Addressing the question of why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in England, Rick Szostak demonstrates the crucial role played by the development of a nation-wide network of land and water transport. He rejects revisionist arguments that downplay the significance of transportation to the...

Recent attention has focused on the UK's productivity gap in the retail sector. Figure 1 shows an estimate of labour productivity in retail across countries, using output per hour worked. The UK lies well behind the US, France and Germany. Reynolds at al (2005) contribute to this debate by...

The aim of this paper is to analyze and estimate salient characteristics of unemployment dynamics. Movements in unemployment are viewed as "chain reactions" of responses to labour market shocks, working their way through systems of interacting lagged adjustment processes. In the context of...