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The article explores how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected the legal transition and foreign relations of Great Britain following Brexit or the British withdrawal from the European Union (EU). Topics discussed include the representation of Great Britain in EU institutions during the transition period, the reported economic and social impact of the pandemic on Great Britain, and the ratification of the trade and cooperation agreement between the EU and Great Britain.

The article explores the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on social security, workplace safety, and employment in Great Britain. Topics discussed include the duty of employers to ensure the safety of workers under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the compliance of workplaces to the lockdown protocols introduced by the British government in response to the pandemic, and the furlough of employees between March and October 2020.

The article explores the policies implemented by the British government for the benefit of companies in the midst of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Topics discussed include the introduction of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 to prevent placement of concerned firms into insolvency, the job retention assistance extended for both employers and employees, and the investment of the government in private companies to support continued innovation.

The outcome of the 2016 referendum on European Union membership took many by surprise and has continued to define the political discourse in Britain. Despite there being a growing body of research focused on explaining how voters cast their ballot, we still know little about what motivated our politicians to do the same. In this article, we draw on individual-level survey data from the British Representation Study to explore support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates who stood at the 2017 general election. We find that candidates' political views on immigration and democracy were key determinants of their decision to vote Leave. In addition, more optimistic views of how Brexit was expected to impact British economy and democracy are associated with greater likelihood of voting Leave. These findings highlight that, while politicians were less likely than voters to support Brexit overall, their motivations for doing so were quite similar. Interestingly, however, we also find that candidates contesting constituencies with higher Leave support were no more likely to vote for Brexit themselves. Taken together, these findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences on the issue of Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the creative economies of the US and the UK regions and nations using high-quality administrative microdata spanning the period 2011–13. The creative industries are highly urbanized in both countries. However, important differences are found in the size, density and diversity of creative activity between the two countries, which reflect differences in both urban systems and industrial organization. By testing the 'Creative Trident' approach in a comparative international context, the analysis adds to the literature on definition and classification of creative economies, as well as to discussions of regional economic development through the creative economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the political dimension of volunteering in the context of austerity. It explores how the economic recession and the austerity measures taken by governments in the UK in recent years affect how volunteers define their engagement and whether they relate it to more political forms of collective action such as protest. The article analyses the narratives and life trajectories of volunteers active in five charities in the field of poverty alleviation in Leicester. It shows how the context of growing inequalities and austerity leads these actors to construct hybrid – 'in-between' – forms of engagement in which compassionate action is mixed with social and critical resilience based on collective empowerment processes. Furthermore, it shows that participants' narratives about their own engagement are also ambivalent: they are based on a criticism of the disempowering consequences of austerity, but they sometimes tend to reproduce dominant discourses that blame the poor for their suffering. It argues that these ambivalences are inherent to narratives based on empowerment processes. The article concludes by suggesting how the focus on these 'in-between' forms of engagement – and their ambivalences – can reveal some of the changing features of collective action in contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK has had a long-standing regional house price gap with prices in London much higher than the rest of the UK. Using price data from 1969 to 2016 we track price differentials through several cycles of boom and bust, and note the growing divergence of London, particularly central London, from the rest of Britain. In explaining this divergence, we highlight the growing importance of international investment since the global financial crisis. We conclude that, although 'Brexit' may have brought the latest long London boom to a close, there is nothing to suggest that the regional house price gap will close. Given the ongoing importance of global financial inflows to major world cities, this has significant implications for how governments approach affordability and housing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the collective, member-based employers' associations in the UK that regulate the employment relationship by participating in collective bargaining. The main empirical contribution is to provide, for the first time, a longitudinal dataset of employers' associations in the UK. We use archival data from the UK Government's Certification Office to build a new dataset, identifying a decline of 81% in the number of employers' associations between 1976 and 2013–2014. We also find that political agency and reducing levels of collective bargaining undermined employers' associations by reducing employers' incentives to associate, although changes within the UK's system of employment relations enabled other types of collective employer organisation to survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper differs from previous research by examining the existence of structural breaks in the UK regional house prices as well as in the prices of the different property types (flats, terraced, detached and semi-detached houses) in the UK as a whole, motivated by the uncertainty in the UK housing market and various financial events that may lead to structural changes within the housing market. Our paper enhances the conventional unit root tests by allowing for structural breaks, while including structural break tests strengthens our analysis. Our empirical results support the existence of structural breaks in the mean equation in seven out of thirteen regions of the UK as well as in three out of four property types, and in the variance equation in six regions and three property types. In addition, using a multivariate GARCH approach we examine both the behaviour of variances and covariances of the house price returns over time. Our results have significant implications for appropriate economic policy selection and investment management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some sizeable, favourable, forecast revisions from the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) allowed the Chancellor to announce a significant loosening of the fiscal stance in October's Budget, while still maintaining the same margin for error against his fiscal mandate. However, forthcoming changes in the treatment of student loans in the public finances mean that the prospects of a further loosening in the fiscal stance look slim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

▀ There has been widespread misinformation in and outside Parliament about the economic case for Brexit. Outside Parliament, the rival groups – those with a negative assessment of Brexit and those with a positive one – have set out their arguments but these have huge differences in the factual and intellectual support they each bring to the debate. The group predicting a negative effect have published a wide set of empirical appraisals from academic and related research teams of the case for leaving and that against it. This, largely rigorous statistical analysis, finds strong and clear evidence of the large costs to leaving. The camp predicting a positive result for Brexit, in contrast, relies on one academic source for its case; the Cardiff University Macroeconomic Institute led by Patrick Minford. This has reported its predictions of the effects of Brexit which in contrast to the other camp, show large positive effects to growth and other key parts of the UK economy.▀ We assess the empirical quality of these two cases and conclude that the economic modelling of the Cardiff group is insufficient for them to give an adequate empirical estimate of the costs and benefits of Brexit; the Liverpool model it uses has a sparse overseas sector and does not differentiate between EU and non‐EU trade for example, so is unsuited to analyse the effects of changes in these. Our verdict is that, based on the evidence, Brexit in almost any form would be damaging to the UK.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the internal mechanisms that allow organisations to become high value manufacturing (HVM). Using a qualitative methodology, three UK manufacturing companies formed in-depth case studies with semi-structured interviews, observations and historical data. The HVM value matrix of Martinez and co-workers is used to categorise each organisation's value proposition. Wider benchmarking of the three organisations was carried out against a focus group with an additional seven manufacturing organisations. Thus, data from 10 manufacturing organisations are included in this research. The cases follow the 'customer intimacy' HVM discipline. The business processes supporting these value propositions were identified. Interestingly, each organisation's desired value proposition differs from their current one. 'Technological integrators' predominantly rely on new product development (NPD) and Strategy processes, whereas 'Socialisors' rely predominantly on Strategy and Customer Relationship processes. Companies can use the findings to better understand their current HVM value proposition and, where necessary, plan their transition to a future desired HVM value proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of Brexit, or Great Britain's withdrawal from the European Union (EU), on the economic conditions of Great Britain, including on British gross domestic product (GDP). An overview of the author's use of the gravity model to analyze Brexit's effect, including in regard to borrowing, foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade, is provided.

The focus of our analysis is on how the UK government's proposed Brexit deal is likely to affect the economy. First, we assess how trade, migration, foreign direct investment, productivity and contributions to the EU budget might change by reviewing current proposals against historical evidence. Second, we use the National Institute Global Econometric Model (NiGEM) to analyse the macroeconomic effects. Our assessment is that trade with the EU, especially in services, would be more costly after Brexit. This would be likely to have adverse effects on living standards in the UK. Our central estimate is that if the government's proposed Brexit deal is implemented, then GDP in the longer term will be around 3% lower per head than it would have been had the UK stayed in the EU. If the UK were to stay in a customs union with the EU, or if the Irish backstop position was to be invoked, there would still be a hit to GDP per capita of 2%. These estimates represent our considered view of the economic impact of the government's proposed Brexit deal, but they are themselves uncertain as there is no historical precedent of a country leaving a major trading block such as the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart metering studies typically focus on quantifying behavior change. However, little is known about how users understand energy information and analyze and interpret feedback from energy data visualizations. To investigate this, we gave 13 participants from nine UK households an electricity power clamp meter. Prior to installing and using the device, we conducted interviews with participants to gauge their understanding of their home electricity consumption and found that participants varied considerably from limited to substantial energy literacy. Two weeks after the clamp meter had been installed, we conducted a contextual inquiry in which we asked participants to explain the web-based time series visualization of their recorded electricity data. We found that the visualization proved unfit: participants relied on memories and suggested likely routines, while widely being unable to reliably identify specific events in the data visualization. In follow-up interviews 3 months later, we found that participants’ understanding of their home electricity consumption had hardly changed. Finally, we invited participants to generate ideas how smart electricity feedback could be optimized. They named different forms of disaggregation, higher temporal resolution, and interactivity as design requirements. In summary, these results suggest that people find home energy data very difficult to understand and link to everyday actions and behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing a bivariate regime switching model, this paper attempts to examine the regime-dependent effects of inflation uncertainty and output growth uncertainty on inflation and output growth. Using monthly data of the United Kingdom and the United States, we provide evidence that both nominal and real uncertainty exert regime-dependent impacts on inflation. Furthermore, in case of both the countries, inflation uncertainty has adverse impact on output growth mainly during the period of economic contraction. Also, for these two countries, it can be argued that higher real uncertainty significantly reduces output growth only in their respective low output growth regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Long‐term unemployment more than doubled during the United Kingdom's Great Recession. Only a small fraction of this persistent increase can be accounted for by the changing composition of unemployment across personal and work history characteristics. Through extending a well‐known stocks‐flows decomposition of labour market fluctuations, the cyclical behaviour of participation flows can account for over two‐thirds of the high level of long‐term unemployment following the financial crisis, especially the procyclical flow from unemployment to inactivity. The pattern of these flows and their changing composition suggest a general shift in the labour force attachment of the unemployed during the downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the dynamics of output connectedness of Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies using time‐varying, region‐specific, generalised connectedness measures. We find that the connectedness of APEC economies with the rest of the world is quite substantial, with the 2008–09 Global Financial Crisis increasing the connectedness measures above their precrisis levels. The USA, China, and Korea are shown to be systemically important and to dominate APEC’s real activities, while outside the APEC region the roles of India and the UK are also non‐negligible. These results suggest that the majority of APEC economies are considerably open to output shocks from the dominant economies such that policymakers in APEC must be continuously conscious of headwinds originating from these sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A green industrial strategy and green quantitative easing could set us on the path towards an environmentally and socially sustainable political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political condition in Ireland following the Great Recession from 2008 to 2016. Topics include the impact of the recession to the economy in the country and in British and European economies, the main development in Irish politics since the global financial crises, and the key factors that will determine the future political stability in the area.

This article lays out both a critique of the oxymoron ‘sustainable development’, and the potential and nuances of a Post-Development agenda. We present ecological swaraj from India and Degrowth from Europe as two examples of alternatives to development. This gives a hint of the forthcoming book, provisionally titledThe Post-Development Dictionary, that is meant to deepen and widen a research, dialogue and action agenda for activists, policymakers and scholars on a variety of worldviews and practices relating to our collective search for an ecologically wise and socially just world. This volume could be one base in the search for alternatives to United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in an attempt to truly transform the world. In fact, it is an agenda towards the pluriverse: ‘a world where many worlds fit’, as the Zapatista say. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this brief article I explain why the expectation amongst economists that Brexit means Britain will experience significant economic losses, thanks to the reversal of the gains from specialisation, is incorrect. The background assumptions regarding comparative advantage are false and cannot inform real-world situations. However, this is not the same as to suggest Britain as a post-Brexit country will follow successful trade policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One vision of a post Brexit Britain is of a political economy sustained by highly flexible labour markets, light touch regulation, and a hyper competitive low-tax regime. This article focuses on the tax element, evaluating the prospects of this vision’s realization on the basis of the attributes of the British political economy, the substance of the Britain’s new found freedoms and the forces at play in the European and international regulatory environment. Britain is seeking a smooth transition via a strategy of upgrading and expanding national position in global wealth chains (GWCs). Occupying space in GWCs requires a series of careful balancing acts between making a tax offer attractive to mobile capital and maintaining revenue, designing a low-tax regime and staying within the boundaries of accepted practice established by multilateral rules and norms, and between multiple, often conflicting, goals that Britain must simultaneously pursue as it leaves the European Union. With hard Brexit, Britain will pursue this vision, but these balances are likely to prove illusive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The UK’s closely contested Brexit vote to leave the EU is expected to have a significant impact on the UK and EU. While calculating the impact of Brexit is difficult since the UK is still formally a member of the EU, understanding the vote is possible. Leading up to the referendum, public opinion was divided along demographic and economic lines. This article uses referendum results at the local government level to test whether national, racial, religious and economic factors actually influenced the vote. Results indicate that demographic variables played a role while economic variables did not. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The UK's decision to leave the European Union will have a wide-ranging effect on the British economy, but the scale and sequencing of the likely effects are hard to gauge. The uncertainties surrounding how a country separates itself from a regional economic bloc have posed challenges to the economics profession about how best to analyse the many consequences. The paper discusses the main lines of relevant economic argumentation, and reviews the evidence from studies of the likely effects of 'Brexit'. It then considers how the UK's economic linkages with the EU might evolve and examines some of the ensuing political economy challenges. The concluding section ponders the role of economists in so contentious a political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the policy-maker’s ‘decision not to decide’ affects different levels of internal organization and how it is reflected in the residential patterns of different population groups. The article explores the dynamics of residential patterns in two case studies: the Collective behaviour of the Sylheti community along Whitechapel Road in Eastern London and the Group Action of the ‘Kol-Torah’ Community in Zangwill Street, Jerusalem, where Inner-markets activities create clear property lines around/within their boundaries and result in a similar homogeneous pattern. Identifying the main engines of organized neighbourhood change and the difficulties of planning and dealing with individuals in the housing market shed light on similar processes occurring in other city centres with diverse population groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the education and career trajectory of Valpy FitzGerald, from his upbringing within the culturally distinguished Knox family, his education at Oxford and Cambridge and his career as a radical macroeconomist of development at Cambridge, The Hague and the Oxford Department of Development (ODID). It highlights his work with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, his advisory role with the British Labour Government after 1997 and his contributions to the reform of ODID. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We investigate the impact of the outcome of the EU referendum (Brexit) on various sectors of the British economy over the period June–July 2016. Using the event study methodology, we assess the effects of Brexit, relative to what had been anticipated, as measured by abnormal returns (ARs). The results show that the banking and travel and leisure sectors were affected negatively, with a cumulative AR of −15.37% for the banking sector. We observe that Brexit has a mixed effect on ARs with apparent sector-by-sector differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial variations in entrepreneurial activity have been shown to be a time persistent phenomenon in many countries. This paper analyses how these spatial variations have been affected by the recent financial crisis within the context of theories of regional resilience and adaptability. The analysis applies Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis techniques to data on firm births across Local Authority Districts of Great Britain during the period 2004–2012. The results demonstrate that, whilst the overall shape of the spatial distribution of firm births remained persistent, there is evidence of an increase in regional inequality. This is primarily associated with a divergence between London and the rest of the distribution. London, together with part of its surrounding area, appears to constitute a resilient entrepreneurial regime that has generated a dynamic, adaptive response to the crisis with high rates of new firm formation in contrast to other regions which have remained locked into lower rates of entrepreneurship. This supports the view that regional entrepreneurship is a path dependent process: entrepreneurial regions are more adaptable to the effects of an exogenous shock than less entrepreneurial regions. Accordingly, entrepreneurship is a critical factor influencing the resilience of regions in responding to an economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The article argues that the popular vote for the Great Britain to leave the European Union (EU) highlights many questions about how the world is governed today in the age of globalization. Topics discussed include Brexit being a protest vote in which many citizens who felt disenfranchised re-engaged with the political process, issues that informed the Brexit vote like economic circumstances and attitudinal positioning; and why the solutions suggested by the Leave campaign unsustainable.

We use Office for National Statistics' micro data for large UK establishments in the production industries in the period 1997–2008 to study the relationship between their productivity and the presence of substantial R&D activities, either at the production unit itself, or at other UK reporting units owned by the same enterprise group. We estimate that total factor (revenue) productivity is on average about 14% higher at the establishments which have substantial R&D themselves, compared to those with no R&D. Among the establishments with no R&D themselves, we estimate that productivity is on average about 9% higher at those which belong to enterprise groups which do have substantial R&D elsewhere in the UK in the same sub-sector. For the establishments with substantial R&D themselves, we also estimate a significant positive relationship between current productivity and past R&D expenditure using dynamic specifications which allow for both establishment-specific ‘fixed effects’ and a serially correlated error component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use an extended version of the well-established Crepon, Duguet, and Mairesse model [1998. “Research, Innovation and Productivity: An Econometric Analysis at the Firm Level.”Economics of Innovation and New Technology7 (2): 115–158] to model the relationship between appropriability mechanisms, innovation, and firm-level productivity. We enrich this model in three ways: (1) We compare estimates obtained using a broader definition of innovation spending to those that use R&D spending. (2) We assume that a firm simultaneously innovates and chooses among different appropriability methods to protect the innovation. (3) We estimate the impact of innovation output on firm productivity conditional on the choice of appropriability mechanism. We find that firms that innovate and rate formal methods for the protection of intellectual property highly are more productive than other firms, but that the same does not hold in the case of informal methods of protection, except possibly for large firms as opposed to SMEs. We also find that this result is strongest for firms in the services, trade, and utility sectors, and negative in the manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent economic crisis has brought into focus how even open and highly interdependent economies in the European Union try to govern their economies according to territorially defined interests. The aim of this article is to examine an area, online gambling, with the technological and legal conditions that challenge approaches that favour economic patriotism. The article compares two cases, the United Kingdom and Italy, that represent two different models of economic governance to argue that they are similar in which interests they seek to protect and at which level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The BREXIT referendum of June 23, 2016, represents a rather surprising decision by the UK electorate and it is a historical result with implications for the UK, Europe and the world economy. It can be shown that a major information blunder by the Cameron government forms part of the explanation of the referendum result: The 16 page info brochure that government sent out to households did not contain a single key finding of the Treasury study on the economic effects of EU membership on the UK and the cost of BREXIT, respectively. While prior to the Scottish referendum of 2014 the Cameron government conveyed key economic insights to households, before the BREXIT vote the government did not give the Treasury's finding that a 10 % output loss was to be expected as a long run BREXIT effect - had households obtained this information, the referendum would have been 52 % in favor of Remain. Thus there is a new, very convincing argument for a second referendum. Also, US perspectives are emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum to leave the European Union and the possible problems following the exit. Topics include the dilemma of sovereignty that could possibly result to major conflicts, the rise of populism in European countries that could bring political instability and the end of European financial contributions and access to the labor market.

The author comments on the economic factors that affect the voters' behaviour to vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum to leave the European Union. Topics include the government's austerity policies, the lack of access to public services which are cut by the government of Prime Minister David Cameron and the lack of investment in public housing.

The article explores the impacts to the Great Britain's withdrawal of its membership towards the European Union (EU), on aspects of its bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and its international economic relations with other countries.

The aim of this study is to determine mean comparison and identify similarities for all five dimensions of service quality between public hospitals in London city, UK and private hospitals in Attock city of Pakistan on the basis of patient's perception. Data was collected from patients through self-administered questionnaire. SERVQUAL was measurement scale, comprises of 21 items covering all five dimensions. Independence T-Test was performed to analyze collected data using Statistical software package for social sciences. Response rate is this study is 83.33%. It is concluded that in both sectors, performance of hospitals is lowest in responsiveness dimension of service quality. There is highest level of assurance among public hospitals of United Kingdom but in Pakistani private hospitals, empathy dimension is on higher side as compared to other four dimensions. Overall service quality in public hospitals of UK is better than those in private hospitals of Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is provided to the articles in the issue on the theme of the effect of Brexit, or Great Britain's withdrawal from the European Union (EU), on British economic conditions with topics, including economic models, migration and foreign direct investment (FDI).

This paper analyses the logic underpinning austerity governance in the United Kingdom. Taking the UK’s relative fiscal and monetary policy autonomy as a starting point, the paper unpacks and analyses how the United Kingdom has charted a successful course between the imperatives of social stability and market credibility. At the heart of this ‘success’ is a fundamentally anticipatory governing logic. Fiscal consolidation was justified and enacted as a pre-emptive and preventative intervention in order to anticipate an indebted and thus disciplined future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, then, UK austerity is not necessarily geared only towards swingeing spending cuts, because the direction of travel towards an imagined debt- and deficit-free future is just as important as reaching the destination itself under the logic of anticipatory fiscal consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the economic conditions of Great Britain. It mentions that impact of Great Britain's decision reagrding the exit from European Union on its economy, and states the decline in gross domestic product (GDP). It also mentions the decline of interest rate and exchange rate after the exit of Great Britain from European Union.

The article discusses the Great Britain's decision reagrding the exit from European Union with Referendum, and its impact on the economy of the country. It mentions the decline in economy of Great Britain due to the decision of its exit from European Union (EU) and breaking of Free Trade Agreement with EU. It also mentions that Referendum involves metropolitan quarters for political and economic establishment.

This article documents and seeks to explain the remarkably positive employment trends of a central area of London in the years since the onset of the financial crisis. The volatility of this economy since the 1980s had suggested the likelihood of a sharp loss of jobs, maybe followed by a strong bounce-back, if the finance sector could overcome reputational damage from its role in the debacle of 2007-2008. In fact this area proved both the most resilient in the downturn and the most dynamic in the upturn, accounting for all or most net job gains in the UK. This article considers three types of explanation for this positive outcome, in terms of: fundamental economic strengths allowing it to keep going through generally tough times; an advantaged position in relation to elite choices about resource allocation and restructuring in the face of a general fiscal/commercial squeeze; and (less conventionally) the impact of massive support to/through the banking sector, in first mitigating impacts of the downturn for the financial centre, and then fuelling another global city boom. The last of these is argued to be key to understanding not only why central London has done so well since the crisis, but how it is still liable to be 'the capital of boom and bust'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]