Articles

Professor Adam Dixon is the Adam Smith Chair in Sustainable Capitalism here at Panmure House, Smith’s former home, now a centre for modern social and economic research and debate.

Baroness Minouche Shafik Delivers Thought-Provoking Adam Smith Address on Need for a New Social Contact at Panmure House in Edinburgh. Written by Kenny Kemp

There will be a shift towards home-grown energy solutions globally and thus renewables will expand.

Our engineering success, and the economic system built on that success is not sustainable.

Successfully delivering impact investment requires commitment from investors to establish and implement clear decision-making frameworks and defined key performance indicators.

Tax an item and people will consume and produce less of it, incentivize it, and they will produce more.

In effect, humanity is paying more to run faster and go backwards.

Confidence for change will come from individual choice and corporate purpose

The tools that tamed corporate monopolies a century ago will not save us today and creating more competition will not help. The real problem remains shareholder capitalism.

China does whatever it can to thrive economically, putting freedom and prosperity at risk for the rest of the world.

Session Five of the Hutton Series saw the panellists recognising the importance of the transition in energy use and associated infrastructure and related behavioural patterns. Professor Susan Krumdieck outlines the details in her manifesto for Panmure House Perspectives.

Adam Smith’s description of the pin factory, with which he begins The Wealth of Nations, introduces the fundamental economic concept of the division of labour.

The role of business in addressing climate change.

Economic thinker Andrew Milligan takes us back to basics on the significance of carbon pricing.

COP26 is our opportunity to re-commit ourselves to the difficult but perfectly feasible challenges of taking our country to net zero

Economic thinker Andrew Milligan points out that the present response to Covid-19 is not unique and that governments do increase National Debt to eye-watering levels in times of crisis.

As a participant in the financial sector session, alongside senior figures from the investment and financial regulation worlds, it offered an opportunity to look back in order to look ahead.

We face another pandemic in 2021 which now requires a moral ‘vaccine’.

Jon Newey, a member of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, was selected to transform the derelict and forlorn Panmure House into an internationally acclaimed centre for Scotland’s most famous economist Adam Smith.

Humanity is a juggernaut on a collision course with the hard limits of nature

A retrospective look at the relationship between the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch and Adam Smith by Professor Benny Higgins, chairman of the Buccleuch Estates.

Thirty Years Ago, in September 1990, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) came into force.

This obituary appeared in The Times newspaper in November 2019.

Two outstanding writers of their generations shared a similar and critical fate, the inaugural Inspirational Alba address in Panmure House heard in Edinburgh, in early 2020, before the Covid-19 lockdown.

Award-winning author and writer Ian Fraser sets out his views of how and why the Scottish banking industry, much admired by Adam Smith, have fallen from grace.

Distinguished global economist and writer, and former Management Editor of The Economist, Frances Cairncross has been in the vanguard of thinkers interpreting and making sense of our chaotic and contradictory world. Dr Cairncross is also Chair of Heriot-Watt University Court, where she helps guide the institution’s future. She talks with Panmure House Perspectives Writer Kenny Kemp.

The regeneration of Panmure House, Adam Smith’s final home, is now nearing completion. Panmure House Perspectives met with Professor Keith Lumsden, former director of Edinburgh Business School and the driving force behind the original project. He speaks with chief writer Kenny Kemp.

Dr Steve Johnson reviews a serious issue that is endemic in our business world: fraud. So what motivates those who steal from their employers and what can be done to halt this alarming global trend? He speaks to Kenny Kemp about his doctoral research inside a Southeast Asian non-governmental organisation.

Bob Buchan, Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, shares a selection of his business lessons learned at the sharp end of financing gold and copper mines in the harshest regions of the world. He received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt in 2011. He spoke to Kenny Kemp.

Professor Robert MacIntosh, Head of School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, argues that thoughtful educational institutions must answer the key question: ‘Why study with us?’