I am Professor of Economics at Lancaster University's Management School.

I have also worked at Dartmouth College, the Welsh Office, Lehigh University, the Australian National University, the University of Wales (Cardiff), and as a consultant for numerous organisations including the World Bank, OECD and the British Council.

My books include Fundamentals of Labor Economics, Wage Flexibility and Unemployment Dynamics and The Economics of Education. I was founding editor of the journal, Education Economics.

For further information about me, see my CV.

Contact me





Lecture notes are available from your LUVLE site.

I have compiled a series of interactive quizzes for use by students on courses in Labour Economics and Education Economics.

In addition, I have developed a simple forecasting model for the UK economy, designed specifically for web use by beginning students of economics. Alternatively, you could try out the IFS online model.

Please note that it may not be possible to access the above teaching materials from outside the Lancaster domain.

Why not visit my BLOG?

Contact me


 

 

You will find below some useful computer programs which I have written, including FORTRAN code to:

evaluate efficiencies from a CCR-type Data Envelopment Analysis model, reporting Simar and Wilson bootstrap confidence intervals.

evaluate efficiencies from a BCC-type Data Envelopment Analysis model, reporting Simar and Wilson bootstrap confidence intervals.

forecast a single variable using a single hidden layer feedforward neural network

forecast a system of 4 variables using a single hidden layer feedforward neural network.


 

 

Here are a number of useful links:


Economics - Teaching Topics

Online multiple-choice questions to accompany John Sloman's textbook. You can also access the rest of the Sloman website from here, but frankly it's hopelessly out of date and other links below are much better.

Tutor-2-u is a useful resource for economic data and other information for beginning students of economics.

The Concise Encyclopaedia of Economics has articles by a large number of well-known economists on a wide variety of topics.

There are a variety of sites on the internet where you can ask 'experts' questions and they will answer them free of charge. So if you have a problem with some economics, and you don't want to ask your tutor about it, you can try posting a question at AllExperts. Or you could post a question or join a discussion on the economics newsgroup. You should, of course, bear in mind that the answers you get back from expert sites or newsgroups are not all equally reliable.

Videos of Gary Becker's course on the economics of human capital.

On-line introductory economics textbook, by Robert Schenk, complete with interactive multiple choice tests - brilliant!

A very lively introduction to game theory - by Roger McCain

An intermediate microeconomics textbook - by David Friedman.

An impressive free online textbook on Regional Economics by Edgar Hoover and Frank Giarratani.

More online books may be found here.

There's a very good introduction to ISLM analysis (with online quizzes) by Colin Danby. Other sources of material on the ISLM model and related things are available by clicking on these numbers: 1 2. Also see my supplementary notes on this.

For topics in public choice, it may be worth checking out the Encyclopaedia of Law and Economics.

A nice introduction (or memory refresher!) for students wanting to know something about least squares regression.

Whatever happened to the very impressive intermediate microeconomics package, O.O. Micro?

Some nice biographies of economists may be found on this history of economic thought page.


Economic Data

British data from:

Office of National Statistics

Treasury

Bank of England

For the USA, you can find an amazing amount of data online. The best places to start are the Statistical Abstract and the Monthly Labor Review

Other countries' data from:

Eurostat

OECD

The Penn World Tables are an absolutely amazing source of time series data for lots of different countries.

Up-to-date economic statistics from around the world may be found at Free Lunch. There is a lot of financial information about companies available from Hoover's.

The annual UNDP Human Development Reports.

A variety of other World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and OECD data is available from ESDS.



Economic Forecasts

Treasury collection of forecasts (UK)

The Royal Bank of Scotland provides forecasts as well as interesting commentaries on the current state of the economy.

OECD (international - click on the link to Economic Outlook and then on flashfile)

The FAIRMODEL allows you to make your own forecasts of the US economy and the world economy, and is great fun to play with.

For the UK, a similar online experience is provided by the IFS online model.



Useful Freeware/Shareware Programs

EasyReg is an extremely useful and powerful free software package for econometrics.

Mathomatic solves algebra and calculus problems.

There are also some stunning Java applets available which really point the way forward for serious use of the world-wide web. Statlet allows you to do statistical work online.



Economics of Education Stuff

University and HE college statistics (UK)

The Dearing Report - the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education.

The Barro-Lee data set on international measures of schooling years and quality is a terrific resource, often used in conjunction with data from the Penn World Tables.

A truly phenomenal amount of data on the American education system is available, notably the Common Core of Data, CCD, on elementary and secondary schools, and the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System, IPEDS, which includes data on universities.



Journals and Magazines

Economist

Fortune

You can also link to a collection of articles from a variety of current on-line magazines.

Useful material can often be found in the Brookings Policy Briefs, the Cato Policy Reports, and the Levy Policy Notes. There are also lots of interesting and relevant articles and data to be found at David Smith's EconomicsUK.

Back issues of a lot of academic journals may also be obtained online.



Games

Prisoners' dilemma game (very addictive).

Another ridiculously addictive game which will help you learn about dynamic game theory.



General

Netec allows you to access working papers

Goffe's FAQ links into numerous other internet resources for economists.

Want some music while you work? Go to the radio tuner.

Why not send someone a free digital postcard?


 

 



A selection of my recent working papers is available for download.

You may wish to proceed to the Johnes family home page.

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