Policies to promote competition are high on the political agenda worldwide. But in a constantly changing marketplace, the effects of more intense competition on firm conduct, market structure, and industry performance are often hard to distinguish. This study combines game-theoretic models with...

The FSA announced in January 2000 that, as part of the new regulatory approach, it would carry out a number of pilot theme projects on major issues that cut across different industry sectors and have wide-ranging implications for consumers. This paper forms part of one such project. It considers...

Investment costs of pension funds are crucial for their returns. Consolidation in the pension fund market proceeds continuously, often with cost savings as the main argument. Unused economies of scale in the pension fund investment costs, however, have declined over the years to values close to...

We examine the determinants of low income transitions using first-order Markov models that control for initial conditions effects (those found to be poor in the base year may be a non-random sample) and for attrition (panel retention may also be non-random). Our econometric model is a form of...

We examine the determinants of low income transitions using first-order Markov models that control for initial conditions effects (those found to be poor in the base year may be a nonrandom sample) and for attrition (panel retention may also be non-random). Our econometric model is a form of...

This paper analyzes the nature of democratic development in a nation on the process of introducing nuclear power over the period 1960 - 2017 for an unbalanced panel of 171 countries. Given the involved political process of introducing nuclear power and its political importance, as well as the...

We discuss changes in the demand for paid sex accompanying the criminalization of prostitution in the United Kingdom, which moved from a relatively permissive regime under the Wolfenden Report of 1960, to a much harder line of aiming to crack down on prostitution with the Prostitution (Public...

In this paper we analyze a discrete choice model for partially ordered alternatives. The alternatives are differentiated along two dimensions, the first an unordered "horizontal" dimension, and the second an ordered "vertical" dimension. The model can be used in circumstances in which...

The paper examines the influence of factor price risk on factor-use efficiency through the adoption of conservation technology. The effect of a mean-preserving increase in factor price risk on optimal input-use efficiency is shown to be conditional on the own-price elasticity of factor use...

This paper examines both pay relativities and mechanisms for pay determination within the UK academic labour market drawing upon a particularly detailed data set of 635 academics from five traditional Scottish Universities. In the existing literature, the fact that in many occupations, employees...