John Kay

Doing an Atkins diet is now as fashionable in business as it is in personal life. But in business – as on the female body – there are places where you want fat as well as those where you do not. Bottom line – rather than tinker with sustainability, it is still best to soak up resources and use the energy productively.

It is in human, rather than natural resources, that the origins of material prosperity are to be found. John describes why natural resources may be a burden rather than a blessing for some developing countries.

The connection between a country’s climate and its wealth can prove elusive.

A walk on Menton’s marché municipal reveals how the conclusions regarding differences in productivity among countries, can be both obvious and meaningless.

Where do economists go on holiday? Unmoved by glossy travel brochures they turn straight to the concept of purchasing power parity.

Books that John has reviewed in the past…

The interrelationship of technology, economic advance, and social and political systems, has many ramifications. The last ten years, in economic terms, have constituted an American decade. But the way in which the American decade comes to an end is probably the most important issue for the world economy today.

John Kay speaks about the need for seamless integration between the three roles of measurement, which he identifies as external reporting, internal control and internal analysis. His major theme is that the requirements for external reporting should be derived from the measures used for internal control which in turn should be based upon the measures used to complete internal analysis. Hence the seamless link between these three roles of measurement.

Looking at the most productive economies in the world, one common element is striking: Western European influence. This is a most unfashionable observation to make.

The crisis in the European social model should be clearly visible from Copenhagen. It proves hard to establish what is really supposed to be going wrong.