The doctrine of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has now been accepted across the world - not only by businesses and business organisations, together with an array of commentators and NGOs, but also by many governments. This is a worrying development. The doctrine rests on mistaken...

(The text which follows formed the basis for a brief presentation to a conference held on 22 April 2009 at the Said Business School, Oxford University. The subject of the conference was 'Beyond Kyoto - Green Innovation and Enterprise in the 21st Century'.) Governments across the world are...

It is an honour and a pleasure for me to be here today to give the Institute's annual lecture for 1989. I do so, of course, in a personal capacity. While I am at present an international civil servant, both my subject-matter today and my treatment of it reflect my own choice; and the views I...

Two leading international agencies, the OECD and the IMF, are now becoming more closely involved with climate change issues, in conjunction with finance and economics ministries within their member countries. This broader official involvement opens up an opportunity: it could lead to a more...

In the same time period over which the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia became freer, measured inequality of income for those countries increased. Researchers linked the increase to the egalitarian values of socialism and to the process of economic and political...

Angus Maddison died last April. As can be seen on his website, he left an impressive legacy of books, articles and tables of key figures. For many, his single most notable and distinctive contribution is the set of tables entitled Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP,...