• • The economy will grow at 1.1 per cent in 1999, but manufacturing output will decline by 0.5 per cent and there is a one in three chance of outright recession.

• • Cuts in interest rates to 5.75 per cent by the end of 1999 together with higher government spending should sustain continuing growth.

• • We expect public borrowing to exceed public investment by £236bn over the five years 1997-2001.

• • The inflation target will be met for the end of 1999.

• • The most likely outlook for the world economy in 1999 is a marked slowdown, with growth slackening in the OECD from 2.4 to 1.8 per cent.

• • But there is also a high probability that further shocks to financial markets could induce a full blown recession in the US and a substantial reduction in European growth.

• • Sharp and swift cuts in interest rates are needed to avert this danger.

• • The ECB could cut rates by half a percentage point without compromising its inflation goals.

There has been a very sharp deterioration in confidence about the economic situation in the UK over the past three months. This has been highlighted in a range of business and consumer surveys. It is also evident in profit warnings from the corporate sector, falling asset prices, high profile job losses, downward revisions in economic forecasts and an easing of monetary policy. This pessimism is not now confined to the manufacturing sector as appeared to be the case in the earlier part of the year, but seems to pervade all sectors of the economy.

The economic outlook for the global economy has deteriorated appreciably over the past six months. By the late spring it had already become clear that growth in the OECD economies would slow to around 2½ per cent this year from 3 per cent in 1997, with strong domestic demand outside Japan being offset by the growing impact of the contraction in the Asian economies. However the further slowdown projected in 1999 appeared relatively benign, with monetary conditions remaining accommodative in the major economies and commodity prices remaining weak.

The US economy continued to expand strongly in the first half of this year. GDP rose by 2 per cent compared to the latter half of last year, broadly in line with the pace of growth observed throughout 1997. The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since 1970, with private sector demand continuing to reflect the impact of the sustained appreciation in equity prices since 1994. We expect GDP growth to be a little under 3½ per cent this year. Recent events have sharply changed the short-term economic outlook for the coming months. Growth is now projected to slow significantly, with domestic demand pressures easing and external demand remaining weak. The correction in equity prices and the tighter financial conditions facing many companies should begin to exert a significant drag on economic growth, in spite of likely further relaxation in the stance of monetary policy. GDP is expected to rise by around 1½ per cent both in 1999 and in the year 2000. If credit market conditions were to tighten further, or asset prices to show a renewed decline, then the economy could well move close to outright recession by the end of next year.

Economic growth in the EU area rose markedly last year. Output expanded by more than 3 per cent in over half of the member countries, although growth was notably slower in the larger economies. The outlook continued to improve in the first half of this year. Growth in the first quarter was particularly buoyant. Eurostat figures indicate that output in the EU was some 3.3 per cent higher in the first quarter of 1998 than a year earlier. Although output rose by only 0.2 per cent in the second quarter, this was partly due to statistical distortions arising from the different number of working days in the quarter. Italy is the sole economy where growth has proved to be weaker than initially expected. The global financial crisis and slowdown in worldwide demand is expected to dampen EU growth somewhat next year, and we continue to be less optimistic than the European Commission about future prospects. Growth in the EU economies is projected to slow from 2¾ per cent this year to around 2¼ per cent in 1999.

The Asian crisis has had a marked effect on the world economy over the past fifteen months. Private sector demand has collapsed in the affected economies and reinforced the effects arising from the deflationary forces in the Japanese economy at present. Up until this summer it did not appear likely that the world economy as a whole would slide into a full scale recession, although it was clear that growth had begun to slow in the industrialised economies. There were also important downside risks in our forecasts at that time; in particular the danger that a policy of monetisation in Japan would further weaken the yen and set in motion renewed disruption by enforcing a devaluation of the Chinese yuan against the dollar. It was also clear that profit margins were coming under pressure in the US economy, raising the possibility that future dividends would be somewhat weaker than implied by the exceptionally rapid growth in real equity prices since 1994. Neither a Chinese devaluation nor an equity price collapse were however part of our central forecasts.

Gordon Brown's first Budget as Chancellor signalled a new emphasis on microeconomic relationships in economic policymaking. Whereas in the past there has been implicit acknowledgement that macroeconomic policy relies on appropriate responses in individual behaviour, this time the policy focus was explicitly on the structure of the incentives facing employers and employees.

The US experienced a considerable increase in inequality between skilled and less-skilled workers during the early 1980s—a period which corresponds with a large temporary appreciation of the dollar. This article investigates the reasons behind this rise in inequality by evaluating the impact of trade with low-wage countries (LWCs) and technological change on the wage bill share of skilled workers (which is designed to capture movements in inequality arising from changes in both the relative wage and employment opportunities of the less-skilled). We find that an increase in US imports from LWCs—encouraged by the large appreciation of the dollar in the early 1980s—seems to explain some of the rise in US inequality in low-skill-intensive sectors, but that technological change (proxied by R&D expenditure) explains the rise in inequality in high-skill-intensive sectors. However, given that the timing of the sudden rise in US R&D expenditure corresponds with the appreciation of the dollar, it may be the case that the deterioration in US trade competitiveness during this period contributed to the rapid increase in the rate of technological change via mechanisms such as ‘defensive innovation’. Hence one might also argue that the technology-based explanation for the rise in US inequality could actually be a trade-based explanation.

In this article I consider shifts in the structure of wages in Britain between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. In the 1990s the rising gap between the highest and lowest paid was either stable or rose a little, but by nowhere near as much as in the 1980s. This seems to be, at least partially, due to the fact that faster educational upgrading has dampened down some of the rising wage differentials experienced by the more educated. However, demand still seems to be shifting in favour of the more highly educated and skilled because, despite the fact that there are many more workers with higher educational qualifications, their wages relative to other groups have not fallen. Finally, I argue that relative demand shifts in favour of the more educated and skilled are still more pronounced in more technologically advanced industries. This is in line with the notion, like much of the evidence based on industry demand shifts in the 1970s and 1980s, that technology is key to changes in labour market inequality.

Traditional macroeconomic models are based on the concept of a single representative consumer. A great deal can be gained by constructing a dynamic general equilibrium economic model which represents the behaviour of a panel of consumers spread out along the income distribution. Such a framework allows us to assess the distributional impact of policy changes. We present here such a model, showing the behaviour of consumers facing uncertain incomes and we use it to assess the distributional impact of changes to pension provision. We find that means testing of old age pensions increases inequality among the retired because of the effect it has on incentives to save.