Antitrust policy refers to government intervention in markets dominated by monopolies and abuse of monopoly power. In the UK, antitrust policy is better known as simply competition policy, with the OFT and Competition and Markets authority investigating mergers and abuse of monopoly power. In the US, antitrust become important in the late nineteenth century, when …
Johann Hari wrote a piece on ‘The biggest lie in UK Politics’ Let’s start with a fact that should be on billboards across the land. As a proportion of GDP, Britain’s national debt has been higher than it is now for 200 of the past 250 years. Read that sentence again. Check it on any …
Do speed cameras help reduce accidents and make our roads safer? Or do speed cameras merely raise revenue whilst failing to reduce fatalities? If exceeding the speed limit increases the risk of fatal and serious accidents should we not seek to enforce speed limits? Which is more important the freedom to drive (and speed) or …
Profit satisficing is a situation where there is a separation of ownership and control. As a result, the owners are likely to have different objectives to the managers and workers. In short, owners wish to maximise profits, but workers and managers may not. It is an example of the principal-agent problem. The shareholder is the principal. …
The resource curse is the observation that countries endowed with a rich source of natural resources can struggle to make effective use of these and often end up with low levels of economic development than countries with low levels of natural resources. There are various reasons put forward to explain this resource curse, such as …
The UK government has given the Bank of England an inflation target of CPI 2 % +/-1. The Bank of England is responsible for using monetary policy (e.g. interest rates) to achieve this goal of low inflation. But, as well as targeting inflation, the Bank of England also has a wider remit of considering objectives …
A regressive tax is a tax which takes a higher percentage of tax revenue from those on low incomes. As income increases, the proportion of your income paid in tax falls. Suppose there is a poll tax of £3,000 (paid regardless of income) In this case, the person earning £10,000 is paying 30% of their …
This privatization was left to the last for a number of reasons Loss-making nature of British Rail Heavy dependence on external subsidies for rural and provincial services The need to see safety as an overriding priority Positive externalities of railways, – taking traffic off congested roads BR was an integrated national network with a complex …