Recent research on the equity risk premium has questioned the ability of historical estimates of the risk premium to provide reliable estimates of the expected risk premium. We calculate the equity risk premium for a number of countries over longer horizons than has been attempted to date. We...

We use an incomplete-contract approach to compare contracting out by a public sector agency with the delegation of contracting out to a public-private partnership(PPP) that is a joint venture between private and sector agents. The PPP maximizes a linear combination of profit and social benefit....

This paper analyses a model of non-linear exchange rate adjustment that extends the literature by allowing asymmetric responses to over- and under-valuations. Applying the model to Greece and Turkey, we find that adjustment is asymmetric and that exchange rates depend on the sign as well as the...

This article seeks to provide a categorisation of events of systemic financial instability that have been experienced in recent decades, seeking to draw out common elements from these seemingly-diverse events. We maintain that despite the apparent diversity of events of financial instability, a...

We seek to assess the effect of changes in commercial property prices on bank behaviour and performance in a range of industrialised economies, extending the existing micro literature on bank performance. The results suggest that, consistent with macro-level studies, commercial property prices...

This paper analyses optimal monetary policy using a structural model of the economy that allows for the effect of changes in asset prices on aggregate demand. The important feature is that monetary policy is assumed to affect output and inflation not only directly via firms’ level of...

This paper examines the impact of a change of focus by a firm, as signified by stock market reclassification. It distinguishes between sector reclassifications that are motivated by information specific to a particular firm, and those that result from sector redefinitions and reorganisations....

Considerable attention has been directed in the recent finance and economics literature to issues concerning the effects on company failure risk of changes in the macroeconomic environment. This paper examines the accounting ratio-based and macroeconomic determinants of insolvency exit of UK...

Pension reform is one of the biggest challenges facing national governments. How to reform the old pay-as-you-go (PAYG) systems is still under hot debate; one of the most influential funded pension schemes is designed by the World Bank. In the second chapter of this paper, we first review the...

Literacy rates continue to be strikingly low among women and low caste population compared to the general population not only in any Indian state, but more so in the worst performing ones. The present paper offers an explanation of this disparate development in terms of the hypothesis of elite...