Please select from the titles below:
- Wage Subsidies and European Unemployment: Theories and Evidence
- The Economics of Advertising: A Reappraisal
- Structural Change and Economic Behaviour: The Case of UK Exports
- Economic Growth and Sustainability
- The Simple Economics of Profit Sharing Scheme
- Public Utility Regulation in Britain: Some Lessons from the pre-1945 Experience
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Wage Subsidies and European Unemployment: Theories and Evidence (p.1)
By N Adnett and A DawsonWage subsidies are an increasingly popular policy instrument. This survey provides a critical assessment of wage subsidies in the context of contemporary labour market problems in the EU. A selective review of the experience of wage subsidies in the OECD is provided and the development of theory since Kaldor is critically assessed. The paper expounds the merits of Snower's Benefit Transfer Programme, a marginal job-creating subsidy targeted on the long-term unemployed. It suggests modifications to his proposal to distinguish between the tradable and non-tradable sectors and to respond to the growth of part-time employment and to the threat of increasing wage inequality.
The Economics of Advertising: A Reappraisal (p.23)
By A BearneThe traditional view of advertising is that it is economically wasteful and damaging to welfare as it distorts consumers' preferences, thus creating monopoly power for firms that produce heavily advertised brands. The alternative school of thought takes a broader view of competition and stresses the informative role of advertising. In a world characterised by uncertainty and ignorance, it is argued that advertising has a key role to play in providing consumers with information, reducing search costs and enabling them to make better informed choices. Further theoretical developments have stressed the importance of market structure, strategic interaction between firms and the role that advertising plays in this.
Structural Change and Economic Behaviour: The Case of UK Exports (p.39)
By S G Hall, G Urga and J WhitleyIn this paper, we make use of the sequential testing procedure which dates unknown break points proposed in Banerjee and Urga (1995,a,b) to analyze UK export behaviour. We show that the evidence points to a structural shift in 1979. Although there is some support for a supply-side interpretation in that there have been changes in the behaviour of prices, this does not appear to be closely associated with the changes in export behaviour and there appears to have also been a shift in the underlying demand for UK exports. We also find that variables that proxy changes in the quality of UK exports, or other supply-side influences, do not properly account for the observed structural break in UK export performance.
Economic Growth and Sustainability: A Simple Framework (p.51)
By I HodgeThe debate about the relationship between economic growth and the environment embraces many different strands, some emphasise the limits to the capacity of the earth to sustain economic activity, some focus on options at the local level, some suggest that growth and environment are complementary. This paper suggests a framework based on elementary concepts from economics that illustrates the essential characteristics of these diverse elements and the relationships between them. The framework identifies limits to technological options which may press against a sustainability constraint.
The Simple Economics of Profit Sharing Scheme (p.65)
By D LeslieThis paper proposes a very simple structure to reach the heart of the issues concerning profit-sharing schemes. It shows that a framework which assumes that there is no uncertainty is hardly appropriate and that when uncertainty is introduced the claim that profit-sharing can create jobs becomes an ambiguous one. An appealing and intuitive rationale for this ambiguity is given. This represents a middle ground between Weitzmann who claims profit-sharing is employment-creating and his critics who argue that there are no positive effects. The paper argues that the only hard core justification for profit-sharing is to enable mutually profitable trades in risk to occur. Any employment consequence should be seen as incidental and if there is `equilibrium' unemployment then there are alternative and more robust ways of generating more employment.
Public Utility Regulation in Britain: Some Lessons from the pre-1945 Experience (p. 73)
By P LoweThe system of public utility regulation untoduced following privatisation has been the object of much criticism but, subject to reform, is likely to survive any change of government. Much discussion of the present regulatory regime, if it takes a historical perspective, does so primarily with the nationalisation experience after 1945 in mind. This paper takes a longer term view by suggesting that the pre-war mixed system of regulation is worthy of investigation as indeed is US regulation in that period. The paper focuses towards the end on some important criticisms of the present regulatory regime and compares these with concerns in that earlier experience. - Lowe (1/96)
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