Impact of the Night Tube on London’s Night Time Economy
London is the most visited city in the world, and the most attractive for Foreign Direct Investment. It is a place where people love to come to do business, see the sights, experience the culture and heritage, to socialise and have fun. London already has an extensive transport system which supports its economy but it […]
Coping with Uncertainty: the Red Hot Topic in Economics
After months of Trappist silence, a whole plethora of large companies has pronounced on the adverse consequences for Scotland of a Yes vote tomorrow. The sectors span the economy, from oil to banks, from supermarkets to phone companies. But what will be the effect of these interventions? From the perspective of a rational economic person, […]
Scottish Independence and Fairytale Land
Sir James Mirrlees is one of the mere handful of British recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics. As his fine old Scottish surname might suggest, he has been active in the debate on independence. His latest intervention, which has attracted considerable publicity, is to pronounce that an independent Scotland should be willing to repudiate […]
After the BRICs, the GIPSIs: Tackling Europe’s Problems
The Euro zone lurches into yet another crisis, with fears of deflation and a further drop in output. There are several dominant explanations of why Europe has been unable to recover from the crisis. Most commentators subscribe to them either on their own, or in various combinations, depending on their tastes. One puts the blame […]
Wall Street no smarter than Mr and Mrs Average
Lurid stories about the excesses in the UK housing market continue to proliferate. True, there is some evidence of a cooling, as the price rises tempt more sellers into the market and temporarily increase supply relative to demand. But at the same time we learn in the Sunday Times that the good burghers of Cobham […]
Employment is rising because labour is cheap
The latest employment figures confirm the buoyancy of the UK labour market. In the quarter April-June of this year, employment rose by 167,000 on the previous quarter, to an all-time high of 30.60 million. Unemployment also fell, by no less than 132,000. Taking a somewhat longer perspective, the low point for employment was reached in […]
The predictability of the Premier League
The Premier League kicks off again this weekend. Given the abysmal showing of our boys in the World Cup, a falling off of interest might be expected. But increasingly, the competition attracts many of the best players from all over the world. A self-reinforcing process has been set up on a global scale. The more […]
In Praise of Inequality in Science
Does inequality in the output of scientists matter? Inequality is a fashionable topic these days, and evidence for its existence is keenly sought in all sorts of places. John Ioannidis, a health policy researcher at Stanford, and his colleagues have found it in the research outputs of their fellow academics. In a paper published in […]
Open Data: Britain leads the world
The UK economy is doing well. Even so, it is not often that we are placed unequivocally at the top of a world ranking of any kind. But a team of economists led by Nicholas Gruen of Lateral Economics in Melbourne has done just that. In their recent report on the economic potential created by […]
Economists are not impressed by Piketty’s views on inequality
The financial crisis has undoubtedly created a demand in popular culture for works which portray capitalism in a bad light, such as the recent best seller by Thomas Piketty. Piketty’s writing has gathered increasing attention from economists, and his arguments do not really bear scrutiny. The focus of Piketty’s work is the long-run evolution of […]
