Estimated to be spending £100m over its targeted budget, UKTI is not delivering enough exports to justify its costs. This report argues that UKTI is representative of some of the worst inefficiencies of the bloated quango state.
After No: A practical blueprint for the UK outside the EU
Smoking, plain packaging, and public health
Julian Morris reviews the evidence around plain packaging for cigarettes from Australia, the only country to have tried the policy so far. It finds that plain packaging has not had a noticeable impact on smoking rates, but has led to a significant rise in counterfeits, which are more easily available for underage smokers.
Who Pays Corporation Tax
Ben Southwood reviews the evidence around the incidence of the corporation tax, finding that more than half appears to come out of workers’ wages, with the remainder coming as an economically harmful capital tax.
School Vouchers for England
How school vouchers can harness choice and competition to bring greater quality and equality in education. A joint publication of the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Market Reform in Education.
The Trading Dead
The zombie firms plaguing Britain's economy, and what to do about them.
Free Thoughts: Collected Columns of Jamie Whyte
Jamie Whyte is a management consultant and former lecturer in philosophy at the University of Cambridge. This collection of his best columns for newspapers including The Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times captures his entertaining, thought-provoking style. Whyte is primarily concerned with the relationship between the state and individuals: invariably arguing that politicians should back off and leave us to make decisions for ourselves.
Cash in the Attic
Nigel Hawkins identifies £40bn of assets that the state could sell off to cut taxes or pay down the debt, including government-owned real estate, parts of state-owned companies like National Rail, and utilities that the government should not be running in the first place.
Burning down the house: Why Help to Buy will ruin Britain's housing market
Why Help to Buy will stoke a housing bubble by boosting demand without doing anything for supply, and risk taxpayer money in the process.
What Hayek would do: How Austrian economists would fix the crisis
Robert CB Miller gives a modern Austrian explanation of the crisis, and argues that tightening the 'loose joint' of bank credit expansion is the key to preventing a repeat in the future. Based on the work of FA Hayek and other Austrian school economists, he says that the recession is a necessary part of the recovery process, as bad investments are liquidated and new profit routes discovered, but government draws out this process by regulating markets and restricting trade.