Posts Tagged ‘growth

I was recently on Newshour Extra on the BBC World Service discussing ‘Do we need economic growth?‘

This is a text (in German) of a recent interview with me from Novo magazin on economic growth. It was conducted by Marco Visscher. The original longer version appeared in Dutch in Oneworld magazine. The headline can be translated as “sustainability hinders growth”. Mehr Wirtschaftswachstum ist nötig, um die Lebensbedingungen der Menschen zu verbessern, besonders […]

The audio recording of my Berlin Salon debate on “Do we need economic growth?” is now online. It turned out to be a fiery exchange in places.

I will be debating “Do we need economic growth?” at the Berlin Salon on the evening of 7 April. The discussion is in English and entrance is free. More details are available here.

In the light of today’s publication of a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a rich country think tank, my spiked essay on inequality is worth rereading. The OECD broadly argues that high and rising inequality damages economic growth whereas I contend that, if anything, causality runs in the other direction. […]

This is my column for the October issue of Fund Strategy. Few seem to have noticed how the role of mainstream economics has changed in recent years. In many cases it could reasonably be called the art of making excuses for poor economic performance. Until a few years ago, many policymakers were congratulating themselves on […]

This is the text of my piece on global inequality from last Friday’s Financial Times. It is perhaps the ultimate killer fact: Oxfam, the aid organisation, estimates the 85 richest people in the world own as much wealth as the bottom half of the global population. The figure grabbed global media attention and was even […]

What is the likely impact of policies to redress wide economic inequalities? Many support this goal and some abhor it but few take the trouble to spell out exactly what they mean by equality in this context. Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union speech provided a good opportunity to unpick the concept. The president […]

This is my Perspective column from this week’s Fund Strategy magazine. An important side effect of the debate about “tapering” by America’s Federal Reserve is heighted concern about emerging economies. It is widely argued that as the developed economies start to recover their emerging counterparts could falter. As it happens a western recovery is still […]

The proposed HS2 high speed rail link between London and the north of England provides an object lesson in Britain’s failure to promote economic growth. It shows how politicians of all parties can profess support for economic expansion in good faith only to fail to achieve their stated objectives. In that respect the discussion is […]