The cost of war
A potential military conflict in Ukraine will come with costs for all those, directly and indirectly, affected by a war situation. To examine the costs involved in a war, it is interesting to examine...
The price of Champagne
Like so many goods in this inflationary period, there has been a significant increase in the price of luxury items over the last 12 months. An example of this is Champagne which has increased in price...
US inflation
The US rate of inflation reached 7 per cent on Thursday 13 January – the highest it has been for 40 years. From a low of 1.4 per cent in January 2021 the US inflation rate has increased each month this...
Apple: the first business to be valued at $3 trillion
On January 4 2022 Apply became the first business in the world to be worth $3 trillion. If Apple were a country its value would put it just behind Germany which is the world’s fourth-biggest economy....
Economic well-being
In his book, An Economist’s Lessons on Happiness: Farewell Dismal Science! (2021) Professor Richard Easterlin explains how personal happiness can be measured along with ways of improving people’s happiness...
Retail Economics
The last week of November is one of the most significant periods in the year for retail spending. Black Friday (the Friday following the Thanksgiving holiday) is a calendar date that is synonymous with...
Turkish lira crashes to ‘insane’ historic low
Turkey’s lira crashed to a record low of 13.44 to the dollar on Tuesday, a level once unfathomable and well past what was just last week deemed the “psychological” barrier of 11 to the dollar. “Insane...
The growing number of billionaires
Could Elon Musk become the world’s first trillionaire? It is very difficult to keep track of the wealth of the world’s richest people, but the planet’s wealthiest entrepreneurs seem to be getting richer...
The Economics of Cop26
The weight of expectation hangs heavily on world leaders as they meet for the global climate summit in Glasgow this week. Reaching an agreement that limits global warming to 1.5 degrees is a challenging...
Applying game theory
The American economist John Nash is a central figure in the application of Game Theory in Economics. In 1994 he won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his PhD thesis which set out the definition and properties...