Chess and Decision Making
The World Chess Championship is underway, and the current champion – the Indian Viswanathan Anand – is trailing his young rival Magnus Carlsen by three to five. In the opinion of many, Carlsen is set fair to become the strongest ever human player. The match is an absorbing spectacle, but the game of chess is […]
Learn Maths, Young Person! The Secret of Success in the 21st Century
A currently fashionable pessimistic topic is the lifetime prospects of children born into the middle class. Graduate debt, lack of finance to buy homes and job insecurity after they graduate, the list goes on. Alan Milburn, the government’s ‘social mobility tsar’, put the seal of approval on this prevailing angst last month. His Social Mobility […]
The Benefits of Choice: the Battle Never Ends
Do consumer choice and competition between suppliers improve the quality of outcomes for consumers? The answer might seem so obvious to many readers that it is hardly worth asking. But a powerful strand of political opinion is building up to an attack on the concept. Mary Creagh, the new Labour shadow Transport Secretary said last […]
Grangemouth highlights the competitive problems of the Rest of the UK
The recovery in the British economy is now firmly established. Output in the services sector, the largest part of the economy, is above the previous peak level prior to the crash in 2008. There is a widespread myth that the recovery is fueled by debt-financed personal spending. Yet since the trough of the recession in […]
Energy and Emissions: Taxation or Technology?
Energy prices are in the news. The recent actions of some of the energy companies can plausibly be described as provocative, no matter how well founded their decisions might be. They run the risk of provoking the ire of both the Opposition and the Government. One interesting aspect of the debate is that it has […]
Gresham’s Law in Education: How the Bad Drove Out the Good
Young adults in England have scored almost the lowest result in the developed world in international literacy and numeracy tests. A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England’s 16 to 24 year olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts. England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for […]
Quis custodiet? Put the regulators on trial if they screw up
The Treasury’s amendments to the Banking Reform Bill mean that senior bankers could face up to seven years in jail for ‘reckless misconduct’ which leads to the collapse of a bank. Certainly, the behaviour of prominent individuals in the run up to the crisis left much to be desired. If only we could have put […]
Russia: how the crisis might affect future growth
The performance of the BRIC economies over the past decade or so has been mixed. Russian growth, though impressive by Western standards, has lagged that of both India and China. This is particularly true since 2008. I got an insight into the problem at a conference last week at the Economics Institute at St Petersburg […]
Everything is crystal clear with hindsight
Are government bonds risky? This question arose a year ago, during a meeting with my bank. I wanted a low risk portfolio, but they noted that I did not want to hold UK government bonds. Whether it was the regulator who was insisting, or whether it was the way the bank was interpreting some Delphic […]
Alibaba: not just the Forty Thieves. China at the Cutting Edge
In the whole of the 20th century, only a few countries managed to transform themselves and join the club of rich economies. Japan is the most prominent example. The key question for the first half of the 21st century is whether or not China will manage to do the same. It is a difficult and elusive feat, […]
