Summary [January 1978]

This brief provides a summary of the world, UK and Scottish economic outlook. The upward movement in the Scotland/UK unemployment relative over the past few quarters is unlikely to portend a return to the poor relative performance of the Scottish economy which occurred in the early nineteen sixties. Nevertheless the outlook for the Scottish economy in 1978 is not very encouraging

Foreign investment in Scotland

A significant feature of the UK economy throughout the post-war period has been the growth in direct foreign investment in manufacturing industries. For the host nation the main benefits are employment creation, income generation and import reduction or export expansion. Scotland has been particularly successful in attracting the lion's inward investment for example in the period 1945- 1965 a total of 108,500 jobs were created by foreign firms setting up manufacturing units in the despite its size, obtained 46,221 (42.6%), whereas the second most SE England, gained only 16,926 (15.6%). The reasons for this success have been attributed primarily to a combination of the availability of labour in Scotland, the financial inducements offered by central government as part of regional policy and, the undoubted attraction of the environment, notably of course golf courses, for foreign businessmen. This brief paper explores the nature of Scotland's direct foreign investment and the reasons for its success

Review of the quarter's economic trends [January 1977]

There is now ample evidence that the pace of recovery in the major economies slackened during 1976. Published statistics, however, are as yet inadequate to document the full extent of the slowdown or to assert that it was a transient phenomenon. Available evidence would suggest that the growth in the major economies in 1977 may be somewhat slower than had earlier been forecast, and that in the short run further reductions in unemployment and inflation rates may be very difficult to achieve. Several threads may be drawn together in an attempt to justify this interpretation of likely future developments

Tourism in Scotland

In 1978 13.2 million tourist and business travellers spent £523 million in Scotland, Foreign visitors, although only 8.5% of the total, contributed £158 million (ie 30.2%) of tourist expenditure. As such tourism is both an "invisible" export, since it is a means of earning foreign exchange, and a significant provider of jobs, many of which are created in the remoter rural areas. Despite its importance statistics relating specifically to tourism are not readily available from published sources. The "industry" actually combines the resources of a wide range of activities, most of which have economic and social links with other sectors of the economy independent from tourism. These include hotels and catering, transport and travel services as well as entertainment, sport and recreation facilities. Consequently the economic impact of tourism is generally assessed not in terms of employment and output but by more indirect measures such as numbers of visitors, or bednights spent in Scotland, as well as tourist expenditure and hotel occupancy data. This brief will examine the wider economic impact of Scotland's tourism industry and its future

Econometric forecasts for Scotland

In the first issue (July 1975) of the Fraser of Allander Institute Quarterly Economic Commentary, the special article, by Professor J McGilvray, reviewed the problems associated with constructing regional econometric models to forecast key economic variables. Since that time, a number of forecasts for the Scottish economy have been made in the main text or in special articles of the Quarterly Commentary. Many of these have been underpinned by forecasting relationships which have been estimated for particular sectors of the economy. Up to now we have been unable to produce a set of relationships which could genuinely be described as a 'model' of the Scottish economy. The reason for this is simple, but illustrative of the type of problem discussed by Professor McGilvray. To understand it one must be acquainted with the fundamental differences which exist between national and regional economic models

Review of the quarter's economic trends [April 1980]

This brief paper surveys recent world and UK economic data and reveals that there are some signs to suggest that the world economy will withstand the 1979 oil price shock better than it did in 1973/74. The main difference is that the 1979 price rise was not super-imposed on as severe an inflation as that which occurred on the previous occasion. The present rate of increase in the world prices should not reach the levels of the last cycle when the twelve month increase in manufacturing prices peaked at 23%. Advance warning by US economists that 1979 was going to be a year of difficulty did not go unnoticed by businessmen in that country who took steps in 1978 to avoid a repetition of the inventory boom and bust cycle which had proved so costly in the recession of 1973/74. Also, consumer expectations are adjusting towards a continuing rise in the price of oil. In the UK real GDP is expected to fall by 2½% from mid-year 1980. Thereafter, it is assumed to grow at an average annual rate of 1% for the next four years

The tax and price index

A feature of this year's Budget was the shift in emphasis from direct taxation to indirect taxation. The annual yield of income tax has been reduced by £4½ billion while that of direct taxes was increased by a similar amount. It must be acknowledged that the new tax and price index has a number of deficiencies. It is only applicable to a proportion of the population, namely those who pay tax and whose gross income is less than £10,000 per annum. It takes no account of the social wage, nor of changes in benefits, such as the recent restructuring of child allowance. It smoothes out tax payments over a full year even though, for administrative reasons, these may fluctuate widely from month to month. This brief paper explores some of these deficiencies in more detail and assess their impact on taxation

The world economy [April 1979]

In the January issue of the Commentary is was pointed out that the mildly favourable prospects for world economic growth in 1979 were overshadowed by some political uncertainties, notably the prospect of disruptions to the supply of oil and the growth of protectionism. While the volume of world trade, as measured by the utilisation rates of dry cargo shipping, has continued to improve since the trough of June, 1978, there have been further less favourable political developments. This brief considers the impact of these developments and analyses the latest economic data

The Scottish economy [October 1979]

The previous two issues of this Commentary have both indicated that the Scottish economy has been performing poorly since the mid 1970's. This is true in both an absolute and a relative sense. Manufacturing production only increased by 1.2% between 1976 and 1978 and, after dropping below 1975 levels in the first quarter of 1979, is unlikely to show any substantial improvement for the year as a whole. In an international context the 1975-1978 performance can best be described as appalling. Over the same period industrial production in Eire grew by 28%, in Japan and the US by 23% and in West Germany and France by 15%. Inertia in developing new markets and lack of competitiveness in existing markets both contributed substantially to the virtual stagnation of Scottish output. Because the problems are so diverse, so too must be the solutions

Single-Molecule Analysis of the Human Telomerase RNA·Dyskerin Interaction and the Effect of Dyskeratosis Congenita Mutations†

It has been proposed that human telomerase RNA (hTR) interacts with dyskerin, prior to assembly of the telomerase holoenzyme. The direct interaction of dyskerin and hTR has not been demonstrated and is an experimentally challenging research problem because of difficulties in expressing and purifying dyskerin in quantities that are useful for biophysical analysis. By orthogonally labeling dyskerin and hTR, we have been able to employ single-molecule two-color coincidence detection (TCCD) to observe directly the formation of a dyskerin·hTR complex. By systematic deletion of hTR subdomains, we have gained insights into the RNA sites required for interaction with dyskerin. We then investigated mutated forms of hTR and dyskerin that are associated with dyskeratosis congenita (DC), on the basis of clinical genetics studies, for their effects on the dyskerin·hTR interaction. Dyskerin mutations associated with X-linked DC resulted in significant impairment of the dyskerin·hTR interaction, whereas mutations in hTR associated with autosomal dominant (AD) DC did not affect the interaction. We propose that disruption of the dyskerin·hTR interaction may contribute to X-linked DC