The European Union will enter Stage Three of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999. The development of euro financial markets and thickness externalities in the use of the euro as a means of payment will be the major factors determining the importance of the euro as an international...

On the international scene, away from national legal rules, the use of different currencies is largely due to the process of the ''Invisible Hand''. How do currencies flow when their circulations are not tightly guided and canalised? The paper develops a three-country model of the world economy...

This paper takes a systematic look at the portfolio choice problem faced by Investment Banks or Funds investing in transition economies. We relate the performance of projects in the transition economies to the broader macreconomics and international environment and evaluate the attractiveness of...

Optimal production decisions depend on local market characteristics. This paper develops a model to explain firm labor demand and firm density across regions. Firms vary in their technology to combine imperfectly substitutable worker types, and locate across regions with distinct distributions...

We use non-random sorting into interethnic marriage and salient differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of Sephardic affiliation on wages. Using the 1995 Israeli Census, we estimate the effect of a Sephardic affiliation on wages. We first compare the...

David Metcalf, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), outlines recent changes in the regulatory framework for immigrant workers.

Women have, on average, been less well-paid than men throughout history. Prior to 1900, most economic historians see the gender wage gap as a reflection of men's greater strength and correspondingly higher productivity. This paper investigates the gender wage gap in cigar making around 1900....

The US economy is still suffering from its most severe recession in seven decades. This article covers the key issue of taxes, spending and public debt, a major point of disagreement between the two candidates in the 2012 US election, President Obama and Governor Romney.

The UK is facing not one but two housing crises. The first is a short-term fall in prices and construction whcih is both driven by and driving the recession. The second and more profound is the overall shortage of housing and the problems of affordability that this generates.

The article uses house prices to measure the peace dividend in Northern Ireland - and draws lessons for other parts of the world that have endured long conflicts.