Wednesday 8th September

The Mate Market

Every online dating candidate is visible, in unsparing detail, to every other. The chances of finding the right person now look very high, and the risks of making a mistake vanishingly low. Where once we might have met some hundreds of potential partners during our life, now we can meet millions. Satisfaction guaranteed?
Friday 3rd September

Knotty independence: who guards the BBC

The Director General of the BBC was photographed coming out of Downing Street with notes about how the national broadcaster will cover the government's unpopular spending cuts. To understand the BBC's reaction, you need to think of it as a business
Tuesday 31st August

World Bank crisis-lending contravenes Eurodad responsible lending principles

Despite commitments by the World Bank to significantly reduce conditions attached to its loans, research from Eurodad reveals that a massive 57 conditions were attached to three loans given to Ghana in 2009. 12 out of the 57 conditions were stipulated in a side document, and not made explicit in loan agreements themselves, contravening responsible financing principles.

These economic policy conditions restrict the right of Ghana - a country with good democratic credentials - to decide for itself how to recover from the global crisis and boost sustainable investment. The reforms that the World Bank imposes may hinder not help Ghana's development and democratic institutions.

Wednesday 25th August

Chirac's Saudi scandal

Inflated commissions from arms sales to Saudi Arabia probably made their way into personal and party coffers. If the allegations are proved, the USA has some power – including pursuing parties through its courts – to punish
Monday 23rd August

How billionaires can help the world

The Giving Pledge promoted by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett is a huge commitment of funds by the super-rich to philanthropic ends. At its core is a view that business, however conducted, is just a means to an end, the source of money to be distributed to good causes by wealthy elites. Business leaders would do well to apply their zeal and skills to reforming the objectives and operations of their vast engines of wealth.
Thursday 19th August

CDC Group: a Case Study in Blinkered Development

CDC has made a long journey from supporting rural development in British colonial territories to pursuing high returns, often channelled through tax havens. The author argues that CDC has lost sight of wider development goals and needs to reset its ethical and investment standards.
Friday 13th August

Sovereign debt work-out: reform needed

Excessive national debt in low-income countries, sometimes incurred by dubious means and parties, is a major hindrance to development and a burden to creditor country citizens. An international mechanism is needed to offer countries a way to negotiate balanced resolutions with their creditors.
Sunday 8th August

The playthings of humanity

Fulfilment does not come from self-government in Toy Story 3. Can Pixar ever let the Toys go free? See Related Articles for Jeremy O'Grady's reply
Tuesday 3rd August

The financial sector needs a civil society watchdog

Non-profits have suffered in the financial crisis no less than their counterparts in the private and public sectors. But could this be a 'Greenpeace moment': might philanthropic foundations support the creation of a civil society conscience for international finance?
Wednesday 21st July

Has Quantitative Easing worked?

Brief post - also out of the Cable talk - on efficacy of QE

Barbed-wire City and Financially Transmitted Diseases

Vince Cable explains that the City is a bit like the oil company compounds in Gabon - surrounded by barbed wire, paying a levy to government, but otherwise distant from the host country
Monday 12th July

Pension reform and growth. Cui bono?

The UK government's decision to re-base pensions won't work, and even if it does, will be counter-productive. It's evidence of the inability of governments to think beyond the corporate view of economics and consider the economy as a whole.
Wednesday 7th July

Productivity does not explain wage differentials

The co-option of “fairness” by the UK's new government has unnerved many on the left. Yet in reality, all sides have always drawn on the language of fairness. What is at stake is really the interpretation of the causes of inequality; a matter of economics. This article suggests how we should interpret the inequalities of modern society from a post-Keynesian perspective
Friday 2nd July

Book Review: India's New Capitalists: Caste, Business and Industry in a Modern Nation

Historical and cultural detail provides a rich understanding of India's powerful new business houses
Tuesday 29th June

It's up to You - the economics of openDemocracy

Yes, great, independent content costs and if the readers don't pay for it who will? Why you should want openDemocracy to be supported by voluntary reader donations and give if you can
Saturday 26th June

Toward a new Alexandria

The guardians of learning can no longer allow the Library to be surrounded with barbed-wire fences. It is time for the academe to liberate scholarship
Friday 25th June

A Defining Budget IV: The betrayal of the liberal tradition

After a brief resurgence of Keynesian economics in response to the crash, neoliberalism is back in the ascendant. For the Liberal Democrat party in the UK this signals the abandonment of a proud liberal tradition.
Wednesday 23rd June

Democratic access to academic knowledge

Technology should have improved access to knowledge much further than it has, and nowhere more so than in the academe. Here is a simple and low-cost proposal to democratise learning in the UK

Optimism, pessimism and rationality

In a review essay of Matt Ridley's "The rational optimist" and Mark Boyle's "The moneyless man", scavenger and squatter Katharine Hibbert sympathises with alternative living but also wants clear thinking
Tuesday 22nd June

A Defining Budget II: It is simply incredible to call this “fair”

The UK's Coalition has delivered its first and potentially defining budget under the banner of fairness. How do its figures stack up? An insider from Brown's policy team responds.
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