There is a nice weather map cartoon by Matt featuring the UK characterised by the varied intensity of dinner table house price conversation. And it is not just that we are obsessed with property values…
In baseball history, nine players have signed guaranteed contracts worth over $200 million. Five of those contracts have been for ten years. Two of the five belong to Alex Rodriguez; the others include…
When discussing the state of the economy, politicians deploy two key tricks. First, get your excuses in early. Second, take all the credit for any good news but blame others for any bad news. David Cameron…
Focusing on growth, the Brisbane G20 leaders’ summit has not grappled with three key issues. How much more growth can the planet survive? How can poorer nations raise their living standards to parity with…
Economists are being called upon to estimate the costs of the Ebola epidemic to West Africa and elsewhere. However, economists should also play a part in estimating the likelihood of the disease spreading…
The word “speculation” carries a connotation of negativity. And it’s probably fair to say that pretty much every financial crisis since the tulip mania of the 1630s can be attributed to some sort of mass…
Many readers of this piece will be aware that economists are rethinking the role of happiness and GDP. They question facile assumptions about economic growth alone being good for us. What’s the good of…
Behind every economic policy initiative lies a narrative justifying that course of action: immigration increases unemployment; public debt is unsustainable; manufacturing is interminably declining; city…
I will never forget the late summer day on which Johnny Smith (not his real name) came to my office at UNSW full of excitement about his incipient undergraduate career. “I want to work as an investment…
As the US economy emerges from recession, the prospect of the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates grabs the attention of the financial markets more and more. US rates have been close to zero for…
It’s that time of year again – when academic economics, thanks to the Nobel Prize announcements, is thrust into the public gaze. That the economics Nobel is mistitled and has quite a different status to…
Jean Tirole has won a deserved Nobel prize. The French economist from Toulouse 1 Capitole University has made some significant contributions to almost all fields in economics, but it is his work in the…
In a world where too many go to bed hungry, it comes as a shock to realise that more than half the world’s food production is left to rot, lost in transit, thrown out, or otherwise wasted. This loss is…
After the global financial crisis in 2008, economics was in disarray. Even the Queen was moved to chide economists for failing to warn about the build-up of debt in households and banks in the major economies…
What does genuine economic progress look like? The orthodox answer is that a bigger economy is always better, but this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite planet, the economy…
Anyone listening to the Scottish Independence debate may wish to have a care for the English regions. Take the West Midlands, equal to the population of Scotland, cradle of the industrial revolution and…
While Edinburgh and London wrestle over the future of the pound, it has has been sinking. The slide (especially against the US dollar) is widely seen as a knee-jerk reaction to the possibility of Scotland…
If you want to understand the sometimes confounding moves played by Russian premier Vladimir Putin, then you could do worse than look at the accounts. On the face of it the country has seen 14 years of…
Ask ten people what they think about Africa’s rising cities and you get ten different opinions. The only thing they will agree on is that traffic is awful. In truth, 52 cities with more than a million…
Political wrangling over food prices has a long history, and a difficult future. We have become used to ever-cheaper food, but a closer look at what’s happening shows that what we buy and how much we pay…