Research & Ideas
Analysis
Matching Theory - why unemployment levels remain high even when job offers are plenty
Written by Gavin Chait
"According to a classical view of the market, buyers and sellers find one another immediately, without cost, and have perfect information about the prices of all goods and services... But this is not what happens in the real world," reads a statement about the work of Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides, who have won the 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Read more: Matching Theory - why unemployment levels remain high even when job offers are plentyMandatory disclosure of CEO salary ratios to typical employees will drive down wages
Written by Gavin Chait
Capitalism, for what it's worth, is not naturally competitive.
It's like a knife in the hand of a chef, or a lathe worked by an artisan. It can create beautiful things. It can cut off your arm. It depends on your concentration and skill.
Read more: Mandatory disclosure of CEO salary ratios to typical employees will drive down wagesIncompetent governments nationalise successful businesses to cover up their mistakes
Written by Gavin Chait
"I think it's absolutely ridiculous. I'm almost ashamed being here talking about it," said Dr Ben Goldacre, speaking on the BBC in answer to claims that Facebook causes cancer. Dr Goldacre is the writer of Bad Science, a column that challenges bad ideas about scientific research.
I know how he feels, for here we are once more debating state-led proposals to nationalise profitable industries in the name of the "people".
Read more: Incompetent governments nationalise successful businesses to cover up their mistakesWill achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals create economic self-sufficiency?
Written by Gavin Chait
A neat trick - if you're a bored electrical engineering student - is to rig up an oscilloscope as a rough-'n-ready electrocardiography device. Then you can while away time at afternoon practicals watching your heart beat and concentrating on lowering or raising your pulse rate.
What you can measure and visualise you can influence.
Read more: Will achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals create economic self-sufficiency?Helium will run out because the world's biggest capitalist doesn't believe in free trade
Written by Gavin Chait
Professor Robert Richardson shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics for his 1972 discovery of the property of superfluidity in helium-3 atoms. And he is a worried man.
"There is no chemical means to make helium. The supplies we have on Earth come from radioactive alpha decay in rocks. Right now it's not commercially viable to recover helium from the air... But if we do run out altogether, we will have to recover helium from the air and it will cost 10,000 times what it does today," he says in New Scientist.
Read more: Helium will run out because the world's biggest capitalist doesn't believe in free tradePage 4 of 54
