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In a prior academic life, I taught public choice – the economic analysis of political decision-making. During the week of lessons on the economics of bureaucracy, the students went through the consequences of the bureaus holding an information advantage over their ministerial masters. Read more

Journalism and opinion are supposed to be clearly separated, but that difference is shrinking – and perhaps disappearing. Objective reporting is like utopia, it cannot really exist. Read more

Depending on your own experience with dating apps, you might be surprised to learn that success in the online dating market is not distributed equally. So, this Valentine’s Day, spare a thought for those struggling to find love among the insidious and “unjust” inequality on apps like Tinder or Bumble. Read more

I’m not convinced there’s anything wrong with a tie. Why are we always trying to break them? Read more

“Yes, we are all individuals,” the crowd unanimously shouted in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Which made a mockery of professed individuality. Read more

The cogs of government and regulation can grind slowly. And, sometimes, that can be for the best. Read more

Back in 1968, economist Friedrich Hayek wrote that competition is a discovery procedure. Some information about the world simply would not exist without the process of market competition that discovers it. Read more

Over the past few months, you could not drive through any of our big cities without seeing some strange advertising messages. They were strange because, in our world of doom and gloom, they were spreading good news. Read more