In an increasing number of marketplaces, such as Airbnb and Uber, customers rate their service provider, and get rated in return. Potential downsides from this evolution were explored in a Black Mirror episode that described a future where personal ratings determined everything from which neighbourhood you lived in to the type of car you could rent. But this trend needn’t be scary. In theory, it should lead to efficiencies. Many transactions take place with asymmetries of information. Does this hotel

A friend recently emailed me a link to a golf trolley advertised online. A golf trolley with a difference: in addition to the standard slot for the clubs and scorecard was space reserved for a baby! Apparently, the availability of this single product is key to my mate’s new-found willingness to become a ‘stay-at-home dad’. “Yet another example of new gadgets driving able-bodied folk out of the workforce”, I replied. On a more serious note, since the crisis we’ve seen

It recently struck me that occasionally we use this blog to grind an axe on some particular topic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and I’ve done it myself: Shoreditch-based hairdressers; the drink-making habits of my colleagues; footballers in China. But today I thought it was time to make a positive argument about something, for a change. So, I’ve decided to praise Donald Trump. Now, I realise that this choice may raise a few eyebrows. To be clear, I’m not

Tribes form and then ossify over time, but they aren’t stable forever. There are two forces in play: the tendency for individuals to associate with and feel loyalty towards one tribe; and the tendency to desire something different. Desire, according to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, is the desire of the Other.1 The tension between those two forces, loyalty and betrayal, is the dynamic source of evolution in human society, explored in ancient literature like the Iliad through to Romeo and

What's the most wonderful time of the year? Christmas? Quite possibly. But, ask a football fan and they may well tell you that it's right now. As March rolls into April and arctic chills are replaced by glowing sunshine (or so we hope), the football season also begins to heat up, with the fixture list soon dominated by season-defining clashes. And I'm not talking about that fancy continental competition with a somewhat ironic title.[1] Rather I'm referring to what those

I've been looking forward to my first TFiF. As a former Fathom client and now employee, I've always found this blog refreshing and a window into the writer's soul. An economist's soul. Some might say a dark place full of uncomfortable, narcissistic and unnecessarily complicated truths. Those people wouldn't be wrong and, will hopefully, be thoroughly pleased by what's in store. In anticipation of my blog debut, I've been busy filling out my very own hit list of topics to

In a two-part BBC documentary aired last year, a classroom of seven-year-olds were asked who, out of the boys and girls, would perform best at the funfair game, Strongman. The aim of the game was to slam the mallet down, hitting the base hard enough to send the puck sky-high and the bell ringing. All the children recognised that this was a strength-based game, with the girls picking the boys and the boys picking themselves as the most likely winners.

The board game Monopoly® was originally invented by Elizabeth Magie, under the name “The Landlord’s Game”, as a means of demonstrating the evils of rentier capitalism. Originally, there were two sets of rules — essentially, socialism (where the rewards for development were shared by all) and capitalism (where the rewards accrue to the monopolist, who crushes all opponents) — the purpose being to show the moral superiority of the first set. Naturally, because the world is like that, the first

Who remembers the game Whac-A-Mole? Well, for those who don't, Whac-A-Mole is an amusement arcade game in which players use a mallet to hit toy moles, which appear at random, back into their holes. As one pops up, you try to hit it, but as you do, another one springs up somewhere else. You're probably wondering where I'm going with this, but actually this analogy works pretty well to describe the rise of populism and populist parties across the developed

It has long been recognised that some members of the animal kingdom are able to vary the fertility of their species depending on climatic temperature (if you're interested, look up 'temperature dependent sex determination'). This effect is typically thought to be evident only in reptiles and fish, but according to research published last month by Kasey Buckles, Daniel Hungerman and Steven Lugauer, it may be that humans have achieved something remarkably similar¹. Picked up by Monday's edition of the Financial