Economics

Amid all the turmoil in global energy markets, we should not lose sight of the UK power programme that we’re praying will keep our lights on a decade hence: it is, as you know, a hobbyhorse of mine. So how’s it going down at Hinkley Point in Somerset? My man with big binoculars in the Bridgwater Bay nature reserve tells me he’s seeing plenty of lorry movements on the nuclear site, but signals from EDF of France — which has a two-thirds interest in this £18 billion project, alongside Chinese investors — are very worrying. Having already spent £2 billion, the French state utility has deferred until at least the

Some things are universally accepted as true. Water finds its own level; crumpets are best eaten in winter; and the England football team will not win the World Cup again, ever. On a par with these things, the most accepted part of economics is Keynesianism. Of course, John Maynard Keynes said lots of things about economics in between his many and varied sexual encounters. But, as is the way of the world, one of the things he said turned out to be particularly influential. It is so influential that it has gone around the world. It is repeated and relied upon by Japanese finance ministers, New York Times columnists, Nobel

Great progress has been made in open data over the last few years, with most important facts and figures now available online. The quality of the UK economic debate has been enhanced by the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which publishes forecasts in a non-tricksy way. The journalist is spoiled for choice. But, still, you don’t tend to see such forecasts republished: the BBC doesn’t share them and even the FT‘s ‘economy at a glance‘ restricts itself to historic data – and static graphs, which you can’t interrogate. At The Spectator, we’ve been using dynamic graphs for a while. Now, we’re moving up to the next level using HighCharts, a more versatile Norwegian

Like the Christmas pudding sampled by Hercule Poirot at Kings Lacey — but six weeks early — our Spectator Money supplement contains a little treasure in every portion, and perhaps even a priceless gem. I particularly commend the essays by Warwick Lightfoot and Subitha Subramaniam on interest rates, and why central banks have become so hesitant to raise them. In recent days we’ve had an indication from Mark Carney of the Bank of England that UK rates will stay at their current low well into next year, maybe until 2017; in the US, strong job numbers have pumped expectations that the first rate rise for nine years will be delivered

The literary emissions of the left are hardly ever enjoyable, but they can be instructive. Last year Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century became one of the biggest-selling political books of the year. Like a thousand-page Soviet report on tractor production, it hardly seemed intended to be read. The point of its success was that it could be said to ‘prove’ the left’s argument. They could then hit their opponents over the head with it and move to the next stage. Last year they questioned some premises of capitalism and now Paul Mason, the economics editor of Channel 4 News (and Spectator diarist), is here to say that capitalism

Seven years ago I wrote here about a site called Kiva.org. I had met the co-founder of this charity when she came to Oxford in 2007 and was intrigued by her idea. Jennifer Jackley had been inspired to start the site by Muhammad Yunus’s work on microlending — the practice of issuing small loans to people in the developing world who would other-wise have no access to credit. At Kiva.org, rather than giving money, you lend it. You choose people and businesses, mostly in the poorest parts of the world, and advance them a fraction of the amount they want to borrow, typically $25. The loan is then paid back

I spent the last few days in Deal and Folkestone with Professor Richard Thaler at Nudgestock, Ogilvy’s seaside festival of Behavioural Science. On my way home I decided to stop off at M&S to buy some runny scotch eggs and a pie, accompanied by some unwanted green things to make my basket look middle-class. Finding a long queue at the main checkout, I grudgingly took my goods to the self-checkout machines. (For the uninitiated, Richard Thaler is the co-author of Nudge, and more recently the author of Misbehaving. He is perhaps the godfather of behavioural economics, a dissident strand of economics which holds the outlandish view that the discipline might

It used to be that the most annoying thing in academic life was political correctness. But a new irritant now threatens to supplant it: the scourge of correct politicalness. The essence of correct politicalness is to seek to undermine an irrefutable argument by claiming loudly and repetitively to have found an error in it. As with political correctness, which seeks to undermine arguments by declaring the person making them a bigot, correct politicalness originated in the US. But it now has its exponents here, too. Foremost among them is Jonathan Portes. Portes’s career recalls that of the character Kenneth Widmerpool in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. Widmerpool

Numerous commentators have noted how the Irish marriage referendum was influenced by big business, especially Californian-based companies like Google. It’s one of the curious trends of recent years that big business, once considered the enemy of ‘the Left’, is now its greatest proponent; or at least the dominant strain of Leftism, social justice liberalism. Silicon Valley is the most extreme example of this, an industry that is young, dynamic and universally socially liberal; but elsewhere most politically interested billionaires in the West tend to be more liberal than the population, whether it’s George Soros funding various social justice causes or other Democrat-supporting moguls. In contrast, with the exception of the Bangladeshi

‘How do you feel when you go back to Gary?’ I ask Joe Stiglitz. ‘Well, frankly, I get depressed,’ he replies. ‘The American middle class was created in places like my home town and is now struggling badly — which makes me sad.’ Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist and the closest thing the left has to an intellectual superstar, grew up in Gary, Indiana, during the 1950s, when it was the heart of the booming US steel industry. His father sold insurance and his mother was a teacher. ‘We had a modest detached brick house, with a lawn all around — it was safe and secure,’ he recalls. ‘Back then,

‘Two million jobs have been created since 2010 — but there will not be a moment of rest until we have reached our goal,’ said David Cameron in a Telegraph article a fortnight before the election: ‘Two million more jobs; or full employment in Britain.’ It was a bold statement. Indeed you might think, given unemployment at 1.84 million in the winter quarter, that the target for new jobs was actually an error on the part of who-ever drafts the Prime Minister’s prose. Either way, it drew little attention amid the smoke of battle. But now the air has cleared it merits revisiting, because it connects all the key themes

I don’t like to make business predictions, but — barring some apocalypse — I suspect there will be plenty of estate agents around in 2065, and occupying prominent high-street shopfronts just as they do now. This may seem an absurd prediction: after all, almost no one now uses an estate agent to find a house: we go to property websites instead. And, since we all assume the purpose of an estate agent is to find buyers for a house, a role usurped by Rightmove and Primelocation, we think the remaining days of the estate agency are few. However, perhaps the principal role of an estate agent is not to find

Now and again, intelligent people, politicians and columnists attack ‘trickle-down economics’ in the mistaken belief that it exists. Or that it ever existed. In his classic book, Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell gives a brief history. Here’s the excerpt: There have been many economic theories over the centuries, accompanied by controversies among different schools of economists. But one of the most politically prominent economic theories today is one that has never existed among economists – the ‘trickle down’ theory. Yet this non-existent theory has been attacked from the New York Times to a writer in India. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speechwriter Samuel Rosenman referred to ‘the philosophy that had prevailed in Washington

I’m disappointed that Ed Balls’s suggestion that the Office of Budget Responsibility should audit the parties’ manifestos was never taken up, not least because we will never know what Robert Chote thinks of the Green party’s claim that all its proposals are ‘fully costed’. Believe it or not, this includes the commitment to spend £45 billion on loft insulation in the next parliament. It’s quite something, the Greens’ manifesto. No doubt you’ll have already read about some of their more reasonable measures — such as the ‘complete ban on cages for hens and rabbits’ and the insistence that ‘UK taxpayers’ money is not used for bullfighting’. But the sheer scale