The British economy [March 1992]

The recession in non-oil GDP has continued for six quarters with the real value of output falling by just under 4% since the second quarter of 1990. The present recession is therefore the longest since the Second World War, although the fall is still not as rapid, or as deep, as in the 1979-81 recession where the decline in non-oil GDP from peak to trough occurred over five quarters and amounted to 6.2%. Considerable uncertainty exists over the course of demand over the next few months, with consumption unlikely to exhibit strong growth. The likely outturn for GDP growth during 1992 is for an increase of no more than 1%. Macroeconomic trends, earnings and productivity, and unemployment levels are also analysed

Outlook and appraisal [March 1993]

The end of the recession is at hand, but the size and timing of proposed tax increases may limit the speed of recovery and so reduce further the prospects for the three million unemployed in Britain

The Scottish economy [March 1993]

Our previous forecast of a small fall in the seasonally adjusted output index for Scottish production industries (Divisions 1 to 4 of the 1980 SIC) for the third quarter last year was not borne out by the actual outcome. This is mainly due to a large under-reporting of the index for the second quarter last year in the previous official data release. It is now clear that the prolonged recession, and particularly the substantial fall in output in the second quarter contributed significantly to the deterioration of business confidence as reported in the previous Scottish Chambers' business surveys (which should also affect the early official recording of the second quarter's output). This under-reporting leads our model to predict a further fall, although small, in the following quarter. However, the actual outcome of industrial output, total volume of sales and new orders in the third quarter turned out to be not as bad as we had been expecting (see also the following business survey section). Nevertheless, as data reveal in this paper, we are expecting a large fall in production for 1992 as a whole. There will be a further marked reduction in Scottish industrial output

Outlook and appraisal [June 1993]

First quarter GDP figures signal the end of the recession. Recent falls in unemployment and rising house prices should stimulate greater expenditure from consumers now that the threat of redundancy has receded

Special article : Quarterly Economic Commentary: Volume 10-18

The Fraser ofAllander Institute has, since its inception, sought to promote debate and research into the Scottish economy. One way in which we have done this is to publish, every quarter, a collection of views and results from those who conduct research in this area. In the current volume J McGilvray presents a review of the responses to the government's consultation paper on water and sewerage in Scotland. In previous volumes, a large number of articles appeared and addressed a wide variety of subjects. Articles which appeared in volumes 10 - 18 are documented on the following pages and those wishing to obtain backcopies can do so, through the Institute, by contacting the editor. Articles appear by volume & number and are labelled according to whether they were a Feature Article (FA), Briefing Paper (BP), Economic Perspective (EP) or a Special Article (SA

Optimal population policy

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/This paper investigates the notion of optimality in population policy through the use of simple analytical and numerical examples. A control theoretic framework is adopted which does not restrict the analysis to a particular criterion of welfare nor to particular assumptions about the economy or population. Given an arbitrarily specified index of societal welfare and a set of assumptions on underlying economic and population dynamics, the corresponding policies can be deduced that maximize over time this measure of welfare. The necessary conditions for the solution of the problem provide insights into the tradeoffs inherent in maintaining optimality. In addition, the analysis allows the isolation of the factors and parameters to which the optimal policy in a given situation is most sensitive.The very simple models discussed in the paper serve to stress the importance of the ethical assumptions of population policy. They suggest that whether a society has a high or a low aversion, to crowding or environmental degradation has relatively little impact on its optimal population policy compared to its valuation on the welfare of future generations and of potential entrants to the society