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Understanding the Evolving Macroeconomy

The Understanding the Evolving Macroeconomy Research Programme has been set up by the ESRC to study the behaviour, governance and management of the UK economy in a rapidly changing world economic environment.

The Programme is organised around two related themes:


Economic Growth and Fluctuations

The Programme aims to improve understanding of how to enhance the performance of the UK Economy. This will involve gaining both better theoretical and empirical analyses of the long-term behaviour of the economy, and how this might be affected by short-run and international factors. The focus will be on the levers of economic growth, on the institutional, industrial and policy factors that help promote UK growth, and on understanding and controlling the short-term factors, both domestic and foreign, that might impede long-run performance. This will engage the concerns of both the private sector and government.

Economic Policy: Design, Governance and Practice

The Programme will investigate how domestic and international institutional arrangements might be improved to assist private sector decision making and economic management. Recent changes in the organisation of monetary and fiscal policy in the UK, and those impending in the European Union, point to the importance and timeliness of this research. Recent developments at the global level such as the East Asian currency and financial crisis have also led to the adequacy of the existing framework of international institutions being questioned. There is, therefore, also a wider international dimension involving, for example, the I.M.F., the World Bank and other state and non-state agencies.