This paper uses the Workplace Employee Relations Survey panel for 1990–1998 to investigate the relationship between foreign ownership, skill-structure and use of microelectronic technologies in British establishments. We find that foreign-owned establishments are early adopters of new microelectronic technologies and employ more non-manual workers (more senior technical professional workers, less skilled manual workers). Because foreign-owned establishments are early adopters of new technology, an increase in foreign ownership can partly explain a recent improvement in the relative position of skilled workers in Britain.

Estimation and simulation of sustainable real exchange rates in a sample of EU member countries find vulnerabilities connected to the adoption of the euro if the rate vis-à-vis the euro were to be fixed with weak fundamentals and inappropriate policies. Sample countries have benefited from dramatic improvements in their external positions, in part driven by inflows of foreign direct investment. As a result, exchange rate misalignments have narrowed in most countries and, looking ahead, are expected to narrow further. These results are conditional, however, on optimistic projections with respect to world import demand and foreign direct investment inflows.

Not so very long ago, I argued that it was possible to characterise modern monetary and fiscal policy in the UK as a function of three key events: exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992, the election of ‘New Labour’ in May 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. The first led to the adoption of a domestic inflation target in October 1992, the second to the operational independence of the Bank of England and the establishment of the Monetary Policy Committee and the third to the acceptance of the need for macro-prudential policies, extraordinary monetary interventions to augment a simple interest rate rule and formal budgetary oversight by a fiscal council. The latter was provided by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which was established in 2010.

The Institute is a world leader in macroeconomic modelling and forecasting. It has produced quarterly economic forecasts for around sixty years, supported by macroeconomic models. The aim of the original builders of macroeconomic models was to transform understanding of how economies worked and use that knowledge to improve economic policy. In the early years, when computers were rare, macroeconomic modelling was a new frontier and Institute economists were among the first to produce a working model of the UK economy. It is remarkable how quickly models were being used to produce forecasts, assess policy and influence the international macroeconomic research agenda. The models built at the Institute were mainstream in the sense that they followed the contents of standard macroeconomic textbooks, developed with the subject, and fitted the facts as they were known at the time. There were continual improvements in understanding as the subject developed in response to new ideas and developments in the global economy. This article celebrates the development of macroeconomic modelling at the Institute and the contribution it has made to public life.

The purpose of the Enquiry, whose results are reported in this article, was to assess the competitiveness of British exports in five Eastern European countries—Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The Enquiry also investigated, more generally, the possibilities of promoting trade with these five countries. They were chosen because their trade with other countries is almost entirely the monopoly of specialised foreign trade corporations;(1) hence for each category of products there is only one buyer in each country. It is therefore possible to make some assessment of the competitiveness of British exports from the consumer end without an impossibly large number of interviews. These foreign trade corporations keep in touch with all the main suppliers both inside and outside the Comecon area, and are therefore in a good position to answer questions about the competitiveness of various Western countries' exports—questions concerning not only statistically quantifiable aspects (such as price) but also such matters as packaging and public relations.

Recent economic data indicate that the momentum of the present cyclical expansion in the United States continues to be stronger than widely expected at the beginning of last year. GDP is provisionally estimated to have risen by around 3¾ per cent in 1998, with domestic demand rising by 5 per cent. The last three years have all now seen output growth of 3½-4 per cent with high resource utilisation but low, and declining, price inflation.

The ‘productivity puzzle’ – the substantial drop in productivity in the UK since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008 – has exercised economists and policymakers alike. The loss in productivity levels, mainly output per hour, should have been restored by now and the trend growth should have been recovered, or even exceeded. Instead after a very sharp fall, much faster than many of our competitors, it has only recently started to rise again, but at a stubbornly slow rate and at the time of writing stood some 2 per cent below its pre-recession levels. So although we are likely to get back to where we were pretty soon, it is possible that the gap, with where we should have been on pre-recession trends, continues. The Bank of England calculates this gap could stay as high as 16 per cent or even widen if the rate of productivity increase does not return to normal. This is bad for the economy and especially bad for innovation, investment, growth and competitiveness. This paper examines possible explanations and offers some possible answers. It sides, in the end, more with those that argue that demand deficiency looks like being at least a part of the explanation, but acknowledges that changes in the structure and destination of employment, since the recession started, have also played a role.

This paper looks at some of the key fiscal questions related to Scottish independence, drawing on detailed analysis of household survey data, official data on public spending and revenues, and using a model of the UK and Scotland's public finances over the next half a century. We examine how and why public spending on, and revenues raised from, Scotland differ from the average across the UK, and how Scotland's fiscal position might be expected to evolve over the next 50 years under current policies.

Scotland's economic performance and fiscal make-up are key elements in the debate leading up to the forthcoming referendum on independence. However, in terms of understanding Scotland's economic performance, the situation is complicated by the high degree of overseas ownership, especially with regards to North Sea activity, and the importance of a natural commodity, oil. This makes the use of traditional measures of economic performance, like GDP or GDP per capita, less relevant than for most countries and suggests a greater need to use both constant price and cash GNI, neither of which are currently available. In terms of its fiscal balance, Scotland's independence would require taxes derived from its offshore (North Sea) activity to be sufficient to offset the extra monies (in per head terms) currently transferred from the rest of the UK (via the Barnett formula system) in order to pay for the current level of public services. Based on current projections, such North Sea related tax revenues would amount to less than the likely Barnett transfer, leading to a net loss in funding at the time of independence. Under such circumstances the question of whether or not Scotland could afford to initiate the building up of an ‘Oil Fund’, is largely a redundant one. However, uncertainties over both future oil and gas revenues and over the continuation of the existing Barnett system make it difficult to predict with any great certainty whether Scotland would see a longer-term net fiscal gain or loss post-independence. Apparent inconsistencies between official GNI and Scottish revenue figures also means that the existing fiscal balance position remains open to question.

This note is a sequel to an earlier article by W. A. B. Hopkin and W. A. H. Godley which set out a method of estimating how the main aggregates in the national accounts will be affected over a period of 18 months or two years by changes in taxation. More recent experience and additional research into methods of short-term economic forecasting have led to further developments in the same field.

The Review is pleased to give hospitality to CLARE Group articles, but is not necessarily in agreement with the views expressed; responsibility for these rests with the author. Members of the CLARE Group are M.J. Artis, A.J.C. Britton, W.A. Brown, W.J. Carlin, J.S. Flemming, C.A.E. Goodhart, J.A. Kay, R.C.O. Matthews, D. Miles, M.H. Miller, P.M. Oppenheimer, M.V. Posner, W.B. Reddaway, J.R. Sargent, M.FG. Scott, Z.A. Silberston, J.H.B. Tew, S. Wadhwani and M. Weale.

Between 1950 and the oil price increase of 1973, British Coal lost most of its markets for direct sales to industry and households. Its hold over electricity generation actually strengthened in the 1960s and 1970s, as competition from petroleum faded and the contribution from nuclear energy was delayed and limited by technical and financial problems. But competition from coal imports has increased; and a radically new technology for using natural gas to generate electricity has developed.

This new technology arrived simultaneously with the privatisation of electricity supply. The new structure of ownership has not changed the fundamental nature of the choices open to generators or big customers, but has liberated decision making from some key constraints, and removed some powers from Ministers. Coal imports and gas usage are rapidly eroding British Coal's market, towards a level one tenth of 1960's sales. By the time the public noted the speed of the final contraction of coal, in the autumn of 1992, it was already too late even for a modest application of the brakes. The author argues that this is to be regretted.

For the future, the nuclear question remains open, but is perhaps a dubious bet for the UK after all the effort and errors of the past.

The National Institute has launched a series of conferences on important issues of economic policy. The conference papers and accounts of the conference discussions are being published by Heinemann Educational Books. The first two books in the series, entitled Demand Management and De-industrialisation, were the outcome of conferences held in December 1977 and June 1978 respectively. The third book, of which this article gives a brief summary under the same title, appeared this month, following a conference in June 1979. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum for discussion of the trade and exchange-rate policies which the United Kingdom should pursue domestically and advocate in the international arena, and the choice of topics reflects the attention recently devoted there to non-tariff barriers to trade, general economic relations between North and South, the European Monetary System, and its differing implications for debtor and creditor countries. Future studies will be conducted under the joint sponsorship of the National Institute, the Policy Studies Institute and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The first under the new arrangement will take place next month, with ‘Britain in Europe’ as its theme. The series has been started with financial support from the Nuffield Foundation.

In any projection of the working population in Britain, it is the number of married women at work which is the main uncertainty. For men and (to a lesser extent) for single women, the numbers likely to be working can be foreseen fairly accurately. Reasonable estimates can be made of the total numbers in each age group, and in all the sizeable age-groups over 95 per cent have a job. These participation rates—that is, the proportion in each age group which is at work—have not changed much in the past, and there is not much scope for them to rise in the future.

In recent years, international product markets have become more open as a consequence of a reduction in local trade barriers such as the completion of the single market in Europe and the North American Free Trade Agreement and through a reduction in worldwide trade barriers through GATT. The resulting increase in the competitiveness of global product markets has been intensified by the emergence of competition from the former Communist countries in Europe and rapidly developing countries from South East Asia.

The challenge for labour market policy in the new member states and other transition economies of Eastern Europe has been to redress the sharp drops in employment and rises in unemployment in a way that fosters the creation of productive jobs. This paper first documents the magnitude and productivity of job and worker reallocation. It then investigates the effects of privatisation, product and labour market liberalisation, and obstacles to growth in the new private sector on reallocation and its productivity in Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. We find that market reform has resulted in a large increase in the pace of job reallocation, particularly that occurring between sectors and via firm turnover. Unlike under central planning, the job reallocation during the transition has contributed significantly to aggregate productivity growth. Privatisation has not only stimulated intrasectoral job reallocation, but the reallocation is more productive than that among remaining state firms. The estimated effect of privatisation on firm productivity is usually positive, but it varies considerably across countries. The productivity gains from privatisation have generally not come at the expense of workers, but are associated rather with increased wages and employment.

The financial crisis that emerged during 2007 and overwhelmed the financial system in late 2008 also brought to the fore some of the obvious failings of the style of modelling that had been fashionable in central banks in the previous decade. The shift to Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models (DSGE) of whatever sort left no real scope for money and financial markets to have an impact on the real economy. This was in part because equilibrium models based on theory are unlikely to be designed to cope with a period of disequilibrium, which is when the financial system becomes important in macroeconomics. DSGE models come in various guises, and it was common to operate with a three-equation model with demand, supply and the interest rate as the equations. It is hard to see how the financial sector could fit into this, or what use it would be even if it were included. Larger DSGE models that respect the national income identity are easier to augment with a financial sector; but even that developed by the US Federal Reserve (see Edge, Kiley and Laforte, 2010) tends to return to equilibrium rather more rapidly than seems reasonable.

During the second half of the 1990s the UK economy enjoyed a sustained period of strong and stable growth. Since then the slowdown in the world economy that accompanied the collapse in equity markets has served until recently to moderate growth both domestically and abroad. But, in comparison to other major economies, the UK has so far emerged relatively unscathed. This could be the result of good fortune, well directed stabilisation policies or reformed institutions. Part at least of the relatively good growth performance displayed by the UK economy comes from stronger domestic demand. It is of course difficult to disentangle strong demand growth from the impacts on income of improved supply performance. We attempt to isolate those elements that are most clearly demand side stimulants.