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Welcome to Stephanomics - this is where I discuss the UK economy, how it relates to the rest of the world, and how it affects us all
14:04 UK time, Friday, 17 May 2013
Stephanie added analysis to:
Cost-benefit analyses "discount" the future benefits - a pound of benefit for citizens in 50 years' time is worth a lot less than a pound today.
You could argue that it systematically biases the outcome against projects that will deliver benefits to people for a really long time.
11:48 UK time, Thursday, 16 May 2013
I like high-speed trains. I really do. Every time I travel on a French or German one I wish we had more of them in the UK.
Quite a few economists I know feel the same way. But none that I have spoken to thinks the economic case for HS2 is particularly strong.
15:59 UK time, Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Stephanie added analysis to:
It's good to see the Bank of England governor raising the growth forecast - for once - and talking about a modest recovery.
But he and everyone else had hoped to see this kind of growth several years ago.
15:23 UK time, Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Sir Mervyn King was more direct than usual in his 82nd Inflation Report press conference - which was also his last.
He was also a little more upbeat - to the extent that he was able to say the growth outlook had got slightly better since the last report, for the first time in more than five years.
01:43 UK time, Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Little did anyone know then that he would preside over 81 more of them, first as the Bank's first chief economist, then its deputy governor, and finally as governor. Wednesday sees press conference number 82. Also Sir Mervyn's last.
I wasn't at that first conference. But as a student intern at the Financial Times I did go to the third one, in August of 1993. I remember being suitably awed by my surroundings, and impressed by the then chief economist's willingness to answer our questions and also his apparent desire to explain the Bank's policy rather than simply repeat it.
11:54 UK time, Tuesday, 14 May 2013
For decades, many British politicians who could not agree on anything, when it came to Europe, could at least agree that the single market was a good thing. Not any more.
That is partly a reflection of how UKIP - and the eurozone crisis - have changed the terms of the European debate.
17:44 UK time, Friday, 10 May 2013
There has been encouraging news on the state of the UK recovery in the past few days, suggesting the economy may have gained some momentum in the last couple of months.
You might also be interested to know that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has moved a step closer to revising away last year's double dip recession.
18:30 UK time, Tuesday, 7 May 2013
No-one knows. If anyone asks you about the economic costs and benefits of leaving the European Union, that is almost always going to be the best answer.
It is also the answer to most questions about the economic costs and benefits of staying in. These are not questions that economists or anyone else can give a sensible answer to - not least, because no-one can say with any confidence what the terms of Britain's NON-membership of the EU would be.
17:55 UK time, Thursday, 2 May 2013
"It's like opening the windows in a convertible when the top's already down". That is how one market commentator has described the European Central Bank's (ECB) widely anticipated rate cut: Welcome, maybe, but unlikely to bring a big change in the weather for the periphery economies currently locked in the boot.
The euro rose in value, around the time the rate decision was announced, only to fall through the floor later on during the ECB President's press conference, falling 0.7% against the dollar in not very much time at all.
12:58 UK time, Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Probably the biggest surprise of 2013 so far has been the dogged optimism of the financial markets. When the economic news is good, share prices rise. But when the news is bad, they often seem to go up as well.
It's a puzzle for economists everywhere, and there's no better example than this week's hotly anticipated European Central Bank meeting.
14:44 UK time, Thursday, 25 April 2013
It is good news - excellent news, if you're the Chancellor. There were few City forecasters expecting a growth figure for the first quarter of 0.3%, and plenty expecting worse. But in the words of the CBI chief John Cridland, it's "nothing to write home about".
Cooler heads are entitled to point out that our national output shrank by the same amount in the previous three months before. In a sense, Thursday's figure simply reverses that fall.
17:50 UK time, Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Both the Treasury and the Scottish government agree that it makes good economic sense for Scotland and the rest of the UK to share a currency right now. They disagree on how attractive, or workable, it would be if Scotland were to become an independent country.
Which side is right? Unless or until the Scottish people vote for independence, we'll never know. Each is certainly overstating their case.
10:42 UK time, Tuesday, 23 April 2013
True to form, the borrowing numbers have changed again with the release of the March public finance figures - the last set of monthly numbers for the 2012-13 financial year. And this time the revision has been in a helpful direction for George Osborne.
I pointed out yesterday that revisions had already eliminated the £100m fall in the chancellor's preferred measure of borrowing between 2011-12 and 2012-13.
16:56 UK time, Monday, 22 April 2013
This is shaping up to be an even more nail-biting week for the chancellor than we already thought.
Not only will we discover on Thursday whether the UK has formally gone back into recession, but on Tuesday we might learn that government borrowing rose in 2012-13, after all.
01:37 UK time, Saturday, 20 April 2013
Who cares what the IMF thinks about UK fiscal policy? Certainly not most ordinary voters.
I don't get the impression that serious investors are hanging on the fund's every word on the subject either.
21:44 UK time, Wednesday, 17 April 2013
After all the talk about what happened in the 1980s, Wednesday's labour market figures, for many, will have felt like another blast from the past.
Though the claimant count fell slightly, employment is down - and the wider measure of joblessness rose 70,000 in the three months to February.
15:12 UK time, Tuesday, 16 April 2013
The global economy is recovering, but not fast enough for most people to notice the difference. Whether it's growth, inflation or government borrowing, that's the message from the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook. And nowhere more than in the UK.
For the advanced economies as a group, the IMF is now expecting a slightly slower recovery than it was in January, with growth of 1.2% in 2013 and 2.2% in 2014.
21:11 UK time, Wednesday, 10 April 2013
She changed the country, yes. But did she make it better? That's the question lurking behind the deluge of commentary following Baroness Thatcher's death - and in the fascinating parliamentary debate in her honour.
For me, the lesson of all that talk is that it is a very difficult question to answer without caveats and qualifications, and not just for the usual reason, that her policies "divided the nation". It's also because the market economy she helped to bring to the UK is itself such a many-sided thing.
18:09 UK time, Monday, 8 April 2013
There really was no modern British Prime Minister who presided over a greater transformation of the nation's economy than Baroness Margaret Thatcher. When she left office, nearly every aspect of British economic life had changed fundamentally.
People will debate for a long time what she meant when she said "there's no such thing as society". But in Britain in the late 1970s it's fair to say there was no such thing as the consumer. When she left, politicians spoke of little else.
17:44 UK time, Wednesday, 27 March 2013
They say there's no such thing as a free lunch. But for many years, Britain has been enjoying something similar when it comes to its international investments.
Year after year, as a country we have somehow made a lot more on our investments abroad than the rest of the world has earned on its investments in the UK, even though - in cash terms - foreigners have more invested in us than we have invested in them.
Stephanie has been a reporter at the New York Times (2001); a speech writer and senior advisor to the US Treasury Secretary (1997-2001); a Financial Times leader-writer and columnist (1993-7); and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School.
She became BBC economics editor in April 2008.
She has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Harold Wincott Award for online journalism.
Her father was Michael Flanders, of the 1950s and '60s musical comedy duo, Flanders and Swann.
She lives in West London with her partner and their two children.
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