Not quite exponential
The inspiration for this this tweet on apparent slow down in growth of UK business investment after 2016. It looked a little suspicious since the “trend line” only touches three of the data and does not appreciably exceed any. (And also, subjective experience makes it strange to think that in recent history that really was a sustained period of UK business investment).
Excel trend line analysis
The ONS data I found for this go back to the pre-Blair/Brown 1997 Q1, so here is the simple exponential trend line fit in excel to all these available data (note 100 == 1997Q1 value):
What can be seen seen that in 2021 business investment very close returned to its trend line. The problem, if there is one, is that it is pretty aneamic trend.
If we want to exclude the post-2016 data as there have been various developments in the UK since then, this is the trend line that is obtained:
This trend line is weaker than the trend over the full time range and indeed business investment recovered above it already by 2021Q1.
Data used
- UK ONS UK business investment, chained volume measure, seasonally adjusted, excluding the reclassification of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) in Quarter 2 2005, link
Copyright: B. Nikolic 2022. For general information only. Not to be relied for any purpose. Not advice about investment. No warranty of any kind. No liability for any use of this information accepted.