Publications
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The UK’s recent productivity performance has been strikingly weak. Output per hour worked, which increased by around 2.1 per cent per year in the decade leading up to the economic downturn, increased by just 0.2 per cent per year in the ten years following the global financial crisis. This paper...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This paper builds upon Bartelsman, Lopez-Garcia, and Presidente (2018) and provides empirical evidence on the cyclical features of labour reallocation in a sample of European Union (EU) countries over the Great Recession and the slow recovery. The analysis makes use of cross-country micro-...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This paper uses plant-level estimates of total factor productivity covering 40 years to examine what role, if any, productivity has played in the decline of output share and employment in British manufacturing. The results show that TFP growth in British manufacturing was negative between 1973 and...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
I summarise new facts on hours worked differences across countries and their driving forces. The facts are derived from a comprehensive analysis of micro data sets. First, hours worked are substantially higher in poor than in rich countries. Second, lower hours worked in Europe than in the US can...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Recent data suggests that the global growth cycle has probably peaked. We forecast world GDP growth of around 3.5 per cent a year over the next two years.
On that basis, the second decade of the 21st century will have seen sustained global GDP growth.
Tariff increases and trade disputes seem likely...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The UK’s future relationship with the European Union (EU) remains undecided even though the Article 50 exit date is less than two months away. Brexit uncertainty has intensified since our last forecast and is now evident in various indicators.
Our main forecast is conditional on a ‘soft’ Brexit...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
On average, UK productivity performance in the decades leading up to the financial crisis was quite disappointing. Joining the EU was not to blame. Indeed, EU membership, which was an integral part of the Thatcher reform programme, had a significant positive impact. Over the long run, UK supply-...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Unanimity on the question of UK exit from the EU is not within reach, but this does not mean that the House of Commons or the population at large can not find a way out of the current Brexit impasse that is fair and legitimate. We discuss different voting procedures which satisfy some important...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
There continues to be considerable discussion in all of polite society about the causes of the productivity puzzle. Commissions and Inquiries have been set up and answers sought with the most recent, the Industrial Strategy Council, having its inaugural meeting in November 2018. The National...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The Institute is a world leader in macroeconomic modelling and forecasting. It has produced quarterly economic forecasts for around sixty years, supported by macroeconomic models. The aim of the original builders of macroeconomic models was to transform understanding of how economies worked and use...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The Institute has long examined overseas developments in order to understand better domestic macroeconomic dynamics.The organising principle for much of the postwar period was simply the impact on net trade with an implicit view on whether the exchange rate was at an appropriate level and, as such...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This article takes a short personal ‘helicopter ride’ over the main policy issues in the UK labour market, putting them into the context of the developments which have taken place in applied econometrics. We overview NIESR’s role in the study of labour economics in postwar Britain and review some...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This paper charts the evolution of mainly empirical research at the NIESR over the1970s and 80s. As was all too evident there were very large discrete technical improvements in data handling and manipulation over this period. Less well appreciated were the effects on the economy of major supply-...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
UK labour productivity is significantly lower than that of many other similarly advanced economies and has been so for decades, with negative implications for UK living standards. To make matters worse, during the last ten years labour productivity growth has stalled in most industrialised...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the UK’s oldest independent economic research institute, was founded exactly eighty years ago. The Institute’s original mission was “to carry out research into the economic and social forces that affect people’s lives and to improve the...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The global economy is set to continue to grow at a pace of slightly below 4 per cent a year in the near term.
Oil prices have risen further and with some advanced economies appearing to be operating at close to full capacity, there is a risk that inflation will increase. Our expectation is that any...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The future relationship between the UK and the EU remains unclear. Despite that uncertainty the economy has gained momentum over the last few months, fiscal outturns have been better and financial markets appear to be sanguine about the uncertainty. It is against this backdrop that the Chancellor...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Bell, D.N.F. and Blanchflower, D.G. (2018), ‘The Lack of Wage Growth and the Falling NAIRU’, National Institute Economic Review, August, pp. R40-R55.Doi: 10.1177/002795011824500114.
From page R48, 2nd column, final paragraph, to page R50, 1st column following the italic text the following...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
In this note, we argue that a considerable part of the explanation for the benign wage growth in the advanced world is the rise in underemployment. In the years after 2008 the unemployment rate understates labour market slack. Underemployment is more important than unemployment in explaining the...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
In housing affordability levels and volatility, there could hardly be a greater contrast than between the UK and Germany. Differences in history, institutions and policies are explored in this paper. Residential housing supply has been far more expansionary in Germany and mortgage credit more...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This paper summarises the evidence from recent research relating to the British Planning system’s impact on the supply of development. Planning serves important economic and social purposes but it is essential to distinguish between restricting development relative to demand in particular places to...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This article summarises the long-run decline in housing affordability in England and suggests this is substantially attributable to shortfalls in housing supply. Public attitudes to housing have become increasingly pro-development in recent years and the current policy framework – summarised in the...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The paper discusses the many reasons why housing policy can appear to be both incoherent and ineffective - with too many Departments involved each with different objectives and a plethora of policies pulling in different directions. Drawing on earlier research findings the paper discusses three...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Financial stability reports published by central banks and commentaries by international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) frequently highlight the high level of debt (private sector or public sector or both) as an important risk...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Last year the global economy expanded at its fastest pace since 2011. We expect global growth to continue at a similar rate in 2018 and 2019.
We expect the pace of global economic expansion to slow to around 3.5 per cent a year in the medium term unless productivity growth picks up substantially....
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The UK economy is facing an unusual level of uncertainty because of Brexit. This uncertainty primarily stems from the yet to be defined relationship between the UK and the EU but also from the economy’s response to the new framework once it emerges. The UK government’s White Paper, which set out...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The housing market is a source of much comment and tension in the UK. Many commentators and policymakers have got into the habit of describing the market as ‘broken’, indeed we take our title from the White Paper issued by the then Department for Communities and Local Government in 2017. In our...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
In his Spring Statement, the chancellor said that he saw light at the end of the fiscal tunnel. We are afraid that this will turn out to have been an illusion. While public borrowing has been reduced to sustainable levels, our analysis of the prospects for the public finances points to severe...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This paper introduces a special issue of the Review on how the National Institute Global Econometric Model (NiGEM) is being used to navigate uncertain times. NiGEM is the leading global macroeconomic model, used by both policy-makers and the private sector across the globe for economic forecasting...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
There is a strong case for boosting public investment in many countries based on identified country-specific structural weaknesses and the relatively low levels of such investment. This paper analyses the potential macroeconomic benefits of increased public investment using simulations on NiGEM....
Type: National Institute Economic Review
For a large number of countries, we augment the specification of import demand in NiGEM by accounting for different import contents of individual expenditure components. Three examples illustrate that these changes have important implications for model outcomes. In the case of the recently enacted...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Exchange rate fluctuations have been particularly large since mid-2014, displaying divergent developments across the period. The nominal effective exchange rate of the dollar has appreciated by 15 per cent since June 2014, masking a 25 per cent appreciation to December 2016 followed by a...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
We modify NiGEM in order to study the macroeconomic effects of imposing import tariffs in the US under different assumptions regarding the long-run price setting behaviour of exporters. Overall, the macroeconomic implications in the US resemble the impact of a cost shock or adverse supply shock as...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
We analyse the costs of Brexit. The results show that by 2030 a hard Brexit would reduce cumulative GDP growth by 18 percentage points compared to a situation where the UK continued its EU membership. The economic damage in our FTA and soft Brexit scenarios is less severe than in our hard Brexit...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The Irish economy has recovered at an impressive pace from the economic and financial crisis that lasted from 2008–12. Nonetheless, as a small open economy with some lingering vulnerabilities from the recent crisis, the economy remains heavily exposed to potential adverse shocks. In this paper, we...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Last year the global economy expanded at its fastest pace since 2011. We continue to expect to see slightly faster global growth this year with momentum being carried forward. We expect growth to continue to be broadly based.
With some advanced economies appearing to be operating at close to full...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
We have revised lower our GDP forecast for 2018 to just under 1.5 per cent mainly due to weak performance in the first quarter. But the slowdown is likely to be temporary.
The Commentary in this Review builds a case for higher government spending. We have, as a result, allowed for higher total...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
Our new "virtual issue" of our Economic Review focussing on Productivity
Type: National Institute Economic Review
In England, teacher shortages have worsened in recent years and one contributor is the declining rates of retention among newly qualified teachers (NQTs). We employ a method developed in the health-statistics literature to identify schools that both recruit an unusually high level of NQTs and lose...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
There is a perception among some commentators and policy analysts that leadership and managerial practices in private schools are superior to those in state schools. Analysing a survey of workplaces in Britain, we find little evidence to support this contention when examining the prevalence of...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
In recent years, governments have spent considerable time, effort and political capital on education reforms in the expectation that pupil attainment will improve.Since the mid-1990s reforms in England have focused on school governance issues, notably the weakening of local government control over...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
It might only be just a little too strong to argue that the housing market dominates our national life. Whilst economists, if they consider housing at all, would think of the consumption of housing services as another aspect of the basket of goods and services bought, like clothing or food, most...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
GDP is forecast to grow by nearly 2 per cent this year and in 2019. Our forecasts have been revised higher since November.
Annual consumer price inflation peaked at 3 per cent in the final quarter of 2017 and is forecast to ease back to the target rate of 2 per cent over the next eight quarters.
We...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The global economy is expanding at its fastest pace since 2011. With momentum expected to carry into 2018, we have revised up our forecasts for growth in all of the major economies and regions.
But with many economies operating at close to full capacity, some slowdown in the pace of expansion is...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
A major part of the 2010–15 UK government’s education reforms in England was a focus on the curriculum that pupils study from ages 14–16. Most high profile was the introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) performance measure for schools, incentivising study of “subjects the Russell Group...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
We explore the variation in pupil attainment at the end of secondary schooling in England. The paper links data on all schools and all pupils within these schools to analyse the role of the school in accounting for this variation. We analyse a number of different indicators of pupil attainment...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
In this note, we focus on underemployment as a potential cause of lower wage growth, which itself may have deeper causes, but which has, we would argue, demonstrably changed since the 2008 recession. The gap between our measures of the number of additional hours required by those who want more...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
This is a new 'virtual' special issue of our Economic Review. Focusing on the financial crisis, it examines the roots and evolution of the crisis and lessons learned in the last decade.
Type: National Institute Economic Review
We analyse TFP growth in the US business sector using a basic unobserved component model where trend growth follows a random walk and the noise is a first order autoregression. This is fitted using a Kalman-filter methodology. We find that trend TFP growth has declined steadily from 1.5 to 1.0 per...
Type: National Institute Economic Review
The UK’s automotive industry has been one of the ‘star performers’ of the UK economy in recent years – unlike most other manufacturing sectors. Output has increased by over 60 per cent since 2010 and there has been over £8 billion worth of investment in the industry in the past five years. The...
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