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The Economic Situation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2020
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The first quarter was probably the bottom point of a stock-cycle—a cycle which had been interrupted at the end of last year by an unintended rise in manufacturers' stocks of finished goods; these stocks seem to have been run off at the beginning of the year. Apart from this swing in stocks, there was very little change in real terms, between the fourth quarter and the first: we take the view that the increase in consumers' spending on durables in the first quarter was nearly all seasonal (page 7). So the year 1962 began with national output, industrial production, and also the volume of exports of goods and services all roughly where they had been two years earlier, at the end of the brief 1959 boom.
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- Copyright © 1962 National Institute of Economic and Social Research
References
(1) Chart 1, page 4, National Institute Economic Review, No. 15, May 1961.
(1) Budget speech, Hansard 9 April 1962, col. 964 “In the private sector, industries concerned with distribution and services, according to Board of Trade forecasts, show a rise of 8 per cent in real terms between 1961 and 1962”.
(2) Separate comparison of ‘other private’ industry orders and investment in ‘other private’ industry is unreliable owing to classification differences between the building and investment series.
(1) Public Investment in Great Britain, October 1961, Cmnd. 1522.
(2) There was a much smaller rise in stocks of imported food in the first quarter than in the fourth; but this was a seasonal change. Stocks of imported industrial materials and fuel fell a little less in the first quarter than in the fourth (Statistical Appendix table 17).
(3) The unadjusted stock change figures for cars and com mercial vehicles in Great Britain, derived as a residual from figures of output, imports, home registrations and exports, were as follows :
(1) For the past relationship between the movement of exports to the United States and the United States gross national product, see chart 2, page 6, National Institute Economic Review, no. 20, May 1962.
(2) From the official seasonally adjusted figures of total consumers' expenditure on durable goods it is possible to deduce the official adjustment made to cars and motor-cycles alone.
(1) Using the old seasonal pattern the official adjusted series would show a downturn in the latter half of the year.
(1) The seasonal adjustments to the expenditure series for household durable goods have also been slightly modified. The timing in changes of hire purchase controls has in the past tended to produce somewhat systematic fluctuations in demand which could possibly distort the seasonal pattern.
(2) Deposit rates were reduced from 20 per cent to 10 per cent on radio and electrical goods and domestic appliances except cookers.
(3) It is difficult to interpret recent changes in the official estimates of incomes. The difference between official estimates of gross domestic product derived from income and from expenditure increased sharply during the first quarter of 1962.
(1) In reaction to the rise in vegetable prices consumers reduced their consumption of vegetables and potatoes con siderably. Against the rise in price of 58 per cent over the past year, greengrocers and fruiterers increased the value of their sales by 10 per cent only.
(1) See chart 4, page 11, National Institute Economic Review, no. 19 February 1962, which shows the squeeze on profit- margins last year.
(2) See ‘Note on the retail and consumer price indices’, National Institute Economic Review no. 20 May 1962, page 52.
(3) The national income estimates for the first quarter of this year are more than usually uncertain.
(4) That is, the rise from the fourth quarter of 1961 to the second quarter of 1962.
(1) See National Institute Economic Review, no. 13, January 1961.
(1) See also chart 3, page 41, in ‘Engineering orders : their use in forecasting’.
(2) In the latest EEC quarterly economic survey, The Economic Situation in the Community, June 1962, this forecast is not in fact raised upwards; this publication does not, on the whole, use seasonally adjusted figures.
(1) See also chart 2, page 40, in ‘Engineering orders : their use in forecasting’.
(1) European banks can pay deposit rates above those dictated to US banks by Federal Reserve Regulations and because of the marginal nature of the business they can quote lower lending rates than US banks. See Bank for International Settlements, Thirty-Second Annual Report, Basle, June 1962, pages 135 and 136.
(1) This includes gold holdings of international organizations as well as those of countries (as shown in table 18).