Warwick Lightfoot's Substack

Warwick Lightfoot's Substack

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Fiscal Policy and Public Finance

Government debt is not the UK’s economic problem. The problem is government spending.
The British Government will not be forced to go to IMF to be bailed out - that is yesterday’s story when currencies were fixed against the dollar in a…
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Warwick Lightfoot
Are British Taxpayers saving up to pay future taxes?
Is the British economy exhibiting neo-Ricardian Equivalence responding both to public debt and public spending?
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Warwick Lightfoot
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Economists at official institutions do not like President Trump and have allowed their antipathy to him to colour their economic analysis
Effective monetary policy, strong corporate and household balance sheets, cheap energy, expansionary fiscal impulse, a tech sector to die for and a…
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Warwick Lightfoot
Structure of the US Balance of Payments and Capital Account
Dissecting the US Current Account: Trends, Transformations, and the Path from Hyperglobalization
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Warwick Lightfoot
Trump Administration’s Tariff Policy and the case for Unilateral Free Trade
Countries should embrace Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage, open markets, remove tariffs and impediments to trade, give effect to their self interest…
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Warwick Lightfoot
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UK’s Spring Economic Statement focuses on Redundant Fiscal Rules, Neglecting falling Productivity, Profits, the falling Rate of Return on…
UK has supply-side problems arising from high public spending, taxation and labour market regulation that deliver weak productivity and falling profits
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Warwick Lightfoot
Challenge of over expanded public sectors: in the UK, Europe and North America
Elevated public expenditure crowding out private sector growth, is a problem in advanced OECD economies, the UK offers an egregious example, the EU…
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Warwick Lightfoot
What should financial markets make of a second Trump administration: return to President Ronald Reagan’s War Keynesianism?
Economic modelling of President Trump's tariffs as exercises in hyperbole, big geopolitical issue is rearmament led by US, financed by debt, with…
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Warwick Lightfoot
As the UK Labour Market Becomes Less Flexible and Efficient, is the Minimum Wage Lowering Productivity Growth?
UK labour market is becoming more regulated, minimum wage regulation is compress pay differentials and a Manhattan Skyline of marginal tax rates damages…
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Warwick Lightfoot
Rachel Reeves: huge Labour Budget, many measures, big increases in spending, taxation and borrowing. But nothing to show for it, in terms of…
The OBR’s economic forecast lowers its forecast for GDP growth, exemplifies crowding out effects arising from higher public spending and no change in…
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Warwick Lightfoot
Labour’s Budget: a backward looking rhetoric of nostalgia, that exaggerates tax increases for presentational purposes
The political economy of new British Labour Government’s budget, continuity and the zeitgeist of atavistic intergenerational focus on distribution that…
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Warwick Lightfoot
The Criterion for judging a government’s budget.
Britain’s new Labour Government will present a budget on Wednesday 30 October 2024. How should it be assessed?
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Warwick Lightfoot
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