British regions display persistent differences in both earnings and unemployment rates. A number of studies have found that in general, regions that have high unemployment tend to have low wages. This runs contrary to a compensating differentials argument that high wages should compensate for...

This study employs the pseudo-panel approach to estimate returns to education among income earners in Sri Lanka.  Pseudo-panel data are constructed from nine repreated cross-sections of Sri Lanka’s Labor Force Survey data from 1997-2008 for workers born during 1953-1974.  The results...

The paper presents trade policy as in line with that of other continental European powers, with a move to moderate levels of tariff protection for politically sensitive sectors such as steel and textiles and clothing, but also in agriculture, with levels of protection falling slightly before the...

In 1909 the United Kingdom Government introduced “super-taxâ€, which was an additional income tax levied on top incomes. This provided information on the distribution of total incomes that had not previously been available on a regular basis, since under the ordinary income tax, the...

The literature on carbon leakage has not yet benefitted from many of the insights of the ‘New Economic Geography’ (NEG).  Most studies assume both an absence of agglomeration forces and that factors do not move inter-regionally.  This paper develops a 2-region NEG model with...

When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser. This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact...

Participation in ‘friendly societies’ (or other cooperative organisations) is often used as proxy for measuring the stock of social capital. This is too simplistic. Friendly societies underwent radical changes over the nineteenth century and contemporaries regularly demoaned that...

The phenomenon of recurring prolonged swings in the total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate is approached in this paper by examining a particular episode in earlier twentieth century economic history. A marked acceleration of productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing occurred after World War...

Deliberate killing is a common part of the defining features of both homicide and civil war. Often, the scale of killing is also similar: most countries have homicide rates that exceed the threshold of one thousand combat-related deaths during a year that is the standard criterion for civil war....

This paper analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. In Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines, the issue of military scrip to pay for resources and...