Keeping the zombie economy on its feet

philmullan Economic policy, Innovation, Productivity, Zombie economy

On 23 January the British government introduced its long-flagged industrial strategy. It was another in a long line of disappointing launches of industrial policies. I wrote an article explaining that Theresa May’s ‘modern’ industrial strategy isn’t nearly enough to boost productivity. Moreover, government economic policies that have primarily propped on the zombie economy are making matters worse. The article is here

What my new book is about

philmullan Creative destruction, Economic policy, The longest depression, Zombie economy

Creative destruction: How to start an economic renaissance

To be published on 29 March 2017 by Policy Press

The mature economies have been stuck in a long, contained depression since the 1970s. The pressing question that arises today is not why investment and productivity have been so weak, important though that is. Rather it is whether we are hitting the limits of effectively muddling through this dismal reality. The financial crash of 2008 was the first significant indicator that sustaining reasonable living standards could no longer rely on an ever-expanding financialised debt economy. The subsequent recession was one of the sharpest since the 1930s but thankfully the system’s collapse was avoided. Can we expect to be as fortunate when today’s bubbles burst? Continue reading →

Economists: culprits or scapegoats?

philmullan Brexit, Economics, Politics

At the start of this year Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, declared that the economics profession was ‘to some degree in crisis’. He highlighted its ‘Michael Fish’ moment before the 2008-9 financial crash when most economists were as off the mark as the infamous BBC weather forecaster in anticipating an impending hurricane in 1987. Haldane went on to admit – ‘a fair cop’ – that economic experts at his own Bank, as at the IMF, the OECD and the Treasury, had seen their gloomy predictions of the effects of a vote for Brexit confounded by what actually happened. The economy continuing to run along pretty much as it had before the referendum, even ticking up a little as 2016 went on.

The clarity of Haldane’s mea culpa about economists getting their predictions wrong wasn’t matched by his explanation for why. Continue reading →