National Institute Economic Review articles from July 2006

National Institute Economic Review archives from July 2006

The world economy.(AT A GLANCE ...)
July 1, 2006... * Global growth will quicken to 5.1 per cent this year falling back only a bit in 2007 to a still rapid 4.7 per cent. * Inflationary pressures are rising, mainly owing to higher oil prices, but the impact of rising oil prices on inflation...

The UK economy.(AT A GLANCE ...)
July 1, 2006... * GDP is expected to grow by 2.5 per cent in 2006 and by 2.6 per cent in 2007. * Consumer price inflation will remain somewhat above the Government's target of 2.0 per cent over the next two years. * Wage inflation will stay subdued,...

Commentary-big government?
July 1, 2006... Introduction The size of the public sector is a continuing source of economic debate from a number of perspectives. Given the wide belief that the economic performance of the United States has been better than that of continental Europe...

The world economy.
July 1, 2006... Interest rates and the real economy We expect global growth to rise above 5 per cent this year, following growth of 4.8 per cent in 2005 and 5.3 per cent in 2004. This extended period of exceptional global growth is the strongest we have...

Correcting global imbalances.
July 1, 2006... Introduction The US is now running a current account deficit of 6 per cent of GDP, and can be expected to do so for some time unless the US economy slows rapidly. The current account deficit may be sustainable, and may be the result of...

UK economy forecast.
July 1, 2006... 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,...

Prudence and UK trend growth.
July 1, 2006... Introduction Trend GDP growth has assumed an importance in the public debate not least because the decomposition of GDP into trend and cyclical components lies at the heart of the 'Golden Rule'. This rule states that the Government should...

Public sector performance: introduction.
July 1, 2006... The performance of the public sector affects us all. There are at least three reasons why we should be interested in how well it functions: it is big; its outputs are special; and it is getting bigger. The public sector represents a sizeable...

Setting targets for health care performance: lessons from a case study of the English NHS.(National Health Service)(Case study)
July 1, 2006... This paper examines problems of setting targets for health care performance in which the centre sets a uniform set of targets and levels of performance. The case study examined by the paper is from the system of performance assessment of 'star...

Metrics, targets and performance.
July 1, 2006... The setting and use of targets in the public sector has generated a growing amount of interest in the UK. This has occurred at a time when more analysts and policymakers are grasping the nettle of measuring performance in and of the public...

Assessing public service performance in local authorities through CPA--a research note on deprivation.(comprehensive performance assessments )
July 1, 2006... The UK Government places ever-greater weight on performance assessment of local public bodies through comprehensive performance assessments (CPA). However, the CPA assessment framework has been criticised for its disregard of local factors that...

The tax man cometh--but is he efficient?
July 1, 2006... The performance of local tax offices of Norway is studied over a three-year period applying Data Envelopment Efficiency analysis and a Malmquist productivity index. The estimates are bias-corrected using a bootstrap approach recently developed...