What is the primary challenge facing UK PLC at present? If you thought Brexit, think again. The correct answer, as regular readers will be aware, is the economy's dismal productivity performance. Data released earlier this week showed that output per hour fell in the second quarter, and is now back below its pre-crisis peak. That is an unprecedented postwar decade of near-zero productivity growth. But there is one shining beacon of hope. The Premier League (PL), celebrating its 25th birthday

Economists, and this author is one, regularly score well below average on surveys of public opinion in relation to their trustworthiness – below both lawyers and pollsters in one recent survey in the UK, for example. This is humbling, and causes us to consider how we can do our jobs better. And it reflects, I think, a view of economists that all we care about is money. As the saying goes, we know the price of everything but the value

Here’s a bit of Friday afternoon trivia for you: ATLANTA FALCONS: 2017 SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS #Fakenews news headline from an Atlanta-based news organisation or slogan emblazoned on the T-shirt of an African villager? It’s the African villager, of course. The Atlanta Falcons are not the 2017 NFL Champions – they lost to the New England Patriots 34-28 in the final earlier this year, despite leading that match by 28 points to 3 at one point. One cruel reminder of their

In the film-within-a-film ‘Strike’ (from The Comic Strip Presents…), the UK miners’ strike of 1984 is given the Hollywood treatment, with Al Pacino (or, rather, a brilliant Peter Richardson playing Al Pacino) as Arthur Scargill, and Meryl Streep (played by an equally brilliant Jennifer Saunders) as his wife. Scargill is interpreted as brooding and sentimental, with dark undertones of violence, emphasised by his penchant for endlessly cleaning and loading his revolver. His wife is neurotic and icily distant, and prone

Listening to recent central bank speeches, one can't help but get a sense of summer cheer. Risks to the global economy, which had been skewed to the downside, now appear broadly balanced. The shift in the macroeconomic outlook has been so great that policy normalisation is on the horizon, not just in the US but elsewhere. That's a good thing, right? Judging from the reaction in equity markets, maybe not. If the punchbowl is taken away, what appears on the

June has been a busy month for politics in Europe. Fresh from his victory in May's presidential elections, Emmanuel Macron won a landslide majority in parliament for his La République En Marche! (REM - an interesting acronym for a political party: that's them in the spotlight, winning their election...). On this side of the Channel, Theresa May lost twelve seats, failing to secure a majority for her party. At the time of writing, the Conservative Party is scrambling to reach

In the great 1957 film "Twelve angry men" (from the play of the same name written by Reginald Rose), Henry Fonda stars as the lone hold-out in a jury of   twelve, unpersuaded by the evidence against the defendant in the murder case they are hearing. For the remainder of the film, he gradually cajoles and persuades the other eleven jurors to agree with him and acquit the defendant. The other jurors are keen to get back to their normal lives,