On Global Markets

There are plenty of reasons why Japanese policymakers might favor a stronger yen. With Japan increasingly reliant on both imported food and imported energy, anything which increases the nation’s international purchasing power can be seen as positive. But the supposed benefits of a stronger currency run beyond that obvious implication. It helps to support household […] 

Looking back from 1919, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote of the pre-Great War world as a high point of what would now be termed globalization. As he set out in the Economic Consequences of the Peace: “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of […] 

Private equity investing, as the name rather helpfully suggests, involves buying (and later selling) equity in firms that are not listed on the public markets. Under that, rather broad umbrella, a whole variety of different investing strategies can be found. Varying from venture capital (the provision of early-stage investments to often quickly growing companies) to […] 

Economics is an unusual discipline. Most fields of study are just that, a study of a specific field. Economics though is, in its broadest sense, almost a way of thinking, a common approach to methodology rather than a set subject matter. This can come as a surprise to non-economists. Often, possibly all too often, telling […] 

This week three Republican senators called upon President Biden to formally block a take-over of U.S. Steel by the Japanese firm, Nippon Steel.  As senators Vance, Hawley, and Rubio noted in their letter, whilst President Biden has made clear his opposition to such a take-over in the past he has yet to formally intervene. By […] 

There are two veins that tend to run through the tone of European economic commentary when the continent’s residents – or at least those in Western half – compare themselves to the United States. Broadly put these can be classified as either hand-wringing pessimism or rather smug complacency. The pessimistic case is based on the […] 

Evidence based policymaking is something which, in public at least, most public servants now aspire to. Think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic have taken to using the term over the last two decades to describe policymaking which is rooted in evidence, data, and research rather than driven by ideological reasoning. As one might […] 

It is, as the saying goes, difficult to make predictions; especially about the future. That may have always been the case but the issue was especially acute in the spring and summer of 2020. The covid pandemic and the associated lock-down and stay-at-home orders designed to constrain the growth of the virus forced widespread changes […] 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hot new thing. Any firm which can plausibly claim any exposure to the rapidly developing technology has seen the price of its equity soar over the past year as investors seek to cash in. The most booster-ish proponents of AI see it as a game changer for economic growth, ushering […] 

Short-selling has a long history and so too do government bans on actively betting on asset prices falling. Indeed short-selling, and government interventions to prevent it, are just about as old as the very concept of joint-stock companies. The Dutch East India Company, or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), was established in 1602 by an amalgamation […]