Episode 088

China is an economy like no other. It is a mixed economy as ours used to be, and then some. The state still plays the leading role, which has protected it from the worst of the excesses, which have devastated western economies. But last month the Chinese stock market suffered massive losses and sent a wave of panic cascading around the world. To make sense of it all we invited Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, Professor John Ross.

Hardly a day passes without a recognition of Britain's housing crisis: virtually no social housing is built, prices and rents move ever upwards, as does the rate of homelessness, overcrowding and slum landlordism. Britain is "full up" say the Cassandras about Calais, when in fact Britain is practically empty. Just two percent of Britain's landmass is built on. Unmet needs and unused economic resources ought to have led to a building boom, but it hasn’t. To find out why we invited the brightest of young housing economists from the University of Leeds, Dr Mary Robertson.

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