Time for an honest talk about the costs of climate action
Sydney University’s Centre for Complex Systems does innovative work on a broad range of topics. But spending the last couple of weeks there has also given me a wider perspective on some familiar themes. Climate change is, quite literally, a hot topic in Australian politics. The country melted in 45-degree record temperatures in January, and […]
Why we should allow second-rate universities to go bankrupt
The political spotlight remains focused on Brexit, but an important dogfight is developing in the area of higher education. The specific issue is whether universities in the UK should be allowed to go bankrupt. It is not merely a theoretical question. In the past year, a number of universities have announced deficits running well into […]
Looking out for the next financial crisis? Keep an eye on spiralling debt
Concerns are growing that another financial crisis is imminent. No less important a figure than Kenneth Rogoff wrote last week that “the next major financial crisis may come sooner than you think”. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the IMF, shot to fame with his 2008 book This Time Is Different, co-authored with his Harvard […]
What’s the point of economists? Look to America’s tech giants to find out
Despite the dire predictions from the economics profession about Brexit, the UK economy is doing well. Growth continues at a steady pace. An all-time record 32.4m people are in work. Unemployment has fallen to levels not seen since the mid-1970s. In contrast, the Eurozone is on the brink of recession – and Italy is already […]
AI has not yet spurred a productivity boom, but just you wait
Nobel laureate Bob Solow pronounced 30 years ago that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”. At the start of the 1980s, the world entered the digital age. Fax machines transformed communications. The introduction of personal computers made high-powered computing available to all. But it took time to work out […]
No matter how we measure inflation, politics will forever trump economics
THE ECONOMIC Affairs Committee of the House of Lords has got its bovver boots on. Last week, the government was given a sound kicking. The issue was the seemingly esoteric one of how to measure inflation. Inflation tells us how much the prices of goods and services are going up. The question is: what do […]
Capitalism has reduced inequality and improved the world, yet still it is under attack
DESPITE the First World War ending the previous November, the year 1919 was a very bad one. For example, the UK entered what was by far its deepest ever economic recession. Output fell some 25 per cent between 1919 and 1921 as the economy attempted to adapt to peacetime conditions. The troops had been promised […]
Europe has suffered from the euro – just ask the Greeks
One of the entertainments of the holiday period was reading Adults In The Room, the book by Yanis Varoufakis. It describes his time as finance minister of Greece, and his negotiations with the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. Varoufakis was only in the job between January and July 2015. He had the […]
The Ghost of Christmas Past could tell us where the negotiations all went wrong
In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge finds being haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Past unbearable. He begs it to stop. The Ghost replies: “These are the shadows of things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me.” It might almost be the Prime Minister speaking about the whole […]
Hyperbolic discounting explains why the French are revolting over Macron’s fuel tax
Economists have long argued that an effective way of reducing carbon emissions is by increasing taxes on energy consumption. This year’s Nobel laureate, Bill Nordhaus, advocated a global carbon tax over 40 years ago. The scientific logic is impeccable. But the practical politics of it are fraught with difficulties. To say that energy taxes, and […]
