Purpose – The paper aims to query the value of strategies implemented, notably in France, and to demonstrate the largely ignored link between demographics and economics. Design/methodology/approach – The paper achieves its objective by comparing statistics of European Union (EU) members and...

Purpose – This article attempts to unravel the ways in which New Labour's economic and social policies differ from those of previous Conservative and Labour administrations. Design/methodology/approach – The article analyses Treasury documents, which outline the philosophy underpinning the...

Purpose – The paper attempts to empirically assess whether GDP per capita or the human capital index is a better measure of happiness. Design/methodology/approach – Cross‐country regressions are run to see how GDP per capita fairs in comparison to the human capital index in explaining...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which the European Union (EU) is influencing policy making in EU member states. It covers the historical development of the UK, France and Germany. There is evidence to suggest politics and economic policy making in these...

Purpose – Measures of inequality determine the effectiveness of social and economic policies aimed at reducing inequality and to design effective intervention policies. The purpose of this paper is to focus on poverty reduction and welfare improving impacts of reducing income inequality in the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to disenchant advocates of sustainability of the current form of capitalism and to argue that under current intensification of globalisation of economic and political efforts, “privilege” and “alienation” might be...

A closed-form solution for quantity and asset-price movements in a dynamic general equilibrium model with non-state-separable preferences shows that the welfare cost of fluctuations and the equity premium can be large in such a model. But a large welfare loss from cycles does not imply a large...

Abstract This paper examines whether taxation is effective in eliminating sunspot fluctuations by considering two separate model economies by which indeterminacy occurs for empirically plausible specification of the model parameters. In the first model where production exhibits social increasing...