This paper compares contingent values for a hypothetical landscape protection programme with respondents’ voting behaviour in an actual referendum. We use the example of a proposed increase of expenditures for landscape protection in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland. In particular we examine...

Central bank behavior is often summarized by simple rules for operat-ing targets, i.e., for a short-run nominal interest rate or for a money growth rate. In this paper we examine conditions under which these rules lead to identical fundamental solutions of a conventional business cycle model....

This research paper was commissioned and funded by the Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC). It is being disseminated through the TUC’s unionlearn High Road project. The project is part of a community programme called Equal – a European Social Fund initiative that tests and promotes new...

While most Central European countries, realising the inflationary potential of money creation, had by the mid-1990s switched to market instruments based monetary policy, Belarus continued to use money emission, so gaining seigniorage and inflation tax. The productivity of the inflation tax can...

1. "Making Welfare Work: the Politics of Reform", by Frank Field 2. "EU Enlargement and the Future of the Welfare State", by Hans-Werner Sinn and 3. "Globalization and the Future of Social Protection", by Vito Tanzi.

A widely held notion is that freely floating exchange rates are excessively volatile when moving from fixed to floating exchange rates. We re-examine the data and conclude that the disparity between the fundamentals and exchange rate volatility is more apparent than real, especially when the...

This paper applies recently developed time series and heterogeneous panel nonlinear unit root tests to 24 OECD and 33 non-OECD countries’ consumption-income ratios over the period 1951–2003. This extends evidence provided in the recent literature to consider nonlinear adjustment in time...

EMU monetary policy targets aggregate Euro Area inflation. Concerns are growing that a focus on aggregate inflation may cause national inflation rates to diverge. While different explanations for diverging aggregate Euro Area inflation have been brought forward, the very impact of aggregation on...