UK Economy

UK Economy Revision Presentation

During our recent series of revision workshops for AS & A2 Economics, we looked at the key data and trends in the UK Economy.

No longer over a barrel?

David Smith turns his attention to oil prices in today’s Sunday Times and asks why the spiraling cost of crude has not hit global economic growth and inflation as much as in past oil shocks. Most of the recessions and major slowdowns in the global economy have been pre-dated by spikes in international commodity prices. Has oil now lost the power to shock?

David quotes a new report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research which mentions the long term decline in oil dependency for the UK economy and the effects of a flexible labour market on wage bargaining power. There are two excellent evaluation points for any essay on oil in the exams this summer.

“Ray Barrell, an economist with the institute, said the big change is that economies are less directly sensitive to oil prices than they used to be. The “energy intensity” of growth – the amount of oil, coal and gas needed to produce an increase in gross domestic product – has halved since the 1970s, reflecting greater energy efficiency and the shift away from heavy manufacturing. Labour markets have also become more flexible, said Barrell, so workers accept temporary reductions in real wages when energy prices rise, while in the past they would have demanded compensation. The wage-price spiral used to mean expensive oil led to inflation, unemployment or both. Central banks now are under less pressure to act to head off the “second round” inflationary effects of dearer oil.”

The rest of David Smith’s article can be read here:

The Monetary Stimulus

There was no change to UK base interest rates this week with the Monetary Policy Committee holding rates at 5.0% for May. Across the Channel, the hyperactive (!) European Central Bank also kept policy rates constant for what now seems like an eternity! Thank heavens the UK remains outside the Euro Zone! Whilst policy rates are at 5% for the moment, this does not mean that monetary policy is not acting as a stimulus to one or more of the components of aggregate demand (C+I+G+X-M).

The overall stance of monetary policy includes the effects of base rate movements and also changes in the external value of sterling against a basket of other currencies. So whilst interest rates have edged lower in recent months we should also take into account the major depreciation of sterling against the Euro Zone with whome we do more than half of our trade. A falling pound acts as an important stimulus to the export sector of the economy, even though the boost is muted somewhat by a slowdown in economic growth in our export markets. Will the lower pound be a white knight for the faltering UK economy?

Better off out than in?

Yes says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in his piece in the Telegraph today arguing that the UK economy might have been dealt a much tougher blow from the fallout from the credit crunch had we been locked into the single currency zone. I have been discussing this with my A2 students this morning. When external shocks occur, the key to stabilising prices, demand and output is to have a flexible supply-side, fiscal policy autonomy and control over monetary policy. The UK has all three to a reasonable degree and I cannot help thinking that the sliding sterling-euro exchange rate is key to all of this.

Ambrose writes: “As Neil Mellor from the Bank of New York Mellon points out, the pound has been perfectly hedged in this cycle. Sterling has fallen hard against the euro, giving a shot in the arm to British manufacturers (yes, they still exist, 13pc of GDP) who rely heavily on Europe’s markets: yet it remains overvalued against the dollar, softening the effect of oil, metal, and commodity inflation. The shock absorber is working. The Bank of England has already cut rates three times.”

It is interesting when you chat to city and industry economists that discussion of the possible entry of the UK into the Euro Zone is completely off the agenda, the prospect does not exist. The debate has moved on for good.

Things can only get better …..

We asked a thousand people and most of them said ...... there is trouble ahead!  Consumer confidence took a further nose-dive last month according to fresh data from the Nationwide Building Society. The main reason was another steep decline in the percentage of people reported as saying that the UK economy is in good shape. This is just one survey among many, and its limited longevity doesn’t give it much of a record in anticipating turning points in the economic cycle. But if the housing market presages a wider economic downturn, it might well be one of the survey indicators to watch carefully because the shift in sentiment does not appear to have benign causes. Sixty per cent of those surveyed say that now is a bad time to make a major purchase such as a house or a new car – almost twice the number compared to two years ago.

Does a current account deficit matter?

Yes according to economist Roger Bootle writing in the latest edition of the Deloitte Economic Review and reported in this article from the Financial Times.

“Britain is headed for its highest peacetime current account deficit and both household and government spending will have to slow painfully to correct it, according to economist Roger Bootle”

Gordon’s economic history lesson

It cannot have been easy or much fun for the man. Gordon Brown’s appearance on the Andrew Marr show this morning was supposed to have been the start of the big fight-back after the appalling drubbing that he suffered at the polls on Thursday and Friday. But the garbled mixture of reassurance and platitudes about the government ‘feeling our pain’ was distinctly underwhelming. I winced ahfl way through the interview when Brown claimed that the last Labour government inherited high inflation from the Conservatives. This is simply not true. I applaud his decision to give independence to the Bank of England in May 1997, but low and (relatively) stable inflation did not appear miraculously when Blair walked into Number 10 that year - consumer price inflation (the government’s chosen emasure, but not one that most of us now look at with much credence) was already low for some years before 1997 as our chart shows. Inflation targets (introduced in the UK in 1992 after our departure from the ERM) and a favourable mix of disinflationary economic shocks, globalisation and the strong exchange rate combined to give Brown and his Treasury team an inheritance of low inflation when they came to power. Perhaps it was the stress that caused Brown to make such a shocking mistake in his attempt to teach us all a little economic history?

Haulier closes down

This ninety second video clip from BBC news is a short but powerful clip to show when discussing the effects of rising fuel prices on the profitability of a business - no bells and whistles, just a face to face interview with the owner of a haulage firm who has decided to quite because of the cost of diesel and his inability to pass on costs to consumers, the result, 21 redundancies and a firesale of the assets of the business.

Housing recession or inflation - take your pick!

Which would you rather face: a recession and house price crash or years of soaring seventies-style inflation? In normal circumstances, the Bank would have already cut the official interest rate far and fast, hoping lenders would follow suit. Two options; one nasty dilemma for the Bank of England. Edmund Conway examines the issues in today’s Telegraph.

I was listening to a talk from a city economist a couple of nights ago - it was superb, the first time I felt I really understood the underlying dynamics of the sub-prime crisis and the consequences of securitisation! One of the aspects that came out of the wider discussion was that several of the powerful forces that have driven house prices higher in recent years are now in reverse gear - namely:

A rise in real mortgage rates brought about by the credit crunch
A tightening of mortgage supply - partly reversing the process of financial innovation in mortgage products
Signs of a reversal of the high level of inward migration
and
Evidence that the lack of supply is now having less of a bearing on house prices as a better balance between demand and supply is achieved.

Revision: China and the UK Economy

Events and developments in one country inevitably have spill-over effects onto others. Your economics revision should consider some of these inter-relationships wherever possible. It will certainly help your analysis and evaluation. In this revision note we look at China

Revision note:
Revision_China_Effect.pdf