This paper considers the problems of the social security system in relation to pensions in Poland. It concludes that the system that prevailed until recently had the capacity to cause the Social Insurance Fund to be permanently in deficit because of structural issues deriving from the conditions...

Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other...

The 1961-66 intercensal period saw the continuation of the post-war decline in both the absolute size of the Irish farm labour force and its share in total employment. In this paper attention is focussed on the different patterns of adjustment in the numbers of farmers, farmers' relatives...

The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF), and the guidance element of the European Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) associated with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) constitute the Structural Funds of the European Community. Each of these Funds was...

In my contribution to this Symposium I wish to explore two main themes. The first deals with the contribution of education to economic growth at the macro level. In this part I shall discuss the evidence of the importance of education – or human capital formation – as a determinant of the...

An important trend in macroeconomic research in recent years involves the increased use of optimization-based models with nominal rigidities (such as sticky prices) to analyse how monetary policy affects the economy and how optimal policy should be designed. This paper presents a re-formulated...