The paper explores the determinants of up-front fees on sovereign bank loans.Remuneration of bank loans is typically channelled through the floating interestbenchmark, the interest spread, and a battery of fees. There is substantial evidence of thespread paying for long-run sovereign repayment...

This paper reviews the literature on the economics of intellectual property rights (IPR), with a particular focus on the main industrial property rights of patents and trade marks. Intellectual property rights arise from the legal protection accorded to certain inventions or creations. We begin...

The paper reviews the macroeconomic data describing the British economy from 1760 to1913 and shows that it passed through a two stage evolution of inequality. In the first half ofthe nineteenth century, the real wage stagnated while output per worker expanded. The profitrate doubled and the...

In 2000, the Lisbon Agenda set out an ambitious plan to make the EuropeanUnion “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy inthe world”. The Agenda suggested a need for action on three broad fronts:the first explicitly macroeconomic; the second explicitly microeconomic;the third...

The paper reviews the macroeconomic data describing the British economy during theindustrial revolution and shows that they contain a story of dramatically increasing inequalitybetween 1800 and 1840: GDP per worker rose 37%, real wages stagnated, and the profit ratedoubled. They share of profits...

Renewed interest in economic growth has encouraged studies of how different sectors have contributed to convergence trends. Comparing productivity levels across countries is notoriously tricky, but one attractive approach has been to deflate sector value added by the PPP exchange rate for GDP....

The growth process for a technological leader is different from that of a follower.While followers can grow through imitation and capital deepening, a leader must undertakeoriginal research. This suggests that as the gap between the leader and the follower narrows, thefollower must undertake...

It is shown that spillovers can enhance private returns to innovation if they feedback into the dynamic research of the original inventor (Internalized spillovers), butwill always reduce private returns, if the original inventor does not benefit fromthe advancements other inventors build into...