Question 2: Which of the following was the second most important cause for the slowdown in UK productivity growth?
Answer:
(Insufficient) investment in research and development
Confidence level:
Confident
Question 1: Which of the following was the most important cause for the slowdown in UK productivity growth?
Answer:
Low demand (including due to the financial crisis, austerity policies, or Brexit)
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
The hope is that productivity will grow stronger once the Brexit issue is settled. Trying to get a deal by the 31st of December might not be realistic though...
Question 2: Do you agree that, in a period of great uncertainty and after a prolonged period of weak real wage growth, monetary policy makers can afford to wait for greater certainty about real wage developments and building inflationary pressure before raising interest rates?
In the presence of elevated economic uncertainty, monetary policy tightening becomes less effective (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261560617300943). The reason is that elevated uncertainty motivates agents to postpone decisions until more precise information becomes available, and this cautiousness makes them less responsive to changes in the economic environment, including the interest rate. The implication is that an additional interest rate hike will have a much smaller impact on inflation and GDP growth than conventional wisdom suggests. Is it not better to wait until we have a clearer picture about the economy? Luckily enough, the GDP reading for 2018Q1 will come before the May interest rate decision so MPC members will have a clearer picture of the economic outlook before pressing the button.
The relationship between inflation and unemployment is by no means linear and depends on the starting point of inflation. In a brand new paper joint with my colleague Michael Ellington (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2882494) we show that UK inflation is driven by monetary developments when inflation is already high (above 3%). Therefore, at high inflation rates, MPC should pay closer attention to money growth rather than labour market developments.
The CFM surveys informs the public about the views held by prominent economists based in Europe on important macroeconomic and public policy questions. Some surveys focus specifically on the UK economy (as the CFM is a UK research centre), but surveys can in principle focus on any macroeconomic question for any region. The surveys shed light on the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement among these experts. An important motivation for the survey is to give a more comprehensive overview of the beliefs held by economists and in particular to include the views of those economists whose opinions are not frequently heard in public debates.
Questions mainly focus on macroeconomic and public policy topics. Although there are some questions that focus specifically on the UK economy, the setup of the survey is much broader and considers questions related to other countries/regions and also considers questions not tied to a specific economy.
The surveys are done in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
The UK Productivity Puzzle
Question 2: Which of the following was the second most important cause for the slowdown in UK productivity growth?
Question 1: Which of the following was the most important cause for the slowdown in UK productivity growth?
Labour Markets and Monetary Policy
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Question 2: Do you agree that, in a period of great uncertainty and after a prolonged period of weak real wage growth, monetary policy makers can afford to wait for greater certainty about real wage developments and building inflationary pressure before raising interest rates?
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Question 1: Do you agree that a strong labour market is a good indicator of building inflationary pressure?
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Bitcoin and the City
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Question 2: Do you agree that the regulatory oversight of cryptocurrencies needs to be increased?
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