Occasional Paper – serie

The author discusses how research in financial markets has evolved and whether the application of theories can ever be translated into 'excess profits'.

Lal analyses the effects of minimum wages on unemployment and training, and concludes that they increase unemployment and reduce the incentive to acquire skills

Professor Bhagwati applies his unrivalled knowledge and meticulous analysis to some of the most serious threats to the prized goal of freeing world trade.

CONTENTS: The Lessons of History; Stages of European Integration; The Role of Monetary Policy in the Integration Process; Common Currency as Pace-Setter for Political Union; The Labour Market & Social Union; Compensatory transfers; Possible Political Tensions; Institutional Arrangements & 'Good Money from Outside'; The Difficulties & Risks of Monetary Union; Barriers Against Deficits & Debts; Constitutional restraints; Ambivalence of the Political Union; Summary.

Since 1988, Professor Geoffrey Wood of City University Business School has written a regular column in the Institute's Journal, Economic Affairs, in which he exposes popular economic fallacies. occasional Paper 102 is a collection of these columns which includes many of the fallacies in common circulation - for example, about the supposed dangers of free trade, about the abilities of governments to control economies, about the significance of current account deficits, about the use of fiscal policy to control inflation and about the effects of government regulation of markets. These lucid and stimulating columns are invaluable to students, struggling to master some of the complexities of economic theory and its applications, who often find that the most effective way of learning economic analysis is to see such fallacies exposed. It is a text particularly suitable for first year University students of economics which complements existing textbook by using examples to clarify fundamental concepts in economics and to demonstrate the practical uses of economic theory.

In this reprint of his January 1998 lecture to the IEA, Mr Portillo directly addresses the political issues raised by EMU. He considers the project's effects on democracy and concludes that it raises real dangers of conflict in the future. The book also contains a postscript by noted American economist Professor Martin Feldstein.

Economic historian Professor Nick Crafts gives a wide-ranging assessment of the economic record of the recent Conservative Government.

The rising tide of government regulation in most countries is provoking a reconsideration of the extent to which the state should lay down rules for others. Self-regulation and other forms of voluntary rule-setting are being examined as substitutes for regulation by government. Readings 52 begins with a paper by John Blundell and Colin Robinson which analyses the forces behind government regulation, its shortcomings and the scope for voluntary regulation. Seven papers by distinguished commentators on regulation then examine Blundell and Robinson's conclusions.

Trans-National Government, Legitimacy and the WHO. Roger Scruton examines the activities of transnational institutions (the United Nations and its affiliates) and finds that they are, in effect, exercising legislative powers, so bypassing national legislatures and avoiding the constraints to which those legislatures are subject. The ex-politicians who tend to be placed in charge of these transnational institutions are too sensitive to the concerns of unrepresentative interest groups which want to impose their visions of the world on other people. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is one such transnational institution. An example of the abuse of its powers is its attempt, based on spurious grounds, to secure a draconian convention against the tobacco industry. Such a convention would do nothing to curtail tobacco consumption but would increase criminal activity and would confer massive legislative and policing powers on unaccountable bureaucrats. The WHO, Scruton argues, should instead concentrate on its real mission - the prevention and cure of communicable diseases such as malaria and TB.