Our best guess is that business surveys, such as the PMIs, understated falls in activity in April and we suspect that the next batch of surveys, released as early as next week, will do so again in May...

The impact of the lockdowns on the ability of statisticians to collect price data means that measures of inflation will be less accurate than normal. However, this will probably have little impact on...

The coronavirus will leave in its wake a sharp rise in public sector debt. Low interest rates suggest that many governments will be able to live with this, rather than having to resort to austerity...

Manufacturing PMIs for April fell sharply, but the way the surveys are constructed means that conditions may be even worse than the headline figures suggest. Indeed, the sub-components of the surveys...