The United Kingdom's economy grew by 0.9 percent in 2024, after a growth rate of 0.4 percent in 2023, 4.8 percent in 2022, 8.6 percent in 2021, and a record 10.3 percent fall in 2020. During the provided time period, the biggest annual fall in gross domestic product before 2020 occurred in 2009, when the UK economy contracted by 4.6 percent at the height of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. Before 2021, the year with the highest annual GDP growth rate was 1973, when the UK economy grew by 6.5 percent. UK economy growing but GDP per capita falling In 2022, the UK's GDP per capita amounted to approximately 37,371 pounds, with this falling to 37,028 pounds in 2023, and 36,977 pounds in 2024. While the UK economy as a whole grew during this time, the UK's population grew at a faster rate, resulting in the negative growth in GDP per capita. This suggests the UK economy's struggles with productivity are not only stagnating, but getting worse. The relatively poor economic performance of the UK in recent years has not gone unnoticed by the electorate, with the economy consistently seen as the most important issue for voters since 2022. Recent shocks to UK economy In the second quarter of 2020, the UK economy shrank by a record 20.3 percent at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there was a relatively swift economic recovery initially, the economy has struggled to grow much beyond its pre-pandemic size, and was only around 3.1 percent larger in December 2024, when compared with December 2019. Although the labor market has generally been quite resilient during this time, a long twenty-month period between 2021 and 2023 saw prices rise faster than wages, and inflation surge to a high of 11.1 percent in October 2022.

The UK economy shrank by 0.1 percent in January 2025 after growing by 0.4 percent in December. Since a huge decline in GDP in April 2020, the UK economy has gradually recovered and is now around 3.4 percent larger than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. After the initial recovery from the pandemic, however, the UK economy has effectively flatlined, fluctuating between low growth and small contractions since January 2022. Labour banking on growth to turn around fortunes in 2025 In February 2025, just over half a year after winning the last general election, the approval rating for the new Labour government fell to a low of -48 percent. Furthermore, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer was not only less popular than the new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, but also the leader of the Reform Party, Nigel Farage, whose party have surged in opinion polls recently. This remarkable decline in popularity for the new government is, in some part, due to a deliberate policy of making tough decisions early. Arguably, the most damaging of these policies was the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance for some pensioners, although other factors such as a controversy about gifts and donations also hurt the government. While Labour aims to restore the UK's economic and political credibility in the long term, they will certainly hope for some good economic news sooner rather than later. Economy bounces back in 2024 after ending 2023 in recession Due to two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, in late 2023 the UK economy ended the year in recession. After not growing at all in the second quarter of 2023, UK GDP fell by 0.1 percent in the third quarter, and then by 0.3 percent in the last quarter. For the whole of 2023, the economy grew by 0.4 percent compared to 2022, and for 2024 is forecast to have grown by 1.1 percent. During the first two quarters of 2024, UK GDP grew by 0.7 percent, and 0.4 percent, with this relatively strong growth followed by zero percent growth in the third quarter of the year. Although the economy had started to grow again by the time of the 2024 general election, this was not enough to save the Conservative government at the time. Despite usually seen as the best party for handling the economy, the Conservative's economic competency was behind that of Labour on the eve of the 2024 election.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the role played by loan supply shocks over the business cycle in the euro area, the UK and the USA from 1980 to 2011 by estimating time-varying parameter vector autoregression models with stochastic volatility and identifying these shocks with sign restrictions consistent with the recent macroeconomic literature. The evidence suggests that in all three economic areas loan supply shocks appear to have a significant effect, with clear signs of an increasing impact over the past few years. Moreover, the role of loan supply shocks is estimated to be particularly important during recessions.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) produces annual, quarterly and monthly data for main economic indicators (MEI). The variables cover national accounts, industrial production, employment, prices, business trends and trade for the member countries of the OECD and select non-member countries. The dataset also includes the OECD's leading indicators (key variables that signal changes in the business cycle).

The OECD defines each variable separately for each country. Nevertheless, the data are considered sufficiently similar to enable comparisons between countries, especially for relative values and rates of change.

These data were first provided by the UK Data Service in January 2003.

• leading indicators (indicators that run 6-12 months ahead of GNP cycle)
• national accounts
• national income
• production
• business tendency surveys
• consumer surveys
• manufacturing
• construction
• domestic demand
• employment
• unemployment
• other labour market indicators
• labour compensation
• producer prices
• consumer price index
• other prices
• monetary aggregates and their components
• domestic credit and debt
• interest rates
• security issues
• share prices
• currency conversions
• external finance
• foreign trade
• balance of payments
• capital and financial accounts
• financial accounts
• net errors and omissions
• world trade

This is the latest version of the Global VAR (GVAR) dataset. The GVAR is a global modelling framework for analyzing the international macroeconomic transmission of shocks, taking into account drivers of economic activity, interlinkages and spillovers between different countries, and the effects of unobserved or observed common factors. This dataset includes quarterly macroeconomic variables for 33 economies (log real GDP, y, the rate of inflation, dp, short-term interest rate, r, long-term interest rate, lr, the log deflated exchange rate, ep, and log real equity prices, eq), as well as quarterly data on commodity prices (oil prices, poil, agricultural raw material, pmat, and metals prices, pmetal), over the 1979Q2 to 2019Q4 period. These 33 countries cover more than 90% of world GDP. \( \ \) It would be appreciated if use of the updated dataset could be acknowledged as: “Mohaddes, K. and M. Raissi (2020). Compilation, Revision and Updating of the Global VAR (GVAR) Database, 1979Q2-2019Q4. University of Cambridge: Judge Business School (mimeo)”.

This dataset shows the percentage of people that cycle to work. The data is broken douwn by Euro Region for England and Wales and is derived from teh 2001 and 2011 census data released by ONS http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html. Derived from ONS tables and combined with Euro regions that are available through the OS Opendata Boundary Line product http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/boundary-line.html. GIS vector data. This dataset was first accessioned in the EDINA ShareGeo Open repository on 2014-04-11 and migrated to Edinburgh DataShare on 2017-02-22.

Between January 2018 and February 2025, the United Kingdom's consumer price inflation rate showed notable volatility. The rate hit its lowest point at 0.5 percent in August 2020 and peaked at 9.6 percent in October 2022. By September 2024, inflation had moderated to 2.6 percent, but the following months saw inflation increase again. The Bank of England's interest rate policy closely tracked these inflationary trends. Rates remained low at 0.5-0.75 percent until April 2020, when they were reduced to 0.1 percent in response to economic challenges. A series of rate increases followed, reaching a peak of 5.25 percent from August 2023 to July 2024. The central bank then initiated rate cuts in August and November 2024, lowering the rate to 4.75 percent, signaling a potential shift in monetary policy. In February 2025, the Bank of England implemented another rate cut, setting the bank rate at 4.5 percent. Global context of inflation and interest rates The UK's experience reflects a broader international trend of rising inflation and subsequent central bank responses. From January 2022 to July 2024, advanced and emerging economies alike increased their policy rates to counter inflationary pressures. However, a shift began in late 2024, with many countries, including the UK, starting to lower rates. This change suggests a potential new phase in the global economic cycle and monetary policy approach. Comparison with other major economies The UK's monetary policy decisions align closely with those of other major economies. The United States, for instance, saw its federal funds rate peak at 5.33 percent in August 2023, mirroring the UK's rate trajectory. Similarly, central bank rates in the EU all increased drastically between 2022 and 2024. These synchronized movements reflect the global nature of inflationary pressures and the coordinated efforts of central banks to maintain economic stability. As with the UK, both the U.S. and EU began considering rate cuts in late 2024, signaling a potential shift in the global economic landscape.

This data deposition is linked to several empirical papers that explain the passage of climate change legislation (measured as the number of laws passed in country i in year t) as a function of different political economy factors. Each observation is a country-year (e.g. UK in 2008) for which we record the number of climate laws passed in that year (1 UK law passed: the 2008 Climate Change Act). (In some specifications the dependent variable is a yes-no dummy, depending on whether any laws were passed). The passage of new climate legislation in a country-year is a function of the stock of existing laws in that country and elsewhere, economic factors such as the business cycle and political factors such as the strength of government. All the variables used in the work are in publicly available databases (see attached read-me file for details). This includes "Climate Change Laws of the World", a dataset on climate change policy and legislation, as well as political / economic data sets such as the "Database of Political Institutions", Polity IV and IMF Statistical data. They are not included in this submission. What is included is the computer codes (STATA do files) underlying the two main published papers.

CCCEP was established in October 2008 with the aim of advancing public and private action on climate change through rigorous, innovative research. Our five research themes for Phase Two are:

1. Understanding green growth and climate-compatible development: what could constitute green growth or climate-compatible development in industrialised and developing countries?

2. Advancing climate finance and investment: how can we unlock major flows of finance into both adaptation and mitigation in different contexts? What are the implications of such flows?

3. Evaluating the performance of climate policies: how can we assess the performance of different climate policies and how can we understand the scope for policy learning?

4. Managing climate risks and uncertainties and strengthening climate services: how can we promote new approaches to the assessment, management and communication of climate risks/uncertainties?

5. Enabling rapid transitions in mitigation and adaptation: how can we understand the scope for rapid transitions to dramatically cut emissions and adapt to significant climate change?

Beyond the planned scientific programme, we set up a CCCEP Innovation Fund with the aim of stimulating, developing and disseminating innovative ideas from both the academic and practitioner communities.

Our plans for Phase Two build on the solid institutional foundations of Phase One, including CCCEP's position at LSE/Leeds, its management structure and its key staff.

As of 2023, 19 percent of people in the UK classed as the highest social grade, AB, cycled every week, with this group consisting of people in upper managerial positions. Meanwhile, the cycling participation rate among people classed as DE was 11 percent.