As a professional nerd, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been asked what I think of Rishi Sunak’s enthusiasm for maths. It’s hard to know quite what to say. I agree with much of what Sunak said in his speech last month singing the praises of numeracy. Yet...
Undercover Economist
My weekly column in the Financial Times on Saturdays, explaining the economic ideas around us every day. This column was inspired by my book and began in 2005.
Why we shouldn’t hold referendums
Citizens of democracies can be ill-informed and inconsistent, and this often feels like a tragedy or even a crisis. Occasionally, however, one reads something so absurd that it would take a heart of stone not to laugh. Consider a recent survey conducted by the...
The never-ending brilliance of board games
What is the point of games? For Lizzie Magie, the idiosyncratic genius who inspired Monopoly, the answer was clear: she thought games are educational. Klaus Teuber, the equally brilliant designer of the board game Catan, had a different view: he thought games are fun....
Why is the field of economics still so elitist?
There is no shortage of white men in economics. That is clear enough from a glance down the very male, very white list of winners of the discipline’s Nobel memorial prize. There are a few exceptions: the black Caribbean-born scholar Sir Arthur Lewis won in 1979; the...
Does winning the lottery actually ruin your life?
At the start of the graphic novel Bloke’s Progress, our everyday hero Darren Bloke isn’t coping with the everyday stresses of life. He has a tedious job, a grinding commute, squalling children and too many bills to pay. Then he wins the lottery — and his troubles...
Has 21st century policy gone medieval?
Criminal justice has always been a source of knotty problems. How to punish the guilty while sparing the innocent? Trial by ordeal was a neat solution: delegate the decision to God. In the Middle Ages, a suspect who insisted on their innocence might be asked to carry...
What Mystic Meg can teach economists about forecasting
Economist Ezra Solomon once quipped that “the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”. I’m not sure if the astrologer “Mystic Meg” was ever respectable, but she was certainly much loved. “Britain’s most famous astrologer by a...
Lockdowns are over. WFH isn’t. Why?
Each February, the team at NPR’s fabulous Planet Money podcast announce their Valentines, nerdy love letters to under-appreciated data releases or obscure supply-chain trackers. This year, co-host Amanda Aronczyk revealed that her Valentine would be for . . . the...
Most Budget-day tweaks make the tax system worse. These wouldn’t
The tired metaphor is that the chancellor will try to pull a rabbit out of the hat on Budget day. The sleight of hand is usually less delightful: he’ll stuff some frozen prawns behind the radiator and a turd underneath the sofa, and hope to make a getaway before...