Economics

By Adam Walker, Economics Correspondent Are Academic Attitudes Degrading The Manufacturing Industry? Over the past 30 years the UK has gone from housing a manufacturing industry to being an almost entirely service-based economy with a particular emphasis on the financial sector. On The London Economic we have discussed this in a number of articles including Jack Peat’s article on 3D printing aiding British manufacturing and one of my previous articles on whether London’s service sector is draining the UK. Regardless of the...

By Valentina Magri A missed goal and a missing report. They are the main drivers of a revitalised debate over immigration in the UK. The missed goal concerns net flow of migrants. According to recent data over migration in the UK, David Cameron is unlikely to meet his migration target of under 100,000 migrants by 2015. The Office for National Statistics estimated a net flow of 212,000 migrants to the UK in the 12 months to September 2013 (compared to...

By Artur Salles Lisboa de Oliveira, writer for Exame The Brazilian economy benefited significantly from the commodities boom throughout the 2000’s, allowing it to keep a strong inflow of capital which led to rising reserves and currency stability. Despite these favourable conditions, authorities didn’t succeed in promoting economic growth by addressing crucial issues such as infrastructure bottlenecks, high energy costs and excessive bureaucracy. Instead of tackling these aspects, the government exhibits a strong inclination to replicate the failing policies of...

By Adam Walker, Economics Correspondent  Since the global recession struck we have cut society into two vastly unequal groups as a means of pigeon holing blame. The one per cent - those with a total household income that exceeds £300,000 annually – have become targets in the financial downturn. The credit crunch in 2007, the Icelandic Banking crisis in late 2008 and the Eurozone Sovereign Debt crisis in 2010 have all at one point referred back to this section of...

By Valentina Magri The Bank of England (BoE) gave us both good and bad news during the presentation of the last inflation report in February. The good news: the UK will be one of the fastest-growing advanced economies, with a GDP growth equal to +2.6 per cent. The bad news: this growth relies too much on consumer spending. Indeed, the inflation report shows that consumption contribution to GDP have risen from 0.4 percentage points of the second quarter of 2013...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic  The great London housing crisis is a potent example of how capitalist structures fail when left to their own devices. Mayor of London Boris Johnson believes we would be utterly nuts as a society if we "slammed the door" on wealthy foreigners buying property in the capital. Loosely translated, this means that London residents are competing with the top one per cent of wealth in the world in a market that is...

By Stephen Angus Peter Junor China’s urbanisation plan is designed to boost the economy by increasing domestic consumption and connecting more people to the global workplace. The government also hope to improve living standards for everyone, but urbanisation can have drastic and irreversible effects on the environment while also reshaping the cultural fabric of the country which has historically been very rural. The last couple of years have seen the urban population outnumber the rural population for the first time in...

By Adam Walker, Economics Correspondent The Digital-Savvy Generation Rises To Power Facebook has acquired mobile phone messaging app WhatsApp for a total of $19 billion, giving them a bigger corporate value than giants such as American Airlines, Ralph Lauren and Tiffany. Launched in 2009 the app was based on a £0.79 subscription model for all of its users. Following the explosive growth of smartphone ownership and the immense popularity of the application it became one of the most prominent pieces of software...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic One of Britain’s biggest exporters shows the power of the four freedoms. In July 2011 the decision of the British government to award a £1.4 billion Thameslink contract to German firm Siemens was met with uproar. To quote the Daily Mail (deplorable but, in this instance, understandable), it was “beggars belief that Bombardier could have lost out to the Germans…. This would never have happened if Britain had put the national and...