Bonus Culture’ holds back public investment

Financial Times – Letters, 23rd October 2020 Martin Wolf is correct that more investment is essential if we are to get the economy growing again (“The threat of long economic Covid looms”, Opinion, October 21). He claims to have the support of the IMF in...

The Impact of the Bonus Culture on the UK Economy

World Economics • Vol. 21 • No. 3 • July–Sept 2020, 1st October 2020 Key Points • The decline in UK tangible investment since 2000 has led to a sharp decline in labour productivity and the trend growth rate of the UK economy. A similar decline in the US was caused by...

Investment and Unemployment

The future is unknown, but we should not count on being improbably lucky. Covid-19 has increased the need for a large increase in business tangible investment. This was necessary before the pandemic and has because essential to prevent a large rise in unemployment....

Zombies & Creative Destruction

Low interest rates have allowed companies to survive which would otherwise have become bankrupt. This truth has fathered a popular fallacy* which claims that it has a damaging impact on productivity, because these weak survivors, termed zombies, do not invest and as...

A Schumpeterian view of zombie companies

Financial Times – Letters, 29th June 2020 Sir, Your leader (“Reasons to fear the march of the zombie companies”, FT View, June 25) confuses companies with their businesses. You rightly argue that companies, which can cover their variable costs, should not be...