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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
Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, investing has come under renewed pressure due to pushback from the new US president. Despite that, we think that demand for ESG investments is here to stay and that their performance won’t buckle much in the …
25th March 2025
The recent slump in the S&P 500 raised the spectre of a bear market. But even if one happened this year – rather than next year as we have been tacitly assuming in our forecasts – in response to the bursting of a bubble in Artificial Intelligence (AI), we …
19th March 2025
* This Focus features additional analysis added following the announcement of a snap election for April 28 th . * Recent shifts in the polls suggest new Liberal Party leader Mark Carney and Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre are both in with a …
10th 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% …
New Zealand’s current account deficit will remain large as domestic demand rebounds and the government is running a sizeable structural budget deficit. While the New Zealand dollar has recently been among the worst-performing G10 currencies, we expect it …
3rd March 2025
The inflationary impact of tariffs for all President Trump’s various tariff threats would, if implemented in full, trigger a rebound in consumer price inflation later this year to between 3% and 4%, which would make it much harder for the Fed to resume …
28th January 2025
Having hit a record high, we expect the trade-weighted US dollar to climb further in 2025. While the short-term danger that a strong dollar poses to the world economy tends to be overblown, the bigger risk is that is worsens external imbalances which …
24th January 2025
We suspect that a Coalition government would run slightly tighter fiscal policy than Labor, which in turn may encourage the Reserve Bank of Australia to loosen monetary policy a bit more aggressively than we’re anticipating. But while we expect the …
22nd January 2025
US President-elect Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric against Canada suggests we should take his tariff threats seriously. We already assume that Trump includes Canada in a likely 10% universal import tariff, but we remain relatively sanguine …
9th January 2025
We now expect underlying inflation to remain above the Bank of Japan’s 2% target for most of 2025 and the Bank to hike rates to 1.25%. However, we believe that it’s too early for the Bank to declare victory in its quest to lift inflation sustainably to …
8th January 2025
Immigration has probably added around 0.6%-pts to GDP growth per year on average across advanced economies since the pandemic. But tighter restrictions on immigration will weigh heavily on GDP growth in the US and Canada over the next few years. And the …
16th December 2024
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
The incoming Trump administration’s proposed crackdown on immigration means labour force growth is likely to slow toward zero. That would pull down potential GDP growth to less than 2% and labour shortages would contribute to increased inflationary …
4th December 2024
Although the Republicans completed a clean sweep in the recent election, we are sceptical that this opens the door to additional fiscal stimulus. We do expect the original Trump tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of next year, to be extended. …
3rd December 2024
While we expect the RBNZ to cut interest rates by the most since the GFC over the coming year, housing affordability was never as stretched at the start of an easing cycle as it was at the start of the current one. Accordingly, we only expect house prices …
19th November 2024
The recent downturn in US commercial property has piqued investor interest in alternatives as they look to diversify. With an aging population, senior housing has a clear long run structural demand driver pointing to further growth in the sector. Our …
18th November 2024
The government’s plan to trim the population will hit potential GDP growth and, given the headwinds for residential investment, reduce the chance of GDP reaching that lower potential level. Rents on new leases are set to fall, which presents downside …
31st October 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
With the Conservatives currently on track to win a clear majority at the next federal election, which is due by October 2025 but could come much earlier, there is a high chance that the carbon tax will soon be scrapped. We do not think this would alter …
28th October 2024
Our central forecast is that there won’t be a fiscally induced ‘crisis’ in the Treasury market. But there is clearly a risk of yields rising in response to higher term premia and more restrictive monetary policy than would otherwise be the case, if the US …
25th October 2024
The September release of US non-farm payrolls was just the start of a run of strong employment releases in advanced economies this month, reigniting fears about pay growth and inflation. However, when putting a few quirks to one side and judging a range …
21st 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
Our new House Price Leading Index combines several leading indicators that capture the balance of supply and demand in Australia’s housing market and suggests that house price growth will continue to slow over the coming months. We’ve been tracking a wide …
7th October 2024
Even though state and federal budgets point to a sharp slowdown in public demand in 2024/25, our analysis suggests that the public sector will keep providing a sizeable boost to GDP growth. And if we’re right that private demand will pick up as real …
18th September 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
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has always ended up cutting interest rates by more than it anticipated at the start of previous easing cycles. We think this time won’t be any different and expect the Bank to cut rates to 2.25% at the end of its easing …
10th 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
Retail real estate has faced a tough period, buffeted by the rise of e-commerce, extensive oversupply and the impacts of the pandemic on in-store shopping. But we think the sector is well down the road to dealing with those challenges and now offers a …
20th August 2024
While we expect inflation to fall below the Bank of Japan’s 2% next year, the Bank’s still very accommodative stance means that this alone won’t trigger interest rate cuts. We think it would require a major downturn in activity that results in a looser …
19th August 2024
The renewed widening of global imbalances has become another faultline in the fracturing of the world economy, and will continue to provoke trade barriers in the coming decades. With overall imbalances most prominent in the US, further tariffs aimed at …
14th August 2024
While faster wage growth should eventually result in a significant pick-up in rental inflation, it seems likely that rental growth will trail income growth for the foreseeable future. That means that the Bank of Japan will have to let the economy run …
5th August 2024
If implemented in full on day one, Donald Trump’s trade, immigration and fiscal policies would together be stagflationary. We suspect that he will be forced to water down his plans, however, and it could take some time to implement them. The upshot is …
31st July 2024
We don’t think the recent rotation in US equities sets the stage for something much bigger. In our opinion, another sustained and substantial rotation won’t begin until shortly before the bubble in the stock market bursts. And our baseline assumption is …
25th July 2024
There are several structural factors that explain the underperformance of Canadian productivity growth compared to the US since the 1980s, but the underperformance in the last few years specifically reflects more cyclical factors including extremely …
23rd July 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
With unhedged yield gaps still very much in favour of overseas bonds and hedged returns set to improve as overseas central banks slash borrowing costs, Japanese investors won’t respond to higher JGB yields by repatriating capital. And while we expect …
1st 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
Why is productivity so weak outside the US? Productivity growth in most advanced economies has been much weaker than that in the US since the pandemic. This partly reflects the relative weakness of demand, coupled with a degree of labour hoarding which …
29th April 2024
We believe that the “narrow path” of returning inflation to target while keeping unemployment below pre-pandemic levels is wishful thinking. The Reserve Bank of Australia won’t bring domestic cost pressures under control unless the unemployment rate rises …
4th April 2024
We think that it is now time for the curtains to close on the so-called ‘excess savings’ debate. While unusually high savings accumulated by households during the pandemic helped prevent recessions in advanced economies in 2023, they are likely to have …
3rd April 2024
While the Bank of Japan’s JGB holdings have started to shrink and will continue to do so now that Yield Curve Control is over, we think that the normalisation of the Bank’s balance sheet could take up to a decade. While shrinking central bank demand for …
26th March 2024
Reshoring still more myth than reality Although it has been a priority for the last three administrations, the reshoring of lost manufacturing jobs remains more myth than reality. There has been a significant boom in the construction of hi-tech …
12th March 2024
The surge in the terms of trade explains some of the resilience of Australia’s economy as it has probably encouraged the government to spend more money than it would have done without soaring mining tax revenues. The key point though is that Australia’s …
7th March 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 survey 12 major advanced economy housing markets to understand why house price falls have been small despite high starting points and sharp increases in mortgage rates. We then use this information to ascertain whether the correction in house prices is …
14th 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
