Years on, we still haven’t learnt to quantify the damage done during the pandemic
The Royal Society is the world’s oldest independent scientific academy. Last week, some of its scientists trespassed onto public policy with a report on how effectively lockdowns and other measures such as mask wearing reduced the number of cases during the Covid-19 pandemic. At one level, the work was thorough and scrupulous. More than fifty scientists […]
We need to get to net zero, but we will fail if we lose public support
Rishi Sunak’s proposals to adjust some of the timetables on the path to net zero have provoked outrage in many quarters. This is despite the fact that the UK has already made more progress than most countries in moving towards net zero. We might usefully compare it to this time last year, when the public […]
Keep dreaming if you think Brexit is the reason craft beer breweries are going bust
A couple of weeks in the Highlands is always refreshing; the scenery is fantastic and the locals are welcoming, even if the weather has been typical of a very British summer. The experience was only marred in one respect: it was virtually impossible to obtain a pint of hand-pumped traditional bitter in the pubs. This […]
House prices will eventually start to fall, as long as owners accept their new reality
Economic news has had few moments of optimism lately: living standards are being squeezed and the overall level of economic activity, as measured by GDP, remains lower than it was in the second half of 2019. Yet house prices are holding up well. In the year to May 2023 average house prices are estimated to […]
Edinburgh Fringe fame for a one woman show is proof of the randomness of celebrity
The Edinburgh Festival is in full swing and the number of performers is almost incredible: the overall total this year is estimated to be around 50,000. A small fraction are already established names; an even smaller fraction may become famous as the festival unfolds. But most will return home just as unknown as when they […]
The post-pandemic workplace and office employment densities in central London
Historically, office employment densities in London have been consistently increasing as more workers have been fit into smaller spaces. It is likely that average office employment densities for prime urban areas reached as high as one full-time equivalent job per 10sqm of office space before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic (hereafter ‘the pandemic’). Ostensibly […]
Learnings from our 2023 work experience programme
Volterra are delighted to have hosted four work experience placements over the past two weeks at our Kennington office. The benefits of work experience placements for students are well documented. Readers won’t be surprised to hear that a good quality placement helps grow the students’ confidence, improves their core skillsets and consolidates their career paths […]
The big beasts of banking, supermarkets and tech are behind our productivity slump
The mystery of the dramatic slowdown in productivity growth across the West since the late 2000s remains unsolved. It is the key question in political economy. If productivity doesn’t rise, national income per head of population remains flat. As a result, government receipts from taxation remain static. In the UK, where the limits to taxation […]
Even if the pandemic hadn’t happened, we would have all ended up working remotely
Working from home is a phenomenon we still associate with the pandemic. Some companies are trying to reverse its growth and get more people back into the office, but the debate about productivity has failed, so far, to yield conclusive results. A fascinating and timely Stanford research paper, entitled “The evolution of working from home”, […]
If politicians keep ignoring economists, our strategies will never be cost-effective
Economists have been getting bad press because of the antics of the Bank of England and its Monetary Policy Committee. We are suffering from what we, as economists, describe as a “negative externality”. It might be convenient for you to drive your car, for example, but the emissions which this creates have a negative impact […]
