We use firm-level data for the Ethiopian manufacturing sector matched with commodity-level data on tariffs to examine the effect of trade liberalization on firm performance during the 1997-2005 period.  We find relatively large positive effects of tariff reductions on total factor productivity,...

The frequency and severity of medical liability litigation in the United Kingdom have increased since the middle of the twentieth century.  Recent estimates of settling outstanding negligence claims hover around at least 10 percent of the National Health Service's total annual budget.  This...

Inflation targeting central banks will be hampered without good models to assist them to be forward-looking.  Many current inflation models fail to forecast turning points adequately, because they miss key underlying long-run influences.  The world is on the cusp of a dramatic turning point in...

Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries English peasants faced large income shocks relative to mean incomes.  Innovations in property rights over land induced peasants to respond by trading small parcels of land as part of their risk coping strategy.  The same period witnessed a dramatic...

In this paper we investigate a 'global' production function for agriculture, using FAO data for 128 countries from 1961-2002.  Our review of the empirical literature in this field highlights that existing cross-country studies largely neglect variable time-series properties, parameter...

An old intuition suggests that poverty may perpetuate itself due to mild risk taking.  Risk-averse individuals remain in poverty while their more daring peers escape by means of high-return, high-risk activities.  As a growing literature increasingly highlights the role of insurance as a...

The impact of class size on student achievement remains a thorny question for educational decision makers.  Meta-analyses of empirical studies emphasise the absence of class-size efects but detractors have argued against such pessimistic conclusions because many of the underlying studies have...

We investigate the properties of the composite likelihood (CL) method for (T x NT) GARCH panels.  The defining feature of a GARCH panel with time series length T is that, while nuisance parameters are allowed to vary across NT series, other parameters of interest are assumed to be common.  CL...

I show that the fiscal position of the UK means it will be very hard for the next government to allow the undergraduate fee cap to increase beyond the rate of inflation.  The funding postion of the higher education sector can be improved by the government removing the interest rate subsidy it...