Our aim in this paper is to test the robustness of the relation between total factor productivity growth and inflation to the specifications of the model adopted for its identification. In doing so we estimate a generalized Box-Box cost function using data from the two-digit Standard Industrial...

The paper develops a two-good, small country, general equilibrium trade model with endogenous labour supply, where trade is restricted by a tariff or an import quota. Within this framework, it is shown that, contrary to Anam (1989), under an import quota domestic and world prices may vary in the...

This paper examines whether incumbent national governments of the member states of the European Union have manipulated the fiscal policy instruments at their disposal in order to create national political business cycles, opportunistic or partisan, in the 1970-98 period.

Exploring the nexus between banking sector reform and performance: Evidence from newly acceded EU countries

This paper investigates whether compliance with sectoral wages, or "underground" wages (i.e. equilibrium wages lower than the, officially minimum, sectoral ones), may emerge endogenously in industries with market power. Wage bargaining is centralized and it is conducted by large-scale efficient...

We present a unified theoretical framework capable to address the main real capital decision problems. Initially we specify a continous-time, terminal-horizon real capital model and use it to trace the properties of optimal utilisation, maintenance, and expansionary investment policies, as well...

The paper proposes a stochastic frontier model with random coefficients to separate technical inefficiency from technological differences across firms, and free the frontier model from the restrictive assumption that all firms must share exactly the same technological possibilities.

The unemployment rate in Greece rose from a mere 2.2% in the 1970s to 6.4% in the 1980s and 10% approximately in the mid-1990s. Currently, it gravitates around that level. In this paper we present the stylized facts of unemployment in Greece and examine the causes of its abrupt increse in the...

The paper examines wheter the tax changes observed in eleven countries of the European Union during the 1965-1996 period could be attibuted to intended pre-election period actions of incumbent governments seeking their reelection or to traditional stabilizing fiscal policies.

Measured against PPP, the drachma effective exchange rate was overvalued by a significant amount, implying that the devaluation on March 1998 was an adjustment of the exchange rate towards the long-run price differentials. The paper also analyses the links between fiscal policy, interest rates...