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Land use planning: the Corn Laws of our times
Kristian Niemietz
7 September 2011
4 comments

When the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian sound almost exactly alike on an issue, something is fishy. And when dozens of special interest groups queue up to defend the ‘common good’...
You say you want a revolution?
Gabriel H. Sahlgren
6 September 2011
2 comments

  Yesterday, dealing a blow to the progress of the coalition’s free school programme, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pledged that for-profit schools shall remain banned. This is...
What happened to progress?
Peter King
5 September 2011
1 comment

  One of the arguments used by the pro-AV campaign in the early spring was that a positive vote to change the electoral system would signal that there was a progressive majority in the...
Traffic management – a disastrous policy?
Paul Withrington
2 September 2011
2 comments

Over the past decade vast sums have been spent on public transport despite the fact that nearly 90% of passenger miles are by car and to places that are difficult or impossible to serve by bus, let...
We can't afford this obsession with the 'gender pay gap'
Ruth Porter
1 September 2011
2 comments

The latest gender pay statistics have provoked the usual storm of nonsense. Apparently, the Government should increase regulatory burdens on businesses, at a time when our economy is seriously...
Mercantilism is back with a vengeance
Terry Arthur
31 August 2011
3 comments

‘The fundamental principles of mercantilism and neo-mercantilism are: direction of economic life by the authorities; the belief that money is wealth; exports are better than imports (thus...
Urban Planning and the Poor
Mark Pennington
31 August 2011
10 comments

Many government interventions in markets though they are often justified in terms of the ‘public interest’ work to the disproportionate benefit of organised interests – often the...
The London riots were not caused by ‘moral decay’ or inequality
Kristian Niemietz
30 August 2011
7 comments

Being too busy torching, looting and vandalising, the London rioters and their offshoots in other cities could not be bothered to prepare banners expressing their ‘political demands’,...
Urgent need to simplify the tax code
Mark Littlewood
26 August 2011
1 comment

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has released some interesting research coming out of its 2020 Tax Commission. HMRC is simply failing to collect tax revenues – to the tune of about £25...
Hayek’s overcoat
G. R. Steele
24 August 2011
11 comments

Lord Robert Skidelsky is unlikely to have understood the anecdote in his opening remarks in the LSE Hayek/Keynes debate. He related that, after addressing an audience of Cambridge economists in...
Transport policy: the folly of the last decade
Paul Withrington
23 August 2011
6 comments

The last government’s Ten Year Plan envisaged that congestion could be greatly reduced by increasing rail use by 50% and bus use by 10%. Consequently vast sums have been spent on public...
Protectionism is an economic blind alley
Tom Papworth
22 August 2011
3 comments

The IEA has recently published articles by Mark Pennington on the subject of Ha Joon Chang’s 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. As Pennington addresses each of his...
Keynesian paradoxes
G. R. Steele
18 August 2011
6 comments

Keynes gave little thought to generalities. He acknowledged that his prescriptions were limited to the special circumstances of the 1930s. With Bolshevism in mind, any fiscal deficit spending was...
Ha Joon Chang: confused on bounded rationality and economic regulation
Mark Pennington
17 August 2011
comments

In this third and final of the series on Ha Joon Chang’s critique of ‘free market economics’ I examine his account of ‘bounded rationality’ and the case for greater...
Regulating shop opening hours harms both consumers and workers
Karthik Reddy
16 August 2011
comments

‘Hundreds of thousands [of workers] should not have to stand to attention late into the night for the mere convenience of a few yuppies!’ These passionate words, uttered by German union...
Economic reflections and the riots
Len Shackleton
15 August 2011
3 comments

In many ways it is too early to draw conclusions for public policy from the riots which the country has experienced in the last week or so. But this does not seem to have deterred our ever-active...
The London riots were not caused by poverty
Kristian Niemietz
12 August 2011
14 comments

Gerhart Hauptmann´s 1911 novel „Die Ratten“ (Engl. „The Rats“), set in a deprived borough of Berlin, was a powerful critique of a concept of morality that ignored the...
Last tango in Basel: a Gaucho’s guide to avoiding the repayment of debt
Keith Boyfield and Brian Sturgess
11 August 2011
1 comment

Most voters would never have heard of the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS). However, the BIS performs a crucial role as the central banks' banker. In establishing rules on...
The March of the Makers…
Philip Booth
10 August 2011
4 comments

Politicians cannot stop trying to design the economy. In this respect they have a hugely over-inflated sense of their own abilities. Gordon Brown, of course, was an impulsive meddler – he...
Crisis in the eurozone
D. R. Myddelton
9 August 2011
5 comments

It is in times like these that one appreciates the advice the Irishman gave the tourist seeking directions: ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.’  In recent days...

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