The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank draws attention to the continuing problems of the tech sector both in the US and here in the UK. While the Bank of England claims that there are no systemic issues in the UK resulting from the collapse it appears that many UK tech companies, perhaps a third, had relationships

Five years ago on 24 March 2016 the paperback edition of my book The Flat White Economy was published by Duckworth. The key point I made was that the tech enabled sector was at least as important to the UK economy as the tech production sector. My second point was that the critical factor driving

Endless midsummer nights, stunning archipelagos and tasty meatballs, there are many reasons to go to Sweden for a holiday. In the summer of 2019, you can also snap up a real bargain. Cebr analysis of the Scandinavian currencies illustrates that UK workers will get the best deal should they convert their pounds into Swedish kronor. The

The British Business Bank does not always get the high profile it deserves. Its annual report showed it had supported 27,000 businesses and had £2.1 billion of funding deployed since 2012 when it was set up by Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat minister in the coalition government, to foster small and middle-sized businesses. In start-ups,

The meeting will be taking place at Aldgate Tower on April 10th.

The digital economy has become the U.K.’s largest economic sector, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.   The so-called “flat white economy,” which encompasses media, Internet and creative businesses such as film, music and advertising, accounted for 14.4 percent of gross value added last year and almost half of its growth. That

They are calling it the “flat white” sector and it is overtaking industry as the largest driver of UK economic output.   According to research the coffee-drinking, bicycle-riding millennials of digital and creative businesses, notably those in the “Silicon Roundabout” in east London, propelled it above a more traditional part of the UK economy representing

The Flat White Economy has overtaken industry to become the UK’s largest economic sector. In 2018 it accounted for 14.4% of GVA and 47% of GVA growth   As the author of the best selling (it actually held the No 1 slot on Amazon for 18 hours!)  book The Flat White Economy, I take an

For those who don’t know the term, ‘Flat White Economy’ is an extension of the tech economy; it is the ecosystem that surrounds the IT industry in its broadest sense – from the baristas that make flat-white coffees that drive the IT workers through to the co-working spaces that host a myriad start-ups and the

Corrales is not alone in sensing the stirrings of a tech boom — not just on Tyneside, but across northern England. The economist Douglas McWilliams studied the growth of the digital economy in America and identified three factors crucial to success: a highly skilled workforce, cheap housing and a sense of cultural buzz.   The

The UK economy’s fastest growing sector is that mix of tech and the creative sector that I named in the eponymous book ‘The Flat White Economy’ (the updated version was published in paperback by Duckworth in March 2016). New data released by Cebr today show that the sector grew by 9.8% to reach 9.7% of

Douglas McWilliams interview

  The phrase ‘flat white economy’, first coined by Cebr economists and used by Douglas McWilliams Cebr’s founder and director as the title of his book published early last year, has been listed as a neologism of 2015 by language experts, according to the Daily Mail.   In his book The Flat White Economy, Douglas McWilliams explains the meteoric success

London to outperform UK economy, driven by business services and ‘flat white economy’

Oil prices came within a whisker of hitting $100 a barrel and gas prices surged yesterday as the Ukraine crisis escalated. Brent crude, the global benchmark oil price, touched $99.50 a barrel, the highest since September 2014, after Moscow ordered troops into two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine. Western leaders responded with moves to impose

The labour market data out in the past week highlighted two facets of official policy: The early post-furlough employment data showed that employment had bounced back with 160,000 more workers added to company payrolls during October. The unemployment rate for the three months to September (when furlough still existed but when its impact on the labour

At the time of Brexit, few thought it would be followed by a two- to three-fold increase in net migration INTO the UK. Yet new migration data have recently been released that seem to suggest that this is, in fact, the case. Compared to a pre-Brexit average of around 250,000 a year, net migration into

The latest immigration figures for 2022 showed another steep increase in the number of people coming to the UK. Based on the latest estimates, nearly 1.2 million people immigrated in 2022 while around 557,000 left the country, leading to a net migration figure of 606,000. This is up by 118,000 compared to 2021. Looking at the

Would you expect an economy with a high tax burden and one of the earliest retirement ages in the developed world to be amongst the top performers in the years since the pandemic? France is that economy, being relatively resilient amidst considerable global volatility, despite having the second highest tax-to-GDP ratio in the OECD and

Most tech flotations are characterised by prioritisation of revenue growth over profitability and extravagant extrapolation. It is not surprising that investors’ hopes are often dashed and sometimes dramatically so. At time of writing the Nasdaq Technology Stock 100 Index is down 43% year to date and coincidentally by the same amount over the past year.

Poor Sadiq Khan. His Mayoralty has coincided with both the pandemic and Brexit, both of which have hit London by more than the rest of the country. And yet there is a sense that he may have used these problems to disguise some of his own making, notably the negative economic impact of Low Traffic

Displaying its policy wonk origins, Michael Gove’s long-awaited white paper on Levelling up the United Kingdom and one of the government’s flagship policies, is full of historical analogies and quotes.  The 322-page epic starts with a tour d’horizon going back 7,000 years, the middle part is a detailed analysis of productivity differentials between regions, somewhat

View this article here. On Friday 24th September the 2021 Anglo Greek Symposium featured Cebr’s Deputy Chairman, Douglas McWilliams, speaking about the virtues of a Flat White Economy. The session was also chaired by Cebr Board Member, Vicky Pryce.

View this article here. A very early official estimate of the UK population suggests it was 67.1 million in mid-2020, up by 300,000 on 2019, and the smallest percentage increase since 2003. There was a net outflow of people when the pandemic struck and, of course, the significant loss of life. It was originally thought that the

At the beginning of the year, a report claimed [1] that up to 1.3 million people born abroad had left the UK during 2020 as jobs in sectors such as hospitality and construction disappeared. Relatively quickly, it became clear that the figure was vastly overblown and that the pandemic had introduced some serious response bias

Download the full report here. It is still far too early to reach a definitive view on the basis of two months of trade data about how Brexit is likely to work out. But there are some hints from the data and the diplomatic developments so far and we have tried to analyse them to

The coronavirus pandemic has been a challenge for economic forecasters. While we at Cebr have probably fared better than most other forecasters (our March 2020 forecasts revision predicted global output to decline by 4.0% for the year at a time when many of our rivals were still forecasting growth – the latest data suggest the

There are two reasons for expecting that the market structure in tech sectors will differ from the model of perfect competition with plentiful companies competing on price, quality and increasingly innovation. First is the economics of information. Once some research has been completed, the costs of replication are very low. So we get what I

Last Tuesday there was a 5 mile lorry queue on the M20 near my home as the French allegedly tested Brexit procedures. It is still possible that this was a coincidence, though it happened at a tense time in the Brexit negotiations. Meanwhile a 27-acre site near the Ashford Designer Outlet shopping centre has been

This week Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, in a column in the Spectator, points out that the take up of tech is much more limited by the demand side than the supply side, which is true. He then suggests that he is one of the very few people to observe this, a more dubious

Cebr opens its London offices for the first time since the lockdown started on Monday, 3 August. We plan to split the team into two groups, Blue and Green, and to take turns in working in the office so as to maintain social distancing. But many of our clients, particularly in finance and insurance, are not

Last week it became legal to use an e-scooter on UK public roads – provided it is rented from one of the Government-approved schemes that are to be trialled by local councils over the next 12 months. The announcement has been greeted with enthusiasm. The first UK scheme is expected to be up and running

The Foreign Secretary has developed proposals for a bespoke immigration route for the 2.8 million Hong Kong people who currently have the status of being British Nationals (Overseas) and their dependants. They will be granted five years leave to remain in the UK, with the right to work or study; after these five years, they will be able

The below is an amended version of an article published in the Daily Mail on 10 June.   The economy has started to recover from the depths that it plumbed last month. But it looks likely that, after a bounce as lockdown ends, we may then be stuck for a while at around 85-90pc of

By DOUG MCWILLIAMS FOR THE DAILY MAIL View the full article here   The economy has started to recover from the depths that it plumbed during the lockdown.   But according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Britain still faces the deepest recession in the developed world this year.   And it looks likely

FORECASTING EYE SPECIAL The UK economy is certainly starting to revive from its coronavirus caused crash and will continue to do so as lockdown diminishes. How far the recovery will go in the short term will depend on a series of factors – whether an effective Covid 19 vaccine will emerge from one of the

Nearly half a million people in the UK now earn enough of a living as artists, musicians or writers to cite it as their main occupation. No doubt, many more work at these occupations in their spare time as well.   The ONS has now made more consistent the NOMIS data on activity by occupation and

As I write I can see 15 builders working. Last week on the same two sites there were only 5. Traffic data also confirms that where they can, people seem to be choosing to go back to work. It will be odd if a politician with as much sensitivity to the public mood as Boris

Douglas McWilliams talks to Mikael Pawlo about the possible financial impact of the Corona crisis. Also discussions about McWilliams’ books The Flat White Economy, The Inequality Paradox and Driving the Silk Road. Concept discussed are helicopter money, super-babies, hyper-inflation and good capitalist ambassadors. Best episode ever of you ask our producer Farid Abbaspour. But then

The full blog post can be found here.   Corona Virus and the associated shutdowns have shattered the world economy. According to my colleagues at Cebr, it looks as though this year we will see a fall in world GDP of 4% or more, the biggest fall in peacetime world economy growth since the 5% drop

Under PM Boris Johnson, the Conservatives have won a large majority in the general election held last Thursday. It may sound harsh to say so but winning the election is the easy part. Views in the Cebr office have differed but I had always expected that the Conservatives could win a popular vote on the twin

CEBR FORECASTING EYE SPECIAL    Summary   Cebr has performed a quick analysis of the likely economic impact of the Brexit deal agreed at the European Council on 17 October 2019.   Obviously this study has been produced at speed and relies heavily on past work. In particular it is based on a study by

Forecasting Eye    While the politicians play parliamentary games, the UK economy is close to recession.   GDP fell in Q2 2019 by 0.2% after a 0.5% rise in Q1. The swing was largely driven by the Brexit inventory cycle to which Cebr first drew attention.   There is a lively debate about whether GDP

Forecasting Eye    On 20 August, the ONS released newly revised data on UK GDP up to 2016 showing the economy was £26 billion larger and growing around 0.2% faster than had previously been thought. The revision was driven by more accurate measures of the digital economy.   Our latest estimate was previously that the

Forecasting Eye    I was mentored in economics by Sir Donald MacDougal who had been responsible for ensuring that there were adequate food supplies during WW2, monitoring shipping losses and estimating the impact on food inventories. He forced me to pay particular attention to the inventory cycle, something I have found a huge advantage in

Forecasting Eye    The last official estimate of the economic impact of the Edinburgh Festival in 2015 suggested that it contributed £312 million to Scottish GDP. If true this would have been about 0.15% of Scottish GDP at that time. The estimated contribution to Edinburgh’s GDP was about 1%.   To anyone wandering around Edinburgh

Sajid Javid will find his background in hedging emerging market government debt rather useful in his new job as Chancellor of the Exchequer. And also his working in his Asian family retail business. Few Chancellors have had such hands on experience of the sectors they will be influencing in their work.   The outgoing Chancellor didn’t

Forecasting Eye   Four of us from the Cebr team were in Spain for different reasons last week. I had the great good fortune to be invited to speak at the Power 50 conference on e-gaming in the wonderful Puente Romano resort in Marbella on behalf of BDO. The others were paying their own way

Forecasting Eye    You might think that after Cebr published its report two weeks ago showing that The Flat White Economy is now the UK’s largest sector – heavily covered not only in The Times and Bloomberg but also in the main IT press – someone from the government and the Bank of England might

Forecasting Eye    Cebr’s latest World Economic League Table released in December had Russian GDP effectively stagnating in real dollar terms, rising only from $1,540 billion in 2018 to $1,630 in 2033. By contrast, Korea’s GDP, which starts from about the same level, is forecast to rise by 55% over this period compared with Russia’s

Forecasting Eye   The joke about Sweden used to be ‘Question: What do famous Swedes have in common? Answer: They don’t live in Sweden’. Bjorn Borg, IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, film director Ingmar Bergman and sports stars like skier Anja Paerson and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have lived elsewhere partly to avoid tax. Abba stayed in Sweden

“In the UK, Labour has raised the possibility of direct government subsidies to build a network, which may be necessary to bring 5G to rural areas. The good news is that 5G is a technology still in its infancy, so there is plenty of time for Britain to catch up.   Doing so should be

  Future economic success will depend on a fusion of creativity and technology, according to Cebr Deputy Chairman Douglas McWilliams.    Douglas was speaking at Birbeck College, London’s seminar ‘Trade and Talent – The Brexit Challenge’, supported by the Worshipful Company of World Traders.   Douglas said: “Successful economies in the coming years will depend on

Cebr opened its doors for business in early 1993 and  tonight we celebrate our first 25 years with a party on HQS Wellington on the Thames for our clients and staff.   To celebrate Cebr’s 25 years of existence, tomorrow we will be publishing a new study of the economics consultancy sector itself, showing that

Access the article here.   The zombie company concept was developed in Japan, to suggest that persistent low interest rates allowed heavily indebted companies (who might, at more normal rates of interest, have been liquidated) to stay in business, thus preventing the Schumpeterian creative destruction that allows the business sector to innovate and improve. It

The zombie company concept was developed in Japan, to suggest that persistent low interest rates allowed heavily indebted companies (who might, at more normal rates of interest, have been liquidated) to stay in business, thus preventing the Schumpeterian creative destruction that allows the business sector to innovate and improve. It has since been applied to

Douglas McWilliams Cebr Deputy Chairman talking to the Indian Professionals Association (22 November 2017) on the way in which the Indian economy is changing gear and starting to invest heavily in infrastructure.     Speaking notes for Douglas McWilliams for Indian Professionals Association Chatham House 22 Nov 2017   I’d like to talk about four

The national chronic productivity problem has been blamed on poor investment, zombie companies and bad management, but economists have now added another possible reason to the list: trendy millennials who put lifestyle before hard work.   Douglas McWilliams, deputy chairman of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, who documented the ascendance of creative Britain

The lifestyle economy – great for employees but not so good for public finances   Introduction   This is a short Cebr research note about an important change in preferences towards work that is affecting the level of productivity, GDP and ultimately public finances.   The thesis is that people are increasingly taking on jobs

Cebr is delighted that Gareth Denley, former director of IBM UK and successful private equity entrepreneur, has accepted an invitation to join its board.   Gareth is an experienced Chairman, CEO, and General Manager; he has held executive positions in UK publicly quoted, large global multinational, and private equity owned technology and technology services companies.

Renewing the Entente: Macron’s “New France” is good for Britain too   The French mood this Bastille Day should be buoyant. And why not? The French economy has returned to growth with jobs growth of 90,000 in Q1, of which 80,000 were in the private sector. Cebr’s GDP forecast for France this year is 1.6%

Cebr comment on the implications of the UK General Election 2017     ‘Whoever tries to form a government has perhaps the most difficult mandate of any government since 1945’ ‘Increased economic stability at the price of longer term political instability’ ‘The luck of the Irish…’ The political results of the election     I’ve

Cebr Special Report – Economic Consequences of Limiting Migration[1] This short note gives Cebr’s analysis on the economic consequences of limiting migration as proposed in the Conservative Manifesto for the 2017 General Election. The note builds on earlier work by NIESR and the OBR but is unique in looking at the dynamic effects of reducing

Philip Hammond seems to have been captured by his Treasury civil servants. These are essentially academic types without much understanding of the real world. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, because they are serious about keeping the country solvent and inflation down.   But they tend not to understand the damage to the economy from

An economist from a rival consultancy with the splendidly Scottish name of Ian Mulherin has been all over the airwaves postulating that Britain doesn’t need any more houses.   He has argued his case well and made some points that are not only backed by the statistics but are probably true. He has shown that

Speech by Douglas McWilliams, Wednesday 11 January 2017   As David Smith’s analysis in the Sunday Times last Sunday showed, forecasters had a good year in 2016. Most of us got it roughly right. The Cebr forecast was GDP growth of 2.0% while the current estimate is growth of the year will turn out at

Bespoke analysis in the news:   Mind the Generation Gap, a report launched this month by Cebr and Brewin Dolphin looking at inter-generational wealth management and the financial challenges facing three generations of the UK population, was covered by The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, the Independent, City AM, the Evening Standard, the Nottingham

The following are the key findings of this report: The report investigates the relative importance of main sectors of the UK economy and their dependence both direct and indirect on trading with the Single Market. The biggest sector in the UK is retail/wholesale trade, totalling £178 billion in 2014. This was followed closely by manufacturing

Cebr response to Autumn Statement

Bespoke analysis in the News:   Research by Cebr for Heathrow which calculated that an expansion at the airport could boost the UK economy by as much as £24,000 of GDP per family, was covered by the Daily Telegraph.   YouGov and Cebr’s Consumer and Business Confidence Indices, which saw confidence rise to pre-Brexit levels, was

The Northern Powerhouse is set to become the cornerstone of the UK’s digital economy according to Flat White Economy guru Douglas McWilliams Digital economy in Northern Powerhouse to grow 20% pa over period to 2020 compared with 5%pa in London North of England digital jobs to grow from 284,000 in 2015 to 622,000 in 2020

Although I am sure that Europe is likely to be the slowest growing region in the world on average over the next 30 years, it does look as though it is facing a bit of a cyclical upturn at the moment.   By far the most reliable business survey produced anywhere, the Ifo survey from

Research in the News:   Research by Cebr in conjunction with Legal and General, titled Bank of Mum and Dad, which calculated that parents helped finance 25% of all UK mortgages transaction this year, amounting to £5bn in 2016, was covered by BBC News, the Daily Telegraph (x2), Newsweek, The Times (x2), the Spectator, the Financial Times (x2),

Most economists see stagnant productivity as a real problem. And in an ideal world we would all be migrating to extremely high value jobs with high pay and high productivity. But we had a bit of a false dawn with City jobs. The number of people working in City jobs rose from 204 thousand in

Spain’s economy has had a relatively successful past 12  months despite (or some have alleged, because of) the lack of a government. GDP has risen at an annual rate of 3.4% in the year to Q! 2016, the fastest growth in Western Europe by some distance while unemployment has fallen by 1.8 percentage points from

Forecasting Eye

Cebr Forecasting Eye

March/April 2016

The tube strike is unlikely to cost the London economy anything like £50 million a day – my best estimate is about £10 million says Cebr Executive Chairman Douglas McWilliams

In the future, London will need underground roads, better cycle lanes and a new body to manage road space

Our main forecast a year ago was that the UK would suffer a recession. Although the latest data released just before Christmas suggests that a technical recession may well be taking place in Q3 and Q4 this year, the reality is that the economy has flatlined rather than fallen back. We would treat this prediction

Today’s Budget is the first against a background where economic growth in the UK has virtually ground to a halt. Official estimates of GDP for the end of last year (Q4) is estimated to have been 0.8% lower than in Q4 2019 pre pandemic and yet the labour market remains tight with unemployment stubbornly below 4%.

2023 doesn’t look a great year for the UK – but the shafts of light are that inflation will be on its way down and the economy should start to recover at some point in the year What did we get right last year? After an extraordinary year, I was amazed to find that our

UK consumers are struggling to cope with the worsening cost-of-living crisis. On Friday morning, Ofgem published the new energy price cap which sees the average UK household paying £3,549 per year for energy, up by 178% on the previous year. The sharp increases in energy bills are threatening to push many towards fuel poverty. But it

For a brief moment, the curse of “fiscal drag” – the most pernicious of stealth taxes – appeared to have been banished from British politics. Under the Coalition Government, workers’ tax-free allowance steadily increased above inflation year after year, meaning a shrinking share of the population paid income tax to the Treasury. It was a

It’s not a great time to move to a new rented home. The average rent agreed for new contracts rose by 10.6% across the UK in the year to May 2022, with prices in London rising the fastest – at 15.7%1. This is considerably up on rent increases at the same time last year when

Robert Jenrick has warned that the UK could face ‘the most difficult economic year that we’ve seen in our lifetime’ amid the heavy sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. The Tory MP described how the country could be looking at ‘an energy crisis unrivalled since the 1970s’ and said the government had to ‘level

One of the surprises of the Budget was the rise in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s inflation forecast for 2022 to 4% (average across the year) despite frozen fuel duties and a squeeze on some alcohol duties. The figure is in line with Cebr forecasts but until recently officials in both Whitehall and Threadneedle Street

Though his popularity has tumbled in the last year as he has faced the hard choices demanded by the economy, more people still think Rishi Sunak is doing a good job than think he is doing a bad job, according to YouGov’s monthly survey. But he is now facing multiple challenges as he prepares his

Once Joe Biden is sworn in on 20th January, the Democratic Party will not only be in charge of the White House and the House of Representatives but also the Senate, following the surprise victories of the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s run-off election on 6th January. It will be the first

Cebr founder Douglas McWilliams presented the findings of our report for Fair Fuel UK and RHA to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Motoring. The full report is available here and a summary can be found below.   Rumours in Whitehall have been rife as to how Rishi Sunak will pay off the huge Covid deficit.

RAISING fuel duty will crash the economy by over £600 million, cost the nation around 8,000 jobs and hit the White Van Man hardest according to a new report.   Chancellor Rishi Sunak is thought to be mulling over increasing the tax by two to three pence, but the Centre for Economics and Business Research say

The Chancellor has till mid-2021 to convince the markets that he has a policy to get the deficit under control but a messy Brexit could limit his fiscal options   There is clearly a debate going on in Whitehall about the appropriate size for the UK budget deficit. The Treasury line seems to be that

Having already suffered pestilence, do we need to look out for the other three apocalyptic horsemen from the Book of Revelations: war, famine and death*?   In the past month, there have been some signs. China and India are facing off in the Himalayas, never a good sign when both parties are nuclear-equipped. Cyberwarfare has

The need to distance ourselves from each other socially and at work because of the Covid 19 virus has shattered our economies which are now suffering their worst hits since the 1930s. While it is true that online shopping and working from home have cushioned the shutdown, my colleagues at Cebr have estimated that the

President Trump missed his ambitious growth target for the American economy by a wide margin last year, a report has confirmed.   Gross domestic product rose by 2.1 per cent annualised in the fourth quarter, the commerce department said in its first of three estimates. This meant the economy grew 2.3 per cent in 2019,

Sorry that we didn’t blog yesterday. The hotel in Pavlodar didn’t have working wifi, working air conditioning or indeed, at the time I went to bed, running water even. The food was good though….   Quite apart from that it wasn’t the very best day for most of us. We knew that the organisers had

Forecasting Eye    Last week was week 19 in the John Lewis Partnership financial year. Week 19 is the trough between the two peak trading weeks of week 17 (Black Friday) and week 21 (just before Christmas). But it is still one of their 5 strongest weeks of the year with weekly sales around £300m

This is a sample of Cebr’s UK Housing Prospects analysis. To sign up for a 30 day free trial of Cebr’s forecasting and analysis service, please click here. Low transaction numbers over the coming years will hold price inflation down, with house price growth expected to remain subdued at 4.1% in 2018 before picking up