Wednesday, 28 September 2016

Can't Unite, Won't Unite, Shouldn't Unite

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Encouraged by their leader today, Corbynites are peddling the narrative that now Mr C has won again, and with an even bigger majority th...
Saturday, 24 September 2016

What's Behind The Labour Curtain?

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In changing the rules to allow paying members to vote for the party leader, Ed Miliband couldn't have predicted what a 5 season, 25 d...
Thursday, 22 September 2016

Two Fallacious Memes Doing The Rounds

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If you're Facebook friends with people who share memes that are superficially seductive but logically and evidentially dubious, the ch...
Wednesday, 21 September 2016

IEA Paper: How Governments Harm Trade

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The following paper, published here with the Institute of Economic Affairs, and entitled How Governments Harm Trade (for the full vers...
Tuesday, 20 September 2016

The Economist Doesn't Do A Very Good Job With This One

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From the days when I used to read it every week (long before the days of the online option) The Economist has always come across as wishi...
Monday, 19 September 2016

Not Everything Has To Be Pareto Optimal

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A reader asked whether in economics we should always strive for Pareto improvements. For those unfamiliar with the term, a Pareto improve...
Thursday, 15 September 2016

An Interesting Thing You Might Not Realise About Unemployment

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Unemployment figures are often bandied around by Cassandra-types who portend doom on the state of society. But there are at least two con...
Tuesday, 13 September 2016

Oh, Not This Again!

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Today Oxfam has released another one of its 'UK inequality is one of the terrible things that urgently needs addressing'   public...
Monday, 12 September 2016

Tariffs: Why The Benefits Are Overstated & The Costs Understated

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In a week in which tariff-friendly Donald Trump is the shortest price he's been to become US President, in no small part due to his s...
Sunday, 11 September 2016

This Is An Interesting Paper On Picking The Winner With A 95% Probability

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Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith is so unbelievably inept, unworldly, arrogant and socially maladroit that the Independent is start...
Thursday, 8 September 2016

What Is The Value Of A Blog Post?

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What's the true value of a blog post? The difficulty in ascertaining value is that, unlike say a mobile phone, a pair of trousers or...
Wednesday, 7 September 2016

It's More About 'How' It's Done Than 'Who' Does It

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Supermarkets provide a good illustration of why it's not who controls the company that matters it is the company's effectiveness ...
Sunday, 4 September 2016

Social Mobility: Separating The Myths From The Facts

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A follower of this Blog, who himself blogs as Sub Specie Aeternitatis, emailed a couple of queries about social mobility as per my last p...
Friday, 2 September 2016

The Blind Lifeguard Problem

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In a week in which almost everyone in Westminster and in the media is getting almost everything wrong about the topic of social mobility,...
Thursday, 1 September 2016

Is This Going To Turn Out To Be One Of Humanity's Costliest Mistakes?

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After yesterday's blog on the issue of state-subsidised green expenditure, a friend commented that he thought the end result will st...