Issue 17 – March 2021

Issue Theme Articles

Good God

Would new gods help combat corruption and improve democracy? Paul Frijters believes so. As the covid-19 pandemic has progressed, a growing number of governments have shifted to ruling by decree.

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Normally corrupt

Riccardo D’Emidio explores why social norms and informality matter in considerations of corruption. Growing up in a British-Italian household I was regularly surprised by how differently people behaved in the

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The unhappy face of corruption

Luca Andriani and Gaygysyz Ashyrov explain how life satisfaction is not a gold-plated toilet brush. Laura Kovesi was chief prosecutor of the Romanian Anti-Corruption Directorate between 2006 and 2018. She

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Other Articles

Out of our heads

Lindsey Hall tells of the ideas behind Real Ideas. Since we founded Real Ideas fourteen years ago, we have worked with all kinds of ideas – big concepts, quirky thoughts,

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Sovereign states on a leash

Foreign investment: Rick Rowden recounts the tale of who’s wagging the dog.   When Mexico adopted a tax on high-fructose corn syrup as part of an effort to address the

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The pathology of economics

Covid-19 exposes the deadly dominance of neoclassical economics in Africa. Howard Stein. On 24 February 2021 Ghana received a vaccine shipment (600,000 doses), the first to sub-Saharan Africa under the

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Deforestation: the route away

Without robust due diligence, financial institutions will continue to fund soy-driven deforestation. By Daniel Jones. Late last year, the UK government announced “world-leading new measures” to protect rainforests. Enshrined in

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Power: don’t mention it

Do economists speak their mind or mind what they speak? Blair Fix interprets. Economists of all nationalities, when speaking about their area of expertise, have their own words and ways

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Interviews

The coarse in economics

Tom Bergin is an award-winning, financial journalist of long standing. He tends to specialise in the seamier side of corporate behaviour, his previous book being on the BP Horizon disaster.

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From Russia with luck

A tale of corruption and corridors. The Mint hears how Alena Ledeneva looks for favours. During the final days of the Soviet Union in 1990, a young sociology student in

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The growing realisation

Tim Jackson has just published a new book, Post Growth – Life After Capitalism, examining our disastrous obsession with growth in a finite world and how we might escape it. 

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Columns

What is corruption?

After all, it’s hard to bite the hand that feeds you. As a teenager, I recall my father informing me that to make real money you need to be close

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Double parked

Two cars yet nowhere to go. But how did she get where she is? Lockdown has certainly left everyone frazzled.  I have been trying to get on with writing my

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Biden: his time

The US is lusty and demanding for the future. But can it keep it up? The good news is that Biden, so far, is not your typical machine Democrat who

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