David Miles's picture
Affiliation: 
Imperial College
Credentials: 
Professor of economics

Voting history

Towards a High-Wage, High-Productivity Economy

Question 2: What is your evaluation of the following statement: “A well-designed government-stipulated wage increase can lead to higher productivity”?

Answer:
Agree
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
see answer to first question

Question 1: Which of the following statements most closely reflects your understanding of the relationship between productivity and wages.

Answer:
Wage increases can in some cases increase long-run productivity
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
There are a few channels by which a link from higher wages to higher productivity might work - the obvious one is a switch in the capital labour ratio to align labour productivity with real wages but effort and morale may might rise with remuneration.

Post-Covid Fiscal Rules for the UK

Question 2: What impact has the sequence of fiscal rules adopted in the UK since 1997 had on the conduct of fiscal policy in the UK?

Answer:
Improved
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
Having some framework for policy - some form of forward-looking rule - does force governments to pay some attention to the likely future path for debt and deficits. With no framework the temptation to just focus on today and simply make optimistic noises about the future is too great.

Question 1:  What impact has the sequence of fiscal rules adopted in the UK since 1997 had on the level of UK public debt? 

Answer:
Reduced
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
On balance the rules may have reduced debt somewhat. This is largely because the debt GDP ratio in the years before the 2008 financial crisis were held at around the 40% limit the rules then specified. Had the UK gone into the financial crisis with a ratio much higher the stock of debt today might well be somewhat higher.

ECB Monetary Policy and Catch-up Inflation

Question 2: Which of the following policies is the most desirable to meet the ECBs objective to achieve its mandate of “price stability” as you understand this term.

Answer:
Inflation targeting
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
Flexible inflation targeting - by which I mean having a flexible and contingent desired horizon to return inflation to target when it has deviated from it - is likely to be the best one can do to create a nominal anchor. Simple but flexible is the key to decent policy.

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