Britain’s position in the economic ‘league table’

'Tis the season of making predictions about the future. What will 2014 bring? There has also been a lot a coverage of a study making predictions as far ahead as 2030.

The study, published by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, makes some fairly startling predictions. The most commented on is the forecast that the UK will have the largest economy in Europe by 2030.

There are plenty of reasons to either cheer this prediction (particularly by those who generally favour the current government's economic policies). There are lots of reasons to have significant doubts about the reliability of these forecasts too. Will Hutton in The Guardian expresses his lack of confidence in some of the guesswork here.

I wonder if by 2030, GDP will have fallen from favour (somewhat) as the main indicator of economic progress. Most economists are keen to move towards a broader 'dashboard' approach to measuring economic progress, capturing a far wider range of data.

The Economist's World in Figures is quite a nice digest of stats comparing predictions for countries in 2014.