Ten years on from the demise of Lehman Brothers, former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown believes we are drifting towards another crash – but is he right? Nafis Alam examines the factors that will be critical in any future crisis in a recent post for The Conversation.
Could the London property bubble be about to burst? Geoff Meen, Professor of Applied Economics at Reading, unpicks the reasons behind London’s falling house prices in a new post for The Conversation.
The world’s elderly population is growing. By 2050 it’s expected that one third of the population of Europe will be over 65 – and this gives older people more political clout. Could this ‘grey power’ be having an effect on the world’s economies? Tim Vlandas explains his prize-winning research.
Tim Vlandas is Associate Professor in the University of Reading’s Division of Politics and International Relations. His paper ‘Grey power and the Economy: Ageing and inflation across advanced economies‘ won the 2018 Research Outputs Prize for the Prosperity and Resilience theme.
Dr Stefania Lovo
Dr Stefania Lovo (SPEIR) has continued to work closely with the World Bank, providing research and expertise on development economics to (i) the International Trade Unit, regarding ‘Trade competitiveness in Armenia’; (ii) the Poverty Global Practise unit, regarding ‘Are we confusing poverty with preferences?’; and (iii) the International Trade Unit, regarding ‘Trade in services in Ghana’. One of her co-authored World Bank blogs may be found here.
Dr Zahra Siddique
Dr Zahra Siddique (SPEIR) received the runner-up prize in the P&R Output Prize for her co-authored article ‘The Economic Payoff of Name Americanization’. The article explores why more than 30% of migrants who settled in New York City in the 1920s changed their names, and what economic benefits those name-changes brought about.
Dr Sam Rawlings
Dr Sam Rawlings (SPEIR) has been investigating the impact of parental education on child health, exploiting a compulsory schooling law reform implemented in China in 1986 to identify effects. The key findings are that maternal education affects child health, but only for boys. Maternal education has sizable and significant effects on boys height-for-age (a measure of long-run health status), but effects are smaller and not statistically significant for girls. This is an important finding in China, where son preference exists and reflects the traditional patriarchal Confucian system in which girls and women are marginalised in society.
Michaela Bergman, Chief Counsellor for Social Issues at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Food prices hit low income groups hardest in UK but have a much greater impact in the developing world. Professor Richard Tiffin from the University of Reading’s Centre for Food Security explains why.
Last week saw the publication of the UK Government’s Family Food Survey for 2011. The report, which for the first time in some years, includes elasticities of demand estimated by our own Centre for Food Security, highlights the impact of an overall 26% increase in the price of the UK’s food between 2007 and 2011. Increases in the price of fruit and lamb of 26% and 55% in that period, for example, have resulted in reduced purchases of 10% and 33%, respectively.
It is important to recognise that these price changes do not affect the population evenly. In the UK we spend on average 11% of our income on food. This rises to 17% when we look at the 20% of households with the lowest levels of income. As a result, changes in food purchases are larger amongst low income groups. For example, the reduction in fruit consumption rises to 16% when only low income households are included. Because low income households spend more on food and food prices have increased by more than those of other goods, the inflation rate affecting low income households is higher. Between 2006 and 2009 the inflation rate for the lowest 10% of households by income was over 13%, whilst that for the highest was just over 11%.
The difference in the proportion of income spent on food is even starker when considering the picture globally. In Ethiopia, for example, the average household spends 60% of its income on food. In a world where, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the price of food is one and half times higher than in 2000, the impact on these households is clear. Increased expenditure is not an option and all that can be done is to trade-down and reduce food consumption. The factors causing these price rises are complex and include climate change, growth in demand from middle income countries and closer integration between energy and food markets. What is clear however is that the impact on food consumption in the developing world is potentially devastating.
As Christmas parties rock to the sound of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ it is worth reflecting that almost thirty years after Band Aid, we still have a billion hungry people on the planet and a further billion suffering from malnutrition. A famine not dissimilar to that which prompted Bob Geldof into action is unfolding in the Sahel where cereal production is 26% below last year; Chad and Gambia are experiencing 50% reductions. Prices will rise as supply fails to meet demand and as a result more than 16 million people are officially at risk.