Tuesday, 23 May 2023

New fiscal rules in the Eurozone, but unwarranted lack of national sovereignty persists

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  The EU Commission has put forward proposals for the next version of fiscal rules for the Eurozone, and these have now been agreed with som...
Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Why is there asymmetry in how insurgent political voices on the left and right are treated by the two main parties in the UK?

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  The attitude of the two main parties to those further to the right (for the Conservatives) or the left (for Labour) is very different. In ...
Tuesday, 9 May 2023

The Tyranny of Nostalgia

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  Russell Jones has written a history of the UK economy since the 1970s, and as narratives go this is very good. While I inevitably had min...
Tuesday, 2 May 2023

Why deteriorating healthcare is a macroeconomic issue

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  “Healthy People, Prosperous Lives” is the first interim repor t of the IPPR’s Commission on Health and Prosperity. (I am a member.of the C...
Tuesday, 25 April 2023

Which OECD country is the highest social spender?

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  Before answering this question, we need to define what the OECD counts as social expenditure. It is mainly a combination of what we call w...
Tuesday, 18 April 2023

Why fiscal consolidations (spending cuts or tax increases) don't reduce debt to GDP ratios, and why politicians continue to tighten at the wrong time

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  The claim often made for fiscal consolidations (cuts in public spending or increases in taxes) is that they are required to reduce the rat...
Tuesday, 11 April 2023

The poor judgements of Nigel Lawson

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  For someone who has been described as the “economic brain of Thatcherism”, it was inevitable that evaluations of his career would be ideo...