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Blackmail by Athens?
Holger Zemanek
13 May 2011
9 comments

Last week rumours circulated that Greece is considering leaving the eurozone. In addition, representatives of the European Commission and European finance ministers apparently held a secret meeting...
Overworked Britons, leisurely continentals?
Kristian Niemietz
12 May 2011
14 comments

The readers of the Daily Mail were not amused, judging from the multitude of furious comments below this article. The newspaper claimed that while other Europeans were enjoying much shorter working...
Time for a rethink on tuition fees policy
Len Shackleton
11 May 2011
2 comments

David Willetts has added to the confusion surrounding university fees with a proposal to allow higher education institutions to admit extra home (UK and EU) students if they pay ‘full’...
A career as an economic adviser
Sir Alan Peacock
10 May 2011
comments

I published my first book in 1951 – 60 years ago! It argued for the amalgamation of finance of national insurance with the direct tax system. It got a certain amount of notoriety but did not...
Can you be a half-way Spirit Leveller?
Kristian Niemietz
9 May 2011
3 comments

I recently gave a talk at the Libertarian Alliance entitled ‘Spirit Level Egalitarianism, Happiness Economics and Steady State Economics’. When asked where the Spirit Level debate was...
The Bishop of Brentwood part two
Philip Booth
6 May 2011
1 comment

My last blog post dealt with the issue of ‘living wages for migrants’ in response to points that the Bishop of Brentwood had made in a high-profile homily. In direct contradiction to...
The Bishop of Brentwood part one
Philip Booth
5 May 2011
1 comment

The Bishop of Brentwood made the headlines yesterday for saying in a homily at a Mass that it was a scandal the migrants were exploited by being required to work for low levels of pay and that...
The burden of ‘too much choice’
Mark Pennington
4 May 2011
3 comments

Among the themes to emerge from ‘happiness economics’ one seized on by those disapproving of open markets and the decision-making autonomy they may bring is that having ‘choice...
Cobden’s greatest error?
James Stanfield
3 May 2011
comments

On the important question of education, Richard Cobden rejected the principles of free trade and limited government. He campaigned for the introduction of a national system of ‘free’...
Say's Law of Markets
Steven Kates
28 April 2011
4 comments

Only someone with professional training in economics has ever heard of the economic principle now known as Say’s Law of Markets. Indeed it was Keynes’s explicit aim in writing his...
The true scale of UK government debt
Nick Silver
26 April 2011
6 comments

A couple of years ago, in an IEA paper, I suggested that the UK’s public debt was many times larger than the official figure. Following the financial crisis, I recalculated my estimate ...
True Finns are right to oppose EU bailouts
Mark Littlewood
21 April 2011
comments

General elections in Finland rarely secure much coverage across mainstream European media, but the results of – and fallout from – the poll earlier this month deserve detailed...
Free-market economics vs. steady-state economics: how to frame the debate
Kristian Niemietz
20 April 2011
5 comments

In panel discussions or similar debate formats, it is usually a huge advantage to be thoroughly informed about the opponent’s weltanschauung, since this enables one to anticipate the other...
Hayek versus Habermas: Round 2
Mark Pennington
20 April 2011
comments

In a recent post I pointed out that Habermas’s theory of communicative ethics and deliberative democracy fails to recognise a fundamental point highlighted by Hayek – that much of the...
Why contracting out of the state pension should remain
Philip Booth
20 April 2011
comments

The recently published Green Paper on pensions was widely welcomed. Indeed, it contained some reasonable ideas. However, it also contained a proposal to abolish contracting out of state pensions...
Dear John: all universities are private not public!
James Stanfield
19 April 2011
1 comment

Last week the universities minister David Willetts announced that from 2012 students attending private universities will be eligible for a state-funded loan of £6,000. In response, the shadow...
Sovereign debt restructuring and the euro crisis
G. R. Steele
18 April 2011
2 comments

The eurozone came with fine aspirations: according to article 127 in the consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ‘the primary objective of the European...
Reducing deficits in open economies
Philip Booth
15 April 2011
3 comments

In June 2011 an editorial article appeared in the Royal Economic Society newsletter which seemed to sympathise with attacks on what it called ‘deficit fetishism’. Not quite the legions...
Set the economy free to meet tough challenges ahead
Richard Wellings
14 April 2011
comments

Despite the cuts, the coalition Government will raise our national debt by almost £500bn over this Parliament. This is just the official debt. When other liabilities such as pensions are...
If there is to be an immigration cap, the Government should sell that limited number of work permits and visas
Mark Littlewood
13 April 2011
2 comments

Unsurprisingly, the government has been struggling somewhat with how to implement its policy of imposing an immigration cap on non-EU immigrants. Fortunately, in The Challenge of Immigration, a new...

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