The increase in equity prices over the 1990s has to a large degree been attributed to permanently higher productivity growth that is derived from the ‘new economy’ and related research and development (R&D) expenditures. This paper establishes a rational expectations model of technology...

This discussion paper finds that since 2002 compulsory annuities no longer provide an actuarially fair pension. Hence annuities are a poor investment giving returns of less than 85% in present value terms. The paper uses a database of annuity rates collected from MoneyFacts monthly reports since...

In an endogenous growth model with two public services with differing productivities, this paper analytically characterises optimal fiscal policy for a decentralised economy, whereby the optimal values of the growth rate, tax rate and expenditure shares on the two public goods are linked...

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyse the revenue-expenditure models of public finance by considering the possibility of non-linear and asymmetric adjustment. A long-run relationship between general government expenditure and revenues is identified for Italy.Following system-wide...

This paper investigates the use by insiders of private information in their decision to exercise executive stock options. It is the first to categorise the exercise of an executive stock option by the proportion of stock sold at exercise. Consistent with existing research, exercises overall do...

The Article considers the specification of models used to test Purchasing Power Parity when applied to cross exchange rates. Specifically,conventional dynamic models used to test stationarity of the real exchange rate are likely to be misspecified, except when the parameters of each exchange...

This paper investigates the predictive ability of executives’ stock option exercises by categorising all exercises by the overall value of the transaction. This measure incorporates the cost to the executive of exercising the option, together with the income generated by the associated sale of...