Question 4: Which of the following policies would be your second choice of policy to boost private sector productivity, in addition to or absent your first choice?
Answer:
Investments in human capital including education and job retraining.
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
If fewer high-skilled immigrants want to make the UK its home, the country will have to step up significantly the investment in its universities.
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?
As a simple plot, or correlation, the Phillips curve is a very unreliable economic law. But, as a structural relation that encapsulates the strength of nominal rigidities, monetary non-neutrality, or deviations from the classical dichotomy, it is one of the most powerful, effective, and useful pieces of applied economics. I am interpreting the vague term "strong labor market" as a measure of real activity standing fot the structural interpretation.
Only as much as we regulate gold, silver, baseball cards, or any other asset that can potentially emerge as a currency (and we know from monetary theory that many can). Market regulators can regulate it, as the CFTC will be doing, but central banks through macro prudential regulation should be weary of jumping to tightly regulate anything that moves, including speculative new assets that banks and SIFIs should not be holding in the first place.
Question 1: Do you agree that cryptocurrencies are currently a threat to the stability of the financial system, or can be expected to become a threat in the next couple of years?
Bitcoin is inadequate as a currency. As an asset that provides some small benefits to its users---chiefly anonymity and irreversibility of transactions---and that has a fairly limited and steady supply though, it is quite similar to gold. Even the arguments of some of its fans are eerily familiar to those that one has heard for decades about gold. Like gold, it fluctuates wildly in value and it is subject to fads and manias. As long as regulators treat it as a highly speculative investment, like so many other investments out there, then it should pose as much risk to the financial system as so many of these do.
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 4: Which of the following policies would be your second choice of policy to boost private sector productivity, in addition to or absent your first choice?
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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Question 1: Do you agree that cryptocurrencies are currently a threat to the stability of the financial system, or can be expected to become a threat in the next couple of years?
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