This report builds on prior work to provide a new, comprehensive, and balanced view of water security in Pakistan, stressing the importance of the diverse social, environmental, and economic outcomes from water. The report highlights the complex water issues that Pakistan must tackle to improve...

In the face of increasing environmental stresses, there is a critical need to improve water-use efficiency in many arid and semiarid agroclimatic zones. Drip irrigation is a high-efficiency irrigation technology that can improve water-use efficiency in currently irrigated areas and transform...

The fertilizer industry in Pakistan, with US$3.74 billion per year in sales, now stands at a crossroads where, after an initial substantial contribution in boosting crop productivity, its future potential is being challenged. Fertilizer-responsive crop varieties, supplementary irrigation water,...

Price controls across many sectors are currently being hotly debated. New controls in the housing market, more onerous minimum wages, minimum prices for alcohol, and freezes on energy prices are very high up the agenda of most politicians at the moment. Even without any further controls, wages,...

The reselling of tickets for events has a long history, dating back at least to Roman times. Such secondary markets in tickets are no different from other kinds of secondary market, and serve the same purpose: to correct flaws in the initial primary market. In recent years, new technology has...

There is currently much concern with questions of freedom of speech and expression, much of it focused on the appearance of ‘wokeness’ and its manifestations in corporate life, the media, and academia. Historically, the idea of free expression was seen as dangerous or a heresy. But this has...

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...

Innovation is an important source of economic growth. It increases productivity and creates wealth by freeing up resources to be used for other activity and hence more output. Despite its economic importance, innovation is still not fully understood and is difficult to predict. In pre-modern...

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is heavily discussed in the UK, with support and opposition from several parts of the political spectrum. This idea has been around for a long time and was first formulated more than two centuries ago. There have been several times when it has attracted...

Pandemics are a recurring feature of human history. The COVID-19 virus has several features that mean it poses a particularly severe challenge. It threatens to cause a collapse of hospital systems through a high number of serious cases arising in a short period of time, and this, rather than...