Welcome to Stephanomics - this is where I discuss the UK economy, how it relates to the rest of the world, and how it affects us all
7 hours ago
Thursday's first estimate for growth is welcome news to everyone, not least government ministers.
In effect, it confirms that the last three months of this latest recession were brought to you by the Queen. Or at least the extra Bank Holiday to celebrate her Jubilee.
16:02 UK time, Friday, 19 October 2012
There have now been four pieces of good economic news in as many days: inflation, employment, retail sales and now the public finances have all come in better than expected.
The EU Summit even ended in (partial) agreement. No-one's cracking out the champagne, but it's fair to say that the economic picture looks brighter than it has been for a while.
11:12 UK time, Thursday, 18 October 2012
Welcome signs of life from UK consumers today. But the latest retail sales figures also show how UK shoppers have been squeezed by higher inflation in the past few years. We are spending a lot more than we were before the recession and not getting much more in return.
The volume of retail sales was 0.6% higher in September than it was in August. That means there has been a 1% increase in sales between the second and third quarter - the largest quarterly rise in two years. City economists think that is good news for next week's GDP figures.
17:39 UK time, Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Britain's latest labour market statistics have again provided happy news - in an environment that would otherwise be rather grim.
Economists have spent a lot of time pondering the jobs puzzle. So have I (sigh). But one consequence of the surprising strength of employment is both welcome and hard to dispute. It may have been an unusually difficult period for our economy but it has also been a surprisingly equitable one.
16:27 UK time, Monday, 15 October 2012
In the wake of the financial crisis it's become fashionable to beat up on mainstream economics for becoming too mathematical - for "mistaking beauty for truth", as Paul Krugman memorably put it.
Looking at the potential benefits of increasingly complicated financial contracts, it is said that too many economists fell in love with the theory - without thinking hard enough about what it would all mean in practice.
14:11 UK time, Friday, 12 October 2012
Lord Turner said on Thursday the headwinds facing the UK recovery are so serious, the UK authorities might have to throw away the rule book to overcome them, in both bank regulation and the approach to monetary policy.
Robert Peston debates the implications for financial regulation in his latest blog. Given that Lord Turner is one of two leading contenders to succeed Sir Mervyn King, I'm wondering what "still more innovative and unconventional" monetary policies might look like.
12:16 UK time, Thursday, 11 October 2012
If you knew nothing of what had happened in the global economy over the past five years you would have found Christine Lagarde's opening press conference at the World Bank and IMF meetings in Tokyo on Thursday morning distinctly peculiar.
Why? Because she was saying some quite scary things about the outlook for the world, but she didn't sound like she wanted to raise the alarm. She sounded like it was pretty much business as usual.
14:50 UK time, Monday, 8 October 2012
There was some politics in George Osborne's speech on Monday - as you would expect, at a party conference. But no policy fireworks. And he gave only the broadest sense of the tough decisions he would be taking in the months ahead. That's probably not surprising either.
The difficult reality for Mr Osborne is that the coalition has been struggling to deliver on the two goals that were right at the centre of its economic strategy: growth and deficit reduction. Put simply: the lack of one has made the second a lot more difficult.
16:35 UK time, Friday, 5 October 2012
Every budding businessman or woman dreams it making it into the boardroom - but they haven't always thought about what they'll do when they get there.
Between them, my guests on the Bottom Line this week had spent decades in boardrooms of every shape and size. I asked them to share their tips on how to handle the politics of the top table - everything from hidden agendas, to clashing egos, to a plain old failure to agree.
17:25 UK time, Thursday, 4 October 2012
In his monthly press conference on Thursday, European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi didn't go back on anything he said at the last one. I'm afraid that's about as exciting as it got.
He left most of the gaps in his September statement intact. And he refused to engage in any speculation about Spain - a disappointment for the many investors and analysts who can think of little else.
15:15 UK time, Tuesday, 2 October 2012
The US's economic recovery has been a lot stronger than the UK's.
But that's not saying much. It's not something you can expect President Obama to boast about in Wednesday's first presidential debate.
06:35 UK time, Monday, 1 October 2012
Sir Mervyn King was an economics professor at the London School of Economics before joining the Bank of England in 1991, and becoming its governor in 2003.
He studied at John Maynard Keynes' old college in Cambridge in the 1960s at a time when Keynesian economics was in the ascendant, but about to come under attack from monetarist economists such as Milton Friedman.
00:01 UK time, Saturday, 29 September 2012
Invest more in infrastructure. Talk to many economists about Britain's current economic problems and that is very likely to be part of their answer.
On Radio 4's Today programme we are debating whether that's right - or practically feasible.
11:56 UK time, Friday, 28 September 2012
For once, the UK economy has been getting press coverage that George Osborne can enjoy.
Newspaper columnists have been talking about "green shoots" for a couple of weeks. Now the cover of this week's Economist magazine has Britain "sailing out of the storm".
00:03 UK time, Thursday, 27 September 2012
What are the biggest short-term risks hanging over the global recovery?
If you asked most people in the financial markets that question they would point to two things: another blow-up in the eurozone crisis, and the lurking fear that US budget policies are heading over a "fiscal cliff".
16:14 UK time, Monday, 24 September 2012
You might think the financial crisis was caused by letting markets get too free - the financial markets, in particular.
Followers of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek would say exactly the opposite. In their view, it happened because the markets weren't free enough.
11:59 UK time, Friday, 21 September 2012
The governor of the Bank of England seemed to let George Osborne off the hook on Thursday night, in his TV interview for Channel 4, when he said it would be OK for the chancellor to miss his debt target because of slow economic growth.
Mr Osborne will be glad for the support, even if critics will say the Bank governor should not be publicly opining on fiscal policy. It's fair to say the chancellor's not getting much help from anyone else - or the UK economy.
00:02 UK time, Thursday, 20 September 2012
We found out this week that British workers, on average, were 20 % less productive than the G7 average in 2011, and nearly 40% less productive than the average US worker.
That's the biggest gap since they started measuring it, in 1990.
10:19 UK time, Monday, 17 September 2012
It's hard to think of a British man born in the 1880s whose name you hear more often, in current debates, than John Maynard Keynes.
I've made a TV series, with help from the Open University, about three economic thinkers from the past who have something interesting to tell us about the financial crisis and how to get past it: Friedrich Hayek, Karl Marx and, tonight, Keynes.
19:40 UK time, Thursday, 13 September 2012
For several years the US Federal Reserve has pioneered what might be called the "straitjacket" approach to setting interest rates.
But when it comes to injecting money into the economy, this latest decision has it embracing an equally unprecedented amount of flexibility.
Stephanie has been a reporter at the New York Times (2001); a speech writer and senior advisor to the US Treasury Secretary (1997-2001); a Financial Times leader-writer and columnist (1993-7); and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School.
She became BBC economics editor in April 2008.
She has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Harold Wincott Award for online journalism.
Her father was Michael Flanders, of the 1950s and '60s musical comedy duo, Flanders and Swann.
She lives in West London with her partner and their two children.
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