Various adjustments to Britain’s tax and benefit system have created sharp spikes in marginal tax rates. Some families take home less than 40p of each extra pound they earn, blunting incentives to…

The Brunel Centre and Futures West session on their latest policy paper

The UK’s referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) was followed by an increase in race and religious hate crime of 15-25% in England and Wales. Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence wh...

Economists and experts from around the world debate the key economic questions of our time.

From the Enlightenment to today’s ‘tradwives’, three books look at the tension between production and reproduction

The Prime Minister is facing a crisis of contempt among his own MPs

This week’s IGM European Economic Experts Panel statements: Selecting candidates for membership of the ECB Executive Board based primarily on nationality ahead of competence is likely to have a negati...

Takatoshi Ito, who passed away in September 2025, was a leading scholar of macroeconomics and international finance. This column, written by a group of friends and colleagues, outlines his many contributions in a lifetime of research, teaching, and policymaking in Japan, the US, and around the world. His work is particularly notable for challenging the widespread perception that standard economic analysis is somehow ill-suited for understanding the Japanese economy. Indeed, using the discipline’s rigorous tools, he illuminated challenges that Japan faced earlier and more acutely than other countries – including population decline and ageing, ballooning government debt, the zero lower bound and unconventional monetary policies, real estate bubbles and their collapse, and the banking sector’s problem of non-performing loans.

From the Enlightenment to today’s ‘tradwives’, three books look at the tension between production and reproduction

Andrew Kelly

Lord Taverne made three crucial contributions to the IFS that formed the foundations from which it has grown.

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth”. Mokyr…

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth”. Mokyr was cited by the Nobel committee “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress”. This column, written by two of his students and now fellow scholars, outlines how his work has reshaped our understanding of virtually every fact and theory associated with industrialisation – from the mechanics of machine design and production processes to the intellectual and political forces that changed entire societies. One core message of this extensive body of research is particularly timely: economic progress is critically dependent on open intellectual inquiry, on the free exchange of ideas, and on a vigorous defence of scientific principles.

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth”. Mokyr was cited by the Nobel committee “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress”. This column, written by two of his students and now fellow scholars, outlines how his work has reshaped our understanding of virtually every fact and theory associated with industrialisation – from the mechanics of machine design and production processes to the intellectual and political forces that changed entire societies. One core message of this extensive body of research is particularly timely: economic progress is critically dependent on open intellectual inquiry, on the free exchange of ideas, and on a vigorous defence of scientific principles.

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt have been jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Joel Mokyr ‘for having explained innovation-driven economic growth’. Aghion and Howitt were cited by the Nobel committee ‘for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction’. As this column explains, their work transformed creative destruction from an evocative metaphor into a rigorous analytical framework. The Nobel recognition honours research that has fundamentally reshaped how economists understand the engines of prosperity and technological progress.

For two decades, the UK economy has seen weak growth, driven by low business investment, inadequate market dynamism and persistent policy instability. These failures shape the daily reality of…