Currently, local authorities in the UK raise only about a quarter of their revenues from taxes under their control. The Balance of Funding Review Report considered whether this proportion should be increased, and if so, how. This paper considers the report and possible reforms. Reasons why the...

Though anecdotal evidence suggests that retail price inflation increased temporarily in January 2002 when Euro notes and coins were introduced, the evidence from official statistics largely refutes this. We test for the presence of a sudden temporary increase in inflation for Euro-changeover...

In a small open economy with heterogeneous firms, in which tariffs determine the mass of active firms, the gains from trade liberalization depend positively on the level of firm vertical heterogeneity and negatively on transportation costs. The benefits from temporary protection depend on the...

In the Crawford-Sobel (uniform, quadratic utility) cheap-talk model we allow for mediation in which the informed agent reports one possible element of a partition to a mediator (a communication device) and then the mediator suggests an action to the uninformed decision-maker according to the...

We identify characteristics that affect firms' ability to learn from their export activities. Our analysis is based on a panel of Argentinian firms spanning 1992-2001 and we employ Granger causality tests, propensity score matching techniques and GMM regressions. The characteristics we find to...

This paper models aid agencies as financial intermediaries that do not make a financial return to depositors, whose concern is to transfer resources to investor-beneficiaries. This leads to a problem of verifying that the agency is using donations as intended. One solution to this problem is for...

In an attempt to reduce high electricity prices in England and Wales, the government and regulator forced the largest generators to divest some plant in the late 1990s, and introduced New Electricity Trading Arrangements in March 2001. We use a supply function model to simulate prices from April...

We explore a dynamic commons problem and assess the welfare consequences of access to capital markets. The commons has a high intrinsic rate of return but its fruits cannot be secured by individual agents. Capital market access allows resources to be held securely and intertemporally...

Regional integration affects location decisions of MNCs and therefore influences each member country’s provision of investment incentives, which in turn may trigger relocation. As a consequence, subsidy competition increases as integration proceeds. We analyze the welfare consequences of this...

In a small open economy with heterogeneous firms, in which tariffs determine the mass of active firms, free trade optimality depends positively on the level of firm heterogeneity and negatively on transportation costs. The benefits from temporary protection depend on the level of backwardness:...