IEA Podcast

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, and Arun Advani, Director of the Centre for Analysis of Taxation and a former Wealth Tax Commissioner. The discussion centres on the IEA’s new paper, “Fool’s Gold: The Case Against the Wealth Tax,” covering why the idea has gone from niche curiosity to political obsession, what the e...

Modern Monetary Theory has taken the internet by storm. From viral Twitter threads to bestselling books, MMT promises that governments can spend freely without the usual constraints — that money can be printed to fund hospitals, green energy, and public services without consequence. But is any of it true? In this episode, Christopher Snowdon sits down with economist and author Emmanuel Marjorie, w...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, Dr Christopher Snowdon speaks with Roger Bate, Fellow at the International Centre for Law and Economics and former IEA Fellow, about the failures of the World Health Organisation during COVID and the case for fundamental reform — or outright replacement. They discuss the International Health Reform Panel, a new group co-chaired by former WHO insider...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Managing Editor Daniel Freeman and Energy Analyst Andy Mayer to discuss the latest UK unemployment data, the impact of artificial intelligence on the labour market, and the Government’s recent energy market reforms. The episode opens with the latest jobs figures, which showed unemployment falling to 4.9% — but with the b...

In this episode of the IEA Podcast, Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz to launch a new series on the IEA Insider Substack: Millennial Liberalism. The series, inspired by the IEA’s 1985 anthology The New Right Enlightenment, brings together young classical liberals to share how they came to their ideas in a generation overwhelmingly hostile to free markets. Kristian e...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Frost and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz to discuss the week in economics. The episode covers findings from the IEA’s landmark public opinion report on British attitudes to economic growth, a new poll from the New Statesman on the gender gap in political attitudes among young people, an IPR report...

In this episode of Free the Power, the IEA’s occasional series looking at free market solutions to problems in climate and energy policy, IEA energy analyst and COO Andy Mayer speaks with Catherine McBride, CEO of the Great British Business Council and lead author of the report Premeditated Industrial Destruction . They discuss how three quarters of UK energy is not electricity but oil, gas and co...

Britain wants growth. 87% of the public support it, cutting across age, income, and political affiliation. But there is a catch: most people do not believe they will ever actually see the benefits. While nine in ten expect big corporations and the wealthy to gain from a growing economy, barely half think it will improve their own lives. That gap between wanting growth and trusting it explains almo...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Frost and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz. The episode covers the Home Office’s decision to revoke Kanye West’s travel authorisation, the Green Party’s push for rent controls ahead of local elections, and new evidence on the employment effects of the minimum wage. On the free speech and visa qu...

What really causes recessions? Tyler Goodspeed, former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and author of Recession: The Real Reasons Economies Shrink and What We Can Do About It , joins Daniel Freeman to challenge everything we think we know about economic downturns. Drawing on over 300 years of economic history across Britain and America, Goodspeed demolishes the idea that reces...

Is the triple lock on the state pension sustainable? What does the future of free speech in Britain actually look like? And when does safety regulation cross the line into doing more harm than good? Kristian Niemietz, Lord Frost, and host Callum Price tackle three of the most contested policy questions in British public life right now. The panel examines the case for and against the triple lock, e...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, chair Callum Price hosts the 33rd Hayek Lecture, introduced by Lord Frost, IEA Director General. Harvard Professor of Economics Edward Glaeser delivers the lecture entitled “Does Britain Need a Second London?”, examining the relationship between urban density, housing supply and economic growth. Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, joins the pan...

Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty is one of the most important works of political philosophy of the 20th century -- but it’s also one of the most difficult to read. Written over 15 years while its author battled illness, moved between continents, and collected a Nobel Prize, the book is uneven, repetitive, and densely philosophical in places. In this interview, Dr Eamonn Butler, director of the...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor at the IEA, speaks with Dr. Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at the University of Southern Denmark and author of A Farewell to Alms (2008) and The Son Also Rises (2014). The conversation explores why economic growth was almost non-existent before 1800 and what set Britain on the path to the Industrial Revolution, f...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, and Lord Frost, IEA Director General. They discuss the OECD’s latest growth forecasts, which place the UK as the hardest hit economy in the G20, the Government’s response to the energy price shock, and what — if anything — should be done about rising inflation. The conversation then...

Are we living through the biggest financial bubble in history — and does anyone in power know it? In this IEA event, Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA and Max Rangeley present a joint case that decades of deficit spending, money creation and artificially low interest rates have inflated an asset bubble unprecedented in its scale and scope. Drawing on data from the OBR, the Bank of England and the OECD, Bake...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz and, making his first appearance on the podcast, Senior Economist Dr Valentin Boboc. Together they discuss a busy week in British economic policy. The episode opens with Rachel Reeves' Mace lecture, in which the Chancellor set out her theory of growth and the case for an "active and s...

Governments across Europe have convinced themselves they can pick winners, drive innovation and save the planet — all at the same time. But what happens when the bill comes due? Kristian Niemietz is joined by Professor Kristin Sandstrom and Professor Magnus Henriksen, authors of a new IEA report on green industrial policy in the EU, to find out. From Northvolt — the European Union’s flagship batte...

Join Andy Mayer, IEA Chief Operating Officer, with Sean Ridley, energy and environment analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies and co-author of Power to the Markets, for a comprehensive breakdown of why Britain’s energy market has stopped functioning as a market at all. This episode of Free the Power explores how decades of subsidies, government targets, and intervention have eroded price signals...

Inheritance tax is one of Britain’s most hated taxes -- but is the outrage justified? Kristian Niemietz sits down with Rory Meakin, Research Fellow at the Taxpayers’ Alliance and author of a new IEA paper on inheritance tax, to examine what this tax actually does, how much it raises, and whether it makes any economic sense. From the farmer protests that pushed the issue back into the headlines, to...

In this episode of the IEA Podcast, Lord Frost is joined by Kristian Niemietz and Andy Mayer to discuss the growing “Dubai phenomenon” — why increasing numbers of Brits are leaving the UK to build a better life abroad, and why politicians like Ed Davey are wrong to criticise them for it. The panel argues that rather than attacking those who leave, Britain should be asking why it can no longer offe...

Callum Price is joined by Dr Lawrence Newport, co-founder of Looking for Growth, a grassroots movement pushing for meaningful economic reform across the UK. Lawrence explains how the movement was born out of frustration with the Government’s first budget, which he argues was indistinguishable from years of previous Treasury thinking, typified by managed decline and a lack of ambition from the poli...

On the 250th anniversary of its publication, we revisit one of the most consequential books ever written: Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations . Published on 9th March 1776 — the same year as the American Declaration of Independence — Smith’s masterwork laid the intellectual foundations for modern economics, free trade, and the idea that individual freedom, properly channelled through law and compet...

Australia made global headlines when it introduced a social media ban for under-16s, but does the evidence actually support such a drastic step? In this episode, Callum Price is joined by IEA Public Policy Fellow Matthew Lesh to examine the claims driving the push to restrict young people’s access to social media platforms. They explore what the research really says about social media and children...

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, IEA Director of Communications Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz and Director General Lord Frost to discuss the Spring Statement, the Middle East crisis and its economic repercussions, and shifting British attitudes towards national identity and the NHS. The trio assess Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement, which delivered lit...