A disagreement has emerged over whether advanced countries such as Britain engaged in financial repression following the Second World War. A review of the historical and archival evidence identifies eleven pieces of British legislation and sixteen directives that supported financial repression...

We estimate the effects of government consumption and investment shocks during prolonged episodes of low interest rates, which we consider as proxy for the effective lower bound. Using a panel VAR model for 17 advanced countries, in which we include real government spending, output, inflation,...

In the paper we show that, most of the time, smooth reduction in the debt ratio is optimal for tax-smoothing purposes when fiscal risks are asymmetric, with large debt-augmenting shocks more likely than commensurate debt reducing shocks. Asymmetric risks are a feature of 200 years of data for...

This paper examines UK sovereign debt sustainability following the Second World War. Even though the UK in 1946 recorded the highest public debt-to-GDP ratio of the 20th century, the sovereign credit literature does not show a UK sovereign default following the Second World War. New archival...

In 1973 the British academic Ronald Dore published what was to become one of the most influential books ever written in the fields of industrial sociology and Japanese studies. British Factory-Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations (Dore, 1973) was a...

A recent literature explores the nature and causes of the collapse in international trade during 2008 and 2009. The decline was particularly great for automobiles and industrial supplies; it occurred largely along the intensive margin; quantities fell by more than prices; and prices fell less...