Happiness is ... desirable but hard to measure
The Financial Times 20/12/01
Are you happy? The odds are that if you spend a lot of time pondering this question, you are not. Happiness, like economic
growth, is best achieved by not aiming obsessively for it...more
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Capitalism, global and local
The Financial Times 17/12/01
Suppose you have two nephews. One is a student of economics or a beginner in financial markets. The other is an arts student or works in publishing or journalism. He has no aspirations to economic expertise but is convinced that global capitalism is making the rich richer and the poor poorer. You in your turn want to give them both a serious Christmas book. Here are ideal gifts...more |
Britain's very modest miracle
The Financial Times 06/12/01
Towards the end of the 20th century, there grew up in British university departments of politics a subject devoted to relative UK economic decline. No sooner had the subject become established than it became out of date. Today, the topic of discussion is not why the UK is declining, but why it seems to be doing better in the current world recession than most of its trading partners...more |
The straw man of market fundamentalism
Review of Just Capital in Economic Affairs 12/01
Just Capital has been marketed
as an attack on market fundamentalism. This has always seemed to me a
straw man. In Europe, including the UK, there are no such fundamentalists
with any political influence, whatever the case may be among a few
academics. The true value of the book lies in its demolition of a number
of fallacies often held by businessmen and politicians...more
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Why world deflation is remote
The Financial Times 22/11/01
If there are two imperfect sciences, they are geopolitics and macroeconomics. Yet since the outrage of September 11, any realistic discussion of the outlook has had to combine elements of both...more |
An exit from the Middle East
The Financial Times 08/11/01
Until oil dependence is drastically reduced, the western powers are doomed to recurring intervention in the affairs of the region and to making unpleasant choices between unattractive regimes, nearly all contemptuous of human rights. From time to time they will back the wrong horse - as they did more than 20 years ago in Iran and could easily do in Saudi Arabia now - and be blown from crisis to crisis...more |
Let the huddled masses go free
The Financial Times 25/10/01
For all the effect they have had on hostile opinion, the many books and articles showing the benefits of globalisation might as well have been printed in invisible ink. Most people's reactions are based on their political prejudices or favourite newspapers. What is needed is a dramatic gesture, which is worthwhile for its own sake and would demonstrate that the free movement of capital and labour is of benefit to the world's poor...more
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How to pay for the war
The Financial Times 11/10/01
I find slightly shocking how little the world of economics has adjusted to the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Too much discussion has been in terms of marginal adjustments and too little about how to adapt to a world at war...more |
The danger of too much understanding
The Financial Times 27/09/01
Many people love recalling where they were during traumatic events such as the assassination of Jack Kennedy. This is not normally my line. But the circumstances in which I learned of the outrage of September 11 were rather special.
I was in hospital recovering from a non-threatening, but painful, operation. On television we saw the World Trade Center on fire, followed by the collapse of the first tower. Maybe this huge atrocity ought to have put my own pain into perspective. But I am no hero. They continued side by side.
..more |
The not so noble savage
Prospect October
Roger Sandall, a recently retired New Zealand lecturer in anthropology, has launched a broadside against the modern version of the noble savage. In fact the essays included in this book cover so many topics, ranging from designer tribalism to Karl Popper in New Zealand, that a little sorting out is required by the reader...more
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How land taxes could pay for urban renewal
The Financial Times 30/08/01
Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone, now locked in combat over the financing of London Transport, could learn something from David Ricardo's 200-year-old analysis of land values. Here is one of the very few examples of a tax that, far from being a distortion, should aid efficiency...more |
In praise of free lunches
Times Literary Supplement24/08/01
One of the myths of New Labour is that paid work is the answer to most social problems. There is no need to argue about the miseries that arise when people able and willing to work are not able to find a job that makes them better off than being on the dole. But it is a fatal logical slide to move from here to insisting that as many people as possible should work for cash, even if that is not what they want to do or that is not the best way of using their enthusiasms and skills...more
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The moral leap from bribery to compensation
The Financial Times 16/08/01
There are many forms of nimbyism. In theory people can see the effect of over-severe planning
legislation in raising house prices and land values, reducing growth and employment and increasing income
disparities. But the same people do not find it easy to accept an industrial or office block in their own
vicinity. Some economists believe they have a way of dealing with such questions...more |
The ethics and economics of the arms trade
Royal Society of Arts Journal 08/01
Every sensible market economist should accept that a market
must operate within a framework of law and moral convention. Investment bankers are not permitted to finance firms that sell poison to children, or even adults, and there are strong constraints on the emission of lead into rivers or on pollutants into the chain of food stuffs. Above all, we do not subsidise businesses to engage in these harmful activities. When these rules break down there is an understandable outcry. My contention simply is that exports of arms to dubious regimes should come within the sphere of what is out of bounds - and more decisively so than at present...more
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Managing a divided economy
The Financial Times 02/08/01
The "two-speed economy" is the cliche of the moment. It refers
to the contrast between the weak manufacturing and trading sectors
and the strong domestic and service ones. The trend from manufacturing
to services is long established. But there are signs that the
shift has become unsustainably rapid and the pattern of growth
distorted both by the high level of sterling and, more recently,
by the slowdown in world growth and trade...more
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A limited
cure for recession
The Financial Times 15/07/01
Even the most pessimistic of analysts see some scope for official
action to prevent a downturn from getting out of control. The one
thing of which we can be sure about the present setback to the world
economy is that nobody knows how long or deep it will be. The epicentre
of the present disturbance is the US economy. Stories of surprising
consumer confidence are succeeded by reports of sagging business
confidence. Even if there is some recovery in the second half of
this year, we shall not know if it is a breathing space or the beginning
of a durable recovery...more |
No defence for arms subsidies
The Financial Times 05/07/01
Do subsidised arms sales make even economic sense, when governments
of all political persuasions have been trying to promote competition
and move away from supporting national champions? Because of the
secrecy that surrounds the issue - not to speak of the corrupt nature
of many of the dealings - consistent facts and figures have been
hard to come by...more |
The rise of the inactive man
The Financial Times 21/06/01
In many parts of the world the unemployment statistics have proved
a misleading guide to labour market performance and nowhere more
so than in Britain. Between the bottom of the 1992 recession and
the first quarter of this year the UK unemployment percentage fell
from 9.9 per cent to 3.3 per cent. This improvement cannot be written
off as just an aspect of the movement of the economy from recession
to boom. For the remarkable thing is that the fall in unemployment
has not so far been accompanied by any notable acceleration in wages
or inflation. Something more than the upturn in the business cycle
has been involved. ..more |
Blair's
problems of success
The Financial Times 07/06/01
Barring a nearly impossible poll upset, Tony Blair will start
on Friday at the pinnacle of his authority as the first two-term
British Labour prime minister with a more than adequate majority.
He will have greater power over both the government and its policies
than he had before or will have afterwards, when disillusion and
factional fighting are bound to emerge. It is not entirely an enviable
position. For he will ever after be asking himself: could I have
used the opportunity better?..more
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Labour the
least bad option
New Statesman contributors’
symposium 04/06/01
In some past elections, I have been torn between dislike
of the illiberal features of Toryism and my support for a competitive
free market economy. Not now. All the Conservatives have to offer
are bribes to obvious interest groups such as motorists, clumsily
combined with promises of general tax cuts to be financed by administrative
economies - the last refuge of the political speech writer who knows
he does not have a coherent story to tell...more |
Happiness
first
Times Literary Supplement
Review of Ethics As Social Science 01/06/01
The frequent complaint against postwar analytic philosophy, that
it did not tell people how to behave, was wide of the mark. There
may be some people who still believe with Raskolnikov in Crime
and Punishment that if there is no God everything is permitted.
But once their error is pointed out, they should not expect university
professors to formulate codes of behaviour for them. After all if
someone has rejected a traditional moral code derived from the Bible
or other religious authority, why should he or she follow an Oxbridge
or Harvard academic instead?..more |
In
praise of Brown's trust fund
The Financial Times 24/05/01
The mistake of Karl Marx was to thunder against private capital
and investment income. The problem with them is not that they exist
but that too few of us have them. One of the great advantages of
the old professional middle classes is that they had some personal
funds on which to fall back and were not completely dependent on
wages and salaries...more
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The
excuse of globalisation
The Financial Times 10/05/01
One way of looking at globalisation is that it is an excuse.
On the left it is used as an excuse by governments that have not
tried to introduce socialism. “What can we do?†is the cry. “We
will be swept away by the world capital markets if we try anything
really radical.†On the right, globalisation is used as a threat.
Instead of arguing against excessive levels of government spending
on the merits of the case, people are told that their economies
will become “uncompetitiveâ€...more
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The
greatest perversity of the EU
The Financial Times 26/04/01
There is an aspect of the European Union that is potentially more
sinister than the single currency is alleged to be by its opponents
but which is hardly ever discussed in English-speaking countries
and not very much on the Continent either. This is the acquis
communautaire...more |
In defence
of Bertrand Russell
The Spectator 14/04/01
The second volume of the biography of Bertrand Russell by
Ray Monk seems to have brought out the worst in both author and
most reviewers. The typical response has been “Silly old man. He
was lost when he left the rarefied world of mathematical logic and
proceeded to make a mess of both his family life and his intrusions
into politics.†To which my riposte would be “Silly old reviewersâ€...more |
No
accounting for acts of God
The Financial Times 12/04/01
Margaret Thatcher’s valedictory remark “It’s a funny old worldâ€
applies quite well to the present economic religion of inflation
targets. British shoppers who have had to pay more for meat because
of foot-and-mouth disease might regard the outbreak as an unmitigated
calamity. Yet for the Bank of England, it is apparently good news.
For it postpones the time when Sir Edward George, the Bank’s governor,
will have to write a letter apologising for the inflation rate falling
by more than 1 percentage point below the 2.5 per cent target...more
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Why
the US needs a recession
The Financial Times 29/03/01
The US needs a recession after a long and excessive boom. In saying
this I am doing no more than following the implications of the mainstream
analysis espoused for instance by Mervyn King, the Bank of England's
deputy governor, and many other central bankers the world over.
They have mostly accepted the view that there is something like
a normal degree of resource utilisation or employment level above
which we are likely to get not merely inflation but accelerating
inflation...more
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A
reformer who tinkers too much
The Financial Times 15/03/01
It is no news that the economic and social
programme of the British Labour government is largely the creature
of Gordon Brown, the finance minister. But what exactly is the strategy
he is following and how valid is it?...more
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Alternatives
to inflation targets
The Financial Times 01/03/01
There is one prediction about the next Wednesday's British Budget
which can be safely made. That is that no sooner has the chancellor
Gordon Brown sat down than financial discussion will shift to the
likely decision of the Monetary Policy Committee, the very next
day, on UK short term interest rates. ...more
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The
debt society owes to war
The Financial Times 15/02/01
One of the hoariest of myths is that it is
mainly the love of money that makes the world go round. The older
form of the thesis was the Marxist one that wars were due to rivalry
for markets or investment outlets. There are more modern theories
coming from the opposite political camp...more
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Britain's post-election choices
The Financial Times 01/02/00
As usual, the Green Budget prepared by the Institute for Fiscal Studies
in conjunction with Goldman Sachs provides much the best indication
of British public finances in advance of the Budget statement. But I
have to admit that I find it somewhat too reassuring...more
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The business cycle lives again
The Financial Times 18/01/01
The Federal Reserve's emergency interest rate cut of January 3 was
almost certainly triggered by financial indicators. There have been
rumours about particular financial institutions but the widening of
corporate bond spreads has been a fact, as has been the sharp, but perhaps
temporary, narrowing since Alan Greenspan, Fed chairman, acted...more
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The
irresistible folly of crystal-gazing
The Financial Times 04/01/01
Winston Churchill said that a young person
entering politics needs “the ability to foretell what is going to
happen, tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have
the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t.†Alas, only the
last part can be done...more
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