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?
read more...»Strong profits provide a buffer
Could the high profitability of the UK business sector offer a ray of hope for the economy as the slowdown starts to bite?
Manufacturing’s revival?
Can UK manufacturing industry enjoy a sustained revival at a time when financial services are under pressure from the credit crunch? The Engineering Employers’ Federation has produced a new report on the performance of the manufacturing sector which concludes that “manufacturing is performing strongly with a number of the indicators at their highest level for ten years.”
OCR 2888 - June Case Study - Broad Themes
This is the first in a series of blog posts relating to the OCR A2 Economics Case Study, Economics in a European Context. This summer the pre-release case study materials focus on the EU automotive industry and many of the economic and environmental issues that link to this important industrial sector. I have been working on our toolkit for this paper (due out in a few days) and below I have tried to capture some of the broad themes that I feel are covered by the case study materials. Please do add your own ideas through the blog!
