This paper reflects on the influence of Vilfredo Pareto’s letters to two of his ex-students, Benvenuto Griziotti and Guido Sensini, on Ricardian equivalence and fiscal theory. The letters are of historical interest because of their emphasis on the need for fiscal studies to consider “social...

The oldest university still in operation is approximately 1,750 years old (wordiQ.com, 2004). When compared to firms, universities have stood the test of time, while firms seem to lack longevity. The oldest listed firm still operating is around 225 years old (O’Hara and Mandel, 2004), a...

This paper explores how a country can maximise its utility from the Olympic games when uncertainty exists in medal production. A theoretical model demonstrates how the value of medals, uncertainty in producing medals, a decision maker's attitutes towards risks and costs of producing medals...

Open source software is released under an open source license giving individuals the right to use, modify, and redistribute freely the programs. This paper proposes a model of differentiated duopoly in which firms invest in the development of proprietary or open source software. The main...

This paper introduces a simulation procedure in the context of a demand system for vice -- marijuana, tobacco and alcohol -- to formally account for the inherent uncertainty in marijuanarelated data and parameters. This entails using existing econometric estimates pertaining to the consumption...

This paper examines the idea of making international income comparisons on the basis of food consumption patterns. We commence by giving a brief review on the different ways of measuring real income and highlight some of the problems. Next, we embark on an international journey by analyzing food...

Fiscal decentralisation has attracted attention from government, academic studies, and international institutions with the aims of enhancing economic growth in recent years. One of the difficult issues is to measure satisfactorily the degree of fiscal decentralisation across countries. This...

Sustained economic growth in China has triggered a surge of energy imports, especially oil imports. This paper investigates the determinants of China’s energy import demand by using cointegraiton and VECM techniques. The findings suggest that, in the long run, growth of industrial production...