Recent empirical research into the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy shocks has generated a 'puzzle'. Both Keynesian and Real Business Cycle models predict that a fiscal expansion will lead to a real exchange rate appreciation. However, in almost all the countries that have been studied,...

Using a survey and an experiment, we identify the personal characteristics associated with the difference between an individual's giving to charity and her vote in a referendum on charitable giving. Under certain circumstances, high levels of self-reported trust and happiness, and participation...

We describe a new process for creating points systems for prioritising patients for elective health services. Beginning in 2004, the authors were closely involved in a project to develop the process, initially for coronary artery bypass graft surgery and then successively for other elective...

The decision to cooperate within R&D joint ventures is often based on expert advice. Such advice typically originates in a due diligence process, which assesses the R&D joint venture's profitability, for example, by appraising the achievability of synergies. We show that if the experts who...

This paper econometrically examines the impact of aid on the well-being of population sub-groups within 48 developing countries. This is a radical departure from previous empirical research of aid effectiveness at the country level, which has looked mainly at the relationship between aid and...

International aid has an ambiguous effect on the macro-economy of the recipient country. To the extent that aid raises consumer expenditure, there will be some real exchange rate appreciation and a shift of resources away from traded goods production and into non-traded goods production....

The standard innovation race specification assumes a memoryless exponential distribution for the time to success of an R&D project. This specification implies that a project succeeds, eventually, with probability one. We introduce a positive probability that an R&D project fails. With this...

We examine the relationship between inflation and unemployment in the long run, using quarterly US data from 1952 to 2010. Using a band-pass filter approach, we find strong evidence that a positive relationship exists, where inflation leads unemployment by some 3 to 3 1/2 years, in cycles that...

We build a principal-agent-client model of corruption, allowing for heterogeneity in the value of public projects relative to the cost of monitoring their execution and for uncertainty of corruptors regarding the value of a project conducted. We derive the conditions under which officials with...

We report new experimental evidence of the household response to weekday differentials in peak and off-peak electricity prices. The data come from Auckland, New Zealand, where peak residential electricity consumption occurs in winter for heating. Peak/off-peak price differentials ranged over...