A new class of time series models is used to track the progress of the COVID-19 epidemic in the UK in early 2021. Models are fitted to England and the regions, as well as to the UK as a whole. The growth rate of the daily number of cases and the instantaneous reproduction number are computed regularly and compared with those produced by SAGE. The results from figures published each day are compared with results based on figures by specimen date, which may be more accurate but are subject to substantial revisions. It is then shown how data from the two different sources can be combined in bivariate models.

The aim of the study was to approach an assessment of the technological level of the economies in Eastern Europe, particularly in the newly-democratising countries—Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland—by means of studying their innovative activity and productivity levels in comparison with the West.

Comparative labour costs in the manufacturing industries have been analysed in four previous issues of this Review based on surveys of labour costs published by the Swedish Employers' Confederation. These contain time series of wages for time worked, social charges and total labour costs in manufacturing for most OECD countries and convert them into a common currency. Although no allowance is made for the different purchasing power of the wages paid (‘PPPs’) the comparison is useful since the products of the industries of various countries compete on international markets on the basis of current exchange rates.

This paper aims to provide a brief and relatively non-technical overview of state-of-the-art forecasting with large data sets. We classify existing methods into four groups depending on whether data sets are used wholly or partly, whether a single model or multiple models are used and whether a small subset or the whole data set is being forecast. In particular, we provide brief descriptions of the methods and short recommendations where appropriate, without going into detailed discussions of their merits or demerits.

The UK, with its relatively liberal immigration policies following recent enlargements, has been one of the main recipients of migrants from new EU member states. This paper poses the questions: what is the effect of immigration on a receiving economy such as the UK? Is the effect beneficial or adverse for growth? Does emigration have brain drain effects on sending economies? How differently would skilled (or unskilled) migration affect both receiving and sending economies? What factors would contribute to immigration/emigration benefits/costs and economic growth driven by migration? Who are the winners and losers in both the sending and host regions? We utilise a two-bloc endogenous growth model with labour mobility of different skill compositions to address these questions. We show that migration, in general, is beneficial to the receiving country and increases the world growth rate. With remittances, the sending country in aggregate can also benefit. The only exception is in the case of unskilled migration, which can actually have a detrimental impact on the world growth rate. This possibility however seems to be unlikely by our examination of migration trends. Winners are migrants, and the skill group in the region that sees its relative size decrease.

The financial crisis that started in mid-2007 enveloped the world economy and caused a serious recession in most OECD countries. It is widely believed that it has also left a scar on potential output because it will have raised perceptions of risk and hence reduced the sustainable capital stock people wish to hold. It is inevitable that policymakers should ask what can be done to reduce the chances of this happening again, and it is equally inevitable that the banks would answer that it is too costly to do anything. There are four questions one must answer before it is possible to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of bank regulation. The first involves asking what are the costs of financial crises? The second involves asking what are the costs of financial regulation? The third involves asking what causes crises? The fourth, and perhaps the most important, involves asking whether regulators can do anything to reduce the risk of crises? Our overall approach to these issues is spelled out in a report written for the FSA in the aftermath of the crisis (see Barrell et al., 2009).

Much was written about the potential benefits and costs of North Sea oil when production had scarcely begun; for example, Hamilton (1978), Johnson (1978), Robinson and Morgan (1978) and Page (1977). In recent years, with concrete experience to draw on, there has been much argument as to the effects of oil on the British economy: in particular, whether, as argued by Forsyth and Kay (1980), a structural change was a necessary consequence, involving a relative decline in the manufacturing sector. This debate includes contributions from Richardson (1980), Worswick (1980), Barker (1980), Brooks (1981), Eastwood and Venables (1982) and Byatt et al. (1982).

The Euro Area recommendations endorsed by the European Council in 2016 called for a differentiation of the fiscal effort by individual Member States, taking into account spillovers across Euro Area countries. This article shows model-based simulations of an increase in public investment in Germany and the Netherlands and their spillovers to the rest of the Euro Area. While spillovers in a monetary union may be small when monetary policy reacts by raising interest rates, when rates are kept constant and the stimulus is accommodated, spillovers can be sizeable. An increase in (productive) spending in Germany and the Netherlands can boost GDP in these countries and also have significant positive spillovers on the rest of EA GDP, while the effects on current accounts are likely to be small. Effects can be even larger when investment is directed to the most productive projects. With low borrowing costs at present, the increase in government debt for surplus countries will be modest, while there could be an improvement in debt ratios in the rest of the Euro Area.

Steel is the basic material of industrialisation; and also of war. For Britain in the eighteenth century, iron and steel was the cornerstone of the industrial revolution; for Germany, a century later, the steel industry was the foundation of the militarism of Bismarck. Both countries supplied steel rails for America's westward expansion in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, before the emergence of America's own steel industry. Until the 1880s the British iron and steel industry was dominant. By the turn of the century both America and Germany had overtaken Britain as a steel producer. Today Britain has the smallest of the three industries. In 1979, a relatively good year, 21.5 million tonnes of crude steel were made in Britain, compared with 46 million in Germany and 123.3 in America.

The service industries—that is, all activities apart from agriculture and the production and construction industries—account for more than half of gross domestic product and employ about two thirds of the civilian labour force. The size of the employed labour force alone makes a brief analysis of productivity worthwhile; additional interest stems from the importance of the contribution of the internationally tradeable services to the balance of payments.

In November 1985 the National Institute introduced a new version of its quarterly forecasting model which included a large number (approximately 45) of explicit expectations terms. The model was solved on the basis of model consistent expectations.

Teaching practical subjects (e.g. woodwork, technical drawing, domestic science) in secondary schools can provide a valuable foundation and introduction to subsequent vocational training and qualification. This article compares the way such subjects are taught in secondary schools in Britain with three Continental countries—Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The emphasis on high quality of finish in the making of small articles to a given design, which is the normal approach in these Continental countries, is contrasted with the British emphasis on pupils' developing their own designs to solve larger problems—an approach which leaves less time for making the final article and achieving a high standard of finish. The implications for the current revision of the National Curriculum in Technology are considered.

This note examines the question of whether the responsibility for the operation of monetary policy in the UK should be ceded to an independent Bank of England. While sterling was committed to membership of the European Monetary System, this issue was pre-empted since monetary policy was effectively determined by the actions of the Bundesbank. Now, with the UK's withdrawal from the EMS and no immediate prospect of any return, the question has again returned to the policy agenda. In fact, the arguments used to justify such a delegation of responsibility are closely related to those originally associated with the decision to join the EMS itself; that monetary policy should be controlled by an authority with a strong aversion to inflation and a reputation for sticking to its announced policy. It has been argued that an independent Bank of England would offer precisely these advantages without compromising the domestic (ie UK) objectives which were overridden by the Bundesbank.

What do we mean by a country's real income? There are in fact two different approaches here. One, which we address here, is the question of interpreting the existing definition of income. The other is the widespread view that income ought to measure ‘sustainable consumption’. The origin of the idea that income should be a measure of sustainable consumption can be traced back to Hicks (1939).

In 1998 the Government set out its expenditure plans for the remainder of the current Parliament in the Comprehensive Spending Review. Announced within this were large increases in expenditure on education, health and capital spending with the objective of meeting the Government‘s manifesto pledges. Yet as the recent report by the Treasury on the UK's trend rate of growth states, the expenditure plans of the CSR may also help to raise the growth potential of the economy, although no quantitative assessment of this was made. Using evidence from the empirical growth literature, this article examines the possible effects of these policies on the long-run growth rate of the economy. In general the results from the empirical literature are non-robust, but by conducting a very different style of review we are able to identify several studies from which to determine what these effects might be. Using a stylised version of the CSR we estimate that it may raise the long-run growth rate by as much as 0.1 of a percentage point per annum, although there is some sensitivity to the underlying assumptions. This appears to confirm the likelihood of modest upside risk to the Treasury's estimate of trend growth.

It is universally acknowledged that imports in the UK economy have risen very rapidly; import penetration in manufacturing has risen from 26 per cent in 1980 to 34 per cent in 1986. It is felt that any reflationary programme will have little impact on domestic employment since much of the extra spending power will be spent on imports, especially imports of manufactured goods. This has led to the firm belief that a reflationary programme has to be directed towards activities which have a lower import content and hence a higher domestic output and employment multiplier. This was the belief that made infrastructural expenditure such a popular option in the political discussions before the 1987 election.

After almost two years of virtual stagnation, a sharp rise in the level of output has ensued in the last six months; between the third quarter of last year and the first of this, national output probably increased by 2-2½ per cent (table 2). But the momentum of this recovery may have begun to slacken off towards the end of the period.

This article presents measures o f competitiveness in manufacturing comparing Britain to Germany, France and the United States. Data from the National Accounts and the Census of Production are combined to derive new estimates of relative unit labour costs for a number of manufacturing industries. The results show that British manufacturing had a competitive advantage over Germany and France in 1993. This arose primarily from the devaluation of Sterling and followed a period, from 1989 to 1992, when unit labour costs in British manufacturing were generally close to those in Germany and France. Unit labour costs in American manufacturing, however, were considerably lower than in the European countries in 1993. The results by industry show that Britain performs relatively poorly in much of the engineering sector while being relatively more competitive in consumer goods industries. Over time changes in the market exchange rates and nominal wage inflation have large impacts on the relative competitive position of total manufacturing in the four countries whereas productivity growth plays a minor role. However, at the industry level productivity growth is important. In the face of similar movements in relative nominal wages across industries, differences in productivity performance distinguish those British industries which gained ground over their rivals abroad from those whose competitive position worsened.

In recent years, the National Institute Economic Review, in its appraisal of the economic situation, has often taken the line either that an incomes policy was needed, or that existing incomes policies should be strengthened. The term ‘incomes policy’ is a vague one: and the main purpose of this article is to be more specific.