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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 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]

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The objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between per capita emissions ( $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$ and $$\hbox {SO}_{2}$$ ) and economic growth (per capita GDP) in the UK using a long span of data. This paper examines the existence of a non-linear relationship between emissions and economic growth using methods that do not restrict the relationship to be any particular shape. The methodology employs instrumental variables in the place of per capita GDP to deal with potential concerns about errors in variables and endogeneity. The empirical results provide strong support for the environmental Kuznets curve, with estimated turning points in 1966 and 1967 for $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$ and $$\hbox {SO}_{2}$$ , respectively. These turning points correspond roughly with the introduction of the Clean Air Act in the UK as well as the reduction in the use of coal as an energy source; and together, they provide a snapshot of the forces driving the turning points. The paper continues by further investigating the temporal behavior of the inverted U-shaped relationship. The findings indicate that if emissions and per capita GDP deviate from their long-run relationship, emissions do the 'heavy lifting' to restore the system to equilibrium. This result is intuitively pleasing because mitigation is directly affected by legislation as opposed to declining economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Conservative party's ability to embrace popular concerns around value, place and equality has enabled it to resurrect the old pre-crisis growth model, says Craig Berry, in a move which none of the post-crisis narratives offered by the Labour party has yet been able to disrupt or overturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consistent drop in public sector net borrowing in the first half of the year has stalled recently. And signs of a weaker pace of growth in the economy also points to borrowing in 2015-16 not falling as fast as the OBR expects. But evidence that the economy's potential is stronger than previously believed may allow an easing of the longer-term fiscal squeeze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to this article is the use of sports mega-events as part of a state's “soft power” strategy. The article offers two things: first, a critique of the “soft power” concept and a clearer understanding of what it refers to by drawing on the political use of sports mega-events by states; second, the article seeks to understand how and why sports mega-events are attractive to states with different political systems and at different stages of economic development. To this end a case study of an advanced capitalist state (London Olympics, 2012) and a so-called “emerging” state (FIFA World Cup, 2014; Rio Olympics, 2016) will be undertaken in order to shed light on the role of sports events as part of soft power strategies across different categories of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008/2009 recession had a pronounced impact on the financial performance, stability and output of Britain's volume housebuilders, leading to a historic decline in new housing supply. Whereas current policy ambitions signal the need for a substantial increase in speculative housing provision, little is known about how the recession affected the attitudes and motivations of Britain's volume housebuilders or what such behavioural legacies might mean for post-recession housing delivery. Indeed, whilst the British economy and housing market are showing positive signs of recovery and growth, speculative housebuilding completions remain well below policy ambitions. It is therefore unclear whether Britain's volume housebuilders, in light of their recessionary experiences, have the capacity to deliver such a step change in housing supply. In addressing this gap in knowledge, this paper examines the recessionary attitudes and motivations of Britain's biggest housebuilders and, in doing so, outlines a number of key challenges that may confront policy-makers and the housebuilders themselves in their attempts to meet the housing needs of a post-recession Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atlantic Gateway -- including the cities of Liverpool and Manchester -- is a proposition to create the critical mass to achieve a new level of sustainable economic growth not previously achieved in the UK outside London. The Atlantic Gateway Partnership's aim is to attract investment and accelerate growth as a transformational contribution to rebalancing the UK economy. The author sets out the challenges and the context and describes the proposition, the partnership and the priorities. The paper concludes with an exploration of future options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National exergy efficiency analysis relates the quality of primary energy inputs to an economy with end useful work in sectoral energy uses such as transport, heat and electrical devices. This approach has been used by a range of authors to explore insights to macroscale energy systems and linkages with economic growth. However, these analyses use a variety of calculation methods with sometimes coarse assumptions, inhibiting comparisons. Therefore, building on previous studies, this paper first contributes toward a common useful work accounting framework, by developing more refined methodological techniques for electricity end use and transport exergy efficiencies. Second, to test this more consistent and granular approach, these advances are applied to the US and UK for 1960 to 2010. The results reveal divergent aggregate exergy efficiencies: US efficiency remains stable at around 11%, while UK efficiency rises from 9% to 15%. The US efficiency stagnation is due to "efficiency dilution", where structural shifts to lower efficiency consumption (e.g., air-conditioning) outweigh device-level efficiency gains. The results demonstrate this is an important area of research, with consequent implications for national energy efficiency policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how business schools can better engage with business practice, building on literature that highlights their lack of impact and questions their business-model sustainability. Reporting exemplars of good practice in engagement (in both research and teaching), the paper offers six recommendations for Deans of business schools, government, and businesses. Design/methodology/approach – The research was undertaken for a report commissioned by the Association of Business Schools for the Minister of State for Universities and Science. Methods included a review of published literature; surveys of practising managers, managers who had changed careers to work in business schools, managers who had taken MBA degrees, doctoral students, deans of business schools, and fellows of learned societies; and interviews with individuals close to government who were themselves preparing reports on shaping government policy for business development and economic growth. Examples of good practice were examined for both content and lessons on how they developed. Findings – Six recommendations are proposed, on programme design; faculty skills and experience; developing partnerships and relationships; assessing impact; managing and organizing research; and differentiating business-school offerings for enhanced profile and distinctiveness. Two further crosscutting themes relate to the incentives that might be required for change to happen, and the capabilities needed for delivery. Originality/value – Originality in the paper stems from its focus on the solutions to the problems identified, as opposed to the restatement of the problems themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends economic geography research on path creation by developing a conceptual framework that moves beyond existing firm-centric accounts and connects to a wider array of actors and multiscalar institutional contexts that mediate the emergence and development of growth paths. As part of a broader understanding of social and institutional agency, the approach specifically redresses the apparent neglect of the multiple roles of the state and public policy interventions in research on path creation. The framework is used to interpret more than 30 years of path-creation activities that have placed the peripheral region of North East England at the forefront of the United Kingdom's burgeoning offshore wind sector. The empirical findings reveal how a variety of path-creation mechanisms have served to shape, and be shaped by, successive causal episodes of complex and geographically situated social agency. Emerging from an episode of entrepreneurial activity, the path's creation was subsequently catalyzed by a decade of strategic and contextual regional policy intervention before a radical restructuring of economic development governance in the United Kingdom created a policy vacuum for the path's development. The analysis of the policy-on, policy-off episodes illustrates the potential agency of evolutionary inspired policy interventions in supporting mechanisms of path creation and reveals a varied set of implications for the cohesion and embeddedness of the path's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon Treasury Official Economic Forecasts Vols. I & II, a series of Treasury Model (TM) forecasts of the percentage growth in real total consumers' expenditure are derived for the period 1967 to 1989. The one-, two- and three-step ahead forecasts examined cover an interesting period which includes major shocks to the UK economy, business cycle effects and changes in economic policy. Whilst a battery of forecast evaluation statistics and tests do not detect any evidence of forecast bias or irrationality over the whole sample, split-sample analysis provides evidence of a switch from overprediction to underprediction around 1977. In addition, the application of 'modified' versions of Holden-Peel (1990) tests provides evidence of the longest horizon forecasts failing to capture the full movement of changes in consumption growth. Using simple regression and a selection of forecast encompassing tests, shorter horizon forecasts are found to dominate longer horizon forecasts, a feature which might be expected logically, but need not occur in practice. Finally, forecast performance is related to changes in model specification and modelling methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'sub-prime' meltdown has accelerated critiques of the economic modelling that underpinned the activities of banking and allied industries. Coincidentally, there has been resurgence in interest in more socialised interpretations of economic life. In this article we seek to show how it may still be possible to marry formal economic modelling with these more socialised concerns. We argue that, at a time when many economists are anticipating slower growth rates in the future, such a possibility need not be disastrous. Indeed, it could result in genuine gains in terms of sustainability and a more just and stable society. Overall, then, we outline proposals for a different long-run economic trajectory and conclude with brief comments on the suggestion that Britain can validly overcome current deficits by copying the actions of the Liberal Government of Canada during the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the deepest and longest recession the UK has experienced since the 1930s, this article examines the origins, sustenance and puncturing of the growth dynamic the UK economy enjoyed between 1992 and 2007. In so doing it seeks to gauge the interventions made to attempt to shore up the growth model and the prospects for the resumption of growth. It argues that the Anglo-liberal growth model is, indeed, fatally flawed and that, in the absence of a new growth model, it is difficult to see how sustained economic growth can be achieved. Yet it also argues that, at present, no alternative growth model is on offer and that it is wrong to infer the likelihood of a paradigm shift in economic thinking from the 'inter-paradigm' borrowing used to shore up the old growth model in the midst of the recession. If crises are judged as much by the transformations to which they give rise as by the accumulation of pathologies out of which they crystallize, then what we have experienced to date is not so much a crisis as a catastrophic equilibrium. Though the symptoms to which it has given rise are pregnant with the possibility of crisis, the crisis itself is yet to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates government initiatives focused on the economy that were developed by Great Britain's Labour Party during its period of dominance from 1997 to 2010. The author provides reasons for Great Britain's economic growth during this time prior to the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis. The connection between this growth and growing income inequality in the country is then assessed. Policies pertaining to Britain's financial services industry, national debt, and government spending are examined as well.

The article discusses the major role of the housing market in the economy of Great Britain and how its recovery could impact overall economic growth. It states that the housing market measures economic growth as higher rates in house prices suggests higher consumer spending and better economic outlook. It is said, however, that the boom in the housing sector is faced with concerns such as falling incomes, higher taxes, and expensive mortgage lending rates.

The article discusses economic forecasts for Great Britain in 2011 and 2012. Yearly growth rate is predicted to escalate to 2% in 2011 and 2.25% in 2012. General government spendings is expected to drop about .75% from gross domestic product growth in 2011 and 2012. In 2011, growth in employment is anticipated, but will be inadequate to absorb hikes in the labor force. Forecasts for prices and earnings, demand, household sector, supply, public finances and accumulation are discussed.