The UK economy in 2016 is emerging from a long period of economic stagnation and the recession of 2008-12, and has some positive signals of growth, low inflation and falling unemployment. However, the UK chancellor has been giving mixed signals. On the one hand he has pointed out that UK has one of the strongest …
Economists attempt to make forecasts for leading economic variables such as Inflation Economic growth House prices Exchange rates Population growth The main importance of economic forecasts is to help policymakers make better decisions. For example, if the economy was forecast to enter into a recession, the government could consider implementing expansionary fiscal policy (higher spending …
Given levels of UK national debt and forecasts for rises in government debt, what are the prospects for a UK debt default? The UK has had higher levels of national debt after the First and Second World War Bond Yields Bond yields on UK government gilts are reasonable and don’t predict any default. In fact …
I’m off to New York on Wednesday, I’m tempted to stay until May 8th, so I can miss the UK General election campaigning, which so far has been quite depressing for the poor quality of economic debate. This is just an outline of some issues for consideration. I may expand upon these in the coming …
A report by NIESR suggests that austerity pursued by the government in 2010, needlessly led to a delayed economic recovery and could have cost the UK 5% of GDP or £1,500 per person. The austerity was unnecessary because The lower growth led to delayed rises in tax increases and Interest rates were at 0%, and …
There are a raft of different methods of calculating government debt. It can be a little bewildering (even for an economics teacher!). I have tried to define the key terms in a simple format and also a more detailed and precise way. This only focuses on the UK. Defining Public Sector Debt Simple Way: Government …
Readers Question: Is there an inbuilt deflationary bias in the Eurozone? Note: I originally wrote this post in 2010. Unfortunately, every year there is a reason to update the post and suggest the deflationary bias in the Eurozone keeps getting stronger. Deflationary bias means that there is a tendency for economic policy to promote lower …
What is the UK’s debt burden? Firstly, there are different types of debt to consider Government debt – See: public sector debt (often referred to as National debt) Private sector debt – indebtedness of householders, finance sector and non-financial companies. External debt – the amount we ‘owe’ to other countries In addition, you might take …