This paper concerns the new economy (alias the knowledge-based economy). I examine the different meanings attached to the new economy term and the evidence surrounding it, concentrating on the upsurge in US productivity growth between 1995 and 2000. I argue that the reports of the death of the...

This paper examines the arguments for changing the ways that UK drug prices are regulated. In the UK, NHS pharmaceutical expenditures on branded drugs, currently worth about £3 billion a year, have been regulated by the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) since 1978. We argue that, in...

This paper investigates the economic impact of the government’s proposed new UK R&D tax credit. We measure the benefit of the credit by the effect on value added in the short and long runs. This is simulated from existing econometric estimates of the tax-price elasticity of research and...

A long-standing concern surrounding the performance of the UK economy is its perceived failure to maintain the same technological pace as its competitors. Industrial research and development (R&D) expenditure as a proportion of GDP fell during the 1980s at a time when all other G7 countries...

This paper uses the Millennium Cohort Study to look at ethnic differences in birth outcomes for a cohort of English children born in 2000 and 2001. There is an increasingly large literature showing that longer gestation and higher birthweight are positively associated with cognitive and...

This paper provides a non-technical review of the evidence on the returns to education and training for the individual, the firm and the economy at large. It begins by reviewing the empirical work that has attempted to estimate the true causal effect of education and training on individual...

In Australia, as in most industrialised countries, there has been a dramatic increase in unemployment rates over the last three decades. The teenage labour market, in particular, has undergone significant structural changes which have resulted in large increases in the rate of unemployment among...