For a number of years, Tilburg University has been publishing a list of the top economics departments around the globe - click here. Their ranking is based on the number of publications a department has in a select list of top journals. The great thing is that one can change the journal selection and see how this affects the rankings. Chris Colvin, wanting to see how good Queen's University Belfast is at economic history, ranked departments based on economic history journals. To his surprise (and mine), we do very well. We are in the premier league in terms of economic history, and we are not that far behind Harvard and other top universities. A few more key signings (apologies for the football metaphor) and we will be close to the top. Thankfully, we have been recruiting in this area of late so we are moving up the league! Click here to learn more about economic history at Queen's.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.