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Despite saying the “world is changing”, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, today just tinkered with fiscal policy. This left the impression that bigger changes lie ahead. Indeed, the pressure to raise both defence and other public spending is only likely to …
26th March 2025
It is becoming clear that President Trump’s actions are driven by both his fixation on reducing the US trade deficit and his transactional approach to dealing with other countries. So, even though the Trump administration’s ideas to transform the entire …
25th March 2025
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will present her fiscal update on 26 th March against the challenging backdrop of geopolitical ruptures, tariffs threats and a stagnating domestic economy. We expect Reeves to tighten fiscal policy by a further £10bn (0.3% …
10th March 2025
The Shape of the Fractured World in 2025 The share of the fracturing global economy that is accounted for by China and its geopolitical allies contracted in 2024, leaving it under a third the size of the US bloc at the start of 2025. This fall was in part …
17th January 2025
Donald Trump’s second term could redraw the global geopolitical map. A sustainable “Grand Bargain” with China, warmer relations with Russia, or a breakdown in the relationship between the US and its traditional allies could each reshape supply chains and …
7th January 2025
We think that the shift in the shape of consumer spending over the past few years away from spending on goods towards spending on services is here to stay. While the recent strength in spending on housing rents may not persist, over the next couple of …
5th December 2024
We discussed the global impact of higher tariffs in a Drop-In on Tuesday, 26th November. Click here to watch the 20-minute online briefing. In this Focus, we construct a framework to explore the channels through which an import tariff works, which we use …
25th November 2024
This Budget is big, both in the way it defines the government’s plans and the money it raises and spends. The key point is that it loosens fiscal policy relative to previous plans and is therefore consistent with GDP growth perhaps being a bit stronger …
30th October 2024
Balancing investing in the economy and fiscal credibility In her first Budget on Wednesday 30 th October the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces the unenviable task of trying to achieve three objectives. First, being able to say there will be “no return to …
16th October 2024
The structural deterioration in the fiscal situation suggests that a tight grip on the public finances in the Budget on 30 th October will be necessary. That’s why we think the government will maintain existing plans for fiscal policy to be tightened, but …
12th September 2024
Getting an early steer on whether an economy has entered recession requires a holistic assessment of a variety of indicators to see if multiple variables are flagging recession at the same time. In this vein, we have created Economic Momentum Indicators …
9th September 2024
It is not inevitable that the economic malaise of the past 20-30 years will continue over the next decade. Some of the cyclical forces that have lowered the UK’s economic growth rate will fade and new structural ones, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), …
10th July 2024
The current fiscal framework is not perfect and could be reformed to improve investor confidence in the management of the public finances, tilt the composition of spending towards investment and reduce political uncertainty. However, the importance of the …
12th June 2024
Just as fixed mortgage rates have shielded homeowners from rising interest rates, they will prevent households’ interest costs from falling rapidly when interest rates are cut. While borrowers on tracker and two-year fixed rate deals will soon see their …
6th June 2024
We discussed the outlook for UK inflation and interest rates in an online briefing just after the release of April's CPI data. Watch that briefing here . Our forecast that CPI inflation will fall from 3.2% in March to below 2.0% in April and below 1.0% …
16th May 2024
The net giveaway of £13.9bn (0.5% of GDP) in 2024/25 in the Budget may help end the recession before an election later this year. But fiscal policy is still being tightened in 2024/25 and that tightening will continue after the election and will probably …
6th March 2024
We will be discussing what the policies announced in the Budget mean for the economy and the financial markets in a 20-minute online briefing shortly after the Budget at 3pm GMT on Wednesday 6 th March. (Register here .) Using most of the fiscal headroom …
20th February 2024
We will be discussing whether the next government will move the dial on the economy in a 20-minute online briefing at 3pm GMT on Wednesday 13th March. (Register here .) The next general election won’t be as pivotal for the economy or the markets as the …
13th February 2024
Although the recent transition to a higher interest rate climate has not caused any lasting or systemic financial flare ups, it is probably too soon to sound the all-clear. And while a higher interest rate climate in the medium-term will reduce …
8th February 2024
The key indicators that have usually convinced the Bank of England to cut interest rates suggest the first cut could come in Q1 2024. That said, rates have risen to a lower peak than most models suggest, which implies they need to stay higher for longer …
30th November 2023
The net giveaway the Chancellor announced in the Autumn Statement is designed to curry favour ahead of an election late in 2024. However, fiscal policy is still being tightened in 2024/25 and it looks as though whoever wins the election will have to …
22nd November 2023
During the past decade, the global economy has transitioned out of an era in which globalisation was the key driver of economic and financial relationships into one shaped by geopolitics. Previously, most governments had believed that closer economic …
16th November 2023
With the government still languishing far behind in the opinion polls and an election required before the end of January 2025, the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is under more pressure than ever to pull something out of the bag at the Autumn Statement on …
15th November 2023
One key lesson from the bouts of inflation in the 1970s and 1980s is that core inflation faded only once a loosening in the labour market drove down the job vacancy rate to more normal levels. We estimate that a fall in the job vacancy rate from 3.0% in …
2nd August 2023
Note: We discussed our revamped FCIs and took your questions on global financial conditions in a 20-minute online briefing on Thursday, 20 th April . Watch the recording here . We have revamped our financial conditions indices (FCIs) for advanced …
18th April 2023
The Budget has taken a bit of a backseat given the renewed worries about the health of the global banking system, but the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, was a bit more generous than we expected and probably plans to splash more cash ahead of the 2024/25 …
15th March 2023
We expect the Spring Budget on 15 th March to contain some giveaways confined to 2023/24. But a downgrade to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) medium-term GDP growth forecasts will prevent an unwinding of the £54bn (1.8% of GDP) of fiscal …
8th March 2023
Labour’s big lead in the polls raises the question of what difference a Labour government would make to the economic outlook. The answer is probably not much. A tight grip on the public finances is likely by whichever party is in charge. And the …
9th January 2023
In his Autumn Statement, the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, appears to have pulled off the tricky task of reassuring the financial markets of the government’s fiscal discipline while also managing not to deepen the recession. Our economic forecasts suggest he …
17th November 2022
We’ll be discussing the implications for the economy and the financial markets of the Autumn Statement in a 20-minute online briefing at 4pm GMT on 17 th November. (Register here .) In his Autumn Statement on 17 th November the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, …
10th November 2022
While the UK government’s apparent U-turn on fiscal policy offers some hope of relief for sterling, we think the outlook remains precarious. We continue to expect that sterling will lose further ground against the US dollar in the near term. But while …
20th October 2022
As the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, unveils whether, when and how he will put public debt on a sustainable path in his Medium-Term Fiscal Plan on Monday 31 st October, the big question will be whether his actions will be enough to restore credibility …
The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, provided more support to the economy than we had expected over the next few years in today’s Spring Fiscal Statement, but he could have gone further in 2022/23. Instead, he chose to bank some extra cash so there’s scope for …
23rd March 2022
The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, will use his Spring Statement on 23 rd March to soften the blow for households facing rising energy and food costs. However, any hopes that he will announce a big handout may be disappointed as he tries to strike a balance …
16th March 2022
We think that most of the fall in the size of the UK’s labour force since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic should eventually be reversed. Even so, we wouldn’t be surprised if this took another two years or so. That suggests to us that the labour market …
14th March 2022
This Budget was perhaps more notable for what the Chancellor didn’t do rather than what he did. The OBR handed Rishi Sunak a significant upgrade to its forecasts for the public finances but, while the Chancellor spent some of the windfall a substantial …
27th October 2021
The interactions between Brexit, the deterioration in Scotland’s fiscal situation and the continued lack of an easy option for the currency have made the economics of Scottish independence even more challenging than at the time of the first referendum in …
7th September 2021
The widely reported labour shortages should mostly prove temporary. While it may take 6-12 months before some of the underlying causes unwind, recruitment difficulties probably won’t have a long-lasting upward impact on wage growth. As such, they …
8th July 2021
We think there’s a good chance that when the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) starts to tighten monetary policy it will do it by unwinding some quantitative easing (QE) before it raises interest rates. That would be consistent with the …
22nd June 2021
The economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis may not push CPI inflation above 2.0% for a prolonged period until 2023, although there is a risk that it happens sooner. And further ahead, the government’s desire to use fiscal policy to achieve its …
22nd March 2021
While most governments are focussed squarely on maintaining or increasing fiscal support for their economies, in today’s Budget the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, adopted a different two-staged plan for the UK – spend big for the next two years and tax big for …
3rd March 2021
While policymakers in the US are wrangling about how much additional stimulus is required, the debate in the UK is more about what tax rises are needed to repair the damage to the public finances caused by the pandemic. Admittedly, in next week’s Budget …
25th February 2021
Our view that the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will be quicker and more complete than most forecasters expect suggests that the economic legacy of the crisis may not be a permanently smaller economy but instead higher inflation and bigger public …
8th February 2021
At some point, there may need to be a fiscal squeeze to pay for any lasting increase in spending caused by the COVID-19 crisis and increases in age-related spending. But the biggest danger is that fiscal policy is tightened too much too soon to fill a …
8th December 2020
It is by no means inevitable that the coronavirus crisis puts a big permanent hole in the supply capacity of economies (i.e. their ability to produce goods and services). With the right government policies, many economies should be able more or less to …
29th June 2020
As long as social distancing isn’t practised for many years, then those behavioural changes triggered specifically by the coronavirus crisis will probably prove temporary. But those changes that were already underway and which have been supercharged by …
23rd June 2020
The swift and significant response of the Bank of England to the coronavirus crisis has prevented a financial crisis, but we think the Bank will need to do much more than the markets currently expect to get the economy back on track. By this time next …
4th June 2020
The coordinated fiscal and monetary stimulus announced by the Chancellor and the Bank of England today shows that policymakers are pulling out all the stops to ensure that the coronavirus results in the economy following a path over the coming quarters …
11th March 2020
The new Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s first priority in the Budget on Wednesday 11 th March will be to deliver a package of measures to help those areas of the economy likely to be hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak. He will presumably also get things …
4th March 2020
We think that the coming fiscal stimulus will raise annual GDP growth by about 0.6ppts this year and 0.25ppts in 2021. This is part of the reason why we expect GDP growth to beat the consensus forecast by rising to 1.8% in 2021 and helps to explain our …
3rd February 2020
