We address the problem of how to investigate whether economics, or politics, or both, matter in the explanation of public policy. The problem is first posed in a particular context by uncovering a political business cycle (using Canadian data for 130 years) and by taking up the challenge to make...

We address the problem of how to investigate whether economics, or politics, or both, matter in the explanation of public policy. We first pose the problem in a particular context by uncovering a political business cycle (using Canadian data covering 130 years), and by taking up the challenge to...

Three significant characteristics of resource consumption are introduced into the decision-making process: time costs of consumption; a costly access activity; and, mutual exclusivity of (some)consumption activities. It is seen that when these factors are ignored approaches based upon estimation...

We argue that the traditional question ‘fixed vs. flexible exchange rates?’ is not well-defined, because ‘flexible exchange rates’ does not explicitly specify any particular monetary policy. In traditional analyses, ‘flexible exchange rates’ was interpreted as implying a fixed money...

Antitrust enforcement in a number of countries allows an efficiencies defence for horizontal mergers, joint ventures, specialization agreements and other horizontal arrangements. These defences may be statutory, jurisprudential or administrative. They involve, in essence, a balancing of real per...

This paper examines the impact of a collapsing exchange rate regime on output in an open economy in which shocks to capital flows and exports predominate. A sticky-price rational expec-tations model is used to compare the variability of output under the collapsing regime to that under...