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Reeves has placed an uncertainty premium on the British economy

5 0
23.01.2025

Rachel Reeves is expected to meet with Donald Trump’s allies at Davos in a bid to talk up the UK’s growth prospects. Photo: PA

Rachel Reeves promised to restore economic stability, but the outcome of her various actions has been to increase uncertainty, says Paul Ormerod

Daniel Ellsberg, who died in 2023 in his 90s, was a true Renaissance Man.

After a stellar career as an economics student at Harvard, he served in the Marines before working for the Rand Corporation on nuclear strategy. In the Pentagon in the early 1970s, he leaked top secret documents, which became known as the Pentagon Papers. He was put on trial for treason and sensationally acquitted.

In the early 1960s, he made a fundamental contribution to behavioural economics which is of great practical relevance to the current economic situation in the UK.

His paper, esoterically entitled Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms, was based on a deceptively simple experiment.

Ellsberg presented people with an urn containing 50 black and 50 red balls. They were first offered a bet to........

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