Don’t fear robots taking your job – worry about them cutting your wages
Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) seem to be in the news all the time, and breakthroughs are announced regularly. Last year, it was an AI programme which beat the world champion at Go, a game immensely more complex than chess. Now, in the austere American journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes […]
There’s substance to the Trump team’s trade critique of Germany and the Eurozone
President Trump’s administration has made many criticisms of Germany. One of the more important was by his top trade advisor, Peter Nabarro. He accused the Germans of using a “grossly undervalued” Euro to “exploit” its trading relationship with America. The complaint that when the Euro was formed the Deutschmark was too low relative to the […]
Need a reason to cut public sector pay and pensions? Look at Jeremy Corbyn
The shambles over the treatment of National Insurance has dominated the media’s reporting of the recent Budget. But only the previous week, Jeremy Corbyn made a complete horlicks of his tax return for the second year running. The Bearded One makes a saintly fuss over making his tax affairs transparent. In 2016, he forgot to […]
Kenneth Arrow proved economists needn’t be loud to make a difference
Does winning the Nobel Prize in economics cause longevity? We might be forgiven for thinking so. Thomas Schelling died last year aged 95. The author of the famous textbook, Paul Samuelson, passed away at 94, whilst his colleague, Bob Solow, is still going strong at 92. The British Laureate Ronald Coase reached the age of […]
Claims that a low tax, low regulation UK would be a disaster are rubbish
Dame Minouche Shafik, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, is leaving to become Director of the London School of Economics. Last weekend, she gave her final interview wearing her Bank hat. Shafik issued what was described in the media as a “thinly veiled warning” to the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond. She stated that it was […]
Blame restrictions on the supply of land for new homes for rising wealth inequality
Official data released last week on London house price increases in 2016 generated a lot of interest. Given that housing represents by far the most important component of wealth for most people, it is not surprising that stories like this are read avidly. There is a feeling that the current situation regarding the affordability of […]
A tale of two Eurozones: Greater Germany and Club Med are drifting ever further apart
At the end of last week Federica Mogherini met leading members of the Trump administration. Mogherini, yet another Italian politician turned Euro-bureaucrat, is in fact the foreign policy chief of the European Union. She stood on her dignity, or rather the dignity of the European Commission, issuing a warning to America not to interfere with politics […]
It’s fanciful to think China’s economy will overtake the US’s anytime soon
Possibly the single most important of the tensions stoked up by President Trump is the rivalry between the United States and China. Economic strength will be the ultimate determinant of this struggle for the position of Top Nation. Comparisons of the size of economies, particularly ones at very different levels of income per head, are fraught […]
Why the economics profession remains blind to the benefits of Brexit
The office for National Statistics last week estimated that the UK economy grew at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent in the final quarter of last year. This is slightly above the long-term average growth of the past three decades. But a Financial Times survey this month showed that the majority of economists remain […]
Economic Research Council talk: why are so many economists opposed to Brexit?
Economic Research Council talk on Monday 20th February 18.30 – 20.00: I will be discussing why so many economists are opposed to Brexit. Book your ticket here. A limited number of Early Bird tickets are available for £15 each. Following a Financial Times survey in January that showed that nine times as many economists are opposed to […]
