The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) was founded by George Osborne as part of his shredding of George Brown’s reputation. He wanted and independence badge to put on the economic forecasts on which fiscal policy was based. He accused Brown of making it up. Anyway now we have the OBR, here are my notes and links …

Links

  1. https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/office-budget-responsibility-obr which points at the external review  by the OECD, and it’s duty to report on its own accuracy. The IFG would seem to be neutral to favourable.
  2. https://www.capitaleconomics.com/clients/publications/uk-economics/uk-economics-weekly/why-did-the-obr-get-its-fiscal-forecasts-so-wrong from Capital Economics, a private sector consultancy, founded by a Brexiteer, Roger Bootle, who is now Chairman of their Board. The Chief Economist is Neil Shearing for whom I can find no publication list. Bootle’s publications, all books, are listed on his CE page. I found this, Making a Success of Brexit and Reforming the EU, the reviews took me to this by Larry Elliot who may well be more anti-Euro than Bootle. I may need to read him in his own words. It would seem he is  more of a monetarist than I and less pro EU.
  3. https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/10/28/the-office-for-budget-responsibility-is-a-really-terrible-economic-forecaster/ from Richard Murphy, criticising its accuracy with its own figures.
  4. The OECD Report on the OBR 2020
Dave Economics ,

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