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.

12:00 5 May 2020 The UK government has refused to bail out universities which are suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic. Institutions will however be able to charge full tuition fees for the duration of lockdown, and £2.6 billion in tuition fees will be paid early. The government has also imposed a cap on the number of students which can enrol next academic year, and £100 million has been allocated in research funding.

As COVID-19 has spread globally, access to the outside world has shrunk, made increasingly off-limits by government lock-down, observable now only through glass. Our digital lives have expanded to fill the void, evenings previously spent with friends now passed plugged into laptops, obsessing over the latest figures, bailouts and newly-imposed restrictions - time blurs. Amid the chorus of leaders justifying ever more draconian measures, one thing has been hard to miss: the invocations of war.

As the world is ravaged by COVID-19, governments everywhere are enjoying burgeoning support. A glance at approval ratings finds presidents, prime ministers, even autocrats, overwhelmingly popular, in some instances irrespective of their actual performance. Of course, this is unsurprising: there’s long been a history of populations coalescing around established leaders in times of crisis. Amid uncertainty, we find their increased visibility reassuring. Speaking to the nation they look competent and confident; we feel inclined to trust them, and more often than not, we do.

The emergence of Joe Biden as the unassailable front-runner in the Democratic Primary belies a contest that at various turns broke new ground. From its unprecedented field, larger and more representative than ever (save the brief participation of two billionaires), to the remarkable resuscitation of one moribund campaign, the departure from custom was clear. Nowhere was this more obvious than in policy, where the inclusion of senators, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, dragged the conversation leftwards into distinctly uncharted territory.

As the spread of the coronavirus continues across the world, many questions remain unanswered, not least what is going to happen to those thousands of students whose universities have also been affected by the pandemic. Schools, offices, museums, restaurants and bars are being closed across the world, and curfews are in place in particularly affected countries. Similarly, universities have begun shutting up shop, not willing to risk large swathes of students being affected by the virus.

The continued existence of fossil fuel subsidies in a time of their almost universal condemnation reveals something about the governments that rule us, something pernicious, but also something all-too-predictable. Like no other area, they expose a gulf between rhetoric and action, a disconnect so stark that, if the risks it posed were less catastrophic, would almost be comical. Back in reality, though, the cognitive dissonance, cynicism, or whatever its cause, serves only to warm our planet and threaten all life. 

Here at INOMICS, we’ve always been dedicated to trying to help you, the economist (fledgling or otherwise) get the most out of your education and career. Whether that be offering you the best new courses and conferences, nudging you towards the perfect university degree, or helping you apply to jobs once you’re done studying, we’re there to give advice and present opportunities you may not have otherwise found.

Supply-side economics. Squabbling over its merits – or lack thereof – has underpinned much modern political discourse; belief in, or rejection of, its principles helping demarcate Republican from Democrat, Tory supporter from Labour devotee, etc. Over the course of its life it's operated under a number of guises; its tenets followed to varying degrees; and ever since its conception in the 1970s, it's remained one of politics’ most volatile fault lines.

The current moment is one defined by crisis. It can be found everywhere: in the climate, economy, mental health, even in democracy. It’s so ubiquitous as to have almost become the new norm. Amid the chaos, politics has struggled to keep up, its landscape is in permanent shift, its rulebook long thrown away. New formations have emerged, metastasized, sometimes died, and occasionally taken over - developments often surprising and hard to make sense of. What’s clear, though, is that polarisation has set in.

The jostling between market and state, and the territory that each occupies, lies at the heart of political discourse. It's the major fault line around which political parties form and debates rage. Despite their uneasy relationship, between them they generally make available all that we need, be it food, a home, healthcare, employment, or education, at varying - and often questionable - quality and cost. The demarcation between the two, rarely ever static, differs widely across states, and speaks to the values of the society in question.

The US economy is improving, so we are told. With the financial crash receding into the distance, almost out of sight, things are looking up, the future is finally brightening. Unemployment reached a 50-year low in 2019, falling to 3.5%, while US employers have added almost 5 million jobs in just two years. These are ‘the best economic numbers our country has ever experienced’, the President declared at Davos, with characteristic humility.

As has been recently been documented on INOMICS, students across the world are facing a mental health crisis of unprecedented proportions. We had columnist James Matthew Alston investigate the phenomenon, looking particularly at university responses, and it's fair to say his conclusions made for tough reading.

Dating in academia is riddled with potholes, the most immediate of which is do not stray far from your academic discipline. Curious indeed considering that the academic world is meant to be populated by an abundance of young and energetic minds from a variety of different cultures, races and ethnicities, all of whom are hungry for new information and experiences. One would think that such an environment would provide the perfect dating terrain, right? Wrong!

The holidays are coming up soon, with Christmas just around the corner. If you want to avoid last-minute panicked present-buying, you had better get to planning the gifts you'll be giving. And what if you have an economist in your life? What would be the perfect gift for them? We're here to help your Christmas gift woes with some fun suggestions for the 10 best gift ideas for an economist. Happy holidays!

Esther Duflo is something of a rarity in her field, and not just for being the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, or the second only female winner. Her pioneering research also sets her apart. Eschewing the grand theory model favoured by her contemporaries, Duflo has carved out her own academic path, pursuing a rigorous analysis of - in her own words - ‘the pieces that comprise the whole’.

Inequality is rampant, we hardly need telling. Rarely does the print media pass up an opportunity to remind us. We stand inundated by an endless stream of statistics – on scales barely fathomable – each one more depressing than the last. For instance, it’s widely known that: ‘8% of humanity takes home 50% of global income’; that ‘the top 1% own 45% of the world’s wealth’; and how could we forget that ‘the 26 richest people on earth had the same net worth as the poorest half’.

Kapitalismus oder Sozialismus? Francis Fukuyamas Ausrufung der liberalen Demokratie zur höchsten Entwicklungsform eines Staatsgebildes hat sich bislang noch nicht eindeutig bestätigt. Die uralte Frage "Kapitalismus oder Sozialismus?" hat wieder an Bedeutung gewonnen. In einem auf der ganzen Welt erkennbaren Muster stehen Politiker vor einer Wahl - eine ungewöhnliche Sache in der modernen Politik -, die man grob so beschreiben kann: Willst du mehr Kapitalismus oder möchtest du ein wenig Sozialismus ausprobieren? Das klingt einfach, aber die Frage ist in der Tat vielschichtig.

Capitalism or socialism? With Francis Fukuyama’s proclamations of history ending looking increasingly premature, this age-old question has found renewed salience. In a pattern seen across the world, people are being faced with a distinct choice - an unusual thing in modern politics - which can crudely be reduced to: do you want more capitalism or would you like to try a bit of socialism? Simple sounding it may be, but the question is, in fact, a tough one. One must actually grasp what is meant by each term.

It's important to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest updates in your field. Otherwise your knowledge could be out of date and your research won't be be topically informed. The finance journals listed here are some of the best in the English-speaking world, offering the latest insights into finance, economics, accounting and business. If you're studying or working in the field of finance, here's our list of the top finance journals you should be reading.

Economists, so the story goes, had successfully grasped the essence of human behaviour: rational, and, therefore, highly predictable. With this discovery, an age-old question whose answer for millennia had eluded humanity was finally laid to rest. Where philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists had failed, economists had struck gold. They had cracked it. As a result, imperfect theories - as economic theories inherently are - started to be treated as laws of nature, like facts, and confidence among economists erred towards hubris.

Since its inception in the 1970s, microfinance has become the darling of development organisations the world over - the idea with the potential to save the planet’s poor. Pioneered by Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, it provides the financially marginalized with banking services that, given their impoverishment, would otherwise be out of reach.

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..."