Opinion Polls, Financial Crashes and Groupthink
The election is done and dusted, but many interesting questions remain. Was there a swing to the Conservatives at the very last minute, or was it indeed possible to foresee the victory in advance? Snippets are emerging which suggest that the electorate had made up their minds well before polling day. Rod Liddle, the entertaining […]
The Subtle Costs of a Mansion Tax
An exciting email pinged into my inbox at the end of last week. It was a link to the contents of the latest issue of the American Economic Association’s journal ‘Economic Policy’. For most people these are not usually as gripping as, say, a Ken Follett novel. But there, nestling amongst thickets of algebra, is […]
Day care for dogs and the output gap
I am keen on dogs. Recently, I have seen an advert for a special canine toothbrush designed to get rid of the pet’s bad breath, surely a difficult challenge given what dogs get up to. Vans promoting home beauty visits for dogs have proliferated for some time now. A new service being promoted is day […]
Bribing the electorate: new rules of the game thanks to zero inflation
The temptation to believe in the concept of a free lunch is one which has proved irresistible to numerous governments through the ages. Henry VIII, for example, has seized popular imagination once again through the brilliant portrayal of him by Damian Lewis in Wolf Hall. Bluff King Hal is the nickname often associated with the […]
The 38 per cent tipping point on tax
Ed Miliband’s proposal to tax non-doms more harshly may be good, populist politics. But does it make economic sense? At most, the yield will be around £1 billion, even if people do not alter their behaviour in response to the change in policy. The actual amount generated could even be negative if enough non-doms leave the […]
Capitalism is stable and resilient
The financial crisis did succeed in creating one dynamic new industry. Since the late 2000s, there has been a massive upsurge in op-ed pieces, books and even artistic performances offering a critique of capitalism. A founder member of the Monty Python team, Terry Jones, is the latest to get in on the act with his […]
Why is inflation so low?
Zero inflation is trending. The consumer price index in the UK was at the same level in February as it was a year earlier. The reporting of this figure on the BBC website created some unintended amusement, however. The drop to zero, we were told, was “sharper than many analysts had expected”. And what was […]
Why are crime rates falling?
Economic statistics are the bane of forecasters’ lives. Cynics might say that this is because the data reveal how bad their predictions are. But a big practical problem is that initial estimates of the state of the economy can be revised substantially. These issues are as nothing compared to statistics on crime. The Crime Survey […]
Open borders or fair wages: the left needs to make up its mind
As published in the Guardian on Tuesday 24th March 2015 as part of their ‘Economics – Immigration Special’ Mass immigration increases inequality. This is the unpalatable fact the liberal left in Britain refuses to accept. Markets are imperfect instruments. But it is not necessary to subscribe to free market economic theory to believe that large […]
Do Budgets really matter?
All eyes will be on George Osborne’s Budget today. An immense amount of media attention and serious commentary will be devoted to it. But do Budgets really matter? How much difference would it make if successive chancellors simply did nothing, apart from indexing various allowances and benefits in line with inflation? From time immemorial, British […]
