Ice cream, apathy and the paradox of two party politics
Harold Hotelling, the economist who inaugurated the concept of spatial competition almost a century ago, did not actually use the examp...
Financial Regulation That Might Have a Chance of Working
Regulation of financial services has been an unmitigated policy disaster. Ed Kane has already described the demand for more regulation ...
Why our planes are growing safer and our finances are not
Having just booked a flight to Berlin in June with Germanwings, I thought it might be useful to explain why.
Air travel is extraordi...
Must we endure excessive drug prices to encourage pharmaceutical R&D?
The business model of the modern pharmaceutical industry has been based on drugs that alleviate but do not cure the chronic diseases of...
BUDGET 22 March 2014
A stealthy step towards abolishing income tax
‘For what reason is there, that he which laboureth much, and sparing the fruits of his...
Banks might improve with more women in charge
The most powerful posts in the financial world are today held by women. Janet Yellen chairs the Federal Reserve Board, and Christ...
Why do we welcome innovation to products more readily than to processes?
Children love to play with new toys, but hate disruption to their established routines. These characteristics persist in adult li...
The best strategy is to be good at whatever it is you do
Michael Porter was first economist to become a business guru. He used simple economic concepts to illustrate issues of corporate strate...
What did the US Supreme Court have to say about Sir Malcolm Rifkind in 1874?
Even distinguished former Foreign Secretaries such as Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind might be forgiven for having forgotten the Tre...
It’s too risky to rely on financial risk models
As the global financial crisis began to break in 2007, David Viniar, then CFO of Goldman Sachs, reported in astonishment that his firm ...