John Kay

Environmentalism offers an alternative account of the natural world to the religious and an alternative anti-capitalist account of the political world to the Marxist. The rise of environmentalism parallels in time and place the decline of religion and of socialism.

Technology, globalisation and competition drive prices down. The status of positional goods, the rising cost of domestically produced labour-intensive services and the absence of vigorous competition push prices and inequality up.

Every business tells you that its economics is unique, and it’s rarely true. But for television in the twentieth century, it was true. But today this is no longer the case and like in any other market, people pay for what they want and show great diversity in what they do want.

Our attitudes to risk are governed, not by their incidence, but by their salience. Subjective assessments emphasise the salience of risks. For politicians, salience is all and that is why we are at war on terror.

Recent immigration flows from EU accession states have again shown that policy based evidence does not work. Unfortunately, academics who seek public attention and official research funding are too easily co-opted into this process.

The value of counterfactual history lies not in the questions it raises about the past, but the questions it raises about the present and future, and in the reminder that there is nothing inevitable about the world we observe.

Micro states, like Monaco, depend for their existence on the acquiescence of their larger neighbours.

If Venice were owned by the Disney Corporation, Venice would not be in peril. The city is threatened by crumbling infrastructure and rising sea levels, and by inexorable growth in the number of visitors. Gates that let the tourists in pay for gates that keep the water out.

Managing the process of globalisation requires that those who gain from it compensate those who lose. Otherwise we risk not only the rise of protectionism but a loss of social cohesion: both these problems are already evident.

The states of Western Europe are the first states in history in which insiders represent a large proportion of the population. So every presentation of the reform agenda simply provokes the opposition of the majority and the victims are those who can never hope to become insiders.