Economics for Business: Is an economic recovery underway?

A ‘crossover’ blog here, since most Business students will be spending at least some of their time thinking about the external environment that firms operate in. For most businesses, the dominating external issue has been the deep recession – a long period in which the UK economy has struggled. Analysis from The Economist suggests that the economy has taken so much damage we’re basically back to where we were in late 2003! A pretty depressing thought, but there are some signs that things might be picking up.

What follows is a link to an article giving reasons to be optimistic, and to a short series of blogs from last year that take you through what you need to know about economic ‘fundamentals’ at A2 level.

We might be way too early talking about green shoots of recovery (I was blogging about which business sectors are pulling the economy out of recession? back in 2010) but the Guardian article Is the worst finally over for the UK economy? makes a persuasive case that we might be past the worst. Let’s see.

Here are links to some key terms and examples that might be helpful too:

Economic environment - Confidence
Economic environment - Debt bombshell
Economic environment - Exchange Rates
Economic environment - GDP
Economic environment - Inflation
Economic environment - Oil and Petrol Prices
Economic environment – Unemployment
Economics environment - Stock market booms (and busts)