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Economic thought has often regarded business cycles as asymmetric. This study examines the existence of asymmetries over the business cycle in seven European countries: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. To analyse this issue, industrial production in these countries from 1957 to 1998 is examined, and quarterly contractions and expansions in this variable are compared. The results obtained with both parametric and non- parametric methods allow the existence of asymmetries in these countries to be questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wages in industrialized countries have risen considerably during the last 50 years, whereas hours worked, for manual workers at least, have decreased only marginally. In Europe, one policy response has been to attempt to protect workers from pressure to work long hours by placing legal restrictions on the amount of hours that may be worked each week. This paper examines the possibility that, in fact, observed hours may be the result of a desire of workers to work longer due to a shift in their preferences from leisure to increased consumption, caused by the huge increase in mass media advertising. A cointegrating VAR framework is used to test this hypothesis on UK time series data for both males and females from 1952 to 1997. Advertising is shown to be positively associated with hours worked for both male and female series. Causality tests indicate unidirectional causality, for males and females, from advertising to hours worked. These results suggest that the European policy response is more likely to restrict employee rather than employer discretion over hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"In this paper we estimate earnings functions for native born and foreign born white and non-white males in the English labour market, using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey.... Our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between native born and foreign born males when investigating the labour market experience of ethnic minorities. Furthermore, the earnings performance amongst white immigrants varies considerably.", (excerpt)

This article examines how a new market signal of inflation expectation could be used to inform the policy-maker when interest rates could be lowered without triggering inflation. Methodologies have been developed aimed at measuring the gilts (inflation-indexed government bonds) market's forecast of the future inflation path. A gilts market window on expectation can be used as a diagnostic tool both to examine why a macroeconomic model forecasts badly, and also to detect the extent to which an external shock has shifted market expectation away from its equilibrium path. It is only via changes in perception that the behaviour of economic agents and therefore the future can be influenced towards the policy target. The estimates suggest that it is technically possible with the indexed gilts method to read the financial markets forecast of the future inflation path in Great Britain. The expected inflation path alters in response to external shocks and to subsequent policy reaction, and these movements in market expectation can be monitored as they occur. In principle, the gilts market can provide "on-line" instantaneous information on movements in expected future inflation in response to external events, news, political speeches and most important, in response to proposed policy reactions to events even before they are implemented.

This paper assesses the extent and sources of the UK's comparative advantage within the European Union (EU). It finds that both inter-industry and intra-industry trade are important despite clear aggregation effects. Having established that there is a significant degree of inter-industry specialization the sources of this are analysed, using a factor-content approach. Results are reported for aggregate factors of production and, in the case of labour, by disaggregated skill categories. A key finding is that the UK's net trade with the EU is driven more by a specialization in specific types of skill than by an overall endowment of human capital. The results also suggest that the inter-industry specialization cannot be explained by comparative advantage alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]