There have been a couple of thoughtful pieces from Paul Krugman challenging the consensus that Brexit will have very high short-term economic cost. Krugman’s argument is: There is uncertainty, but uncertainty on itself is not enough to create a significant demand side shock. In fact, when the uncertainty is resolved, we could have a mini-boom …
The UK saw net migration of 330,000 in the last year. If net migration were to fall significantly – how would this affect the UK economy? Net migration is generally difficult to predict, but there are good reasons to assume this is likely to fall in future years. Net migration will likely fall because: Climate …
The EU has many achievements of which it can rightly claim. Long period of peace and prosperity, unrivalled in European history. Secured transition to democracy for countries such as Spain and post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe Free trade and free movement has helped improve economic growth and living standards. Working on European wide problems, such …
Negative bond yields (e.g. -0.04% on 2 year gilt) mean that those who hold the bond to maturity will receive less than the value of the bond. A negative bond yield is usually very rare. In normal circumstances, investors require some yield (interest) to give an incentive to buy government bond. There is no good …
In this recent post we saw some of the economic and political challenges of allowing free movement of labour within an economic block, such as the EU28. To what extent can the government / EU mitigate these negative impacts, whilst retaining free movement of labour? 1. Funding related to number of people. One issue of …
To what extent was Labour’s remain campaign insufficient? It’s hard to say. Labour voters did vote 63% to remain, which compares to SNP (64%), Greens (75%) and Lib Dems (70%) and 42% Conservative. 4% for UKIP. How UK voted Pros of campaign It started well with message that social and economic problems caused by austerity …
There are perhaps 16 million people who voted Remain and are now very unhappy at the decision to leave the EU. Feelings are so strong there are calls for a second referendum – 3 million signing a petition for a 2nd referendum. However, if the initial referendum was over-turned, you would have 17 million very …
Some thing that weren’t always made clear during EU referendum. Economic experts are worth listening to. A string of senior ‘leave’ politicians lined up to say you shouldn’t listen to economists making warnings about short term and long-term damage to economy. But, just because economic analysis is inconvenient to your point of view, doesn’t alter …