Prospects for the Uk Economy

2009 ◽  
Vol 207 ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Simon Kirby ◽  
Ray Barrell ◽  
Vladimir Pillonca

Since our October forecast events have conspired to worsen the outlook for the UK and global economy. Concerns about the solvency of banks across the globe have continued, and in some cases intensified. The inter-linkages of the global economy continue to be highlighted as the list of economies slipping into recession grows, even for those who have not suffered the direct shock of a crisis in their domestic banking system. Indeed what started as a problem in securities markets related to sub-prime lending in the US mortgage market has evolved into the near collapse of the global banking system. The UK has enjoyed the fruits of the rapid growth of financial intermediation over the past decade. However, such gains are being sharply reversed, as discussed on pp. 4–8 of this Review. The problem of access to credit for households and non-financial corporations still persists and, if anything, the situation seems to have deteriorated. As discussed on pp. 71–2 of this Review, Bank of England data suggest that lending by banks to households and businesses contracted in the final quarter of last year, even though £37 billion (2.6 per cent of money GDP) of new capital was injected into two major UK banking groups, effectively nationalising one of them (Royal Bank of Scotland).

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vishanth Weerakkody ◽  
Mohamad Osmani ◽  
Paul Waller ◽  
Nitham Hindi ◽  
Rajab Al-Esmail

<p>Continued professional development (CPD) has been at the centre of capacity building in most successful organisations in western countries over the past few decades. Specialised professions in fields such as Accounting, Finance and ICT, to name but a few, are continuously evolving, which is necessitating certain standards to be followed through registration and certification by a designated authority (e.g. ACCA). Whilst most developed countries such as the UK and the US have well established frameworks for CPD for these professions, several developing nations, including Qatar (the chosen context for this article) are only just beginning to adopt these frameworks into their local contexts. However, the unique socio-cultural settings in such countries require these frameworks to be appropriately modified before they are adopted within the respective national context. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of CPD in Qatar through comparing the UK as a benchmark and drawing corresponding and contrasting observations to formulate a roadmap towards developing a high level framework.</p>


2007 ◽  
Vol 200 ◽  
pp. 7-30 ◽  

The global economy expanded by 5.3 per cent in 2006, one of the fastest rates of growth in the past 35 years. We project further expansions of 5 per cent this year and 4¾ per cent in 2008. The key risks to the forecast that we highlight in this Review relate to global housing markets and the current stance of monetary policy. The US economy is restrained by the recent correction in its housing market, which is expected to continue to weigh on the economy through 2008. There is some concern that the housing investment downturn may spread to other economies, and in this report we explore the areas most at risk to such a contagion. We also consider the recent volatility in the oil price, which makes it difficult for monetary authorities to distinguish signal from noise. If too much emphasis is placed on what subsequently turns out to be noise, policy settings could turn out to be overly lax or stringent.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 191-195
Author(s):  
Jerry Dupont

I work for the Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC), a cooperative with some 900 participating members. Most are in the US, with a fair number in Canada and some in Australia, the UK and sixteen other countries. For over a quarter of a century LLMC has provided its member libraries with a wide range of legal titles, including much Commonwealth material, on microfiche. We grew hoary in that task, but have been rejuvenated in a new role. We've just launched an on-line digital library, LLMC-Digital, which will provide vastly enhanced access to our materials. The foundation for this endeavour is our backfile of 92,000 volumes (some 49-million page images) filmed during the past 27 years. To that base will be added every new title acquired in LLMC's future filming or scanning.


2013 ◽  
Vol 224 ◽  
pp. R1-R13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Besley ◽  
Miguel Coelho ◽  
John Van Reenen

What policies and institutions are needed to sustain long-run growth in the UK? We describe an optimistic story of the UK economy over the past 30 years. From the late 1970s, the UK reversed a century of relative decline in terms of per capita GDP with our main counterparts in the US, France and Germany. A key factor behind this improvement was an array of policy changes including an expansion of higher education and greater competition in product and labour markets. However, major weaknesses with respect to long-run investment in human capital, infrastructure and innovation remain. These are hampered by problems of short-termism and policy risk. We propose a series of radical reforms to address these problems: such as more flexibility in schooling with a new focus on disadvantage; a new architecture for national infrastructure decisions and more competition in banking.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Meckling

Over the past decade, carbon trading has emerged as the policy instrument of choice in the industrialized world to address global climate change. In this article I argue that a transnational business coalition, representing mostly energy firms and energy-intensive manufacturers, actively promoted the global rise of carbon trading. In this process, business was able to draw on the support of government allies and business-oriented environmental groups, particularly in the UK and the US. Alongside its allies, the coalition had pivotal influence in the internationalization of carbon trading through the Kyoto Protocol, in the U-turn of the EU from skeptic to frontrunner on carbon trading and in the re-import of carbon trading to the US. While business was not able to prevent mandatory emission controls, it was able to critically affect the regulatory style of climate policy in favor of low-cost, market-based options.


Author(s):  
Sergey Avetisyan

Over the past decade, the credit quality of loan portfolios across most countries in the world remained relatively stable until the financial crises hit the global economy in 2007&ndash;2008. In this paper I discuss, the relationship between non-performing loans and economic landscape. Since 2008, nonperforming loans have been an increasingly hot topic in the international scene, due to their important and rising volume and their impact on the economy as a whole, on the banking system and on its credit supply. Since then, average bank asset quality deteriorated sharply due to the global economic recession. Yet the deterioration of loan performance was very uneven across countries. I am interested in explaining these differences in bank asset quality across countries and over time. In this paper, I therefore study the empirical determinants of non-performing loan (NPL) ratios using a data set for EU countries covering the past decade. The paper assumes that the spatial organization of banking systems and the geographical distribution of comercial banks branches, ATMs and GDP growth are major factors influencing the effectiveness in credit system. The aim of this paper is to construct a continuous and quantifiable model, which will demonstrate a role of economic condition, technology, competition, policy, business climate in Financial Stability. Main hypotheses suggests, that GDP growth, interest rate, new business, FDI, ATMs and geographical distribution of branches have an influences on NPL (non-performing loans).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Jones ◽  
Beatriz Kira ◽  
Anna Sands ◽  
Danilo B. Garrido Alves

The internet and digital technologies are upending global trade. Industries and supply chains are being transformed, and the movement of data across borders is now central to the operation of the global economy. Provisions in trade agreements address many aspects of the digital economy – from cross-border data flows, to the protection of citizens’ personal data, and the regulation of the internet and new technologies like artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making. The UK government has identified digital trade as a priority in its Global Britain strategy and one of the main sources of economic growth to recover from the pandemic. It wants the UK to play a leading role in setting the international standards and regulations that govern the global digital economy. The regulation of digital trade is a fast-evolving and contentious issue, and the US, European Union (EU), and China have adopted different approaches. Now that the UK has left the EU, it will need to navigate across multiple and often conflicting digital realms. The UK needs to decide which policy objectives it will prioritise, how to regulate the digital economy domestically, and how best to achieve its priorities when negotiating international trade agreements. There is an urgent need to develop a robust, evidence-based approach to the UK’s digital trade strategy that takes into account the perspectives of businesses, workers, and citizens, as well as the approaches of other countries in the global economy. This working paper aims to inform UK policy debates by assessing the state of play in digital trade globally. The authors present a detailed analysis of five policy areas that are central to discussions on digital trade for the UK: cross-border data flows and privacy; internet access and content regulation; intellectual property and innovation; e-commerce (including trade facilitation and consumer protection); and taxation (customs duties on e-commerce and digital services taxes). In each of these areas the authors compare and contrast the approaches taken by the US, EU and China, discuss the public policy implications, and examine the choices facing the UK.


1997 ◽  
Vol 1997 ◽  
pp. 26-26
Author(s):  
B.J. McGuirk ◽  
J. Smith ◽  
R. Mrode

Over the past 10 years, dairy breeding in the United Kingdom has switched from British Friesian to the North American type Holstein. Many of the bulls entering progeny testing in the UK in that period were sourced from overseas bull mothers, especially from the US. The aim of this study was to compare current predictions of the genetic merit of those bulls, using pedigree information, with the performance of their UK daughters.


Author(s):  
Ranald C. Michie

The shock to the global financial system in 2020, caused by the coronavirus, provides is a test for the measures taken since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. The coronavirus has caused a shock to the global economic system, disrupting both supply and demand, and this demands more direct government intervention than central banks are able to provide. Whereas the 2008 crisis was one centred on the global banking system that of 2020 was an event akin to a war, natural disaster, or a political revolution. In turn that had implications for the global financial system as it contained the potential to destabilize banks by threatening the solvency of those to whom they had made loans and extended credit. To forestall such an event central banks are called upon to act as lenders of last resort, particularly the Federal Reserve, as it was the only one capable of supplying the US$s on which all banks relied when making and receiving payments, and borrowing and lending, among themselves. From the outset that response appears to have learned lessons from the mistakes of the 2008 crisis, in terms of speed, scale, and co-ordination, while the global banking system is far more resilient.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Wang ◽  

As the novel coronavirus continues ravaging communities worldwide, children and adults are spending more time than ever before on their electronic devices. Social networking websites, streaming platforms, and video games accumulate hours of usage. Students and employees are turning to remote learning and working. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, teleworking was already on the rise. In the US, the population of employees working remotely increased from 19.6% in 2003 to 24.1% in 2015, and in Sweden, the prevalence of working from home jumped from 5.9% in 1999 to 19.7% in 2012 (Feldstead & Henseke, 2017). Research conducted by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) reported that the teleworking rate in the UK increased by at least 20% over the past decade. There are currently no official reports on the increase of remote working in 2020. However, given the current pandemic situation along with the rapid advancement of technology each day, the numbers are expected to be at an all-time high. This may introduce the world to a new set of health problems: the Digital Eye Strain syndrome.


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