This paper examines whether the states brought together in the Italian monetary union of the nineteenth century constituted an optimum monetary area, either before or after unification. Interest rate shocks indicate close relations between states in northern Italy but negative correlations...

This survey outlines the characteristics and drivers of the phases of European industrial policy over the last century and attempts some conclusions about policy impacts. The first liberal phase and the second, ultimately autarkic, phase were ended by war. The third phase terminated with the oil...

We construct a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model of the interaction between demography and the economy for six centuries of English history. At the core of the four overlapping generations, rational expectations model is household choice about target number and quality of children, as...

Both analysis of international trade and the knowledge resource theory of the firm imply that language skills should play a vital role in exporting. This may be apparent to large multinationals with sites in many different linguistic locations, but we show it is less obvious to smaller...

The present research shows how entrepreneurial culture contributes to the widely noted difference in entrepreneurial propensities between men and women. The consequences of the assumed differential importance of household and family generate testable hypotheses about the gender effects of...

Because ownership was already more divorced from control in the largest stock market of 1911 (London) than in the largest stock market of 1995 (New York), the consequences for the economy, for good or ill, could have been considerable. Using a large sample of quoted companies with capital of £1...

The consensus among legal and economic historians that British law between 1844 and 1914 provided little protection to corporate shareholders is based on formal provisions in the Companies Acts. In fact these Acts applied only to companies registered by the Board of Trade. Moreover corporate law...

Rational offender models assume that individuals choose whether to offend by weighing the rewards against the chances of apprehension and the penalty if caught. While evidence indicates that rational theory is applicable to acquisitive crimes, the explanatory power for gratuitous non-fatal...

This paper assesses UK innovation policy impact on a large, population weighted, sample of both service and manufacturing SMEs. By focussing on self-reported innovation the study achieves a wider coverage of the effects of SME innovation policy than possible with more traditional indicators....

Was Spanish fiscal policy destabilizing? We estimate policy reaction functions and test the impact of fiscal shocks on growth volatility over the period 19501998. We find that a transition from pro-cyclical to countercyclical fiscal policy occurred in the late years of the Franco regime,...