A few weeks ago Janan Ganesh in the FT described the UK housing market as an ‘institutionalised pathology’. The problems that the housing market is causing for the British economic and political system seemingly become ever more apparent by the day. There is an increasingly strong coalition of […]
On Thursday Noah put up a brief post on the Market Priesthood. It relates the story of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, meeting David Cameron, of Coalition Government fame. Levitt and Dubner tried to persuade Cameron that health care was just like any other part […]
I’ve just published some thoughts on last night’s Bristol Festival of Ideas event over at Medium.com: Last night I attended a cracking event to mark the relaunch Pelican books, organised under the auspices of the Bristol Festival of Ideas. The authors of four of the initial five volumes published […]
It’s clear we’re already entering what is going to be a very long election campaign in the run up to May 2015. In the housing policy field we’re seeing plenty of organisations pitching ideas at the moment, with the aim of influencing the content of the manifestos for […]
Rent regulation and three year tenancies. That’s Ed’s big housing idea for the private rented sector. It is what the people wanted. Well, quite a lot of people appear to support the idea. But even before the formal announcement has been made it is apparent that some are […]
Anyone with a liberal bone in their body ought to be concerned. Liberals need no convincing about the damaging effects of concentrations of power, in either the public or the private sector. There is therefore a preoccupation with checks and balances – mechanisms for curbing power and holding […]
Yesterday evening I attended a European Parliamentary hustings at the University of Bristol. Five parties were represented on the platform – including three of the South West’s MEPs. There were probably seven hundred people in the audience. So a discussion of European politics can attract a decent crowd […]
The spectrum of response to this week’s Post-Crash Economics Society report on economics education – or their more specific proposal on a module panics and bubbles – has been intriguing, if not entirely unexpected. Some economists have welcomed the students’ aspirations for greater critical engagement with the material […]
Since the Global Financial Crisis questions have been asked about the adequacy of dominant approaches to economic analysis. Are they sufficient to help us understand the economy or do they need supplementing or reformulating? This is an important question for policy not simply because of the debate over […]
You’d expect lefties to kick up a fuss about the Coalition’s austerity-justified policies. An agenda that is having serious negative impacts upon the most vulnerable, while at the same time transferring wealth to the already wealthy, will have a tendency to annoy those who prioritize solidarity, dignity and […]
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