While the world celebrated the discovery that the steroid dexamethasone was an effective treatment for Covid-19 patients on ventilators, my...
You can’t please everyone, it seems. Royal Dutch Shell has announced plans to plant trees in order to absorb some of the carbon dioxide produced...
“The economy, stupid.” Pinned to the wall, this motto famously reminded Bill Clinton’s campaign staff to stay on message as he ran for the US...
Everyone seems to agree that we live in a “superstar economy” — one in which the leading companies are making dramatic strides both in...
What should the top rate of income tax be? Should it be 70 per cent, as has been informally suggested by the young star of the US Democratic party,...
Brinkmanship is an old idea, but not such an old word. It was first used in 1956, after US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles opined that “the...
What is the most important job in the world? President? Teacher? Parent? I suggest a post that would not feature on most people’s lists: central...
What are the limits to economic growth — and have we already recklessly exceeded them? Such questions were raised this week by alarming report...
Bill Gates has more money than I do. JK Rowling sells more books. Katy Perry has more Twitter followers. Usain Bolt is faster. And I can only...
Is the glass half full, half empty, or laced with cyanide? Last week I wrote about “statistics, fast and slow” — the gap between the world as...
What happened in the markets this week? That depends on how often you were looking. It was a brutal Monday — the S&P 500 was down more than 4 per...
It should not be difficult to love Amazon. To consumers, it offers choice and convenience. Countless internet ventures have relied on its cheap,...
One of my first economics lessons contrasted perfect competition, which was judged to be a good thing, with monopoly, which was not. There are worse...
