Energy is today, more than ever, at the core of the world economy and its evolution. One of the major challenges of the century is to generate more energy, to facilitate access to energy and economic development of the poor, but also to manage climate change properly in a perspective of sustainable develop- ment. The growing importance of energy matters in the daily functioning of the world eco…
This review is a primer for those who wish to familiarize themselves with nonparametric econometrics. Though the underlying theory for many of these methods can be daunting for some practitioners, this article will demonstrate how a range of nonparametric methods can in fact be deployed in a fairly straightforward manner. Rather than aiming for encyclopedic coverage of the field, we shall res…
This book collects a series of essays to celebrate the work of David Hendry: one of the most influential of all modern econometricians. David’s writing has covered many areas of modern econometrics, which brings together insights from economic theory, past empirical evidence, the power of modern computing, and rigorous statistical theory to try to build useful empirically appealing models.…
Social economics is the study, with the methods of economics, of social phenomena in which aggregates affect individual choices.1 Such phenomena include, just to mention a few, social norms and conventions, cultural identities and stereotypes, peer and neighbor- hood effects. A central underpinning of the methods of economics is methodological individualism. In particular, explanations based s…
In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged the need to further explore the relationship between health and the economy by setting up the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH). One of the main conclusions of the work of CMH was that investing in health could not only be of intrinsic value but could in addition produce important economic gains. In response to the growing …
When the first edition of this book was published, nearly fifteen years ago, I began my preface by noting the growing importance of exchange rates in a world of increas- ing globalisation. A lot has happened to change the world’s financial landscape in that decade and a half. Perhaps the most notable events have been the establishment of the European Monetary Union, and the dramatic changes i…
Forecasts are usually made to help and guide decision making. Good fore- casts are preconditions for good, informed decisions. These decisions may vary from a financial market bet on interest rate changes to the policy decision on how to structure a country’s pension system. Ideally, decision-makers should be as well prepared as possible for the future, which would allow them to act appropria…
R is a language and environment for data analysis and graphics. It may be considered an implementation of S, an award-winning language initially developed at Bell Laboratories since the late 1970s. The R project was initiated by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in the early 1990s, and has been developed by an international team since mid-1997. Histori…
Over the last five decades, significant advances in the estimation and inference of various econometric models have taken place. This includes the classical linear model where the explanatory variables are nonstochastic (fixed) and the error is normally distributed, and the non-classical models, where these classical assumptions are violated. These models are frequently used in applied work, su…
The overall objectives of this review and synthesis are to study the basics of information-theoretic methods in econometrics, to examine the connecting theme among these methods, and to provide a more detailed summary and synthesis of the sub-class of methods that treat the observed sample moments as stochastic. Within the above objectives, this review focuses on studying the inter-connection…
This book presents the proceedings of the European Symposium on Management, Quality and Economics in Housing and other Building Sectors held in Lisbon, from 30 September to 4 October, 1991. The Symposium was organized by the Civil Engineering Department of the Technical University of Lisbon (Instituto Superior Técnico), Portugal and the University of Salford, Surveying Department, United King…
Financial economics plays a far more prominent role in the training of economists than it did even a few years ago. This change is generally attributed to the parallel transformation in capital markets that has occurred in recent years. It is true that trillions of dollars of assets are traded daily in financial markets—for derivative securities like options and futures, for example—that h…
National and global macro econometric modelling has had a long and venerable history in the UK, with important implications for macroeconomic policy in general and monetary policy in particular. It is an activity that involves sustained research input of several investigators with a variety of skills. The present work is not an exception and its completion has required the enthusiasm and commit…
The Current Issues series has slightly unusual origins. Current Issues in International Trade, which Macmillan published in 1987 and which turned out to be the pilot for the series, was in fact 'conceived' in the Horton Hospital, Banbury, and 'delivered' (in the sense of completed) in the Hilton International in Nicosia! The reader may be struck by the thought that a more worthwhile and enjoyab…
Stochastic Methods in Economics and Finance introduces the reader to certain mathematical techniques by presenting both their theoretical elements and their applications. Topics such as martingale methods, stochastic processes, optimal stopping, the modeling of uncertainty using a Wiener process, Ito's lemma as a tool of stochastic calculus, basic facts about stochastic differential equations…
In September 2005 we organized a conference at the University of Cassino, Italy, the aim of which was to explore ‘The Keynesian Legacy in Macro- economic Modelling’. In the postwar period, macroeconomic modelling of developed economies was mainly rooted in Keynesian theory up to the 1970s, when the failure of applied models to deal with stagflation led to a shift in economic theory towards …
Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is undoubtedly regarded as the most important book on economics in the twentieth century, and this view would be shared, I think, by those who are wholly opposed to its teaching as well as by its adherents. Nearly 50 years after its appearance controversy still rages around its basic ideas and prescriptions, and I do not think that a…
This book provides a detailed treatment of micro econometric analysis, the analysis of individual-level data on the economic behavior of individuals or firms. This type of analysis usually entails applying regression methods to cross-section and panel data. The book aims at providing the practitioner with a comprehensive coverage of statistical methods and their application in modern applied m…
This chapter examines whether differences in the efficiency of the use of indirect energy of Dutch arable farms are attributable to differences in management. To do so, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to assess farm-specific efficiency scores for fertilisers — the input most important for energy conservation in crop farming. Next, using the concept of strategic management, the qualit…
Each of the chapters in this volume concerns some aspect of economists' use of controlled experiments. Since the mid-1970s this kind of work has been transformed from a seldom encountered curiosity to a small but well-established and growing part of the economic literature. This transformation has been rapid. For example, when I began my own experimental work about a dozen years ago, it was mos…
A review of the past 40 years reveals that economic policymaking has been profoundly influenced by two major phenomena. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Keynesian "revolution" made its debut on the stage of economic policy and determined the actions of policymakers in the Western world. The last two decades of the past millennium intum were influenced by the phenomenon of privatization. While the …
1. Political economy or economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing. Thus it is on the one side a study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man. For man's character has b…
The main aim of this book is to introduce the ideas of the neo-Austrian school of economics and to compare these ideas with the more familiar methods of conventional or orthodox economics. Many well-known introductory textbooks meant for the use of prospective accountants or business studies graduates, whose main interest is not in economics, typically make great use of graphical diagrams of eq…
At present, problems of optimization of the interaction between nature and human society can be solved only by the joint efforts of a wide range of specialists. The elaboration and realization of plans of socio-economic development for individual countries and regions should be based on the principles of preservation of balance in the biosphere, biogeocenoses, landscapes and other natural com…
The word ‘socialism’ is apt to produce strong feelings, of enthusiasm, cynicism, hostility. It is the road to a future just society, or to serfdom. It is the next stage of an ineluctable historical process, or a tragic aberration, a cul-de-sac, into which the deluded masses are drawn by power-hungry agitator-intellectuals. My own attitude will emerge in the pages that follow. Let me make it…
This collection reflects the rather wide range of my interests, from the history of Russian economic thought to the contemporary Soviet scene, as well as questions relating to socialism and the role and limitations of markets. Major changes are taking place in the Soviet Union and in a number of other communist-ruled countries, changes which involve decisive strengthening of market forces and a…
Léon Walras may rightfully be considered as one of the founding fathers of mathematical economics. Much of mathematical economics developed since Walras’s time has gradually become common knowledge in economics. This means that Walras directly and indirectly has had a marked influence upon our science as it stands now. It is therefore important to know how Walras came to his results, what…