Economics
The trick that makes self-checkouts almost tolerable
I spent the last few days in Deal and Folkestone with Professor Richard Thaler at Nudgestock, Ogilvy’s seaside festival of…
Jonathan Portes, master of the political correction
Jonathan Portes, master of the political correction
‘The problem isn’t that we’ve been slaves to free markets’: Joseph Stiglitz interview
Joseph Stiglitz, the left’s favourite economist,on making the free market work
Can Cameron bring us full employment? And do we want it?
‘Two million jobs have been created since 2010 — but there will not be a moment of rest until we…
Why the internet hasn’t killed estate agents (and what might)
I don’t like to make business predictions, but — barring some apocalypse — I suspect there will be plenty of…
David Starkey’s diary: Why don’t we celebrate the triumphs of private dentistry?
To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I…
The Green party manifesto is even crazier than you’ve heard
I’m disappointed that Ed Balls’s suggestion that the Office of Budget Responsibility should audit the parties’ manifestos was never taken…
John Maynard Keynes: transforming global economy while reading Virginia Woolf
To the 21st-century right, especially in the United States, John Maynard Keynes has become a much-hated figure whose name is…
What Samsung’s new TVs owe to Jeremy Bentham
Watching brief Samsung warned users of its voice-activated televisions that what they said in front of the TV could be…
The low sculduggery of high Victorian finance
The whole idea of capitalism, according to Enlightenment philosophers, was that it created a positive spiral of moral behaviour. ‘Concern…
Don't believe the gloom-mongers: deflation will be good for Britain
Campaigning in Putney in 1978, Mrs Thatcher famously took out a pair of scissors and cut a pound note down…
Why I’m glad there’s no British Las Vegas
I didn’t realise that the Rialto Bridge has a moving walkway and muzak, that the gondolas beneath it float on…
The subversive wonders of Kilkenomics – where economics meets stand-up
‘What is a Minsky moment, anyway?’ asks Gerry Stembridge, an Irish satirist. ‘I’ve been reading about them in the papers…
S&M&B&Q: Why aren’t there sex-and-shopping novels for men?
I never got beyond page 20 in Fifty Shades of Grey. No one got shot in the first chapter, and…
What are the Chinese up to in Africa?
Few subjects generate as much angst, or puzzlement, among Western policymakers in Africa as China’s presence on the continent. In…
Adam Smith is the father of more than one sort of economics
Gandhi would test his resolve by sleeping between two naked virgins, an avenue not really open to me, as my…
The opéra bouffe that was the Bretton Woods conference
There ought to be a comic opera about the Bretton Woods conference — Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face, about Margaret,…
A Labour MP defends the Empire – and only quotes Lenin twice
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
You can buy happiness. Here’s how…
If you are reading this article online, perhaps you could go to the comments section and let us know what…
Is full employment just another of George Osborne’s political stunts?
‘Full employment’ usually means the lowest achievable rate of unemployment — somewhere south of 5 per cent compared with 7.2 per…
The engagement-ring theory of property bubbles
Google ‘the bread market’ and you get 135,000 hits, mostly from specialist food industry websites. Google ‘the property market’, however,…
Niall Ferguson’s diary: Brazil is overtaking us – but it no longer feels like that
São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’,…
Is there a way to live without economic growth?
During Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s I found myself handing out rice balls to Tokyo’s homeless on the banks…
The man who made it OK to talk about immigration
How Professor Paul Collier has bypassed the liberal taboo on discussing immigration
Why Britain’s economy will overtake Germany’s
Why the UK economy will one day overtake Germany
