Tag: Theory
On the brink of a shadow drink industry
Restriction of business on moral grounds is not always unsuccessful but measures have to be applied with great care.
For a stimulus, boring is best
The objective of monetisation has not been to put money in the hands of consumers and businesses but to put money in the vaults of banks.
The limits of what money can buy
Should there be markets for sperm, surrogate motherhood or transplant organs?
London’s rise from sewer to spectacle
The salient fact is that London could never have become a great business and financial capital if its residents felt an urge to vomit every time they went outdoors.
Only fools claim to know the future
Good players don’t forecast the future, but adapt to it.
To understand Christmas, go to the pub
Anyone who thinks the quest for scale economies is the primary explanation of the human desire for family life is strangely deficient in observational capacity, as well as common sense.
Fetish for making things ignores real work
Manufacturing fetishism – the idea that manufacturing is the central economic activity and everything else is somehow subordinate – is deeply ingrained in human thinking.
How do skirts differ from computers?
The average historic return on the volatile equity market is central to calculations of the cost of capital and provision for future pension liabilities. But the figure has been debated for decades.
Higher pay boosts economics and politics
Wouldn’t it be simpler if poor people in work were just paid more in the first place? That is, apparently, predistribution.
The law that explains the folly of bank regulation
Goodhart suggested that any measure adopted as a target loses the information content that appeared to make it relevant. People change their behaviour to meet the target.
