Takatoshi Ito, who passed away in September 2025, was a leading scholar of macroeconomics and international finance. This column, written by a group of friends and colleagues, outlines his many contributions in a lifetime of research, teaching, and policymaking in Japan, the US, and around the world. His work is particularly notable for challenging the widespread perception that standard economic analysis is somehow ill-suited for understanding the Japanese economy. Indeed, using the discipline’s rigorous tools, he illuminated challenges that Japan faced earlier and more acutely than other countries – including population decline and ageing, ballooning government debt, the zero lower bound and unconventional monetary policies, real estate bubbles and their collapse, and the banking sector’s problem of non-performing loans.

From the Enlightenment to today’s ‘tradwives’, three books look at the tension between production and reproduction

Andrew Kelly

Lord Taverne made three crucial contributions to the IFS that formed the foundations from which it has grown.

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth”. Mokyr…

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth”. Mokyr was cited by the Nobel committee “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress”. This column, written by two of his students and now fellow scholars, outlines how his work has reshaped our understanding of virtually every fact and theory associated with industrialisation – from the mechanics of machine design and production processes to the intellectual and political forces that changed entire societies. One core message of this extensive body of research is particularly timely: economic progress is critically dependent on open intellectual inquiry, on the free exchange of ideas, and on a vigorous defence of scientific principles.

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth”. Mokyr was cited by the Nobel committee “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress”. This column, written by two of his students and now fellow scholars, outlines how his work has reshaped our understanding of virtually every fact and theory associated with industrialisation – from the mechanics of machine design and production processes to the intellectual and political forces that changed entire societies. One core message of this extensive body of research is particularly timely: economic progress is critically dependent on open intellectual inquiry, on the free exchange of ideas, and on a vigorous defence of scientific principles.

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt have been jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Joel Mokyr ‘for having explained innovation-driven economic growth’. Aghion and Howitt were cited by the Nobel committee ‘for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction’. As this column explains, their work transformed creative destruction from an evocative metaphor into a rigorous analytical framework. The Nobel recognition honours research that has fundamentally reshaped how economists understand the engines of prosperity and technological progress.

For two decades, the UK economy has seen weak growth, driven by low business investment, inadequate market dynamism and persistent policy instability. These failures shape the daily reality of…

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt have been jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Joel Mokyr ‘for having explained innovation-driven economic growth’. Aghion and Howitt were cited by the Nobel committee ‘for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction’. As this column explains, their work transformed creative destruction from an evocative metaphor into a rigorous analytical framework. The Nobel recognition honours research that has fundamentally transformed how economists understand the engines of prosperity and technological progress.

The starkly different paths of economic and institutional development followed by China and the West is often attributed largely to the Industrial Revolution. This column argues that institutions and culture played a key role in setting Europe and China on divergent paths well before the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but the role they played was mediated by a critical difference between the two civilisations: the nature of their prevalent social organisations. A key factor behind China’s remarkable economic resurgence has been its capacity to adapt traditional institutions and cultural practices to the needs of a modern economy.

The West of England has a diverse economy, including rural areas, services-based jobs and advanced manufacturing hubs. Investment in infrastructure, skills and research and development (R&D) could hel...

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Given the precarious state of the UK’s public finances, there has been speculation about whether a loan from the International Monetary Fund will be needed, as happened in 1976. What’s really required...

In an age of trade wars, armed conflict, pandemics and climate change, too little attention is being paid to the vulnerability of the global food system. The UK is not immune to the risks, which…

Over the past few centuries, Britain has undergone three periods of major agricultural change. These revolutions in farming practice are closely tied to long-term economic development and highlight…

Data suggests the drive towards individualism has increased the selection of monikers in recent decades