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The various new vaccines announced over the past two weeks give real hope of a return to normal life. Of

Justice secretary Robert Buckland last week blamed the public for England’s new lockdown. In particular, the fault was with people

So Boris Johnson has failed to follow his own government’s guidelines on cost-benefit appraisal. Study after study by economists show

Economics is at long last storming the bastions of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). This citadel of epidemiologists

The word “narrative” is usually seen as being a posh way of saying “story”. But the idea of narratives is

Last month, the official group of scientific advisers — SAGE — warned the government that only a quarter of those

Verification and validation. It is hard to imagine a more nerdy phrase. But it is, in essence, how science makes

Scepticism about the advice given by government scientists about Covid-19 is rising sharply. In areas like Bolton infections are high.

A great deal of government policy during the Covid crisis has involved regulation. Given a choice, economists usually prefer to

King Canute has had a bad press. The monarch sat on the beach on his throne with the deliberate intention

Decisions, whether by individuals, companies or governments, are often made with imperfect and incomplete information. This is so obvious as

Office workers continue to display reluctance to return to their workplaces, despite encouragement from the government for them to head

Did Sweden get it right in its response to Covid? There is increasing interest in this question. Contrary to widespread

There seems to be a fundamental problem with quangos. Hardly a day seems to go by without some new story

In an otherwise depressing week, two pieces of very good news emerged from India. In Mumbai, blood tests conducted by

A key concept in modern economics is, to use the jargon term, rational expectations. The idea has dominated orthodox macroeconomics

Another day, another lurid, headline-grabbing number of deaths to expect from Covid-19. This time, it was a study from the

The Prime Minister is now demanding that offices reopen to revive economic activity in the centres of towns and cities.

Radical leaders such as Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland have gained plaudits through their relentless

One silver lining of the Covid-19 crisis has been a surge in innovation. Enterprising firms have invented both new products