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22. The Perfect Storm: Economic stagnation, the rising cost of living, public spending cuts, and the impact on UK poverty
- Author:
- Moussa Haddad
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- The combination in the UK of economic stagnation and public spending cuts is causing substantial hardship to people living in poverty. This amounts to a 'Perfect Storm' of falling incomes, rising prices, public service cuts, benefit cuts, a housing crisis, and weak labour rights. By making different political choices, the government can both protect people in poverty and help to stimulate economic recovery in the short term, and set the UK on the way towards economic, social and environmental sustainability in the long term.
- Topic:
- Economics, Environment, Poverty, Labor Issues, and Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom
23. London 2012 - Medal Projection - Medaillenvorausberechnung
- Author:
- Wolfgang Maennig and Christian Wellbrock
- Publication Date:
- 02-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg
- Abstract:
- We project the medal number and medal ranking for the Olympic Games in London in 2012. The largest relative increase is predicted for Brazil (80% more medals) and the UK (+28%).UK will continue to rank 4th. The largest decreases in medal numbers are predicted for Australia (-13%, but remains in 5th place) and the USA (-13%, remains No. 1). Germany should retain a rank of 6th and will win 38 medals (compared to 41 in 2008).
- Topic:
- Economics, Sports, and Olympics
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, and London
24. The Liquidation of Government Debt
- Author:
- Carmen M. Reinhart
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of "financial repression." Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive domestic audiences (such as pension funds), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, regulation of cross-border capital movements, and (generally) a tighter connection between government and banks. In this paper, the authors describe some of the regulatory measures and policy actions that characterized the heyday of the financial repression era. In the heavily regulated financial markets of the Bretton Woods system, several restrictions facilitated a sharp and rapid reduction in public debt/GDP ratios from the late 1940s to the 1970s. Low nominal interest rates help reduce debt servicing costs while a high incidence of negative real interest rates liquidates or erodes the real value of government debt. Thus, financial repression is most successful in liquidating debts when accompanied by a steady dose of inflation. Inflation need not take market participants entirely by surprise and, in effect, it need not be very high (by historical standards). For the advanced economies in Reinhart and Sbrancia's sample, real interest rates were negative roughly half of the time during 1945–80. For the United States and the United Kingdom, their estimates of the annual liquidation of debt via negative real interest rates amounted on average to 3 to 4 percent of GDP a year. For Australia and Italy, which recorded higher inflation rates, the liquidation effect was larger (around 5 percent per annum).
- Topic:
- Debt, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States and United Kingdom
25. Exploring BME Maternal Poverty: The financial lives of ethnic minority mothers in Tyne and Wear
- Author:
- Chris Warburton Brown
- Publication Date:
- 01-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- This report has grown out of Oxfam's commitment to tackling the poverty of black and minority ethnic (BME) women in the UK. It aims to improve our understanding of BME mothers' experiences of poverty, to address the way in which the poverty of BME mothers is hidden from conventional data collection, to raise awareness amongst policy-makers and practitioners of the material circumstances of low-income BME mothers, and to improve the ways in which poor BME women are supported to secure greater assets and resources.
- Topic:
- Economics, Gender Issues, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom and Europe
26. A Generalized Fact and Model of Long-Run Economic Growth: Kaldor Fact as a Special Case
- Author:
- Daniel Danxia Xie
- Publication Date:
- 02-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- This paper provides new evidence on the long-run relationship between economic growth and labor's share in national income, based on a comprehensive panel data set for 123 countries from 1950 to 2004. Xie's primary finding is that labor's share follows a cubic relationship with real GDP per capita over the long process of development. At the beginning of the modern economic growth process, the share of labor in national income first decreases until an initial threshold is reached. After that, labor's share keeps increasing until the country's GDP per capita reaches a second threshold before falling again. Xie argues that these dynamics apply not only to the less developed countries in the postwar years, but also to the advanced countries like the United States and the United Kingdom during their early economic take-offs, starting in the late 18th and 19th century, respectively. Finally, he proposes a two-sector constant elasticity of substitution (CES)-type growth model and simulate the model to replicate and explain the possible mechanism behind such a nonlinear pattern of movements in labor's share.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, Labor Issues, and Monetary Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States and United Kingdom
27. Longevity, Capital Formation and Economic Development
- Author:
- Qiong Zhang
- Publication Date:
- 07-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Many researchers have concluded that longer life expectancies prompt increased investment in education, as a prolonged labor supply raises the rate of return on education. Besides explaining the empirical evidence behind this conclusion (at an absolute level), there is another issue to be discussed: does time spent in studying and working increase proportionally with higher longevity? Building on an extended life-cycle model with an assumption on a more realistic distribution of life cycle mortality rates, this article considers dynamic effects of prolonging longevity on economic development by directly introducing changes in longevity into the economy, which is more preferable than comparative static analysis that relies on changes in relevant parameters. It shows that prolonged life expectancy will cause individuals to increase their time in education but may not warrant rises in labor input. Later we show that higher improvement rate of longevity will also promote economic growth, even we exclude the mechanism of human capital formation, and only consider growth effects of higher improvement rate of life expectancy from physical capital investment.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Education, Health, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- United States and United Kingdom
28. Is the recovery sustainable in the US and Europe?
- Publication Date:
- 02-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxford Economics
- Abstract:
- Following the worst recession since the 1930s, the US, UK and Eurozone economies have all now returned to positive growth. With the boost from policy stimulus and the inventory cycle peaking, however, this raises questions about the sustainability of the current rebound. The analysis presented here suggests that the recoveries in both the US and Europe will be relatively muted compared to recent historical experience. The US is likely to be the growth leader, reflecting the more dynamic nature of its economy and financial sector. A key uncertainty relates to how labour markets will perform during the recovery phase. To date, the rise in US unemployment been particularly severe when compared to the experience of Europe. In light of the sharp falls in European productivity, we expect employment gains in Europe to be more muted in the recovery phase than in the US. The performance of residential real estate markets also remains important. Home prices in the US are now close to fair value by most metrics, suggesting that the correction in prices is likely to be bottoming out. In Europe, only Spain and Ireland appear to be in the midst of substantial housing market corrections. Commercial real estate markets are also facing ongoing corrections in many countries. While conditions in the US and Eurozone may deteriorate further, commercial property values appear to be stabilising in the UK following earlier sharp declines. The ability of the banking sector to finance the economic recoveries in the US and Europe remains a key risk to the growth outlook. As the process of absorbing credit losses and rebuilding capital is likely to be protracted, the normalisation of lending standards is likely to take longer than following recent recessions. This is a particular concern for the Eurozone, where bank funding is more important for companies. Whether domestic demand in the US and Europe recovers will also depend on whether private sector deleveraging has further to run. The destruction of household net wealth in the US suggests that the personal savings rate has further to rise, whereas there no longer appears to be a pressing need for households in the UK and Eurozone to consolidate their balance sheets. In contrast, non-financial corporations in the US are in a stronger financial position than their European peers, having not increased debt levels as rapidly during the credit boom. Risks around public finances have received the most attention in recent weeks. In particular, the adjustments underway in Greece pose a risk of potential contagion from sovereign credit risk that could threaten growth on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Topic:
- Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, and Europe
29. The Realities and Relevance of Japan's Great Recession: Neither Ran nor Rashomon
- Author:
- Adam S. Posen
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- Japan's Great Recession was the result of a series of macroeconomic and financial policy mistakes. Thus, it was largely avoidable once the initial shock from the bubble bursting had passed. The aberration in Japan's recession was not the behaviour of growth, which is best seen as a series of recoveries aborted by policy errors. Rather, the surprise was the persistent steadiness of limited deflation, even after recovery took place. This is a more fundamental challenge to our basic macroeconomic understanding than is commonly recognized. The UK and US economies are at low risk of having recurrent recessions through macroeconomic policy mistakes—but deflation itself cannot be ruled out. The United Kingdom worryingly combines a couple of financial parallels to Japan with far less room for fiscal action to compensate for them than Japan had. Also, Japan did not face poor prospects for external demand and the need to reallocate productive resources across export sectors during its Great Recession. Many economies do now face this challenge simultaneously, which may limit the pace of, and their share in, the global recovery.
- Topic:
- Economics, Markets, Monetary Policy, and Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, and United Kingdom
30. EU-India strategic partnership: Taking the stock
- Author:
- Alok Rashmi Mukhopadhyay
- Publication Date:
- 08-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta
- Abstract:
- The prevalent perception of the European Union (EU) in India is predominantly constructed by the British and American media. At the time of a global economic downturn, its ripple effects on the continent especially on the 'PIIGS' (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and an imminent crack in the Eurozone have been the debate of the day. In a recent article in The National Interest, James Joyner, has however examined this genre of 'Europe's obituary'. Making a comparison with EU's transatlantic sibling, he identifies three errors in this type of analyses, 'treating the EU as if it were a nation-state, regarding anything less than utopia as a failure, and projecting short-term trends long into the future'. However Joyner is also right when he describes the EU as 'a confusing array of overlapping treaty commitments'.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Bilateral Relations
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, America, Europe, India, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland