Tag: Economics In Action

The “regulation” of the banking industry is more like “supervision”. The difference is more than semantic, and the result is less than satisfactory.

Tobacco companies are allowed to make no claims for their product at all, except that it is bad for you. An economist’s perspective on advertising may explain why.

When should a government intervene in the market? It is not clear what New Labour thinks is the answer.

For most of the last century, political debate on economic issues has been dominated by socialism. The agenda and the language of socialism...

Public investment is now prioritised according to whether it can be disguised by the private finance initiative: Goodhart’s Law has come into play once again.

The great German experiment teaches us a great deal. One of the lessons is that microeconomic policy is of critical important.

Does it matter if all of Britain's electricity generating companies are owned by Americans? Neither laissez-faire nor chauvinism is the appropriate response to foreign ownership.

The communitarian view of politics and society - whereby our actions and views are inseperable from the communities in which we live - is not incompatible with mainstream economic thinking. Rather, it heightens our understanding of how markets work.

George Orwell dissected the use of language in politics. He would have found a similar target in the language of business.

How are we to deal with businessmen who won’t play fair? There are three responses, and the one most under-rated is to regulate by a system of values.