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The myth of Santa Claus has been translated into an extraordinary market on a global scale. But how did this marketing success materialise? How did Finland become the home of Christmas?
This lecture explores how regulators try to prevent what will hopefully be the ‘last’ bubble and suggests that the most effective regulatory frameworks were developed during the normal operation of markets, not in response to crises.
Torture was officially outlawed in France in the 1780s and in Europe during the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it has returned as an instrument of state policy.
In this final lecture we will consider whether we can plot a more successful future than our recent history might suggest and what that implies for our economic and political institutions.
The experience of inter-mediation in the UK does not encourage the thought that long term finance can easily be located. Do we need a Development Bank?
Housing represents the main asset class held by UK households and we shall try to understand why it is held as such a large share of assets. We shall then outline whether this choice has other knock on effects in the economy such as labour and social mobility.
We will carefully outline the categories of savings held by households and link that to the operation of financial intermediaries in providing loanable funds.
Productivity growth in the UK economy has lagged behind that of our major trading partners. We will examine a number of possible explanations ranging from the role of finance to the employment of physical and human capital.
The European Court of Human Rights has been at the crossroads of two legal civilizations: the Continental Civil Law on the one hand and the British Common Law on the other. Here we have two different approaches to reality.