The literature on informational cascades and herding theory has for a decade focused on the externality and suboptimal outcomes generated from decision-making when spaces are coarser than private information spaces. Much of the output has therefore been positive, not normative. This paper...

In the context of liberalisation of electricity markets world wide, the need for agreed protocols for electricity trades between systems with different charges poses a special challenge. System operators need to know how much a given trade uses the network, in order to allocate an appropriate...

The copula function is considered within the context of financial multivariate data sets that are not normally distributed. The Bernstein polynomial approximation to copulae is given and motivated by its desirable properties. The multivariate convergence properties are analysed. The concept of...

This paper presents substantial new evidence on the competitive process that links together industrial economic and international economics. Our time-series data base concerns manufactured product prices and their domestic and international determinants. We identity cointegrating relationships,...

A new class of model-based filters for extracting trends and cycles in economic time series is presented. These low pass and band pass filters are derived in a mutually consistent manner as the joint solution to a signal extraction problem in an unobserved components model. The resulting trends...

Due to a shortage of data and increased international mergers, national energy regulators are looking to international benchmarking analyses for help in setting price controls within incentive regulation. We present an international benchmarking study of 63 regional electricity distribution...

The analysis presented in this paper considers the impact on poverty rates of the Labour government’s tax and benefit policy changes in combination with the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW). It examines the contribution of the NMW to direct poverty reduction and to “making...

Demsetz (1968) advocated competitive bidding as a replacement for natural monopoly regulation. Williamson (1976) and Goldberg (1976) argued that these problems of natural monopoly regulation are inherent in long-term investment under uncertainty, and that both long- and short-term franchising...

Co-movements and correlations in the major macroeconomic aggregates has been the focus of much recent literature in business cycle research. In this paper we provide another dimension to business cycle analysis. We examine the evolution of the cross sectional distribution of the growth rates of...

Bayesian statistical methods are naturally oriented towards pooling in a rigorous way information from separate sources. It has been suggested that both historical and implied volatilities convey information about future volatility. However, typically in the literature implied and return...