The UK economy is suffering from low productivity. This has been weighing heavily on GDP growth since the 2008 financial crisis, with output per worker stagnating at one of the lowest levels of any advanced economy. Raising productivity requires investment in productive enterprise. But UK investment, as a proportion of domestic output, has fallen from… [Read More]
Why aren’t we building more homes? This has been the perennial question in housing policy, as initiative after initiative seems to have made too little headway. But, as Daniel Bentley explains in this new guide to the housing crisis, the challenge is not just to increase the number of new homes, but to ensure the… [Read More]
For at least the past two decades, opinion polls have shown a large number of voters have wanted the UK to leave the European Union. When the question was finally put in the June 2016 referendum, the electorate voted to do just that by a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Yet… [Read More]
The population of the United Kingdom is growing at a rate of more than 500,000 a year, equivalent to a new town of about 10,000 people being created every week. On current projections, by 2039 there will be nearly 10 million more people living here – enough to populate Greater Manchester three times over. What… [Read More]
In this new report, Newcastle University academics Neil Powe and Rhona Pringle explore the scope for business-led growth and place-based revival in peripheral rural towns – those that are distant rather than accessible to large urban areas, and that are between 2,000 and 12,000 in population. The research aims to investigate whether businesses can thrive… [Read More]
As the UK looks to benefit from the opportunities afforded by Brexit, Theresa May intends that the country’s economic success will be underpinned by a modern industrial strategy. The first outline of this was set out in a green paper published in January. In this pamphlet, Rupert Darwall argues that an industrial strategy is needed,… [Read More]
Why is economic growth and prosperity in the world so patchy and unstable? Why have incomes for so many people stagnated? Why is there so much inequality – and why is there so much debt? Are all these conditions inevitable or are there more effective ways of ordering our economic affairs to achieve better results?… [Read More]
Concerns about immigration were not the only reason why a small but significant majority of the British electorate voted to leave the European Union in the referendum of 23 June 2016. But concerns about immigration were certainly a major factor. Polls which asked people why they voted for Brexit soon after the vote recorded that the… [Read More]
The government’s housing white paper identifies the delivery rate of new homes, once planning permission has been granted, as ‘too slow’ and a ‘major problem’. This is a welcome new consideration within Whitehall, to join longstanding and equally valid concerns about bottlenecks in the planning system. The proposals it suggests for tackling slow development include:… [Read More]
The image of the EU’s Single Market as an economically successful project, membership of which is vital to the interests of the UK, has rested on the hopes and repeated assurances of politicians rather than any credible evidence. No UK government has ever sought to monitor its impact until the rushed analysis, now widely held… [Read More]