News Update

Be the first to know about our upcoming events, new publications and recently added commentary.

Sign up to our newsletter

We only send emails once every two weeks to keep you up to date.

Published on March 3, 2023

Falling house prices may seem like a good thing – but it’s renters who are paying the price

Council member Josh Ryan-Collins writes on the housing crisis in the Guardian on 3rd March 2023

“UK house prices are falling. In the year to February, prices fell by 1.1% to reach their lowest level for over a decade. The drivers are clear: inflation and rising interest rates are combining to put off mortgage borrowers…

Falling prices may seem like a good thing: the average home in England currently costs around nine times the average annual disposable household income. However, they would have to fall by a massive amount to return to the level of affordability – around 4.5 times income – that preceded the last major bubble of the late 1990s. Such a collapse would almost certainly cause a financial crisis and disastrous recession.”

Economists and human rights experts call on Starmer to drop “destructive” economic policy

Patrick Allen August 30, 2023

In an open letter coordinated by the think-tank Compassion in Politics, academics including PEF Council members Ha-Joon Chang and Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson – authors of the widely read The Spirit Level – warn Starmer that his current approach mimics the “economic orthodoxy that has made this country poorer, less cohesive and more unequal than fifteen years ago.”

PROGRESSIVE ECONOMICS 2023

Patrick Allen April 6, 2023

Following the great success of our conference last year , the Progressive Economy Forum and the University of Greenwich Research Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability bring you Progressive Economics 2023 –a conference of debate and education at a vital moment in the UK to debate the policies to tackle the alarming economic challenges of austerity, inequalities, Brexit, Covid-19, cost-of-living crisis, global supply problems, the war in Ukraine, care crisis and environmental collapse.What are the solutions and how to persuade the policy makers to implement them?

The Cost of Living Crisis – a paper by Ozlem Onaran

Özlem Onaran April 4, 2023

This paper by PEF Council member Ozlem Onaran analyses the political economy of the cost of living crisis in the context of the UK. It presents the long-term trends in the wage share, wealth inequality, labour’s bargaining power, and the real wages in the UK.

BBC review on its economics broadcasting

Patrick Allen March 2, 2023

“We think too many journalists lack understanding of basic economics or lack
confidence reporting it. This brings a high risk to impartiality. In the period
of this review, it particularly affected debt. Some journalists seem to feel
instinctively that debt is simply bad, full stop, and don’t appear to realise
this can be contested and contestable.”