Business and Finance

Chancellors and central bankers face a perennial headache: booms typically cause inflation, while recessions mainly reduce output without reducing prices or inflation. New ESRC-funded research by Professor V. Bhaskar of the University of Essex explains how this problem emerges through the phenomenon of ’asymmetric price adjustment’ – the fact that firms are far quicker to increase prices than to cut them.

This work has important implications for inflation targeting by the Bank of

It took an evolutionary leap in the human species to help trigger the change from centuries of economic stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth, according to the first theory that integrates evolutionary biology and economics.

“Until now, economic growth theory did not have implications for evolutionary biology, and evolutionary biology did not have implications for economic growth,” said lead theorist Oded Galor, professor of economics at Brown University.

This new theo

Das in Lissabon gesetzte Ziel rückt in immer weitere Ferne

Europa muss größere Anstrengungen im Hinblick auf eine echte “wissensgestützte Wirtschaft” unternehmen, wie vom Europäischen Rat in Lissabon (März 2000) gefordert wurde. Dies lässt sich dem letzten Bericht der Europäischen Kommission mit wichtigen Zahlen zu den Bereichen Wissenschaft, Technologie und Innovation (2002) entnehmen. Gemäß dem von der Kommission entwickelten Gesamtindikator für Investitionen in die wissensgestützte

A company spun out from the UK’s University of Manchester has become the first in the world to produce and ship multi-gram quantities of quantum dots – and has launched a unique ‘Free Evaluation Samples’ program throughout the EU and UK.

Using a patented process, Nanoco Ltd is not only able to ship its standard ‘NanoDots’ in production-level quantities to meet growing market demand, but can easily configure NanoDots to meet custom performance specifications – previously a long process of t

Too few financial companies including banks, pension funds and insurance companies are taking the risks and opportunities posed by climate change seriously, members of the United Nations Environment Programme`s (UNEP) Finance Initiatives are warning.

Losses as a result of natural disasters appear to be doubling every decade and have reached one trillion US dollars in the past 15 years. Annual losses, in the next ten years, will reach close to $150 billion if current trends continue.

Research conducted by University of Ulster financial services researcher Mark Durkin into the uptake of Internet-based banking has found that banks are embracing the innovation in order not to be put at a competitive disadvantage – rather than for any sustainable competitive advantage Internet banking might provide in its own right.

The research study conducted with banks in Ireland, Sweden, the UK and the United States, found that managing customer relationships vai the internet is the grea