We examine trend economic developments in New Zealand and in each of Australia’s six states and two territories (i.e. nine regions) in order to inform issues regarding economic policy harmonisation across Australasia. Our focus is on trend developments in GDP, population, GDP per capita and...

We place regional industry structures at centre stage in currency union analysis, decomposing differences between regional and aggregate cycles into 'industry structure' and 'industry cycle' effects. The industry structure effect indicates whether a region's industry structure causes its cycle...

If two countries experience similar cycles, loss in monetary sovereignty following currency union may not be severe. Analysis of cyclical similarity is frequently carried out at the overall industry level, then interpreted with reference to regional industrial structures. By contrast, this paper...

We use a panel of euro area countries to assess the determinants of long-term sovereign bond yield spreads over the period 1999.01-2010.12. We find that, unlike the period preceding the global financial crisis, European government bond yield spreads are well-explained by macro- and fiscal...

We use a dynamic multipath general-to-specific algorithm to capture structural instability in the link between euro area sovereign bond yield spreads against Germany and their underlying determinants over the period January 1999 – August 2011. We offer new evidence suggesting a significant...

We provide empirical evidence from a number of European countries, which shows that unemployment and output are positively related when unemployment is low and inversely related when unemployment is high. We then construct a stylised macro-model with goods and labour market imperfections to show...

This paper develops a generalised version of the life-cycle model in which consumers’ preferences are defined over components of consumption and are affected by the level of public expenditure on goods and services. The model implies that the crowding out of private consumption could in fact...

This paper studies the quantitative implications of changes in the composition of taxes for long-run growth and expected lifetime utility in the UK economy over 1970-2005. Our setup is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model incorporating a detailed fiscal policy structure, and whose...

In this paper we construct a stylised general equilibrium macromodel to show that demand led expansions may have unexpected effects when market imperfections lead to changes in labour productivity. We find some empirical support, from a number of European countries, for the main predictions of...