Should short selling be banned?
A big chunk of the trades that happen in shares are sold short. In other words, the trader takes a punt that the price will go down. In effect you sell something that you don’t own yet – like shares i...
24 Apr 201717min
Regional wealth diversity – how economics ignores the dimension of space
London and the southeast accounts for a third of the UK’s gross disposable household income. The rest of the country somehow scrapes by. But it’s clear to see why. The proximity to other businesses me...
20 Apr 201723min
Does Modern Monetary Theory make sense?
Modern Monetary Theory states that’s, because the government of a country is the monopoly supplier of money, it has an unlimited capacity to pay for things and provide funds for other sectors. If the ...
17 Apr 201731min
Lies, damn lies and employment statistics
Figures out in the US last week showed the unemployment rate had dropped to just 4.5 percent, a long way from the 10% rate back in 2009. Yet Donald Trump won an election, in part, because he was there...
13 Apr 201719min
Do minimum wages reduce inequality?
Mark Perry, Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Michigan, believes that raising the minimum wage will push costs up so high companies won’t be able to afford them. He wrote in his ...
10 Apr 201727min
The rising impact of the gig economy
Latest UK employment statistics show that more than half of the jobs added in the last year went to the self-employed. Part of this will be entrepreneurs forging their own path, but many will be peopl...
6 Apr 201716min
Can you have a free market for public goods?
It seems there’s a relentless desire to try and apply free market principles to public goods, like health, education, defence and research. Even though they usually operate in a monopolistic environme...
3 Apr 201725min
Do poor people make the rich richer?
Karl Marx argued that the bourgeoisie got rich by creaming their wealth off the proletariat who did all the work. But in this podcast Prof Steve Keen tells Phil Dobbie that it’s not the capitalists wh...
30 Mar 201718min
