This paper suggests a new approach to analyze the causes of franchise extension. Based on a new dataset, it provides a detailed econometric study of the Great Reform Act of 1832 in the United Kingdom. The econometric analysis yields four main results. First, modernization theory only receives...

The GARCH-t model is widely used to predict volatilty. However, modeling the conditional variance as a linear combination of past squared observations may not be the best approach if the standardized observations are non-Gaussian. A simple modi.cation lets the conditional variance, or its...

For most of the twentieth century, collective bargaining provided the terms on which labour was commonly employed in Britain. However, the quarter century since 1980 has seen the collapse of collectivism as the main way of regulating employment. Our argument is that the tacit settlement between...

State-owned electricity companies typically set prices that are too low to finance new investment when needed, and which create additional problems where private investment is sought. The paper asks to what extent this can be attributed to historic cost accounting, and finds that provided the...

We evaluate the impact of real business cycle shocks on corruption and economic policy in a model of entry regulation in a representative democracy. We .nd that corruption is procyclical and regulation policy is counter-cyclical. Corrupt politicians engage in excessive stabilization of aggregate...

In this paper, we develop an agent-based model of a market game in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the UK government’s 2008-2010 policy on promoting smart metering. We also consider possible supplementary strategies. With the model, we test the effectiveness of four possible strategy...

This paper presents a social cost benefit analysis of ownership unbundling (as compared to legal und functional unbundling) of the electricity transmission system operators in Germany. The study relies on the Residual Supply Index for its competitive concept. The analysis models some 15 effects,...

In recent years, a number of empirical studies and energy regulators have applied benchmarking techniques to measure the efficiency and performance of network utilities. An important issue has been the extent to which such results are influenced by contextual factors. Among these, weather...

This study uses the observed differences between public system failures and private investment as a natural experiment to reveal the effect of financing constraints on firms' ability to substitute specifically for deficient public services and more generally to acquired complementary capital....

Civil conflict has far-reaching effects on underdeveloped economies. Whilst military expenditure may be diverted into projects that encourage human capital accumulation and the construction of essential infrastructure, conflict destroys institutions and infrastructure generating financial...