Blog Archives - Page 2 of 11 - Centre for Enterprise Markets and Ethics

June 2, 2025 Blog

Neil Jordan: War and Peace – and Artificial Intelligence

A fascinating advance currently underway in the field of artificial intelligence is the development of models to assist with peace negotiations. In collaboration with the White House, a think tank in Washington has been developing a simulator that generates potential peace-agreements to end the war in Ukraine, and also scores the likelihood of each deal being...

June 2, 2025 Blog

May News Roundup

In this instalment, there are stories relating to health and the welfare bill, utilities, the value of work, insurance markets, monetary policy, tariffs and trade, artificial intelligence and the environment, as well as a review of our latest book Health and Productivity Faced with a an increasing benefits bill, driven in part by long...

May 27, 2025 Blog

Philip Booth: Pope Francis, Fraternity and Globalisation

This is a repost of an appreciation of Pope Francis by CEME Fellow, Professor Philip Booth, first published on the Catholic Social Teaching blog of St Mary’s University. We thought it would be of interest to CEME readers, but reposting does not mean endorsement of every point. In the coverage of the passing of Pope Francis...

May 12, 2025 Blog

Monthly News Roundup – April 2025

Sign up for our Substack We have compiled some news, comment pieces and announcements that we hope our readers find interesting. In this installment, there are stories relating to carbon markets, housing, the use (or not) of cash, the need for economic growth in the UK, and on the capacity of artificial intelligence to...

Inflation Is ABout More Than Money Cover

May 6, 2025 Blog

Peter Selby: Inflation is About More Than Money: Economics, Politics and the Social Fabric’ by Brian Griffiths

Reproduced with permission of Church Times ‘INFLATION is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon’, says the title of chapter 7; at the same time, it is, as the book’s title affirms, ‘about more than money’. Those are the two pegs on which the argument of this courteously erudite tract hangs. Published by the Centre for...

April 22, 2025 Blog

Neil Jordan: (How) Does Artificial Intelligence Think? (What) Does it Know?

A recent article reports on work by researchers at Anthropic, the AI lab that developed a ‘reasoning’ AI model, and their ability to look into the digital brains of large language models. Investigating what happens in a neural network as an AI model ‘thinks’, they uncovered some unexpected complexity that would suggest that on some...

April 14, 2025 Blog

Philip Booth: Tariffs are No Solution to a Non-Existent Problem

President Trump has certainly brought the issue to the fore with a bang. Perhaps his attempts at protectionism will show the error in the thinking of the anti-globalists in our own country. We don’t get many controlled experiments in economics. Perhaps this will be one. The anti-globalisation trend, which is strongly supported by Christians in...

March 17, 2025 Blog

Neil Jordan: Second Homes and the Council Tax Premium – Solution or Sumptuary Law?

From April 1st this year, local authorities in England have the power, under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, to charge a Council Tax Premium of 100% on second homes. Many councils have availed themselves of the opportunity. The Justification The move to charge a premium is driven by a number of concerns about...

February 10, 2025 Blog

Andrei Rogobete: In Defence of Cash ISAs

Recent articles in the financial news (such as this one by the Telegraph) have been hastily calling for the abolition of Cash ISAs, claiming absurdities such as, ‘cash savers don’t deserve tax breaks’. Here are a few reasons why they may be mistaken and why their approach is saliently unwise: – Cash ISAs are a...

November 3, 2024 Blog

Neil Jordan: The Mystery Box – Gambling, The Experience Economy or Disordered Consumption?

Of growing popularity at present is the phenomenon of the ‘mystery box’: a box or case purchased – usually from an online provider – that contains various ‘unknown’ objects. A fairly typical example would cost somewhere in the region of £90 and will be described by the seller as either unclaimed luggage from an airport...