India's Economic Reforms 1991-2001 By Vijay Joshi and I. M. D. Little 282pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press £25 The decade of the 1980s was a historical watershed. The twentieth century has been dominated by collectivism - the planning and control of economic life by governments. In the 1980s, collectivism collapsed, both as a project and as … Continue reading Book Review: The road of excess leads to wisdom
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Book Review: Whatever happened to the New Industrial State?
The Good Society By John Kenneth Galbraith Sinclair-Stevenson. £12.99 It is hard to be critical of someone who writes as wittily and pithily as John Kenneth Galbraith. But any temptation to undue leniency on this score should be resisted. An economist's track record is more important than his style, and Galbraith's is not good. Twenty … Continue reading Book Review: Whatever happened to the New Industrial State?
Diary: Russian Lessons
Thursday 27 June I am in St Petersburg both as a tourist and as a British observer of the second round of the Russian presidential elections. The excuse for tourism is that the House of Lords Bridge Club has been invited to play a match against the South African consulate. I fly to St Petersburg … Continue reading Diary: Russian Lessons
Book Review: After serfdom
Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty By Andrew Gamble Oxford: Polity. £45 Friedrich von Hayek's career is a story of death and resurrection. He was born in Vienna in 1899 and died in Freiburg in 1992, the most famous survivor of the once famous Austrian school of economics. For much of his life he fought … Continue reading Book Review: After serfdom
Obituary: Professor Nicholas Wahl
The death of Nicholas Wahl at the early age of 66 is a grievous loss to his many friends and to the study of French politics. Nick Wahl was one of the small band of outstanding American scholars of post-war France. His knowledge of French culture and politics was encyclopaedic; he cultivated everyone in France … Continue reading Obituary: Professor Nicholas Wahl
Book Review: The sage who was reluctant to publish
A Soaring Eagle, Alfred Marshall, 1842 - 1924 by Peter Groenewegen Cheltenham: Elgar. £59.95 This is the first full-length biography of Alfred Marshall, founder of the Cambridge School of Economics, and the dominant force in British economics from the death of Mill to the rise of Keynes. Hitherto we have had to make do with … Continue reading Book Review: The sage who was reluctant to publish
Opinion: Brussels cannot know best
Jacques Delors, stepping down as President of the European Commission at the end of this month, seemed to be fashioning his political epitaph in a newspaper article before Christmas. "Thatcher defeated, says Delors", the headline ran. The Commissi on President was reported as saying that socialism had defeated her brand of "ultra-liberal economics". The claim … Continue reading Opinion: Brussels cannot know best
Essay: Welfare without the state
There is widespread agreement that the welfare state needs to be drastically reformed, certainly slimmed down. Designed in the 1940s to protect weakened capitalist economies against the assault of revolutionary socialism, it is now under assault itself. Governments all over Europe are busy chipping away at entitlements and benefits built up since the war. Yet … Continue reading Essay: Welfare without the state
Book Review: Economics as part of the human condition
Review of Capitalism with a Human Face by Samuel Brittan Published by Edward Elgar, £49.95 This collection of essays by the UK's leading financial journalist ranges widely, from studies in utilitarian ethics to technical macroeconomics. Samuel Brittan is as much at home with John Rawls as he is with Milton Friedman. He brings to them … Continue reading Book Review: Economics as part of the human condition
Book Review – Churchill: The End of Glory; A Political Biography
FOLLOWING its publication in England in February, John Charmley's biography of Winston Churchill comes to the United States on a gale of argument which is sure to continue. What he has done is to challenge two of the most sacred postwar Anglo-American myths: that the war against Hitler was justified, and that Churchill was a … Continue reading Book Review – Churchill: The End of Glory; A Political Biography
Robert Skidelsky 