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...

China Crisis Series

Chinese economy still struggles with mixed bag of economic data in Q1

Mar 16, 2016 14:54 pm UTC| Insights & Views Economy

Activity indicators in Q1 so far evidenced that public investment strengthened, partly offsetting weakness in the private sector. Industrial production grew 5.4% YoY in Q1 so far, down from previous 5.9%...

China Crisis Series

NPC meetings suggests China's monetary and fiscal policy will be more pro-active in 2016

Mar 16, 2016 12:32 pm UTC| Insights & Views Economy

Chinas parliament today approved a new five-year plan, setting out an ambitious target of an average economic growth of 6.5-7 per cent a year by 2020. The size of Chinas economy is expected to exceed 90 trillion yuan (USD...