Publications

In less than a month, UK voters will be asked to express their intention to leave the EU in a referendum. The UK Prime Minister David Cameroon has strongly argued…

2016 is going to be a crucial year for Royal Mail, RM, the 500 year old British postal operator whose privatization process (started in October 2013) was finally completed in October 2015. In a broad sense, it is a decisive time for the entire sector of delivery services in Great Britain. The sector can be divided in two segments: the growing and competitive parcel delivery segment, boosted by the growth of e-commerce, and the declining segment of letter delivery.

Central Banking The European Commission accepts that EU law requires accounts to provide a “true and fair view” of assets, liabilities, financial position and profit or loss as specific indicators…

Back in 2014, several European countries started including the revenues from drugs and prostitution into their national accounting systems. These two sectors have several characteristics in common. First, the consumption…

WP 2016-03. The paper has now been published and can be accessed here. After the end of communism, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe shared very similar challenges. Despite…

An historic decentralization deal in England There is historically in England a North/South division. In the South, trade and financial services have made London the target of international investments and…

Central Banking Bank share prices recover after further falls early February. However, credibility of ECB increasingly questioned as it considers further expansionary policies. Fears of a renewed banking crisis, which…

Addictive Manufacturing (AM) is the name adopted in industries whose production is defined by the use of large scale 3D printing techniques. 3D printing is a technology which builds three-dimensional…

A deteriorated banking sector in a worn-out economy At the beginning of 2016, in the context of the new EU legislation on “bail in”, Italy found itself unprepared to face…

WP 2016-02. Most of the literature on rent-seeking and the size of government expenditure has focused on the mechanisms through which policy-makers gather the necessary majorities to justify and expand…