The International Monetary Fund has released the conclusions of its annual "Article IV" health-check for the UK economy. It endorses the Government's short-term fiscal giveaway to help ameliorate the recession (which the Conservatives say was a mistake), but says that it should be more ambitious in its plans to repair the public finances once the economic recovery is underway.
If the picture painted by the Treasury in this year’s Budget is correct, we are currently suffering a “bust” without having enjoyed a “boom”. But there is an alternative view of recent history that casts a less favourable light on Gordon Brown's tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The outlook for the public finances appears significantly weaker than the Treasury predicted in the November 2008 Pre-Budget Report (PBR). This Briefing Note sets out illustrative projections for the outlook for government borrowing and debt over the next few years.
Despite official figures showing that the public finances are weakening more sharply than the Treasury predicted in November's Pre-Budget Report, Gordon Brown has been handed some useful ammunition if he wants to argue for a further short-term fiscal giveaway in April's Budget.
This paper develops an empirical strategy to estimate whether subsidies to private medical insurance are self-financing in countries where public and private insurance coexist and the latter covers the same treatments as the former.
