The blob is wrong: competition and independence raise school standards
The A-Level results released last week confirm the dominance of schools in London and the South East. Provisional league tables have only appeared so far for state schools, but these two regions have two-thirds of the top 100. South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, and Wales did not have a single school between them in the […]
The national accounts are the new JK Rowling
A potential candidate for the world’s most boring book is the Office for National Statistics’ National Accounts: Sources and Methods. This book, all 502 pages of it, is currently available in hardback on Amazon for just 1p. It does exactly what it says in the title. It gives a detailed description of how the data […]
The Subtle Costs of a Mansion Tax
An exciting email pinged into my inbox at the end of last week. It was a link to the contents of the latest issue of the American Economic Association’s journal ‘Economic Policy’. For most people these are not usually as gripping as, say, a Ken Follett novel. But there, nestling amongst thickets of algebra, is […]
The so-called ‘output gap’: another piece of economic mumbo-jumbo
The concept of the’ output gap’ is central to mainstream macroeconomics. It is not merely of academic interest. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has a specific requirement to estimate the output gap, which it defines formally as “the difference between the current level of activity in the economy and the potential level it could […]
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 […]
