In 1981, 364 economists signed a letter to the London Times, objecting to the Thatcher Government’s anti-inflation policy. This article considers both the policy and the objections. The policy was basically a monetarist one, grounded on the view that inflation could be controlled only by...

It is commonly thought that an open economy can accommodate output shocks through either exchange rate or real sector adjustments. We formalise this notion by incorporating labour market rigidities into an “escape clause” model of currency crises. We show that the absence of structural...

Over the last thirty years, collective rights to organize into unions, bargain collectively and strike have been weakened in both New Zealand and the UK. At the same time, individual rights to due process and to protection from discriminatory or unjust management decisions have been...

Price controls are a very old means of trying to contain inflation. In Britain they were used in the Second World War and again in the 1960s. On the first occasion they seemed to work quite well though there were other factors involved--notably rationing. The second episode was not successful....

We consider the lessons that might be learned by other countries from the problems with Northern Rock and the reactions of the UK authorities. We ask whether the surprise of the run on the bank came because economic analysis did not provide the right guidance or whether it was simply a problem...

Based on a nationwide survey, this article focuses on the perceptions of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) members on two of the central issues that have dominated debates on the South African labour movement: the advisability of COSATU's Alliance with the African National Congress...

Purpose The resource curse literature suggests that firms operating in non-oil and non-gas industries in petrostates face considerable challenges in securing competitiveness and sustaining themselves. Based on a firm-level survey within a micro-petrostate, Brunei, the purpose of this paper is to...

This article draws on selected findings of one of a series of surveys conducted by the authors in the Eastern Cape province, dealing broadly with labour market issues. Particular attention is accorded to levels of unemployment, the extent of migrancy, the operation of extended networks of...

A central debate in Human Resource Management (HRM) in emerging economies is whether nations follow distinct paradigms, or if there has been homogenization towards low value-added policies or 'best practice' HR systems. The literature on comparative capitalism indicates the existence of...