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...
World Skills Competition Highlights Human Capital
Oh Lordy! I've never come across this before - a sort of supply-side Olympics, World Skills International hosted in Brazil, where nations compete in a variety of categories ranging from web design...
Should we take Corbynomics seriously?
The Guardian carries a piece by the Keynesian economics Robert Skidelsky who, argues that some of Jeremy Corbyn's economic ideas have a degree of sense. The notion of a national sovereign wealth...
London Housing Rent Crisis - More Controls Needed?
This article from the Guardian, Sky-high London rents prompt calls for new controls on landlords, looks at demand and supply in action, not least the speculative demand from overseas for London...
A-levels, Culture, and the Great Regional Divide
Last week saw the ritual tears and joy of the announcement of the A level results. An encouraging aspect was the increase, albeit small, in the percentage of entries in traditional academic...
Wearable tech - the new 'merit good'?
We've all got our favourite example of a merit or demerit good but perhaps a new one has emerged for students to use in their examination responses. A new report out, highlighted in this article...
Linda Yueh on China's Devaluation
What does the devaluation of the Chinese Yuan tell us about the state of the world's largest economy? Linda Yueh, formerly at the BBC and recently returned to academic life at Oxford, provides her...
Final Days for Britain's Deep Mine Pits
The decline of the deep mine coal industry in Britain has been relentless and deeply painful from an economic and social perspective. In this BBC news article the former industrial relations editor...
Will UK Interest Rates Rise?
This is 'revelatory' stuff: David Miles, whose term on the MPC has just finished appears alongside Evan Davis. And frankly, it is rather disappointing: Evan appears in his thrall, David Miles says...