IEA Podcast

In this Institute of Economic Affairs Economics 101 explainer, Dr. Stephen Davies breaks down one of the most profound yet misunderstood concepts in economics: opportunity cost. The episode covers why economists are always talking about costs, what scarcity really means, and why absolutely nothing in life is ever truly free.
Dr. Davies explains why time is the most radically scarce resource of all, unable to be reused or spent on two things simultaneously, and how this gives rise to the concept of opportunity cost -- the foregone benefit of the next best alternative use of your time and resources. He illustrates this with a concrete example, comparing the choice between a concert and a night at the cinema, and shows how the real cost of any decision is not just what you pay but what you give up.
The episode also tackles the subjectivity of value, explaining why the same concert ticket means something completely different to different people, and why Oscar Wilde’s famous quip about economists knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing fundamentally misses the point. Dr. Davies shows how prices in markets are not cold and empty but rich with information about what people actually value relative to everything else available to them.
The episode concludes with the crucial distinction between stated preferences and revealed preferences -- what people say they would like to do versus what they actually choose to do when opportunity cost is taken into account -- and why revealed preferences tell us far more about what people genuinely value.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.
The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.


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In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, IEA Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz speaks with Dr. Rainer Zitelmann, historian, sociologist, and author of New Space Capitalism, about the rise of private space industry and what it reveals about markets, incentives, and the limits of state-led enterprise. They examine how space exploration has shifted from a government monopoly to a competitive private sector, and what the economics of that transition look like.
The conversation covers the record of NASA’s government-run programmes, particularly the Space Shuttle, whose per-flight costs vastly exceeded forecasts and which ultimately left the United States reliant on Russian rockets to reach the International Space Station. They discuss how SpaceX’s reusable rockets reduced launch costs by 95%, why the old Cost Plus contracting model incentivised waste rather than efficiency, and how Obama’s political indifference to space turned out to be its unlikely enabler. Zitelmann also takes aim at Mariana Mazzucato’s moonshot framing, arguing she cherry-picks a decade of success and ignores fifty years of failure.
The interview then turns to the frontier questions: asteroid mining, property rights in space, the Outer Space Treaty’s legal grey areas, and whether private ownership on Mars is not just desirable but necessary for survival. Zitelmann argues that socialism failed everywhere on Earth and would fail even faster in the hostile conditions of outer space, and sets out his proposal for how space property rights could be structured on the model of the American West.
📖 Buy New Space Capitalism by Dr. Rainer Zitelmann: https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Space-Capitalism-Entrepreneurial-Stars-ebook/dp/B0GN9Q8C7H
📄 Read Dr. Zitelmann’s IEA paper, Exploring the Space Economy: https://iea.org.uk/publications/exploring-the-space-economy/


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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz and Senior Economist Dr Valentin Boboc. The episode examines the political turmoil in Westminster, the Government’s King’s Speech, and what both mean for the UK economy. The discussion centres on the bond market, fiscal credibility, and why political chaos matters far more when public debt is already stretched.
Dr Boboc and Kristian Niemietz dig into the UK’s deteriorating fiscal position, with around 8% of all public spending now going on debt interest alone. They assess why bond markets are nervous about whoever ends up leading the Government, arguing that the real problem is not the chaos itself but the absence of any credible plan on spending, growth, or taxation. The King’s Speech is assessed in detail, including the Government’s “Regulating for Growth” bill, the nationalisation of British Steel, and what Kristian describes as Chris Snowdon’s “capitalist command economy” thesis: a state that does not want to own industry directly but increasingly dictates what private companies produce and how.
The conversation closes with a look at a Labour backbench growth paper that Kristian describes as the closest thing to a centre-left supply-side agenda he has read in the British context. He and Dr Boboc explore why rationing key inputs like land, energy and childcare drives up costs and then triggers expensive spending programmes to compensate, and what genuine fiscal consolidation through growth might actually look like.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.
The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs briefing, Dr Kristian Niemietz is joined by IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics Dr Christopher Snowdon to examine a question with no easy answer: what kind of economy does Britain actually have? Neither neoliberal nor socialist, Chris makes the case that the UK has drifted into what he calls a “capitalist command economy” — one where industries remain largely in private hands but are increasingly directed, targeted, and fined by the state.
Chris and Kristian work through the evidence: boiler companies fined for not selling enough heat pumps, car manufacturers penalised for selling too many petrol vehicles, supermarkets being required to track and reduce the calories their customers buy, Gatwick Airport granted a new runway only on condition it controls how its passengers travel. They trace the roots of this model through price controls, rent regulation, minimum wage creep, and the Government’s habit of outsourcing its policy goals to business while escaping the blame when things go wrong.
The conversation closes with the question of whether this model is stable. Drawing on Mises’s concept of interventionism as an inherently unstable system, Kristian asks whether the capitalist command economy simply creates the conditions for a more conventional socialist government — or something else entirely. Chris argues the real problem is that Britain lacks even a word for what it has become, and that naming it is the first step to challenging it.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.
The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Lord Frost is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director, and Dr Valentin Boboc, Senior Economist, to work through three of the week’s most pressing economic questions. The episode opens with a debate sparked by a Daily Telegraph piece from former IEA chair Neil Record, who argues that Britain may not have a housing shortage in the conventional sense. Niemietz and Boboc push back, examining how demand grows faster than supply as a country gets richer, why the rental market tells a far bleaker story than headline ownership figures suggest, and how over £70,000 of regulatory costs have been added per housing unit in recent years alone.
The conversation then turns to the Planning and Infrastructure Act and its restrictions on vexatious judicial reviews, using the recent case of a solar farm as the first real-world test. The panel assesses whether cutting the artificial waiting period from 14 months to two months represents a genuine turning point for infrastructure delivery in Britain, or whether NIMBYs will simply adapt and find new avenues for delay.
The final segment examines a warning from Conservative MP Neil O’Brien that Treasury forecasts for capital tax revenues may be built on shaky foundations. With the Government leaning heavily on stamp duty, capital gains tax, and inheritance tax to plug a fiscal gap, Boboc and Niemietz argue the tax base is too narrow, too volatile, and too geographically concentrated to deliver the roughly £30 billion the Treasury is counting on by 2030.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.
The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe