In spite of general reductions in government spending, the prime minister has found room in the government's budget to spend money on a major survey of what makes the British people happy. This will be used, in the prime minister’s own words, to guide government policy towards improvement in...

In a lucid and compelling analysis, written for economists and non-economists alike, the authors find that happiness research cannot be used to justify government intervention in the way its proponents suggest. Those who would wish governments to take into account measures of wellbeing when...

Book reviewed in this article: Don Lavoie and Emily Chamlee-Wright, Culture and Enterprise: The Development, Representation and Morality of Business Daniel F. Spulber (ed.), Famous Fables of Economics: Myths of Market Failures John Plender, A Stake in the Future: A Stakeholding Solution Paul...

Conviction narrative theory (CNT), a social psychological approach to the way economic agents take deisions under Knightian uncertainty, together with the new methodology of directed algorithmic text analysis (DATA), provide the opportunity for a theory of economic sentiment or animal sprits...

Spanish Abstract: Propongo una reforma radical y ramificada del plan de estudios. Aún se debería enseñar el modelo básico de comportamiento del agente de la economía tradicional, pues no es totalmente irrelevante para el mundo real. Pero solo debería ser una de las numerosas formas de...

In the summer of 2012, I was invited to write a weekly opinion column for City A.M. newspaper. It is a free, business-focused newspaper, launched in 2005, and is distributed at more than 250 commuter hubs across London and the Home Counties, as well as 1,600 offices throughout the City, Canary...

In contrast to the recent past, there is now widespread concern about the apparent excesses of some pay structures in corporate businesses. Top pay has risen much faster than average levels of pay in the last twenty years. This is in part the consequence of globalisation and developments in...

The seminal work on epidemiological models was carried out in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The models have developed substantially since, but their key drivers are those discovered nearly a century ago. Epidemiological models have real scientific value. However, any forecast made with them...

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, governments have relied heavily on the advice of epidemiologists and health professionals, while economists maintained a low profile in policymaking. This paper illustrates how economic insights could have helped and would be essential in future pandemics. Its...