My Blog
The Olympics, traffic in Central London and a bar in Santa Fe
We all know now about the empty roads and deserted shops, all quite contrary to the official announcements before the
Why Can’t Debt Just be Inflated Away?
The debt problems which the UK and Europe currently face are essentially ones of political economy. Basically, there is a
Royal Bank of Scotland fiasco shows the power of networks
The last week or so has seen complete mayhem in the Royal Bank of Scotland and its subsidiaries. A computer
Kahneman and schizophrenia in economics
I was at a fascinating session last night, with Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman in conversation with a leading thinker from
Political map of London is like America: strong geographic segregation
Thomas Schelling is a brilliant American polymath, who deservedly won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2005. One of his
Compulsion or Co-operation: Curbing Executive Pay
Andrew Moss, who has been in charge of Aviva since 2007, has become the third chief executive to quit amid
Why do films flop?
The Disney sci-fi flick John Carter has become one of the biggest flops in movie history. The studio has announced
Corporate structure, Darwinism and Random Selection
The corporate world exhibits a wide variety of structures. Co-operatives and partnerships have been around for a long time and
Co-operation and Competition
Ed Mayo, ex-head of the New Economics Foundation and now of Co-ops UK, has an interesting blog (here) on the
Minsky Mania: a Raincheck
The American economist Hyman Minsky is currently very fashionable, especially amongst those who are sympathetic to the idea of more
Why are markets so volatile?
Mainstream economic thinking has considerable difficulty in explaining the massive degree of volatility of financial markets over the past few
Expansionary fiscal contraction
To many people, this phrase is an oxymoron. How can fiscal contraction be expansionary? But the evidence suggests that this
Why is economic growth stalling? May be it is Ricardian equivalence!
The British and American recoveries do seem to be stalling. The recovery profile is by no means as strong as
Recovery is not always smooth
There has been huge media attention about the 2011 Q2 UK GDP growth figures released today. The estimate of 0.2
Hard problems in economics
This is a summary of a presentation I gave in Zurich earlier in June to FuturICT,one ofthe candidate flagship European
The economic recession: where are we now, and how bad has it been?
The world economy as a whole is roaring away. The 5 per cent real GDP growth on 2010 is almost
What a good job Keynes didn’t believe in forecasting
Keynes is in many people’s minds at the moment, as uncertainty about the course of the economic recovery is high.
one swallow…
Of course one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but the second quarter 2010 UK GDP figures released today show output
Limits to taxation? The UK General Election 2010
The May 2010 election saw a substantial swing against the incumbent Labour government, though the Conservatives were denied an outright
extreme events, hill running and financial markets
I am currently in the Scottish Highlands for ten days or so, and my outings on the hills have made
