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Deregulating the labour market: it's not that easy
Len Shackleton
1 October 2012
2 comments

It is very difficult to deregulate the labour market. Here is a timely case in point – the continuing existence of the Agricultural Wages Board, which sets the new rates of pay for various...
How about private money?
Kevin Dowd
28 September 2012
comments

  I am very grateful to the IEA for making Private Money available as a free download on the web. On looking back over it – it was written and published in 1988 - I am struck by how...
What if Paul Krugman’s aliens had already landed?
Kristian Niemietz
27 September 2012
5 comments

You have probably seen this video here, where Paul Krugman explains why the threat of an alien invasion could be a good thing. It would lead to the kind of stimulus package he wants: politicians...
Clegg's policy to take money from pensions to pay for mortgages is madness
Philip Booth
26 September 2012
comments

It is difficult to think of a policy that is as ill-conceived on so many levels as the coalition's announcement on Sunday to encourage parents to guarantee their children's mortgages....
Hayek - much more than money
Philip Booth
25 September 2012
4 comments

  Last night’s BBC programme on F. A. Hayek was interesting and, like the Keynes programme, gave the subject a fair crack of the whip. It is not by way of criticism that I write this...
State funding should be withdrawn from all political activists
Christopher Snowdon
24 September 2012
1 comment

  The pressure group Hope Not Hate is celebrating the news that the British National Party will be denied €100,000 of European Union funding. After lobbying from the organisation, the...
Has The Guardian taken over The Times?
Philip Booth
21 September 2012
26 comments

I was surprised to see The Times run a front page, a three page feature and a leader on tax avoidance yesterday. The arguments used by The Times, and the specific examples highlighted were...
Why does the government create monopolies?
Len Shackleton
20 September 2012
4 comments

  Patrick McLoughlin and Michael Gove are competent and well-thought-of Secretaries of State. As Conservatives, they presumably assert from time to time generalities about the virtues of...
A solution to the dilemma of Key Stage 4 exams reform
James Croft
19 September 2012
4 comments

Michael Gove is one of those reforming politicians who galvanises support by polarising opinion. In the media frenzy surrounding the announcement of the government’s reforms to Key...
Singing Keynes' praises
Philip Booth
19 September 2012
5 comments

  Monday night's BBC documentary Keynes in the Masters of Money series will be followed by two others on Hayek and Marx. The first programme was brilliantly presented by Stephanie...
Ben Bernanke’s road to inflation
G. R. Steele
18 September 2012
comments

  President Obama’s 2009 stimulus has been a disappointment: the Keynesian response is that it failed because it was not big enough. So, now we have Ben Bernanke’s rescue act:...
The end of the euro - and the beginning of currency competition
Eduardo Belgrano
17 September 2012
1 comment

  We are so accustomed to our present currency system that it is difficult to imagine a system of more than one currency circulating side by side. However such a monetary system has existed...
OMT programme will prolong Spain’s economic crisis
Juan Ramón Rallo
14 September 2012
1 comment

  Living on debt is a Western disease which has been fuelled by the universalisation of inconvertible paper money. Obviously, Spain has not been immune, as anyone can clearly check by...
Old Labour + wind farms = predistribution
Kristian Niemietz
13 September 2012
comments

  In 1997, I knew next to nothing about politics, and even less about British politics. But I remember the debates about the ‘Third Way’ quite vividly. For some, the Third Way...
The Government ought to rouse our sleeping casinos
Christopher Snowdon
12 September 2012
comments

They say that laws are like sausages, it is better not to see how they are made. If so, the 2005 Gambling Act was of the supermarket own-brand, ‘sixteen for a pound’ variety. It began...
Living Wage likely to destroy jobs and increase poverty
Len Shackleton
11 September 2012
2 comments

Last week Ed Miliband suggested that a new Labour government could introduce a requirement for all government contractors to pay a ‘living wage’ well in excess of the national minimum...
From Big Macs to Big Brother: the market and culture
John Meadowcroft
10 September 2012
comments

One of the most important contemporary debates in political economy concerns the impact of the market on culture and the allegation that unfettered market forces will supply ‘dumbed-down...
Wind power: quenching a fire with champagne
Kristian Niemietz
7 September 2012
4 comments

There is a game, in the style of Trivial Pursuit, where one card reads something like: ‘Paul extinguished the flames by pouring champagne over them. That was efficient. Right or wrong...
Black markets, abandoned children: the devastating impact of prohibiting private adoption
John Blundell
6 September 2012
comments

Up until prohibition, Guatemala, China, and Russia were the last three remaining countries with a well-developed legal market in international adoptions. All other nations that had once allowed...
The case for a land-value tax
Duncan Stoddard
4 September 2012
76 comments

  ‘Buy land, they're not making it anymore.’ - Mark Twain The UK economy is beset by three compounding problems: no growth, a high deficit and a constricting...

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