UK Economy Research Articles

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.

A Warehouse Theory of Capital Accumulation

Abstract An interesting puzzle in 20th century economics is that in her magnum opus, The Accumulation of Capital (Robinson, J. 1956. The Accumulation of Capital. London: Macmillan.), Mrs. Joan Robinson made no mention of the name Irving Fisher. Zero, none. In my view, Mrs. Robinson was the greatest British economist since Alfred Marshall, and Irving Fisher was the greatest economist ever lived. Yes, with a great diversity of subject matters, Fisher in economics was a Mozart in music, a Rembrandt in art, or a Darwin in biology. In short, Fisher was a genius.

The Carbon Tax Effect on British Columbia Economy and Carbon Emission

A carbon tax is the most common carbon emission control policy widely used. British Columbia is the first Canadian province to use a carbon tax and implementing a carbon tax will impact British Columbia's environment and economy. This paper analyzes the scale of the carbon tax, energy consumption, GHG emission, and government revenue in British Columbia to evaluate the effect of the carbon tax. This paper finds that a carbon tax has no impact on dramatically reducing GHG British Columbia emissions, but it can help the government get more revenue. Although the carbon tax has little effect on reducing carbon emissions in British Columbia, the carbon emissions in British Columbia have been significantly reduced compared to other provinces. Therefore, we believe that the British Columbia carbon tax has a significant impact on controlling CO2 emissions, and the value of carbon emissions can be further controlled by increasing the carbon tax.

The War of Jenkins’ Ear and the Spectre of French Universal Monarchy

ABSTRACT The Anglo–Spanish War of 1739, commonly referred to as the War of Jenkins’ Ear, is generally explained as having been caused by public outrage at the depredations of the Guarda Costas without consideration of European politics. While Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole risked his political life to avoid war with Spain for fear that it would only benefit France and disrupt the British economy, the Country opposition, led by Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, exploited the situation with a maritime vision of empire to bring down the government. This article, however, suggests that Bolingbroke’s Country party was no less troubled by the prospect of French universal monarchy than the Walpole ministry but that they pushed for war with Spain as an urgent precautionary measure. Once France decided to support Spain, they thought it would be extremely difficult and costly to separate them and re–establish the balance of power. They believed that owing to Hanoverian influence on British foreign policy, which culminated in the Anglo–French Alliance of 1716–1731, the Utrecht peace settlement had been significantly distorted in favour of the French, and a French–Spanish alliance was already in sight. Therefore, before it was too late, Spain had to be defeated and Austria befriended again.

Occupational distribution and mobility of migrants born in South Asia: evidence from England/Wales Census, 1901–1911

ABSTRACT South Asians constitute Britain's largest ethnic minorities, yet very little is known about their migration history in the prewar era. Recent literature has begun to challenge the widely held view that South Asian migration to Britain was a post-war phenomenon in response to Britain's need for labour as it emerged from two costly wars. The literature has demonstrated that the South Asian presence in Britain can be traced back to the seventeenth century. This paper adds to that literature by analysing the occupation distribution and mobility of South Asian-born migrants during the early twentieth century. Regression results from the 1901 and 1911 Censuses of England and Wales suggest that relative to other foreign-born and British-born, South Asian-born immigrants were primarily employed in white-collar jobs, a position they largely retained until at least 1911. These results suggest that the South Asian diaspora was economically well assimilated into the British economy.

Britain's economic crisis in Mini-budget perspective

In October 2022, former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her resignation in London, becoming the first prime minister with the shortest term in British history. Due to the current unstable economic and international situation, Lizzie Truss launched a "mini-budget" to trigger a violent reaction in the financial market. Severely tested the British market: the stock market plummeted, the bond market sold wildly, and the foreign exchange market collapsed. As a highly developed financial industry in the United Kingdom, the budget bill severely impacts its financial instrument pension plan. Mini-budget has been a cold winter for the British economy since Brexit in 2016, the new crown epidemic in 2019, and the Russian-Ukrainian war. This article examines the current British economic crisis and its consequences in the context of globalization, as well as analyzes and forecasts the future of the British economy based on Sunak's "Autumn Statement."

Policing rights in the UK 2022: an audit

As the UK economy unravels and collective action in defence of livelihood and life spreads, the author explains how 2022 reveals the way the government is reacting to an expanding list of ‘enemies’, heedless of legal and moral restraints. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have pursued authoritarian responses on many fronts: with increasingly brutal policing of racialised minorities, migrants, asylum seekers and protesters, and ‘crackdowns’ announced or promised on investigative journalists; university campuses; striking nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, rail and postal workers; and ‘human rights’ – against a background of an impoverished and anxious population and a public sector in shreds. This review, though not exhaustive, highlights key aspects of the policing of society and particularly the introduction of new pieces of legislation in the past year.