Addressing the question of why productivity growth rates differ between countries from a disequilibrium standpoint, the paper explores the possibility of combining in a single formalisation two different but complementary theories of technical change and macroeconomic growth--namely the...

This paper attempts to estimate the real effects of transnational activity upon both investment and labour demand, within each of the five industries that comprise Japan's domestic machinery sector. The study uses a standard model of investment and labour demand, which is augmented to include...

The European Monetary Union has been in operation since 1 January 1999. The paper offers an interim assessment of the operations of the European Central Bank (ECB) during this period. It describes how the ECB defined its monetary strategy and carried out its policy. The evaluation offered in the...

We use the Toda & Yamamoto (1995) causality testing procedure to investigate the relationship, if any, between financial development and economic growth.We use quarterly data from 19 OECD countries and China, and use total credit and interest spread as indicators of financial development. We...

The theory of optimal currency areas stresses that a single currency zone should have symmetry across shocks and structures. What happens if the monetary transmission mechanisms differ so that a common monetary policy has different effects in different places? Using a fully specified econometric...

This paper investigates the determinants of the high bank spreads observed in the Caribbean over the financially liberalised period of the 1990s. A theoretical model is formulated and tested using panel data. Among other factors, market power is found to be one of the main influences on these...

The European Central Bank has an unprecedented degree of statutory independence. This is presumably attributable to the view that central banks, unimpeded by external forces, pursue the public interest. That presumption has not always been common in the economics literature, even in the...

Multinational firms are traditionally considered as firms possessing some technological lead and which are exploiting this proprietary advantage in international markets, but a growing literature has been arguing that multinational firms set up foreign subsidiaries not only as a means to exploit...

This paper discriminates between basic and developmental research when estimating international research spillovers between nine OECD nations. Using panel cointegration techniques, the estimates show that basic research generates much larger international spillovers than developmental research....