Blog and updates
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26 Jun 2015
Who plays better poker? Cameron, Sturgeon or Varoufakis?
The gracious Palladian architecture of Edinburgh has often led the city to be described as the Athens of the North. If the referendum result had gone the other way, much closer parallels would have...
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25 Jun 2015
Could Djibouti be the next Dubai?
This little story on today's BBC Business News combines many of the elements of constraints on development and policies to help promote growth and development which we teach at A2.
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24 Jun 2015
Tax credits explained
In the last couple of weeks we have seen the PM pledging changes to the tax credits system, the Chancellor looking for £12bn of welfare cuts, and suggestions that it would help to avoid 'in-work...
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22 Jun 2015
Economics Teacher Conference Download
It was fantastic to see so many of you at today's Teachers National Conference at the Wellcome Collection conference centre in London. I'm sure, like me, you really enjoyed soaking up the wit and...
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20 Jun 2015
Access to great free resources from CORE Economics
The CORE Economics approach is now taught at UCL, Bristol and Southampton Universities. The demand for this new undergraduate course is in part a response to pressure from students who have been...
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18 Jun 2015
Ideas from Living and Dead Economists
A summer challenge for my more ambitious economics students is to become knowledgeable about the ideas, insights and theories put forward by as many different economists as they can. Here is the...
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18 Jun 2015
Supply side success is a cure for the drug of deficit finance
George Osborne’s plan to run financial surpluses and use them to pay off government debt has been met with the usual set of whinges and whines, mainly from academic economists funded by the...
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17 Jun 2015
Final preparations for Unit 4 macro
Year 13 students who are in the final stages of preparation for Unit 4 papers will know that they must carry a range of evidence about the UK and the global economy with them in their head as they...
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16 Jun 2015
Does social mobility matter to Economists?
Social mobility (or apparent lack of it) has been in the news again recently. I suppose that this won’t be a surprise given the success of the incumbent Conservative Government during the General...
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16 Jun 2015
Why banking is dominated by a few big and highly leveraged firms
The domination of the banking industry by a handful of ‘too-big-to-fail’ and highly leveraged banks is driven by two forces at the heart of modern market economies: competition and ‘increasing...
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16 Jun 2015
Behavioural Economics - Giving and Peer Effects
Donors are strongly influenced by how much other people have given when it comes to giving online to fundraising websites. A single large donation of £100 increases subsequent amounts given by...
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15 Jun 2015
Fiscal and Monetary policy – limited by a lack of ‘wriggle room’?
At some point recession will return, and we will want to use fiscal policy and monetary policy to help revive aggregate demand. After the financial crisis, policymakers sprang into action to...
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14 Jun 2015
Mis-leading price comparison sites
They give the appearance of offering consumers much valued information and transparency about the best deals in complex savings, loans and insurance markets. But price comparison sites are coming...
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14 Jun 2015
OCR F585 Case Study Toolkit Presentation
The full version of my OCR F585 presentation toolkit is now available for viewing in streamed format now that the main exam is over.
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13 Jun 2015
Banks, cancer and Stephen Hawking
Massive fines for banks, gross misbehaviour, huge bonuses for failure, bail outs at vast expense to the taxpayer. Little wonder that politicians and pundits can almost invariably win cheap applause...
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11 Jun 2015
Nudging to Achieve Behavioural Change
Behavioural economics seeks to develop an understanding of how people think their decisions can be influenced through 'nudges'. There are many different types of nudge and this Storify will seek to...
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11 Jun 2015
Economics of a Natural Resource Curse
Recent articles and analysis on the economics of natural resources and whether they act as a constraint and barrier to economic growth and development in many of the world's poorer countries.
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10 Jun 2015
Which sectors are suffering poor productivity growth? And why?
Britain’s GDP growth has been strong, relative to similar economies. Employment has never been higher. Yet almost all economists at the moment share a similar worry – poor productivity. GDP per...
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10 Jun 2015
TFTA - Cape to Cairo Free-Trade Zone
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33076917Intra-regional trade within Sub Saharan Africa is much lower as a percentage of total trade than for other regions such as Asia and the European...
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10 Jun 2015
Information, Networks and Economic Growth - Cesar Hidalgo
It was a delight to hear Cesar Hidalgo speak at the Oxford Martin School yesterday as he launches his new book Why Information Grows. Below are some notes that I took at the meeting and also a...
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