Monthly Archives: January 2011

The dog ate my policy proposals

Posted on January 29, 2011 by

Silvio Berlusconi was a bass player and cruise ship crooner. Tony Blair played guitar in a band called Ugly Rumours. Bill Clinton played the saxophone. Notice a link? Apparently, there is a “dark side to creativity”, according to a new … Continue reading →

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The “I” in “team”

Posted on January 25, 2011 by

I’ve had some fraught experiences working in teams. Perhaps the most farcical was the Young Enterprise team I was part of at sixth form college. There we were, a bunch of optimistic unrealistic 16 and 17 year-olds, thinking we might … Continue reading →

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Toilet troubles

Posted on January 21, 2011 by

Have you heard of Professor Jay Pil Choi, of Michigan State University’s Economic Department? He’s the author of weighty contributions to economic academia such as “Recent Developments in Antitrust”, “Tying in Two-Sided Markets with Multi-Homing”, and ”Up or Down? A Male … Continue reading →

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Fun economics websites

Posted on January 13, 2011 by

Quite often “top ten” style lists of economics blogs and websites contain links to interesting sites – but they do tend to be a bit on the serious side. So here’s my list of places to go if you’re a weary economist … Continue reading →

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Caring currencies

Posted on January 9, 2011 by

Social care for the elderly costs the UK Government £16billion each year, according to a recent report. There is an unmet need for social care, which is forecast to increase over the next 15 years. What to do about it? … Continue reading →

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A cure for irrationality?

Posted on January 5, 2011 by

One of the most influential books on what behavioural economics means for public policy is probably Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, which describes how people can be helped to make better decisions, crucially without removing their freedom of choice. … Continue reading →

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When will I be famous?

Posted on January 2, 2011 by

Should your eye casually fall across the celebrity magazines, you might for a moment wonder why it is exactly that some people are so famous. You might also grumpily note that the most famous people in the world aren’t necessarily … Continue reading →

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2010 in review

Posted on January 2, 2011 by

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever. Crunchy numbers In 2010, there were 57 new posts, … Continue reading →

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