We construct a monetary model where government bonds also provide liquidity service. Liquid government bonds create an endogenous interest-rate spread; affect equilibrium allocations and inflation by altering the Ramsey planner’s sequence of implementability and sticky-price constraints. The...

Australia’s policies towards asylum seekers hit the headlines when it refused to admit those aboard the Tampa in September 2001. This tough stance and the raft of legislation that followed became known as Australia’s “Pacific Solution”. It was clearly intended to deter those who might...

We examine a setting in which property rights are initially ambiguously defined. Whether the parties go to court to remove the ambiguity or bargain and settle privately, they incur enforcement costs. When the parties bargain, a version of the Coase theorem holds. Despite the additional costs of...

The recent influx of financial capital to China implies expectations of continued real appreciation and, indeed, rapid expansion had previously led to real appreciations elsewhere in East Asia. In a world of open economies and differentiated traded goods, however, development-related...

Receipt of unemployment insurance by immigrant men and social assistance by immigrant families are analysed using thirteen surveys from Canada. Estimates from a cohort fixed effects model are found to be sensitive to the choice of survey years. This is due to the mis-specification of the fixed...

In a dynamic framework in which generations are linked by educational background, we identify an intergenerational externality that is larger for disadvantaged groups. This provides an argument for affirmative action in higher education based on efficiency alone.

International pressure to revalue China’s currency stems in part from the expectation that rapid economic growth should be associated with a real exchange rate appreciation. This hinges on the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis under which economic growth, stemming from improvements in traded sector...

This article surveys the growth of consumer credit in Australia during the 20th century, particularly after World War II. Until the 1970s, the regulation of Australia’s financial market caused formal consumer credit to be provided mainly by finance companies under hire-purchase contracts,...

This paper develops a Hotelling location model in which two radio stations choose combinations of local and international content to play, given consumers with preferences distributed over those combinations. Station revenue derives from sales of advertising time, the demand for which depends...

This note considers Hotelling’s (1929) model of locational choices by two firms and subsequent price competition in a setting where atomistic consumers locate first. It is shown that any equilibrium in pure strategies involves either one or two mass points with all surplus captured either by...