The day's events kicked off on Monday afternoon with a pro-celebrity football match in the Blanchflower Stadium on the Holywood Road in Belfast.

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Footballer Danny Blanchflower refused to appear in the 1950s and author Richard Gordon also backed out but was later persuaded to take part.

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But studies of these programmes offer only lukewarm support, according to David Bell of the University of Stirling and David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College.

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But there are prominent naysayers too, notably David Blanchflower, a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee, and Lord Skidelsky - a former Conservative peer, now a cross bencher.

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However, former monetary policy committee member Professor David Blanchflower told the BBC that a spell of higher inflation would benefit the UK economy, suggesting that 4% would be a "pretty good starting point".

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David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee who now works in the US, believes that, with many of the details still to be agreed, there is a danger the plan could further damage a struggling US economy.

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Another former U.K. rate-setter and arch-dove, David Blanchflower, has pointed out that even if nominal-GDP targeting was a good idea in theory, it is a bad idea in practice because nominal GDP is hard to measure and prone to large revisions.

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