Category: Economics
Lessons from the crash and today’s trends in Western monetary policy
Reading Time: 5 minutes The coronavirus pandemic, and the ensuing economic crisis, has provoked unprecedented responses from policy makers, no more so than from central banks. The Federal Reserve’s major actions include purchasing up […]
Interview with Oliver Hart
Reading Time: 8 minutes Professor Oliver Hart is the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics Harvard University. He specialises in contract theory and the theory of the firm, having served as the President of […]
The Rationality of Irrationality
Reading Time: 4 minutes Reinhard Selten, 1994 Nobel prize and founding father of experimental economics, predicted that individuals wouldn’t play the conventional Nash Equilibrium in the Ultimatum Game, better known as a take-it-or-leave-it offer. […]
The Hyper-Digitalisation of Covid-19
Reading Time: 3 minutes “A reminder that the virus does not discriminate, we are all at risk.” These were the words UK Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove presented to the public when Prime Minister […]
Carehomes: The timebomb the government won’t diffuse
Reading Time: 5 minutes As a barometer of society’s civilisation, the UK’s care home sector is important. However, employing more people than the NHS, it is economically and politically important too. Clear and visible […]
Rent-seeking and Inequality
Reading Time: 5 minutes 26 billionaires own as much as the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people – perhaps unsurprising given how little the poor in developing countries own. Inequality is widely accepted as not […]
A Conversation with Professor Dave Donaldson on International Trade
Reading Time: 5 minutes TC: To begin with, I wanted to discuss industrial policy, which has seen a resurgence in the 2020 election cycle, whether that’s in the form of the Buy American plan […]
The Digitalisation of Cash: Key Impacts on the Developing World
Reading Time: 3 minutes Development in the third world is rarely incremental. Instead, countries are often able to skip a stage in the course of development usually taken by an economically advanced nation. A […]
Is GDP dead: What metric should we use to guide growth?
Reading Time: 3 minutes GDP has historically been the lens through which we viewed our success: a high GDP growth meant that the economy was booming and that lives were improving, while a drop […]
Comparing the Financial Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic to the 2008 Financial Crisis
Reading Time: 4 minutes Millions unemployed. The world in shock. Governments panicking. Both the financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic left the globe reeling. Yet governments responded with their own bailout packages, their own […]