Category: Quick Reads
“Good Economics for Hard Times” by Duflo and Banerjee
Reading Time: 3 minutes Good Economics for Hard Times is the second general readership publication of the husband and wife, Nobel-prize winning pair of Duflo and Banerjee. Their first book, Poor Economics, published in […]
The Bitcoin Bubble
Reading Time: 3 minutes In 2008 the first cryptocurrency Bitcoin was launched. While still providing a means for exchanges and the store of value, cryptocurrencies have the distinct advantage of being decentralised as opposed […]
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 […]
Why IP Laws Should Be Weakened
Reading Time: 4 minutes Intellectual property (IP) laws have gathered a lot of press recently, specifically in relation to the cost of drugs and healthcare, as well as the US-China trade war. There is […]
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 […]