Professor Ronald MacDonald on the Economic consequences of Scottish Independence

This video of a talk by Professor Ronald Macdonald, who holds the Adam Smith chair of Political Economy at the University of Glasgow, and was previously Professor of International Finance at the University of Strathclyde. It lasts about 18 minutes but is well worth listening to in terms of one reputable expert view with unimpeachable Scottish credentials on what the impact of tomorrow's vote on both Scotland and the rest of the UK might be.

The talk is called "The numbers don't add up."

Comments

Thomas said…
If Scotland's debt share is £120bn, then total UK debt is 1.45tn.
Scotland's 2012-13 deficit was £8.6bn. The UK's was £92bn.
If Scotland would have to find around £15bn to service our debt, the UK would have to find around £170bn.
Scottish expenditure 2012-13 was £65bn. UK expenditure was £680.
So the cuts would be about 23% of Scottish expenditure or 25% of UK.
So as part of the UK, we would be £1.3bn worse off per year and that's before we even consider savings such as trident, westminster, etc.

If Scotland didn't get a share of the UK assets and therefore didn't take their share of the UK liabilities, we would start debt free and with a deficit of £3.6bn (£8.6bn minus £5bn interest). This would be just 5.5% of expenditure. That means we'll be £13bn per year better off than staying in the UK. This is more than double the oil and gas tax revenues!
Chris Whiteside said…
Fortunately we will never know. I think breaking up the UK would have been very messy for all concerned.

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