If an economist tells you it is raining, I would advise you to take plenty of sunblock.  In the same way, when economists tell you how much better off we are going to be if we do away with cash, I would advise you to hoard as much of the …

A United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report released last month has urged countries outside the USA to be cautious about fracking. In addition to warning about the excessive water consumption and potential for earthquakes, the report highlights the many commercial advantages the US frackers enjoyed that are …

One of the most seductive flaws in modern thinking is that we can persuade people to do something unpleasant today in order to avoid something even more unpleasant in the future.  The trouble is, humans are not wired that way.  As the “marshmallow experiment” has shown time and again, around …

When the trucks stop running, the economy crashes… and it does so rapidly.  That is a lesson that Brazil has reminded us of this week.  But it is a lesson that more developed states like the UK ignore at their peril. Problems began, as is often the case, with a …

In 2008, George Osborne famously berated his Labour predecessor for “not fixing the roof when the sun was shining.”  The truth within this myth was that Blair’s New Labour had been a little too “relaxed” about people “getting filthy rich” in the boom years; leaving the public on the hook …

The long period of anaemic GDP growth is about to stall.  The reason why?  Because global oil prices have just broken out of their Goldilocks band – the price range in which oil companies can stay in businesses without triggering a global recession. Last week the Brent Crude oil price …

In an interview with the Telegraph, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Ben Broadbent used the term “climacteric” to describe the trajectory of the British economy.  Unfortunately, while the term has a particular meaning to economists, it has a colloquial meaning that might be taken to stray into the …

Like most of my countrymen and women, tomorrow I will be doing anything but tuning in to the circus that is the Royal wedding.  This is not because I have anything against the young couple themselves – both strike me as decent individuals (although that is, perhaps, a luxury afforded …

Among the many changes to government in the last four decades, one stands out.  Government no longer does things.  To a greater extent with every year that goes by, government uses legislation and regulation to force others – corporations and individuals – to do the things that government used to …

Sometimes a story is repeated so often that its veracity is never challenged.  One such is the myth that British households are in thrall to a wicked energy cartel that puts excessive profits above common decency.  So much so, indeed, that the government and the opposition parties have all signed …