Investors are abandoning France: It needs serious reform – and fast August 16, 2015 Exceptionalism has long characterised France. On the cultural front, two years ago the country requested the audio-visual sector (including French cinema) be excluded from the US-EU free trade agreement. The French labour market also has its own idiosyncrasies. On average, the French work much less than their EU peers (186 and 239 hours fewer a [...]
Can Alexis Tsipras survive as Greece’s Prime Minister? August 16, 2015 Dennis Novy, a professor at Warwick University, says Yes. Alexis Tsipras will be able to survive, for one simple reason: there’s no better alternative. The Greeks don’t want to leave the Eurozone. The last months have shown that the government’s previous approach hasn’t worked. Predominantly, this is because of too much resistance from other countries, [...]
Why the disadvantaged have been education reform’s biggest winners August 13, 2015 THE SCHOOL reforms in England since 2010 have been underpinned by the rationale that a good education is emancipating and liberating; that it allows access to a world of opportunities and interests where an individual’s destiny is in their own hands. In order to achieve that goal, the coalition and now the Conservatives have undertaken [...]
Unemployment has risen – but we need to look at the bigger labour market picture August 13, 2015 THE headlines this week were about a rise in UK unemployment –up 25,000 in the past three months. The main weakness was in part-time employment, which fell by nearly 100,000. Full-time employment rose, albeit more slowly than in previous quarters. The number of full-time employees is more than 400,000 (2.2 per cent) up on a [...]
A-Level results: A major milestone for many – but not for much longer August 13, 2015 STUDENTS across the UK opened their A-Level results yesterday and, for most, the three or four letters in that envelope will determine where they study next or which employer they go on to work for. A-Level results day has been a major milestone in many peoples’ lives since the 1950s. But if other organisations follow [...]
As China’s yuan devaluation shocks markets, should the world fear a global currency war? August 13, 2015 Gabriel Stein is director of asset management services at Oxford Economics, says Yes Not because China wants to start one, but because the decision is not China’s. Ostensibly, the changes implemented over the past three days aim to give market forces greater influence over the currency. That is good news. But by announcing, on three [...]
Forget nationalisation: UK railways need a radical dose of devolution August 12, 2015 It's been a torrid time for Britain’s railways lately. In the last six months – as many a hard-pressed City A.M. commuter will know – there have been bad tempered strikes on the Tube and commuter railways. Channel Tunnel trains have had to run the gauntlet of tyre-burning port workers in Calais as well as [...]
What future for forecasts? It’s time economists grappled with the flaws in their models August 12, 2015 Macroeconomic forces influence truly vast sums of money, but the process of analysing them is notoriously unreliable. Economic forecasting is often very wide of the mark and seriously inaccurate just one year ahead. Traditional economic forecasting has conspicuously failed to identify turning points in the economic cycle, while the highly sophisticated DSGE (dynamic stochastic general [...]
Ignoring A-Level results is not the best way to build a truly diverse workforce August 12, 2015 Today's A-Level results are a welcome release of tension for students, as many begin to contemplate university and their career paths. But are first-rate grades and university degrees still top of the wish list for businesses? A recent poll by KPMG revealed that 80 per cent of UK adults believe that success is driven by [...]
As wage growth slows to 2.4 per cent in June, is the UK economy now a cause for concern? August 12, 2015 Calum Bennie is a savings expert at Scottish Friendly, says Yes While this moderate wage growth seems like good news for a steady as she goes economy, in reality, it suggests that the underlying situation is more fragile than we thought. In addition, the recent devaluations of the Chinese yuan have, in two fell swoops, [...]