Employment is rising because labour is cheap – especially in the private sector August 19, 2014 The latest employment figures confirm the buoyancy of the UK labour market. In the April to June quarter of this year, employment rose by 167,000 on the previous quarter, to an all-time high of 30.6m. Unemployment also fell, by no less than 132,000. Taking a somewhat longer perspective, the low point for employment was reached [...]
The power of our top football clubs is making the Premier League predictable August 13, 2014 The Premier League kicks off again this weekend. And given the abysmal showing of our boys in the recent World Cup, a falling off of interest might be expected. But increasingly, our domestic football league attracts many of the best players from around the world. A self-reinforcing process has been set up on a global [...]
Why recessions can be good for your health – unless you’re in your fifties August 5, 2014 MANY readers at this time of the year will be looking forward to their summer break, perhaps contemplating with a certain amount of envy those colleagues who have already departed. But is leisure good for you? A bit of a no brainer, you might think. Indeed, until recently, the consensus among applied economists was that [...]
Why inequality in science is a good thing – if you care about progress July 29, 2014 DOES inequality in the output of scientists matter? Inequality is a fashionable topic, and evidence for its existence is keenly sought in all sorts of places. John Ioannidis, a health policy researcher at Stanford, and his colleagues have found it in the research outputs of their fellow academics. As they detail in a paper in [...]
Britain leads the open data revolution – but sloppy economists must keep up July 22, 2014 THE UK economy is doing well. Even so, it is not often that we are placed unequivocally at the top of a world ranking of any kind. But a team of economists led by Nicholas Gruen of Lateral Economics in Melbourne has done just that. In their recent report on the economic potential created by [...]
Risky projects like HS3 are the only way to rescue our languishing regions July 16, 2014 In London and much of the South East, the recovery has been well underway for a considerable period of time. House prices boom and restaurants are packed. The economic data for the UK as a whole looks just as encouraging, with employment now at its highest ever level. Yet there are persistent complaints that the [...]
Piketty’s populism is flawed: Capitalism doesn’t mean more inequality July 8, 2014 The financial crisis has undoubtedly created a demand in popular culture for works portraying capitalism in a bad light, such as the recent bestseller by Thomas Piketty – Capital in the 21st Century. Piketty’s writing has gathered increasing attention from economists, who show that his arguments do not bear scrutiny. The focus of Piketty’s work [...]
The crisis isn’t over: The Eurozone’s laggards still need disciplining July 1, 2014 THE POLISH banking and financial elite gathered last week at a conference in the Baltic seaside resort of Sopot. The proceedings were enlivened by the presence on the platform of Jacek Rostowski, one of the senior Polish politicians recently caught on tape badmouthing David Cameron, in very colourful terms, for his failure to stand up [...]
What Keynes can teach us about England’s World Cup failure June 25, 2014 SO FAREWELL, then, England! Yet another failure by our boys at the highest levels of football. Despite their stupendous salaries, our players were once again unable to exhibit the necessary skills, a point which seems to exercise many fans of the game. Tens of thousands, if not millions, of words have been written about the [...]
