TALKING POINT
By the IEA’s Editorial and Research Fellow,
Professor Len Shackleton
Another busy week in lockdown. I wrote a couple of short pieces, one for CapX and one for the IEA blog, both based on the paper which IEA Economics Fellow Julian Jessop and I wrote on Rebooting Britain.
On Wednesday we did a YouTube ‘Definite Article’ video on this. Watching it back, Julian was great. I, however, always cringe at my performance on these things. Without access to hairdressers, I look increasingly like Ben Gunn and must be spooking any small children happening to look in.
Talking of which – my four-year-old is back at school! Initially reluctant, she now seems quite happy, particularly as Best Friend is in the same bubble. It’s still anybody’s guess when the ten-year-old is going back. We’ve had very little contact with the school and the class teacher has done nothing to check that the kids are doing any work.
Higher education – or rather my own university, many others have been pathetic – has done rather better. I’ve just finished online teaching for this term. Buckingham has a four-term year, enabling most students to complete degrees in two years: we’re now in the three-week exam period before our Summer term begins.
The tutorials, via Teams, went well. Better in some ways than face-to-face teaching as the students were more committed. I was able to see who was taking it all in and who wasn’t, and follow up privately with them later. It was also easier to remember all their names – no small issue at my age.
I’ve also been working this week on two IEA-related things. One is the new distance learning MA in Political Economy which Buckingham's Vinson Centre is developing in conjunction with the IEA. You’ll be hearing more about this soon.
The other is a book I am editing on Free Speech. This is such an important issue, with the boundaries of our freedom shrinking daily.
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Rebooting Britain
As Len mentions, this week the IEA and Civitas released Rebooting Britain: How the UK economy can recover from Coronavirus.
The uncertainty created by the Covid-19 crisis has reinvigorated many old debates about the role of the state.
Some argue that it has demonstrated the need for a permanent increase in government intervention and public spending. But, as the paper concludes, the evidence does not support this view. Read the briefing paper in full here.
Len’s op-ed for CapX made the case for deregulation of the labour market to boost employment once the crisis has passed. And IEA Economics Fellow Julian Jessop called on the government to interfere less, not more, to reboot the economy in a City AM article.
And, in case you missed it, IEA Director General Mark Littlewood has outlined what the UK government could do to “stop economic disaster” and create the conditions for a swift recovery from the greatest downturn since the Second World War in an article for the Telegraph. Read in full here.
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Uncharted waters
Some policymakers may think that the billions of pounds currently being spent to tide people over during the current crisis will be enough to keep things in place, and that the economy will simply “snap back” when it is safe for people to return to work.
But Sinclair Davidson, Professor of Institutional Economics at RMIT University, suggests in an IEA blog that “To take that view is to have a very mechanistic understanding of the economy. Unfortunately the economy is not a machine that can be simply switched off and on at will.” Read the article in full here.
How should we finance the additional government spending? What does the future hold for fiscal responsibility? Are we right to say that this is a one-off event and we should throw caution to the wind when it comes to government debt?
Watch our new video with Steve Baker MP, IEA Senior Academic Fellow Professor Philip Booth and IEA Director General Mark Littlewood here.
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The new anomalies?
Does the government have a plan? You can visit a beauty spot, but can't camp there. All primary school pupils were meant to be back this month, but that appears to no longer be feasible. IEA Director General Mark Littlewood examined the anomalies and absurdities of lockdown with a rotating panel of experts on this week's Live with Littlewood.
Michael Carnuccio (Founder, JTK Group) and Terry Kibbe (Chief Executive, Free the People) shared their views from across the Pond. Janet Daley (Telegraph columnist), Alex Deane (Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting) and Dan Hodges (Commentator for the Mail on Sunday) discussed, among other things, the easing of the lockdown and damaging consequences of what Janet has termed a "social experiment".
And Matthew Lesh (Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute), John O’Connell (Chief Executive, TaxPayers’ Alliance) and Robert Colvile (Director of the Centre for Policy Studies) examined the UK's economic bounce back. Catch up on the episode here.
Our next Live with Littlewood will take place at 6.30pm on Thursday 2nd July. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to ensure you don’t miss out.
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In case you missed it
* In a new video, Clark Neily (Vice President for criminal justice at the Cato Institute) and Connor Boyack (President of the Libertas Institute) speak to the IEA’s Alexander Hammond about the Black Lives Matter protests, Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and what the future might hold for the US criminal justice system. Watch here.
* In a new academic webinar, co-authors Dr Christian Sandström and Dr Karl Wennberg discuss their new book, Bureaucrats or Markets in Innovation Policy? They explain how targeted interventions and subsidies to firms do not have the intended effects but instead create policy failures, government waste and rent-seeking. Watch here.
*Our School of Thought webinar – which each week profiles a great liberal thinker – examined the life and work of John Stuart Mill with IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon. Watch here.
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You're invited
*Status quo... Inequality has been one of the dominant economic concerns over the past decade. Claims that increases in wealth benefit only those at the top and have a negligible impact on the lower rungs of the economic ladder are driving the discussion. On Tuesday, 16th June (1pm-2pm), Martin Agerup, President of Danish Think Tank CEPOS, will present a new way of thinking about inequality. Register here.
*On Wednesday, 17th June (1-2pm), Dr Simon Kaye, Senior Policy Researcher at the NLGN think tank, will outline his upcoming report on the Nobel Prize-winning political economist Elinor Ostrom, discussing how her ideas reach across political and ideological borders. Register here.
*And on Thursday, 18th June (1-2pm), IEA Academic and Research Director Professor Syed Kamall will host a webinar with Dr Juan Castañeda, Director of the Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR) and Professor Tim Congdon CBE, Chairman of the IIMR, on their new briefing paper – Inflation: The next threat? Register here.
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