Knowing and Making

Alan Sugar has belatedly discovered an important economic concept: the idea of incidence . The star of The Apprentice and former owner of Tottenham Hotspur has just realised that when new income pours into a competitive industry which relies on scarce resources, incumbent companies don't get to keep the money. The standard example of this in economics is farm subsidies. Although one might think farm subsidies are good for farmers, that is not really true. Because there's a fixed supply of farmland, whose price is determined by how much money a farmer can generate from it, all of the extra money is - eventually - captured by landlords in higher rents. Farmers might benefit in the short term, as this paper suggests , but when their leases are up for renewal the rent will go up. Football is no different - there's a limited number of talented players, and all the clubs want to buy them. So now that the Premier League makes £2 billion a year (twelve times the amount of 20...

And that's the end of the show, of this year's series and this series of blog postings. Over these twelve episodes we've had several thousand people stop by to watch, and I hope you've enjoyed it. Thanks very much for reading and especially thanks to those who have commented or emailed me. If you found my thoughts on the Apprentice interesting, do subscribe to the blog (links at the top of the right-hand column) - one of the regular themes of this blog is tongue-in-cheek economic analysis of subjects that you might not think are about economics at all. You might like some of our other features. Congratulations to Yasmina and I look forward to talking further with you all about her - and next year's Apprentice candidates - in the future. Best wishes to you all.       Leigh. 10:57  And the credits roll. It's probably time to switch over to the European election results, but we have Michelle Hussain on the news first. I don't think a live blog of the next seven...

Hidden amongst the noise and disruption of an astonishing day in British government are a couple of fascinating stories which have the potential to form the political landscape for years to come. But there's almost no time to act: the government must take steps within 48 hours to avoid being overtaken by events. The first story is the reshaping of the Cabinet into three new "councils". These are: National Economic Council: Economics and enterprise Democratic Renewal Council: Constitutional and political reform Domestic Policy Council: Public services These three new groupings provide a structuring framework for most of the Cabinet, with the exception of foreign, defence, European and international development policy - which may be a candidate for a future fourth council. The second story is Brown's appointment of more people from outside the House of Commons as ministers - Alan Sugar being the most visible - and his statement in today's press conference that we ca...