“Light touch” regulation is now seen as one of the primary contributors to the recent global recession. This post makes the case for true “light touch” regulation – as opposed to simply bad legislation – and warns that this distinction should not be forgotten, as governments attempt to learn from the recession. Not only is light touch not part of the problem, it’s a key part of the solution, if EU estimates of a stimulus of €150bn from reducing red-tape by 25% are anything to go by.
This post uses the latest IMF World Economic Outlook to examine which countries have been affected most by the recession. Looking at 2010-2013 growth rates, it breaks the recession’s impact down into two periods, the initial economic crisis and the subsequent rebound over the past 12 months. It finds that the recent recovery is very broadly based.
With the 2010 World Cup down to the last sixteen, what would a World Cup of economics look like? How would the sixteen countries that are left fare, if they were competing on economic factors, not football ones? This post presents the Last 16 with a twist – each match is decided by a country’s economic defence, midfield and attack.
With all the investment banks getting in on the act, here’s another shameless attempt to cash in on the World Cup. When will Ronaldo dive? What can behavioural economics tell us about this? After a quick poll, to profile Ronaldo, this post looks at three schools of thought in economics that might reveal something about when Ronaldo will dive: how people are biased to the present, how people value fairness and how people dislike ambiguity.
This post examines the latest OECD data, to see which economies have been most affected by “lost trade” during the Great Recession, especially as it is being rewritten in the light of eurozone/PIIGS crisis. It turns out that the nature of the exporting sector, and not the government’s finances, has determined a country’s trading success since 2008, with drug-exporting Ireland and Switzerland among the least affected, while Finland (ICT) and Japan (cars) find themselves among the most affected.
This post examines the so-called “web of debt” across the EU, a graphic published in a recent New York Times article. By using gross debt statistics, and regardless of the borrower’s sector, the chart misses the obvious point that the markets are worried primarily about government debt. Indeed, the logic of the chart forces the authors into almost the completely wrong conclusion about the UK!
This post explores the now freely available World Development Indicators, from the World Bank. In particular, it looks at urbanisation and the role for cities in development and creating wealth and well-being. Over the past 50 years, China in particular has urbanised fast. Over the next 50, India may be the centre of city growth. This presents development challenges but on balance is a huge opportunity.
Inflation in the eurozone has jumped up in recent months from -0.5% to +1.0%. This post examines the likely pressures on eurozone inflation in 2010, by looking at the prices of commodities. Using World Bank data on commodity prices, it finds rapid inflation in commodities since late 2009. With the current over-reliance of macroeconomic policy on interest rates, this poses a threat to eurozone growth.
With so much of the focus of the media and markets on Greece and its PIGS neighbours in the eurozone, one could easily forget that the UK will have the largest deficit in the EU this year and next. This post suggests that being outside the eurozone is a two-way street for the UK. The lack of restraint on its fiscal policy is already showing, with a simple index of government finance statistics placing the UK finances as the weakest of 24 developed countries.
This post reviews the ILO’s Global Wage Report and in particular its expanding dataset on internal inequality between top and bottom earners. While inequality has fallen in many countries, including Ireland, there is no strong evidence of a global trend in that direction. The figures contain an important reminder: even the poorest in wealthy countries live in conditions that average earners in most other countries would happily take.
