Quick links for main economic statistics My page with graphs Main ONS dataset Useful direct links Economic growth National income acc Real GDP | % quarterly Inflation inflation series CPI annual % Unemployment Labour market ILO % Current account b of p pnbp C.A % GDP Budget deficit psf at ONS | psf at …
On the day Spain, announced its unemployment rate had increased to a truly staggering 27%, many see the UK’s anaemic growth rate of 0.3% in Q1 2013 as a ‘success’. But, it is worth noting UK real GDP is still considerably below its 2008 peak. Dataset ABMI at ONS When you look at GDP like …
Readers Question: Why do countries that experience a boom risk losing international competitiveness? An economic boom implies that an economy is growing above its long term trend rate. This means that the rate of economic growth is high, but there tend to be inflationary pressures because demand is growing faster than supply. The impact of …
Readers Question: I’ve recently been studying monetarism and I have a question with regards to printing money. It is well known than printing money leads to inflation as demonstrated by the Fisher equation, but say if the new money created was all spent on imports i.e. all the newly printed money leaked from the domestic …
Another guide to inflationary pressures is the producer price index (PPI). Producer inflation measures the price of goods produced by manufacturing firms. This is sometimes referred to as ‘factor gate prices’ In the year to February 2013 the output price index for home sales of manufactured products rose 2.3%. In the same period the total …
In recent years, I’ve frequently stated that fiscal consolidation can actually increase debt levels. It may seem a paradox because fiscal consolidation aims to reduce the budget deficit by increasing taxes and cutting spending. Yet, under circumstances, policies to reduce debt levels can actually cause a rise in debt to GDP. This seems to be …
A debt spiral refers to a situation where a country (or firm or individual) sees ever-increasing levels of debt. This increasing levels of debt and debt interest become unsustainable, eventually leading to debt default. Types of Debt Spirals Public sector debt. This is debt that the government owe to the private sector (e.g. UK public …
When I do mock interviews for PPE at Oxford, one of my favourite questions to ask is. – Who should manage the economy – unelected professional economists or politicians who get elected but might not know about economics? There’s no easy answer. In practise it is an element of both. But, essentially, in a democracy, …