We make so much plastic these days that it takes about eight percent of oil production. And despite its image problem, plastic production is set to double in the next 20 years. Show more

When Gabriel Zucman crunched the numbers, he found a big chunk of global wealth illegally stashed in offshore tax havens - making them a significant feature of the modern economy. Show more

In 1876, John Warne Gates described the new product he hoped to sell as 'lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust'. Barbed wire wreaked huge changes in America. Show more

Flamboyant American retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge introduced Londoners to a whole new shopping experience, one honed in the department stores of late 19th-century America. Show more

Sending sensitive financial data is no easy matter. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication solved some of the problems. But has it created a new one? Show more

Charity has become big business. One recent study estimates that the British give about as much to charity as they spend on beer. But what’s the best way to elicit donations? Show more

Josiah Wedgwood was a man of many talents. But maybe his greatest achievement was solving a problem it took another 200 years for a Nobel Prize-winning economist even to identify. Show more

How many people around the world need glasses and don’t have them? Until surprisingly recently, nobody knew. Now we have an eye-popping answer: 2.5 billion. Show more

What would happen if GPS stopped working? From emergency services to just-in-time supermarket logistics networks, the ability to navigate using GPS is baked into the economy. Show more

The global supply chain that keeps perishable goods at controlled temperatures has revolutionised the food industry, and other industries too. Show more

The plough did more than create the underpinning of civilisation - with all its benefits and inequities. Different types of plough led to different types of civilisation. Show more

If managers often have a bad reputation, what should we make of those who tell managers how to manage? That question has often been raised over the years, with a sceptical tone. Show more

Property rights for the world's poor could unlock trillions in 'dead capital'. According to one economist, the value of extralegal property globally exceeds 10 trillion dollars. Show more

Do welfare states boost economic growth, or stunt it? It is not an easy question to answer. The evidence suggests it is a wash - the positive and negative effects balance out. Show more

Facebook’s ubiquitous 'like' button can reveal a treasure trove of potential insights. Should we worry? And how should we manage our impulses in this brave new social media world? Show more

Norman Borlaug transformed agricultural production around the world by tinkering with the genetic design of wheat. Yet worries about overpopulation continue. Show more

Subways get crowded, planes over-booked and roads congested. Back in the 1950s, an economist proposed a solution to these problems that worked well in theory but was never built. Show more

The ARPAnet was the forerunner of today’s Internet – and at its heart was a massive, heavily armoured piece of kit that set the stage for how the internet works. Show more

Before James Bonsack came along, cigarettes were far less popular than cigars, pipes or chewing tobacco. His machine, one historian claims, invented much of modern marketing. Show more

Cuneiform, the earliest known script, was not used for poetry, or to send messages to far-off lands. It was used to create the world's first accounts and written contracts. Show more