In this paper we investigate whether specialist producers of Irish cereals were allocating land efficiently in a mean-variance sense during the 1993-2002 time period. We then expand the model to examine the potential implications on the land allocation decision of the 2002 EU Commission’s...

We introduce a new US uncertainty index which is more sensitive to consumer spending and therefore reflects households’ decisions. We find evidence that macroeconomic uncertainty shocks impose negative, statistically significant, and long-lasting effects on consumption, income and financial...