Inequality - Incomes of richest 1% in the USA surge
Both during and after the pandemic, there has been a dramatic upsurge in the share of income going to the richest one per cent of people in the USA according to new data. The top 1% share now far...
Marginal Cost - Pret Ditches the Smoothie!
Can you hear Pret customers tearing up their monthly subscriptions? Pret-a-Manger is to stop selling shakes and smoothies because they can't afford it and instead will offer iced-drinks.
Does a Four-Day Week Lift Productivity?
A trial involving 61 firms and over 3,000 workers has seemed to validate the notion that a four-day working week has helped boost productivity at the margin.
Supply and demand in action - why the price of milk has soared in the UK
Why did milk prices reach an all-time wholesale price record in December?
Economies of Scale - How Singapore Airlines Makes 19 Million Meals a Year
How to make 50,000 meals a day and take into account the fact that food can taste different in the sky?
Time to rethink how the World Bank operates
One for Year 13 economists. Larry Elliott looks here at the future of the World Bank in the aftermath and asks the pertinent question about whether an institution that emerged in the aftermath of...
One Year Universal Free School Meals Programme for London
What a story to start a new week. The Mayor of London is drawing on higher than expected tax revenues from business rates to fund a one-year universal programme offering free meals to all primary...
Leprechaun Economics - How real is Ireland's super-fast economic growth?
A debate is raging about whether we can truly believe the super-charged economic growth that is taking place in the Irish economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has labelled the rapid...
International Competitiveness & Supply-side Policies
In our revision blast session last week, we looked at measures of competitiveness and focused on macro and micro supply-side policies that might help improve the UK's relative standings in...
Wonderful examples of cross-industry innovations
This is one of those twitter streams that arrives once in a while and provides a veritable gold-mine of interesting examples of when industries draw on ideas from others to fast-forward the...
Nestle to raise prices (again)
Some excellent revision material here for Year 13 Economics students; Nestle have announced that continued cost rises mean that they are going to have to increase prices again.
Economics Weekly Quiz | 17 February 2023
Here's our weekly economics news quiz.
Should home insulation in the UK be subsidised?
Improving the energy efficiency of the UK’s ageing housing stock has become increasingly important considering increasing energy prices - how strong is the case for government financial support to...
McDonald's Raises Prices Again
The decision by McDonald's to raise prices on five core menu items brings into play many aspects of business economics such as the likely PED, the effect of rising costs, food price inflation, the...
Brexit has dealt a blow to UK investment according to MPC member
One of the external members of the Monetary Policy Committee, Jonathan Haskel, has estimated that Brexit has effectively imposed a productivity penalty equivalent to £29 billion on the UK economy....
Social Capital and Resource Management - Reforestation in Nepal
A half term hat tip to Prairna Sharma for spotting this timely article from Eric Solheim lauding Nepal for their success in increasing forest cover. This is a great example of Elinor Ostrom's work...
The UK Hand Car Wash Market
You'll find plenty of hand car wash businesses dotted around the towns and cities of the UK. The hand car wash industry has come under increasing criticism in recent years both in terms of...
Why are the oil giants making such big (supernormal) profits?
This BBC article looks at the profits being made by the big oil companies and attempts to explain them.
Market Power - OFCOM investigates mobile phone and broadband suppliers over pricing
OFCOM have decided to investigate mobile phone and broadband suppliers who introduce price increases mid-contract.
Interest Rates and Aggregate Demand and Supply
With central banks in many countries including the UK and the USA raising policy interest rates, we have added two short topic videos to our reference section on how increased interest rates might...