Our tech advances are difficult for productivity stats to compute
One of the most depressing aspects of the decade of the 2010s, well before Covid-19 struck, was the apparently very slow growth in productivity. This is not a mere ivory tower issue. It is only through increasing productivity that rises in living standards can be sustained. Productivity is the key measure of the efficiency of […]
Let the Iowa fiasco serve as a warning — new technology isn’t always the answer Opinion
Last week, the entire world witnessed the shambles of the vote counting in the Iowa Democratic caucus. It should have been straightforward — but adding all the votes up in a consistent way took a whole week. The list of errors is as long as your arm. In some precincts, for example, the total number […]
Can we innovate better outside the EU? Economic lessons from the Nobel prize winner
Gordon Brown’s time as chancellor will be remembered for many things. A sense of humour would be conspicuously absent from this list. But he provoked a great deal of mirth unintentionally in a speech shortly before the 1997 General Election on the theme of “post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory”. Perhaps the last laugh is with Brown. The […]
Kenneth Arrow proved economists needn’t be loud to make a difference
Does winning the Nobel Prize in economics cause longevity? We might be forgiven for thinking so. Thomas Schelling died last year aged 95. The author of the famous textbook, Paul Samuelson, passed away at 94, whilst his colleague, Bob Solow, is still going strong at 92. The British Laureate Ronald Coase reached the age of […]
