About Graham Gudgin and Ken Coutts

Graham Gudgin is Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge and Chief Economic Advisor at Policy Exchange in London. He is also visiting Professor at the University of Ulster and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre. Ken Coutts is Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School, Emeritus Assistant Director of Studies in the Faculty of Economics, and Life Fellow in Economics, Selwyn College, at the University of Cambridge.

Did EU Membership Accelerate UK Economic Growth?

by Graham Gudgin and Ken Coutts on 29th September 2017

The Brexit debate has been distorted by several myths. One of the most persistently and widely quoted, including during the 2016 referendum campaign and subsequently as in here, is that the UK’s economic performance improved after joining the EU in 1973. Performance is usually measured as GDP per head, and on this measure the UK […]

Plenty More Boom And Bust In The UK

by Graham Gudgin and Ken Coutts on 18th December 2015

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has had good mileage out of his claims that the UK has the fastest growing economy in Europe. His claim is correct, at least for the larger economies in Western Europe in 2014 and 2015, but pride may come before a fall. The Eurostat forecasts are that […]

The Blocked Completion of the European Monetary Union

The reform of the euro zone is stuck. Against the background of political blockades, this report examines from a combined economic and political science perspective how the Euro can be prepared for the next crisis. The report first identifies general requirements for the stabilization of economic and monetary union. Next, the report reconstructs the political logic of the euro crisis and shows that the prospects for realizing far-reaching reform proposals aiming at a fiscal union are poor. Subsequently, the report develops a proposal of how, under the given circumstances, the room for maneuver within the existing framework of economic and monetary union can be extended in a pragmatic way in order to strengthen national fiscal policy as an instrument of macroeconomic stabilization.

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Platform work: Maximising the potential while safeguarding standards?

The rise of platform work across the European Union can facilitate better access to the labour market for disadvantaged groups, encourage participation among those with other responsibilities and foster self-employment and entrepreneurship. However, there are growing concerns relating to platform workers’ social protection, working time and health and safety standards, with the work itself often characterised by low income, low-skilled work, and individual small-scale tasks. Eurofound’s new policy brief highlights the main opportunities and challenges of specific types of platform work and illustrates some of the first attempts at addressing them in the EU.

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At the beginning of the new EU legislative cycle, this occasional paper by Udo Bullmann (MEP and S&D Group coordinator in the European Parliament’s Development Committee) makes the case for an EU development policy that puts the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a concern for human well-being front and centre. The paper argues that EU development policy must serve to fight inequalities in partner countries to enable successful transformations in the spirit of the SDGs. Weaving a concern for achieving greater equality into the process of EU development policy-making, including through ex-ante assessment tools, is key in this regard.

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Did EU Membership Accelerate UK Economic Growth?

Plenty More Boom And Bust In The UK

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