Economics

Our macroeconomic reliance on debt, and the focus on aggregate demand, is based upon a wide Keynesian consensus.

Less attention is paid to the savings that must provide the funding for investment, the centrality of assets and importance of the core infrastructure systems – natural and conventional.  Microeconomic principles, such as the polluter pays and public money for public goods, provide guides for developing sustainable government policies.

  • Fiscal rules – the cakeism approach

    Both main political parties have committed to fiscal rules, and both are trying to present a picture of discipline by balancing current spending with current income (within three years for Labour), borrowing only to invest, and starting to reduce the debt relative to GDP by the end of the next Parliament. Read at face value,… Read more…

  • Podcast 54: Fudging the fiscal rules

    The Labour Party, like the Conservatives, has committed to borrow only to invest, to fund current spending only from current income, and to get debt as a percentage of GDP down. As ever when it comes to fiscal rules, the devil is in the detail, and these rules are less than they seem. Labour acknowledges… Read more…

  • Podcast 52: Fiddling the figures – iron fiscal rules are not what they seem

    Iron fiscal rules that allow borrowing only for investment might seem like a sensible strategy, but the figures have repeatedly been fiddled to make the UK appear fiscally responsible. Both main political parties have been playing this game for forty years. From Thatcher onwards, Conservatives used privatisation and PFIs (private finance initiatives) to move debt… Read more…

  • Seas of opportunity: navigating the Blue Economy

    Seas of opportunity: navigating the Blue Economy | Simmons & Simmons (simmons-simmons.com) In this podcast, Dieter Helm speak with James Merchant, Marine natural capital analyst at the Marine Conservation Society, on the why and the how of building a sustainable blue economy – an economy where finance and policy measures are geared towards regenerative and… Read more…

  • The Economy in Plain English with Clare English and Professor Sir Dieter Helm

    With Clare English, former BBC Journalist, and Susan Murray, Director of the David Hume Institute, discussing what makes up the sustainable economy. Read more…

  • A perfect storm: more infrastructure investment and higher real interest rates

    There are two schools of thought on interest rates: what might be called the conventional theory of the “blip”; and the longer-term monetary cyclical theory. The first has the current rates as a hiatus caused by current high inflation, itself the product of the energy price spikes caused by Russia. The second sees the last… Read more…