In this paper, the effect of house prices on fertility is analysed across South African provinces using spatial Durbin model. This approach assumes spatial linkages through both endogenous and exogenous variables while allowing the total housing effect on fertility to be decomposed into direct...

The current food crisis all over the globe has necessitated alternative policy actions byvarious stakeholders in almost all countries of the world. Consequently, efforts are focusedon increased investment in agricultural research and development. The study evaluatesimpact of technological...

The study evaluates the technical, allocative and cost efficiencies of maize farmers andanalyses the impact of technological innovations on these efficiency measures. Theinvestigation of farm efficiency is of vital importance from both microeconomic andmacroeconomic points of view. It indicates...

The current international integration of financial markets provides a channel for currency depreciation to affect stock prices. Moreover, the recent financial crisis in Asia with its accompanying exchange rate volatility affords a case study to examine that channel. This paper applies a...

This paper explores whether a significant long-run relationship exists between money and nominal GDP and between money and the price level in the Venezuelan economy. We apply time-series econometric techniques to annual data for the Venezuelan economy for 1950 to 1996. An important feature of...

We study the effects of trade orientation and human capital on total factor productivity for a pooled cross-section, time-series sample of developed and developing countries. We first estimate total factor productivity from a parsimonious specification of the aggregate production function...

A small, but growing, body of literature searches for evidence of non-Keynesian effects of fiscal contractions. That is, some evidence exists that large fiscal contractions stimulate short-run economic activity. Our paper continues this research effort by systematically examining the effects, if...

We reconsider the optimal central banker contract derived in Walsh (1995). We show that if the government's objective function places weight (value) on the cost of the contract, then the optimal inflation contract does not completely neutralize the inflation bias. That is, a fraction of the...

This paper considers the contacting approach to central banking in the context of a simple common agency model. The recent literature on optimal contracts suggests that the political principal of the central bank can design the appropriate incentive schemes that remedy for time-inconsistency...

Approaching monetary policy as a principal agent problem provides a useful framework for interpreting alternative delegation schemes. In this paper, we consider the effectiveness of central banker incentive schemes when the principal delegates monetary policy through contracts but remains...