This paper revisits one of the classic debates on world capitalist development – the ‘transition to capitalism’ debate framed in Robert Brenner’s classic critique of World Systems and Dependency Theory. It was originally presented to the July 2007 conference of the International...

We embed a stylized traffic model within a general equilibrium model in which labor supply is endogenous and income taxes are distortionary. Within this framework we derive simple rules for performing a cost-benefit analysis that can be applied knowing only the output of the traffic model and a...

Canonical analysis of the classical general equilibrium model demonstrates the existence of an open and dense subset of standard economies that possess fully-revealing rational expectations equilibria. This paper shows that the analogous result is not true in urban economies. An open subset of...

This paper assesses the pre and post Free Trade Agreement (FTA) pattern in bilateral trade between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Besides the usual direction of trade analysis we also use general and partial equilibrium approaches in order to evaluate the true potential of this FTA. Our results reveal...

Using the hybrid of Heckscher - Ohlin and Specific Factor models of trade we show that economic recession led shock results in a loss for both capitalists and skilled workers. Some of the unionized unskilled workers lose formal sector employment and move onto the informal sector. In case capital...

Canonical analysis of the classical general equilibrium model demonstrates the existence of an open and dense subset of standard economies that possess fully-revealing rational expectations equilibria. This paper shows that the analogous result is not true in urban economies under reasonable...

This paper builds a general equilibrium model for a small open economy with unemployment of unskilled labor to assess the impact of a recessionary shock. It is shown that irrespective of the factor intensity assumption skilled wage and rental ratio goes up if recession led price fall is...

Informal economy involving unrecorded, unregistered, extra legal activities employs majority of the workforce in the developing world. Such extra legal existence of informal manufacturing and service sectors is facilitated through extortion by agents of political forces in power. Such extortion...

As per the conventional wisdom there should be provision for public assistance for skill acquirement for achieving higher economic growth in the future. However, empirical observations on small OECD countries over the period 2001-2011 tell somewhat a different story. This study makes an attempt...

As per the conventional wisdom there should be provision for public assistance for skills acquirement for improving relative wage inequality in the future. This paper attempts to explore the validity of this traditional perception with the help of a two-sector, specific factor general...