Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka reklamen sett som en mekanism somöverför information om produkter från producenter till konsumenter.Två frågor under söks och besvaras: Har informationsinnehållet i bilochlivsmedelsannonser ökat eller minskat under den senaste 40 åren?Hur har andelen annonser med olika former av information varieratunder perioden? Resultaten visar att det finns en viss antydan till ökning iinformationsinnehållet, men det starkaste mönstret är en pendlande trendmed högt informationsinnehållet i början och slutet av perioden med ettlägre däremellan.

Ht 2008

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the series of events and legislation that has led to the current system of welfare and wealth redistribution in the United State. I begin with a background of the origins of the welfare state in England and the United States, and discuss the social movements which gave rise to the modern welfare state. I discuss how wars, economic theories, and recessions have influenced policy, and how such policy has affected poverty and unemployment rates since the Great Depression. I have found that social welfare spending has steadily increased since the Great Depression, and that the current trend of deficit spending and expansion of the social safety-net is a product of the legislation passed during the Great Depression and the ‘Great Society’ of the 1960s. Although there have been many attempts to secure a minimum standard of living through social welfare spending, the problems of poverty and unemployment persist.

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This thesis presents a number of examples where macroeconometric models are employed as useful tools for evaluation of contemporary policy problems. A range of approaches is proposed to shed light on how macromodels can actually contribute to the policy debate. In particular, the thesis emphasises how different models maybe augmented or modified and stresses the need for care in the experimental design of policy simulations. Small stylised models of the UK economy are estimated in the first part of this thesis. They are used to assess the performance of simple monetary policy rules under the current inflation targeting monetary regime. In a monetary policy regime of inflation targeting, the appropriate target band-width can be assessed by calculating the variance of inflation in a macroeconomic model under alternative policy rules. A recent Bank of England study concludes from stochastic simulation of a small semi-structural model that a 'fairly substantial lump of inflation uncertainty' exists in the United Kingdom. In chapter 2 an extended and improved version of that model is developed while their estimates of inflation variability are revised downwards by deploying analytic techniques. In chapter 3 a new small 'semi structural' dynamic model of the UK economy is estimated, with particular attention to the modelling of wages and prices. It is used to assess the performance of simple monetary policy rules, including 'inflation forecast targeting' and 'Taylor' rules, while taking into account different degrees of forward-lookingness in both inflation targeting horizon and wage bargaining. Computation of asymptotic inflation-output standard-error trade-offs is provided under various specifications and parametrisations of the model. Large-scale country models have the convenience to make explicit a complete range of relationships among macroeconomic variables most of which, for obvious reasons, are neglected in smaller dynamic models. As a consequence, such quantitative framework offers an unique opportunity to evaluate not only the aggregate impact of exogenous shocks on the variables of interest, but also to identify the underlying economic mechanisms enabling the transmission of such shocks. In the second part of the thesis, I undertake simulations of the National Institute's Domestic Econometric Model (NIDEM) to analyse the characteristics of the UK monetary transmission mechanism. Chapter 4 emphasises that the impact of interest rate movements on real variables is strictly determined by both the monetary regime at work and the underlying assumptions regarding consumption behaviour. Certainly, the steady integration of the members of the EMU and increasing awareness of the need for closer co-operation in monetary and fiscal policy have stimulated greater interest in modelling interdependencies between European countries and the impact and feedbacks from the rest of the world economy. Many of the key issues have now an international aspect, so it becomes more and more difficult to rely on single-country models to provide necessary analysis. International transmission mechanisms can therefore be better tackled with a multi-country model. The third and last part of this thesis focuses on cross-country asymmetric transmissions in response to a common monetary shock within EMU. In particular, in chapter 5 an empirical analysis of the links between monetary and fiscal policy within EMU is presented. This is done through simulation of a neo-classical highly non-Ricardian multi-country model: the IMF's MULTIMOD Mark III (MM3). Chapter 6 provides further evidence about the effects of embracing a Monetary Union when underlying macroeconomist structures still differ across countries. By use of the same model-based quantitative framework, this chapter examines the role of nominal and real rigidities in European labour markets for the assessment of asymmetries in monetary transmission under various monetary regimes.

This thesis is about how the members of a long-established multi-craft union, originating in the coachmaking trade, coped with the massive changes in the means of transport, culminating in the dominance of mass production motor car firms. Part I explores changes in the nineteenth and early twentieth century with the rise of railways and motor cars. In both, some coachmaking skills were made redundant, while others were very necessary. The rise of the motor industry, far from destroying coachmaking unionism, wrenched it out of a long period of stagnation. Part II focusses on the interwar period, which witnessed major changes in car body production. Brush painting and varnishing was. replaced by cellulose spraying; wooden framed bodies were replaced by all-steel ones; assembly lines came into use, and the division of labour greatly increased, with large numbers of semi-skilled workers employed in the biggest firms. Analysis of the main technical changes, and the changing state of the car industry, shows that, despite massive unemployment among its members, and a membership decline of over one third, in the early 1930s, the RUVB did not suffer "technological unemployment". Although there was a material basis for craft unionism in much of the car body industry in the 1920s, and in the rest of vehicle building during the whole interwar period, the union still tried to organise semi-skilled workers. But when an "Industrial Section" was created in 1931, it was a response to the union's financial crisis caused by unemployment payments, and no serious recruitment of mass production operatives took place. The contrasting experiences in Coventry and Oxford in the 1920s and 1930s are analysed in detail. The study is not a conventional head office-based union history, instead favouring case studies of the organisation of work, technical developments, industrial structure, and local union organisation.