Block factor methods offer an attractive approach to forecasting with many predictors. These extract the information in these predictors into factors reflecting different blocks of variables (e.g. a price block, a housing block, a financial block, etc.). However, a forecasting model which simply...

Internationally, a certain market failure has become apparent in terms of the effective engagement of small business owner-managers in business support programs, and in the wider concept of life long learning. There exists a cultural gap between support agencies and the small business sector's...

For the last two decades, the primary instruments for UK regional policy have been discretionary subsidies. Such aid is targeted at "additional" projects - projects that would not have been implemented without the subsidy - and the subsidy should be the minimum necessary for the project to...

In this paper we consider the nature of possible equilibria in a regional economic system characterised by an absence of net migration flows but the presence of gross flows. We argue that the presence of gross flows in a stationary equilibrium is most easily generated through the introduction of...

This paper is concerned with the deflator(s) used to obtain series measured in real terms in 'the' consumption function. Since the precise deflator(s) to be used in any particular specification is not uniquely determined by theoretical considerations alone we consider ways of approaching the...

This paper investigates the performance of a number of recently proposed 'consumption functions' using annual Scottish and UK data for the period 1971 to 1985. Whilst the exercise is 'atheoretical' in the sense that no attempt is made to tie estimated models to specific theories, the influences...

The demand for industrial development certificates and the effect of regional policy, Reg. Studies 23,301-314. Attempts to cstimate the effects of UK regional policy are frequently restricted by lack of data. However, this paper uses the statistics resulting from the policy of Industrial...

Professor Thirlwall has argued that the growth rate of a country is constrained by the requirement that the external current account must broadly balance. He maintains that a country's growth can be analysed using a dynamic Harrod trade multiplier, and that a country's long-run growth rate (y)...

Without convergence of macroeconomic parameters representative of the nature of adjustment mechanisms, even a common shock to members of a monetary union can lead to different macroeconomic consequences across the union and, eventually, to the need for more or less co-ordinated specific...

Introduction: In this paper we consider the estimation of earnings equations for individuals who are either self employed or are in paid employment, and who are assumed to have freely chosen their employment status. The key aspect of the available data is that we do not observe an individual's...