National Institute Economic Review articles from January 2008

National Institute Economic Review archives from January 2008

The world economy.(AT A GLANCE ...)
January 1, 2008... * The risks of a pronounced setback to the world economy have risen as a result of the continuing financial crisis. * The central forecast is one in which global growth moderates from 4.7 per cent in 2007 to 4.4 per cent in 2008. *...

The UK economy.(AT A GLANCE ...)
January 1, 2008... * GDP growth will slow from 3.1 per cent in 2007 to 2.0 per cent in 2008 as the financial crisis bites. * The main sources of the slowdown will be household spending and business investment as they react to tighter credit conditions. *...

Commentary: the balance of payments and the savings gap.
January 1, 2008... Introduction The recent national accounts showed the United Kingdom to be running a balance of payments deficit of 5.7 per cent of GDP in the third quarter of 2007, matching the record deficit incurred in 1988/9. In the period up to 1972,...

Risks of a global recession.(THE WORLD ECONOMY)
January 1, 2008... The past few weeks have seen turmoil and turbulence in global financial markets, with 21 January seeing the sharpest one-day share price falls in many Asian and European markets since 2001, ostensibly in response to widespread fears of an...

Interest rate cuts and the US slowdown.(THE WORLD ECONOMY)
January 1, 2008... United States Fears of a US recession have spread, leading to turbulence in the financial markets. Real data available up to November 2007 remained relatively optimistic for the US. GDP in the third quarter rose at an annual rate of 4.9...

Downward risks to output growth in East Asia.(THE WORLD ECONOMY)
January 1, 2008... Building on strong growth in the first half of last year, output continued to expand briskly across the major East Asian economies in the third quarter. While domestic demand remained firm--or at least did not deteriorate in the case of...

Global uncertainty weighs on Europe.(THE WORLD ECONOMY)
January 1, 2008... This year should see a downturn in the Euro Area's economic growth. After peaking at 2 3/4 per cent in 2006 and 2007, real GDP growth is projected to slow down to around 2 per cent over the forecast period. Private investment and external trade...

Oil prices and world inflation.(THE WORLD ECONOMY)
January 1, 2008... Between NIESR's October 2007 and January 2008 global economy forecasts, oil prices rose by almost $20 per barrel, and they averaged $86 a barrel in the fourth quarter of 2007, as against our assumption of $71 a barrel. (1) In the first quarter...

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

Risk and the UK exchange rate.
January 1, 2008... Sterling has fallen markedly against other currencies in the past few months, and in January reached its lowest point against the euro (or its equivalent) since the last quarter of 1996, as we can see from figure 1, which uses the first three...

Introduction: recent developments in economic forecasting.
January 1, 2008... Forecasts of the future values of economic variables continue to be regularly produced by professional forecasters, both produced and used by policymakers and used, but also abused (i.e. castigated), by the media. The National Institute's...

The GDP fan charts: an empirical evaluation.
January 1, 2008... This paper evaluates the probability density forecasts reflected in the Bank of England's real GDP growth fan charts. Evaluation is carried out using tests that allow for data dependence and using two GDP growth estimates. Results suggest there...

Here is the news: forecast revisions in the Bank of England survey of external forecasters.
January 1, 2008... This article analyses the forecasts of inflation and GDP growth supplied by the individual respondents to the Bank of England's quarterly Survey of External Forecasters, 1996-2005, using a recently released dataset. This comprises a...

Real-time probability forecasts of UK macroeconomic events.
January 1, 2008... An overview is provided of the issues raised in the recent literature on the use of real-time data in the context of nowcasting and forecasting UK macroeconomic events. The ideas are illustrated through two specific applications using UK...

Forecasting the Swiss economy using VECX* models: an exercise in forecast combination across models and observation windows.
January 1, 2008... This paper uses vector error correction models of Switzerland for forecasting output, inflation and the short-term interest rate. It considers three different ways of dealing with forecast uncertainties. First, it investigates the effect on...

A review of forecasting techniques for large data sets.
January 1, 2008... This paper aims to provide a brief and relatively non-technical overview of state-of-the-art forecasting with large data sets. We classify existing methods into four groups depending on whether data sets are used wholly or partly, whether a...