How would your life be without the internet? For many of you, this is a question that may be difficult to answer – as the internet has probably been an integral part of your life, probably since a very young age. We use internet infrastructure (broadband, 4G, 5G) to communicate, to shop, to educate ourselves, to keep in touch with each other, to buy and sell goods and services. We use it to seek and find new information, to learn how to cook, to download music, to watch movies. We also use the internet to make fast payments, transfer money between accounts, manage our ISA or our pension fund, set up direct debits and pay our credit-card bills.
I could spend hours writing about all the things that we do over the internet these days, and I would probably never manage to come up with a complete list. Just think about how many hours you spend online every day. Most likely, much of your waking time is spent using internet-based services one way or another (including apps on your phone, streaming on your phone, tablet or your smart TV and similar). If your access to the internet was disrupted, you would certainly feel the difference. What if you just couldn’t afford to have computer or internet access? What effect would that have on your education, your ability to find a job, and your income?
Martin Jenkins, a former homeless man, now entrepreneur, thinks that the magnitude of this effect is rather significant. In fact, he is so convinced about the importance of bringing the internet to poorer households, that he recently founded a company, Neptune, offering low-income households in the Bronx district of New York free access to online education, healthcare and finance portals. His venture was mentioned in a recent (and very interesting) BBC article – a link to which can be found at the end of this blog. But is internet connectivity really that important when it comes to economic and labour market outcomes? And is there a systematic link between economic growth and internet penetration rates?
These are all questions that have been the subject of intensive debate over the last few years, in the context of both developed and developing economies. Indeed, the ‘digital divide’ as it is known (the economic gap between the internet haves and have nots) is not something that concerns only developing countries. According to a recent policy brief published by the New York City Comptroller:
More than one-third (34 percent) of households in the Bronx lack broadband at home, compared to 30 percent in Brooklyn, 26 percent in Queens, 22 percent in Staten Island, and 21 percent in Manhattan.
The report goes on to present data on the percentage of households with internet connection at home by NYC district, and it does not take advanced econometric skills for one to notice that there is a clear link between median district income and broadband access. Wealthier districts (e.g. Manhattan Community District 1 & 2 – Battery Park City, Greenwich Village & Soho PUMA), tend to have a significantly higher share of households with broadband access, than less affluent ones (e.g. NYC-Brooklyn Community District 13 – Brighton Beach & Coney Island PUMA) – 88% of total households compared with 58%.
But, do these large variations in internet connectivity matter? The evidence is mixed. On the one hand, there are several studies that find a clear, strong link between internet penetration and economic growth. Czernich et al (2011), for instance, using data on OECD countries over the period 1996–2007, find that “a 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration raised annual per capita growth by 0.9–1.5 percentage points”.
Another study by Koutroumpis (2018) examined the effect of rolling out broadband in the UK.
For the UK, the speed increase contributed 1.71% to GDP in total and 0.12% annually. Combining the effect of the adoption and speed changes increased UK GDP by 6.99% cumulatively and 0.49% annually on average”. (pp.10–11)
The evidence is less clear, however, when one tries to estimate the benefits between different types of workers – low and high skilled. In a recent paper, Atasoy (2013) finds that:
gaining access to broadband services in a county is associated with approximately a 1.8 percentage point increase in the employment rate, with larger effects in rural and isolated areas.
But then he adds:
most of the employment gains result from existing firms increasing the scale of their labor demand and from growth in the labor force. These results are consistent with a theoretical model in which broadband technology is complementary to skilled workers, with larger effects among college-educated workers and in industries and occupations that employ more college-educated workers.
Similarly, Forman et al (2009) analyse the effect of business use of advanced internet technology and local variation in US wage growth, over the period 1995–2000. Their findings show that:
Advanced internet technology is associated with larger wage growth in places that were already well off. These are places with highly educated and large urban populations, and concentration of IT-intensive industry. Overall, advanced internet explains over half of the difference in wage growth between these counties and all others.
How important then is internet access as a determinant of growth and economic activity and what role does it have in bridging economic disparities between communities? The answer to this question is most likely ‘very important’ – but less straightforward than one might have assumed.
Article
References
- Comptroller, New York City, Internet Inequality
- Czernich, N., Falck, O., Kretschmer, T. and Woessmann, L., 2011, Broadband infrastructure and economic growth, The Economic Journal, 121(552), pp.505–32
- Koutroumpis, P., 2018, The economic impact of broadband: evidence from OECD countries, Ofcom
- Atasoy, H., 2013, The effects of broadband internet expansion on labor market outcomes, ILR Review, 66(2), pp.315–45
- Forman, C., Goldfarb, A. and Greenstein, S., 2009, The Internet and Local Wages: Convergence or Divergence? (No. w14750), National Bureau of Economic Research
Questions
- Is there a link between economic growth and internet access? Discuss, using examples.
- Explain the arguments for and against government intervention to subsidise internet access of poorer households.
- How important is the internet to you and your day to day life? Take a day offline (yes, really – a whole day). Then come back and write about it.
The IMF has just published its six-monthly World Economic Outlook. This provides an assessment of trends in the global economy and gives forecasts for a range of macroeconomic indicators by country, by groups of countries and for the whole world.
This latest report is upbeat for the short term. Global economic growth is expected to be around 3.9% this year and next. This represents 2.3% this year and 2.5% next for advanced countries and 4.8% this year and 4.9% next for emerging and developing countries. For large advanced countries such rates are above potential economic growth rates of around 1.6% and thus represent a rise in the positive output gap or fall in the negative one.
But while the near future for economic growth seems positive, the IMF is less optimistic beyond that for advanced countries, where growth rates are forecast to decline to 2.2% in 2019, 1.7% in 2020 and 1.5% by 2023. Emerging and developing countries, however, are expected to see growth rates of around 5% being maintained.
For most countries, current favorable growth rates will not last. Policymakers should seize this opportunity to bolster growth, make it more durable, and equip their governments better to counter the next downturn.
By comparison with other countries, the UK’s growth prospects look poor. The IMF forecasts that its growth rate will slow from 1.8% in 2017 to 1.6% in 2018 and 1.5% in 2019, eventually rising to around 1.6% by 2023. 
The short-term figures are lower than in the USA, France and Germany and reflect ‘the anticipated higher barriers to trade and lower foreign direct investment following Brexit’.
The report sounds some alarm bells for the global economy.
The first is a possible growth in trade barriers as a trade war looms between the USA and China and as Russia faces growing trade sanctions. As Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF told an audience in Hong Kong:
Governments need to steer clear of protectionism in all its forms. …Remember: the multilateral trade system has transformed our world over the past generation. It helped reduce by half the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty. It has reduced the cost of living, and has created millions of new jobs with higher wages. …But that system of rules and shared responsibility is now in danger of being torn apart. This would be an inexcusable, collective policy failure. So let us redouble our efforts to reduce trade barriers and resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures.
The second danger is a growth in world government and private debt levels, which at 225% of global GDP are now higher than before the financial crisis of 2007–9. With Trump’s policies of tax cuts and increased government expenditure, the resulting rise in US government debt levels could see some fiscal tightening ahead, which could act as a brake on the world economy. As Maurice Obstfeld , Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department, said at the Press Conference launching the latest World Economic Outlook:
Debts throughout the world are very high, and a lot of debts are denominated in dollars. And if dollar funding costs rise, this could be a strain on countries’ sovereign financial institutions.
In China, there has been a massive rise in corporate debt, which may become unsustainable if the Chinese economy slows. Other countries too have seen a surge in private-sector debt. If optimism is replaced by pessimism, there could be a ‘Minsky moment’, where people start to claw down on debt and banks become less generous in lending. This could lead to another crisis and a global recession. A trigger could be rising interest rates, with people finding it hard to service their debts and so cut down on spending.
The third danger is the slow growth in labour productivity combined with aging populations in developed countries. This acts as a brake on growth. The rise in AI and robotics (see the post Rage against the machine) could help to increase potential growth rates, but this could cost jobs in the short term and the benefits could be very unevenly distributed.
This brings us to a final issue and this is the long-term trend to greater inequality, especially in developed economies. Growth has been skewed to the top end of the income distribution. As the April 2017 WEO reported, “technological advances have contributed the most to the recent rise in inequality, but increased financial globalization – and foreign direct investment in particular – has also played a role.”
And the policy of quantitative easing has also tended to benefit the rich, as its main effect has been to push up asset prices, such as share and house prices. Although this has indirectly stimulated the economy, it has mainly benefited asset owners, many of whom have seen their wealth soar. People further down the income scale have seen little or no growth in their real incomes since the financial crisis.
Articles
- Clouds gather over global economy, casting long shadow on Europe
Politico, Pierre Briançon (18/4/18)
- IMF warns rising trade tensions threaten to derail global growth
Reuters, David Lawder (17/4/18)
- IMF outlook contains cause for celebration but a horrendous hangover is looming
The Guardian, Greg Jericho (18/4/18)
- World trade system in danger of being torn apart, warns IMF
The Guardian, Larry Elliott (17/4/18)
- IMF Warns of Rising Threats to Global Financial System
Bloomberg, Andrew Mayeda (18/4/18)
- IMF issues warning on global debt
BBC News, Andrew Walker (18/4/18)
- The IMF has a simple message: the global recovery will peter out
The Guardian, Larry Elliott (17/4/18)
- Global growth is built, alas, on shaky foundations
The Irish Times, Martin Wolf (18/4/18)
- Government debt
The Economist (19/4/18)
- This Is How Much Money the World Owes
Fortune (19/4/18)
Report
Data
Questions
- For what reasons may the IMF forecasts turn out to be incorrect?
- Why are emerging and developing countries likely to experience faster rates of economic growth than advanced countries?
- What are meant by a ‘positive output gap’ and a ‘negative output gap’? What are the consequences of each for various macroeconomic indicators?
- Explain what is meant by a ‘Minsky moment’. When are such moments likely to occur? Explain why or why not such a moment is likely to occur in the next two or three years?
- For every debt owed, someone is owed that debt. So does it matter if global public and/or private debts rise? Explain.
- What have been the positive and negative effects of the policy of quantitative easing?
- What are the arguments for and against using tariffs and other forms of trade restrictions as a means of boosting a country’s domestic economy?
We all know that our spending changes during the Christmas period: namely we spend a lot more than during the rest of the year. This applies across the board – we buy more clothes, food and drink, even though each day, we can generally only wear, eat and drink the same amount as usual! This has some interesting points from a behavioural economics stance, but here I’m going to think about the impact of this on some key retailers.
Marks & Spencer have previously made headlines for the wrong reasons: poor sales on clothes and the need for serious restructuring of its stores, target audience and marketing in order for this long-standing retailer to remain current and competitive. Although sales were expected to rise in the Christmas period, they did significantly better than expected, with sales growth of 2.3%, above the expected 0.5%. More encouragingly, this growth was not just in food, but in clothing and homeware as well.
One of the key reasons given for this above-expected improvement in sales was the conveniently timed Christmas, falling on a Sunday and hence giving extra shopping days. M&S have said that this certainly helped with their Christmas trading. Although this was good for Q4 trading, the timing will not play ball for Easter and they are expecting a negative effective during that trading period. Some analysts have said that despite the growth being boosted by the timing of Christmas, there were still signs of a change in fortunes. Bryan Roberts from TCC Global said:
“It might be the sign of some green shoots in that part of the business.”
This is consistent with the Chief Executive, Steve Rowe’s comments that despite the timing of Christmas adding around 1.5% to clothing and home sales growth, the recovery was also due to “better ranges, better availability and better prices”.
It appears as though many other retailers have experienced positive growth in Christmas sales, with the John Lewis Partnership seeing like-for-like sales growth of 2.7%, with Waitrose at a 2.8% rise.
The other interesting area is supermarkets. Waitrose and M&S are certainly competitors in the food industry, but at the higher end. If we consider the mid-range supermarkets (Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco), they have also performed, as a whole, fairly well. The low-cost Aldi and Lidl have been causing havoc for these supermarket chains, but the Christmas period seemed to prove fruitful for them.
Tesco saw UK like-for-like sales up by 1.8%, which showed significant progress in light of previously difficult trading periods with the emergence of the low-cost chains. Q$ was its better quarter of sales growth for over five years. One of the key drivers of this growth is fresh food sales and its Chief Executive, Dave Lewis said “we are very encouraged by the sustained strong progress that we are making across the group.” However, despite these positive numbers, Tesco only really met market expectation, rather than surpassing them as Morrison, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer did.
Perhaps the stand-out performance came from Morrisons, with its best Christmas performance for seven years. Another casualty of the low-cost competitors, it has been making a recovery and Q4 of 2016 demonstrated this beyond doubt. Like-for-like sales for the nine weeks to the start of 2017 were up by 2.9%, with growth in both food and drink and clothing.
Morrisons has been on a long and painful journey, with significant reorganisation of its stores and management. While this has created problems, it does appear to be working.
We also saw a general move up to the more premium own-brands and this again benefited all supermarkets. Morrisons Chief Executive, David Potts said:
“We are delighted to have found our mojo … Every year does bring its challenges, but so far we haven’t seen any change in consumer sentiment. Customers splashed out over Christmas and wanted to trade up … We are becoming more relevant to more people as we turn the company around.”
So it seems to be success all round for traders over the Christmas period and that, in many cases, this has been a reversal of fortunes. The question now is whether or not this will continue with the uncertainty over Brexit and the economy.
Articles
M&S beats Christmas sales forecast in clothing and homeware BBC News (12/1/17)
Marks & Spencer reports long-awaited rise in clothing sales The Telegraph, Ashley Armstrong (12/1/17)
Marks and Spencer reveals signs of growth in clothing business Financial Times, Mark Vandevelde (12/1/17)
Tesco’s festive sales lifted by fresh food The Telegraph, Ashley Armstrong (12/01/17)
Tesco caps year of recovery with solid Christmas Reuters, James Davey and Kate Holton (12/1/17)
Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, John Lewis and co cheer strong Christmas trading Independent, Josie Cox and Zlata Rodionova (12/1/17)
Morrisons sees best Christmas performance for seven years BBC News (10/12/17)
Morrisons enjoys some ‘remarkable’ Christmas cheer’ The Guardian, Sarah butler and Angela Monaghan (10/1/17)
Record Christmas as Sainsbury’s ‘shows logic of Argos takeover’ The Guardian, Sarah Butler and Angela Monaghan (11/1/17)
Questions
- Why have the big four in the supermarket industry been under pressure over the past 2 years in terms of their sales, profits and market share?
- How have the changes that have been made by M&S’ Chief Executive helped to boost sales once more?
- Share prices for supermarkets have risen. Illustrate why this is on a demand and supply diagram. Why has Tesco, despite its performance, seen a fall in its share price?
- What are the key factors behind Morrison’s success?
- What type of market structure is the supermarket industry? Does this help to explain why the big four have faced so many challenges in recent times?
- If there has been a general increase in sales across all stores over the Christmas trading period, that goes beyond expectations, can we infer anything about customer tastes and their expectations about the future?
Jim Slater, who has just died at the age of 86, was a tycoon of the 1970s, probably unknown to most reader of this blog. But his legacy lives on and many will question whether the actions of the banking sector and big business today is a reflection of the lessons that were not learnt 40 years ago.
Slater was a businessman: perhaps the businessman in the 1970s, building up a company that in today’s money and the height of its success, would have been worth billions. Buying and selling companies, asset stripping and investing created Slater Walker, which shot to success and then crumbled to failure, taking with it a bailout from the Bank of England of £110 million. You might look at that figure and compare it with the bail outs of more recent times and think – peanuts. But think about how prices have changed and convert £110 million into today’s money and that’s a hefty bail out. A key question is whether the willingness of the government and Bank of England to bail out key banks and financial sector businesses has encouraged the irresponsible lending that led to the credit crunch. Was there a moral hazard? Had Slater Walker been left to fail, would the world look a slightly different place?
Perhaps a little extreme, but I wonder, if we were to look back over the past 50 to 60 years, whether we would find other cases of key businesses being bailed out, which set a precedent for other companies to grow, without necessarily taking full responsibility for it. Jim Slater will certainly leave a legacy behind him .
Jim Slater and the warning from the 1970s that we ignored BBC News, Jonty Bloom (20/11/15)
Questions
- What is meant by asset stripping?
- If a company like Slater Walker had not been bailed out, do you think the economy would have suffered?
- If Slater Walker had been left to fail, would that have changed the business model of some of our largest banks and reduced the chance of a financial crisis 40 years later?
- Do you think the concept of moral hazard is relevant here?
The US economy has been performing relatively well, but as with the UK economy, growth in the first quarter of 2015 has slowed. In the US, it has slowed to 0.2%, which is below expectations and said to be due to ‘transitory factors’. In response, the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates at a record low, within the band 0.0% to 0.25%.
The USA appears relatively unconcerned about the slower growth it is experiencing and expects growth to recover in the next quarter. The Fed said:
“Growth in household spending declined; households’ real incomes rose strongly, partly reflecting earlier declines in energy prices, and consumer sentiment remains high. Business fixed investment softened, the recovery in the housing sector remained slow, and exports declined.”
Nothing has been said as to when interest rates may rise and with this unexpected slowing of the economy, further delays are likely. An investment Manager from Aberdeen Asset Management said:
“The removal of the Fed’s time dependent forward guidance could be significant. It means that any meeting from now on could be the one when they announce that magic first rate rise.”
Low rates will provide optimal conditions for stimulating growth. A key instrument of monetary policy, interest rates affect many of the components of aggregate demand. 
Lower interest rates reduce the cost of borrowing, reduce the return on savings and hence encourage consumption. They can also reduce mortgage repayments and have a role in reducing the exchange rate. All of these factors are crucial for any economic stimulus.
Analysts are not expecting rates to rise in the June meeting and so attention has now turned to September as the likely time when interest rates will increase and finally reward savers. Any earlier increase in rates could spell trouble for economic growth and similar arguments can be made in the UK and across the eurozone. The following articles consider the US economy.
Federal Reserve keeps interest rates at record low BBC News, Kim Gittleson (29/4/15)
Shock stalling of US economy hits chances of early Fed rate rise The Guardian, Larry Elliott (29/4/15)
US Fed leave interest rates unchanged after poor GDP figures Independent, Andrew Dewson (30/4/15)
Fed could give clues on first interest rate hike USA Today, Paul Davidson (28/4/15)
Fed’s downgrade of economic outlook signals longer rate hike wait Reuters, Michael Flaherty and Howard Schneider (29/4/15)
Five things that stopped the Fed raising rates The Telegraph, Peter Spence (29/4/15)
Questions
- By outlining the key components of aggregate demand, explain the mechanisms by which interest rates will affect each component.
- How can inflation rates be affected by interest rates?
- Why could it be helpful for the Fed not to provide any forward guidance?
- What are the key factors behind the slowdown of growth in the USA? Do you agree that they are transitory factors?
- Who would be helped and harmed by a rate rise?
- Consider the main macroeconomic objectives and in each case, with respect to the current situation in the USA, explain whether economic theory would suggest that interest rates should (a) fall , (b) remain as they are, or (c) rise.
