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Showing posts from February, 2018

An Alternative Brexit Polemic

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You would think, wouldn't you, that an "Alternative Brexit Economic Analysis" by four highly experienced and qualified economists would be a rigorous exercise in economic forecasting, supported by excellent econometrics and with care taken to avoid confirmation and selection bias?  A new paper from the Brexit-supporting thinktank Economists for Free Trade critiques the Government's recent forecast that Brexit would cause a GDP loss of between 2 and 8 percent over 15 years relative to remaining in the EU, with the "hardest" Brexit causing the greatest loss. Or at least, that's what the paper says it is doing. But the way it goes about it is decidedly odd for something claiming to be an "Alternative Brexit Economic Analysis". The first section of the report is an extensive discussion of the reasons why no-one should ever believe forecasts produced by the UK Civil Service. The authors argued that because HMT's forecasts are frequently w

The misery of Mitie

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The failure of Carillion has brought to light widespread moral hazard in the outsourcing sector. For years, companies that deliver crucial public services relied on expectation of government support to keep their borrowing costs low and enable them to please shareholders by giving dividends they couldn't afford. They, and the banks and investors that funded them, assumed they were too important to fail. So when Carillion was on the brink of failure, RBS tightened the screws , clearly believing that the UK government would eventually cough up (my emphasis) : RBS....insisted that this revised arrangement "would be in place until support from [the Government] had been agreed and that the terms of this support would determine whether other uncommitted facilities with RBS would be withdrawn". But they were wrong. The UK government refused to provide support, preferring to allow Carillion to fail. That decision shocked the outsourcing sector to the core. In effect, it ha