Recent theoretical advances have emphasised the importance of localised increasing returns to scale in understanding both the regional growth and agglomeration processes. However, considerable empirical controversy still exists over whether returns to scale are constant or increasing....

Using data envelopment analysis, we calculate indices of total factor productivity (TFP), efficiency and technological change for the manufacturing sectors of 68 European NUTS1 regions over the period 1986-2002. We subsequently examine these indices using exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA)...

This paper assesses various critiques that have been levelled over the years against Thirlwall's Law and the balance-of-payments constrained growth model. It starts by assessing the criticisms that the law is largely capturing an identity; that the law of one price renders the model incoherent;...

First paragraph: Mrs. Thatcher’s controversial premiership in the UK ran from 1979 to 1990. It witnessed the end of the post-war Keynesian macroeconomic consensus and the introduction of monetarist policies targeting inflation by attempting to control the growth of the money supply. The...

In Cambridge, UK, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were some of the most distinguished post-war non-neoclassical economists, which included Nicholas Kaldor, Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa. The Cambridge capital theory controversies seemed to have been decisively settled in Cambridge,...

This paper considers from a methodological point of view why disputes in macroeconomics over its fundamental assumptions regularly occur. It analyses the problem first using Kuhn's concept of the paradigm and then draws on McCloskey's use of rhetorical analysis. It finds the latter of limited...

In 2008, the three main banks in Iceland collapsed. There is strong evidence that the banks would have become insolvent even without the subprime crisis. Yet there was a marked difference in opinion at the time about the viability of the Icelandic banks. A clean bill of health was given by the...

The aim of this paper is to deal with the empirical aspects of the ‘new’ monetary policy framework, known as Inflation Targeting. Applying Intervention Analysis to multivariate Structural Time Series models, new empirical evidence is produced in the case of a number of OECD...

Twenty-five train operating companies (TOCs) were created between 1994-1997, as part of the restructuring process of the railway industry in Great Britain. The TOCs operate monopoly franchises for the provision of passenger rail services over certain routes - some of which continue to receive...

It has been noted in the literature that failure to meet the target set by government for reducing the headcount ratio of child poverty in Britain is partly due to the success of government policy in generating economic growth. Apart from missing the argument that absolute poverty is not a...