This study attempts to give the reader an understanding of social stratification in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Using the principal–agent theoretical framework for examining both the socio-economic...

This paper examines the relation between ambition, as a form of dynamic human capital, and the escalator role of high-order metropolitan regions, as originally identified by A. J. Fielding. It argues that occupational progression in such places particularly depends on concentrations both of...

Theory suggests that government should as far as possible smooth taxes and its recurrent consumption spending, which means that government debt should act as a shock absorber, and any planned adjustments in debt should be gradual. This suggests that operational targets for governments (e.g. for...

We analyse the role of financial sector workers in the huge rise of the share of earnings going to those at the very top of the pay distribution in the UK. Rising bankers' bonuses accounted for two-thirds of the increase in the share of the top 1% after 1999. Surprisingly, bankers' share of...

In this paper, we obtain the density function of the single barrier one-sided Parisian stopping time. The problem reduces to that of solving a Volterra integral equation of the first kind, where a recursive solution is consequently obtained. The advantage of this new method as compared to that...

The reconstruction of Kuwait, following its occupation by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990, constitutes a significant though rarely studied episode of post-war recovery. On the eve of liberation in 1991, Kuwait faced a number of challenges including physical rehabilitation and reconstruction,...

We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls on government behavior. Oil-rich municipalities experience increases in revenues and report corresponding increases in spending on public goods and services. However, survey data and...

The latest CEP Election Analysis gives an overview of the research evidence on financial regulation, one of the key battlegrounds of the 2010 General Election.

We test the hypothesis that the government bond markets in the Eurozone are more fragile and more susceptible to self-fulfilling liquidity crises than in stand-alone countries. We find evidence that a significant part of the surge in the spreads of the peripheral Eurozone countries during...