The years since the 2008 financial crisis have been among the strangest in the history of monetary policy. Interest rates have been lower than at any time since the Industrial Revolution. Governments have been issuing debt in unprecedented quantities, and central banks have been buying the debt back. But this era seems to be coming to an end. Interest rates around the world are rising. Markets talk not of quantitative easing but of quantitative tightening. What has been going on? Edward Chancellor’s new book offers a very long-term perspective, beginning in Babylon and ending with Covid. The b ..read more

John Kay is one of Britain’s leading public economists.  He writes books and articles and lectures widely to both technical and general audiences.  If you are not familiar with his work, go to www.johnkay.com John requires an assistant to provide both research assistance and administrative support.  The work will involve research assistance of a conventional kind:  collecting and analysing data and identifying and summarising sources. It will also include helping to manage John’s diary and make travel arrangements, taking charge of John’s website an ..read more

I have a new working paper with Matthew Ford looking at ‘Ergodicity Economics‘, which is an attempt to produce “a re-write of economic theory, taking account of the ergodicity question: are averages over time identical to expectation values (averages across the stochastic ensemble)?” In our paper we argue that ergodicity economics as currently theorised is actually a restricted case of the theory it criticises, and it does not provide convincing alternative justifications for its usefulness. You can read it here. The post A Critique of ‘Ergodicity Economics’ appeared first on John Kay ..read more

The promotion of competition is  an existing aim of financial regulation. But in proposals around the Future Regulatory Framework in the Queen’s Speech last month, an additional objective was suggested: encouraging “competitiveness”. This modification of the regulatory remit sounds like a technical, semantic change. It is indeed technical — the devil of all financial regulation is in the detail — but it is much more than semantic. The Financial Conduct Authority has a good record of promoting competition. In particular, it has cleared the way for innovative new businesses to challenge inc ..read more

There is not much humour to be found in the Ukrainian war, but here is a vignette that might give momentary relief from the tragedy – or even a moment of insight into it. Luhansk, capital of the self-declared independent Luhansk republic in Eastern Ukraine, was founded by the British industrialist Charles Gascoigne. He established an armaments industry in eighteenth-century Russia – as it then was – and chose that resource-rich area for its location. Gascoigne was not strictly speaking a Scot – he was born in England and his father was an English officer in the army sent to pacify the Highland ..read more

John’s review of Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein has just been published in Business Economics. You can read the review for free here. The post Review of Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment appeared first on John Kay ..read more