Comparative Advantage tries to stay away from politics. We focus on economics and our colleagues at the Brexit Briefing and the Brussels Briefing are more than capable of guiding you through the political twists and turns of Brexit.

Fortunately, for us at least, the data published last week suggest that the UK economy has had a similar attitude to the turmoil in Westminster.

While the soft data — purchasing managers’ indices and surveys of businesses — pointed to a downturn in sentiment this does not seem to have been borne out in the official figures.

Labour market data, inflation, retail sales and public sector borrowing all came in stronger than City economists had expected. That followed growth figures, published the previous week, which said the economy had bounced back in January following an exceptionally weak December.

Now-casting.com, who provide data for the FT's UK economics dashboard, are currently predicting that economic growth for the third quarter is likely to end up somewhere close to 0.3 per cent rather than the stagnation they had foreseen earlier in March.

Positive surprises in the UK data, combined with negative ones in Europe, have helped to support the pound even as financial markets have been roiled in the rest of the world.

However the Bank of England, in its meeting last week, sounded a note of caution. They suggested indicators may be less reliable at the moment as stockpiling by companies and businesses make it less of an indicator of the “medium term” outlook.

This week’s calendar

Tuesday

11.00: Ben Broadbent at the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

The deputy governor of the Bank of England will be at a committee hearing on the governance of the UK’s statistics. He will be speaking alongside Clare Lombardelli, chief economic adviser to the Treasury, and Robert Chote, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Expect questions on reform of the controversial retail price index.

Friday

9.30: National accounts (Q4)

The final version of last year’s growth figures will be published. Analysts are not expecting any change to the 0.2 per cent growth figure from the initial release. We will also get the latest set of figures on the household savings ratio and the current account deficit.

9.30: Bank of England money and credit (February)

BoE lending figures pointed to a jump in consumer borrowing during January, suggesting consumers were once again relying on cheap credit to fund spending rather than real wage increases. Bank lending to businesses also increased but statisticians at the central bank said this largely reflected a few big mergers.

Last week’s highlights

Everyone’s talking about: Alan Krueger

Tributes poured in this week for Alan Krueger, an influential economist who took his own life last weekend. My colleague Tim Harford called him a “master economist” while Martin Sandbu wrote his death felt like a “a deeply personal loss for tens of thousands who have strived to understand the economy in order to change it for the better.”

Arindrajit Dube, a professor at UMass Amherst who will be reviewing the minimum wage for Philip Hammond, reflected on Krueger’s work here, writing that

If you believe that economics as a discipline should seek to answer questions about how the economy works through credible research and without ever substituting dogma for evidence, you owe an enormous debt to Alan Krueger

What we’re reading: the state of the profession

Last week the American Economics Association, a US organisation for academic economists, published a survey examining the state of the profession. While, only a minority of respondents from all groups said they were satisfied and felt valued; women, non-white economists and LGBT economists were all the most negative. Soumaya Keynes of the Economist has a full write-up here.

Quote of the week

“Our country is facing a national emergency,” — the Trades Union Congress and the CBI in a joint letter to Theresa May.

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