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This paper develops a dynamic model of Rational Partisan Business Cycles in which wage contracts overlap elections and wage setters have to make a prediction about the election result. Empirical analysis of 20 OECD countries supports the theoretical implication that left wing incumbents increase output, but increased expectation of a left wing regime reduces it. The model is extended to incorporate the effects of alternative measures of Central Bank Independence (CBI). The measure of objective independence outperforms the other measures and it is found that CBI reduces politically induced business cycles.

A number of countries have granted more autonomy to central banks in deciding interest rates and greater independence appears to be linked to improved macroeconomic performance. The political business cycle relates to such factors as seeking to 'bribe' the electorate prior to an election. An examination of data from 18 countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicates a negative correlation between partiisan and electoral effects and the independence of the central bank.

Explains that economists believe Robert Lowe's most remarkable editorials in "The Times" newspaper are those about Great Britain's commercial treaty with France in 1860. Analyses of the financial side of the American Civil War; Classic instance of how Ricardians fail to cope with free trade by negotiation; Roughness and sarcasm colored every public argument in which he took part.

The article focuses on the emergence of the disciplines of economics and economic history in England. The disagreement between economists Alfred Marshall and Ven. William Cunningham is not unfamiliar to economic historians, but they have tended to view it either as a personal squabble or as a local offshoot of the more famous Methodenstreit which began in Germany a decade or so earlier. Cunningham's charge was that Marshall had instead squeezed and bruised the facts into whatever laws would maximize the apparent area of applicability of his own brand of economics. In this attempt to turn economics into a universal science, he had instead theorized himself out of the capacity to offer opinions on the issues of the day other than as a private layman. Economics, as Cunningham saw it, was there to criticize particular legislation, and any principles developed for this end must be consonant with the particular needs and aims and ambitions of the nation in which the legislation is carried out. Thus economists should be collecting empirical data as a means to giving advice appropriate to its time and place.