The Department for International Development (DfID) of the UK government wants to increase direct cash transfers to up to six million people. In the light of the truly shocking Oxfam scandal last week, bypassing charities altogether may prove appetising. Especially when DfID struggles to meet the 0.7 per cent of GDP target. But experience in […]
Bryan Caplan has been in school for 40 years. From preschool to an economics PhD at Princeton and his current job, as a professor of economics at George Mason University, his life has been spent learning and teaching. The system, he says, has been good to him: I have my dream job for life. I’m […]
It’s fashionable, if ill-considered, to dismiss financial innovation. Yet financial innovation has, over time, benefited mankind. On a very simple level, credit cards are a nifty product that preclude the need to carry large amounts of cash or worry too much about crossing between currency zones. At the same time, of course, simply to wave […]
There is plenty for the City of London to be positive about. Despite Brexit and the recent volatility of financial markets, there are numerous opportunities for the City to reaffirm its status as the financial capital of the world. But there is no room for complacency and, as I argue in a new report for […]
Keeping your funds in cash is generally viewed as much safer than holding them in stocks. This is because, on any given day, the value of the US and UK capital stock – as measured by the NYSE and FTSE indices – can easily fluctuate by one or two percentage points either way. By contrast, […]
We have been talking about this for the last 12 months: when will financial markets realise that the amazing performance of 2017 was not sustainable? When will stock markets adjust? Are we approaching the next big market crash? When will the bubble burst? Apparently, we now know the answer. A little more than a month […]
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Custom’s crack down on tax-dodging has brought in about one-third of the amount that it was predicted to raise. And HMRC’s estimate of the tax gap – the amount being dodged – is some one-third the amount that had been claimed by the more vociferous of the anti-tax dodging campaigners. It’s […]
Haiti’s government should do an about-face from the policy of forcefully dispossessing people of land in an attempt to bolster economic output. In August 2013, men with bulldozers arrived in Tru-du-Nord, Haiti, to confiscate land for their government’s vision of growth in the region — organic bananas. Haitians awoke in horror, unprepared for what awaited […]
This time last year, Xi Jinping’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos was being heralded as a historic turning point. Just days before Donald Trump delivered a dystopian inaugural address on the theme of “American carnage”, Xi sung the virtues of globalisation and free trade. It was a changing of the guard: as […]
The Left has won the economic argument. You can tell that from the fact that whatever happens in the world, it takes five minutes for someone to come up with an explanation for why this event somehow represents “a damning indictment of neoliberalism”. And within another fifteen minutes, that interpretation will have become the dominant […]
The UK’s water industry has earned a pretty bad reputation in recent years. There are, for example, some incidences of water companies paying out high dividends while increasing borrowing. Does the behaviour of some water companies merit nationalisation? Put simply: no. Ofwat, the regulator for the industry, already has the ability to scrutinise the practices […]
Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell fought the last election on a promise to implement a mass programme of nationalisation. And that very much remains their plan. The energy, water, rail and mail sectors, as well as some PFI deals, will be first on the list of areas that Labour would seek to bring back into […]
Cheating is bad. Not only do cheaters wrongfully take away from other people, but by flouting the rules of the game they undermine trust in the game, making other participants worse off in the process. Countries where cheating is more widespread and socially accepted, such as Greece, tend to be poorer than their more compliant […]
The collapse of Carillion points to a fundamental flaw in the way the UK Government procures suppliers for public sector projects. Rather than using outsourcing to harness the best the market has to offer, ministers have allowed Government procurement to become a cartel. Carillion’s demise is devastating evidence that this policy is failing both the public […]
This morning, Carillion announced that it has gone into liquidation. The usual suspects are wailing about how the fate of one of the UK government’s biggest contractors demonstrates the folly of privatisation and outsourcing. The truth is rather less catastrophic for the British taxpayer than they would have you believe. After all, the losses suffered […]
The global economy enters 2018 with good momentum. Expectations for growth this year are rising in many countries, equities are hitting new highs and business confidence is buoyant. The worries around Brexit, the US elections, risks in the Chinese economy and populism in Europe that loomed large 12-18 months ago have eased. Our “worry index”, […]
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