In the past, the use of a compulsory levy on television sets (a licence fee) to finance the BBC could be justified given the problem of spectrum scarcity and the fact that television signals were a public good (i.e. there was effectively a zero marginal cost of an additional user receiving the...

The policy reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic will increase budget deficits massively in the world’s leading countries. The deficits will largely be monetised, with heavy state borrowing from both national central banks and commercial banks. The monetisation of budget deficits, combined with...

Leading economists warn 1% growth could become the UK’s new normSummary: The UK’s sustainable growth rate has been much lower than that calculated by the OBR and used by the government to forecast public finances.The lack of growth is important in its own right. However, it is also important...

The last 20 years have seen severe macroeconomic instability in Britain, with three extreme and highly damaging boom-bust cycles. Professor Tim Congdon, one of the City’s most well-known commentators, has been an influential critic of successive governments' failures in economic policy...