This week CapX is republishing some of our favourite articles of the year. This piece first appeared on October 30. In a now-famous essay, “What is Seen and What Is Not Seen”, the great economist Frederic Bastiat warned against judging the value of any activity in a vacuum. Bastiat’s “broken window fallacy” brilliantly exposes a common […]
This week CapX is republishing some of our favourite articles of the year. This piece first appeared on June 21. What is it about the European Union and bad tech laws with boring names? Brussels managed to transform four harmless letters into a byword for irritating compliance-induced spam and pop ups as well as a consolidation […]
Britain has just released two bold and damning reviews on the Big Four oligopoly in auditing. Amongst the highlights of these reports, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has called for a ring-fencing of the firms’ audit practices from their consulting businesses and for dual audits of large companies by Big Four and non-Big Four […]
This week, the government announced that they were suspending the Tier 1 Investor visa scheme over money-laundering concerns. Known informally as the “golden visa”, foreigners who invest £2 million in the UK gain the right to live and work here and can apply for permanent residency after five years (or sooner if they invest more). […]
Think of Davos. Now imagine the annual international powwow not in 2018 but 400 years earlier. The question on the lips of “Chinese scholars in their silk robes, British adventurers in their doublets and jerkins, Turkish civil servants in their turban and caftans” once they reach the Swiss town is a big one: “Who will […]
Today marks 25 years since the privatisation of the railways. To mark this auspicious anniversary, various Labour politicians have been doing the rounds, calling for the railways to be renationalised. It’s a popular policy, with over 60 per cent of the British public in favour of it, while only 20 per cent oppose it. Who […]
For the past seven decades, the world has been moulded by a strong, transatlantic relationship with the US and EU underwriting the terms of peace, stability and economic prosperity. The success of this order has created its own existential challenge. Its rising beneficiaries in Asia and elsewhere increasingly challenge the validity of these arrangements and […]
Philip Hammond’s decision in this week’s budget to abandon the Private Finance Initiative has been regarded by some commentators as the adoption of a “Corbyn-lite” policy by the Conservatives. Such a claim misses the point. After all, PFI has been used to fund a huge expansion in government spending whilst pushing the costs, in an […]
In a now-famous essay, “What is Seen and What Is Not Seen”, the great economist Frederic Bastiat warned against judging the value of any activity in a vacuum. Bastiat’s “broken window fallacy” brilliantly exposes a common tendency to focus on the visible, tangible benefits of an action – the “seen” – while neglecting the “unseen” penalties […]
Goodhart’s Law tells us that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure”. It’s a good maxim to apply to nearly any macroeconomic theory. Just when we think we’ve worked out how it all works, real life starts to slither away from the theory. Consider the history of economic models. […]
Britain’s blistering heatwave has created a record-breaking demand for the treat that, over the course of the last century, has become a summer favourite the world over: ice cream. Sales have increased 100 per cent year on year, and London is even hosting an ice-cream themed pop-up exhibition, fittingly titled ‘Scoop’. Just 350 years ago, ice cream […]
Auditors are in the business of trust. But in the last year alone, PwC has been banned in India, Deloitte is being investigated in South Africa, several KPMG partners have been criminally charged in the US, and EY has been fined in the UK. The ostensive watchdogs of market disclosure have become poster boys for […]
Yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions we had some relief from Brexit as the leader of the Labour Party asked about bus subsidies. He declared that “since 2010, her Government has cut 46% from bus budgets in England”. That seems a bit of an exaggeration from the figures I could find – which quote £2.21 billion […]
What is it about the European Union and bad tech laws with boring names? Brussels managed to transform four harmless letters into a byword for irritating compliance-induced spam and pop ups as well as a consolidation of power for the internet’s biggest players. Now that the GDPR dust has settled, along comes Article 13 of the […]
Michael Gove has today given a speech making the case for reforming capitalism. This is a theme some of us have been exploring for a decade, so it’s good to see a heavyweight intellectual Conservative taking up the cause. We need, however, to be quite precise about what is wrong and how to address it. […]
Bread and circuses are as much public services as water and healthcare. Listening to the UK debate you would be forgiven for missing this essential truth. The big issue of what kind of a relationship or partnership we should have between the private sector and the public sector is very much back on the agenda. […]
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