It has always been part of financial markets, from their origins in 17th-century coffee houses to the Great Crash of 2008

Not as much as Michael Lewis thinks

The Airports Commission model was flawed and risks steering the Prime Minister towards the wrong answer—and if Heathrow is picked, saddling customers with higher costs

Nature is smarter than people

We should challenge claims about the value of the financial sector to Britain

Walter Lippmann: Public Economist by Craufurd D Goodwin (Harvard University Press, £25.95)Read more of our books in briefWalter Lippmann was one of the greatest American journalists,...

If Prospect held a competition for the most improbable conjunction of author and quotation, my entry would pair Goethe with the observation that “the system of book-keeping by double entry is among...

Scotland would prosper from independence if it became more self-confident and resisted complacent self-congratulation

Large scale poverty is the result of political and organisational failures

Market economies are unpredictable and chaotic—and that is why we should value them