UK Economy Research Articles

Understanding the Economic Contributions of the Arboriculture & Commercial Urban Forestry Sector in New England

AbstractThis study details the results of a survey of firms that was conducted to establish a baseline for a further understanding of the value of the arboriculture/commercial urban forestry (ACUF) sector to the New England Economy, during February and March of 2022. The greatest percentage of responses came from Massachusetts firms (45 percent) followed by Connecticut (about 15 percent) and Maine (about 9 percent). Respondents from New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont represented 6-7 percent of the sample and firms from other states (and international firms) comprised 11 percent of the sample. The distribution of firms' business income earned in each state were consistent with the firm location distribution. Large firms dominated the distribution of 2021 gross income for ACUF firms in this sample with about 48 percent of the respondents reporting gross incomes greater than $500,000. There was also a relatively large number of small firms (about 10 percent) earning less than $25,000. The 2021 total gross income of the 119 firms in this sample was estimated to be over $252 million. Large firms earning over $1 million in gross income represent 91 percent of the total gross income for this sample. Just over 70 percent of firms' gross income was from private individuals, with about 18 percent from commercial sources. Only about 7 percent was from state and local government. Tree pruning and removal was the predominant activity (over 55 percent), followed by tree fertilization and tree health at about 17 percent. Other tree care activities represented less than 10 percent of gross income.

Are Low‐Income Households Getting Left Behind in the United Kingdom's Energy Transition?

The transition to sustainable energy sources is crucial to achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the impacts on the environment and climate, while providing access to affordable, secure, modern, and sustainable energy by 2030—Sustainable Development Goal 7 of the Agreement. Countries around the world are increasingly making diverse and ambitious commitments and taking actions to achieve these goals. The United Kingdom (UK) had a previous goal of reducing GHG emissions by 80 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2050, but in 2019 the country became the first major economy to vow to reach net‐zero by 2050. In 2021, the government under the now extinct Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), published the Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener, containing policies and proposals to achieve this goal in all sectors of the UK economy.

Imagining Economic Growth in Post-War Britain.

This article contends that common representations of the history of the British economy and economic policy in the 'Golden Age' period (circa 1950-73) as a story of 'failure' rely overwhelmingly on one measure, that of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. Drawing on the foundational criticisms of this metric made by Simon Kuznets, it is argued that, for this period of British economic history, shortfalls in measured GDP growth in comparison with other rich countries are a very poor measure of changes in economic well-being in the UK. If we follow this argument and discard the belief that one metric can summarize trends in such well-being, the notion of 'failure' in this period should be set aside in favour of a more nuanced, multidimensional assessment.

The potential importance of exploiting export markets for CO2 transport and storage services in realising the economic value of Scottish CCS

Previous research investigating the UK economy impacts of introducing a new Scottish CO2 Transport and Storage (T&S) industry linked to carbon capture and storage (CCS) has focussed on supply chain and funding requirements in introducing such a new sector to service proximate Scottish industrial emissions via onshore pipelines. However, Scottish plans extend to shipping CO2 from outside Scotland for storage in North Sea reservoirs by also servicing sequestration requirements from elsewhere in the UK and/or overseas. This will involve investment in greater industry capacity but could ease associated domestic funding requirements. Here, we introduce improved economy-wide structural (input-output) data reflecting how a Scottish T&S sector may emerge from current Oil and Gas industry supply chain capacity to a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, extending to simulate emergence of an export base. Our central finding is that exploiting overseas T&S export opportunities is crucial where the policy aim is to generate greater economic activity without increasing demands on the public purse. However, any extent of real wage bargaining and consequent producer cost pressure as labour demand increases will act to dampen expansionary power, displacing export production and employment, while driving consumer price impacts that limit real income and public budget gains.

Inflation in the UK after COVID-19

Since January 2020, UK faced a serious epidemic and this COVID had a significant impact on the UK' s economy. In order to make the UK's economy recovered, Bank of England set the monetary and fiscal policy and injected many liquidity into the market to stimulate public's buying demand. After around one and a half years, the inflation grew alongside with the UK economy growth and finally the inflation has reached a historical high level over the past few decade. This essay mainly gather the information from different UK's data website, some news website and bank of England’s official website to introduce the recent inflation and interest rate in UK, analyze the reasons of nowadays high inflation, presented the central bank's recent policy and discussed the prediction of the future inflation and central bank’s policy towards the high inflation. The main findings are that the previous' bank of England’s policy during the COVID-19 period and Russia and Ukraine were the mainly causes and reasons for the nowadays' high and continuous inflation. For the prediction, the inflation in UK is forecast to continue increasing in the short period of time (the end of 2022 and the early of 2023) and it will decrease since the start of late 2023 and be back to the normal stage. Bank of England will continue increasing the bank rate to battle the inflation in the short period of time and then stop add bps and gradually make the bank rate back to the normal value.

Analysis and Prediction on the Top Retailers in the UK

The inflation in the UK has been increasingly serious, reaching approximately 10%. This directly causes the rise in the price of daily-used goods, including fresh and chilled, food cupboard and bakery, and household items. The growth in living costs has cut the shopping desire for the customers, pushing them to altering their original consumption habits. It is interesting to research in the behavior of the retailers during the inflation and the downturn of the UK economy. This paper has chosen four well-known retailers in the UK, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer’s and NEXT to represent the general development of the retail industry throughout the country. To evaluate the performance of the company before and after the influence, the stock price is used to indicate the current value of the four retailers. By collecting the data from Yahoo Finance and forecasting by applying Arima model, there will be no significant upwards or downwards tendency in the near future for Sainsbury’s and NEXT, while slight fluctuations are predicted to be shown for Tesco and Marks & Spencer’s stock price.

The role of inflation in the UK economy in the post-pandemic era

The paper focuses on the specific nature of the inflation process and a set of anti-inflation policies in the United Kingdom in 2021-2022. Based on the analysis of the economic literature, speeches given by the central bank’s staff, official documents and statistical data the author discusses the implicit transition in the regulation approaches used by HM Treasury and the Bank of England. There is some evidence that the cost-of-living crisis as a part of the inflation problem gets a top priority in the post-pandemic era. The government addresses this issue mainly through the income redistribution and benefits and financial support for lower income households. With regard to the inflation problem per se, the official approach implies the shift from monetary to fiscal tools. It means the expanding use of automatic stabilizers through increasing taxes and NICs in accordance with the IMF recommendations. Meanwhile, the Bank of England’s measures are more consistent with the task of financing the government’s borrowing than maintaining the price stability. These findings highlight the rising role of the state in the UK economy. The paper concludes with some comments regarding the split within the conservative party over the marked shifts in the monetary and fiscal policy.

Comparison of the COVID-19 Impacts on UK and US Economy: Evidence from Employment

Contemporarily, the COVID-19 pandemic has strongly influenced the global economy in various aspects. Among the strongly affected fields in economy, the employment ratio is one of the most influenced indicators as the corporation strategies have been adjusted due to the environment. On this basis, this paper will investigate and analyze the impacts on employment based on data retrieving and analysis. To be specific, two countries will be selected for better illustration, i.e., the U.S. and U.K. According to the analysis, the effects of the pandemic will be demonstrated. In detail, both countries face the drop situation of the employment ratios. In addition, the current policies proposed by the governments of the two selected countries will be discussed and evaluated. Moreover, the limitations as well as future prospects will be pointed out accordingly. These results shed light on guiding further exploration focusing on policy implementation of government during sudden risk affaires (e.g., pandemic).

A material flow analysis of the UK clothing economy

Historically, clothing accounted for a significant proportion of annual income for most UK citizens, so items were carefully preserved and often passed down through generations. In the 21st century, however, just 40 min of work at minimum wage is sufficient to purchase a dress, shirt, or pair of trousers that may be discarded after a handful of uses. UK per-capita clothing consumption is 2–3 times the global average, reliant on international supply chains associated with many environmental and social issues. Steering the clothing system towards ecological sustainability requires wide-ranging strategies, but the lack of data on flows of clothing makes it difficult to quantify the impacts of current production and consumption, let alone design and evaluate sustainability interventions. Here we use material flow analysis to track clothing flows through the UK economy as a prelude to considering embodied carbon and changes in economic value across the system. Our results show the system is characterised by relatively high rates of reuse but very low rates of recycling. More clothing is destroyed (via landfill and incineration) than is reused and recycled. Consequently, reducing consumption of new clothing by just ∼4% would be as effective for reducing waste as doubling current recycling activity. The UK also imports eight times more clothing than it produces, but offshores over half of the associated textile waste. In our carbon analysis, uncertainty is the key theme – estimates put the cradle-to-consumer emissions associated with 2018 UK clothing consumption anywhere from 9 Mt.CO2e to over 30 Mt.CO2e. Our economic analysis shows substantial, but unsurprising losses in economic value of clothing as it flows through the economy, with some unexpected nuances. Improving the accuracy of current flow and impact data is critical for understanding how the clothing system can be most effectively moved towards circularity.

Financial losses and flood damages experienced by SMEs: Who are the biggest losers across sectors and sizes?

As climate-related disasters increase in frequency, magnitude, and variability, the various facets of flood disaster impacts demand more effective and targeted mitigation actions and resilience strategies. Within the private sector, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly susceptible to climate-related events like flooding. As the backbone of the UK economy, SMEs' anticipatory adaptation is urgently needed to safeguard the socio-economic system of places at flood risk. Although many studies have examined the financial losses and other damages SMEs face, the discrepancies in losses and damages due to the size and economic sector of the SME are not sufficiently addressed. This knowledge gap hinders more targeted and effective flood-risk management and is also often cited as a reason why flood insurance is unavailable to SMEs. This paper examined the experience of 417 SMEs after three different flood events in the North of the UK. By performing parametric and non-parametric statistical tests using IBM SPSS 25, we offered granularity on the commonalities and differences in financial losses, types of damages, business closures, and decreases in sales that SMEs of different sectors and sizes experienced. The main findings showed the distinctive categories of financial losses that are more common and expensive for some sectors than for others, and provided a detailed list of losses in nine categories for SMEs in 13 sectors. It also revealed that the losses-to-turnover ratio is a more accurate representation of the negative impact that a flood event can exert on SMEs. In addition to informing SMEs of areas to focus their resources to increase their mitigation and adaptation potential, findings from this study can also support insurers, business chambers, the government and other supporting organisations in identifying potential risks to seek prevention and tailor programmes to build SMEs’ socio-economic resilience in a changing climate.

Implementation of international standards in trade regulation by the state

Free trade policy (or free trade in English) appeared in the second half of the 18th century as a phenomenon of economic life. In its theoretical foundation, A. Smith’s famous work - “The nature and causes of the wealth of nations” became decisive. The theory of free trade was developed by another English economist. It was developed and almost completed in the works of Ricardo.

THE SOVIET STATE AND LAW IN THE 20–30S OF THE TWEN-TIETH CENTURY: A VIEW FROM ABROAD (J.M. KEYNES)

This article provides an author’s survey of the set of views on the Soviet state and law reflected in the scientific heritage of the outstanding British economist and politician John M. Keynes in the context of his interaction with Soviet politicians and scientists of the early twentieth century. The purpose of the study is to identify a kind of «Russian trace» in the life and scientific work of John M. Keynes. Research methods: general scientific (historical, dialectical, etc.), as well as specific scientific (comparative legal, formal logical, etc.). Results: the study makes it possible to generalize John M. Keynes's ambiguous assessments of Soviet statehood in the first decade of Soviet power, in which along with the epithet «laboratory of a new life» the tendency of «Soviet power to violence» was emphasized. The article also gives an analysis of the attitude of his contemporaries – Soviet statesmen and scientists to the scientific research of John M. Keynes.

The Idea of a Good Life: Lessons from Confucius, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, and the Stoics

Abstract In 1930, the British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030 people would work only fifteen hours per week and enjoy more free time and leisure, that we would return to “principles of religion and traditional virtue,” declaring “love of money morbid, semi-criminal, and semi-pathological,” and that “we shall once more value ends above means.” But today, we do not see that this prophesy has proven true. Something must have gone wrong. We do not sufficiently know the distinction between needs and wants, absolute values and relative values, what a good life is, and how to live it. In this essay, I will present and discuss ideas from Confucius, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, and the Stoics that I think are deep and meaningful and can help us free ourselves from evolutionary programming and blind belief in economic and technological growth.

Persistently non-compliant employment practice in the informal economy: permissive visibility in a multiple regulator setting

Abstract The growing significance of non-compliant employment practice in the British economy has motivated scrutiny of the effectiveness of current regulation. In some markets, charges of labour exploitation, underpayment of the national minimum wage and associated ‘wage theft’ from workers are rife where business operations are characterised by academics, regulators and stakeholders as exuding ‘permissive visibility’. The current landscape of enforcement and regulation of informal business and employment practices features complex structural and operational issues for regulators subject to tight resource constraints. These enable permissiveness and offer scope for strategic regulatory tolerance of some violation types, possibly to raise compliance rates for other types of violations. Drawing on extensive empirical evidence and qualitative data sources in one market sector (hand car washes), this study investigates some key hypotheses focussing on compliance and responses by businesses and regulators to the extant regulatory regime. These inform a pragmatic institutional analysis considering the merits of some movement towards a single enforcement body instead of the existing arrangements featuring multiple regulatory institutions.

The OBR and the March 2023 Budget: The Travails of UK Economic Growth and the Politics of Technocratic Fiscal Governance

AbstractThis article places the Office for Budget Responsibility's commentary on the March 2023 UK Budget in political context. It explores how increased independent expert input has transformed the UK economic policy regime, focussing on the complex relationship between rules‐based economic governance, independent oversight and fiscal discipline. The technocratic veneer that enshrines the UK fiscal watchdog obscures the inevitable politics of rules‐based fiscal governance. The recent budget revealed OBR scepticism about how far budget measures can address the UK economy's long‐term structural weaknesses. This underlined the key role for judgment inherent within technocratic fiscal oversight.

A resilience analysis of the contraction of the accommodation and food service sector on the Scottish food industry

The Scottish economy, such as the United Kingdom (UK) economy, has been exposed to several adverse shocks over the past 5 years. Examples of these are the effect of the United Kingdom exiting the European Union (Brexit), the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more recently Russia–Ukraine war, which can result in adverse direct and indirect economic losses across various sectors of the economy. These shocks disrupted the food and drink supply chains. The purpose of this article is 3-fold: (1) to explore the degree of resilience of the Scottish food and drink sector, (2) to estimate the effects on interconnected sectors of the economy, and (3) to estimate the economic losses, which is the financial value associated with the reduction in output. This article focuses on the impact that the sudden contraction that the “accommodation and food service activities”, resulting from the pandemic, had on the food and drink sectors. For this analysis, the study relied on the dynamic inoperability input–output model (DIIM), which takes into account the relationships across the different sectors of the Scottish economy over time. The results indicate that the accommodation and food service sector was the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown contracting by approximately 60%. The DIIM shows that the disruption to this sector had a cascading effect on the remaining 17 sectors of the economy. The processed and preserved fish, fruits, and vegetable sector is the least resilient, while preserved meat and meat product sector is the most resilient to the final demand disruption in the accommodation and food service sector. The least economically affected sector was the other food product sector, while the other service sector had the highest economic loss. Although the soft drink sector had a slow recovery rate, economic losses were lower compared to the agricultural, fishery, and forestry sectors. From the policy perspective, stakeholders in the accommodation and food service sector should re-examine the sector and develop capacity against future pandemics. In addition, it is important for economic sectors to collaborate either vertically or horizontally by sharing information and risk to reduce the burden of future disruptions. Finally, the most vulnerable sectors of the economy, i.e., other service sectors should form a major part of government policy decision-making when planning against future pandemics.

What Kind of Future is Humanity Consigned to by the Scientific and Technological Progress?

In recent decades, more and more works have appeared, the authors of which are trying to predict possible scenarios for the future development of mankind. This article discusses 5 such scenarios: F. Fukuyama believes that all peoples and countries of the globe in the XXI century will develop in the direction of building a liberal-democratic society; Representatives of the Club of Rome in their latest report, based on statistical data of industrial development, substantiate the idea that by the middle of the XXI century. the Earth’s biosphere will become unsuitable for human life and humanity will begin to die out; representatives of the transhumanist movement in their “Manifesto” set themselves the goal of replacing the human biological body with an artificial body by 1245 and thereby saving people from diseases, from old age and even from death itself; English economist D. Susskind in his book “The Future Without Jobs” predicts that in the next two to three decades, robots and artificial intelligence will force people out of all areas of production and discusses the question of how people who are deprived of the opportunity to work will live; Finally, the Israeli historian Yu.N. Harari in his extensive work “Homo Deus” paints a picture of the fact that scientific and technological progress will turn “reasonable man” into “divine man” in the near future. Assessing all these scenarios for the future development of mankind, one involuntarily comes to the conclusion that they all speak of the death of mankind in the near future.

Trade, Businesses, and Economy of U.K. Post-Brexit— A Quantitative Analysis

Many studies have been carried out on Brexit’s economic impact on the UK, EU27, the US, and the rest of the world. Depending on the assumption of whether Brexit will be a hard Brexit or a soft Brexit, almost all studies predicted Blows to the economies of the UK and the EU, with a more severe blow to the UK economy. With the Trade Co-operation Agreement signed by the end of the year 2020 and the actual divorce of the UK from the EU with effect from 01-01-2021, the actual effects of Brexit came to reflect in various economic data reported by various national and international agencies. This paper makes an effort to analyse these hard data and examine the Brexit impacts on various sectors. It has also taken clues from the various surveys on the problems faced by businesses on the border, shortage of labour, etc. In February 2023, a protocol on Northern Ireland was finalized which became a part of the EU-UK withdrawal agreement that now ensures that a hard border is avoided for the UK export items on the island. This protocol was agreed upon between the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland (UK), and the European Union (EU) as the final settlement designed to protect Ireland’s economy and Belfast Agreement. The study concludes that the UK has done a relatively good job of managing the inevitable Brexit disruptions, including transitional measures for border softening. In order to achieve the laudable goal of having the best border in the world by the year 2025, the UK will require streamlining the Regulatory Control Systems. The UK has also entered into a Comprehensive Agreement with Trans-Pacific Partnership. But much is still to be done on the Domestic Regulatory Reforms front. Unless the UK uses the coming years to engage in putting in place proper, meaningful, and comprehensive regulatory reforms, the opportunities for Brexit may be wasted.

Perceived environmental turbulence and corporate strategy: The case of the UK recession

AbstractThe impact of the external environment on strategy is a long debate in the “traditional” strategic management theory. In contrast, future studies have a clearer view, having established that the environment is perceived and has a direct impact on how the future is anticipated. The same field has grown significantly, in the last two decades, with regard to how companies should foresight the future, looking into their external environment. However, we observe that there is a lack of retrospective research on how companies have embraced extreme environmental events, surprises, and wildcards which led to crisis with regard to their perception of the external environment and the strategies developed for the future. This study fills this gap with a multimethodological approach, combining survey and archival data, to examine the relationship between the perceived environmental turbulence and corporate strategy in some of the largest UK‐listed companies. We use the recession of the UK economy in 2008 as the key phenomenon to compare the relationship between perceptions of the environment and corporate strategy before the economic recession (2007) and after (2009). With our analysis, we provide evidence of how the environment influences corporate strategy and we show how a wildcard, like the recession, changed the perception of environmental turbulence, which resulted in greater adoption of the risk averse, retrenchment strategies.

Real Estate Insights The continuing uncertainty of property investment markets – an outlook for the UK in 2023

PurposeThe aim of this Real Estate Insight is to comment upon the outlook for real estate investment in the United Kingdom (UK) at the beginning of 2023 in light of global inflation brought about by the pent-up post-pandemic demand push for goods and services and the exacerbation of the Ukraine/Russia conflict.Design/methodology/approachThis Real Estate Insight will comment upon changes in the investor's view of the UK economy and the relative attractiveness of the different property sectors and the shift in thinking post-pandemic.FindingsThis paper will consider a number of scenarios and possibilities flowing from the current uncertainties in the property market and the wider economy.Practical implicationsAs with all property investment, the value and performance of the property assets is interlinked with the use and demand of different property types. Understanding the supply and demand drivers provides investors with a reasoned conjecture of how the property market may perform going forward.Originality/valueThis is a review of the UK market in relation to post-COVID-19 changes to supply and demand at both an operational and investment level.