Tag Archives: Economics & Ideology

On Wednesday 29 November 2017, PRIME's director, Ann Pettifor, gave evidence at the Committee's invitation to the UK Parliament's Treasury Select Committee, together with Professor Jagjit Chadha, Director, National Institute of Economic and Social Research and Paul Johnson, Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies. A verbatim report of the discussion can be found on the Select Committee's website here. Below we publish PRIME's written evidence to the Treasury Select Committee....

To understand why neoliberalism is in crisis, it helps to begin at the beginning with Adam Smith. He was the grandfather of market economics, but a more complex thinker than modern day neoliberals like to remember. They hail the ‘invisible hand’ – the idea that self-interest and unmanaged markets work best – and recall his...

What has the horror at Grenfell Tower to do with economists? And what have the lives lost at Grenfell Tower to do with the government’s budget deficit?  A great deal, I will argue here. When on Twitter a few days ago I raised the issue of the shared responsibility that economists have for this ghastly tragedy, I was attacked....

A sound national economy is NOT a matter of bean-counting!  Image with thanks to pearlsofprofundity The Way It WasSince 2010 the ideology of balanced budgets has dominated economic policy debate in Britain, from the micro (public institutions such as NHS trusts) through to the macro (George Osborne’s...

The “gold standard” for analysis of the economic policies of political parties was set by The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), established by Jan Tinbergen, Nobel prize winner and, more substantial, member of the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II.  For decades before each election the CPB would assess the manifestos of all parties (see analytical review of the CPB).  Using its highly-respected and publicly available statistical model, CPB...