Rent controls are firmly back on the political agenda. At the national level the reintroduction of rent controls is now official Labour Party policy. At the London level Mayor Sadiq Khan calls for their reintroduction as well. Politicians, however, are in this case merely following a shift in...

This paper reiterates the classical liberal critique of socialism in the format of alternative history. The history described here is identical to ‘ours’ up until just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. From then on, it deviates. In this alternative version, German reunification never...

The coronavirus pandemic has given rise to the phenomenon of "Coronfirmation Bias", a tendency to interpret the pandemic as a vindication of one’s worldview. Three ideas have become part of the conventional wisdom: that the UK was caught unprepared because a decade of austerity had hollowed...

A critique of the New Economic Foundation's 21 hours reportIn the thirtieth IEA Current Controversies Paper, Kristian Niemietz critiques 21 hours, a report from the New Economics Foundation (NEF). The report proposes a gradual reduction of the standard working week to 21 hours within about a...

Radical solutions need to be sought to get people off welfare and back into workIn the thirty-second IEA Discussion Paper, Poverty Research Fellow Kristian Niemietz puts forward solutions which would substantially simplify the welfare system, put in place better incentives to encourage work and...

A ground-breaking study on the measurement of povertyThis ground-breaking study on the measurement of poverty shows how policy in this field has taken a wrong turn with disastrous results.In recent years, poverty has generally been understood in ‘relative’ terms. That is, people are regarded...

Government’s timid reform will not solve chronic housing affordability problemsNot enough is being done to reduce the extraordinarily high cost of housing in Britain. This is the finding of a new report released today by the Institute of Economic Affairs Abundance of land, shortage of...

New IEA research finds a market-oriented anti-poverty policy could lead to families being £750 a month better offExecutive Summary:In the past intellectual movements promoting free trade in particular and a free economy more generally were regarded as having a pro-poor agenda. The current...

Airport expansion must be wrestled from government’s hands, argues new reportSummary:Opposition to air travel has never been about carbon emissions alone. Papers that criticise air travel often begin with a discussion of environmental impacts, but then quickly morph into an aesthetic critique...