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 …
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 …
Will the UK’s decision to leave the EU cause recession? Factors which could cause Brexit recession Loss of confidence. Many foreign investors may be deterred from investing in the UK because of uncertainties that they may have higher costs for accessing the Single Market. This decline in investment could lead to fall in aggregate demand. …
In economics, the framing effect states consumer choices will be influenced by how information is presented. One of the challenges of an economist is to find correct statistics and present them in a way which offers a meaningful and fair portrayal of the situation. Everyone has certain political bias and it can be tempting to …
George Osborne has recently stated that leaving the EU could leave a black hole in public finances of £30bn and this would lead to sharp budget cuts – tax rises and spending cuts. This raises the interesting question of whether you can talk yourself into a recession. Do predictions of recession become self-fulfilling? How can …
A big issue is how net migration is affecting the National Health Service. Does an influx of migrants place greater strain on the NHS? Is migration a convenient excuse for the more long-term issues facing the NHS? To what extent do migrants work for the NHS? If we cut migration levels would that affect taxation …
In the 1960s, a big political issue was the size of the deficit. Not the budget deficit, but the current account deficit on the balance of payments. In recent years, worries about the balance of payments (current account deficit) have slipped from the political and media agenda. However, we have a very strong importance attached …
Fiscal rules are attempts by the government to limit public sector debt and annual borrowing to certain criteria. For example, a simple fiscal rule might state a government should have maximum annual deficit of 3% of GDP. Alternative, the government may plan to run zero deficit over the course of the economic cycle. Generally, economists …