Please find the 2015/16 Adam Smith Institute annual review available to view here.
No Stress II: the flaws in the Bank of England’s stress testing programme
“No Stress II: the flaws in the Bank of England’s stress testing programme”, challenges the stress tests carried out by the Bank of England to assess the financial resilience of UK banks, and refutes their claim that major UK banks could withstand another big shock.
The report's release comes as Europe faces a renewed banking crisis. There is already a major crisis in Italy and mounting concerns about Deutsche Bank, the biggest bank in Europe and recently described by the International Monetary Fund as the most systemically dangerous bank in the world.
Read the paper online here.
The Case for the (Interim) EEA Option
Joining the European Economic Area (EEA) is one option for the UK outside the EU. There are pros and cons to this version of Leave, on which people will have different views. What is undoubtedly true is that, whatever its pros or cons, it is a version of Leave. It is an alternative to the EU. It is not a version of Remaining within the EU. EEA members like Norway are not members of the EU.
Read the whole paper here.
Rebooting Britain: Making the most of Brexit
The referendum decision to leave the EU has proved a real chance for Britain to renew itself, to regain its confidence in itself, and to take decisions that have been put off for too long. There are many features of modern Britain that are simply inadequate to serve its needs today. Some have not been tackled for a lack of political will, and the fear of confronting established interests that act against the national good. Some have been allowed to continue with occasional tinkering at the edges, when a comprehensive overhaul would be more appropriate. Some have not been tackled because our membership of the EU and the obligation to accept its rules has prevented us from doing what is necessary in the national interest.
It is as if the nation has been on automatic drift, plodding on with no clear sense of direction and purpose. A patchwork quilt of policies has evolved from a series of historical events, with no-one taking a clear look at where the nation should be heading if it is to serve the needs of its people in a changing world. The nation has fallen into managerialism as its governing ethos, with the view that the purpose of politics should be to manage things as they are, perhaps more efficiently, perhaps more competently, than the party in opposition might achieve, but without looking at the underlying philosophy that should underpin what we are trying to do.
Institutions and practices are allowed to continue simply because noone seems ready to challenge them and to change them. When they fail to deliver adequate outcomes, temporary patches are applied when the real answer would be to change the system that engendered those failings.
Brexit provides a pretext and an opportunity now to do things differently, for the nation to reboot itself and bring its policies, practices and its performance up to speed, and in ways that transcend the merely adequate and promise instead the achievements that a modern nation such as ours should be able to deliver. Britain has problems, it is true, but they can all be solved by creative energy and skilful resourcefulness. All it needs is the will to do things differently, acting across every area of public policy.
Read the whole paper here.
Nothing to Hide: The case against the ban on extreme pornography
- The ban on possession of ‘extreme pornography’ was introduced in 2009 and extended in 2015. The law, as drafted, bans depictions of some sex acts that can be conducted safely and consensually between adults, with a specific risk of prosecution posed to LGBT minorities.
Read the whole paper here.
Evolution not revolution: the case for the EEA option
Britain needs to leave the European Union, which over 43 years of membership has proven to be sclerotic, anti-democratic and immune to reform. It is a political relic of a post-war order that no longer exists.The best exit route is for the UK to step back to a position in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) and the European Free Trade Association (‘EFTA’), thereby wholly maintaining the open trading arrangements of the single market and related economic integration.
Read the paper online here.
Download the paper here.
Stuck in the middle with EU
An increasing number of EU regulations are made at the global level and not by the EU bureaucracy, which mainly performs a ‘wholesaler’ role, enforcing rules without creating them anew. The UK often does not have a full voice at the global level because of the EU’s need for a ‘common position’.
Read the full paper online here.
The Liberal Case for Leave
The EU referendum campaign is presenting us two competing choices. On the one hand a vision of Britain as part of a steadily-integrating EU (at whatever speed) or a vision of Britain completely outside it.
UK PLC: Britain's debt time bomb
Nigel Hawkins, in his new ASI paper, reviews the big numbers in the Whole Government Accounts, and finds that Britain's government liabilities go far beyond the national debt. In order to ensure stability in security in public finances into the future, he argues that the government must cut back further, as well as selling off some of the assets mentioned in his previous paper Cash in the Attic.
Read the paper here.
The UK and the World in 2050
In The UK and the World in 2050, Madsen Pirie looks ahead to the world in thirty years time and, based on existing scientific advances, considers how we might use technology to solve problems like climate change and world hunger.