Prime, Policy Research in Macroeconomics

Macbeth:I have no spurTo prick the sides of my intent, but onlyVaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,And falls on th'other. . . .Boris Johnson is a moral (or is it amoral?) coward, dispenser of racist remarks, teller of untruths, and general political fantasist. Driven by ambition and lust for power, he appears to have no...

T Sabri Öncü ([email protected], @tsoncu) is an economist based in İstanbul, Turkey. This article was sent on 7 June 2019 and published first on 15 June 2019 in the Indian journal Economic and Political Weekly.  Summary: Would market volatility amidst global trade tensions and uncertainty cause a global recession? Although...

2018 was the 150th anniversary of the TUC, and the 70th anniversary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD. As part of the celebration of these achievements, the TUC’s Economics and Social Affairs department organised an event “Lessons from the Great Financial Crisis” - on 12th November, 2018 – the day after Armistice day, and 100 years after the ending of the First World War.  Several speakers, including ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, were invited to address the...

Fixing the roof whle the sun shines? (Photo: Jeremy Smith) This post was written as introduction to the very recently published book “Discourse Analysis and Austerity: Critical Studies from Economics and Linguistics”, edited by Kate Power, Tanweer Ali and Eva Lebdušková. Published by Routledge, it is...

Image: Robert Triffin (1911-1993), influiential adviser on original European Payments Union. Via https://www.c2dh.uni.lu/ A new European Clearing Union would restore a common purpose to the European project and help defeat the rising ride of authoritarianism.This article is cross-posted from Open...

Whether the UK finally leaves or remains a Member of the EU, progressives are generally united in viewing the existing Treaty and legislative rules on economic policy as dangerously dysfunctional. In their second joint paper on the theme, emeritus Professor John Weeks and PRIME co-director Jeremy Smith set out proposals for “Economic Guidelines...

On Wednesday (6th March) PRIME’s co-director Jeremy Smith was invited by TRT World TV channel to take part in their Roundtable discussion on the future of the euro and eurozone, hosted by David Foster.  His co-panellists were Valentina Romei, statistics journalist at the Financial Times, Vicky Pryce, Chief Economics Adviser to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), and via skype from France, Philippe Waechter, Chief economist of Ostrum Asset Management. General...

I’ve just been updating our data for GDP per head of population (from the OECD database plus adding the ONS estimate for 2018) and noticed a startling fact. The age of austerity, starting with the 2010 Coalition government, and on to the Cameron / May governments, has to date been the worst since records began for annual change in GDP per head . The average increase in GDP per head of population, from 2010 to 2018, inclusive is lower than the decade 2000 to 2009, i.e. the...

The Berlaymont building, Brussels HQ of the European Commission, refracted. Image copyright Jeremy Smith This article is cross-posted from Open Democracy, first published 17th January 2019. It follows up his earlier article from December, “Labour's Brexit trilemma: in search of the least bad...