Conventional economic analysis of public policy has been traditionally conducted in the conceptual context of the theory of market failure. The resultant analytical framework enabled analysts to assess the economic efficiency of market outcomes, and prescribe appropriate government intervention...

Up to 1993, EC member states could ask permission from the Commission of the EC to apply quantitative restrictions at their national borders, on the basis of art. 115 of the Treaty establishing the EC. The completion of the internal market in the EC abolished the internal borders, as a result of...

Coupon scheme helped to privatize a major part of national assets in the Czech and Slovak republics. Investment privatization funds obtained significant part of coupon investment points and became major shareholders in these republics. This lobby has been dominated both by banks and managers of...

One of the ‘costs’ of military imports and military expenditures by developing countries occurs to the extent that these are financed by incurring foreign debt. This article estimates that, for 61 severely and moderately indebted developing countries, military imports during the...

This article traces the evolution and demise of the postwar model of job quality. This model evolved in the context of theories of sheltered employment. It tied assumptions about job quality to the idea that the economy was separable into a stable and unstable segment. Jobs were typically...

Political business cycle theories in modelling the interaction between the polity and the economic system have continually failed to consider questions of economic and political interdependence between nations. In considering the current principal political business cycle models we ask how the...

If the stockmarket is efficient, and if few investors can beat the market, why are most portfolios managed actively (seeking mispriced assets) rather than passively (matching an index)? This article looks at three possible explanations, favouring an explanation in terms of cognitive psychology.

According to anthropologists and sociologists of non-western societies, small-scale farmers in the developing economies are not self-seeking profit maximizers—i.e., their activities are not oriented towards economic efficiency—compared to their counterparts in the developed...

The financial economics’ literature predicts that corporate decisions are influenced by internal contracting and incentive structures emanating from organizational form. The insurance industry is dominated by two main forms of organization—the mutual and stock company—which...