This paper reviews the roles of monetary and fiscal policies in macroeconmic stabilization. In particular, we take acount of interactions between the two policy instruments and ask whether the extent of macroeconomic and policy uncertainty has changed over time, especially with the advent of...

This paper documents the size and timing of the world inter-continental trade boom following the great voyages in the 1490s of Columbus, da Gama and their followers. Indeed, a trade boom followed over the subsequent three centuries. But what was its cause? The conventional wisdom in the world...

The analysis contained in the YHEC report indicates that the report did not consider adequately the role of competition in the market for health insurance. This is a major weakness and appears in part to be due to a late deletion of competition from the report’s final research brief by the...

This paper assesses the relative welfare costs of the various embargos and blockades of the years 1807-1814 in three countries: Britain, France and the United States. Relative price evidence indicates that these blockades and embargos did restrict trade, and that britain was less severely...

This paper presents a model of endogenous growth in the presence of habit formation in consumption. We argue that in addition to the traditional disutility effects of habitual consumption, the past history of consumption represents a past record of transactions as well. As a result, the...

The aim of this study is to identify the economic and socio-economic factors influencing Irish households’ expenditure on Food-Away-From-Home (FAFH). The main objective is to estimate a tobit model of the factors affecting Irish household expenditure on quick-service meals, a particularly...

This paper compares standard stochastic frontier models for panel data with a number of recently developed models designed to remove unobserved heterogeneity from the inefficiency component. Results are used to construct a generalised Malmquist total factor productivity (TFP) index. We conclude...

This paper presents a model of endogenous growth in the presence of habit formation in consumption. We argue that in addition to the traditional disutility effects of habitual consumption, the past history of consumption represents a past record of transactions as well. As a result, the...

This Paper summarizes the theory of Maximum Likelihood Estimation of regressions with alpha-stable residuals. Day of week effects in returns on equity indices, adjusted for dividends (total returns) are estimated and tested using this and traditional OLS methodology. I find that the alpha-stable...