There has been much controversy over the merits of government regulation to protect growers and franchisees from hold-up at the hands of integrators and franchisors. Typically, economic argument have discouraged regulation, since direct evidence for hold-up is weak and bargaining should yield...

Joskow, P. and others propose that, with the opening of retail electricity markets, distribution utilities should be required to enable residential customers to buy at (averaged) wholesale spot market prices. They argue that retail electricity competitors should concentrate on value-added...

School-to-work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies (France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, UK and US). The emphasis is placed on differences across countries in both the current labour market position of young people and recent trends therein, along with the...

In many published studies involving discrete class, a large class of models has been utilised without apparent consideration of either the statistical or the behavioural relationships that exist between different model structures. In this paper the authors consider a number of alternative ways...

This paper considers estimation and inference in panel vector autoregressions (PVARs) with fixed effects when the time dimension of the panel is finite, and the cross-sectional dimension is large. A Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimator based on a transformed likelihood function is proposed and...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the efficiency of the UK debt management authorities' (DMA) behaviour from a cost minimisation perspective over the period January 1985 to March 1995. During this period, the maturity structure of the government's bond portfolio was subject to...

This paper argues that probability forecasts convey information on the uncertainties that surround macroeconomic forecasts in a manner which is straightforward and which is preferable to other alternatives, including the use of confidence intervals. Probability forecasts relating to UK output...

China's accelerated growth rate during the reform period 1978-97 has reinforced concerns about how to cope with continued expansion while also maintaining balanced regional growth. We examine the tendency to, and the speed of, provincial income convergence during the two periods: pre-reform...

In December 1990, the twelve regional electricity companies responsible for the distribution and supply of electricity in England and Wales were privatised. For the first few years following privatisation, real prices, profits and costs in the industry rose. Following two price control reviews,...

In this paper the environmental benefits of optimal tolls in eight English towns are estimated. Tolls are simulated using the SATURN model (Simulation and Assignment of Traffic to Urban Road Networks) with associated software to simulate the changes in traffic patterns resulting from cordon...