The world’s two biggest economies – the United States and China – have been engulfed in a trade war for the last couple of years. Like most Western countries, the United States denounces China for stealing US intellectual property, criticises it for engaging in unfair competition on world markets through subsidies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and finally laments insufficient […]
On Saturday 19 October 2019, the UK Parliament faces a historic choice over whether or not to vote through the new deal agreed by Boris Johnson and the European Union. Members should demand that the Johnson deal be put to the people against the alternative of a much better deal – remaining in the EU.
This People’s Vote is demanded […]
The effect of trade liberalisation on economic activity remains one of the most important questions in economics. While prominent theories of international trade show that free trade improves the allocation of resources and welfare within countries (the so called “reallocation channel”), trade scepticism is at a historical high in many policy circles around the world.
It is well understood that […]
The crisis has resulted in a substantial rise in unemployment in Europe and a notable divergence in unemployment rates and labour market outcomes post-crisis. Particularly, the events that unfolded since the financial crisis and the ensuing sovereign debt — as well as political and institutional — crisis had a tremendous impact on labour markets across Europe. Following a period […]
Boris Johnson recently tweeted a video of a baby making his first steps. He captioned it ‘Let’s get Brexit done’. Yet these baby steps post-Brexit may not be so pleasant. In fact, the UK government admits that they will not take place at all – at least not in October, as Johnson’s tweets promise. In the latest round of […]
There are competing visions for British trade policy: ‘Global Britain’, which sees a sovereign Britain trading free from the shackles of the EU on the basis of WTO rules, with an ability to shape its own rules; and what might be called the “European continuity vision” that sees UK interests closely linked to the EU. Looking beyond the immediate […]
The role of innovation in explaining economic performance has been a focus of economic research for decades, and many questions remain unanswered. One of the main challenges is how we measure innovation. Only by improving the information we have at the firm level can we say something about the links between productivity, firm performance and the implementation of new ideas. In […]
Even the most open of market economies accepts professional monopolies. Clients hand over decision-making to doctors and lawyers based on reputations for expert knowledge and reliable practice. And governments protect professionals against competition from frauds as well as unlicensed practitioners. All of this stands in contrast to, say, the market for widgets, where the customer is always right and […]
Are you worried about big businesses and monopoly? Perhaps you should be, because they can charge you high prices and give you low-quality services. That’s why we have antitrust law in America and competition policy in Europe to stop companies from buying up each other and merging into monopoly.
But that’s not the whole story. Technologies come and go, taking […]
The countryside is generally perceived as a quiet and restrained place, and yet it has a long history of rebellion, riots and uprising in response to external pressures and changes. The Rebecca Riots in west and mid-Wales which lasted from 1839 to 1843 have gone down in history as a period where farmers took direct action at the perceived […]
The remarkable recovery in the Irish economy since 2013 has surprised many observers. Having been particularly affected by the international financial crisis of 2007/08, Irish economic activity has grown significantly since 2013, outpacing the rest of the euro area.
The emergence of the “Celtic Tiger” in the mid-1990s had been driven by an increasing reliance on trade. However, a property-related […]
In 2016 Dave Barnes, chief information and global business services officer of UPS, received a salary of $491,000 and a bonus payment of $251,000, while Pawan Verma, chief information and customer experience officer at Foot Locker, had a salary of $216,000 and a bonus of $664,000. Why in one case did the CIO receive the majority of his compensation in salary, […]
In the classroom I simply refer to him as “Weitzman”, in the same way people simply refer to Keynes, Arrow, Solow, or Hicks. Such widely understood abbreviations reflect their high standing and unique contributions. Students recognised the importance of Weitzman’s contributions to economic theory too. After a year-long lecture series, one of my students proposed a t-shirt with “What […]
A fortnight can be a very, very long time in politics. The plasticity of British politics has become mesmerising. A no-deal Brexit on 31st October, which for a moment looked all but inevitable, now seems to have melted into air. Sometimes, it is easy to become despondent when faced with the brutal immorality of vicious ideologues and moneyed elites. But […]
In much of the developing world, economic power is largely concentrated in the hands of a “market-dominant” ethnic minority. The classic case is southeast Asia, where the Chinese, usually a tiny proportion of the population, enjoy an overwhelmingly dominant economic position. In Malaysia, the average Chinese household had 1.9 times as much wealth as the Bumiputera (Khalid 2007); in […]
Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is a measure used by economists and business people to quantify the productivity of economies and firms. It essentially measures how efficiently and intensively the inputs to production (like capital and labour) are used. TFP receives a lot of attention and is often the main point of motivation behind research projects. Technology affects how these […]
Each day brings with it new drama in UK politics and the course of Brexit – and it’s playing havoc with the UK economy. The following four graphs show the extent that the UK is at risk of a recession – and I conclude that the only way to put an end to all the uncertainty that is plaguing […]
Have you tried buying a DVD player recently? If not, you might be out of luck soon as major retailers in the UK have stopped stocking them amid falling demand. The reason is not that people stopped watching videos (quite the opposite), but the rising popularity of online streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime that can be […]
Over the last three decades, euro area countries have experienced profound economic, financial and institutional changes, plus diverse shocks. Growth has been volatile, and almost missing, in some countries. In this study we have assembled a rich panel to find which factors might have played a role in stirring growth, and/or reducing it in the short and long run.
We […]
We are careening towards the most extreme form of Brexit imaginable – flouncing out of the European Union (EU) after 46 years, without any transition plan. Operation Yellowhammer, a leaked secret report from the government’s own officials predicted that the outcome of this “No Deal Brexit” would be shortages of medicines and fresh foods, civil unrest and transport chaos. […]
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