My Blog

It is science, not lockdowns, that will save the world
The various new vaccines announced over the past two weeks give real hope of a return to normal life. Of

The public are not to blame for the second lockdown
Justice secretary Robert Buckland last week blamed the public for England’s new lockdown. In particular, the fault was with people

Lockdown 2.0: A creative destruction revolution, or the death knell of innovation?
So Boris Johnson has failed to follow his own government’s guidelines on cost-benefit appraisal. Study after study by economists show

Forget the polls endorsing lockdowns and look at how people actually behave
Economics is at long last storming the bastions of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). This citadel of epidemiologists

The government must take back control of the Covid narrative
The word “narrative” is usually seen as being a posh way of saying “story”. But the idea of narratives is

Heavy-handed Westminster diktats have eroded trust — now only localised Covid policy can restore it
Last month, the official group of scientific advisers — SAGE — warned the government that only a quarter of those

Following the science? This government lacks a basic grasp of the scientific method
Verification and validation. It is hard to imagine a more nerdy phrase. But it is, in essence, how science makes

And this week’s winner for the Stupid Scientist award is…
Scepticism about the advice given by government scientists about Covid-19 is rising sharply. In areas like Bolton infections are high.

Incentives are a better way to tackle Covid-19 than blanket lockdowns
A great deal of government policy during the Covid crisis has involved regulation. Given a choice, economists usually prefer to

Coronavirus fatality rates are way down – why has the government not taken this on board?
King Canute has had a bad press. The monarch sat on the beach on his throne with the deliberate intention

On coronavirus, governments have been the most irrational of us all
Decisions, whether by individuals, companies or governments, are often made with imperfect and incomplete information. This is so obvious as

The national productivity recovery depends on getting people back to the office
Office workers continue to display reluctance to return to their workplaces, despite encouragement from the government for them to head

Sweden shows us whether lockdown was worth the economic cost
Did Sweden get it right in its response to Covid? There is increasing interest in this question. Contrary to widespread

Busting the myth of the selfless bureaucrat
There seems to be a fundamental problem with quangos. Hardly a day seems to go by without some new story

The costs of lockdown can no longer be justified
In an otherwise depressing week, two pieces of very good news emerged from India. In Mumbai, blood tests conducted by

Great expectations: The Darwinian wars of economic and epidemiological forecasting
A key concept in modern economics is, to use the jargon term, rational expectations. The idea has dominated orthodox macroeconomics

Why you should read the small print on alarmist Covid-19 death projections
Another day, another lurid, headline-grabbing number of deaths to expect from Covid-19. This time, it was a study from the

Office clusters are as crucial to productivity as they ever were
The Prime Minister is now demanding that offices reopen to revive economic activity in the centres of towns and cities.

The costs of lockdown could far outweigh the benefits
Radical leaders such as Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland have gained plaudits through their relentless

Innovation is the only way to recover from the Covid crisis
One silver lining of the Covid-19 crisis has been a surge in innovation. Enterprising firms have invented both new products