The Institute of Economic Affairs is the UK’s leading free-market think tank. Founded in 1955, our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing ...

“The labour market continues to present a gloomy picture. While not as bad as some have feared, most of the important indicators are negative. Employment and vacancies are slightly down, inactivity ...

Reacting to the Conservative’s pledge to abolish Stamp Duty Land Tax, Tom Clougherty, Executive Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs said: “Abolishing stamp duty is the single best reform any ...

Matthew Elliott is a member of the House of Lords and one of the UK’s foremost public policy thinkers and campaigners. His most recent book, Prosperity Through Growth: Boosting Living Standards in an ...

When this blog was launched over a decade ago, most of my articles were rebuttals of the latest nonsense I had read in the Guardian or the Independent. Those publications are, unfortunately, still ...

The cost-of-living crisis has been worsened by longer-term structural factors, beyond the immediate issues posed by loose monetary policy and supply-side constraints. Indeed, there were discussions ...

Introductory Remarks In recent decades, economics and related policy sciences have taken what might be called a ‘behavioural turn’. Once-dominant theories of rationality and human behaviour have been ...

Between 3 – 8 July 2017, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute jointly held Freedom Week, a series of seminars aimed at students with an interest in classical liberalism, at ...

The UK’s trade patterns with the EU fail to show a Brexit effect, either since the referendum or the end of the transition period. Trade continued to grow between 2016 and the conclusion of the Brexit ...

‘Market failure’ is a term widely used by politicians, journalists and university and A-level economics students and teachers. However, those who use the term often lack any sense of proportion about ...

This article was first published on the Institute of Economic Affairs Substack. Official figures recently published by HMRC indicate a huge rise in illicit tobacco sales in the UK since 2021. The ...

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Booth-BBC-Interactive.pdf In the past, the use of a compulsory levy on television sets (a licence fee) to finance the ...