It is often taken as axiomatic that investors prefer high levels of regulation.  Yet companies have increasingly chosen to list on stock exchanges with lower regulatory requirements.  In this paper we analyse whether investors value high regulatory standards for quoted companies.  We use the...

This paper analyses and quantifies the effects of trade liberalisation and skill-biased technical change, both exogenous and trade-induced, on the skill premium and real wages of unskilled and skilled workers in the Mexican manufacturing sector, using industry- and firm-level data for 1984-1990...

This paper develops a framework for the analysis of how asymmetric information impacts on adverse selection and market efficiency.  We adopt Akerlof's (1970) unit-demand model extended to a setting with multidimensional public and private information.  Adverse selection and efficiency are...

Real wage rises for the unskilled are one mechanism by which poor people can obtain rises in their incomes and a reduction in their economic vulnerability. In this paper it is shown that over a period in Ghana when measured poverty declined, 1988 to 1992, real wages for the unskilled rose, by...

It is commonly claimed that the South African labor market is unusually inflexible owing to the strength of the unions and the system of centralized collective bargaining. One aspect of labor market inflexibility concerns the responsiveness of wages to local unemployment. Examining this spatial...

In this paper we introduce a small Keynesian model of economic growth which is centered around two advanced types of Phillips curves, one for money wages and one for prices, both being augmented by perfect myopic foresight and supplemented by a measure of the medium-term inflationary climate...

In this paper the links from measures of consumption to welfare and well-being are discussed drawing on a study of changes in consumption in Ghana in the 1990s. It is argued that household consumption can act as an opportunity measure of welfare. The widespread distrust of such a welfare measure...

Three issues are addressed in this paper. First, we use both household and macro data to establish how fast per capita consumption and incomes grew in Ghana in the 1990s. Second, we ask how much of the rise in incomes was due to rises in the level of human capital and how much reflected...

Why might there be a long-run trade-off between growth and unemployment? In general equilibrium, the returns on the factors of production are interdependent. This paper develops a model where the determination of the wage is central to the evolution of these incentives. The incentive to hire...

For some observers, the dramatic growth of the services sector in India reflects rapid strides made by educated professionals.  Some others see it as the expansion of an employer of last resort.  Given this heterogeneity, the object of the paper is to analyze the nature of employment being...