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 Questions: is this the worse time to be a young adult in the UK? I will answer this question primarily from the economic point of view. The first thought that springs to mind is that if you look at the long history of the UK, this is probably a good time to be young …
Some thought provoking analysis from NIESR. Firstly, they define recession and depression in an interesting way. Recession – a period of time where output is falling. Depression – The period of time where output is below it’s peak. The UK economy is now growing, at a decent pace (0.8% in Q3). However, output is still …
Readers Question: National debt is now extremely high. However aren’t there different kinds of debt e.g that which funds current spending, that which funds investment in infrastructure and emergency (bank bail out etc) Surely it’s the first we should really be worried about and less concerned with borrowing that makes the economy more efficient such …
Readers Question: How sustainable do you think that the austerity measured imposed on European countries are in economic and political terms? This is a good question. Firstly, I feel there is a certain political appeal of austerity. See: Why is austerity politically popular? When austerity was introduced, there was a reluctant support for austerity – …
The post 2008 recession has seen the longest decline in real GDP on record. 55 months after the peak output of 2008, the UK economy is still 4% below it’s peak. By contrast, in the same time frame during the early 1930s, the economy had recovered to be more than 2% higher than the 1930 …
Welfare spending in the UK is a controversial topic. There is significant political and public concern at the growth of welfare spending in the past few decades. In particular, there is a fear that the growth of the welfare state is encouraging a ‘dependency culture’. But, how much has welfare spending actually increased by? Are …
We tend to consider the impact of immigration on our own country. – How do immigrants affect UK unemployment? UK housing? UK labour markets? and GDP (e.g. economic impact of immigration). However, the flip side of the coin, is how does migration affect developing economies? Recently, the World Bank reported that migrants working in developed …