Fathom is about to embark on another major consultancy project. This isn’t a brag — or not mainly. It’s a note about what — I’ve come to realise over the years — consultancy really is, at least the way we do it. [1] The project involves gathering and cleaning tons of data, reading piles of learned papers, defining the question as tightly as possible in the light of all that (the question being rather loosely defined at present), designing an

This week’s TFiF goes gingerly down the rabbit hole of market pricing, using implied expectations about UK Bank Rate as an example. What do investors base their forecasts on, and are they any good at it? You might think that they should devote all of their efforts to a careful consideration of the various bits of publicly available information that ought to influence the MPC’s decision. Well, they probably spend a bit of time thinking about that. But in truth,

During a particularly hard interval session[1] with my athletics club, by the time we got to the later repetitions I felt as if I were struggling up London’s version of Mount Everest. (In reality it was just a slight incline.) Due to my incessant moaning about how much I HATED hills, the club coach gave me some advice. As I was testing it out and trying to distract myself from the burning in my quads, it got me thinking about

'Best of’ lists and summaries of the past year… Twitter is full of them. Instagram is full of them. Even the news is full of them. To keep up with the trend, it’s only fair that the first TFiF of 2020 is a look back at of some the best blog posts written by Fathomites in 2019. Let’s start with social media. In ‘Social media, and fear of failing to ‘keep up with the Joneses’’, Joanna Davies talked about how

Elevating my chair and peering around Fathom HQ, I am greeted by a display of the latest audio headwear, far more extensive than the range available in my local John Lewis department store. Two thoughts spring to mind. First, I should have asked my colleagues’ advice prior to buying my new noise-cancelling headphones. (Toby’s must be good, or perhaps it’s the guttural screams and blast beats of the black metal he chooses to listen to that divert his attention away

Today sees two consequential events. One, the Conservative Party has won the general election with a landslide majority, making it more or less inevitable that the UK leaves the EU, as planned, on 31 January. And second, it’s Fathom’s Christmas party. While many believe the former will lead to a prolonged (economic) hangover, the headache caused by the latter will hopefully be limited to Saturday morning. But we don’t only indulge in delicious food and wine, we also have a

Next week, millions of UK voters will head back to the polls and cast their ballots in a general election. To those interested in politics, elections provide weeks of head-to-head debates, battle buses and the opportunity to dissect party manifestos. To others ― such as Brenda from Bristol ― the response is far less enthusiastic. While a third general election in a little over four years may seem a tad excessive, and cause many to sympathise with Brenda, turnout is

Readers like myself who have a healthy dose of cynicism about the holiday season will be relieved that today’s blog doesn’t revolve around Christmas (yet). Instead, I’ll be embracing my North American heritage and exploring Thanksgiving and the ensuing phenomenon of Black Friday. Thanksgiving, which in the US falls on the fourth Thursday of November, is a secular holiday celebrated by families gathering for a long weekend and enjoying an indulgent meal of roast turkey together. It’s quite a wholesome

Young people in Europe and the US are showing signs of turning against the generation born after World War II . This move can be seen in the meme ‘OK boomer’, which has become a popular online retort to those who are on the wrong side of 50, or who don’t know what a meme is. It’s typically used to dismiss what are perceived to be outdated views on issues such as climate and gender. And while this intergenerational strife

We’ve all done it. Endured the chaotic cesspool that is the Tube, inevitably encountering that person who refuses to move down the aisle when the train is busy, leaves their backpack on, and blocks the doors when you finally decide you can’t take listening to their awful taste in music anymore. So, are we thinking rationally when we opt to use the Tube? Rationality is one of the key assumptions underlying neoclassical economic theory. The theory contends that economic agents