Paul Krugman: Nobel Prize or Academy Award?

When economic theory is a tower of babel.

By Nicholas Gruen I recently criticised contemporary economics in a speech launching Max Corden’s memoirs. Economic theory threatens to become a Tower of Babel, preoccupied with the world within its models and irrelevant to policy. This has […]

Read the Article...

Building the Public Goods of the Twenty-First Century

Digital public goods in the age of the data revolution

By Nicholas Gruen History plays tricks on us. Just as we think we’ve got things figured, everything changes. My favourite example is Malthus’s ‘principle of population’ which explained why most people were mired in poverty despite improving technology. […]

Read the Article...

We’re All Free Riders. Get over It!

Public goods of the twenty-first century

By Nicholas Gruen The free rider problem Anathematized and stigmatized today, free-riders built the lion’s share of the prosperity we enjoy today. Does that mean we should ‘share’ or ‘pirate’ more copyrighted things on the […]

Read the Article...