Within the Social Representations Theory (SRT) paradigm, social representations are defined technically as practical social knowledge that is produced when groups and individuals encounter the unfamiliar. Social representations therefore function to familiarise the unfamiliar. Theorists also...

This paper develops a theory of technology transfer when technology is embodied in human capital and learning requires on-the-job communication between managers and workers. Patterns of knowledge diffusion depend on where high knowledge managers work and how much time they allocate to training...

This paper shows that smoking intensity, i.e. the amount of nicotine extracted per cigarette smoked, responds to changes in excise taxes and tobacco prices. We exploit data covering the period 1988 to 2006 across many US states. Moreover, we provide new evidence on the importance of cotinine...

Considerable attempts to create a single economy of credit, in part through regularizing microlenders (especially the much-demonized loansharks or mashonisas), have been made by the South African government, notably through the National Credit Act. This article explores how borrowing and...

Many studies have found that international borders represent large barriers to trade. But how do international borders compare to domestic border barriers? We investigate international and domestic border barriers in a unified framework. We consider a data set of exports from individual U.S....

That economic and fi nancial power is shifting from West to East – and specifically to China – has become a mantra of our age, repeated so often and so insistently that it appears to be widely regarded as self-evident. Frequently, it is accompanied by the assertion China is set irreversibly...

The impacts of choice in public services are controversial. We exploit a reform in the English National Health Service to assess the impact of relaxing constraints on patient choice. We estimate a demand model to evaluate whether increased choice increased demand elasticity faced by hospitals...

The Open Data Initiative in the UK offers incredible opportunities for researchers who seek to gain insight from the wealth of public and institutional data that is increasingly available from government sources – like NHS prescription and GP referral information – or the information we...