Explainer: how company versus personal tax cuts boost the economy

Mar 21, 2016 04:21 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy

Suppose the government had about A$10 billion a year to fund lower income tax. It could reduce personal income tax by about 6%, or lower each marginal rate by about 1.5 percentage points. Alternatively it could reduce...

Wage pressures remain very weak in the Eurozone

Mar 18, 2016 15:08 pm UTC| Commentary Economy

Data released from Eurostat showed on Friday that Eurozones labor costs growth increased modestly to 1.3% y/y in the fourth quarter of 2015 after easing in the previous two quarters. The 0.2 percentage point improvement...

Why a drop in unemployment doesn't add up – literally

Mar 17, 2016 23:18 pm UTC| Insights & Views Economy

Unemployment has decreased, according to the latest figures. Here is a question: if the unemployment rate drops, is everyone happy? Suppose that, in a very small country, 380 people are either working or would like to...

Emerging Market Crisis Series

The BRICs: battered, regressive, incompetent, and corrupt?

Mar 17, 2016 22:36 pm UTC| Insights & Views Economy

Theres an old joke about Brazil that suggests that its the country of the future and it always will be. For a while this looked to be an anachronistic, possibly racist stereotype that had been decisively overturned by...

US homebuilding continues on modestly positive course

Mar 17, 2016 06:09 am UTC| Commentary Economy Real Estate

US housing starts in February increased 58k units to 1,178k, surpassing expectations of a moderate increase to 1,150k. Data for the previous two months have been revised to add 37k units to the overall tally. The...

Moody's: Malaysia's policy reforms support A3 rating, despite weaker growth and external pressures

Mar 17, 2016 01:47 am UTC| Research & Analysis Economy

Moodys says that the Government of Malaysias (A3 stable) implementation of major policy reforms has mitigated the negative impact of lower oil prices on the governments fiscal position. Nevertheless, external...

Narrowing NZ current account deficit doesn’t reflect strength of the domestic economy

Mar 16, 2016 16:57 pm UTC| Commentary Economy

Data released earlier on Wednesday showed that New Zealands current account deficit remains remarkably well contained narrowing to 3.1% of GDP in the year to December 2015, against market expectations that it would hold...