This paper describes and assesses a proposal put forward by the Dutch Department of Economic Affairs in July 1996 for structural reform of the electricity industry. First, the reasons for the reform are described. Second, the reform proposal itself is described. Its main features are the...

Economic data are regularly revised, leading to a number of alternative vintages being available fo a given data series over a particular time period. This paper confronts this problem, building on the model validity and data accuracy tests of Hendry (1994) to develop the concept of model and...

The authors examine the growth of income inequality in Hungary in the early transition period. They use household budget survey data from four years between 1987 and 1993 to examine the factors associated with the levels and changes in inequality. They find that public policy inhibited the...

This paper uses an asymmetric multivariate model to investigate asymmetries in employment and pricing behaviour by firms. This generalises the approach of Granger and Lee (1989) and also exploits the cross-equation restrictions on the equations for prices and employment implied by a restricted...

Using Treasury forecasts of the growth in real total consumers' expenditure a number of issues in macroeconomic forecasting are addressed. By restricting attention to a single variable, a more detailed examination is provided than is otherwise possible, thus complementing more general studies....

The authors identify and investigate the basic `hold-up' problem which arises whenever each party to a contingent contract has to pay some ex ante cost for the contract to become feasible. They then proceed to show that, under plausible circumstances, a contractual solution' to this hold-up...

A prototype multi-country static microsimulation model has been built to simulate tax and social benefits in a number of European countries, as part of a preparatory study to examine the possibility of building a comprehensive EU wide integrated microsimulation model. The countries considered in...

The supply function model of the English electricity spot market is extended to include equilibrium in a contract market in the presence of entry threats, both of which have dramatic effects on the determination of equilibrium. The paper presents an analytically tractable model which can be...

There is now a plethora of non-linear time-series models of output over the business cycle, and considerable empirical evidence that there are key non-linear, poorly understood mechanisms at work. Inventories, though a small part of the total flow of national income, play a disproportionately...

This paper studies the pattern of capital mobility with a two-country dynastic model in which each country is exogenously characterised by its degree of altruism towards children. The steady-state welfare implications of restricted as well as unrestricted capital mobility are established. It is...