Issue 3
Issue 3 Digital MagazineIssue 3 of The Confluence has ten student articles and eleven interviews, one with a Nobel laureate, and most focus on money. Topics include spectrum auctions, VAT on private schools, tax havens, and the cost of borrowing for green energy, and many ask how rules and incentives decide who gains and who loses, while a few turn to ethics and decision-making.
Why Your Phone Signal Won a Nobel Prize
A Nobel prize winner describes how his team ran a $19.8 billion spectrum auction and why changing a market's rules changes what people do.
The Battle Nobody Declares
A scholar in Estonia explains how Russia spreads disinformation in the Baltic states and what separates information war from hybrid and cognitive warfare.
Some Are More Equal: For VAT on Schools
Twenty months in, VAT on private school fees is bringing in close to the £1.5 billion a year expected, and enrolment has fallen only a little.
Levelling Down: Against VAT on Schools
Argues that VAT on private school fees raises less than advertised and shrinks the market for schooling, and that fairness should come from improving state schools.
The Weighing Problem
A German economist says politicians and economists argue less about the numbers than about whose gains matter more than whose losses.
The Price of Capital
Developing countries already have green technology, and the article says their problem is the high cost of borrowing, which development banks could lower.
The Land Is Not the Problem
Africa has over sixty per cent of the world's unused farmland, and the article says what it lacks is infrastructure and patient investment.
Power the Future
Thailand will miss its 2037 renewable energy target unless it pays for battery storage and improves its metering and bidding systems.
Two Passions, One Question
A Colombian economist who once played football applies economics to pressure in sport and advises people to do work they enjoy.
The Banana Myth
A political economist uses the story of EU banana rules, which companies and member states pushed for, to show who writes EU law.
Cash Refuses to Die
Pakistan handles hundreds of millions of digital payments a quarter yet still runs on cash, and the article says going cashless risks privacy and leaves some people out.
Follow the Money
A researcher of tax havens explains how multinationals avoid tax and says following the money shows who holds power.
The Shock That Cannot Spread
This year's oil price spike will squeeze household budgets and is unlikely to start a second wave of inflation.
What You Owe When It Costs You Nothing
A philosopher says the question to ask is whether your life would get worse if you gave away some surplus, and applies it to effective altruism and net zero.
The Tax Collector on Horseback
A historian explains how war and the Church built European tax bureaucracies, and why who collects a tax affects whether people pay.
The Quantum Gamble
Looks at the quantum computing boom and finds that firms with working hardware are a fair risk, while firms that only sell a promise are a bet on a story.
Ethics Is Like Breathing
An economics professor with 45 years of teaching says economics cannot be free of values, because choosing a policy goal is an ethical decision.
Blind Spot
A positive result on a test that catches 99% of cases still leaves only a 16.7% chance you are ill, and the article asks why people get this wrong.
Bermuda’s $59 Million Worker
An economist explains how multinationals move profits to places like Bermuda, and says they are productive but increase inequality.
The Woman Who Wasted My Time
An eight-hour bus ride beside a 78-year-old stranger who marvelled at every sunset leads a writer to argue that optimising your time can leave you under-lived.
The Evolution of Right and Wrong
A game theorist explains how morality can evolve, with universalist morals favoured where people meet once and particularist morals where they meet again and again.