China and Africa:
an enduring partnership
Lin Wang, China Business News interviewed Dr Hippolyte Fofack, Chief Economist of the African Export-Import Bank and a regular contributor to World Economics, about the China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Forum held in Beijing hosted by the Chinese government. FOCAC is a triennial meeting between senior Chinese leaders and their counterparts from across Africa. At the Forum Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced a $60 billion package of aid, investment and loans to Africa, against a backdrop of growing concern about rising debt distress on the continent.

 Continue reading... Fighting the Gender Wage Gap:
The Bahrain Experience
Since women’s rights are human rights and because human rights have become an issue of international political life, making sense of the ever-evolving legal frameworks and implementation mechanisms to ensure women are not left behind in terms of rights, responsibilities and roles, remains fundamental. Nowhere is this clearer than the gender wage gap where equal work does not necessarily generate equal pay...

 Continue reading... Serious Errors on UK Telecoms Data: Prices could have fallen by 90% more than the official price index
The Office of National Statistics (ONS), Britain’s official data agency, has admitted that it has made serious errors in its estimation of the output and productivity of the telecoms sector. A paper co-authored by Richard Heys, deputy chief economist of the ONS which compared approaches to deflating the output of the telecoms industry across countries found ...

 Continue reading... Can Big Data Improve Economic Measurement?
The amount of data generated and stored in the digital age is accelerating rapidly, but this is not reflected in official economic statistics. Half a decade ago one estimate put the daily global creation of data at around 2.5 exabytes [2.5×1018 bytes] and it was predicted last year that this would rise to...

 Continue reading... Africa Growth Prospects for 2018
Africa’s economic growth prospects are looking brighter for 2018 with an average forecast of 4.0 percent on 2017. Growth rebounded in the second half of 2016 and strengthened further in 2017, achieving a growth rate of 3.4 percent...

 Continue reading... Debt to GDP Ratio: Use with Care
One of the most widely used and misused statistics is the ratio of public debt to national income as a measure of a country’s solvency. The debt-to-GDP ratio itself is measured with a country's gross sovereign debt in the numerator and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the denominator...

 Continue reading... The Flaws in Population Data
Accurate world population data is immensely important in assessing the impact of people on the sustainability of the planet’s resources. According to World Economics there were an estimated 7.467 billion humans living on the planet in 2017...

 Continue reading... The UK Retail Price Index: Broken, Inaccurate and Unfair
Calculating price indexes that are theoretically sound, robust, comprehensive, easy to understand, and which reflect underlying reality is one of the hardest tasks in economics. Most measures of domestic inflation have flaws, but perhaps the least fit for purpose is the Retail Price Index (RPI) used in Britain.

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