Showing 1 - 10 of 54
Institutional redesign in order for economic change
News, Diane Coyle, Published on 30/12/2025
» The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded both this year and last year to scholars who, in different ways, emphasised the importance of institutions to economic growth.
Gates' 'truth' about climate change
Oped, Peter Singer, Published on 14/11/2025
» Ahead of this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), now underway in Belém, Brazil, Bill Gates, who chairs and funds the foundation that bears his name, released an essay entitled "Three tough truths about climate". The first of these truths is: "Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilisation."
Measuring the economic impact of AI
Oped, Diane Coyle, Published on 24/10/2025
» Is AI transforming the economy in any real sense, or is the promise of rapid growth mere hype?
A paradigm shift for animal tests
Oped, Peter Singer & Sankalpa Ghose, Published on 17/10/2025
» Even in an era of intense political polarisation, there are still moments when a bipartisan consensus can emerge around important ethical issues. One such moment is happening now. Last April, the United States Food and Drug Administration released its "Roadmap to Reducing Animal Testing in Preclinical Safety Studies". The FDA said that it was taking "a groundbreaking step" that would advance public health and limit wasteful expenditure by replacing animal testing with "more effective, human-relevant methods".
President Trump is losing his geo-economic war
News, Harold James, Published on 16/10/2025
» In an age of shifting geopolitics, many countries' strategic planning includes imaginative exercises in weaponising their positions in the world. While Russia and China have been moderately successful at this game, America's efforts have already boomeranged back on it.
Terminal volunteers can save lives
News, Peter Singer & Benjamin L Sievers, Published on 13/09/2025
» At the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), a programme called Last Gift offers terminally ill patients the opportunity to help create more effective treatments. Their special circumstances transform the usual risk-benefit calculus of joining a clinical study of an untested drug. Researchers can ask them to consider consenting to being research participants in ways that they would not ask healthier people with long life expectancies, and terminally ill patients may choose to give that consent when others would be less likely to do so.
The incalculable costs of corrupt statistics
Oped, Diane Coyle, Published on 29/08/2025
» With GDP and employment figures dominating political debates, it is easy to forget that they are hardly timeless truths. In fact, how we measure progress has shifted dramatically over time. The Physiocrats -- eighteenth-century French economists who saw agriculture as the source of all wealth -- regarded farms' output as the most important economic indicator. The Soviet Union, for its part, focused exclusively on goods production and ignored services altogether.
Trump is trying to build a far-right international
Oped, Jan-Werner Mueller, Published on 30/07/2025
» Until recently, the spectre of an international far-right alliance of populist parties in democracies around the world has been just that: any appearance of cooperation was a form of self-promotion, rather than an expression of true solidarity. Few far-right figures have made any sacrifices for one another or seriously interfered in other countries' internal affairs to prop up allies. And efforts to unite the far right in the European Parliament have fallen dismally short.
Building infrastructure for the AI age
Oped, Diane Coyle, Published on 22/07/2025
» The London Underground, the world's oldest subway system, opened in 1863. Around the same time, London's modern sewage system was designed by civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette in response to the Great Stink of 1858, which brought parliament to a standstill. Planning far ahead, Bazalgette built the system to last 150 years. Only now, with the Thames Tideway project, is it being significantly expanded.
The climate challenge as a development opportunity
Oped, Navroz K Dubash, Published on 06/06/2025
» When climate change is framed as a global problem requiring collective regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions, developing-country governments see little reason to prioritise the issue over others. After all, the rich, industrialised countries who contributed disproportionately to the problem are themselves backing away from decarbonisation and climate-finance commitments, while low-income countries bear the brunt of the costs of climate change. Decision-makers in developing countries understandably conclude it may be more rational to hunker down and focus on climate resilience rather than emissions reductions.