We introduce the concept of cooperative substitutes and complements, and use it to throw light on the conditions for a research joint venture to choose equal levels of R&D by all member firms. We show that the second-order conditions for a symmetric optimum take a particularly simple form,...

Grouping models are widely used in economics but are subject to finite sample bias. I show that the standard errors-in-variables estimator (EVE) is exactly equivalent to the Jackknife Instrumental Variables Estimator (JIVE), and use this relationship to develop an estimator which, unlike EVE, is...

The standard public finance analysis of the welfare cost of labour income taxation is based on the estimation of labour supply functions that treat unemployed individuals as non-participants. This paper applies econometric models of multinomial discrete choice to the labour market, explicitly...

We calculate the NAIRU for the U.S. in a framework where inflation and the unemployment rate can respond to each other. The NAIRU is defined as the component of the actual unemployment rate that is uncorrelated with inflation in the long run. Using a structural VAR approach, the NAIRU and core...

This paper analysis the intertemporal public finance decision under political instability. The government’s choice between inflationary finance and foreign debt is constrained by an interest rate, which is affected both by market conditions and debt conditionality. The main result is that...

The empirical finding that exporting firms are more productive on average than non-exporters has provoked a large theoretical literature based on models such as Melitz (2003), where more productive firms are more likely to overcome costs associated with trade. This paper provides a systematic...

The distributional characteristic is a measure which can be used in many applications in social cost-benefit analysis. In the application here, the distributional characteristics of a number of broad aggregates of goods are calculated for Ireland. These calculations can aid in assessing the...

We investigate the response of US trucking firms to the removal of barriers to crossborder trucking under NAFTA. This was done via a program implemented in 2007, cancelled in 2009, and reinstated in 2011. We find that, unsurprisingly, the program’s start resulted in lower stock returns,...

Many authors have proposed incorporating measures of well-being into evaluations of public policy. Yet few evaluations use experimental design or examine multiple aspects of well-being, thus the causal impact of public policies on well-being is largely unknown. In this paper we examine the...

The paper presents results from two natural experiments on the impact of revenue sharing and salary caps on competitive balance in sports leagues arising from the introduction of professionalism in Rugby Union in 1995. The first involves the English Premiership, which traditionally applied a...