The author of this note takes it as self evident that prosperity and the provision of "things" (buildings, roads, furniture, furnishings, clothes, machines and equipment of all sorts) go together. The way people generally speak and act is in line with this view. If this is so, domestic...

Is industrial production relatively in decline? No, it is not. This note displays the evidence that for the last 40 years, in the 6 largest economies of the world, industrial production has kept pace with total output.

It has been said, fairly plausibly, that "Bayesian inference is one of the most widely known eponyms in all of science". But unlike common scientific eponyms, it is by no means clear exactly what "Bayesian" means, and what it has to do with Bayes. "Bayesian", and the dozen or so words and...

The general view of the media, bankers, business and politicians, not noticeably contradicted by academics, is that one of the main functions, or the main function, of the central bank is to analyse the progress of the economy, and then to steer it with skilful judgement towards health and...

Following on from the note entitled <93>The Function of the Central Bank<94>, this note brings the data up to date. It will be re-issued at intervals. It will monitor the tendency of short-term interest rates, give the author's judgement on the likely movement of the central bank rate in the UK, US and...</94></93>

There is very little evidence on the effects of the minimum wage on prices in the international literature and none whatsoever for developing countries. This paper analyzes the effects of the minimum wage on prices using monthly Brazilian household and price data from 1982 to 2000 aggregated at...

A key area of focus in the economic reform process and the design of a favorable business environment is labor market legislation. Montenegro has obviously failed in this area. After nearly 13 years since the beginning of the transition process, or five years since the beginning of Economic...

In many countries the shadow employment has a very high priority among policymakers. A new time series for this component of the labour market has been recently released by the Italian institute of statistics. Taken together they give the motivation and the occasion for a fresh analysis of the...

Using an econometric procedure that corrects for both self-selection of individuals into their preferred compensation scheme and wage endogeneity, this study investigates whether significant differences exist in the job satisfaction of individuals receiving performance- related pay (PRP)...

Instrumental variables (IV) estimates of the effect of fertility on female labor supply have only been able to identify the causal effect of second and higher-parity children. This study uses exogenous variation in fertility caused by the Chinese lunar calendar to identify the effect of the...