Wagner’s Law is the first model of public spending in the history of public finance. The aim of this article is to assess its empirical evidence in Italy for the period 1960-2008 at a disaggregated level, using a time-series approach. After a brief introduction, a survey of the economic...

Many researchers have explored the implications of Lucas’ misperception model. Arguably, the most important implication of this model is that the slope of the aggregate supply curve depends on the variability of nominal shocks. This paper examines this insight from Lucas’ model using annual...

An analysis of the multiplier for the US federal government's consumption expenditures is presented. A simple approach to identify the influence of the federal government's consumption expenditures on economic activity using reduced-form equations is clearly presented and examined using annual...

The conventional search and matching model has been criticized for its inability to explain large cyclical volatility in the vacancy-unemployment ratio without ad hoc assumptions of wage rigidity. This paper presents a mechanism of such volatility without assuming wage rigidity by showing that...

In this article, three issues relating to leading composite indicators (LCI) are discussed: their importance, methods of estimation and uses by institutions worldwide. This discussion is utilised to provide lessons that could be learnt for the application of these indicators to the countries of...

Study and characterization of business cycles are an important issue in the analysis of empirical regularities in a developing economy. Following standard literature of business cycles, we establish episodes of business cycles in Bolivia. We apply economic and statistical filters to economic...

This Economics Research Note examines inventories in the business cycle for Australia covering the period since the mid 1980s. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines inventories as all materials etc., work in progress and finished goods owned by a business, whether held at locations...

This paper constructs a narrative account of all legislated discretionary policy changes in the United Kingdom from 1945 to 2009. Following Romer and Romer (2009, 2010), evidence of the policymakers’ motivation is presented from U.K. official Budget documents together with technical notes,...

The failure of key EU Member States to respect the provisions of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) a few years after its inception triggered a heated debate on how to reform the framework of fiscal policy coordination in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper analyzes 101 reform...

Social security is not apart from other aspects of growth and development. It is a phenomenon completely coherent to economic growth, social justice, human dignity and national prosperity. Generally national social security systems in most countries consist of insurance, protection and relief...