Economics — Page 2

Economics
Beyond Austerity: A Growth Plan for Europe

4th May 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Duncan Weldon

I’ve spent the last couple of days in Rome at the excellent ‘Beyond Austerity’ conference, not to be confused with the TUC’s own upcoming (and highly recommended) ‘After Austerity’ conference.

Most of the papers from Beyond Austerity are available here and are well worth a look.

I can’t really do justice to two days of discussions in one blog post (and another post specifically on banking and financial regulation will follow next week) but I thought it might be interesting to try and summarise the key points of what a European growth agenda might look like.

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Economics
World economy going badly wrong, says ILO

1st May 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Owen Tudor

The ILO released its World of Work Report 2012 on Monday, and it’s grim reading, especially in the advanced economies where there are over 43 million unemployed workers. The International Institute of Labour Studies, the bit of the ILO which produced the report, found that although growth has returned to some economies since the crisis, jobs are not recovering, the risks of social unrest are increasing in most parts of the world, and, as lead report author Raymond Torres says pithily about fiscal consolidation or austerity: “the prescribed cure is killing the patient.”

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Economics
UK & US Policy Compared

26th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Duncan Weldon

Yesterday’s GDP figures have reopened the debate on the UK versus the US recoveries and the effectiveness of different policy responses.

Some commentators are loath to blame the government’s austerity programme for the stagnation of the economy over the past 15 months. Instead they point to factors such as the Eurozone crisis and an external inflation shock that depressed household incomes. Now of course the Eurozone crisis will have impact on UK exports – but there was little evidence of this in 2011 where net trade actually added to growth whilst the domestic economy contracted. Equally the inflation shock has certainly had an impact, but it seems clear to me that the government’s fiscal policies have also been a drag on growth.

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Economics
GDP growth gaps

25th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Richard Exell

I’d like to follow up my post this morning with another about low growth (as opposed to actual recession.) One problem with all the emphasis on recession is it encourages the belief that the flatlining we’ve had for the last year and a half is okay, really. And if the revision of the GDP figures next month reveals that the economy actually grew slightly (a strong possibility) some people will conclude that there isn’t a problem after all.

This morning I mentioned the need for the economy to grow at about 0.8 per cent a year to keep up with population growth, otherwise per capita GDP will fall. The other issue is that we’re used to a certain rate of growth to pay for a gradually rising standard of living and to maintain employment. In the twenty years before the recession growth averaged slightly over half a per cent per quarter – even if we always avoided negative growth, sustained growth below this level will feel pretty cruddy.

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Economics
GDP: one chart

25th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Richard Exell

Today’s GDP figures are bad and let’s hope that the fact that we’re officially back in recession makes the government think again. (Some of us have been worrying this was going to happen for a while.) But the precise figure isn’t that important: even if we had had growth of plus 0.2 per cent it wouldn’t have made much difference to the picture of what has happened since the recession:

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Economics
What level of growth would be a ‘success’?

24th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Duncan Weldon

Tomorrow we get GDP figures for the first quarter. Given this it seems like a good time to look (once again) at what is happening to national income per head.

2011 is widely accepted as a bad year for the UK economy – it was characterised by low growth overall, falling domestic demand, a squeeze on living standards and rising unemployment.

But in many ways it was actually even worse than is widely acknowledge – GDP per capita (i.e. growth once we account for population change) actually fell.

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Economics
Mortgage rates & the aims of policy

20th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Duncan Weldon

George Osborne’s Budget statement:

Mr Deputy Speaker, our commitment to reduce the deficit is keeping interest rates low.

In this Budget, we take measures to ensure that the benefits of those low market interest rates are felt across our economy.

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Economics
The Labour Market in One Chart

19th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Duncan Weldon

Yesterday I wrote that the ‘recovery’ in the labour market was driven part-time and precarious work and marked by falling real wages. The chart below sums up many of the outstanding issues:

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Economics
A part-time and precarious ‘recovery’

18th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics

Duncan Weldon

Today’s Labour Market Statistics brought the welcome news that employment has risen and unemployment fallen, but looking below the headlines reveals a more gloomy picture. The ‘recovery’ is being driven by part-time and precarious work, whilst real wages are falling. As I explain over at Left Foot Forward, today’s numbers are no cause for celebration.

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Economics
Employment Blackspots Update

18th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Labour market

Anjum Klair

The unemployment data released today shows that not only is West Dunbartonshire still the hardest place in Great Britain to find a job, the number of claimants chasing each vacancy has increased from thirty one to thirty six.

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