Congratulations to Christopher Coyle who graduated on Friday with a PhD from Queen's. Christopher is a product of the Queen's system, having studied Economics and Finance at BSc, MSc and PhD levels. He has also just joined the faculty at QUMS and QUCEH. Christopher's PhD looks at financial development and stability over the long run. He and I have a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Economic History, which looks at the role played by law and politics in the evolution of the UK corporate bond market from 1860 until 2000.
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.