The Economics Show

The UK’s Labour government had already inherited a tricky fiscal situation when it came to power last July. But since then, growth has stagnated, borrowing costs have risen, and now the government has committed to a big increase in defence spending. Where will the money come from? The FT’s Sam Fleming interviews Paul Johnson, the long-time director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent think-tank that has been adjudicating the UK’s public finances for more than half a century. As Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver her Spring Statement on Wednesday, should she break her government’s pledge not to raise personal taxes?Sam Fleming is the FT’s economics editor. You can find his latest features and columns here.Subscribe to The Economics show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Modern industrial economies were made possible by automation and mass production, but also by something similar going on inside the world of management. Where once all the decisions were made by an identifiable boss, now they are farmed out to rule books, bureaucracies and computer algorithms — and nobody is individually accountable for them. The FT’s Andrew Hill speaks to Dan Davies, economist and author of The Unaccountability Machine, who explains how the industrialisation of management decision-making was inevitable in our increasingly complex world but has had unforeseen consequences, such as “accountability sinks” and the rise of populist politicians. Nonetheless, there are solutions, including AI, the 1950s management theory of cybernetics and the return of the much-maligned middle manager.Andrew Hill is senior business writer at the Financial Times and consulting editor at FT Live. You can find his latest features and columns here, and enjoy his Big Read on the woes of America’s industrial giants here.Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Andrew Hill. Produced by Edith Rousselot and Laurence Knight. The editor is Bryant Urstadt. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

After decades of double-digit growth, China's economy has been expanding at less than half that since the pandemic. A property market crash, youth unemployment and now a trade war with the US are all adding to the country’s woes. So has the Chinese juggernaut finally run out of gas? Martin Wolf speaks to Keyu Jin, a Chinese economist who has lived and worked most of her life in the US and UK, and is currently a professor with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as well as at Harvard. She says that China remains widely misunderstood in the west.Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column hereSubscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Martin Wolf. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

The world economy is emitting carbon dioxide faster than ever before, meaning our planet is heating up faster than ever before. Martin Wolf speaks to someone who has spent much of the past two decades at the forefront of the climate debate. Lord Adair Turner chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank focused on climate mitigation, and was previously the first chair of the UK government’s committee on climate change in 2008-12. While he fears that US President Donald Trump will act as a drag anchor on international progress in cutting emissions, he believes the EU and China can strike a deal to help the whole world transition to cheap renewable energy.Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column hereSubscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Martin Wolf. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

US President Donald Trump has frozen all foreign aid payments, while Elon Musk is putting America’s biggest development agency, USAID, “through the woodchipper”. Meanwhile, the UK government has just announced it will slash its aid budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP. So are the days of generous programmes to promote health and education in the poorest nations now over? And should we fear that rising authoritarian powers, most notably China, are stepping into the breach with their own funds and parallel institutions? In an interview recorded just before the UK’s announcement, Alan Beattie speaks to economist Minouche Shafik, who is a veteran of the international development scene. She has worked at the World Bank, IMF, and the UK’s Department for International Development. And she is not optimistic.Alan writes the Trade Secrets newsletter. You can sign up here. He is on Bluesky at @alanbeattie.bsky.social. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by Alan Beattie. Produced by Laurence Knight. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Donald Trump’s tariffs are a twentieth century tool that simply won’t work in the 21st century global trading system. That’s the view of today’s guest, Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. Speaking to the FT’s Martin Wolf, Baldwin explains how the shift towards global manufacturing supply chains since the 1990s, and the more recent explosion in digital services exports, mean that the impact of across-the-board import taxes such as the ones proposed by the new US administration will be counterproductive and much more limited than in the past. Nonetheless, should we still worry about the harm that Trump’s policies may be doing to the global trading system, and how should other countries respond?Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column hereSubscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Birth rates are falling fast and not just in highly developed countries. And as populations age, it’s becoming harder to fund pensions or raise labour productivity. But falling fertility could also be harming social cohesion and impeding the innovation needed to solve problems such as climate change. Today on the show, John Burn-Murdoch talks to Alice Evans, a senior lecturer at King’s College, London, and the author of the newsletter, The Great Gender Divergence. Together, they try to figure out why fewer people are choosing to have children, or even coupling up in the first place, and what should be done about it. John Burn-Murdoch writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it hereSubscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by John Burn-Murdoch. Produced by Edith Rousselot. The editor is Bryant Urstadt. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Productivity growth in the developed world has been on a downward trend since the 1960s. Meanwhile, gains in life expectancy have also slowed. And yet the number of dollars and researchers dedicated to R&D grows every year. In today’s episode, the FT’s Chief Data Reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, asks whether western culture has lost its previous focus on human progress and become too risk-averse, or whether the problem is simply that the low-hanging fruit of scientific research has already been plucked. He does so in conversation with innovation economist Matt Clancy, who is the author of the New Things Under the Sun blog, and a research fellow at Open Philanthropy, a non-profit foundation based in San Francisco that provides research grants.John Burn-Murdoch writes a column each week for the Financial Times. You can find it hereSubscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Presented by John Burn-Murdoch. Produced by Edith Rousselot. The editor is Bryant Urstadt. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com