Environmental issues in general, and climate change in particular, lend themselves to EU rather than national policy: many of the effects (such as acid rain and later pollution) are regional, and climate change is global. To date, the EU has had some nota
While the scientific evidence for climate change grows, the policy responses have so far had little or no impact on the build-up of emissions. Current trends in emissions are adverse. The paper considers why the disconnect between science and policy exist
Recent events have sharpened interest in the question of what happens when key businesses get into difficulty. In the banking sector, governments and regulators have had to make it up as they go along. The lack of preparation for failure has been...
Central to any efficient climate change policy, and to the EU’s approach, is the establishment of a credible, long-term carbon price. The EU has chosen to achieve this via the indirect route of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), rather than by sett
Infrastructure matters in a way that most investments do not: it is complementary to the rest of the economy; and competitiveness depends upon it. This article examines the scale of the infrastructure challenge and the roles of governments and the privat
Whilst regulators have resisted the concept of the split cost of capital, financial markets have been applying its logic with enthusiasm. The recent takeover of Norweb with a reported 45% premium to the regulated capital value (RCV) takes the...
At first glance Britain has one of the best records in Europe on climate change; greenhouse gas emissions fell in the 1990s and it has already surpassed its 2012 Kyoto target. This paper examines whether the claimed superiority of Britain's approach is so
2007 will go down in economic history as a roller-coaster – it’s not often that we see a global credit crunch which requires over half a trillion dollars to stabilise, and a run on a major London bank. The former occurs roughly every quarter of a century,
Recent Publications
The EU has been developing its energy and climate policies since 1990, and over time the c...
The most interesting question to ask about oil prices is: why have they taken so long to f...
Whatever the approximate causes of the particular power cuts in mid-August this year, the ...