The promising prospect of a ?New Economy? in the US attracted substantial equity inflows in the late 1990s, helping to finance the country?s burgeoning current account deficit. After peaking in 2000, however, US stocks fell by some 8 trillion dollars in value. To assess the welfare effects of...

At present the USA is - in per capita terms - the top greenhouse gas polluter among the world’s major economies. This is mirrored by the high energy intensity of all sectors of the US economy including manufacturing industries. A potential explanation for the higher energy intensity are lower...

The size and strength of the Royal Navy experienced a punctuated evolution into the largest and most powerful Navy in the world by 1815. Most historians tend to represent its superiority in conflicts at sea as an indication of several factors that would be conceptualized by economists as...

An increase over time in the proportion of young people obtaining a degree is likely to impact on the relative ability compositions (i) of graduates and non-graduates and (ii) across graduates with different classes of degree award. In a signalling framework, we examine the implications of this...

We consider the problem of targeting benefits when the incomes of families are not accurately observable by the public authorities. By income uncertainty it is meant that the decision-maker cannot ascertain an applicant's income, but that he can assign probabilities with respect to the level of...

The recession of 2008-2009 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the other post-war recessions. Nevertheless, employment rates remained higher than might have been expected given the experience of previous recessions. The main reasons for this appear to be a combination of...

We estimate semiparametric Engel curves for rural Pakistan using a large household survey. This allows us to obtain consistent estimates of the effects of household size and composition on consumption patterns even when these demographic variables are correlated with an unknown function of...

One potential channel through which the effects of the minimum wage could be directed is that firms who employ minimum wage workers could have passed on any higher labour costs resulting from the minimum wage in the form of higher prices. This study looks at the effects of the minimum wage on...

At present the USA is - in per capita terms - the top greenhouse gas polluter among the world’s major economies. This is mirrored by the high energy intensity of all sectors of the US economy including manufacturing industries. A potential explanation for the higher energy intensity is lower...

This thesis examines the role of public capital, in particular, "core infrastructure", in private sector production in the United States. The underlying theme is the importance of the individual infrastructure stocks, in particular highways and streets, water and sewer systems and "other...