Why did London become the main money market? Monetary Policy, Arbitrage and European Money Market Integration in 18th century

How did the leading capital market start to attract international bullion? Why did London become the main money market? Monetary regulations, including the charges for minting money and the restrictions on bullion exchange, have played the key role in defining the direction of the flow of international bullion. Countries that abolished minting charges and permitted the free movement of bullion were able to attract international bullion, and countries that applied minting taxes suffered an outflow of bullion. In these cases monetary authorities tried to limit bullion movement through prohibitions on domestic bullion exchange at a free price, and tariffs and quantitative restrictions on bullion exports. The paper illustrates the logic of international monetary flow in the 18th century, using empirical evidence for England, France and Spain. The first section defines and measures monetary policy, and the second section introduces minting charges into the arbitrage equation in order to explain the logic of bullion flow between the pairs of nations England-France, England-Spain and France-Spain. The conclusion emphasises the importance of monetary policy in the creation of leading money markets.

The effectiveness of market intervention policies to improve diet quality and to reduce the prevalence of obesity in Spain

Our project aims at analyzing the relevance of economic factors (mainly income and other socioeconomic characteristics of Spanish households and market prices) on the prevalence of obesity in Spain and to what extent market intervention prices are effective to reduce obesity and improve the quality of the diet, and under what circumstances. In relation to the existing literature worldwide, this project is the first attempt in Spain trying to get an overall picture on the effectiveness of public policies on both food consumption and the quality of diet, on one hand, and on the prevalence of obesity on the other. The project consists of four main parts. The first part represents a critical review of the literature on the economic approach of dealing with the obesity prevalence problems, diet quality and public intervention policies. Although another important body of obesity literature is dealing with physical exercise but in this paper we will limit our attention to those studies related to food consumption respecting the scope of our study and as there are many published literature review dealing with the literature related to the physical exercise and its effect on obesity prevalence. The second part consists of a Parametric and Non-Parametric Analysis of the Role of Economic Factors on Obesity Prevalence in Spain. The third part is trying to overcome the shortcomings of many diet quality indices that have been developed during last decades, such as the Healthy Eating Index, the Diet Quality Index, the Healthy Diet Indicator, and the Mediterranean Diet Score, through the development of a new obesity specific diet quality index. While the last part of our project concentrates on the assessment of the effectiveness of market intervention policies to improve the healthiness of the Spanish Diet Using the new Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) Demand System.