“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.” Paul Krugman’s truism came back to me last week when I … Continue reading “The anti-productivity coalition that is holding back Britain”

 New briefing paper and accompanying open letter from the Institute of Economic Affairs highlight the conditions that prevailed during recent periods of economic … Continue reading “Economists, politicians, academics and businesspeople sign open letter to the Chancellor”

Conditions for growth are not a mystery – we have seen them in the UK in the recent past. This … Continue reading “The Chancellor’s Post-Pandemic Choices”

Across the political spectrum, support is growing for the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) – broadly defined as … Continue reading “Debate: Should we support a Universal Basic Income?”

We tend to conceptualise the housing crisis in terms of affordability – and justifiably so. Over the last two decades, … Continue reading “The hidden costs of the housing crisis”

Britain’s productivity growth has halted. The evidence is clear. Since the financial crisis, output per hour worked has been effectively … Continue reading “Britain’s productivity is lower than France’s or Germany’s. Is that a problem?”

“Britain is damning itself to be a low wage, low productivity economy”. How many headlines like that have we read … Continue reading “The chancellor’s national insurance hike is based on a faulty reading of aggregate statistics”

I once asked one of Margaret Thatcher’s senior advisers whether her governments had been “too obsessed with economics”. “Economics,” he … Continue reading “The four huge economic challenges that will define the coming years”

Political soundbites can be excruciating. They hang around for a year or two before disappearing when they become untenable. Who … Continue reading “The real reason you should be depressed by political soundbites”