James Zuccollo • Jul 25, 2015 •
Wage inequality between men and women has split opinion in the UK after the Government last week announced that all large firms would have to publish the gap in average earnings between their male and female employees. In light of that debate, today’s HESA data on the pay of recent graduates is interesting. It shows […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jul 24, 2015 •
The ONS finds that older people are far more trusting of others than the young, they just don’t trust the Government. Does this account for Churchill’s apocryphal line? If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jul 22, 2015 •
The first reckoning for any Budget is when the Office for Budget Responsibility releases its estimates of the fiscal and economic impact of the measures. The second is when the Chancellor appears in front of the Treasury Select Committee and explains the reasoning behind the Budget. George Osborne’s Summer Budget appearance happened yesterday and shed […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 15, 2015 •
Last week I discussed the importance of good fiscal rules for sustainability, but the recent mess in the UK has demonstrated how poor rules can inhibit growth. When the Government took office in 2010 it faced a startlingly high deficit. It promised to eliminate that within five years, which happens to be the length of […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 10, 2015 •
Before Christmas I wrote a couple of posts on fiscal rules and you might very well be asking why it really matters. The first reason is that the current trajectory of public spending is unsustainable, but not in the sense that the Government means it. Sustainability in public spending should be measured over decades, not […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Dec 28, 2014 •
This post draws upon a blog I wrote for The Reformer. A few days ago I wrote about the lessons that can be drawn from the recent history of the UK’s fiscal rules. This post measures the Government’s new Charter for Fiscal Responsibility against them. The Charter sets out the Government’s fiscal rule and requires […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Dec 27, 2014 •
Earlier this week the UK Government announced its new fiscal rule, which defines the fiscal envelope. For those of you who aren’t British, the deficit exceeded 10% of GDP during the recession and fiscal sustainability has become an important political issue, even for people who aren’t econ junkies! Unfortunately, this new rule is unlikely to […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • Jun 06, 2014 •
I see that Patrick Nolan has an article in Public Finance talking about UK and New Zealand productivity. Go read it, but come back here to comment as they don’t seem to have a comment system. As we are a NZ audience, I’ll quote this bit: While New Zealand faces different challenges, its experience can throw light […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Feb 08, 2013 •
Mark Carney appeared at the Treasury Select Committee today for interrogation before being confirmed as the next Governor of the Bank of England. The big question everybody wanted answered is whether he favoured a move from inflation targeting to NGDP level targeting. The answer is ‘no’, but the reasons are interesting. Carney is a known [...] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 08, 2013 •
Simon Nixon has a provocative article in the WSJ where he argues that the current generation of New Keynesian models are useless because of their poor forecast performance. He proposes looking solely at the rate of debt reduction when forecasting economic performance: [The] dismal science’s [forecasting] record suggests is that there is something profoundly wrong [...] … Read More