“Economics is among the least interdisciplinary and most hierarchical academic fields”

Since the end of 2015, Portugal has been the scene of an unusual political drama. After failing to win a majority in parliament, the country’s long-established centre-left machine rejected the offer of a ‘grand coalition’ with its conservative rival to implement the demands of Brussels and Frankfurt.

The progress of science is generally linear. As new research confirms or replaces existing theories, one generation builds upon the next. Economics, however...

In the face of rising social inequality, both the rich and the middle classes own fancy TVs and nice handbags.

I am not now nor have I ever been a Marxist, yet Karl Marx was one of my most important teachers.

Club for the retired sons of indulgent fathers, Rea Irvin, 1914 by Guy Standing The 20th century income distribution system has broken down irreparably. Recall the post-1945 consensus under which the shares of income going to capital and to labour were roughly stable, when workers and corporations shared the...

If hedge funds go up and down alongside the market, and all but the top performers don’t even beat the market, the rationale for investing in them vanishes.

Attacked and ridiculed, the leak of 243 pages of TTIP negotiations concerning climate, environment and public health prove that civil society organisations were right all along.

Taking from the rich to give to the poor has been, is and should be the way forward for an exploited majority against remote, unaccountable concentrations of extreme wealth and power.

Those who care to see know the real damage that austerity has had on people’s lives. From those needing care who now get so little, to those waiting longer for hospital treatment, and those whose homes might not have been flooded without the cuts from 2011.

Economists struggling to make sense of economic polarization are, increasingly, talking not about technology but about power.

When it comes to fiscal policy the politics of the right at the moment could be reasonably described as deficit fetishism. The policy of the centre left in Europe could also with some justification be described as growing appeasement towards deficit fetishism.

The imposition of German demands on Greece, without consideration for its democracy, sovereignty or interests, is one of those moments that changes everything.

At first sight the negotiations between Greece and the Troika seem to be simply a battle about resources: how much of the pie that is Greek national income their creditors should receive.

To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love and be loved; to create and to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here.

A few weeks ago I was having dinner with David Cameron. Well, almost - we were at the same restaurant but on tables at the opposite sides of the room.

Kim Jong-un, Vasily Galaktionov, 2013 by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman The changing dictatorships Dictatorships are not what they used to be. The totalitarian tyrants of the past – such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot – employed terror, indoctrination, and isolation to monopolise power. Although less ideological, many 20th-century...

In the next two decades, 47 per cent of employment is ‘in the high-risk category’, meaning it is ‘potentially automatable’.