250 Years of Capitalism - Positives outweigh the Negatives
Economics is often described as the dismal science, but it often contains cheerful material. A paper by the leading American economic historian Joel Mokyr made for exuberant holiday reading....
China's money crisis explained with colouring pencils
A neat idea from BBC Newsbeat!
The Invisible Hand - BBC's A History Of Ideas
Adam Smith used the metaphor of an ‘invisible hand’ to describe how individuals making self-interested decisions can collectively and unwittingly engineer an effective economic system that is in...
Hysteresis Effects from the Global Financial Crisis
The financial crisis and the Great Recession have left Europe worse off than before due to falling investment and low productivity alongside an ageing population. That is the central message of a...
Is New York City Too Small?
The NIMBY-ism (‘not in my backyard’) of local politics leads to a bias against large cities that constrains national productivity growth. That is the central conclusion of a study by Frederic...
Huge Rise in Net Inward Migration into the UK
New figures show the highest rate of net migration on record in the UK economy sparking a fresh debate about the economic and social costs and benefits from a sustained period of the influx of...
Game Theory and the 2008 UEFA Champions League Final
Just starting game theory with my A2 students and economists hold in high regard the penalty kick as a real-life example. Technically the kicker and the goalkeeper play a zero-sum game – any gain...
E-cigarettes - Government policy to combat demerit good or government failure example?
It struck me has I was reading this BBC report on the various UK government approaches to e-cigarettes, that the rise of the e-cig offers students a useful example on various fronts when preparing...
2014 House Price League Table for UK Cities
I will busing this data when teaching the economics of the housing market. There is a gulf in property prices across the UK's sixty cities and this data from the Centre for Cities makes this clear.
Average Weekly Earnings By UK City
London, Aberdeen, Crawley and Reading feature as the four cities in the United Kingdom with the highest weekly earnings in 2014. The data below is from the Centre for Cities which provides a wealth...
Poundland and 99p Stores Set to Merge
A classic example of horizontal integration, and in this instance, although market concentration has increased, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) doesn't believe that any merger will have...
Betfair and Paddy Power Announce a Merger
Here is another example of horizontal integration (and market consolidation) in the betting and gaming sector, with Betfair and Paddy Power responding to the merger of Ladbrokes and Gala Coral by...
US sugar tax effectiveness questioned
A new paper http://www.nber.org/papers/w21465 looks at the short term impact of the first city-level tax to be levied in the USA on sugar-sweetened beverages which was enacted by the voters of...
Sky high pay and financial instability
Disproportionately high pay and bonuses in the financial sector is making the industry less stable and worsening income inequality. That is the central finding of research by OECD economist Oliver...
Effective nudges to go green!
Solar panel subsidies work best if the government pays for the installation costs than if it buys generated energy. That is the central finding of research by Olivier De Groote and Frank Verboven,...
Gender Gaps - Impact on Productivity and Incomes
Removing the barriers that women face in the labour market is likely to lead to major productivity gains, according to research by David Cuberes and Marc Teignier, to be presented at the annual...
Germany's Labour Market Miracle
Germany’s unemployment rate almost halved between 2005 and 2010 in part because of the upturn in the business cycle but largely because the country’s employment agencies became much more effective...
Monetary Policy and Inequality - New Evidence
Higher interest rates worsen income inequality, according to research by Haroon Mumtaz and Angeliki Theophilopoulou presented to the annual congress of the European Economic Association in Mannheim...
Econofun - a Board Game for A level and IB Economics students
If you attended our Economics Teachers National Conference at the RBS Headquarters in June 2014 you have met or seen a young entrepreneur called Serena Patel. Serena was showcasing Econofun - a...
Internal and External Economies of Scale - a quick fire quiz
If you are delivering the AQA version of A level economics you should be aware that the new specification requires students to differentiate between internal and external economies (and...