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Tim Harford introduces inventions, ideas and innovations that have helped to create the modern economic world. Insurance is fundamental to the way the modern economy works.

Legally and culturally, there's a clear distinction between gambling and insurance. Economically, the difference is not so easy to see. Both the gambler and the insurer agree that money will change hands depending on what transpires in some unknowable future. Today the biggest insurance market of all - financial derivatives - blurs the line between insuring and gambling more than ever. Tim Harford tells the story of insurance; an idea as old as gambling but one which is fundamental to the way the modern economy works.

Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon.

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15 minutes

Last on

Thu 6 Apr 2017 12:04

Broadcast

  • Thu 6 Apr 2017 12:04

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