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

Economic Value of Stock and Interest Rate Predictability in the UK

In this paper, we evaluate the forecast performance of a range of atheoretic and theory informed models of bond and stock returns. The decision making environment is fully described for an investor who would like to optimally allocate his portfolio between bonds and stocks, over an investment horizon of up to two years. We use a weekly dataset on UK Treasury Bill rates and the FTSE All-Share Index over the period 1997 to 2007, to examine the impact parameter uncertainty and predictability in returns have on how the investor optimally allocates his portfolio. The methods by which the forecasts should be computed and used in this context are described. Both statistical and decision based criteria are used to evaluate the out-of-sample forecasting performance of the models. Our results suggest that in the context of investment decision making under an economic value criterion, the investor gains from not only assuming predictability but by modelling the bond and stock returns together.Density Forecasting; Decision-based Forecast Evaluation; Interest Rate and Stock Return Models; Predictability and Parameter Uncertainty