Welcome to the IEA Weekend Newsletter

• Lessons we can learn
• Milkshake shake-up
• What’s rotten in the state of Denmark?
• Best of the Blog  
• You’re Invited!

Lessons we can learn

The Institute of Economic Affairs has a long history of investigating the issue of school choice, and the role of government in education. This week it released another academic staple in this debate, School Choice Around the World, and the Lessons We Can Learn.

The collection of essays, edited by Pauline Dixon and Steve Humble, examines evidence from countries around the world, including the UK, USA, Sweden, Estonia, Liberia, and India, where a variety of education reforms have been implemented to give parents more choice over their children’s education. 

While the policy prescriptions laid out in the essays vary, much of the analysis falls in favour of increased educational choice, catering for the expressed needs of the poorest parents. 

To download School Choice Around the World, and the Lessons We Can Learn, click here. 

Toby Young, Associate Editor at the Spectator and author of the first essay in the book - English Education Reform: Past, Present, and Future - penned a comment piece for the Spectator on his findings, noting that Scotland and Wales have much to learn from England’s education reforms.

Click here to read Toby’s article in full. 

And on the IEA blog this week, an edited version of James Tooley’s foreword for the book was published, contrasting the top-down government approach to education, against a bottom-up market approach. 

Click here to read. 

Scrapping Sin Taxes?

This week, Boris Johnson MP sent the Nanny State debate into overdrive when he took a stand against ‘sin taxes’, remarking that a recently proposed milkshake tax would “clobber those who can least afford it”.

Our Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon responded to Johnson’s comments, arguing that “the priority should be slashing the taxes which hit the poor hardest and punish people for their lifestyles.”. 

He added that this reevaluation should not stop at unhealthy foods, but “should also look at cutting Britain’s extortionate taxes on alcohol and tobacco” and that “It’s about time politicians started standing up to the killjoys”. 

Chris’s remarks were featured on Sky News, and he also spoke to talkRADIO and LBC about Johnson’s remarks.

Chris also wrote for the Daily Telegraph, explaining the punitive nature of sin taxes, and how they disproportionately affect low and middle income Britons. 

Meanwhile, our Associate Director Kate Andrews commended Johnson’s remarks in her City AM column, noting that a shake-up of this government’s nannying mentality is long overdue. Perhaps the shake-up, she said, starts with Johnson’s defence of the milkshake. 

Earlier in the week, our Director General Mark Littlewood used his Times Business column to warn that the expansion of the state and increasing prohibition of lifestyle choices could symbolise the gradual fading of western liberalism. Read his full piece here. 

The truth about Denmark's "Socialism"

On our podcast this week, we were joined by Danish economist and current president of the think tank CEPOS, Martin Ågerup.  In conversation with our Director General Mark Littlewood, Martin discusses the apparent contradiction between Denmark’s big government and prosperity, and delves into Danish perspectives on the EU and Brexit. 

Listen to this week's podcast here.

If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to our podcast channel, IEA conversations, here.

Best of the Blog 

Following the April 2017 implementation of compulsory gender pay gap reporting for all employers with over 250 employees, recent proposals have advocated extending this policy to include publishing company-specific ethnic pay gap statistics.  

On our blog this week, IEA Editorial and Research Fellow Len Shackleton discusses the perils of these potential proposals if implemented, arguing ethnic pay monitoring will lead to misleading comparisons and possibly damaging unintended consequences. 

He writes that “the temptation may then be for businesses with large concentrations of low-paid minority workers to replace them by investment in automation, or else to outsource this work to smaller businesses, to improve their pay gap figure.” and “It is not apparent that either of these strategies will benefit these disadvantaged workers.”.  

Read more here.

You're Invited...

In Conversation with Dr Stephen Davies 

On Thursday 11th July from 6.30pm – 8.30pm, we will be hosting a drinks reception and a private In Conversation event with Dr Stephen Davies, Head of Education at the IEA and recent author of “The Wealth Explosion: The Nature and Origins of Modernity”, here at the IEA. 



Glynn Brailsford, IEA Managing Director, will be chairing the conversation with Dr Stephen Davies, discussing his latest book.

How did the modern dynamist economy of wealth and opportunity come about? Steve provides a new answer to the question of why and how things changed, whilst considering the question of what kind of world it is that we now live in - and whether it can and will continue.

We very much hope that you will be able to join us for this special event, and please RSVP to [email protected] if you would like to attend.

On the money...

IEA Fellow Professor Pedro Schwartz will be delivering a series of lectures on monetary theory at the University of Buckingham in July and August, in partnership with the Institute of International Monetary Research.



The lectures will cover the institution and ‘Quantity Theory’ of money on the 16th and 17th of July, and money in an open economy and central banking on the 31st of July and 1st of August.

These lectures will be free to attend and promise to be highly interesting for specialists and non-specialists alike, and will place monetary theory and developments in the context of historical thought and events.

For more information, and to confirm your attendance, click here.