S9 Ep37: Addressing Global Imbalances
Episode recorded on 19 June 2026 at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum in Paris.Twice before, the world's savings and debts have piled up in the wrong places, and twice the imbalance broke something. The first...
3 Juli 24min
S9 Ep36: Helping the over-50s find work
Lose your job at 25 and someone will help you find another. Lose it at 55 and the talk quietly turns to how you might wind down towards retirement.Policymakers tend to assume job search training works...
1 Juli 19min
S9 Ep35: The success of the embedded state
Who kept the courts sitting and the streetlights lit when the state had almost no money to pay anyone?Two hundred years ago, British local government ran on unpaid labour. In a parliamentary survey of...
26 Juni 20min
S9 Ep34: Making defence spending pay
Defence spending is rising whether voters like it or not. The UK has committed to 2.5% of national income and aims for nearer 3.5% over the next decade, £30bn a year for each percentage point. What do...
19 Juni 26min
S9 Ep33: Did the sewing machine liberate women?
In January 1860 the New York Times gave its blessing to a new machine: the sewing machine. These "iron needle-women", it wrote, were the only invention that could be claimed “chiefly for women's benef...
12 Juni 19min
S9 Ep32: The digital money supply
Every day, billions of transactions settle between strangers who have no idea which bank the other uses. That lack of friction is not automatic. Nine-tenths of the money in daily circulation has been ...
5 Juni 27min
S9 Ep31: How well does patent screening work?
Someone once held a patent on the swing. A piece of wood. Two ropes. The US Patent Office granted it. How often does that actually happen, and what does it cost when the system gets it wrong? Or, how ...
29 Maj 32min
S9 Ep30: Redefining the monetary standard
The fiat money system has survived the Great Inflation, the global financial crisis, and a pandemic. But can it survive digital currencies?Bitcoin and the blockchain solved a genuine problem in comput...
22 Maj 26min
