Forward guidance needed for companies, not consumers
Most of the commentary on the UK’s economic recovery focuses on consumers. Are they taking on too much debt again to finance their spending? Is there a bubble in house prices, as people get excited about bricks and mortar again? Certainly, in terms of its sheer size, spending by consumers is by far the biggest […]
German revival exposes deep fissure within Europe’s economies
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Germany was seen by many as the new ‘Sick Man of Europe’. Between 1991 and 2005, GDP growth averaged only 1.2 per cent a year, compared to 3.3 per cent in the UK. Since then, the German economy has revived dramatically. The recovery in the German cluster of economies […]
Onion Economics
There is something about onions which brings out the worst in bureaucrats. Orlando Figes’ A People’s Tragedy chronicles the early years of the Russian revolution. Under war communism, the Bolsheviks attempted to exert state control over the entire economy. A long list of vegetables was drawn up, specifying the prices at which they could be […]
Valentine’s Day: Myth and Reality
Valentine’s Day is almost upon us. Many readers may recall a time when its main purpose was for love-struck teenagers to communicate, anonymously or otherwise, with the objects of their desire. Now, it is big business. It is hardly possible to enter a pub or restaurant without being exhorted to publicly display fidelity and love […]
Farewell Facebook?
So farewell, then, Facebook! That is the conclusion of a highly technical paper by two Princeton researchers, John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler, which received a lot of publicity in the press last week. The authors conclude that “Facebook will undergo a rapid decline in the coming years, losing 80 per cent of its peak user […]
The so-called ‘output gap’: another piece of economic mumbo-jumbo
The concept of the’ output gap’ is central to mainstream macroeconomics. It is not merely of academic interest. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has a specific requirement to estimate the output gap, which it defines formally as “the difference between the current level of activity in the economy and the potential level it could […]
Psychology, not economics, is the key if we leave the EU
Poland is the only European country to avoid a recession during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Polish GDP is 36 per cent higher than it was in 2005. To put this in context, the comparable figures for the UK and Germany are 5 and 12 respectively. The Polish economy has been a stunning success by […]
The recovery is well grounded – except in France
The coming year looks like it will be a good one. At the start of each of the past five years, the economic scales have been tilted down, and the challenge has been to look for factors which might have tipped them back up. This year, the balance is reversed. The onus lies with the […]
How Bad Has It Been? 2008-2013 in Historical Perspective
The end of a year is a good time to take stock. For the first time since 2007, prospects for the UK for the forthcoming year look unequivocally good. But looking back, just how bad have the last few years been across the developed world as a whole? And how do they compare with previous […]
Have Bankers Been Practising Socialism? The Debate About the Top 1 Per Cent
Boris Johnson has got into trouble for his statement that it is “surely relevant to a conversation about equality” that just 2 per cent of “our species” has an IQ over 130. Over the past couple of years, the Occupy movement has made headlines by attacking the top 1 per cent. The summer 2013 edition […]
