Energy used in transport is a particularly important focus for environment-development studies because it is increasing in both developed and developing countries and is largely carbon-intensive. This paper examines whether a systemic, mutually causal, cointegrated relationship exists among...

Currently, there is a debate on what impact the implementation of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in India would have on its pharmaceutical industry and health care. The debate hinges primarily on two major questions. First, will the new patent regime provide an...

The issue of inflation expectations has continued to catch the attention of many economic researchers in recent years, due to the mere fact that the public and economic agents’ perceptions about the perceived direction of inflation can significantly influence the inflation rate itself. In an...

Since Brown (1952), habit formation models of consumption have assumed that utility is additively separable in durables and non-durables, and memory loss is a unidimensional process. This thesis dispenses with these assumptions to extend the theory of habit formation and introduce habit...

Rapid global economic growth, centred in Asia but now spread across the world, is driving rapid greenhouse-gas emissions growth, making earlier projections unrealistic. This paper develops new, illustrative business-as-usual projections for carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and other...

China’s current system of fiscal transfers suffers from severe weaknesses. The absence of a clear and coherent principle for distribution of fiscal transfers is a major weakness and results in the current distribution that favors the wealthier provinces. Furthermore, fiscal transfers have...

The determination of optimal financing (optimal capital structure or optimal mix of funds) for corporations is important for efficient corporate governance. Some optimization problems in determining optimal financing for corporations include optimal control, involving a dynamic system with...

The link between skill acquisition and earnings is one of the cornerstones of labour economics. The conventional view is that, all else being equal, workers with relatively higher stocks of embedded skills will receive a relatively higher return when supplying labour. The link between skills and...

Since independence, South Africa has engaged in various bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) in order to enhance exports diversification and stimulate aggregate growth of trade and productivity. This paper empirically investigates potential economic gains of South Africa (SA)-...

An important puzzle in international macroeconomics is the exchange rate disconnect puzzle. Based on recent empirical literature by Mussa (1986), Baxter and Stockman (1989), and Flood and Rose (1995), high exchange rate volatility under floating rates appear not to be related to the high...