This paper discusses some of the methodological implications of an ‘open-systems’ reality. It presents a possible ontology of open systems which draws on various literatures including, but not limited to, Critical Realism. The paper then extrapolates from the ontology to a set of...

Given that many universities spend large sums of money supplying sports facilities for student use, comparatively little is known about the factors that influence the quantity of student sporting participation. This paper presents evidence which suggests that the quantity of student sports...

In little more than twenty years, it has become widely accepted that the optimal design of monetary policy should include provision for a central bank that is independent of government influence. This is a remarkably short period of time for any idea in economics to become so widely-accepted....

Distribution free statistics are employed to investigate biennial income per capita convergence across 52 Spanish provinces over the period 1955-1997. Based upon ideas of concordance and discordance that capture convergence and divergence properties, the paper presents results that suggest...

We present a new model to test the convergence hypothesis based on the ideas of concordance and then employ the model to test empirically for GDP per capita convergence across 97 countries. Our results suggest the presence of switching, while there is more ‘strong divergence’ than ‘strong...

In the last fifteen years or so the conduct of monetary policy in developed economies has converged in a number of ways which include an increasing emphasis on ‘openness’ and ‘transparency’ in policy-making. There is a widespread belief that transparency in the conduct of UK monetary...

This paper attempts to combine elements of the approaches of two influential economists, Sheila Dow and Deirdre McCloskey and expands on previous work (2005) on Dow’s concept of dualism. A concept of rhetorical dualism is developed: dualism (defined variously) engaged in for a rhetorical...

New members of academic teaching staff will encounter any number of issues and problems in their first year. This paper discusses the issues encountered in the first year of a lecturing post and the efforts put into writing and compiling a new, core level 3 module. The paper explores experiences...