Before I started working full-time at the IEA, I wrote a dissertation on poverty in developed economies. At the time, the state of the social policy literature was easily summarised. Developed ...

Britain has suffered a catastrophic decline in welfare performance, falling to 22nd place in life expectancy and ranking just 15th overall despite a record tax burden and ballooning welfare spending ...

Each year, the Government publishes international energy price comparisons. The data is sourced from the IEA and covers industrial and domestic gas and electricity prices. The latest data for 2023 was ...

The overview highlights the academic consensus on harmful consequences. Most studies (56 out of 65) find that rent controls succeed in lowering rents for controlled units, as intended. However, 14 out ...

The National Health Service enjoys strong support among the public, making it almost impossible to introduce radical reforms, even if the performance of the NHS is relatively poor compared with ...

The policy reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic will increase budget deficits massively in all the world’s leading countries. The deficits will to a significant extent be monetised, with heavy state ...

‘Market failure’ is a term widely used by politicians, journalists and university and A-level economics students and teachers. However, those who use the term often lack any sense of proportion about ...

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is currently the subject of much interest and discussion in the UK, with support and opposition from several parts of the political spectrum. Although ...

The cost-of-living crisis has been worsened by longer-term structural factors, beyond the immediate issues posed by loose monetary policy and supply-side constraints. Indeed, there were discussions ...

Forced technology transfer and China (pages 306-319) by Bob Carbaugh Chad Wassell The case for freedom revisited (pages 320-329) by Roland Vaubel Is energy security really too important to leave to ...

Research from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) confirms younger people are hostile to capitalism and hold positive views of socialist alternatives. The new paper should act as a “wake up call” ...

When this blog was launched over a decade ago, most of my articles were rebuttals of the latest nonsense I had read in the Guardian or the Independent. Those publications are, unfortunately, still ...