This week the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published its latest World Economic Outlook, October 2023: Navigating Global Divergences (imf.org). The headlines have focused on the IMF’s gloomy forecasts for the UK, which are even more nonsensical than usual. Unfortunately, this has drawn attention away from a far bigger concern – the fiscal madness in … Continue reading The IMF is right to be more worried about ‘Bidenomics’ than Brexit
Category: Brexit
Dodgy data and even flakier forecasts are making policy much harder
The unusually large revision to the gross domestic product (GDP) figures produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is only the latest of a series of issues with UK economic data and forecasts. Recent news on the public finances has also been better than predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility, while inflation has … Continue reading Dodgy data and even flakier forecasts are making policy much harder
Why Mark Carney is wrong (again)
True to form, Mark Carney has made another unhelpful intervention in the Brexit debate. This time his remarks have generated more heat than light on the impact that the vote to leave the EU might have had on UK inflation. And by appearing to validate fears that UK interest rates have a lot further to … Continue reading Why Mark Carney is wrong (again)
Does ‘Brexit Britain’ really have a migration crisis?
The news that net migration to the UK hit a new record of 606,000 last year has understandably rung alarm bells. As Rakib Ehsan discussed here, there is a broad consensus that such high figures are unsustainable and, in some sense, undesirable. Nonetheless, talk of a immigration ‘crisis’ seems overdone. First, it is not obvious … Continue reading Does ‘Brexit Britain’ really have a migration crisis?
Plain-speaking Economics 