FDCO Next Generation Competition 2026
Run jointly by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Hub for Equal Representation at LSE, this is one of the more accessible essay competitions for 14 to 18 year olds: students write a 1,000 word letter to Professor Dennis Novy responding to one of four set questions, and no prior study of economics is required. The 2026 deadline is 11:59pm on 28 June, entries are split into Under 16 and Under 18 categories, and prizes run from £100 for shortlisted entrants
Live music in the UK: what’s the state of the industry?
Almost 20 million people attended live music in the UK in 2023, yet two grassroots venues closed every week that year. Charlie Meyrick at LSE lays out the economics of this contradiction: rising energy, staffing and rent costs; shrinking post-pandemic audiences among younger cohorts; and a cost-of-touring crisis shaped by Brexit customs requirements and lost EU revenue, with artists earning under £25,000 losing almost half their EU income. Policy options covered include an ar
Wellbeing policy: what lessons from the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman?
Written by Richard Layard at LSE, a collaborator of Kahneman's for over two decades, this is less a biographical tribute than a personal account of how Kahneman's work reshaped policy thinking on wellbeing. Layard explains the pension opt-in/opt-out experiment as a clean demonstration of defaults and framing, traces the evolution of wellbeing measurement from Diener onwards, and describes how the UK Treasury Green Book came to include subjective wellbeing as a policy criterio