Articles
Davos, 2030
The Mint despatches Guy Dauncey to Switzerland, a decade into the future, to report on the global summit. It was pouring when we arrived in Davos. The local news channels
Hidden in plain sight
Alan Freeman interprets the art of deft manipulation of fact used in painting an unrealistically assuring, yet remarkably convincing picture of international inequality. In his 1997 book, The Demon-Haunted World:
All is revealed
Alessandra Mezzadri explains how productivity barely covers anything in fast fashion prices. In April this year, the UK multi-channel retail brand Missguided advertised the sale of a £1 bikini. It
Workers byte back
Cross-border brands feel the heat from digitally organised labour. Grazia Ietto-Gillies explains In 2014 the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declared that in some 43 labour disputes filed since
What is the China Shock?
China’s authoritarianism is steadily consuming the previously democratic Hong Kong trading hub. It has become fashionable to talk about the China shock – the disruption to the international trading system
Here We Go
Incheon towards the future: the city hosted 3,000 people for the 6th Wellbeing Forum. There is an international group of government officials labouring to make life better for people. Wellbeing
Schools out
Martin Parker looks at lessons learnt from the lessons taught in business schools. In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, there were plenty of people willing to write op-ed pieces
Think of a number
Peter Manley questions the single number basis for claims that absolute poverty is on the wane. On 19 January, 2019 Bill Gates retweeted an infographic from Our World in Data —
Paul Krugman’s incredible invisibility trick
It’s impossible to avoid misjudgements in life or to get all one’s predictions right. But should economists get caught out quite so often. Nicholas Gruen looks at Paul Krugman’s recent
Work: a situation vacant
Job’s worth: being cost effective in producing and consuming ever more things. We need a new defining idea for political economy, writes Richard Douglas. During Cheltenham Gold Cup week I
Lost and Unfounded
The global trading system is broken says Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia. It is, he says, a politically, socially and economically unsustainable system designed for the 20th century and based on theories
Don’t bring the house down
Real estate is a load bearing part of the UK economy. Alexander Tziamalis warns how cracks are appearing. London real estate is in a downward spiral, for the first time
Independence for Andalusia
Can British farmers learn from their counterparts in southern Spain to spit out Brussels’ poisoned sweets? Joe Zammit-Lucia and Astrid Vargas write. The high plains of Andalusia in southern Spain
Brexit: the good, the bad and the ugly
Economists and others gathered to compare notes on Brexit. Deborah Hawkes was there. Before the election, The Mint invited members of the public to join three economists to discuss Brexit,
The Case for Policy Space
Crowded out: corporate giants are cramping developing nations’ sovereign styles. Rick Rowden looks at the impact of corporate moves to homogenise global trading and investment agreements and how developing countries
Land reform and dispossession in Africa
How handing out titles to the poor can make the rich richer. By Howard Stein, Ann Arbor, Faustin Maganga, Rie Odgaard and Kelly Askew. There was a time when
The most remarkable rejection of free trade you’ve never heard of
Africans are insisting on actual economic development which is leaving European trade negotiators exasperated. Rick Rowden explains why their stand is historic and right. In one of the most under-reported
Interviews
Interview: Wolfram Elsner – Chinese walls are invisible – Transcript
The Mint: Good evening, Wolfram, and thank you very much for joining us and speaking to The Mint this evening. Wolfram Elsner: Good evening, Henry. The Mint: I’d love to
Interview: Wolfram Elsner – Chinese walls are invisible
German economist and erstwhile policy adviser, Wolfram Elsner, has just published a book, The Chinese Century after researching and teaching in China for almost a decade. When he started out, he
Interview: Steve Keen – Why not?
Steve Keen is currently viewing the world from Thailand, which is remarkably now almost virus free. He arrived there with his Thai partner on one of the last flights in
Interview: Steve Keen – Why not? – Transcript
The Mint: Hi, Steve. Great to see you again. And thanks for giving us your time. I wanted to start first with you describing your experience in the moment of
Bots and bell ringing
Richard Baldwin is a leading international expert and author on globalisation. In his most recent book, he writes about the coming age of “globotics”, an even more intense globalisation plus
A hole in the heart
Grazia Ietto-Gillies has spent her career as an economist seeking to fill a crucial gap: the exclusion of transnational corporations into economic thinking. And this gap is not a small
Unorthodox Greek
Yanis Varoufakis is a heavyweight academic economist with a rare combination of style and substance. He talks to The Mint. Economics professor, Yanis Varoufakis, describes himself as a “failed finance minister
She who dares
A globally influential thinker, Gabriela Ramos, explains why a group of leading economies is challenging globalisation and other conventional wisdom. More than 30 of the world’s wealthiest countries with market
News
Columns
The bull in China’s shop
In this issue we are exploring the world of international organisations, values and globalisation. This is at a time when Trump is challenging all the norms, but maybe the norms
Whiners and losers
Soft cheese, hard Brexit and the joys of talking trade theory. Like most people, I am wearied with this whole Brexit thing. It got particularly bad when Thomas became obsessively
The revolution will not be linearly extrapolated.
Tomorrow is always more radical than we can realise today. Just ask Lenin. Any truly sustainable path is radically unconventional – politically, socially, economically, financially and environmentally. Relentless entropy seeks
On surviving and thriving post EU divorce
Divorce is rarely anything other than a painful, protracted and costly process for at least one side. So here we are, weeks from starting divorce proceedings with the EU and
Books
The Ironic State
From the publisher: What can comedy tell us about the politics of a nation? In this book, James Brassett builds on his prize-winning research to demonstrate how British comedy can
Nothing left to lose
Researchers have charted the US phenomenon where, as globalisation spreads injustice, the despondent reach for the gun. Review by John Komlos It is a commonplace that the demographic development of
Event Recordings
Shut Down the Business School
Business schools are institutions which, a decade after the financial crash, continue to act as loudspeakers for neoliberal capitalism with all its injustices and planetary consequences. Little seems to
Backlash: Saving Globalisation from itself
Globalisation. Source of prosperity for billions? Or a driver of increasing inequality, poor labour conditions, unceasing environmental damage, and cultural fracture? Or both? The debate on what people gain and
Post Brexit, What should our approach to trade be?
As the UK launches into negotiating free trade deals with anyone who will have us and Joe Stiglitz tells not to ‘waste our time’ negotiating with Trump, what should our