Blog and updates
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19 Jan 2017
Behavioural Nudges and Environmental Sustainability
Here are some notes on environmental nudges given at a talk I attended by two members of the Behavioural Insights team.
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19 Jan 2017
Jim O'Neill defends Globalisation
Jim O'Neill wins today's award for money-for-old rope with an article that defends globalisation. The only way that this differs from a good student defending the issue, is that by using the...
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19 Jan 2017
The End of China's Economic Miracle?
This is a blog entry mainly for students who are preparing to take a paper on China for their PreU Economics paper. This is a mighty one hour discussion including George Soros on prospects for the...
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19 Jan 2017
Self-Driving Trucks and Creative Destruction
More creative destruction here: Will self-driving trucks replace the need for truck drivers, and what are the implications of this? Automated trucks won't require statutory rest breaks, for...
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19 Jan 2017
Play 'Brexit - Deal or No Deal'!
Here’s a fun and not too frivolous resource aimed at provoking discussion and debate about the Brexit negotiation process. It combines the concept behind the popular day-time TV show ‘Deal or No...
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19 Jan 2017
The Economics of Charging to use a Book Store!
A bookseller in the Yorkshire Dales was in the headlines last week. He called a customer a “pain in the arse”, and has been the subject of numerous complaints to the local parish council about his...
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19 Jan 2017
Is Inequality Set to Decline?
This FT clip looks at the historic factors that have contributed to rising inequality, or at least the perception of rising inequality today, and the subsequent implications of this for populism...
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19 Jan 2017
The Contestable Gym Market
Many A-Level Business students are looking in depth this year at the UK gym market as part of their exam preparations. Some of Jim's tweeted charts are superb context for understanding the...
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19 Jan 2017
Is Free Trade Good or Bad?
We rather take for granted the maxim that free trade is a good thing. This article from the BBC's Andrew Walker might just, at the margin make you think again. It makes it clear that economic...
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18 Jan 2017
Amartya Sen on Trump, Protectionism and Brexit
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen is interviewed by Ian King on Sky Business News
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17 Jan 2017
Is China now leading the free world?
"Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, so are light and air. No-one will emerge as a winner in a trade war". President Xi...
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17 Jan 2017
Why Economists should learn to tell more jokes
Rory Sutherland is on fine form here as he draws on his experiences at the Kilkenny Festival of economics and comedy. Story-telling is an insanely important part of the context in which we take...
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17 Jan 2017
Mega Merger in the Cigarette Industry
The era of the mega-merger is well and truly here: BAT and Reynolds, tobacco giants, have agreed to merge with the former subsuming the latter.
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17 Jan 2017
Pablo the Dancing Flamingo and Behavioural Priming
Charlie Lewis, Digital Strategist at Winston-Wolf writes here about how an encounter with Pablo the dancing flamingo taught him all he needs to know about behavioural priming!
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16 Jan 2017
Development: the problem of 'failing states'
According to The Economist, few things matter more than fixing failed states. Broadly defined, state failure provides “a general explanation for why poor countries are poor”.
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16 Jan 2017
Economics of leaving a Customs Union
With a hard Brexit strategy becoming more likely by the day, this is a rather good summary of the likely effects of leaving the EU customs union from the economics reporters at the Independent.
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16 Jan 2017
8 billionaires own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world's population - does it matter?
Oxfam have updated their list and comparison of the world's super-rich showing that the top 8 wealthiest people own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world's population. You can see their...
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16 Jan 2017
Zombie firms and weak productivity growth
Are zombie firms crowding out investment and holding back productivity growth? This article from the Economist draws on a new research report from the OECD.
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16 Jan 2017
The Debt Deficit Distinction
KAL from the Economist provides the artistic genius behind this short video from the Economist.
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15 Jan 2017
Government debt and the interest burden
There has been a significant increase in the size of public sector debt in many advanced countries since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) engulfed nations in the autumn of 2007. But what has...
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