This paper explores the similarity of the underlying economic problems that lead to the establishment of (a) independent central banks to operate national monetary policies and (b) independent regulatory agencies for telecommunications and other utility service industries. We show that, in both...

We develop a general mandate framework for delegating monetary policy to an instrument-independent, but goal-dependent central bank. The goal of the mandate consists of: (i) a simple quadratic a loss function that penalizes deviations from target macroeconomic variables; (ii) a form of a...

This paper develops a Harris-Todaro (HT) type model of East-West migration in which labor market imperfections prevent market clearing in both blocs. The model encompasses two extremes of perfectly flexible wages with full employment on the one hand and the HT scenario, where the real wage in...

Multinational arms export control has been the subject of discussion in a variety of fora, from the United Nations through to the Wassenaar group of arms producers. It is widely recognised that free trade in arms can have negative externalities on national security and there are benefits from...

This paper introduces unemployment hysteresis into a tractable New Keynesian three equation model using an insider-outsider labour market. We demonstrate that strict inflation targeting can lead to a unit root in the unemployment rate, but dual mandate monetary policy can stabilise the economy...