This paper constructs a simulation model of the EC footwear market with which to consider the effects of EC trade policies. It examines the Southern enlargement of the EC, the quotas imposed on Korean and Taiwanese sales - initially in France and Italy and subsequently, in line with the `1992'...

Incorporating space in economic models has two important consequences. First, the hypothesis of perfect competition becomes untenable, and second, the distinction between private and public goods becomes blurred. We review arguments that lead to these conclusions and summarize recent work...

We investigate how the ability of the government to depart from budget balance and issue debt expands the set of equilibria that can be supported using lump-sum tax-transfer instruments. We show how this depends on the restrictions that exist on the capacity to tax and make transfer payments,...

We analyse the importance of ERM membership for macroeconomic performance by comparing the behaviour of real output growth and inflation of members and non-members of the ERM. Taking the traditional aggregate supply and demand model as the basis for the analysis, we propose and implement an...

The desire to avoid speculative runs on currencies appears to be one of the main reasons leading policy-makers to impose currency bands, but the standard analysis of target zones rules out any speculative inefficiencies by assumption. As an alternative we first present simple models of excess...

A democratic society in which the distribution of wealth is unequal elects political parties which tend to represent the interests of the poor. The clientele of such governments favour unanticipated inflation taxes to erode the real value of debt service and redistribute income from the rich to...

This paper considers the issue of whether a small developing economy such as Hong Kong faces a perfectly elastic demand for its exports of manufactured goods. We construct a simultaneous demand and supply system which is estimated using Full Information Maximum Likelihood methods, and which...

This paper introduces a new measure, the Trade Restrictiveness Index, which measures the restrictiveness of a system of trade protection. The index is a general equilibrium application of the distance function and answers the question: `What uniform set of trade restrictions is equivalent (in...

Environmental and tax policies and the optimal provision of clean and dirty public goods are analysed within the context of a second-best framework of optimal taxation. Households consume both clean and dirty commodities. Degradation of the natural environment occurs due to the consumption of...