Purpose – Education is highly regarded as having a central influence on individuals' understanding and backing of democracy, but whether this occurs in young and small democratic states remain unknown. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether schooling and education have a positive...

In the cross-country and time series studies on the determinants of the growth rate, capital stock is often proxied with the investment ratio due to lack of reliable data. While investment ratio may give good results with OLS, their robustness is doubtful. In addition there are other problems:...

Studies on bank profitability vis-à-vis market power and efficiency span a number of years, many countries, regions and methods. Yet, the experiences of the Pacific's small states -- where foreign banks are widespread and bank profits relatively high -- remain unknown, leaving policy-makers...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper uses household survey data to model the correlates of household consumption and poverty in Fiji. A multivariate empirical analysis is conducted to ascertain those household and community characteristics that correlate with household welfare and poverty. In...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the two issues of regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the new theory of international trade and draw conclusions for Pacific Island countries (PICs). The authors provide a deeper conceptual treatment of the consequences of RTAs and analyse the...

Purpose – Understanding the relationship between government revenue and government expenditure is important from a policy point of view, especially for a country like Fiji, which is suffering from persistent budget deficits. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between...