The gravity model has been extensively used in international trade research for the last 40 years because of its considerable empirical robustness and explanatory power. Since their introduction in the 1960's, gravity models have been used for assessing trade policy implications and,...

Zipf's law states that the population size of a city is inversely proportional to its population rank of the city. This paper examines the applicability of the Zipf's law to the world rank of corruption. The relationship between corruption and its rank is found to be approximately log-linear but...

In this study we investigated the determinants of the propensity of Swiss firms to train apprentices. Innovation, firm age and competition conditions on the product market are determining factors that were especially emphasized in this investigation. We found that the skill composition of the...

This paper analyses the validity of the weak-form market efficiency, using the random-walk hypothesis for the six industrial base metals - copper, aluminium, zinc, nickel, tin and lead - traded at the London Metal Exchange. I analyse the behaviour of daily and weekly prices of the daily rolling...

This paper shows that an increase in corporate/labor/income tax rates may push an economy with tax evasion into an expansionary pattern, under increasing returns to scale. These effects would be reversed when the steady state is saddle-path stable. This model does not undertake a full...

The gravity model has been extensively used in international trade research for the last 40 years because of its considerable empirical robustness and explanatory power. Since their introduction in the 1960's, gravity models have been used for assessing trade policy implications and,...

In economies where the price of labour is determined outside of competitive markets the question arises as to whether the observed evolution of wages is likely to contribute to a decline in unemployment. I develop and discuss a benchmark, the neutral wage policy, to which the actual evolution of...

The temporal interdependence between health expenditure and economic growth has been the focus in a number of recent empirical studies. While some insights have been gained from these studies, the focus has been on national economies, either in developed or developing countries. This paper...

Health system efficiency is a major target of health policy but its conceptualization and measurement are still a problem in health economics. Because health status is influenced by many factors outside the health system, I argue that measurements of health system efficiency should focus on the...

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the evidence on the excess smoothness of consumption within the permanent income model, by using recently available monthly data. Two formulations of the univariate process of personal disposable income are adopted: in the levels and in the log-levels....