Imagine a contest where 1,024 contestants each flip a coin ten times – anyone who flips tails is eliminated. After ten rounds there would be one contestant remaining, who landed on head ten times. Nobody would call him a genius: he could be simply lucky. But put them in a tailored suit, hand them a Wall Street Journal and a Bloomberg terminal, and the market … Continue reading The Economics of Luck
In 1776, Adam Smith took his readers inside a pin factory. One worker on his own, he wrote, could barely make a single pin a day. But ten workers, splitting the job into eighteen separate steps, could make tens of thousands. This idea, from the opening chapter of The Wealth of Nations, became the starting point of modern economics. Specialisation, markets and prosperity all grew out … Continue reading From Smith to Silicon: How AI is Challenging Every Economic Theory We Were Ever Taught
In November 1956, British paratroopers dropped into Port Said to take back the Suez Canal. Within days, Britain had agreed to a ceasefire and was on its way out, humiliated. It wasn’t the Egyptian army that forced the retreat, and it wasn’t the Soviets. It was America, Britain’s closest ally, and the weapon it pointed at London wasn’t a missile. It was a pile of … Continue reading The Spy Who Lent Me: How Countries Use Each Other’s Debt as a Weapon
When you think about cryptocurrencies, what comes to your mind? To some it may be their widespread, uncontrollable volatility; the looming threat of an economic crash at any time; or a decentralized, secure, globally accessible currency independent of any person’s local government, to others it could act as a second chance for their own government’s mistakes, a lifeline you could say to the lesser fortunate. … Continue reading The Real – Time Economic “Gridlock” of Regulating Crypto
Picture poker and you probably see a player staring down an opponent at a final table. Behind every hand, though, sits a much bigger economic system. Economic impact is a measure of the total value an industry adds to the economy. It counts the money the industry spends directly on wages, venues and equipment, the money that flows on to its suppliers and partners, and … Continue reading The Economics of Poker
