Business Blog

21 April 2013 Last updated at 19:05 ET By Andrew Walker BBC World Service economics correspondent, Washington

More than five years after the onset of the financial crisis, you might have thought economic policy makers would know what to do next.

Well they don't. Or at the very least, there is nothing like the kind of consensus that prevailed before the financial crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been hosting a conference on rethinking economic policy, organised by four experts in the area, including the IMF's own chief economist.

One of the other organisers - the Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof of the University of California - had a vivid analogy for the state of uncertainty the economics profession now faces.

"It's as if a cat has climbed this huge tree - the cat of course is this huge crisis. My view is 'oh my God the cat's going to fall and I don't know what to do'."

Another one of the organisers, David Romer also of the University of California, picked up the analogy: "The cat's been up the tree for five years. It's time to get the cat down from the tree and make sure it doesn't go back up."

The trouble for the economics profession is, according to the last of the conference hosts and another Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz: "There is no good economic theory that explains why the cat is still up the tree".

Changed world

No more cats I promise. But the analogy give a sense of the degree of uncertainty this stellar gathering of economists grappled with.

It is a very different world from the apparently more comfortable one we lived in before the crisis.

What were the key features of that world?

The main economic policy tool was in the hands of central banks. They set interest rates, raising them to keep inflation low and cutting them when the economy was weak.

Fiscal policy - government spending and taxation - was no longer seen as part of the routine toolkit for keeping the economy on an even keel.

Financial regulation was for the most part relatively light touch.

What we got was the worst financial crisis and the deepest recession for the wider economy since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

For Joseph Stiglitz, the crisis was evidence for his view that "economies are not necessarily stable or self-correcting".

There was quite a lot of support for that kind of view and for the idea that various state agencies have an important role in doing something about it.

Many favoured more financial regulation, especially measures that are intended to help stabilise the whole financial system rather than individual banks.

If you really want to know, it's called macro-prudential policy and it's an idea that has really built up a head of steam in the last few years.

One example is a limit on the size of loans relative to the price of the asset such as a house that it's used to buy - the loan-to-value ratio.

It sounds like a reasonable idea, but there was acknowledgement that these policies and their effects are not well understood.

And David Romer, one of the organisers, didn't think he had heard anything big enough to produce a really robust financial system.

Then there is monetary policy. Before the crisis the main tool was interest rates, but the toolkit has since expanded to include quantitative easing - shovelling money into the financial system hoping it will stimulate more spending.

There was support for that but it wasn't universal.

'Not a clue'

Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania for one thought it was a huge amount of stimulus with very little effect.

There is also a debate about what should be the aim of monetary policy.

The idea of inflation targets gained widespread acceptance ahead of the crisis.

Now there is a debate about whether that's enough, but there was no consensus on whether change is needed.

David Romer said the approach seemed good for 15 or 20 years, but subsequently showed itself incapable of generating enough demand in the economy.

But Stefan Gerlach of Goethe University in Frankfurt argued that "it doesn't really make sense to rethink the entire monetary policy framework for an event that happens about once in a century".

There was no great enthusiasm for the rapid increase in government debt in the rich countries over the last few years, but few would go as far as the conservative view of Allan Meltzer:

"If we want financial stability, economic stability and other good things don't we begin by restricting budget deficits? Formally, indefinitely and for all future time?"

Which leaves us where? Confused? You are not the only one.

There were plenty of ideas for sure. But this is how the IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard put it at the end of the conference:

"We don't have a sense of our final destination… Where we end I really don't have much of a clue."

That may be disconcerting, but then the crisis has been an enormous jolt to economic policy, and it would perhaps be even more unsettling if there weren't some fundamental rethinking going on.

22 April 2013 Last updated at 07:34 ET

Work restrictions expiring later this year for migrants from Romania and Bulgaria has had little impact on the numbers planning to move to the UK or wider EU, BBC Newsnight polls suggest.

The countries joined the EU in 2007 but many member states put limits on their citizens working which end this year.

This has raised concerns in the UK that many will now come to seek jobs.

But BBC surveys in each country, both of more than 1,000 people, suggest most would move only with a firm work offer.

Of those questioned more people intended to seek work in the EU including the UK in 2013 than in 2014.

A significant number said they would like to work in the UK, but the number making concrete plans was much smaller.

Romania and Bulgaria are among the poorest countries in Europe and when they joined the European Union in 2007 work restrictions were imposed amid fears about mass migration.

These measures will be dropped on 1 January 2014 giving Bulgarians and Romanians the same rights to work across the union as other EU citizens.

Some in the UK have voiced fears that ending restrictions will trigger a huge influx of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants seeking work as happened when in 2004 the UK allowed people from European Union accession states including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to work freely.

BBC Newsnight wanted to find out what impact these changes were likely to have, particularly on the numbers intending to come to Britain.

In February 2013 the programme commissioned a test poll, asking independent survey company Vitosha to question 1,000 people across Bulgaria.

People were asked if they intended to come to the UK to work. Over a quarter answered yes.

Analysts say the relatively high figure is unsurprising - times are tough in Bulgaria and many Bulgarians dream of a better life. In some surveys as many as 50% of Bulgarians have said they would like to work abroad, but over the past decade only about 6% have actually left.

BBC Newsnight then asked Vitosha in Bulgaria and Gallup Romania to design a questionnaire which would distinguish between aspiration and real concrete plans.

In March 2013 each of the agencies interviewed face to face more than 1,000 people representative of the country as a whole, in villages, in cities, in all regions of Romania and Bulgaria.

People were asked a range of questions about their current situation and whether they had any intentions to move elsewhere in the EU.

When asked whether in the past five years they had considered moving to live and work in another EU member state, 33% of the 1,101 Romanians polled said yes, 67% said no. Of the 1,014 people questioned in Bulgaria - 37% said yes, 63% said no.

Top destinations

When all of those polled were asked to pick their first choice of EU country to move to in either 2013 or 2014, 4.6% of Romanians and 9.3% of Bulgarians chose the UK. These numbers rose to 8.2% for Romanians and 13.6% for Bulgarians when they were asked directly about whether they would consider the UK as a destination.

In the past people from Romania and Bulgaria who have worked in other EU countries have usually opted for places they can reach by car or where the culture and language are closer to their own.

That was still the case among the 197 Romanians who said they were intending to work in another EU country in 2013 - 30% of them said they wanted to go to Italy, 24% to Germany, and 16% to the UK.

However, the Newsnight survey suggested that the UK is becoming a more attractive destination.

Concrete plans

When it came to Romanians intending to work in another EU country in 2014, a much smaller group of 73 people, the percentages changed - 25% wanted to go to Italy, 18% to Germany, and 26% to the UK.

Of the 242 Bulgarians who said they intended to work elsewhere in the EU in 2013 - 30% said they wanted to go to Germany, 27% to the UK and 10% to Spain.

As for Bulgarians intending to work elsewhere in the EU in 2014, again a smaller group, 123 people, 31% wanted to go to Germany, 24% to the UK and 12% to Spain.

Some people said one country for 2013 and a different one for 2014 - so they appear twice.

To get a clearer idea of how many people might actually come to the UK, those who had said they were planning to head to the UK were then asked whether they had made any concrete plans to move.

These plans included searching for somewhere to live and to work.

The number of positive responses fell significantly, though more Bulgarians than Romanians were making concrete plans.

Just 1.2% of the Bulgarians and 0.4% of the Romanians said they had begun to look for accommodation.

Estimations unsafe

The numbers were similarly small for those who had started looking for a job - 2.8% of the Bulgarians had started to look for a job with a recruitment agency and 0.3% of the Romanians.

And 1.4% of the Bulgarians and 0.7% of the Romanians had begun to look for work without the aid of a recruitment agency.

With such small numbers analysts say you cannot safely estimate real numbers of how many will come.

"I think if you're looking at who's making concrete plans, say who's spoken for instance to a recruitment consultancy or who has a firm job offer, I think yes the sample sizes there are a bit small to say specifically who are the numbers who are coming," Peter Flade, director of Gallup UK, told BBC Newsnight.

Many of the people who came to the UK from Poland and other eastern European countries did so without a job awaiting them. However, the results of the Newsnight surveys suggest that, for now at least, most Romanians and Bulgarians would only come to the UK with a firm offer of work.

Looking at Romania, of the 90 people who said they were planning to work in the UK, 65% would do so only with an offer from a recruitment agency, or directly from a company.

For the 138 Bulgarians answering this question, 60% said they would do so only with an offer from a recruitment agency, or directly from a company.

When looking at what kind of people are interested in moving to the UK, the Bulgarian survey suggested they tend to be younger and they are more likely to be unemployed than the average in the survey.

The Romanian survey suggested people interested in moving to the UK are more likely to have a university degree, more likely to be employed, and are likely to be more affluent than those looking to move elsewhere in the EU.

Benefits changes

The surveys were conducted before UK Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech in March suggesting restricting entitlements for new immigrants.

However, Newsnight asked whether the UK government considering restricting state benefits to Romanians and Bulgarians would affect their desire to come to the UK.

Although the 90 Romanian respondents who were interested in working in the UK were more professional and better off than the average respondent in the survey, just under half said it would affect their decision to a great or very great extent.

In Bulgaria, most people interested in working in the UK said a benefits change would not affect their decision.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight Bulgaria's Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism Assen Vassilev said he did not think there would be a mass exodus of Bulgarians when the changes came into effect.

"I think people who wanted to leave have already left. Gone somewhere, come back, gone somewhere else come back. And going back to the survey that shows that 60-70% of people want a firm job offer. They know that going to a place that looks nice in pictures is not going to make your life better."

NB: When looking at the detailed tables that accompany these polls, it is important to look not just at the percentages, but at the total number of respondents who answer each question. At times this number will comprise the entire sample, a large figure that has been designed to reflect the views of the entire population. However, at other times, the number of people responding to individual questions may be as low as 20 and certainly fewer than 100. The margin of error increases significantly as the number of people answering any question diminishes.

You can watch Sanchia Berg's full report on the polls' findings on Monday's Newsnight at 10.30pm on BBC Two, then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer or Newsnight website.

22 April 2013 Last updated at 04:42 ET By Judith Burns BBC News family reporter

Better-off older people should pay tax at the same rate as younger people on similar incomes, a think tank argues.

The report from the Fabian Society argues that as older people are no longer always poor they should "share the pain of deficit reduction".

"All policies that appear to give special advantages to older people as a category should be reviewed," it says.

Age UK said financial options for elderly people were often very limited.

Researchers for the left-of-centre Fabian Society analysed data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (Elsa).

The paper, part of a series produced for the Hanover housing charity, suggests that the majority of older people are neither wealthy baby-boomers with "a surfeit of wealth and leisure" nor "pensioners on the breadline facing poverty, isolation and ill health".

'Profound implications'

"The truth is that the majority of older people today are somewhere in between, neither rich nor poor, and the middle is expanding as a result of recent successes in reducing pensioner poverty," writes author Andrew Harrop.

"Of course this is something to welcome and celebrate, as part of the steady decline of pensioner poverty, but it has profound implications," he argues.

The paper says that "older people catching up with everyone else was not problematic while middle incomes were rising across the board.

"Perhaps it is more so today with growth in median earnings at a standstill."

Mr Harrop cites figures from 2010-11 that suggest that the real incomes of the middle fifth of all households were no greater than in 2003-04 "but middle incomes for retired households were 13% higher".

He added: "Since the financial crisis this disparity has become even more stark: real middle incomes have fallen by 5% overall, but they have risen 5% for retired households."

The report says that when it comes to disposable incomes after housing costs, pensioner couples are now in the top half of UK income distribution because 80% of them are homeowners and most are no longer paying rent or mortgages.

But, Mr Harrop argues, rising house prices have meant a fall in the share of people aged under 45 who are owner occupiers, "with the median 25 to 34-year-old now renting rather owning their home".

When it comes to taxation, the paper highlights a "really significant intergenerational unfairness", with retired middle-income households paying 27% of their gross income in tax, compared with 33% for non-retired households with the same income.

The paper concludes that "in financial terms alone, older people are no longer special", and it calls on the government to assess the evidence for existing rules on social security, taxation and the design of services.

The paper says moves to equalise the tax system would have to be carried out more slowly to avoid a sudden fall in living standards.

'Safety net'

In the meantime, it suggests the government should consider taking national insurance from earnings after state pension age and ending tax-free lump sums on private pensions.

It also argues for more taxes on property, such as a land value tax or a reformed council tax, to suppress rises in house prices.

On top of this, the paper suggests scrapping current rules that guarantee that the state pension "will rise annually by an average of 0.26% more than earnings" and restricting universal benefits to pensioners, such as winter fuel allowance, free TV licences and free bus travel.

Michelle Mitchell, of Age UK, said: "The Fabian Society is right to point out that there has been significant progress in tackling pensioner poverty in recent years. But there are still 1.7 million pensioners living in poverty today, while a further 1.1m have incomes only just above the poverty line.

"It can be difficult for older people to change their financial plans as their options are likely to be very limited. They have also contributed national insurance payments throughout their working lives to receive in return a state pension that ensures a financial safety net but little more."

A Treasury spokesperson said the government was committed to ensuring that older people are able to live with the dignity and respect they deserve and the basic state pension is the foundation of state support for older people.

"In difficult economic times, we have protected the benefits of those who have little means to increase their income, for instance pensioners."

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said: "At a time when people are fighting for every pound in their pocket a tax hike is the last thing they need. The government has repeatedly made clear it will not be introducing any changes to council tax banding."

21 April 2013 Last updated at 19:04 ET

Hundreds of business leaders have formed a new lobby group Business for Britain to press the government to renegotiate the UK's deal with the EU.

The group backs David Cameron's plan to remake the UK's agreements with the EU if the Tories win the next election.

Some 500 business chiefs - including Lord Wolfson of Next and Sir Stuart Rose of Ocado - have signed a letter in Monday's newspapers backing the plan.

But other business leaders have said it is not possible to pick and chose.

As the prime minister unveiled his plan to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU and then hold an in/out referendum on whether to stay in the EU on those new terms or leave, the British manufacturers' association, the EEF, and the UK head of the accountancy firm Deloitte were among those to express doubts.

They suggested it could create uncertainty and lead to a period of "investment chill".

But in its letter in Monday's newspapers Business for Britain states: "As business leaders and entrepreneurs responsible for millions of British jobs, we believe that the government is right to seek a new deal for the EU and for the UK's role in Europe.

"Far from being a threat to our economic interests, a flexible, competitive Europe - with more powers devolved from Brussels - is essential for growth, jobs and access to markets."

Looser arrangement

The group's co-chairman is Alan Halsall, who heads the upmarket pram making company, Silver Cross. He said he thought the new group was needed because there was a misconception about the attitude of businesses to European Union membership: "Business for Britain has been formed because many would have you believe that business doesn't want politicians to try and renegotiate a better deal from Europe."

He said that the economy would do better with a more flexible, looser relationship with the EU.

John Mills, the founder of online retail business JML and the other co-chairman, said the group was politically neutral: "This campaign is not about taking political sides or backing the right horse - it's about doing what's best for British business."

He said he had been a member of the Labour Party for 40 years.

The lobby group's letter comes a week after a major survey by the British Chambers of Commerce suggested most UK companies wanted to stay in Europe, but with some powers brought back home.

Its survey of 4,000 businesses found 64% of those who responded said they favoured making adjustments to the UK's agreements with the EU.

Employment law was the number one area they wanted opt outs from.

22 April 2013 Last updated at 03:36 ET

German airline Lufthansa has cancelled the majority of its flights scheduled for Monday due to a strike over pay.

The airline said only 32 of its flights would run as planned, out of more than 1,700 originally scheduled.

Flights to and from London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Dublin, Aberdeen and Edinburgh will be hit. German airports affected are Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf and Hamburg.

The airline said the strike, the second in two months, was uncalled for.

"It's completely out of proportion," a Lufthansa spokesman was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

"Especially given that four further dates for pay talks had already been agreed upon."

Only 20 of its planned 1,650 short-haul flights are to go ahead, while 12 of its 73 scheduled long-haul flights will do so.

Common tactic

Ground staff have called a one-day strike amid an ongoing pay dispute with the airline.

Like many airlines, Lufthansa is looking to cut costs in the face of stiff competition from low-cost carriers and big Gulf airlines, as well as rising fuel prices.

Last week, Lufthansa rejected union demands for a 5.2% wage increase over the next 12 months.

Strikers are also looking for guarantees over job cuts.

Unions staged a similar one-day strike last month. Short "warning strikes" are a common tactic among German unions, designed to put pressure on wage negotiations.

In a statement on its website, Lufthansa said passengers should expect "massive" flight cancellations and delays that will start to affect long-haul flights from Sunday.

The airline said it was offering free alternative bookings.