IEA Podcast

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz is joined by Senior Policy Fellow Lord Frost and Managing Editor Daniel Freeman to discuss three stories dominating British economic debate. The conversation covers a Financial Times investigation into London’s slowing growth and falling productivity, the Government’s cost of living announcements including tariff cuts and VAT reductions, and Wes Streeting’s proposal to align capital gains tax with income tax rates — a policy he has chosen to brand a “wealth tax.”
On London, the panel picks apart the drivers behind the city’s decline: housing supply restrictions, a 71% marginal tax rate hitting high earners with student loans, the exodus of non-doms, and the post-pandemic shift away from office working. Daniel highlights that American tech firms now describe London’s talent pool as cheap relative to San Francisco, a back-handed compliment that has become the city’s chief selling point. Lord Frost raises the possibility that productive people are leaving while less productive arrivals replace them, and argues for decentralisation over national top-down fixes, pointing to Switzerland as a model for local decision-making on planning and regulation.
On the cost of living package, the panel credits the tariff reductions as the one straightforwardly positive measure while dismissing the VAT cuts on children’s cinema tickets and meals as a two-month gimmick that evidence suggests will not be passed on to consumers. The capital gains tax proposals are judged far less damaging than a genuine wealth tax, but the panel warns that raising rates to 45p would deter risk-taking investment, encourage evasion, and pile further complexity onto an already overburdened system — with no offsetting cuts, such as to stamp duty, to justify the trade-off.
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 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.


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 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