Books

Book reviewed in this article: Just Capital: The Liberal Economy, Adair Turner A Liberating Economic Journey: Post‐Communist Transition. Essays in Honour of Ljubo Sirc, Andrzej Brzeski1 and Jan Winiecki (eds.) The Bow Group, A History, James Barr Rethinking Economic Behaviour: How the Economy Really Works, David Simpson Injecting Incentives into the Solution of Social and Environmental Problems, Ronnie Horesh Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience, Ben S. Bernanke et al. Mail @ the Millennium. Will the Postal Service Go Private? Edward L. Hudgins (ed.) Risky Behavior Among Youths: An Economic Analysis, Jonathon Gruber (ed.) Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political Economy, Peter J. Boettke     

THE MAKING OF ECONOMIC POLICY

Books reviewed in this article:
Rosalind Levacic (1987) Economic Policy-Making: Its Theory and Practice.
Paul Whiteley (1986) Political Control of the Macro-Economy.
Douglas A. Hibbs Jr. (1987) The Political Economy of Industrial Democracies.
Wyn Grant with Jane Sargent (1987) Business and Politics in Britain.
Michael Moran (1986) The Politics of Banking     

Book reviews

Conflict and Order: the Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales 1900–1939 Jane Morgan Strikes in Essential Services Gillian S. Morris Mansell Policing Industrial Disputes: 1893–1985 Roger Geary Taking Japan Seriously: a Confucian Perspective on Leading Economic Issues Ronald Dore Management Reforms in China Edited Malcolm Warner Frances Pinter Managing Labour? Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Industrial Relations Mark Bray and Vic Taylor Marginal Manager: The Changing Role of Supervisors in Australia Peter Gilmour and Russell D. Lansbury Comparative Factory Organisation: An Anglo-German Comparison of Management and Manpower in Manufacturing Arndt Sorge and Malcolm Warner Gower     

Books

Book review in this article
A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures Lionel Robbins S. G. Medema and W. J. Samuels (eds.)
Road Pricing, Traffic Congestion and the Environment Kenneth Button and Erik Verhoef (eds.)
The Political Economy of NATO Todd Sandler and Keith Hartley
A Prism on Globalization: Corporate Responses to the Dollar Rangan Subramanian and Robert Z. Lawrence
From Empire to Europe: The Decline and Revival of British Industry since the Second World War Geoffrey Owen
Virtual Money Elinor Harris Soloman
The Development of Monetary Theory 1920s and 1930s (Volumes I–IV) Forrest Capie and Geoffrey E. Wood (eds.)     

Trends in institutional affiliation of authors who publish in the three leading general interest economics journals

Trends in the institutional affiliation of authors of papers published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics are traced over the last four decades. The share of pages published in these three journals that were authored by faculty at universities employing the most prolific publishers declined markedly around 1970. Possible explanations include the expanded use of double-blind refereeing, the establishment of editorial committees, and increased emphasis on publishing at a broader set of research colleges and universities.     

Book Note

Book reviewed:
Peter Golding and Graham Murdock (eds.), The Political Economy of the Media     

Solving the incomplete markets model with aggregate uncertainty using the Krusell–Smith algorithm

This paper studies the properties of the solution to the heterogeneous agents model in Den Haan et al. [2009. Computational suite of models with heterogeneous agents: incomplete markets and aggregate uncertainty. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, this issue]. To solve for the individual policy rules, we use an Euler-equation method iterating on a grid of pre-specified points. To compute the aggregate law of motion, we use the stochastic-simulation approach of Krusell and Smith [1998. Income and wealth heterogeneity in the macroeconomy. Journal of Political Economy 106, 868–896]. We also compare the stochastic- and non-stochastic-simulation versions of the Krusell–Smith algorithm, and we find that the two versions are similar in terms of their speed and accuracy.     

The core-periphery model: A note on the existence and uniqueness of short-run equilibrium

We consider the core-periphery model [P. Krugman, Increasing returns and economic geography, Journal of Political Economy 199 (1) (1991) 483–499]. The nature and stability of the possible steady states of the model have been made progressively precise; [M. Fujita, P. Krugman, A. Venables, The Spatial Economy. Cities, Regions and International Trade, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999; R. Baldwin, R. Forslid, Ph. Martin, G. Ottaviano, F. Robert-Nicoud, Economic Geography and Public Policy, Princeton Univ. Press, 2003]. In that model as well as in all the new economic geography models that have been derived from it, the short-run (instantaneous) equilibrium is implicitly determined by the current labor distribution across regions. The numerical computations used so far to determine the short-run equilibrium, tend to suggest its existence. In this paper, an existence and uniqueness proof of short-run equilibrium is provided.     

THE BRITISH ECONOMY SINCE 1945

Book reviewed in this article:
Nicholas C. R. Crafts and Nicholas Woodward (eds.) (1991), The British Economy Since 1945.
Alec Cairncross (1992) The British Economy Since 1945.
G. C. Peden (1991) British Economic and Social Policy: Lloyd George to Margaret Thatcher.
Terry Gourvish and Alan O'Day (eds.) (1991) Britain Since 1945.
Sidney Pollard (1992) The Development of the British Economy 1914–1990.     

Book Notices

The Philosophy of Communism. By Giorgio La Pira and others.
Saving Children from Delinquency. By D.H. Stott.
The Economic system: An Analysis of the Flow of Economic Life. By E. T. Weiler.
Savings in the Modern Economy: A Symposium.     

Econometric analysis of structural systems with permanent and transitory shocks

This paper considers the implications of the permanent/transitory decomposition of shocks for identification of structural models in the general case where the model might contain more than one permanent structural shock. It provides a simple and intuitive generalization of the influential work of Blanchard and Quah [1989. The dynamic effects of aggregate demand and supply disturbances. The American Economic Review 79, 655–673], and shows that structural equations with known permanent shocks cannot contain error correction terms, thereby freeing up the latter to be used as instruments in estimating their parameters. The approach is illustrated by a re-examination of the identification schemes used by Wickens and Motto [2001. Estimating shocks and impulse response functions. Journal of Applied Econometrics 16, 371–387], Shapiro and Watson [1988. Sources of business cycle fluctuations. NBER Macroeconomics Annual 3, 111–148], King et al. [1991. Stochastic trends and economic fluctuations. American Economic Review 81, 819–840], Gali [1992. How well does the ISLM model fit postwar US data? Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, 709–735; 1999. Technology, employment, and the business cycle: Do technology shocks explain aggregate fluctuations? American Economic Review 89, 249–271] and Fisher [2006. The dynamic effects of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks. Journal of Political Economy 114, 413–451].     

VARs,common factors and the empirical validation of equilibrium business cycle models

Equilibrium business cycle models have typically less shocks than variables. As pointed out by Altug (1989) International Economic Review 30 (4) 889–920 and Sargent (1989) The Journal of Political Economy 97 (2) 251–287, if variables are measured with error, this characteristic implies that the model solution for measured variables has a factor structure. This paper compares estimation performance for the impulse response coefficients based on a VAR approximation to this class of models and an estimation method that explicitly takes into account the restrictions implied by the factor structure. Bias and mean-squared error for both factor- and VAR-based estimates of impulse response functions are quantified using, as data-generating process, a calibrated standard equilibrium business cycle model. We show that, at short horizons, VAR estimates of impulse response functions are less accurate than factor estimates while the two methods perform similarly at medium and long run horizons.     

Book Review Essays

Book reviewed in this article: Building housing theory: notes on some recent work : Headey, B. Building housing theory: notes on some recent work : Political Economy of Housing Workshop of the Conference of Socialist Economists. Building housing theory: notes on some recent work : Pugh, C. Building housing theory: notes on some recent work : Foster, J. Building housing theory: notes on some recent work : Marcuse, P.     

Books

Books reviewed:
Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct, Daniel B. Klein (ed.)
In Praise of Commercial Culture, Tyler Cowen
Monopoly Policy in the UK: Assessing the Evidence, Roger Clarke, Stephen Davies and Nigel Driffield
Macroeconomic Stabilization in Transition Economies, Mario I. Blejer and Marko Skreb
The Commanding Heights: The Battle between Government and the Marketplace that is Remaking the Modern World, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
Think Tanks Across Nations: A Comparative Approach, Diane Stone, Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett
British Think-Tanks and the Climate of Opinion, Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett
Capturing the Political Imagination: Think Tanks and the Policy Process, Diane Stone
A History of Water in Modern England and Wales, John Hassan
Water Markets: Priming the Invisible Pump, Terry L. Anderson and Pamela Snyder
The Political Economy of German Unification, Thomas Lange and J. R. Shackleton (eds.)     

Book reviews

A Restatement of Economic Liberalism Samuel Brittan Macmillan Japanese Style Management Transferred: The Experience of East Asia K. John Fukuda Routledge Japanese Management in America and Britain Donald Duncan Gordon Gower The Japanization of British Industry Nick Oliver Barry Wilkinson The Finances of British Trade Unions 1975–1985 Paul Willman Industrial Relations in Small Firms—Small Isn’t Beautiful Al Rainnie Routledge Managers of Discontent: Trade Union Officers and Industrial Relations Managers Diane Watson Routledge Recruitment and Selection in the Labour Market Paul Windolf and Stephen Wood Gower Safety at work: the limits of self-regulation Sandra Dawson, Paul Willman, Martin Bamford and Alan Clinton Debating Coal Closures: Economic Calculation in the Coal Dispute 1984–5 David Cooper and Trevor Hopper Helping the Unemployed Professional Roland Pearson and Anne Heyno Wiley Incompressible Unemployment John Naylor and Barbara Senior Avebury The Individual in the Economy: A Survey of Economic Psychology Stephen E. G. Lea, Roger M. Tarpy Financial and Economic Analysis of Enterprises Karl Hedderwick     

New Political Economy

Alberto Alesina and Nouriel Roubini with Gerald D. Cohen, Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy
Avinash K. Dixit, The Making of Economic Policy: A Transaction-Cost Politics Perspective.
Gordon Pepper, Inside Thatcher's Monetarist Revolution     

GOOD BOOKS – AND OTHER

Book reviewed in this article:
Maximilian Hall Monetary Policy since 1971 Macmillan, 1982
Patrick Minford Unemployment: Cause and Cure
D W Challen & A J Hagger Macro-economic Systems
Nick Bosanquet After the New Right
Ed. Sydney Weintraub and Marvin Goodstein Reaganomics in the Stagflation Economy
Herman Kahn The Coming Boom: Economic, Political and Social     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article: The Economics of the Labour Market David Sapsford and Zafiris Tzannatos Government, Industry, and Political Economy Peter Barberis & Timothy May Industry on the Move: Causes and Consequences of International Relocation in the Manufacturing Industry Gijsbert van Liemt (ed) Worker Takeover in Industry–The Kamani Tubes Experiment B. Srinivas Decentralisation of Collective Bargaining Michael Jackson, John Leopold, Kate Tuck Feminizing the Unions Sheila Cunnison and Jane Stageman Women Challenging Unions Linda Briskin and Patricia McDermott (eds) Deregulation: The Politics of Health and Safety A report prepared for the STUC in conjunction with the International Centre for Trade     

Not In My Back Yard

How can governments solve the problem of ‘Not In My Back Yard’ in finding dumps for nuclear waste? Richard Stroup (left) and Donald R Leal, of the Political Economy Research Center in Montana, claim that there are market solutions which have worked in the United States.     

BOOK REVIEWS

O dagiri , H. Growth Through Competition, Competition Through Growth .
C ollinson , D. Managing the Shopfloor: Subjectivity, Masculinity and Workplace Culture .
S herr , A. B. et al. (Eds.). International Joint Ventures: Soviet and Western Perspectives .
J affe , J. A. The Struggle For Market Power: Industrial Relations In the British Coal Industry, 1800–1840 .
K unda , G. Engineering Culture - Control and Commitment In A High-Tech Corporation .
M iller , G. J. Managerial Dilemmas: the Political Economy of Hierarchy .
L ittleton , S. M. The Wapping Dispute .