In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF calls what is now happening, the “Great Lockdown”. I prefer the “Great Shutdown”: this phrase...
When I was young, in the 1960s, the UK was known as the “sick man of Europe”, for its prolonged economic weakness. But after Margaret...
How should we tax companies in a world of mobile capital and global corporations? How should we encourage corporate investment and discourage...
Like many people of 20, the European currency has experienced a traumatic adolescence. At some moments, many thought it would not reach this age of...
Should we be concerned about the state of the world economy? Yes: it always makes sense to be concerned. That does not mean something is sure to go...
Important businesses are losing patience with the UK government over progress — or rather lack of it — in the Brexit negotiations. With just 10...
Does the idea of a second referendum on Brexit make sense? Many who share my view of the vote — that it is a huge error — would insist it does....
Asset prices are, some argue, in an “omnibubble”: prices of every important asset in the high-income countries — stocks, housing...
What might be the economic consequences of Jeremy Corbyn? His ascent to power looks quite plausible. We must start to consider the...
If there was any doubt about it, events of the past week have demonstrated that negotiations over Brexit will be difficult. They have also clarified...
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This is “Stein’s law”, after its inventor Herbert Stein, chairman of the...
The UK’s recent productivity performance has been calamitous. True, the productivity slowdown has been a widespread phenomenon among...
The future of our world heavily depends on relations between the US, a young country and the incumbent superpower, and China, an ancient empire and...
The Marshall Plan is rightly regarded as among the most successful pieces of economic diplomacy in history. Yet it was not the money that mattered...
The promise from Theresa May, the prime minister, in her speech to the Conservative party conference last year was unambiguous: “Our economy...
Blame foreigners first. This strategy is always the companion of aggrieved nationalism. It can be seen in Donald Trump’s ban on immigrants...
Are the aims of the UK prime minister on the outcome of the forthcoming negotiations on Brexit obscure? The gyrations of the foreign currency...
Xi Jinping, recently granted the title of “core leader” of China, is a man with two missions. The first is to purge the Chinese...
Might China rescue the globalisation of trade from its rejection by the US, under President Donald Trump? Could the threat of Chinese leadership, or...
Donald Trump has won the presidency, despite losing the popular vote. The US has, as a result, chosen as its next president a man whose...
on reversing? No, but it has lost dynamism, notably in the case of trade, the motor of global economic integration for decades. The question,...
Many influential interests and opinion-formers detest today’s ultra-low interest rates. They are also clear who is to blame: central...
Why is conventional German thinking on macroeconomics so peculiar? And does it matter? The answer to the second question is that it matters a great...
Migration might well determine the outcome of the referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU. That is because immigration is tangible and...
George Osborne wants to burnish his image as an iron chancellor of the exchequer. He has already committed to achieving a fiscal surplus by 2019-20....
What might central banks do if the next recession hit while interest rates were still far below pre-2008 levels?
Chinese policymakers have a stellar reputation for the quality of economic management but the same was true of the Japanese three decades ago.
The year 2016 will see the UK’s “renegotiation” of its relationship with the EU.
There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.
