The choice between politicos and wonks is that the politicos are better at attaining and maintaining office, but their policy ...

The asymmetry between borrower and lender is well illustrated by Keynes telling the New Zealand Minister of Finance, William ...

The Starmer-Reeves Government plans to fund the concessions they made to their revolting caucus have been deferred to the end ...

We should not assume that all adopted innovations are p. Jonathon Haidt’s ‘The Anxious Generation’ illustrates that sometimes ...

One option is to cut back on maintenance of your capital – say, to delay repainting the house or keeping the car in tip-top condition. The government does the same. Hence our three water systems ...

Does the Autumn 2024 British budget point to a change in fiscal strategies? Many countries found their fiscal position was unsustainable, following the 2008 Global Financial Crash. Their public ...

We should try to to evaluate our social policies systematically. But big data has limitations. The National Party has promised to reintroduce the idea of ‘social investment’ analysis when it returns ...

Stagnation and ContractionStagnation and Contraction In this column I use the less familiar measure of GDP per capita instead of the GDP measure favoured by the commentariat. I became familiar with it ...

Following the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families ...

The 2018 Social Security Act suggests that Labour may have retreated to the minimalist (neo-liberal) welfare state which has developed out of the Richardson-Shipley ‘redesign’.

A burst of grassroots support, a rush of donations, a new, surprise candidate sweeping into an election race crying out for some ‘stardust’. Could the US presidential election have echoes of New ...