The paper surveys the evidence on British economic growth performance since the war. It is shown that the hypotheses proposed by Bacon and Eltis, Kaldor and Thirlwall to account for slow growth are inadequate and that supply side problems leading to poor productivity performance are the most...

This paper deals with the existence and identification of a common European Growth Cycle. It has recently been argued that the formation of a monetary union creates in itself a tendency for business cycle symmetry to emerge. If this holds for the European monetary Union and the quasi-union of...

The relationship between unemployment and the rate of change of money wages in interwar Britain is re-examined. It is argued that improved estimates of the wage equation can be obtained by taking account explicitly of factors which change the level of excess demand associated with the measured...

We extend the `rational-partisan' model of inflation to allow for the effects of unemployment persistence on the dynamics of inflation. We combine this model with the `exchange-rate-regime' model of inflation and examine the experience of the United Kingdom. Outside the fixed exchange rate...

The paper is concerned with the empirical modelling of domestic demand for energy in the United Kingdom at the level of the individual household (most previous British work has used aggregate time-series data). The paper develops a two-stage budgeting model of the household's demand for energy...

We use annual data drawn from 1950-85 to estimate an econometric model of the money multiplier for the United Kingdom. We define the money multiplier as ratio of the money stock broadly defined (M3) and the monetary base (M0), and then decompose the multiplier into the currency ratio, the time...

We argue that the 1970s were characterized by attempts to maintain a cooperative, low unemployment equilibrium in the face of considerable union power, through use of incomes policies and neo-corporatist machinery. The 1980s saw a shift away from this, towards direct measures to limit union...

The paper addresses some of the effects of the removal of exchange controls in the UK in 1979. Nonparametric tests indicate that one consequence of the removal was a marked reduction in the volatility of the on-shore/off-shore differential. Co-integration tests suggest that abolition contributed...

This paper examines alternative methods which have been used to measure aggregate energy consumption over time. It is found that many of the measures which have been widely used in empirical studies are not appropriate for economic analysis. The concept of 'useful energy', popular in engineering...

Using the recent EC Commission report `One Market, One Money' as a point of reference, we consider the merits of a single currency in Europe. The main benefit is the reduction in transaction costs, which the report estimates at 0.4% of European Community (EC) GDP (but much less in countries with...