Academic papers I’d like to see

I often have little thoughts (yes, thank you at the back there, very little indeed) and then realise that I\’ve not got the technical skills to even being researching whether they\’re true or not. I might know roughly where the basic information can be found for example, but not know how to put it together.

One that\’s buzzing around at the moment.

Currently we hear a lot that it\’s the UK\’s \”over reliance\” upon finance rather than manufacturing as in, say, Germany, that\’s causing all our problems.

However, I think I recall that Germany\’s recession has been deeper than ours.

So, wouldn\’t a simple little paper like the following be interesting?

Work out the share of each OECD (just to keep things simple) economy that is a) manufacturing and b) finance.

Look at the decline in GDP and the length of time of negative growth.

Compare and contrast the four sets of data.

I have a feeling that countries which had a larger portion of manufacturing had bigger declines in GDP.

Now that would be interesting, wouldn\’t it?