economic valuation of the threat posed by the establishment of the asian tiger mosquito in australia invasive species policy could be better informed if we understood how much people value reductions in the risks posed by these organisms this study investigates the public s willingness to pay wtp for additional measures to reduce the risk of invasion of the australian mainland by the asian tiger mosquito atm the study contributes to the literature by applying a stated preference method to estimate the public s wtp to reduce the risk of an atm invasion expressed as a change in probability it is the first ex ante invasive species analysis to test over two discrete invasion reduction probabilities based on management effort further to overcome the challenges in valuing changes in probabilities the study presented respondents with a well defined discrete difference in the final probability with one scenario reducing risk from 50 to 25 and the other from 50 to 5 we find a significant difference in the mean wtp values between these two scenarios a 67 vs a 90 the overall conclusion is that estimated benefits of reducing the probability of an atm incursion outweigh the costs

the role of price and nonprice factors in predicting australia s trade performance this article investigates the role of price and nonprice factors in predicting australia s trade performance results broadly suggest that australia s trade performance is largely explained by the

equilibrium exchange rates and supply side performance this paper develops a two country optimising sticky price model of real exchange rate determination in the new open macroeconomics tradition which allows several different forms of deviation from purchasing power parity ppp both along the adjustment path and in the steady state the model has a rich structure and is designed to provide a flexible tool for policy analysis unlike most other papers in the literature both of the key components of the real exchange rate the relative price of non tradables and the terms of trade are made endogenous allowing a more complete analysis of the impact of structural shocks to illustrate one possible application the model is calibrated to match key elements of the uk and euro area economies and used to examine the extent to which possible improvements in the united kingdom s relative supply side performance might account for the sharp and persistent appreciation in sterling since 1996 the results are not supportive of this hypothesis in the model improvements in productivity goods market and labour market competitiveness are all associated with a depreciation in both the spot and the equilibrium real sterling exchange rates two potential supply side sources of an equilibrium appreciation a productivity improvement biased towards traded goods balassa samuelson effect and an anticipated future productivity rise are considered however each is insufficient to account for a long run equilibrium appreciation the latter may account for an initial appreciation of the real exchange rate we conclude by considering further mechanisms that could affect our results

the consumption real exchange rate anomaly with extensive margins abstract this paper investigates a consumption real exchange rate anomaly from the open macroeconomics literature known as the backus smith puzzle we both analytically and quantitatively examine how an expansion of trade along extensive margins can contribute to the puzzle s resolution our argument is based on 1 a wealth effect due to changes in the number of product varieties 2 statistical inefficiency in measuring the number of product varieties and 3 market incompleteness contrary to complete asset markets which in general feature overly strong risk sharing properties changes in the number of product varieties under incomplete markets may produce a wealth effect under high trade elasticity since statistical agencies systematically fail to capture the welfare impact arising from that changes data consistent terms of trade and real exchange rates tend to appreciate due to this positive wealth effect this provides a realistic correlation between data consistent real exchange rates and consumption

technology structural change and bop constrained growth a structuralist toolbox the latin american structuralism las is a significant part of the heterodox tradition in the theory of long run growth with a focus on the problems of developing economies which started their industrialization process when other regions had already accumulated substantial technological capabilities the emergence of a centre periphery system posed specific problems to growth and distribution in laggard economies which las discusses in a systematic way in this paper we presented a simple model which firstly captures key insights of the las school such as the persistency of technological asymmetries and structural heterogeneity secondly it can be used to analyze the impacts of shocks and policies based on how they affect supply side and demand side parameters of the model thirdly it links more closely post keynesian macroeconomics based on the bop constraint with the evolutionary microeconomics concerned with the dynamics of learning lastly it can be used as a toolbox and a teachable model in the analysis of the interactions between structural change technological catching up and long run growth

conceptual framework for regional competitiveness budd l and hirmis a k 2004 conceptual framework for regional competitiveness regional studies38 1007 1020 the concept of territorial competitiveness has gained ground in academic policy and practitioner circles in particular urban competitiveness has generated a large literature however there is a danger that competitiveness at a territorial level becomes a conceptual chimera the essential problem is that territorially based actors and agencies seek to position and maintain the utility of their regions and subregions by reference to a set of measures and indicators that are conceptually suspect and often empirically weak the degree to which regions compete depends on a manifold set of factors the paper proposes a conceptual framework for regional competitiveness based on combining the competitive advantage of firms and the comparative advantage of a regional economy the conceptual transmission mechanism to regional competitiveness combines liebenstein s theory of x inefficiency and aggl

the impact of technology and structural change on export performance in nine developing countries summary this paper focuses on nine large developing countries structural decomposition analysis shows that they tend to concentrate innovative activities in industries stagnating at the world level international trends partly offset national improvements in patent shares the same occurs for world export shares although countries display greater adaptation to world demand econometric analysis suggests that technological activity is related to export gains in high technology sectors if a country expands in industries with increasing technological opportunities in medium technology sectors if it moves away from low opportunity sectors in low technology sectors if it is initially specialized in growing sectors in high tech and low tech sectors export performance is also affected by the growth of technical capabilities foreign direct investments productivity and the initial level of technical skills and in medium tech by the growth rates of foreign direct investments

replacement of agricultural price supports by area payments in the european union and the effects on pesticide use this article determines the contribution of recent european union agricultural policy reforms on the use of pesticides our theoretical model extends the multioutput generalization of the lichtenberg zilberman damage control technology model developed by chambers and lichtenberg our empirical analysis uses farm level data for a sample of french farms results suggest that price effects on the use of pesticides are always more elastic than area payment effects this indicates that policy reforms consisting of a reduction in price supports in favor of area payments may reduce application of crop protection inputs such policy changes which represent a certain degree of decoupling took place under the 1992 common agricultural policy reforms

the value of nonindigenous species risk assessment in international trade abstract managing the introduction of nonindigenous species is becoming a major goal of policy makers at regional national and international scales here we investigate at the national level the ideal design and expected net benefits of a risk assessment program for evaluating the desirability of nonindigenous species imports we show how to enhance the statistical rigor of such a system by correcting a common non random sampling problem encountered in the data this correction enables model output to be interpreted in an economically relevant way and facilitates a theoretically rigorous characterization of the balance between trade and nonindigenous species establishment risk using reptiles and amphibians imported to the u s as a case study we characterize economic outcomes over a range of cases and demonstrate substantial expected returns to such a screening program relative to the current effectively open door policy our results are informative for the current debate in the u s about whether to require federal agencies to apply risk assessment before allowing a species for import the framework presented decomposes a complex argument about risk management into component economic and statistical parts allowing for debate and improved understanding over each element to inform the overall program in a transparent fashion

growth and trade vs trade and growth in the traditional trade literature there is a well developed area analyzing the effect of growth on trade and its reflection on income growth this literature developed already in the 1950s and 1960s generally speaking an interest in the effects of trade on growth has also existed for many years where trade has often been viewed as an engine of growth cases in point are the east asian tigers and japan which have especially benefited from outward looking policies in this paper we analyze the relationship between economic growth and growth in income terms of trade arguing that income terms of trade is a useful concept in analyses of the link between trade and growth our results suggest that fast growing countries have either specialized in sectors with a relatively favorable development with regard to world market prices or they have managed to successively improve quality within sectors thereby avoiding falling terms of trade in spite of large increases in export volumes

real exchange rate fluctuations and the relative importance of nontradables abstract the real exchange rate is one of the most important price variables in macroeconomics as changes in it have implications for both external competitiveness as well as internal sectoral resource allocation this paper decomposes real exchange rate volatility into its two components for a panel of 51 economies over the period 1990 2010 and specifically estimates the relative importance of internal prices in real exchange rate fluctuations unlike other studies this paper goes a step further and examines the role of a set of economic fundamentals in explaining the relative contribution of the non traded component in real exchange rate fluctuations

the econometrics of damage control why specification matters the contribution of damage control agents to production differs fundamentally from that of standard inputs lands labor capital this paper develops an econometric model based on the key characteristics of damage control agents and examines its properties it demonstrates that standard production function specifications overestimate damage control agent productivity and have erroneous implications for the evolution of damage control agent productivity and use in response to changing environments e g the spread of pest resistance it also proposes several alternative specifications and discusses methods for estimating them

the control of invasive species on private property with neighbor to neighbor spillovers invasive pests cross property boundaries property managers may have private incentives to control invasive species despite not having sufficient incentive to fully internalize the external costs of their role in spreading the invasion each property manager has a right to future use of his own property but his property may abut others properties enabling spread of an invasive species the incentives for a foresighted property manager to control invasive species have received little attention we consider the efforts of a foresighted property manager who has rights to future use of a property and has the ability to engage in repeated discrete control activities we find that higher rates of dispersal associated with proximity to neighboring properties reduce the private incentives for control controlling species at one location provides incentives to control at a neighboring location control at neighboring locations are strategic complements and coupled with spatial heterogeneity lead to a weaker link public good problem in which each property owner is unable to fully appropriate the benefits of his own control activity future use rights and private costs suggest that there is scope for a series of coase like exchanges to internalize much of the costs associated with species invasion pigouvian taxes on invasive species potentially have qualitatively perverse behavioral effects a tax with a strong income effect e g failure of effective revenue recycling can reduce the value of property assets and diminish the incentive to manage insects on one s own property

the 45 rule revisited the purpose of this note is to update and reconsider the 45 rule or thirlwall s law by applying cointegration techniques to export equations based on national accounts data for 16 countries the income demand elasticities derived on this basis are fairly close to those found earlier whereas the relative price elasticities are much lower with the marshall lerner condition satisfied for only few of the 16 countries more important to the validity of the 45 rule is that the conditions for cointegration are not satisfied suggesting that the equations are misspecified and that current external accounts are non stationary when analysing this issue further it appears that the reasons for the apparent breakdown of the 45 rule can be traced to developments in the 1970s and 1980s when countries were exposed to major changes in their terms of trade and real effective exchange rates

an investigation into the power of insiders in wage determination abstract this paper is concerned with the role of insider forces in wage determination various union and non union models of wage behaviour are considered and they imply that wages are a convex combination of internal and external factors certain union models also imply a degree of hysteresis data on fourteen british production industries reveal that i insider forces are important ii their importance is directly related to both union power and the degree of monopoly in the product market iii the state of the aggregate labour market is also important and iv hysteresis effects arising from insider power are only significant in a small minority of sectors

is there persistence in the growth of manufactured exports evidence from newly industrializing countries abstract applying cointegration techniques in a panel data setting we document persistent growth of manufactured exports from certain developing countries to complement the investigation of persistence measured by the country fixed effects we analyze asymmetries in income elasticities for all developing countries the decline in exports with world income contraction is sharper than is the rise on the upswing the decline is however especially pronounced for countries with low or negative persistence the results are consistent with long term buyer supplier relationships that create insiders and outsiders in manufactured goods trading exports are also influenced by the transactional infrastructure proxied by telecommunications penetration

how product innovation in the north may immiserize the south a new look at the ricardian model with a continuum of goods abstract the paper proposes a theoretical model investigating the welfare consequences of technological shocks in a ricardian framework a la dornbush fisher and samuelson 1977 contrary to the existing literature the model incorporates a nonhomothetic demand function whose price and income elasticities are endogenously determined by technology nonhomothetic preferences are modeled as the result of the hierarchical consumption of luxury and necessity goods the nature of technical progress determines the consumption pattern and notably the magnitude of the substitution effect between necessities and luxuries the model is applied to the case of trade between two economies with different development levels it is shown in particular that the developing country can suffer a fall in utility as a result of technical progress in the developed country biased towards luxury goods this configuration depends on the size of the development gap and reflects the fact that southern goods are less attractive the higher the range of goods consumed this result suggests that there is an optimal level of development gap to avoid ldcs being harmed by technical progress in the north

the empirical modelling of nie exports an evaluation of different approaches this article investigates the current debate regarding the robustness of estimates of export demand and supply elasticities for ldcs and nies obtained by recent empirical studies the empirical findings reported in the article suggest that price elasticities of demand are indeed low and that there are strong and significant income effects on export demand furthermore using a variety of modelling approaches we demonstrate that the choice of estimation method and normalisation need not lead to drastically different conclusions regarding the size of the price elasticity of demand for nie exports whilst this points against the small country assumption usually made regarding ldc nie exports we argue that the preferred development strategy for ldcs need not necessarily be an inward oriented one this is because the large estimated income market growth elasticities in the demand equations may be due to the presence of supply side influences which have been the focus of attention of the new theories of i

the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy linking an econometric model with theory in this paper the authors outline a method termed theoretical reconstruction which allows the system properties of any econometric macromodel to be related to a simpler theoretical model first elements of the econometric model which involve significant additional theoretical complexity compared to the theory model are removed this process continues until the properties of the deconstructed econometric model match those of the reference theory second the econometric model is gradually reconstructed noting at each point how each element of additional complexity influences the model properties the technique is illustrated using fiscal policy changes and the u k econometric model compact coauthors are julia darby jonathan ireland and ottavio ricchi

an alternative explanation of india s growth transition a demand side hypothesis this paper formalises the balance of payments constrained bpc growth model in a two regime framework to re examine india s growth transition in 1980 from a demand side perspective as an alternative to the supply oriented approaches of previous studies the results provide strong evidence of a demand led growth transition although the government led expenditure strategy of the 1980s fulfilled the role of moving the indian economy out of its slow growing demand regime 1952 79 into a faster growing one it could not sustain demand growth at the natural rate due to a balance of payments constraint consistent with the prediction of the bpc growth model faster export growth in the post 1990 liberalisation period sustained demand growth at its maximum rate by allowing expenditure including government spending to grow at a fast rate the analysis further suggests that india s export surge in the post 1990 liberalisation period has a significant demand side explanation rather than an exclusively supply side interpretation

will there be a dollar crisis almost everyone believes that the us current account deficit must eventually end and that this end will involve dollar depreciation however many believe that this depreciation will take place gradually this paper shows that any process of gradual dollar decline fast enough to prevent the accumulation of implausible levels of us external debt would impose capital losses on investors much larger than they currently expect as a result there will at some point have to be a wile e coyote moment a point at which expectations are revised and the dollar drops sharply it is much less clear however whether this crisis will produce macroeconomic problems paul krugman

varieties and the transfer problem the extensive margin of current account adjustment varieties and the transfer problem the extensive margin of current account adjustment most analyses of the macroeconomic adjustment required to correct global imbalances ignore net exports of new varieties of goods and services and do not account for firms net entry in the product market in this paper we revisit the macroeconomics of trade adjustment in the context of the classic transfer problem using a model where the set of exportables importables and nontraded goods is endogenous we show that exchange rate movements associated with adjustment are dramatically lower when the above features are accounted for relative to traditional macromodels we also find that for reasonable parameterizations consumption and employment hence welfare are not highly sensitive to product differentiation and change little regardless of whether adjustment occurs through movements in relative prices or quantities this result warns against interpreting the size of real depreciation associated with trade rebalancing as an index of macroeconomic distress jel classification f32 and f41

exchange rate pass through at the product level we use a detailed database to investigate exchange rate pass through at the product level for a large number of countries the empirical analysis suggests that pricing behaviours are dichotomous with complete pass through in around 25 of sectors and significant pricing to market in the remaining ones average long run pass through coef ficient is close to 80 this result hides a strong heterogeneity of pass through behaviours across sectors even when composition effects are controlled for average pass through varies across importing countries the econometric analysis shows that pass through tends to be higher in volatile environments in less developed countries in weakly integrated markets jel classification f12 f31 f41

the contribution of genetic modification to changes in corn yield in the united states we use a large rich dataset compiled from results of university extension trials to estimate the contribution of genetic modification gm to changes in corn yield in the united states from timea to timeb through repeated experimental trials we obtain consistent estimates of the effect of these traits by using both the hausman taylor estimator and a comparison of fixed effects estimates analogous to the agronomic practice of comparing near isolines our results suggest that gm traits had a positive impact on yield but that gains associated with combining several gm traits in one hybrid are not necessarily additive

wage interactions comparisons or fall back options this paper examines the degree to which the importance of wages elsewhere in wage determination stems from comparisons made by workers as opposed to re ecting unions fall back options in the bargaining process the di culty of distinguishing these hypotheses is shown in the context of a bargaining model

the role of fairness in wage determination neoclassical wage theory is based on the premise that a worker s utility is based on his own wage and his own hours of work without reference to the wages and hours of others this article reviews anecdotal evidence that the wages of others are a powerful force in determining worker satisfaction such that utility goes down when the wages of others go up the resulting comparisons are a powerful force in determining wage structure but do not exclude ultimate effect of neoclassical wage determinants

accounting for supply integration and income in foreign trade this paper provides alternative estimates of export and import demand functions it is suggested that previous estimates of export and import functions may be biased since they ignore factors such as the integration of markets through customs unions and supply effects the results in this paper reveal that when these factors are incorporated into the model the estimated income elasticities of exports and imports decline substantially and trade flows are found to be more responsive to unanticipated variations in income the analysis further reveals that the degree of integration in markets is closely linked to the level of economic growth

real exchange rate assessment in the gcc countries a trade elasticities approach this article adopts new panel econometric methods to assess real exchange rate alignment with economic fundamentals in the countries of the gulf cooperation council gcc using a theoretical approach popularized by paul krugman in the late 1980s results from panel econometric applications of the krugman model yield low levels of real exchange rate undervaluation in the gcc countries although indicating persistence of undervaluation albeit statistically low into the medium term they also show that the recent real exchange rate undervaluation could be characterized as due to short run frictions and adjustment costs associated with continued depreciation of the us dollar to which gcc countries currencies are pegged further failure to find supporting evidence for the marshall lerner condition underscores the propriety of using fiscal policy rather than exchange rate policy to address recent inflationary pressures and help resolve lingering global financial imbalances

economic growth and balance of payments constraint in brazil an analysis of the 1995 2013 period abstract the purpose of this work is to analyze the balance of payments constrained growth in brazil considering thirwall s law 1979 to this end we estimate export and import demand functions using two econometric models vector error correction and structural state space model for the period of 1995 2013 our results suggest that the balance of payments is a constraint to the brazilian economic growth given i the ratio between exports and imports income elasticities ii the low sensitivity of exports to changes in the real exchange rate and iii the evidence that exports are more sensitive to alterations in commodities prices than to changes in the real exchange rate

the transformation of competitive advantage in east asia an analysis of technological and trade specialisation summary in recent years there has been considerable interest in the relationship between a country s export competitiveness and the role played by technology in strengthening and maintaining competitive advantage a central feature of recent empirical work mainly focused on the oecd countries has rested on examining patterns of export and technological specialization between economies and sectors this paper moves attention away from the advanced industrialized economies to examine the trends for trade and technological specialization among the east asian developing economies in particular two aspects of specialization are examined first to what extent have patterns of competitive advantage changed over time and second to measure the relationship between patterns of trade and technological specialization important differences are found in the patterns of specialization and in the relationship between them among the advanced east asian economies and those catching up

the adjustment of canadian import demand to changes in income prices and exchange rates the paper provides estimates of the sensitivity of canadian import demand to changes in income prices and exchange rates the model specification allows for the con sideration of long run elasticities as well as the dynamics of short run adjustment of imports to changes in these variables the estimated long run elasticities obtained are similar to those in previous studies it is also shown that canadian imports react quickly to changes in either foreign or domestic prices but that the reaction to changes in exchange rates is much slower

the sectoral and regional economic consequences of outdoor air pollution to 2060 abstract this paper provides an assessment of the costs of inaction of outdoor air pollution in the coming decades focusing on the market impacts relative to additional health expenditures changes in labour productivity and crop yield losses the results show that the global economic costs of outdoor air pollution gradually increase to 1 of global gdp by 2060 with highest gdp losses in china the caspian region and eastern europe these economic consequences stem from a combination of exposure to high concentrations aging population and relatively high pollution related health expenditures that crowd out other consumption and savings while the direct costs of these market impacts grow more or less at the same pace as total economic activity the indirect economic costs induced by these impacts become increasingly significant over time numerical results are more sensitive to the specification of the feedbacks to the economic model than to the parameter values used in calibrating the impacts the most optimistic specifications lead to significantly lower costs of air pollution but qualitative conclusions on the sign of effects and ordering of regional consequences are robust non market damages especially the welfare losses from premature deaths are potentially an order of magnitude larger than the market damages that this paper focuses on but those do not directly affect the economy these findings on the costs of inaction of outdoor air pollution underline the need for policy action that would reduce the health and environmental impacts as well as lead to economic benefits

income induced expenditure switching abstract this paper shows that an income effect can drive expenditure switching between domestic and imported goods we use a unique latvian scanner level dataset covering the 2008 2009 crisis to document several empirical findings first expenditure switching accounted for one third of the fall in imports and took place within narrowly defined product groups second there was no corresponding within group change in relative prices third consumers substituted from expensive imports to cheaper domestic alternatives these findings motivate us to estimate a model of nonhomothetic consumer demand which explains two thirds of the observed expenditure switching estimated switching is driven by income not changes in relative prices jel e21 f14 f31 f32 i11 l81

differences in income elasticities and trends in real exchange rates abstract one might expect that differences in income elasticities in trade and or differences in growth rates among countries would give rise to strong secular trends in real exchange rates for example fast growing countries might need steady depreciation to get the world to accept their growing exports in fact however income elasticities are systematically related to growth rates by the 45 degree rule under which fast growing countries appear to face high income elasticities of demand for their exports while having low income elasticities of import demand the net effect of this relationship between elasticities and growth rates is that secular trends in real exchange rates are much smaller than one might otherwise have expected relative ppp holds fairly well this paper documents the existence of a 45 degree rule and suggests an explanation in terms of increasing returns and product differentiation

choosing between adaptation and prevention with an increasing probability of a pandemic abstract the risk of pandemics is increasing driven by changes in human behavior and climate both of which are difficult for policymakers to control there are two main strategies available for reacting to these changes this paper considers the decision to invest in either adaptation domestic capital or prevention foreign capital before a pandemic in an interval of time when pandemic risk is increasing this paper demonstrates how relatively small investments in the two strategies can provide large savings through smaller expected future damages the technical relationships between adaptation prevention and risk also determine the optimal mixture of investment over time as risk increases the technical relationships between these three stocks causes the optimal mixture of strategies to change over time

pests and pesticides risk and risk aversion abstract theoretical and applied literature on risk in decision making for agricultural pest control is reviewed risk can affect pesticide decision making either because of risk aversion or because of its influence on expected profit it is concluded that risk does not necessarily lead to increased pesticide use by individual farmers uncertainty about some variables such as pest density and pest mortality does lead to higher optimal pesticide use under risk aversion however uncertainty about other important variables such as output price and yield leads to lower optimal levels of pesticide use neglect of these variables in most studies has led to the false assumption that pesticides are always risk reducing inputs furthermore there is evidence that in general the pesticide dosage which maximises expected profit is lower under risk than under certainty depending on the balance of forces to increase and decrease pesticide use under risk in many circumstances the net effect of risk on optimal decision making for pest control may be minimal the effect on risk of information about pest density and other variables as in integrated pest management programmes is discussed evidence on this issue is mixed a range of analytical techniques for analysing risk in pest control is reviewed throughout the paper gaps in the existing literature are identified

the effect of skilled emigration on real exchange rates through the wage channel abstract building on an analytical model we provide cross country empirical evidence that net skilled emigration appreciates bilateral real exchange rates through the wage channel in source countries chains of causality in the presence of the law of one price run through the spending effect and the resource allocation effect analogous to the remittance based dutch disease effect a pricing to market model allows pass through for both traded and nontraded prices when the law of one price is violated the skilled emigration elasticity of real exchange rate is estimated to be in the range of between 0 6 and 0 8 with internal prices playing a dominant role alternative model specifications show robust outcomes

the econometrics of damage control lichtenberg and zilberman argue correctly that when biological and physical processes are considered we are able to delineate two components of actual realized crop yields potential output the maximum quantity of product obtainable from any given combination of inputs and losses caused by damaging agents present in the environment p 262 they further argue that damage control agents should be defined in terms of their contribution to the abatement effort and hence should enter the production function as an argument of the damage abatement function to demonstrate the consequences of their claims lichtenberg and zilberman make an ad hoc choice of a cobb douglas functional form for crop yield exogenous factors such as pest prevalence and weather conditions are ignored although they note that omission of these environmental factors will result in misspecification of the production relationship p 267

varieties and the transfer problem abstract we revisit the classic transfer problem accounting for two channels of adjustment increased trade in existing goods and services the intensive margin and net creation and destruction of product varieties the extensive margin over the medium term the latter reduces the scope for real exchange rate and terms of trade variability in response to cross border flows we embed our transfer analysis in popular models of current account adjustment where initial imbalances are driven by domestic demand for or foreign supply of net saving possibly associated with over optimistic expectations simulation exercises based on 2006 data suggest that a transfer of the size of the pre crisis u s current account deficit may require only moderate trend depreciation in real terms and that the aggregate welfare impact of the transfer is disconnected from the size of the relative price correction

take a risk preferring prevention over control of biological invaders abstract scientists have argued that invasive species can be managed most cost effectively with greater investments in prevention further under ideas like the precautionary principle it is reasonable to expect that a cautious manager would use more prevention relative to control because it keeps more invaders out yet this is not typically done in many cases private and public resources are invested primarily to control existing invaders rather than to prevent new invasions managers frequently wait until after invaders have arrived and then scramble to limit the damages we believe these paradoxical decisions can be understood by recognizing the link between typical human preferences for risk bearing and the technology of risk reduction we demonstrate quantitatively how managers perceived to be cautious or averse to risk tend to shy away from prevention relative to control this counterintuitive result arises because control is a safer choice than prevention because its productivity is relatively less risky it works to remove existing invaders from the system in contrast the productivity of prevention is more uncertain because prevention only reduces the chance of invasion it does not eliminate it and invasion may not occur even in the absence of prevention managers averse to risk will inherently avoid as much uncertainty as possible whether the source of uncertainty regards ecological outcomes or economic productivity implications for environmental decision making are clear in invasive species management if managers act as though they are risk averse their caution can backfire when it leads to more control rather than prevention the social consequences of this choice are a greater probability of future invasions and lower social welfare our results suggest that social welfare is highest when managers were willing to take a risk with prevention

a portfolio balancing approach to natural capital and liabilities managing livestock and wildlife diseases with cross species transmission researchers often refer to stocks of desirable natural resources as natural capital and stocks of undesirable species as natural liabilities the logical extension is that when these natural resources interact then the ecosystem is a collection or portfolio of natural capital and liabilities however natural capital and liabilities held in an ecosystem portfolio are more complex to manage than financial asset portfolios the key problem in a financial asset portfolio is adjusting the rates of return on assets for risk and correlation of risk in contrast the returns on natural assets and liabilities require many other adjustments arising from stock related returns and depreciation that endogenously depend on both stocks and controls including interactions among these variables this means ecosystem portfolio analysis extends beyond the consideration of uncertainty and involves understanding complex economic ecological tradeoffs even in a deterministic setting we use capital theory in the context of a deterministic bioeconomic model of valuable wildlife livestock and a pathogen that can be passed between them to develop a portfolio balancing approach to understanding the tradeoffs associated with ecosystem management this specific ecosystem is highly relevant to conservation health and livestock agriculture within the context of this example we also explore issues of mitigation and adaptation to disease risks and the management implications of cross species transmission a final contribution is to examine how exports and infection risks influence the ecological thresholds that epidemiologists often focus on to guide disease management

inventory accumulation wages and employment this paper analyzes the effect of inventory accumulation on the outcome of wage and employment agreements between a union and a firm a two period model is set up with bargaining in each period and the paper analyzes under what circumstances inventories will be held even if demand and production conditions are constant it is found that inventories have an important strategic role they bring forward employment and strengthen the bargaining position of the firm in the later period however the firm s strategic use of inventories will generally be to the detriment of both parties copyright 1991 by royal economic society

an analysis of the disaggregated manufacturing exports of the asian nies to eec usa and japan this paper examines the export performance of the four asian newly industrialized economics nies by modelling their bilateral export flows to three main oecd blocks the usa japan and the european community our estimated export demand models reveal interesting asymmetries between these three areas of destination which do not emerge from previous aggregate empirical studies of nie export performance

relative wages efficiency wages and keynesian unemployment while modern economic theorists have produced a variety of explanations for the failure of wages to fall in the face of unemployment keynes emphasis on relative wages has not been reflected in most contemporary discussions this short paper suggests that relative wage theories in which workers productivity depends primarily on their relative wage provide the best available apparatus for understanding actual unemployment and its fluctuations such theories are very closely related to the efficiency wage theories that have received widespread attention in recent years this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

moving forward balancing the financial and emotional costs of business failure why do owner managers delay business failure when it is financially costly to do so in this paper we acknowledge that delaying business failure can be financially costly to the owner manager and the more costly the delay the more difficult the recovery but we complement this financial perspective by introducing the notion of anticipatory grief as a mechanism for reducing the level of grief triggered by the failure event which reduces the emotional costs of business failure we propose that under some circumstances delaying business failure can help balance the financial and emotional costs of business failure to enhance an owner manager s overall recovery some persistence may be beneficial to recovery and promote subsequent entrepreneurial action

inequality and the us import demand function in this paper we build a model of trade in vertically differentiated products and find that income inequality can affect the demand for imports even in the presence of homothetic preferences the empirical importance of changes in inequality on the demand for imports is then assessed by examining panel data for 36 developing and developed countries for the 1980 1997 period we find significant evidence supporting our prediction that inequality has a large influence on the demand for imports moreover we find that in line with the predictions of our theoretical model this influence is positive for high income countries countries that produce the high quality variety of the vertically differentiated product and negative for low income countries countries that produce the low quality variety of the vertically differentiated product

the sectoral and regional economic consequences of climate change to 2060 this paper presents a new detailed global quantitative assessment of the economic consequences of climate change i e climate damages to 2060 the analysis is based on an assessment of a wide range of impacts changes in crop yields loss of land and capital due to sea level rise changes in fisheries catches capital damages from hurricanes labour productivity changes and changes in health care expenditures from diseases and heat stress changes in tourism flows and changes in energy demand for cooling and heating a multi region multi sector dynamic computable general equilibrium model is used to link different impacts until 2060 directly to specific drivers of economic growth including labour productivity capital stocks and land supply as well as assess the indirect effects these impacts have on the rest of the economy and on the economies of other countries it uses a novel production function approach to identify which aspects of economic activity are directly affected by climate change the model results show that damages are projected to rise twice as fast as global economic activity global annual gross domestic product losses are projected to be 1 0 3 3 by 2060 of the impacts that are modelled impacts on labour productivity and agriculture are projected to have the largest negative economic consequences damages from sea level rise grow most rapidly after the middle of the century damages to energy and tourism are very small from a global perspective as benefits in some regions balance damages in others climate induced damages from hurricanes may have significant effects on local communities but the macroeconomic consequences are projected to be very small net economic consequences are projected to be especially large in africa and asia where the regional economies are vulnerable to a range of different climate impacts for some countries in higher latitudes economic benefits can arise from gains in tourism energy and health the global assessment also shows that countries that are relatively less affected by climate change may reap trade gains

choice under uncertainty problems solved and unsolved ffifteen years ago the theory of choice under uncertainty could be considered one of the success stories of economic analysis it rested on solid axiomatic foundations it had seen important breakthroughs in the analytics of risk risk aversion and their applications to economic issues and it stood ready to provide the theoretical underpinnings for the newly emerging information revolution in economics 1 today choice under uncertainty is a field in flux the standard theory is being challenged on several grounds from both within and outside economics the nature of these challenges and of our profession s responses to them is the topic of this paper

openness government size and the terms of trade this paper investigates the relationship between trade openness and the size ofngovernments both theoretically and empirically we argue that openness can increase the size of governments through two channels 1 a terms of trade externality whereby trade lowers the domestic cost of taxation and 2 the demand for insurance whereby trade raises risk and public transfers we provide a unified framework for studying and testing these two mechanisms our main theoretical prediction is that the relative strength of the two explanations depends on a key parameter namely the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods moreover while the first mechanism is inefficient from the standpoint of world welfare the second is instead optimal in the empirical part of the paper we provide new evidence on the positive association between openness and government size and we explore its determinants consistently with the terms of trade externality channel we show that the correlation is contingent on a low elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods our findings raise warnings that globalization may have led to inefficiently large governments

a structural economic dynamics approach to balance of payments constrained growth this paper derives a balance of payments equilibrium growth rate analogous to thirlwall s law from a pasinettian multi sector macrodynamic framework the resulting formula which we call the multi sectoral thirlwall s law asserts that a country s growth rate of per capita income is directly proportional to the growth rate of its exports with such a proportionality being inversely directly related to sectoral income elasticities of demand for imports exports these income elasticities are weighted by coefficients that measure the share of each sector in total imports and exports respectively it is shown that several theoretical empirical and policy implications can be drawn from such a structural economic dynamics approach to balance of payments constrained growth

drivers of export demand a focus on the giips countries this study investigates the drivers of export demand in the peripheral economies of the euro area namely greece ireland italy portugal and spain giips for the period between 1980 and 2012 recently several authors have pointed out that changes in trade export shares are not associated with major terms of trade disturbances rather they are the result of other underlying factors commonly defined as non price competitiveness starting from this premise the study extends the traditional imperfect substitute trade model to include a measure of non price competitiveness real capital stock the latter is a measure of a country s total resource base and captures the presence of product differentiation and product innovation the results show a significant link between export demand and cumulative investments in the short term giips exports are dominated by the movements of worldwide real income while changes in price and non competitiveness take longer to affect export performance in the long run all three variables play a significant role in pushing exports

reference norms staggered wages and wage leadership theoretical implications and empirical evidence this article presents an extension of the taylor model with staggered wages in which wage setting is also influenced by reference norms we show that reference norms can considerably increase the persistence of inflation but that the size of this effect depends on the exact definition e g external vs internal symmetric vs asymmetric norms using data on collectively bargained wages in austria from 1980 to 2006 we show that wage setting is strongly influenced by reference norms that external norms seem to matter more than internal norms and that there is a clear indication for the existence of wage leadership asymmetric norms

economic incentives for managing filterable biological pollution risks from trade infectious livestock disease problems are biological pollution problems prior work on biological pollution problems generally examines the efficient allocation of prevention and control efforts but does not identify the specific externalities underpinning the design of efficiency enhancing policy instruments prior analyses also focus on problems where those being damaged do not contribute to externalities we examine a problem where the initial biological introduction harms the importer and then others are harmed by spread from this importer here the externality is the spread of infection beyond the initial importer this externality is influenced by the importer s private risk management choices which provide impure public goods that reduce disease spillovers to others making disease spread a filterable externality we derive efficient policy incentives to internalize filterable disease externalities given uncertainties about introduction and spread we find efficiency requires incentivizing an importer s trade choices along with self protection and abatement efforts in contrast to prior work that targets trade alone perhaps surprisingly we find these incentives increase with importers private risk management incentives and with their ability to directly protect others in cases where importers can spread infection to each other we find filterable externalities may lead to multiple nash equilibria

real exchange rate and elasticity of labour supply in a balance of payments constrained macrodynamics a macrodynamic model is proposed in which the real exchange rate and the elasticity of labour supply interact defining different trajectories of growth and income distribution in a developing economy growth depends on imports of capital goods which are paid with exports there are no capital flows and hence is constrained by equilibrium in current account the role of the elasticity of labour supply is to prevent the real exchange rate from appreciating as the economy grows thereby sustaining international competitiveness the model allows for endogenous technological change and considers the impact of migration from the subsistence to the modern sector on the cumulative kaldor verdoorn process of learning copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

ten years of manufacturing wage settlements 1979 89 the purpose of this paper is to examine the pattern wamed in 1985 and outcomes of wage settlements in british there seems to be neither a social nor economic rationale manufacturing industry during the 1980s the period for the present level of pay settlements the combination since 1979 represents the longest sustained period f very unemployment and a union movement in of free collective bargaining in the post war years disarray might have been expected to cause manage with the removal of explicit norms or guide posts ment t0 lake a ralher hard nosed attitude t0 labour to the outcome of periodic negotiations over wage costs financial times leader the pantomime over pnv nnvpmhpr 1 changes the pattern of wage increases generated by y the process of company and plant level pay settlements this paper addresses the outcomes of pay determi should reveal a great deal about the behaviour of nation since the return to free collective bargaining and influences that bear on pay determination and seeks to focus on the influences impacting on despite the absence of incomes policy throughout or the rationale for those outcomes and looks at the 1980s the outcome of wage negotiations none how these have changed over the last decade