UK manufacturers have best month since 2013 in November on December 4, 2017The UK’s manufacturers had their best month since August 2013 in November, according to the latest survey snapshot of the sector. The Purchasing Managers’ Index jumped to 58.2 in the month, up from 56.6 in October and well above the 56.5 that City of London analysts had expected. Any reading above 50 signals growth. Overseas […]
Tory austerity was never about economics on June 19, 2017“The crisis”, the economist Rudiger Dornbusch once noted, “takes a much longer time coming than you think. And then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” A similar dynamic describes the progress of Conservative austerity politics. The stunning failure of Theresa May in last week’s general election has been interpreted by Tory MPs […]
Capping energy tariffs isnt a one-way ticket to Venezuelan-style economic ruin on May 1, 2017The North Norfolk radio personality Alan Partridge once threatened to switch to a different petrol station because he felt the fuel on sale at his usual forecourt was “a bit obvious… a bit petrolly”. But normal people don’t care where they get their energy from so long as it’s a good value. No one prefers […]
Capping energy tariffs isnt a one-way ticket to Venezuelan-style economic ruin on May 1, 2017The North Norfolk radio personality Alan Partridge once threatened to switch to a different petrol station because he felt the fuel on sale at his usual forecourt was “a bit obvious… a bit petrolly”. But normal people don’t care where they get their energy from so long as it’s a good value. No one prefers […]
The treatment of David Dao by United Airlines is a lesson in the economics of air travel on April 24, 2017Economics tutors should thank United Airlines. The hapless company has furnished them with a perfectly intuitive case study in the power of financial incentives. Was the right answer to a lack of volunteers to be bumped from the overcapacity Chicago to Louisville flight last week to select one at random and then drag the unfortunate […]
Higher wages could be the answer to our economic woes on April 10, 2017What comes first: the chicken or the egg? Productivity growth or wage increases? Most economists generally assume that the chicken of productivity growth comes before the egg of workers’ pay hikes. In this mental model productivity (the amount of output that the economy produces per hour of labour) rises thanks to technological advances or more […]
Dont listen to the crude lobbying of the right the rich do not bear the greatest tax burden on March 27, 2017Death and taxes, as we all know, are the two great guarantees of life. But a strong candidate for a third is crude anti-tax lobbying by the right-wing press. Their favoured argument in recent years has been that the “burden” of taxation is falling ever more heavily and unfairly on the very rich. The Daily […]
A cliff-edge Brexit could cost each British household £2,000 Theresa May needs to tread carefully on March 20, 2017Parliamentary resistance has melted like ice cream under Theresa May’s Brexit blowtorch. The two year Article 50 divorce process will be triggered by the end of the month. There now seems to be little likelihood of a vote by MPs on the terms of any final deal – at least any vote that could force […]
What do banks and financiers get in return for paying George Osborne £40,000 for one hour of work? on March 20, 2017George Osborne presided over a national productivity disaster when he was Chancellor. But the MP for Tatton is certainly making an outstanding personal contribution to repairing some of the damage now. Last week the House of Commons Register of Members’ Financial Interests disclosed Osborne’s earnings from outside Parliament since he was sacked from the Cabinet […]
Deluded Republicans are accidentally pushing for tax reform on February 13, 2017‘The greatest treason”, suggested TS Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral, is to “do the right deed for the wrong reason”. That feels like a description of the corporate tax reform plan being pushed by Republicans in the US Congress, as they hope to win the backing of the freshly-installed President Donald Trump. For the […]