We present a model of the world wool market that merges two modelling traditions: the partialequilibrium commodity-specific approach and the computable general-equilibrium approach. The model captures the multistage nature of the wool production system, and the heterogeneous nature of raw wool,...

In view of the distinct and seminal contributions of Pareto and Pigou to the economics of welfare, Pigou’s enduring influence in the field of public finance and Pareto’s hostility to developments in that field of study, the lack of a comparative study of their contributions is unfortunate....

Accurate and timely measures of cross-country real incomes are still a rarity. As the share of expenditure devoted to food is readily available, we use of Engel’s law in reciprocal form to measure affluence. Analysis of real income data for the OECD countries indicates that this approach is...

The Big Mac Index, introduced by The Economist magazine 21 years ago, claims to provide the “true value” of a large number of currencies. This paper assesses the economic value of this index. We show that (i) the index suffers from a substantial bias; (ii) once the bias is allowed for, the...

Environmental regulation has become more and more important in policy making among the world economies. How has it affected productivity growth and hence economic growth? The answer to this question is either controversial or yet to be explored in many cases. The objective of this paper is to...