Research, analysis, podcasts and more from the UKʼs original free market think tank, founded in 1955. Click to read Institute of Economic Affairs | Insider, a Substack publication with tens of ...

Many readers will be familiar with the concept of the Bootleggers and Baptists, in which self-interested businesses find common cause with moral busybodies in rigging the market against consumers. The ...

Nanny State Index 2025 Summary Welcome to the sixth edition of the Nanny State Index, a league table of the best and worst places to be a consumer of food, alcohol, soft drinks and nicotine. As always ...

The Spring Statement was more-or-less as expected. A worsening economic outlook meant that the Chancellor’s headroom against her primary fiscal rule – a current budget surplus in five years’ time – ...

The only plausible explanation for the collapse in legal tobacco sales is that there has been rapid growth in tobacco sales on the black market. There were four significant increases in tobacco duty ...

Summary Given the high economic costs of fraud, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 aims to address the well-known deficiencies of the common law’s approach to corporate criminal ...

The Government’s own impact assessment for its employment rights legislation estimates that the measures could cost businesses up to £5 billion annually. To start, this is a substantial amount. Past ...

UK prices are at the IEA median of 10.17p/kWh, slightly above those in France and a bit below those in Germany. The price differential compared to the US is less pronounced, but domestic gas prices in ...

About the Author Dr Kristian Niemietz is the IEA’s Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy. He is the author of the books A New Understanding of Poverty (2011), Redefining the Poverty Debate ...

The overview highlights the academic consensus on harmful consequences. Most studies (56 out of 65) find that rent controls succeed in lowering rents for controlled units, as intended. However, 14 out ...

Discussion and conclusion The manifestos contain hundreds of new regulatory proposals touching on various policy areas, from the environment and workplace rights to utility regulation, race relations ...