There is no consensus about the causes of the reduction in business cycle volatility seen in many major economies over the last decade. Using stylised models of the economies of the US, Euro area, UK and Japan, we argue that economic stability has been fostered by improved monetary policy and by...

This article is concerned with the economic effects of immigration. The emphasis is on Britain, but extensive material is also provided on other countries. Since 1997 a new British immigration policy has displaced previous policy aims, which were focused on minimizing settlement. Large-scale...

It is widely believed that regional labour markets in the USA are highly flexible, so that employment shocks have only transitory effects on joblessness since induced migration quickly offsets much of the initial impact. However time-series analysis of the response to shocks is very sensitive to...

This paper describes the history of the UK balance of payments since 1950, and contains an informal discussion of future prospects. It documents the huge shifts that have occurred in the composition of trade, in particular the rise of the City of London and knowledge-intensive services...

Arthur Robson (2010) presents an ingenious model to explain why the standard of living apparently fell during the Neolithic transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture. His demonstration relies on a production function that has a strong property with regard to technical change. This note...

We model the coevolution of behavioral strategies and social learning rules in the context of a cooperative dilemma, a situation in which individuals must decide whether or not to subordinate their own interests to those of the group. There are two learning rules in our model, conformism and...