In 1974 Britain elected a Labour government pledged to expand public spending significantly. Labour followed its programme for two years, but after that began to cut both government spending and taxation, anticipating the post-1979 Conservative agenda. This paper examines the history of this...

We estimate the sticky information Phillips curve model of Mankiw and Reis (2002) using survey expectations of professional forecasters from four major European economies. Our estimates imply that inflation expectations in France, Germany and the United Kingdom are updated about once a year, in...

Die Forderung nach höherer Transparenz und besserer Wirkungsorientierung von Subventionen ist ein finanzpolitischer Evergreen, der mit der Schuldenbremse und der Forderung nach langfristiger Tragfähigkeit der Finanzpolitik, zusätzliche Dringlichkeit erhält. Die im Auftrag des...

Using information collected by the National Audit Office, a comparison of several aspects of performance on recent Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts is conducted. The first aspect is a sector by sector comparison of refinancing profits, bearing in mind differential risk levels and in...

Making use of an original dataset we empirically investigate the determinants of state aid to the car industry in the European Union. The EU regulatory system on state aids and the long history of governments' grants to this industry make this an interesting case study. Our findings show that in...

At the time of writing, Irish unions are balloting their members about a new collective bargaining agreement for the public sector (Labour Relations Commission 2013). If a majority of union members in a majority of public sector unions within the Irish Congress of Trade Union (ICTU) endorses the...

Alors qu'en décembre 2012, le Trésor britannique publiait un rapport préconisant une refonte du modèle des PFI et définissant quelques pistes de restructuration pour les futurs partenariats public-privé, proposant une plus forte participation publique au financement des contrats (aux fonds...

Colonial investments impacted long-run political and economic development, but we have little systematic evidence about their origins and spatial distribution. Combining novel data sources, I show that colonial investments were very unequally distributed within 16 British and French African...

Several features of Tanzania's budget system find their roots in the arrangements inherited from the United Kingdom. These include a legal framework that emphasizes accountability' a cabinet of ministers with strong budget decision-making powers' a parliament with very limited budget powers' and...

In recent years, images of United States police wearing helmets and masks, carrying military-style weapons, and riding in armored or even mine-resistant armored vehicles have become increasingly prevalent with media depictions of responses to civil disorder and a purported nationwide trend of...