The prize system for innovation has been criticized as impractical due to the lack of a workable formula or algorithm to determine the size of prizes. In this paper, a decentralized market mechanism via the intertemporal bounty (IB) system can function to duplicate Pareto optimality. Under this...

The 2007/8 financial crisis exposed and exacerbated the debt pathologies of the ‘West’. The paper examines whether the new global debt relations that have been generated by this crisis have transformed global power politics, changing the way in which the ‘global South’ and the ‘global...

We consider a situation where the relatively ‘poor’ are concerned about their relative income status with respect to a relevant reference group. Such a concern is explicitly introduced in a utility function to study the consumption and saving behavior of the poor in terms of a static and...

This paper examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on the livelihoods of low-income households Nigeria. It uses primary household level data from Nigeria to analyse the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare. Our results indicate that aggregate shocks have...

This paper tests the causal relationship between electricity consumption per capita and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for Brazil, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa for the period 1971–2009. To reach this goal, we use panel cointegration analysis and Granger causality tests....

Emerging consensuses among growth economists view good institutions as the key determinant of improving economic growth. This study examines weather institutions measures, such as more transparent, accountable government, rule of law, sound civil liberty and competitive political participation...

This paper examines the question: ‘What is Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region initially needed: grow output or mitigate CO2 emissions? This question is a focus on the issue of both production function and environmental function based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) approach....

Excessive credit growth is often considered to be an indicator of future problems in the financial sector. This paper examines the issue of how best to determine whether the observed level of private sector credit is excessive in the context of the “countercyclical capital buffer”, a...

Although little talked about in contemporary economics, the collection of principles popularly known as Say‟s Law were profoundly influential upon economists of the classical era. Kates (1997), who has quite a bit to say on the subject and receives much attention here, ascribes such importance...

Trust in banks appears to be an essential element of well-functioning of macroeconomic systems, in general, and of financial markets, in particular. We study what factors determine the level of trust in banks before and after the 2007-08 financial crisis and how this crisis reshaped banking...