GATS and the electricity and water sectors

This paper discusses the impact of the GATS agreement of the World Trade Organisation on the electricity and water sectors

The financial crisis and nuclear power

An assessment of the impact of the financial crisis on the prospects for new nuclear power plant orders worldwide

Coke of Norfolk 1754-1842: a biography by Susanna Wade Martins [2009]

Susanna Wade Martins, Coke of Norfolk, 1754–1842. A Biography, Woodbridge, Suffolk, The Boydell Press, 2009. xii + 218 pp. £50.00. 9781843834267. This biography does Thomas Coke full justice, in style as well as in content. It is excellently illustrated with colour and monochrome plates with helpful, discursive captions and specially drawn maps and diagrams. The bibliography and index are extensive and the book has been meticulously produced. Coke’s memory is well served by this first-rate piece of work

Production Constraints and the NAIRU

This paper argues that the production constraints in the basic NAIRU model should be distinguished by type: capital constraints and labour constraints. It notes the failure to incorporate this phenomenon in standard macro models. Using panel data for UK manufacturing over 80 quarters we show that capital constraints became relatively more important during the 1980s as industry failed to match the increase in labour flexibility with rising capital investment

The effect of oil price changes on the price of Russian and Chinese oil shares

© 2016, The Author(s). Do changes in oil prices have an effect on stocks of oil companies in emerging markets? Do the shares of oil companies in emerging markets react to the price news in a similar way as those of the Western companies? This paper aims to answer these questions utilizing event study techniques. As expected, the results of both parametric and nonparametric tests suggest that the fluctuations in oil prices have an effect on the stock prices. However, an interesting result is that the responses of stocks of Chinese and Russian oil companies are considerably different from the shares of their Western counterparts

On the instability of hypersonic flow past a wedge

The instability of a compressible flow past a wedge is investigated in the hypersonic limit. Particular attention is given to the Tollmien-Schlichting waves governed by triple-deck theory though some discussion of inviscid modes is given. It is shown that the attached shock has a significant effect on the growth rates of Tollmien-Schlichting waves. Moreover, the presence of the shock allows for more than one unstable Tollmien-Schlichting wave. Indeed, an infinite discrete spectrum of unstable waves is induced by the shock, but these modes are unstable over relatively small but high frequency ranges. The shock is shown to have little effect on the inviscid modes considered by previous authors and an asymptotic description of inviscid modes in the hypersonic limit is given