Barely a day goes by without some expert telling us how the continental European economies are about to disintegrate unless their labour markets become more flexible. Basically, we are told, Europe has the wrong sort of labour market institutions for the modern global economy. These outdated...

This paper considers the effect of economic integration on the industrial structure and trade patterns of two countries which differ only in size. In a general equilibrium model of intra-industry trade, each country has two imperfectly competitive industries which can differ in three respects:...

We investigate the empirical relationship between managerial ownership of shares and corporate performance, using a panel dataset of 389 UK manufacturing companies. The two measures of performance investigated are: market valuation, as expressed by Tobin's Q, and total factor productivity...

This paper shows that search in the labor market has important effects on accumulation decisions. In a labor market characterized by search, employment contracts are naturally incomplete and this creates a wedge between the rates of return and marginal products of both human and physical...

This paper analyses a group of 278 "founders" of business active in the United Kingdom during the twentieth century, biographies of whom are included in the Dictionary of Business Biography and Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography. All of the businessmen in this group were highly successful...

We review the role of R&D in endogenous growth theory, and describe extant empirical research macro and micro bearing on R&D as an engine of growth. Taking R&D to be key while recognizing the significance of economic incentives emphasizes knowledge as an economic object and, more generally, the...

We analyse the relations between firm's debt and bargained wage level and its implications for the optimal choice of the capital structure. Similarly to Hart and Moore (1991), we place the analysis of the feasible debt contracts in a strategic bargaining setting, in which both the management and...

This paper develops and characterises an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff equivalent which maintains the same volume of trade as a given set of tariffs, quotas, and domestic taxes and subsidies. We relate this volume-equivalent index to the Trade...

This paper argues that in a communist economy, especially in its market socialism version, wages are set in a similar way as in a market economy. Even if the planning centre is involved in the wage setting process, it cannot set wages arbitrarily, but has to simulate market mechanisms in order...

This lecture provides a general framework for analysing unemployment. For inflation to be stable, there must be sufficient unemployment to prevent 'target real wages' exceeding 'feasible real wages'. Target real wages depend on bargaining systems, benefit systems, labour market policies and...