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.

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.

Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is the market value of all goods and services that a country produces in a given year, adjusted - to make it comparable to previous years - for inflation. In many ways, though, it's transcended this rather prosaic definition. It's become the barometer of a country’s progress, an indicator of a land’s prosperity, and the ultimate yardstick for assessing living standards. When growing (at expected rates), politicians refer to it as proof of the success of their policies.

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.

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’.

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..."

This changed in 2018, in America, when the cause was reinvigorated by political upstart and now darling of the left, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Since sensationally winning New York’s 14th congressional district, Cortez has helped drag green policy, and the GND in particular, to the centre of the race for the Democrat Presidential nomination, gaining it international exposure.

In 2018, United States President Donald Trump said his administration was putting more coal miners back into work, having previously rattled on about how important coal jobs were to the future of the US. Perhaps it should be no surprise that his words were empty. The Trump administration has added a negligible  2,000 coal mining jobs since it took control, and whatever bump in coal production 2018 saw was quick to fade away.

In the early hours of the 21st of August 1991, a putsch in the Soviet Union against Mikhail Gorbachev failed, leaving three men dead and the country in a state of shock. The coup had been staged by members of the Soviet government who had taken issue with Gorbachev’s liberalising, democratising reforms, which he had been slowly putting into place over the previous few years. Those who had planned the attack then fled, and were all taken into custody within three days.

Development aid: what is it good for? Well, according to much research the answer may well be absolutely nothing. In fact, it could be worse than nothing. When judged against its founding aim of ‘instigating economic development and alleviating poverty’, its record is so bad it appears that aid might actually hinder the achievement of its own stated goals. And the curious thing is its failure seems to be something of an open secret. Even to an untrained eye the big numbers pertaining to development aid don’t look right. Take Africa, for example.

Brexit may have created a great deal of anxiety and business uncertainty, yet the UK is enjoying a golden period of employment. With more people in jobs and less out of work jobseekers, the UK is experiencing record employment levels not seen for decades. Some of this achievement is down to a job boom in the north of England and in the two biggest Scottish cities.

A wise economist once said of new theories ‘if everybody likes your idea it means you’ve done nothing important’. Provocative? Yes, a little. Its sentiment though, rather than a clarion call for economists to adopt a wilfully antagonistic outlook, is better read as a request for bravery, for the courage to find answers to questions that may upset the status quo. Well, that is at least one possible interpretation…

Rising year on year, seemingly irrespective of company performance, US executive pay is eye-watering. For decades now, its increase - the small blip following the financial crisis aside - has been rapid. As their wallets have bulged, however, CEOs’ standing in the public eye, has fallen precipitously - plotted on a graph the relationship between the two would make a big X. And this is a significant shift.