Steven Rose

 When building an economic model, economists describe consumers using a utility function – that is, a function which takes as its input the bundle of goods that are being consumed and outputs a value called the utility, which can be roughly thought of as the subjective benefit the consumer experiences as a result of consuming that bundle of goods. A common utility function used in trade and other macroeconomic models is the CES (constant elasticity of substitution) function. A key feature of this function is that it implies that given fixed prices for all goods, the demand of a consumer is some fixed proportion of their income. That is, if their income doubles, they buy double the amount of every good. While this is mathematically useful for building a model of aggregate demand (the sum of demand of all consumers) and can produce accurate macroeconomic models, it sits badly with microeconomic empirical evidence. Engel’s law – which is more accurately an observation rather than a ...

The 2019 Labour conference was largely overshadowed by the Supreme Court ruling on the illegality of the lengthy prorogation of Parliament. The event found itself dramatically impacted, and the audience found themselves observing a shortened version of Corbyn’s speech, which (presumably) omitted a number of key policy announcements, such as the uncomplicatedly positive move to scrap universal credit. In the end the speech contained only one new policy announcement. This was Labour’s new policy regarding the production of pharmaceuticals, which they have detailed in the accompanying document titled Medicines For the Many: Public Health Before Profit.  By and large, the document and policy seem well intentioned - while the driving factor of NHS woes is simply underfunding, it behoves us to consider other systemic features of the economy that work against an effective British health system. Overall, the positives of the document outweigh the negatives. Many proposals on how to w...

Ben Houchen - Tees Valley mayor - and his cabinet have secured £20 million grant for the purpose of increasing the capacity of Middlesbrough Train station. This is a worthwhile investment, and comes with the ambition of a direct line to London. Connectivity is key to increasing productivity and improving our economy, both locally and nationally, and improving the lives of the population, and it's a pleasant change of pace to see the North secure infrastructure investment. However it is unclear how much this investment will benefit the people of Middlesbrough, and indeed how a direct line to London could improve lives. If this infrastructure was available to the wider public then there would be no question, but rail transport is by no means available to the wider public. The cost of rail travel is prohibitive - one only has to look at the cost to get from Middlesbrough to Manchester to grimace at the potential cost of a train from Middlesbrough to London - and it's becomi...