Nuclear has a role to play in providing reliable carbon-free electricity, but in the US and Europe it is likely to be too expensive to have more than a small role. * As I have written two books about nuclear … Continued
Climate change involves systemic risk, so it’s not possible to insure against, or diversify away the risk. * Over the years I have sometimes heard investors talk of insuring their portfolios against climate change risks. A group of students once … Continued
A country with several thousand years of distinctive cultural history is governed through European ideology * It is often said that China is one of the world’s oldest civilisations, tracing a history back to around 2,200BCE. Of course there were … Continued
The shift of US attitudes on China owes as much to American disappointments as it does to changes in China’s behaviour * After the revolution that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in 1949, a shocked US foreign policy … Continued
Recent news of increasingly lethal clashes on the long and disputed border between India and China raises a question, how have the two most populous nations on Earth previously mostly kept the peace? * “Good fences make good neighbours” Robert … Continued
I was asked a question by a student today and I thought I would share my answer in this blog. The question: “You rightly call the global financial crisis of ’08 the North American crisis – in attribution, correctly, to … Continued
Demography, the study of population, is one of the few areas of the social sciences where long term predictions (over one or more decades) can have some value. This is because the dynamics of population growth depend on the current … Continued
A lot of people in the richer economies appear doubtful that economic globalisation has been good for them. But there are hundreds of millions in the rest of the world for whom globalisation has been a critical part of their … Continued
I think the world may be fragmenting into increasingly separate economic and cultural regions, one dominated by China, another led but not dominated by the US, with other nations watching and wondering how best to position themselves. This reminds me … Continued
P2P (peer-to-peer) lending is the biggest and most developed form of alternative finance. But does it have any enduring value to add in the financial system? * P2P lending platforms have sprung up in many countries since the global financial crisis, … Continued
The high and rising level of Chinese corporate and local government debt has been a concern for several years. Recent data from the People’s Bank of China suggests the true figure may be much higher than we thought, but things … Continued
The first part of my new MFin elective Understanding the World Economy and Financial System next term will explore the question, why are some countries richer than others? * One of the most important, interesting but hotly contested questions in economics … Continued
Former IMF Chief Economist Eswar Prasad’s excellent book Gaining Currency – The Rise of The Renminbi starts with a fascinating chapter on China’s monetary history, the longest by far of any country. The book is ultimately a persuasive answer to the … Continued
It’s generally agreed that we face an unusually uncertain outlook this year: elections in France and Germany, the path for the UK’s leaving of the European Union and above all, how will President Trump act? Underneath the political fog there … Continued
Single cause explanations of events such as Brexit or the Trump victory are too simple. But there is an important and worrying economic background fact to both, which is that the Anglo-US style of western capitalism seems to have stopped … Continued