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Discusses the report `White Paper on Regional Development Agencies' published by Great Britain in December 1997 which described the economic performance of the country. Failure of the conventional regional economic policy; Examination on the flaws of the economic policies implemented by the government; Aim of the country to level with its international competitors; Strategies and policies which the government should launch to spur economic development.

The reforms instituted by the Broadcasting Act 1990 led to a period of turbulence and upheaval within broadcasting with results that were at best unintended and, at worst, seriously undermined the ideal of public service broadcasting. A Hayekian economic perspective would suggest that the reforms failed because they did not go far enough in the direction of full `marketization'. The paper develops an alternative perspective, based on an adaptation of systems theory within the context of law and economics. This approach offers a broader methodological foundation for the understanding of `economic law' and a different normative perspective on the broadcasting reforms. It is suggested that the difficulty with these reforms was not their failure to go further in the direction of the market, but rather their lack of clarity in articulating a clear alternative to the market as the basis for the organization of television production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late Victorian Britain was very important in the development of British dominance in light consumer goods industries, such as fermented liquors and spirits; detergents and perfumery; bicycles and other carriages; paper, stationery, and bookbinding; and games of all kinds and sports goods. Firms developed technology-based innovations and marketing-based innovations, creating abnormal peaks of trademark registrations in certain industries. This article investigates those peaks and shows that factors usually pointed out as explaining British economic decline in heavy industries did not impact on the development of light consumer goods industries, and on the contrary encouraged their fast growth during this period. Trademark registrations are shown to provide new insights into the debate on British relative decline, when combined with other industry and firm-level data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Great Britain, a basic inter-urban network of motorways was completed in a very short period between the end of 1959 and 1972. We calculate that this substantial investment had the potential to reduce most inter-urban journey times by about one third. In spite of this, a recent OECD study suggested that the investment had no discernible positive impact on the trend rate of economic growth. We attribute this outcome to a serious misalignment of the early investments with the then predominant flows of industrial and commercial traffics and a significant, and probably endogenous, increase in real wages in a road transport industry in which labour productivity was slow to improve. We conclude with a number of policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Glorious Revolution has been linked with Britain's economic development in the eighteenth century. This article argues that it contributed to the early transport revolution. First, it shows that the regulatory environment became more favourable for undertakers, with their rights being better protected. Second, it shows that investment in improving roads and rivers increased substantially in the mid-1690s shortly after the Glorious Revolution. Regression analysis and structural breaks tests confirm that there was a change in investment even after controlling for other determinants of investment. The results have implications for debates on the role of political change in British economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid rise of England's colonial commerce in the late seventeenth century expanded the nation's resource base, stimulated efficiency improvements across the economy, and was important for long-term growth. However, close examination of the interests at play in England's Atlantic world does not support the Whiggish view that the Glorious Revolution played a benign role in this story. In the decades after the Restoration, the cases of the Royal African Company and the Spanish slave trade in Jamaica are used to show that the competition between Crown and Parliament for control of regulation constrained interest groups on either side in their efforts to capture the profits of empire. Stuart 'tyranny' was not able to damage growth and relatively competitive (and peaceful) conditions underpinned very rapid increases in colonial output and trade. The resolution of the rules of the Atlantic game in 1689 allowed a consolidated state better to manipulate and manage the imperial economy in its own interests. More secure rent-seeking enterprises and expensive wars damaged growth and European rivals began a process of catch-up. The Glorious Revolution was not sufficient to permanently halt economic development but it was sufficient to slow progress towards industrial revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a long-term growth outlook for Great Britain. It states that there was a potential output growth due to several factors such as net inflows of migrants, a decrease in the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), and shift to high value-added sectors. It notes the existence of a link between demand shifts and NAIRU changes via hysteresis, profile changes in age affecting a potential output growth, and growth from capital stock expansion.

Think of migration and a long list of related issues come to mind – wages, employment, housing, community cohesion. But what about development, asks Laura Chappell [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents forecasts on the economic recovery and growth in Great Britain through 2006. Performance of gross national product in the third quarter of 2003; Comparison of growth in the U.S. and in Britain in the 1990s; Level of demand for exports in continental Europe.

This article presents a study to determine cause and effect of sectoral employment change and to investigate the range of relationships that emerge. The three objectives are: firstly, to explore the diversification process in Britain from 1978 to 1991; secondly, to examine the relationship between diversification and growth in the context of the national economy; and thirdly, to examine specific places in the urban system to determine relationships between diversification and growth. These should provide useful insights into employment structures and the restructuring of the urban system from 1978 to 1991. In previous research on diversity and diversification there seems to have been a special emphasis on the relationship between growth and diversification. These phenomena have been associated because it was considered that as city size increased there should be greater degrees of diversity, thus diversification over time. There are no immediately obvious regional patterns of diversification when one examines the British urban system from 1978 to 1991. Upon closer inspection, however, one finds that most of the largest centres throughout the urban system have diversified at the greatest pace; this is in keeping with the expectation that large cities should be becoming more diverse.

Discusses the myth of industrial revolution in Great Britain. Axiom of the theory of economic development; Importance of the factory system in the course of industrial revolution; Propositions about discontinuity in the history of technical change; Degree of autonomy or distinctiveness in human society.

This article presents the Hudson report on economic condition of Great Britain. According to the standard economic indices, Britain's growth rate averaged a mere 2-8 per cent, over the last eighteen years, comparable with that of the U.S., but well below that of France, Italy, Germany and Japan. If the problem is not solved, say the authors, Britain is headed for "a social and political upheaval". There is no shortage of explanations for Britain's relative decline, though it is hard to tell from the writing which is cause and which is effect.

Over the past four decades, spending on health care in the United Kingdom has accounted for a rising share, both of total public spending and of the total output of the economy. Other industrial economies hare had similar experiences, although the peculiar nature of the UK health service makes the general explanations offered for such expenditure growth inappropriate. Health spending growth in the UK, for the period 1949-89, is found to be strongly associated with output growth, and reasons to explain this relationship are advanced. The relationship's continued stability, in the light of the 1989 health service reforms is questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effect of rearmament policy on the economic condition of Great Britain in 1930s. The author remarks that the role of rearmament in the interwar economy has aroused little controversy. It was claimed that Britain's rearmament programme is the greatest public works programme ever devised in time of formal peace. Nevertheless, the rearmament boom is generally regarded as having had a beneficial effect on the level of economic activity, especially during the minor slump of 1937-8. According to the author, no great speed for the general tenor of the programme was gradual, limited by the belief of the government that financial and economic risks were more dangerous than military uncertainties, and were likely to be accentuated by increased public expenditure. The major advantage of rearmament over an alternative public works strategy based on the construction industry appears to have been its strong linkages to the staple industries and, through this, to the depressed regions.

The article measures the effect of public finance during the period 1793-1815 on the rate and direction of Great Britain's economic development. It explores the country's involvement in war during the period. One aspect of the war which has intermittently attracted economists" attention from the time of the "bullionist" controversy is the effect of the expedients that were adopted in the field of public finance. The article describes the sources of data which economic historian can use to be able to fairly measure the effect of the country's finance on the rate and direction of economic growth. An analysis on the economic indicators during the period is presented.

The object of this article is to demonstrate that economic analysis used in conjunction with the data employed by researcher R.B. Sheridan yields the conclusion that the possession of the British West Indies actually had the effect of retarding the growth of Great Britain. Sheridan contends that the West Indies in general, and Jamaica in particular, yielded an economic surplus, which contributed in no small way to the growth of the metropolitan economy. In the course of his argument, Sheridan constructs an estimate of the wealth of Jamaica during the 1770's and expands it to include all the British West India sugar colonies. Sheridan's argument contains two types of error that, when corrected, vitiate his conclusion. One type of error, an error of measurement, occurs both in his attempt to measure the wealth of Jamaica and in his acceptance of an estimate of income generated by this wealth. The more serious mistake, however, is an analytical error. Sheridan implicitly considers the extensive growth of the sugar colonies as a measure of their contribution to the economic growth of the mother country.