Blog

The origins of laissez-faire

Professor Jeremy Jennings blogs on the origins of the term "laissez-faire". My assumption is that the majority of people who read CPS blogs believe in a free market and that they are familiar with the pro-market arguments advanced by writers such as Adam Smith and Friedrich von Hayek. However I wonder ...

Raising the personal allowance

Most media outlets are reporting this morning’s plea from Nick Clegg to raise the personal allowance to £10,000 more quickly. This is good news on four levels. First, as Maurice Saatchi and Peter Warburton argued in ‘Poor People! Stop Paying Tax!’ in 2001, the complex interaction between means-tested benefits and ...

A View of Think-Tanks from America

One of the many ways that the American political scene differs from that of Britain is that the U.S. is home to vastly more think tanks, with larger budgets. The latest report from the University of Pennsylvania finds that the U.S. has 1, 815 think tanks, compared to the U.K.’s ...

Multi-option Referendums: The Cases of Puerto Rico and Newfoundland

With the possibility of an in-out-devo max ballot on Scottish independence being discussed, CPS Research Fellow and expert on referendums Matt Qvortrup looks closer at multi-option referendums. Multi option referendums have often been discussed in relation to referendums on ethnic and national issues. There have been relatively high profile referendums with ...

Congratulations to Nick Clegg on more employee ownership

This morning’s speech by Nick Clegg argued for a more ‘liberal capitalism’, to share the successes and benefits amongst many rather than the few. He rightly highlighted the 1980s as a decade of private shareholders and suggested this decade we should encourage employee share ownership. He further argued that employee ...

Heritage: UK Economic Freedom falls, but ranking improves

The 2012 Heritage Index of Economic Freedom is released today, and the UK finds itself up two places from 16th to 14th (despite a lower overall freedom score than last year). The Index, which weights measures of government spending, regulatory efficiency, property rights, freedom from corruption and openness of markets, ...

Who should a British conservative support in the race for a Republican Presidential nomination?

Yesterday saw the end of campaigning in Iowa ahead of the caucuses there today. The race for the Republican nomination has taken some extraordinary twists so far with the candidates seemingly taking it in turns to top the opinion polls for a while, only to spectacularly fall away. But whilst ...