The economic research undertaken at Nottingham Trent University covers various fields of economics. But, a large part of it was grouped into two categories, Applied Economics and Policy and Political Economy.

Purpose Might a country’s economic growth performance differ depending on the evolution of its human capital? This paper aims to consider education as a channel for human capital improvement and then for economic growth. The authors hypothesize the existence of a threshold for education, after which point the characteristics of economic growth change. Design/methodology/approach To address this question, the authors turn from a linear framework to a nonlinear one by applying smooth transition specifications. Findings This empirical analysis for Spain points to the existence of nonlinearities in the relationship between education and economic growth at country level, for both secondary and tertiary education. Next, as different patterns emerge in different regions, the authors provide a regional analysis for a number of representative Spanish regions. The results show that both secondary and tertiary education matter for economic growth and that nonlinearities in this relationship should be taken into account. Practical implications What is learnt from using Smooth Transition Regression models for the education-economic growth link is that the educational level of the population can be understood as a source of nonlinearities in the economic activity of a country (and of a region). Thus, depending on national and regional educational levels, economic growth behaves differently. Originality/value Although the importance of nonlinearities has been identified, linearity is usually assumed in this field of the literature. This paper calls into question the linearity assumption by using time series techniques for 1971-2013 in Spain, an OECD country, and testing whether the results at country level hold for different regions within Spain as a robustness check.

We study the impact of exchange rate misalignment on economic activity in nine Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies. Exchange rate misalignments are computed from country-specific long-run exchange rate relationships with determinants suggested by open macroeconomic models such as interest rate differentials or the Balassa-Samuelson effect. There was a clear reduction in misalignments, but this has been reversed to some extent after 2008. Exchange rate overvaluation has a negative impact on economic activity. The effect of misalignments on economic activity seems to be nonlinear, as overvaluation has a stronger effect than undervaluation. Other factors of economic activity, including institutions, also show nonlinear effects.

In this paper we aim at modelling the long run behaviour of the Real Effective Exchange Rates (REER) for a pool of African countries. Not much attention has been paid to this group of countries, in particular, to the existence of nonlinearities in the long run path of such a variable. Controlling for two sources of nonlinearites, i.e. asymmetric adjustment to equilibrium and nonlinear deterministic trends allows us to gain some insight about the behaviour of the African REER. We find that these sources of nonlinearites help us to explain the apparent unit root behaviour found applying linear unit root tests for most of the countries.J.E.L. Classification : C32, F15. Key words: PPP, Real Exchange Rate, Unit Roots, Nonlinearities. † Corresponding author: Nottingham Business School, Division of Economics, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, NG1 4BU, Nottingham, UK. e-mail: juan.cuestas@ntu.ac.uk. Juan Carlos Cuestas gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the CICYT and FEDER project SEJ2005-01163 and the Bancaja project P1.1B2005-03. The authors gratefully acknowledge an anonymous referee for his/her helpful comments. Juan Carlos Cuestas is a member of the INTECO research group. The usual disclaimer applies.

The current network society, with its primacy of information and communication technologies, is challenging the higher education model. The needs and expectations of today's students differ from those of students in the past, and educational practices should adapt to modern times. But what changes will we see in the relationship between societal transformation and the higher education system? In this research paper, we set out a quantum-based approach in order to analyze this relationship and to advance the understanding about the role that distance education will play in the future. Under this perspective, we provide an illustration that allows for the representation and evaluation of future scenarios.