Corporate tax is getting easier to avoid. Time to abolish it.

Corporate tax avoidance is once again prominent in the news. When Jean-Claude Juncker, the new European Commission president, was prime minister of Luxembourg, the country seems to have operated as a vast tax shelter. Leaked documents have revealed that special tax arrangements were agreed by his country with over 300 multi-national companies. Getting a handle […]

Is Ed Miliband secretly a Rational Economic Person?

Recently, we have seen a very effective piece of forward guidance.  Ed Miliband’s statement that Labour would bring in a mansion tax on properties worth more than £2 million has had a dramatic impact.  The market for expensive properties in London has more or less ground to a halt, with very few transactions taking place.  […]

All we are saying: give capitalism a chance

Is there a secret Leninist cell operating at a high level in the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels?  One which is dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist structures of the European Union?  The evidence from this past week is certainly consistent with this hypothesis.  The demand for an additional £1.7 billion payment from the […]

More ideas like HS3 are needed to solve our regional problems

In London and much of the South East, the recovery has been well under way for a considerable time.  House prices boom and restaurants are packed.  The economic data for the UK as a whole looks just as encouraging, with employment being at its highest ever level. Yet there are persistent complaints that the recovery […]

Psychology, not hard line maths, tells us why Osborne’s strategy is working

So, International Monetary Fund, wrong again! At the end of last week, the IMF abandoned its criticism of the UK government’s economic strategy. Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief, said her organisation had ‘underestimated’ the strength of the recovery in Britain. The IMF now believes that the UK will be the fastest growing of any major […]

New ideas are needed in economics, but not the tired old statist ones

The annual Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) conference was held in Toronto earlier this month. INET was created by George Soros in the autumn of 2009 in response to the economic crisis. Mainstream economics bears a heavy responsibility for creating the intellectual climate prior to the crash that the problems of boom and bust […]

The ‘Gentleman in Whitehall’ does not know best

The government is relaxed about people cashing in their pension schemes to buy a Lamborghini. But the left-leaning liberal commentariat is certainly not. Abuse has been heaped onto George Osborne’s Budget measure of removing the requirement for people to buy an annuity. The main thrust of the attacks is that individuals may act irresponsibly. They […]

Nick Bosanquet in the Financial Times: projections for 2014

Each New Year the Financial Times surveys a select group of policymakers, academics and commentators to gauge views on some important questions for the economy for the coming year. Volterra associate Nick Bosanquet took part in the survey again in 2014. Take a look at Nick’s responses below: 1. Economy: To what extent will the […]

The recovery is well grounded – except in France

The coming year looks like it will be a good one. At the start of each of the past five years, the economic scales have been tilted down, and the challenge has been to look for factors which might have tipped them back up. This year, the balance is reversed. The onus lies with the […]

‘Re-inventing’ London: Planning for the Future

London is changing.  But then, it always is.  The theme of my new book, ‘Reinventing London’ is that change is the lifeblood of a great city.  Over the past thirty years it has replaced around 1 million jobs in manufacturing, largely around the edge of the city and along the radial routes, with more than […]