In A Theory of Justice, the American philosopher John Rawls proposed a “veil of ignorance” to help assess the morality of policy choices. The reason? Individuals are biased by self-interest, so their favoured politics risk being unjust. If people had to devise a social contract under a veil of ignorance, without knowing anything about who they would be or what talents they would have, then their choices would be fairer. For example, slavery would find it more difficult to get

In Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lord Darlington declares that a cynic is “someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” As far as some of my friends are concerned, this epithet might apply equally well to an economist. Clearly, these individuals have not met Erik Brynjolfsson, Felix Eggers and Avinash Gannamaneni. This trio of economists has spent a considerable amount of time — and money — trying to measure the value of something that has

As anyone that has delved into the murky world of purchasing tickets for events online will be aware, the experience is nothing short of a minefield. Am I paying a fair price? Is the website genuine? Is it authorised to sell tickets to this event? Will I get refused entry at the venue? Will my ticket arrive on time? All these unknowns could make you question whether it’s worth going at all, but try telling that to die-hard supporters of

Some years ago, when I was single, I met a girl in a bar. We exchanged numbers and agreed to go on a date. In one of our pre-date text conversations, I told her that I hated emojis. She told me that she loved emojis. There was an awkward pause. We never went on the date. Scroll forward several years and things have changed: not only am I now in a happy, stable relationship, but I have slowly, and reluctantly,

“Tell me what your greatest strength is.” Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I always find this an easier interview question to answer than when I’m asked to name my biggest weakness. That’s the paradox of choice for you! While taking a sideways look at economics over a few beers with colleagues recently, I suggested it might be insightful to compare an individual’s assessment of their own professional forté with that attributed to them by their colleagues. The idea wasn’t

As I was swiping decisively through my best friend’s online dating account last Saturday, it struck me that in many respects the online dating market isn’t dissimilar to markets others of us are more familiar with, such as the online shopping market. Indeed, both are booming, with the reasons below being valid for rejecting either a date or a pair of jeans: 1) Too big 2) Too small 3) Not as pictured 4) Doesn't suit me 5) Damaged Another commonality

There are many things that I’ve long admired about British culture. As a young Italian teenager landing on these shores, I vividly remember being blown away (almost literally) by the music scene, not to mention realising that Benny Hill, a popular British export, might not have been the pinnacle of comedic genius. Political satire and debating were the most eye-opening discoveries of all, as I was mesmerised by programmes like ‘The Day Today’ or ‘The 11 O’clock Show’ and ‘Prime

The ‘infinite monkey theorem’ postulates that, given an infinite amount of time, a lowly monkey will eventually be able to reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare merely by jumping around on a keyboard. Used in this context, the monkey is effectively a metaphor for a machine capable of generating a random sequence of letters and characters. It’s what we might refer to today as a random number generator. This metaphor, sometimes credited to French mathematician Emile Borel writing in 1913,

In the film Mary Poppins, our heroine has a tape measure in her enormously capacious bag, which she uses to measure her charges, the children of the Banks family. She employs it in the usual way but instead of reporting their height it reports their character. The scene culminates with the children measuring her and finding her “practically perfect in every way”. However, for the rest of us, a tape measure wouldn’t be a sensible way to measure someone’s character.

Groucho Marx once stated indignantly, in a beautiful paraphrasing of Russell’s Paradox,[1] that: “I wouldn’t be a member of any club that would have me as a member.” It’s important not to confuse Groucho Marx with Karl Marx, the double centenary of whose birth is this year. They share little in common apart from the name and unconvincing facial hair. But there’s a nice application of Russell’s Paradox to what remains of Karl’s legacy. Marxism is bunk. The doctrine of