Useful post from Paul Krugman about a comparison between the French and UK recoveries. It stems from comments by a Conservative cabinet minister that ‘the French economy is being run into the sand.’ For those who can’t get past the NY Times paywall, I’ll post the two graphs here. UK and France since 2010 The …
I’m a big fan of Waterstones. It’s a good bookshop. It’s not Amazon; it even pays UK taxes. I like the atmosphere of bookshops and would be sad if they disappear from the High Street to be replaced by drones delivering books from anonymous warehouses somewhere off the M4. Even though Amazon is often cheaper, …
Definition of Balanced budget: When total government spending equals government tax receipts. A budget surplus when spending is less than revenue is also considered a balanced budget. Usually, governments have a political incentive to spend more money than they actually have. This leads to a budget deficit because they need to borrow from the private …
The European Union is facing the prospect of a serious bout of deflation (or at least, very low rates of inflation / disinflation) Deflation occurs when prices fall. But, very low rates of inflation are considered to raise problems associated with deflation. In the Eurozone, the main index of inflation has fallen to 0.7% – …
How much is the internet helping to increase productivity? Do distractions like Facebook and Twitter mean the overall benefits of the internet are less than we might hope? How does the internet compare to other technology revolutions, such as stem power and electricity? I often work from a cafe. It’s a nice combination – good …
According to Search marketing agency the Eword, Google hold 89.5% of the market share for internet search in the UK. Bing (owned by Microsoft) taks only a relatively small 6.11%. For such an important market, this is a very high market share, and shows Google has extensive monopoly power. This monopoly power has also been …
Fixed capital formation refers to the process of a firm increasing its stock of fixed capital. Fixed capital are assets used in the productive process, that a firm holds for over a year. (Fixed capital formation does not include current raw materials used in the productive process) Fixed capital can also be referred to as …
Definition – A transaction cost is any cost involved in making an economic transaction. For example, when buying a good or buying foreign exchange, there will be some transaction costs (in addition to the price of the good.) The transaction cost could be financial, extra time or inconvenience. Transaction costs could involve. Paying a margin to …