Halloween is probably one of the best occasions to demonstrate how seriously you take yourself (or not!) and how far your creativity can go to show it. If you think that Halloween is below your intellectual level, well, they say that even Paul Krugman threw one economics-themed party, where “two guests came as Asian tigers, several came as hedge funds, one woman came as capital, dressed as a column..."

Economics is serious business, but sometimes we all need a break! And that's when the internet is there: to sympathise, to commiserate, and to make us smile at the end of a tough day. Fortunately the stereotype of economists being humourless is not true – there are plenty of fun and funny economists who are out there sharing their humour. From students to senior professors, there are memes on the internet to express all aspects of the study and practice of economics. Below you'll find 10 of our favourite memes that we know all economists will love!

Is economics a useful tool for maintaining peace? Can nations use economic policies to avoid war? With globalization an established fact of modern politics, this question is more important than ever. In this piece, we'll consider arguments both for and against. Browse our PhD program listings for economics

Speaking of current issues under the influence of COVID-19, events on the water, or sea, which is another parallel world with its written and unwritten laws, are somewhat undeservedly forgotten. Looking at the latest data, we need to talk about a very worrying trend over the last year. Although global maritime piracy is not as high as between 2009 and 2012, in 2020 the number of pirate attacks and attempts has increased by 24% compared to 2019.

According to the International Chamber of Shipping, more than 50,000 container ships are currently active in the oceans. These are large vessels that carry cargo in closed containers. The capacity of a container ship is measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), while a vessel with a capacity of more than 20,000 TEU is defined as a very large container ship.

‘Chance dominates the game’ concluded C. Reep and B. Benjamin in their 1968 study ‘Skill and Chance in Association Football’ - and not without consequence. Until recently, this statement stood as received wisdom, the phrase deemed self-evident, its veracity left unquestioned. Predictions based on statistics were a folly they said, the game was ‘too fluid, too unpredictable’.

The European Union (EU) is working very hard to make ship recycling greener and safer in the future. It is quite clear that the dismantling of ships in many parts of South Asia in its current state is not acceptable, either from an environmental or a social point of view. Ship recycling regulations, adopted seven years ago, are finally gathering pace now.

The COVID-19 crisis has hit hard enough and continues to affect the global container shipping market. The current economic situation does not give much hope for a short-term recovery of this market. Demand for container shipments has fallen sharply, especially as China closed much of its plants in February 2020. The volume of production or cargo to be exported to other countries plummeted. The situation was exacerbated by a number of restrictions and requirements in almost every industry and in the world's ports.

As has been recently documented on INOMICS, students across the world face a mental health crisis of unprecedented proportions. Columnist James Matthew Alston investigated the phenomenon, looking particularly at university responses - his conclusions made for tough reading.

In recent years, an epidemic has enveloped university campuses across the world - and it's not the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Compared to any other generation of college students in history, current students experience more mental health issues than ever before.

Four years ago, the world adopted an ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designed ‘to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030’. Despite rising life expectancy and the eradication of many endemic diseases, more than 400 million people in the member states of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) still live in absolute poverty, subsisting on less than US$1.90 per day. It is, perhaps, these countries that face the greatest challenges in fulfilling the SDGs.

Coronavirus has had a broad impact on the global economy. Particularly affected were the tourism, trade and industrial sectors, including the export and import markets. Demand for and consumption of goods decreased, and so did the international freight transport sector. The COVID-19 crisis continues to severely affect the container transport market and the current economic situation gives no hope for short-term recovery.

The internet has given us many things: unlimited information, ever-expanding interconnection, myriad means of procrastination - in some places it’s even helped birth democracy. But as one hand giveth, the other, as is often the case, taketh away. And in the UK, it looks like the gift of online shopping may come at the expense of our high streets - and the thousands of livelihoods they maintain.

Dubbed ‘the great equalizer’ at its outset, COVID-19 has often been described as picking its victims at random. Blind to race, ethnicity, and gender, it sees just a human body, a host that enables it to do what all pathogens are programmed to do: spread. While this, from a biological perspective, may be true, the disease’s sweep of the globe has been anything but equalising. Data from both the US and UK - who along with Brazil compete for the honour of worst pandemic response - show that in terms of cases and deaths, minorities are hugely overrepresented.

Esteemed economist, Stanford Professor, and friend of INOMICS, Matthew O. Jackson, generously took time out of his busy schedule to take part in the third INOMICS Handbook Questionnaire. Opposite him, in his customary role of quizmaster, was Professor Marcel Fratzscher, president of the DIW Berlin, and one of Germany’s leading voices in macroeconomics. Observing tradition, and as a nod to those involved, the encounter has been dubbed ‘Fratzscher v Jackson’.

​Supply-side economics. Since its conception in the 1970s, debating its merits – or lack thereof – has been at the heart of political discourse, demarcating Republican from Democrat, Tory loyalist from Labour devotee, and informing not just an economic outlook, but a world view. 

History, it feels, is quickening pace. Pandemics, both old and new, are rocking the world, shaking its foundations. Systemic racism, an age-old disease, continues to facilitate violence on black bodies and undermine humanity, while a novel coronavirus has killed hundreds of thousands, disproportionately affected people of colour, and compounded the often racial inequalities that characterise our societies. Protestors now fill the streets, and across much of the anglophone world a tipping point has been reached. What will emerge from this moment is hard to say.

15:00 8 June 2020 As some countries begin to loosen their lockdowns to varying degrees of success, many universities are still playing it on the safe side. The University of Surey, for example, has moved its CIMS summer school course online. This will be from the 7th to 12th of September 2020.

Universities around the world are currently experiencing a crash course in online education. The coronavirus pandemic has shaken the sector in a big way, leaving professors and students struggling to complete the academic year off campus and having to prepare for the next one under very uncertain circumstances.

In the midst of the destruction it’s wrought, the lives and livelihoods it’s taken, and freedom it’s limited, COVID-19 has given us one thing that may yet prove positive - the opportunity to reflect. Under lockdown, we’ve been compelled to consider our pre-COVID lives, the aspects we valued, the parts we endured, and how things could be changed. Separation from reality has renewed our perspective. And it’s come at a convenient time, for a choice hangs in the air.

In the collective consciousness, the economist exists as a middle-aged man, bespectacled and clad in a suit, whose unhealthy pallor betrays a hermit-like lifestyle led in the confines of a library. Of course, this image isn’t a particularly fair reflection of the discipline, or its practitioners. Some, for instance, will be aware that in the last few years a number of economists have experimented with contact lenses.

Whether someone believes in higher rates of tax or not can tell you a lot about their political views. As a general rule, conservative politicians - at least since the 80s - have favoured fewer tax brackets and relatively lower rates of tax. The argument goes that this encourages people to work harder because they keep more of their money, which means more money remains in the economy; eventually it will trickle down to those not so rich.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so the old proverb goes. And with coronavirus spreading through countries, deep economic recession clambering at its coattails, the collective need has rarely been higher. In just four months, almost 300,000 lives have been taken worldwide, and lockdown, in its various forms, is threatening untold livelihoods - as of May 9th, 33 million jobs have been lost in the US alone. True to the saying, some invention has been forthcoming as incumbents have scrambled to protect their citizens and economies.

The ascension of the Chinese economy to global preeminence is not without precedent. China was, after all, one of the largest economies in the world from the Song Dynasty (c.900 CE) until the 19th century’s ‘Great Divergence’, when European industrialisation facilitated the long period of Western economic dominance that generations alive today know all too well.

In our current state of isolation, it’s important not to forget about some of the other issues which still beset the human race, not least climate change. Due to the fact that so fewer people are travelling both around the world and domestically each day, the levels of greenhouse gases being emitted are far lower than they have been in recent years. However, the problem is far from solved, and how to balance the economy with climate change policies is a question that still awaits an answer.