Ninja Turtles, Nick Clegg and Market Failure

Christmas is coming.  Retailers are beginning to push their offers hard.  The first page of a search on Google for ‘Christmas Toys 2012’ is full of sites announcing the ones which will be ‘hot’ or ‘top’.  In total, there are over 75 million results available to be perused. Last year it was Mishling Tree Monsters, […]

Why teachers are just like bankers

The current highly emotional debate about GCSE grades is not very enlightening.  But what has happened tells us a lot about how incentives matter, how they affect outcomes.  And at the same time, it shows that unless a proper set of social norms is in place, incentives can have unanticipated, perverse effects. Bankers and teachers […]

USA vs China continued… The Influence of Networks (and the Olympics!)

The last three Olympics have seen a titanic battle between the US and China to head the medals table. If you combine the total of the last three Games, China stands just ahead, with 121 golds to the United States’s 116. But, the US topped the table in both 2004 and 2012, while China edges […]

Who will rule the 21st Century

This is a nice big question to ponder on the holiday beach or in the rented villa. A vast amount has already been written on the rise of China and whether the US will be replaced as the global superpower. And where exactly does Europe fit into all this? It is easy to make a […]