Investors should intervene to stop high executive pay, before the regulator does
Shareholder discontent over executive pay continues to rise. Last week, the outgoing boss of BT, Gavin Patterson, was in the firing line. At the company’s annual general meeting, 34 per cent of investors voted against the remuneration report, which included a £1.3m bonus payment to Patterson. Concern about top pay has spread even to the […]
Never mind who wins, the World Cup is a treasure trove for curious economists
Our boys make progress – and I don’t mean on Brexit. On a visit to Glasgow last Thursday, a popular Scottish newspaper had a mock-up photo of Harry Kane lifting the cup. In massive type, the headline shrieked “This Would Be the End of the World”. Yes, it would rather put the Highland Clearances into […]
Meet the engineers of economic theory: Market design has become a full-time job
What does someone with the job title of “chief economist” actually do? The most well-known in the UK is probably Andy Haldane at the Bank of England, but his role is not typical. So what do the others do? Nobel Laureate Alvin Roth’s paper in the latest issue of the American Economic Review describes the […]
Immigration fears are more economically rational than the urban liberals pretend
Immigration is a hot topic in both senses of the word “hot”. Not only is it at the forefront of the news, it also provokes heated emotions. For the metropolitan liberal elite, immigration is unequivocally a Good Thing. They are on the side of the angels. Whether it is President Trump attempting to control entry […]
Economics is doing just fine, thank you, without adopting psychology’s blunders
Criticisms of economics have abounded since the financial crisis. Even Nobel Prize winners like George Akerlof of Berkeley have got in on the act. A key demand is for economics to adopt a more recognisably human portrait of behaviour in its theories than the rational calculating machine of the textbooks. Psychology rather than pure economic […]
Anyone for England? The World Cup and business stardom are both games of luck
The 2018 World Cup in Russia kicks off tomorrow. This time, at least, there is little feeling that our boys will emerge victorious. And yet. There is a great deal more randomness in the outcome of soccer games than is generally appreciated. A striking feature of games in the World Cup is that they are […]
Artificial intelligence will dominate every aspect of our lives, but it won’t replace us
Guess which of the 964 jobs listed in the widely used Occupational Information Network online database is the least susceptible to replacement by artificial intelligence (AI). The unsurprising answer is that of “massage therapist”. This is one of the findings of a paper in the latest issue of the American Economic Review by Erik Brynjolfsson […]
Mark Carney has bigger things to worry about than meaningless Brexit forecasts
The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is up to his usual tricks. Last week, he claimed in front of the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons that British households are now more than £900 worse off after the vote to leave the EU. The figure was obtained by comparing a forecast […]
Brussels elites who fiddled while Rome burned may soon get their comeuppance
The new Italian government looks set to cause shock waves across Europe. The two parties promise mass deportations of immigrants and huge increases in public spending. Both the social and the economic policies of the Italian coalition clash directly with those of the European Commission, and Germany and France. They represent a decisive break with […]
The Windrush scandal and police failures show the dangers of bureaucratic targets
The Windrush scandal still bubbles away. The bureaucrats at the Home Office are being condemned for their harsh behaviour. But it is scarcely their fault – they are simply reacting in a way entirely compatible with the economic theory of rational choice. It emerged during the saga of Amber Rudd’s resignation that targets had been […]
