National Institute Economic Review articles from April 2008

National Institute Economic Review archives from April 2008

The world economy.(AT A GLANCE...)
April 1, 2008... * Despite the credit crisis, global growth will slow from 4.7 per cent in 2007 only to 4.2 per cent in 2008 largely thanks to the resilience of Asian economies. * A pick-up in inflation will be difficult to shake off: prices in the OECD...

The UK economy.(AT A GLANCE...)
April 1, 2008... * Growth will slow markedly from 3.0 per cent in 2007 to 1.8 per cent a year in both 2008 and 2009. * Consumer spending growth will slacken from 3.1 per cent in 2007 to 1.2 per cent in 2008, the slowest since 1992, and decelerate still...

Commentary: the banking crisis and the economy.(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2008... Introduction The past few weeks have seen an intensification of the banking crisis in the United States, with the near failure of Bear Sterns, although some commentators hopefully say that the worst has now passed. In the United Kingdom...

The world economy.
April 1, 2008... Financial crises and global prospects A financial crisis, rooted in US mortgage defaults, has been building for several years. (1) Its effects have seriously damaged the prospects for the global economy, and have particularly serious...

Financial crises and the prospects for recession (1).(THE WORLD ECONOMY)
April 1, 2008... Crises have a common shape but not always common consequences, as Barrell and Davis (2005) discuss. Asset bubbles are associated with the run-up to most crises and regulators should respond, taking an asset bubble as a signal of a need for...

Oil prices and growth.
April 1, 2008... Over the past fifteen months oil prices have steadily risen from around $60 a barrel to over $100, as we can see from Figure 1. The projections in our forecast are based on information from futures markets and on projections by the US Energy...

Prospects for the UK economy.
April 1, 2008... The production of this forecast is supported by the Institute's Corporate Members: Abbey plc, Bank of England, Barclays Bank plc, Ernst and Young LLP, Marks and Spencer plc, The National Grid Company plc, Nomura Research Institute Europe Ltd,...

Forecast uncertainty and prospects for the UK economy.
April 1, 2008... Forecasters are often critised for failing to predict outcomes, and this criticism can be justified if they rely on point estimates in their forecasting rather than providing a measure of the uncertainty around their estimates. There are a...

Introduction: the European Union's New Member States.
April 1, 2008... The formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe have undergone an extended period of transition towards market economics, beginning with the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989, and leading up to the enlargement of the...

Prices and price convergence in emerging Europe: an overview.
April 1, 2008... This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the long-term factors that explain divergent price levels across developed and emerging European countries. We provide stylised facts about the structural factors that influence market and...

Effects of foreign ownership on innovation activities: empirical evidence for twelve European countries.
April 1, 2008... In the present study we investigate the relationship between foreign ownership and innovation activities using the firm- level data of the third Community Innovation Survey (CIS) covering twelve European countries. Probit estimates based on...

Sustainable exchange rates when trade winds are plentiful.
April 1, 2008... Estimation and simulation of sustainable real exchange rates in a sample of EU member countries find vulnerabilities connected to the adoption of the euro if the rate vis-a-vis the euro were to be fixed with weak fundamentals and inappropriate...

Creating productive jobs in East European transition economies: a synthesis of firm-level studies.
April 1, 2008... The challenge for labour market policy in the new member states and other transition economies of Eastern Europe has been to redress the sharp drops in employment and rises in unemployment in a way that fosters the creation of productive jobs....

Real wage flexibility in the enlarged EU: evidence from a structural VAR.(Report)
April 1, 2008... Membership in the monetary union imposes higher demands on factor market flexibility, since neither the exchange rate nor monetary policies can be used to deal with country-specific shocks. In this paper we assess the ability of the twelve new...