NSF (USA) requires proposals to include activities addressing the ‘broader impacts’ of a project. Similarly, starting in 2013, the Higher Education Funding Council for England will require applicants to articulate the societal and economic benefits of their research. The criteria are so broad (by definition!) and vague that applicants do not know what to include, and evaluators have a difficult...

This paper considers the locational effects of geographically discriminatory trade policy. A preferential move towards a free trade area pulls industry into the integrating countries. Input-output links between imperfectly competitive firms amplify this effect and, when trade barriers fall below some critical level, may lead to agglomeration with some member countries gaining industry at the ex...

This paper has been prepared for a chapter in the Handbook of Labor Economics Volume IV edited by David Card and Orley Ashenfelter. We would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for their financial support through the Center for Economic Performance. This survey draws substantially on joint work with Daron Acemoglu, Philippe Aghion, Eve Caroli, Luis Garicano, Christos Genakos,...

The Impediments of Implementing the Bills Ratified by the Provincial Council of Education in East Azerbaijan R. Rabavi S. Maleki Aavaarsin, Ph.D. J. Torkzaadeh, Ph.D. To identify the impediments of implementing the decisions made by the provincial council of education in East Azerbaijan, a randomly selected sample of 264 council members was given a questionnaire consisting of th...

We would like to thank John Bound, Kerwin Charles, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Lance Lochner and numerous seminar participants for very useful comments and suggestions. We are grateful for support from The Mellon Foundation, The University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, The Spencer Foundation, The National Science Foundation, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and Berea Co...

The Federal ministers for the environment and for economic affairs’ suggestions for a renewables price brake must be seen in the light of upcoming elections. Any change of law would have to pass the Federal Council and, therefore, political opposition. So it is unlikely the effects of their proposed measures will be as great as some fear. However, the proposal has started a debate about possibi...

This paper develops a new index to rank the contingencies in different partitioned areas of networks. The new index considers the social and economic impacts of the contingencies and ranks them by using an overall index that combines these effects with technical factors. This overall index is implemented in the Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC) system. Load flow is run in different sc...

*This paper is the result of work being undertaken as part of a collaborative research program entitled ‘Unemployment: Economic Analysis and Policy Modelling’. The project is generously supported by the Australian Research Council and the following collaborative partners: Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services, Commonwealth Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Sma...

* Paper to appear as Chapter 1 in the book " Auctioning Public Assets " edited by Maarten Janssen, to be published by Cambridge University Press. We are grateful to Maarten for inviting us to write this survey. Preparing the survey has made us painfully aware of the gaps in our knowledge of the auction literature and we apologize for all errors and omissions. Tilman Börgers gratefully acknowled...

Eva Cox was a founder member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, and has been Convenor of the Women’s Economic Thinktank since 1989. A sociologist, lecturer, and previously Director of the NSW Council of Social Service, she is a frequent commentator on social policy areas, and delivered the 1995 Boyer Lectures. Her book Leading Women (Random House, 1996) further explores issues raised in this paper...