If economic experts wield political power, we’ll get dragged into fiscal groupthink
Even before the double win in last week’s by-elections, Labour was behaving like a government-in-waiting. Apparently the party has begun drafting the bills for the initial pieces of legislation it will enact after the election. When George Osborne was at the Treasury, the Conservatives created the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). This meant responsibility for […]
Sunak’s flexibility has been curtailed by our undue reverence for the Bank of England
Rishi Sunak will deliver an updated Autumn Statement next week, after Liz Truss’ so-called “mini-budget” triggered her demise. His freedom for manoeuvre has been sharply contained by the new found reverence being accorded to the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Bank of England has forecast a long recession, which could […]
London Councils – Volterra produces unemployment forecasts for the London labour market
Volterra was recently commissioned by London Councils to undertake a detailed piece of research on unemployed London residents and their future employment prospects. Essentially, the research establishes the unemployment picture across London historically, before analysing the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on unemployment in London. Several forecasting scenarios have also been laid out […]
The costs of lockdown can no longer be justified
In an otherwise depressing week, two pieces of very good news emerged from India. In Mumbai, blood tests conducted by the city authorities on 6,936 randomly selected people found that some 40 per cent had coronavirus antibodies. Just 6,000 deaths have been reported so far in a city of 20 million. A similar exercise in […]
Great expectations: The Darwinian wars of economic and epidemiological forecasting
A key concept in modern economics is, to use the jargon term, rational expectations. The idea has dominated orthodox macroeconomics over the past 30 years. Not all economists have been persuaded of its merits by any means, but nevertheless, its influence has extended far beyond academia, into finance ministries and central banks around the world. […]
