Diane Coyle, distinguished academic economist with Harvard PhD, Cambridge Chair, and professional, ex-UK Treasury, CBE, explores enormous problems but also opportunities and explains how economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economy – Digital technology, big data, big tech, machine learning, and AI are revolutionising both the tools…
Brazil, China, Canada, Russia, Indonesia, the US, the UK and the Democratic Republic of Congo, was among the signatories on Tuesday to reverse deforestation by 2030. The pledge includes almost £14.4 bn ($19.2bn) of public and private funds, although the previous deal in 2014 had “failed to slow deforestation at all”, and in fact deforestation…
Irish writer and journalist, Fintan O’Toole gives an insightful, interweaving and fascinating story of the upheavals of Irish history from 1958 to the present, as Ireland has changed almost out of recognition during those decades. He also maps his country’s “dilemma of modernity”: How to achieve economic transformation while maintaining the country’s distinctive culture, by…
A revelatory history of how postcolonial African Independence movements were systematically undermined by one nation above all the US. In 1968 in Accra, Ghana, the Hands of Africa conference brought together the leading figures of African independence in a public show of political strength and purpose. Led by charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, who had just won…
In 1966 two columnists from Newsweek magazine to debate the world of business and economics. Two most influential economist Paul Samuelson was an authority on Keynesian economics which supported the management of the economy along lines prescribed by John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory, and Milton Friedman, little known at that time outside conservative academic circles,…
Professor Bobby Duffy’s compelling book, reveals our preconceptions are just tired stereotypes by expressing when we’re born determines our attitudes to money, sex, religion, politics, and much else, informed by unique analysis of hundreds of studies. Duffy, formerly of polling company Ipsos Mori, now director of The Policy of Institute at King’s College, London, concludes…
The new virus news emerging from China in December 2018, risk-averse financial markets were alert to its potential for disruption. Yet they could never have predicted the total economic collapse that would follow Covid-19’s wake, as stock markets fell faster and harder than at any time since 1929, currencies across the world plunged, investors panicked…
Josiah Wedgwood, the greatest English potter who ever lived, epitomised the best of his age, from his kilns and workshops in Stoke-on-Trent, which revolutionised the production of ceramics in Georgian Britain by marrying technology with design, manufacturing and efficiency and retail flair. He was responsible for transforming the luxury markets not only of London, Liverpool,…
Winston Churchill’s slogan “Keep Buggering On” became a national catchphrase during the Second World War. Duncan Weldon from The Economist highlights key themes from his brisk history of Britain’s economy since the industrial revolution, taking in everything from the South Sea Bubble to the impact of the financial crisis. According to Weldon the same issues…
How a popularly elected leader and tea boy has steered the world’s largest democracy toward authoritarianism and intolerance. Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has been coupled with a form of national populism that has ensured its success at the polls, first in the western state of Gujarat and then in India at large- Modi managed…