making the same mistake again or is this time different the world faces an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions but much of the policy response has certainly not lacked for precedent national governments and international organisations including the international monetary fund imf have looked to crises of the past for solutions to the present and austerity has become a familiar theme the inability to effectively resolve the current crisis however gives rise to the question is this time different this article provides a broad overview to the origins and development of the recent economic crisis and the resort to policies of austerity although there is historical precedent for the resort to austerity such as the uk treasury view during the 1920s and 1930s this time things are different many of the current problems are deeply rooted and reflect the impact of the shift towards free market economics that started in the 1970s 2 the origins of the crisis since the beginning of the 1970s the private sector finance in particular has reorganised on an increasingly global scale it has innovated in terms of both structure and products and it has experienced significant growth as tridico 2012 this issue shows this financialisation was characterised by a ballooning of stock exchanges as many firms decided not only to list their shares but also to become involved in speculative finance in response to pressures on firms to maximise shareholder value together with the progressive erosion of worker and trade union rights and influence labour markets became more flexible and real wages stagnated concurrently profits rebounded leading to burgeoning inequality in this context aggregate demand and consumption were bolstered by easy credit and the wealth effects of speculative bubbles first in stocks and shares and then in housing

measuring returns to scale in dea models when the firm is regulated in the standard framework of data envelopment analysis dea models the returns to scale are fully characterized using the multiplier on the convexity constraint of inefficient decision making units dmu using the projection of the input output vector on the frontier in this note we investigate how the returns to scale measurements in dea models are affected by the presence of regulatory constraints these additional constraints change the role played by the convexity constraint in order to avoid biased estimation of the returns to scale we show that the interaction between the regulatory and the convexity constraints has to be taken into account

the role of the media in fiscal consolidation programmes the case of ireland a number of european countries have implemented austerity programmes since the onset of the current economic crisis this paper focuses on fiscal consolidation a central aspect of such programmes using the case of ireland it investigates the significant role of the mass media in presenting such policies to the public a role which has so far remained unexamined conceiving of the irish experience over the past few decades as a case of neoliberalisation it uses a critical political economic conceptualisation of news organisations to consider 431 editorials and opinion articles discussing fiscal consolidation in three leading irish newspapers between 2008 and 2012 it finds that the majority of articles present viewpoints in favour of fiscal consolidation and display a preference for spending cuts over tax hikes which substantiates the claim that ireland has adopted neoliberal policies to address the crisis only a minority of articles oppose fiscal consolidation these mostly contest specific spending cuts but usually fail to criticise fiscal consolidation itself by calling for economic alternatives such as keynesian stimulus differences between newspapers are also discussed highlighting their ideological cleavages

is perfect competition an empirically inadequate model this paper examines the empirical content of the neoclassical theory of the firm the main models perfect competition monopolistic competition pure monopoly are specified in terms of observable anomalies these models are then tested against data and against each other the findings pave the way for an appraisal of the empirical status of the perfectly competitive model relative to the data and relative to the other neoclassical models

opec and the international oil market can a cartel fuel the engine of economic development abstract the opec cartel was formed to promote two economic goals one microeconomic low oil market volatility the other macroeconomic promotes economic development of its members these goals create a tension since the cartel s single tool is output quotas using this dual micro macro perspective we analyze oil exporting countries behavior we find that the effects of the cartel s choices will be reflected in oil market stability long term macroeconomic development and international oil market structure if an oil producing country cares about both oil industry profits and macroeconomic stability the goal of output stability may be inconsistent with cartel membership

is the end of fiscal austerity feasible in spain an alternative plan to the current stability programme 2015 2018 the spanish authorities have implemented strongly restrictive fiscal policies with a negative impact on gdp and employment especially during the recession of 2011 2013 this paper shows that the end of fiscal austerity is feasible for spain adopting a functional finance approach to fiscal policy and making a partial use of the idea of balanced budget expansion we present an alternative fiscal policy for the years 2016 2018 which is not focused on deficit reduction but on employment creation and on the development of social and structural policies aimed at a real transformation of the spanish economy the two main components of this plan are a progressive fiscal reform to increase public revenue over gdp and a simultaneous increase in the ratio of public expenditure over gdp with the aid of a three equation model this paper proves that an alternative plan to austerity can be not only expansionary but also fully compatible with fiscal sustainability the choice then lies between prioritising either the rate at which unemployment is reduced or at which public deficit is reduced

entry exit and performance in airline markets abstract data from the airline industry indicate that 1 entry generally is not induced by price levels substantially above the norm 2 entry reduces fares and increases output and exit increases fares and reduces output and 3 incumbents cut price and maintain output in response to entry and survivors increase both price and output in response to exit these findings cast doubt on the ability of entry to prevent or reverse price increases from anticompetitive mergers

towards a testable model of entry a study of the us manufacturing industries this paper develops a simple model of firms entry decisions fits it to interindustry data and tests hypotheses related to contestability theory it is shown that entry increases with the profit level of incumbents holding fixed the expected losses that the entrant would suffer in the event of exit these expected losses are greater the higher the probability of a predatory incumbent response and the larger the sunk costs that must be committed by the entrant the effects of sunk costs are significant and incumbents are significantly more likely to react aggressively when they are both profitable and concentrated copyright 1990 by the london school of economics and political science

sunk costs financial markets and contestability abstract this paper analyzes the proposition that the theory or contestable markets will yield good predictions for markets in which sunk costs although present are unimportant two results are of interest 1 if costs are at all sunk incumbent firms will be able to engage in strategic behavior with respect to entrants 2 if no costs are sunk but firms finance investment by borrowing incumbent firms will be able to engage in strategic behavior with respect to entrants in these cases one must analyze strategic behavior of incumbent firms to analyze market performance

toward a public choice theory of monopoly regulation its many dimensions from the perspective of market economics this new thrust was consolidated in 1976 by s peltzman who developed a formal market model in which regulations were viewed as commodities brokered via political markets in response to bids and counter bids by those who stood to gain or to lose from specific regulation outcomes the subsequent contribution by becker 1983 added insights and institutional flesh to the stigler peltzman embryo confirming regulation as an integral component of mainstream market economics an important implication of such contributions especially those from the chicago perspective is that regulation for the most part confirms resource efficiency within market process that political markets in the absence of entry barriers are just as effective as are competitive commodity markets in achieving economic efficiency defined within a comparative institutions framework nowhere is this complacency more apparent than in the conclusion drawn by becker 1983 from a detailed formal analysis of competition among pressure groups for political influence

antitrust and technological innovation in the us ideas institutions decisions and impacts 1890 2000 abstract the history of antitrust policy in the us as it relates to technological innovation exhibits major swings every few decades between favoring concentration and favoring deconcentration this paper sketches for each period the contending ideas that frame antitrust technology policy debates the salience of these ideas in the larger antitrust policy process the institutions for agenda setting and decision making in this area the policy decisions themselves and more speculatively the impacts of these decisions on technological innovation and industrial development the paper concludes with a preliminary attempt to identify the cyclical secular and static processes that have shaped the history of this policy area and to use this analysis to inform future policy makers

evaluating the uncertainty in estimates of the economic impacts of bovine leukosis virus in u s dairy cows an examination of the economic impacts of bovine leukosis virus indicated that reduced milk production attributed to the presence of bovine leukosis virus in dairy cows reduced consumer surplus by 2 7 2 3 billion us bus and resulted in a total partial equilibrium loss of 720 560 million us mus to the u s economy in 1996 most of the economic surplus lost by consumers was transferred to producers whose economic surplus increased by 2 0 1 8 bus as a result of reduced milk production attributed to the presence of bovine leukosis virus in dairy cattle uncertainty analysis showed that an estimate of the milk production decline per percent increase in the prevalence of bovine leukosis virus in dairy cows accounted for most of the uncertainty in the economic impact estimates if bovine leukosis virus had not been present in u s dairy cows then milk production would have increased by 2 0 billion 1 5 billion kg the price would have fallen by 3 8 3 2 cents kg and the value of the milk produced would have decreased by 2 1 1 9 bus guidelines delineated by the international organization for standardization for evaluating and expressing uncertainty in measurement are discussed and proposed for use in the context of broad national estimates for which the economic impacts of bovine leukosis virus serve as an example the principal advantages of the methodology are the clarity and transparency of results and the ability clearly to identify major uncertainty contributors

hedonic cost models and the pricing of milk components to assess likely producer response to milk price reform we examine the technology of protein butterfat and fluid carrier production on 1 924 u s dairy farms a variant of a hedonic cost model is proposed in which the output aggregator is expressed as a function of total output and of the percentage concentrations of its components dairy farmers have responded rationally to artificially low protein prices due to the cow s appetite limit farmers operate in stage i of feed to milk production functions yet protein s marginal cost rises sharply with protein output only modest substitutability is evident among feed inputs or milk component outputs

price changes supply elasticities industry organization and dairy output distribution long run price elasticities of milk supply are decomposed into price elasticities of yield herd size and farm population for northeastern u s dairy farms these elasticities are shown to vary with farm size because of size related differences in capital intensity specialization yield and herd size variability and rates of entry exit into dairy in the short run price responsiveness is shown to decrease with farm size in the long run large farms are shown to be most price responsive results suggest that lower milk prices could make revenue distribution less equal in both the short and long run by altering output and population distributions

classical unemployment accommodation policies and the adjustment of real wages a model of wage formation and stabilization policy in economies with strong trade unions is developed the analysis provides a theoretical underpinning for the assertion that accommodation policies may cause wage inflation and ultimately reduce employment various methods of accomplishing a real wage adjustment are discussed i a policy of complete nonaccommodation 2 continued accommodation policies but with lower employment targets 3 social contracts and 4 tax based incomes policies tip

alternative interpretations of a stateless currency crisis a number of economists warned that a political union was a prerequisite for a viable currency union this paper disputes the feasibility of such a political union a fully fledged federal union which would likely please peripheral europe is impracticable since it implies a degree of fiscal solidarity that does not exist a hayekian minimal federal state which would appeal to core europe would be refused by peripheral members since residual fiscal sovereignty would be surrendered without any clear positive economic and social return even an intermediate solution based on coordinated keynesian policies would be unfeasible since it would be at odds with german monetary mercantilism the euro area is thus trapped between equally unfeasible political perspectives in this bleak context austerity policies are mainly explained by the necessity to readdress the euro area balance of payments crisis this crisis presents striking similarities to traditional financial crises in emerging economies associated with fixed exchange regimes therefore the delayed response of the european central bank ecb to the sovereign debt crisis cannot be seen as the culprit of the euro area crisis the ecb s monetary refinancing mechanisms target 2 and the ecb s belated outright monetary transactions intervention impeded a blow up of the currency union but could not solve its deep causes the current combination of austerity policies and moderate ecb intervention aims to rebalance intra eurozone foreign accounts and to force competitive deflation strategy

analysis of a small open economy the case of energy prices in canada the analysis suggests that land rental price decrease in the long run as a consequence of higher energy prices energy demand from agriculture decreases if land and energy are substitute inputs the necessary and sufficient conditions for expecting increasing average farm size decreasing agricultural output and number of farms also have been provided the analysis considers a competitive equilibrium environment with specific proviso that land prices adjust in response to higher domestic energy prices simple expressions for calculating long run agricultural responses to higher domestic energy prices were derived and used in estimating such responses for canadian agriculture

prices technology and farm size in this paper we construct and empirically test a theory of the agricultural firm which explains the long term growth in farm size in the united states typically the u s farm unit is a family enterprise consequently the ratio of the opportunity cost of farm labor to the price of machinery services determines the size of the farm operation by influencing the machine labor ratio applying the model to u s data we explain virtually all of the growth in the machine labor ratio and in farm size over the 1930 70 period by changes in relative factor prices without reference to technological change or economies of scale

competition economies of scale and diversity of firm sizes this paper presents an empirical example in which small firms are able to compete by specializing without monopolistic conduct despite economies of scale the viability of small commercial banks in illinois is established both by casual observation and by a finding of constant returns to scale not correcting for specialization a second specification of the cost function correcting for specialization exhibits economies of scale suggesting that specialization is the means by which small banks survive monopoly conduct is ruled out by a rosse panzar test rejecting the alternative hypothesis that monopoly power has allowed inefficient banks to survive

entry in monopoly market this paper develops new empirical models of market concentration from game theoretic models of entry we construct our models from inequality conditions that describe entrants equilibrium strategies in simultaneous move and sequential move games and use them to study the effects of entry in isolated monopoly markets for new automobiles from estimates of the market size necessary to support one and two dealers we conclude that monopoly dealers do not block the entry of a second dealer we also find that entry does not cause price cost margins to fall by much

clusters entrepreneurial ecosystem co creation and appropriability a conceptual framework extant literature on clusters underplays the role of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial management in creating and co creating organizations markets and supporting ecosystems we employ transaction costs resource knowledge capabilities and power control based theories to provide a comparative static governance based perspective on clusters we embed this into a more general co evolutionary entrepreneurial theory of the emergence evolution and co evolution of markets ecosystems and clusters we suggest that clusters can involve advantages that help engender superior appropriation of co created value as compared to alternatives entrepreneurial managers faced with a degree of choice will help co create clusters and be part of them for as long as they can appropriate more value in this way than through alternatives

the theory of the firm in long run equilibrium in a recent series of articles economists have investigated the comparative statics of the neoclassical firm in a competitive environment with the specific proviso that output price adjusts in response to changes in factor prices the older theory of the firm such as is found for example in paul samuelson 1947 is deficient in this regard metaphors such as short run have been used to gloss over the inconsistency of holding output price constant in the face of changing costs through changing factor prices in this paper a simple yet thorough analysis of a firm in a competitive industry i e a firm facing zero entry and adjustment cost conditions is given new results pertaining to restrictions on the behavior of such firms are offered also the length and complexity of established results is substantially reduced

contestability in a resource market with non convex costs consider an intertemporal resource market with n identical firms each managing an exhaustible resource deposit the extraction from which is governed by a u shaped average cost curve eswaran lewis and heaps 1983 elh show that such a market cannot have a competitive equilibrium in their comments on elh kimmel 1984 and mumy 1984 point out however that the elh result is driven by there being a small number of firms which is inconsistent with price taking behavior this provides a motivation for analyzing the situation considered by elh under alternative assumptions of market behavior in general perfect contestability applies to circumstances where perfect competition is impossible because economies of scale are present see baumol et al 1982 since the non convexities in elh are not caused by once and for all setup or shut down costs rather the flow of costs is assumed to be a non convex function of the flow of extraction replacing the assumption of price taking behavior with an assumption of ultra free entry 2 provides a potential means of restoring a market equilibrium in the present case contestability theory holds that the threat of competition by potential entrants can discipline the pricing behavior of the active firms however as pointed out by cairns 1991 footnote 9 a non active firm can be the source of this kind of discipline in an exhaustible resource market only if its remaining reserves are positive caution should therefore be exercised in applying contestability theory to a resource market in this note existence of an equilibrium in such an exhaustible resource market is shown partly by relying on the possibility of ultra free entry we

price discrimination or price stabilization debating with models of u s dairy policy two views on u s dairy policy are first that it is an instance of the capture theory of economic regulation that it serves the interests of dairy producers at the expense of consumers and taxpayers by raising dairy product prices and second 2 that dairy policy to correct market failure is an instance of governmental action that dairy policy serves the joint interests of producers consumers and taxpayers this paper discusses several analytical issues which have been important in the debate between these views

debt cycles instability and fiscal rules a godley minsky synthesis wynne godley and hyman minsky were two macroeconomists who saw the crisis coming this paper develops a simple macrodynamic model that synthesises some key perspectives of their analytical frameworks the model incorporates godley s financial balances approach and postulates that private sector s propensity to spend is driven by a stock flow norm the target net private debt to income ratio that changes endogenously via a minsky mechanism it also includes two fiscal rules a maastricht type fiscal rule according to which the fiscal authorities adjust the government expenditures based on a target net government debt ratio and a godley minsky fiscal rule which links government expenditures with private indebtedness following a counter cyclical logic the analysis shows that i the interaction between the propensity to spend and net private indebtedness can generate cycles and instability ii instability is more likely when the propensity to spend responds strongly to deviations from the stock flow norm and when the expectations that determine the stock flow norm are highly sensitive to the economic cycle iii the maastricht type fiscal rule is destabilising while the godley minsky fiscal rule is stabilising iv the paradox of debt can apply both to the private sector and the government sector

us and canadian livestock prices market integration and trade dependence cointegration of canadian and us livestock prices points to the existence of market integration in the period january 1996 to december 2004 trade flows of livestock and beef products were nonexistent between canada and the united states for many months in 2003 and 2004 suggesting market segmentation this lack of trade in beef and livestock was due to livestock beef import bans by both countries due to bovine spongiform encephalopathy it was also determined that canada s trade dependence in livestock and beef is cointegrated with canadian and us livestock prices however as the trade dependence variable is shocked the effects on canadian and us prices are opposite although one would expect that in an integrated market the price responses to an exogenous shock would be similar or statistically identical this result reinforces the case against the use of price cointegration analysis in determining presence or absence of market integration empirical results in this article raise some very difficult q

asymmetry in farm retail price transmission for major dairy products an econometric model is used to estimate the net relationship between changes in the farm level price of milk and changes in the retail prices of four major dairy products fluid milk butter cheese and ice cream results indicate that the farm retail price transmission process in the dairy sector is asymmetric retail dairy product prices adjust more rapidly and more fully to increases in the farm price of milk than to decreases the role in pricing asymmetry of retail demand versus farm supply shifts is tested via a chow type test asymmetry is tested using the houck procedure for estimating nonreversible functions

symmetric or asymmetric price adjustments in the oil market an empirical analysis of the relations between international and domestic prices in the federal republic of germany 1972 89 abstract this paper investigates how german consumer and wholesale prices for gasoline and light heating oil react to changes in the corresponding rotterdam prices monthly data from 1972 to 1989 are employed and the subperiods of the 1970s 1972 to 1979 and 1980s 1980 1989 are distinguished error correction models are estimated to seperate long run equilibrium relations and short run adjustment processes for the 1980s we find rapid symmetric and full adjustment of the german prices to the rotterdam prices whereas during the 1970s we find some asymmetries and at least for gasoline the adjustment processes took considerably more time

the flypaper effect and competition in the local market for public goods in this paper we explore how the ability of bureaucrats to extract resources from their community may be limited by competition in the local market for public goods specifically we examine intergovernmental aid as a resource bureaucrats seek to control intergovernmental aid has been found to be more stimulative of local government expenditures than predicted by neo classical economic theory in this research the flypaper effect is used as an indicator of the ability of bureaucrats to control local resources in excess of local demand and preferences we empirically relate variation in the flypaper effect to the extent of competition in the local market for public goods competition does not consistently limit the flypaper effect the implications of this finding for theories of competition in the local market for public goods are then discussed

tails curtailed accounting for nonlinear dependence in pricing margin insurance for dairy farmers livestock gross margin insurance for dairy cattle lgm dairy is a risk management tool for protecting milk income over feed cost margins in this article we examine the assumptions underpinning the method used to determine lgm dairy premiums analysis of the milk feed dependence structure is conducted using copula methods a rich set of tools that allow modelers to capture nonlinearities in dependence among variables of interest we find a significant relationship between milk and feed prices that increases with time to maturity and severity of negative price shocks extremal or tail dependence is the propensity of dependence to concentrate in the tails of a distribution a common theme in financial and actuarial applications and in agricultural crop revenue insurance is that tail dependence increases the risk to the underwriter and results in higher insurance premiums we present to our knowledge the first case in which tail dependence may actually reduce actuarially fair premiums for an agricultural risk insurance product we examine hedging effectiveness with lgm dairy and show that even in the absence of basis or production risk hedging horizon plays an important role in the ability of this tool to smooth farm income over feed cost margins over time rating methodology that accounts for tail dependence between milk and feed prices extends the optimal hedging horizon and increases hedging effectiveness of the lgm dairy program

economic relations between germany and southern europe two interpretations have been advanced to account for persistent german current account surpluses that translate into equally persistent deficits of countries in the european periphery according to the first the german surplus is the expression of a virtuous savings behaviour to be extended to the periphery the second maintains that the increase in net exports reflects the stagnation of german domestic demand the paper argues that differences in price competitiveness are only part of the explanation of the disequilibria and that an expansion of german internal demand albeit necessary would not suffice to provide a viable response to the long term sustainability of the euro area adopting a multilevel perspective the paper argues that to understand the persistence of deficits in the european periphery the main features of the reorganisation of the german economic system including its income redistribution and demand implications should be considered three elements are singled out the effects of eastward enlargement the impoverishment of the productive matrix of peripheral countries and the quality composition of trade flows this analysis it is argued is a crucial premise for devising trade and industrial policies targeted on redressing the increasing skewness of eu trade especially through greater trade among the deficit countries copyright oxford university press

minimum wages and the demand for labor i formulate measures of the effective minimum wage based on broad definitions of the labor costs that face employers and use these measures in reestimating some simple equations relating the relative employment of youths and adults to the u s minimum wage using aggregate data for 1954 78 i then ground the model more closely in the theory of factor demand first by adding the relative wages of youths and adults to the equation describing their relative employment and then by specifying a complete system of demand equations for these two types of labor teen employment responds quite robustly to changes in the effective minimum in these specifications with an elasticity of 0 1 a translog cost function defined over young workers adults and capital shows that the effective minimum wage reduces employers ability to substitute other factors for young workers using both sets of results i find that a subminimum wage for youths would have increased their employment with at most a small loss of jobs among adults this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

aggregate demand conflict and capacity in the inflationary process this paper focuses on an alternative perspective on inflation to that of the non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment nairu it indicates that there are no automatic forces leading to a level of aggregate demand consistent with constant inflation inflationary pressures arise from conflict over income shares and from cost elements with the price of raw materials especially oil being the most important there are supply side factors impinging on the inflationary process which arise from the level of productive capacity relative to aggregate demand the supply side constraints are viewed as arising from capacity constraints rather than from the operation of the labour market copyright 2005 oxford university press

functional income distribution and aggregate demand in the euro area an increase in the wage share has contradictory effects on the subaggregates of aggregate demand private consumption expenditures ought to increase because wage incomes typically are associated with higher consumption propensities than capital incomes investment expenditures ought to be negatively affected because investment will positively depend on profits net exports will be negatively affected because an increase in the wage share corresponds to an increase in unit labour costs and thus a loss in competitiveness therefore theoretically aggregate demand can be either wage led or profit led depending on how these effects add up the results will crucially depend on how open the economy is internationally the paper estimates a post kaleckian macro model incorporating these effects for the euro area and finds that the euro area is presently in a wage led demand regime implications for wage policies are discussed

input price input quantity relations and the numeraire the fact that a competitive agent faces given input prices does not necessarily mean that these prices can be completely arbitrary especially in the long run an obvious case but not the only one is when there are input output relations among industries but as soon as long run input price interrelatedness is taken seriously the very conception of a downward sloping input demand curve encounters serious difficulties although one can always draw an input price input quantity relation its main qualitative property the sign of its slope is not generally independent of the arbitrary choice of numeraire copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

competitive industry equilibrium under uncertainty and free entry this paper investigates the properties of industry equilibrium under price uncertainty given free entry and exit for any form of risk averse behavior it is shown that an increase in demand uncertainty as measured by a mean preserving spread increases mean output price and reduces output of firms in long run equilibrium

tracing the evolution of the aggregate u s milk supply elasticity using a herd dynamics model the u s dairy sector is characterized by increasing volatility of milk prices and consolidation in production as evidenced by declining number of dairy farms with an increasingly larger share of milk supplied from a small number of very large farms using aggregate national data we build a mixed frequency herd dynamics econometric model of the u s milk supply that updates and substantially amends the model first proposed by chavas and klemme we implement a dynamic residual based bootstrap technique that can be used in testing for changes in nonmarginal simulated long run supply responsiveness and trace the evolution of long run milk supply elasticity from 1975 through 2010 several papers in the past have suggested that long run supply elasticity increases with dairy farm size which implies that increased importance of large farms would increase aggregate long run supply responsiveness contrary to this conclusion we find a declining trend in long run supply elasticity from 1975 through 2005 persistence of such a decline would be a major cause for worry as ever larger price swings would be needed to equilibrate the market in face of demand shocks however we find that milk supply is becoming more responsive since 2005 both to milk and feed price changes increasing responsiveness to feed prices further justifies focusing the next generation of the dairy policy instruments on managing dairy profit margins rather than just revenue streams

long run competition in the u s aluminum industry abstract a methodology for examining dynamic structure performance relationships in a single industry is proposed and illustrated implications of long run competitive behavior for a simple simultaneous equations model of structure and performance are derived and tested using recently developed methods for the interpretation of economic time series it is concluded that the structure and performance in the u s aluminum industry in the postwar period conform well with the hypothesis that the primary aluminum market was competitive in the long run

a simple model of three economies with two currencies the eurozone and the usa this paper presents a keynesian model which describes three countries trading merchandise and financial assets with one another it is initially assumed that all three countries have independent fiscal policies but that two of the countries share a currency hence the model can be used to make a preliminary analysis of the conduct of economic policy in the eurozone vis a vis the rest of the world the usa the main conclusion will be that if all three countries do indeed operate independent fiscal policies the system will work under a floating currency regime but only so long as the european central bank is prepared to modify the structure of its assets by accumulating an ever rising proportion of bills issued by any weak euro country

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

on the comparative statics of a competitive industry with inframarginal firms recently economists have begun to develop a theory of the perfectly competitive firm and industry in long run equilibrium in contrast to the traditional model2 in which all prices are parametric this new theory takes explicit recognition of the fact that output price must adjust to exogenous changes in input prices before the industry can be said to be in long run competitive equilibrium the focus of this analysis has been to derive implications of competitive theory which can be tested using data generated by observing individual firms in

differential importance and comparative statics an application to inventory management abstract in this work we deal with the problem of establishing which parameters impact an inventory policy the most a new sensitivity measure is introduced by relating the differential importance d and the comparative statics cs techniques we discuss the properties of the new indicator and show that it shares the additivity property we provide the expression of for optimization models numerical results are offered for the sensitivity analysis of a recently introduced inventory management model

wage led growth in the eu15 member states the effects of income distribution on growth investment trade balance and inflation this paper estimates a multi country demand led growth model for eu15 countries a decrease in the share of wages in national income in isolation leads to lower growth in finland france germany greece italy luxembourg netherlands portugal spain sweden and the united kingdom whereas it stimulates growth in austria belgium denmark and ireland however a simultaneous decline in the wage share leads to an overall decline in eu15 gdp hence eu15 as a whole is a wage led economy furthermore austria and ireland also experience negative effects on growth when they decrease their wage share along with their trading partners the results indicate that a decline in the wage share has had significant negative effects on growth in the eu15 countries and supports the case of wage coordination we present different wage led recovery scenarios taking into account further effects of a change in the wage share on prices nominal unit labour costs investment and net exports

rents producers surplus and the long run industry supply curve the term producer surplus conventionally has been used to refer to the area above the competitive industry supply curve for output and below the equilibrium price for the short run there is general agreement as to the meaning of this area in the short run this area equals the payments to the firm in excess of the firm s total variable costs such payments are often referred to as quasirents for the long run there is no general agreement as to the meaning of this area some claim that this area has no particular meaning except under very special circumstances for example see mishan 7 221 22 225 30 and formby 1 316 323 24 others argue that this area is equal to the rents paid to factors of production for example see shepherd 9 and helmberger and rosine 2 helmberger and rosine 2 were the only ones to present an analytical example to support their position they demonstrated that producer surplus will in fact equal rents if i an aggregate production function is used ii the production function has four inputs is of the cobb douglas variety and exhibits constant returns to scale and iii two of the industry input supply functions are log linear and two are perfectly elastic the current paper brings the analysis down to the level of the individual firm and significantly extends the result of helmberger and rosine 2 it is demonstrated that producer surplus equals rents whenever the individual firm has a u shaped long run average cost curve regardless of i the form of the industry input supply functions and ii the number of inputs throughout the paper the analysis is general that is no specific functional forms are used

short and long run adjustments in dairy production a profit function analysis a dual profit model is developed to analyse the structure of dairy technology using farm level data for vermont potential short and long run effects of milk price reductions on output supply input demand farm size and profitability are studied the observed levels of the quasi fixed inputs family labour and herd size are found to be significantly lower than their optimal or long run equilibrium values which is consistent with a continuing shift towards fewer and larger dairy farms the analysis suggests that lower milk prices threaten the short run survival of small and medium size farms and reduce the optimal farm size in the long run

broken symmetry symmetry and price uncertainty or short and long run comparative statics of the competitive firm abstract the notion of broken or hidden symmetry is applied to a long run characterization of a competitive firm operating under price uncertainty the main result of the paper is the restoration of a slutsky type symmetry of the input demand functions within an expected utility framework which does not involve any assumption about risk aversion a second conclusion is that economic relations expressed in terms of relative quantities are essential in the long run comparative statics under price uncertainty

price supply response of vegetable growers in the sultanate of oman abstract information on supply price elasticities has been acknowledged as being very important for decision makers at the macro and micro levels this paper presents an empirical investigation of vegetable growers responses to prices in oman it develops a single supply response function incorporating adaptive expectation model for prices results indicate that growers adjust relatively fast to changes in expected prices however these adjustments are rather low for some crop in the short and long run growers production decisions have also shown a significant response to prices of other products competing for farm space and other production resources these results will support efforts aimed at market development and crop enhancement programs

on the economics of effluent charges using the theory of the competitive firm in long run industry equilibrium the authors investigate the effectiveness of an effluent charge in controlling an industry s long run level of pollution the success or failure of such a charge turns out to hinge upon the conditions prevailing in the industry s output and input markets if merely one of these markets is less than perfectly elastic and if in addition the corresponding demand or supply schedule has the normal slope the success of the charge is guaranteed otherwise it is not

is there a causal effect of concentration on persistent profitability differentials this article searches for a causal effect of industry concentration on estimates of persistent profitability differentials i offer solutions to identification problems that plague related analyses by applying an iv and a natural experiment this is the first study that explains estimates of persistent profit differentials using business segments data allowing to match micro and industry level data more consistently testing linear relations critical concentration levels and interactions with mobility barriers i find no evidence that concentration has any positive effect on long run profitability differences results rather tend to point to a statistically and economically significant negative causal effect

the uk s coalition government and heterodox economics the uk coalition government s economic policy was primarily aimed at reducing the large fiscal deficit that it inherited mainly by cutting expenditure this was considered irrational by heterodox economists on the grounds that it would harm employment and output politicians influenced by this tradition advocated a plan b experience has shown that the coalition government s policy was not irrational employment reached record heights and economic growth resumed the paper draws attention to the implications of these facts for heterodox economics and economic policy it is concluded that just as mainstream economics had to rethink after the economic crisis of 2008 09 so heterodox economics has to rethink after the recovery of 2014 15

credible regulatory threats abstract as competition emerges in parts of utility industries and utility regulation policy is reviewed it is useful to examine alternative forms of regulation that may be implemented when hit and run entry is believed to be a non credible threat potential entry may not constrain incumbent firms pricing and production decisions this paper proposes that the credible threat of intervention by a regulator may impact upon incumbent firms decisions empirical evidence from the english and welsh electricity pool market is investigated to discover whether the threat of regulator intervention may have influenced the pricing strategies of the dominant firms in this market

does trade globalization induce or inhibit corporate transparency unbundling the growth potential and product market competition channels abstract trade globalization may affect corporate transparency via multiple channels with potentially opposite signs we aim to empirically disentangle these channels by tracking evolution of corporate transparency for 4061 listed firms in tradable sectors in 49 countries during 1992 2005 by using detailed tariff schedules we measure changes in growth opportunities and product market competition enabled by foreign and domestic trade liberalizations respectively on the one hand higher growth opportunities engendered by foreign trade reforms are disproportionately associated with better corporate transparency in industries that depend more heavily on external financing on the other hand greater product market competition engendered by domestic tariff reductions has no significant impact on corporate transparency

contestability vs competition analyzes the ultra free entry as normative contribution to industrial organization ultra free entry in context of the evolving field of industrial organization assessment of the conceptual validity of william baumol elizabeth bailey john panzar and robert willig s analysis in representing the nature of competition empirical issues in measuring and testing ultra free entry ebsco

a model of imperfect competition with keynesian features the recent literature on the reappraisal of keynes has viewed keynesian equilibria as arising when prices are fixed and effective demands and supplies are equilibrated through the adjustment of quantities one problem with this approach is that it lacks a theory of price determination in particular of why prices are fixed in the present paper we show that a number of keynesian features arise in a model in which prices are fully flexible but where agents have some monopoly power one advantage of this approach is that it provides a theory of the determination of both prices and quantities

why real wages do not fall when there is unemployment abstract erroneous anticipations of fiscal policy results in involuntary unemployment if mutually agreeable unemployment may be eradicated by recontracting the real wage and employment level however if labor demand is inelastic unit elastic or within a bounded elastic range unemployment persists

material productivity in food manufacturing material prices have risen in food manufacturing resulting in material productivity growth this study estimates material productivity indexes for new jersey s foodmanufacturing sector a 21 material productivity growth is indicated for the 1964 84 period the mechanism of material productivity growth is also investigated results suggest that greater material efficiency is encouraged by rising material prices wage rates and regulation and by declining food prices short run impacts on material productivity are caused by input substitution beyond the short run impacts are caused by material saving technological change in some food manufacturing subsectors higher material prices may bring lower revenues to material suppliers

the inefficiency of private adaptation to pollution in the presence of endogenous market structure the paper considers an industry where production costs rise due to pollution but where this effect can be partially off set by investing in adaptation as a private good the focus is not on external effects but industries where economies of scale are introduced from adapting to pollution the structure of the resulting oligopolistic market is endogenous since the level of adaptation is chosen by the firms the analysis of externalities usually disregards defensive or adaptation measures with a few exceptions that point to considerable complications the present debate on adaptation to climate change shows the importance of understanding defensive measures i show that the market failure caused by economies of scale leads to production costs above the social optimum i e to under adapation when pollution increases adaptation only increases if demand is price inelastic otherwise welfare loss from market failure decreases with pollution the total welfare loss is only convex if demand is price inelastic and the influence of pollution on production costs is stronger than the influence of adaptation concave welfare loss has crucial implications for abatement policies

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure comment a situation traditionally identified as conducive to imperfect competition is when average costs decline and the cheapest scale of production is large relative to the size of the market however some of the more recent literature on industrial organization has emphasized a supposed distinction between fixed costs of production and sunk costs of production a point frequently made is that while the possibility of sunk costs can create genuine barriers to entry pure fixed costs per se do not inhibit competitive market performance this approach finds its logical extreme in the norm or abstraction of perfect contestability perfect contestability is essentially a theory of the polar case of frictionless entry and exit as william baumol stated a contestable market is one into which entry is absolutely free and exit is absolutely costless p 3 certainly this is the most reasonable interpretation of a situation where potential entrants feel free to disregard an incumbent s price response suppose every potential and actual producer has access to the same technology in a perfectly contestable market there are no set up or shut down losses the main result is that even with declining average costs of production the incumbent firm does not dare to post a price higher than average cost price above cost invites being undercut by a hit and run shadow entrant capable of producing at the same flow rate and at identical unit cost during just the briefest instant of time i argue that this line of reasoning is misleading perfect contestability gets around the problem of increasing returns only by in effect assuming it away a hit and run technology makes the firm behave as if it is competitive in a market precisely because the convexity preconditions for competition are de facto being met in that market this comment shows that strictly speaking there is no such thing as a pure fixed cost unless there are sunk costs located somewhere in the relevant production technology all costs are variable as a matter of formal theory you cannot have a range of decreasing average cost without sunk costs presumably there is also an approximation theorem which states that when sunk costs are close to being negligible then average production costs are practically nondecreasing perfect contestability holds approximately in a market only to the extent that production costs for the market are approximately nondecreasing my discussion will be restricted to the familiar case of a single well defined homogeneous fully divisible commodity while more general approaches are possible for the sake of simplicity the following definition is used the average cost function a c y t describes say the minimum cost per unit of output produced at a uniform flow rate y throughout the time interval 0 t especially in applications to industrial organization theory it is essential to remember that cost functions are not generally timeless and that writing ac as a function of y alone can be dangerously vague behind the free entry and exit of a hitand run technology in a perfectly contestable market is the abstraction of no sunk costs investments are fully reversible because nothing is lost in setting up or shutting down production

contestability vs competition once more baumol willig and other advocates of contestability theory continue to urge the idea not only for its insights but also as a clear basis for many antitrust and regulatory decisions yet the limits of the theory remain the three key assumptions are extremely strict and two of them are in mutual conflict the theory is not robust to imperfections in order to displace effective competition with contestability baumol must adopt a sequence of implausible propositions which unfortunately have little analytical or empirical basis

economic growth the harrod foreign trade multiplier and the hicks super multiplier as we saw in chapter 2 the post keynesian view of economic growth denies that the postwar economic performance of the majority of the advanced countries has been seriously constrained by the growth of factor supplies even during the long boom of 1950 73 when the growth of output of the advanced countries in aggregate was double that of the historic norm labour shortages were never a limiting factor there was either sufficient disguised unemployment in the non manufacturing sectors or enough immigration to satisfy the demand for labour kindleberger 1967 the rate of capital accumulation is never a long run constraint on economic growth as investment is as much a result of the expansion of output as its cause kaldor 1970 the evidence in support of these conditions has been summarised in chapter 2

produced input use per unit of output abstract when an input price and the output price change to keep a firm in equilibrium useful results follow concerning input use per unit of output silberberg only some of them survive when input supply firms are also kept in equilibrium

the tragedy of uk fiscal policy in the aftermath of the financial crisis the evolving response of the uk fiscal authorities to the financial crisis and recession are briefly outlined with a focus on the fiscal austerity programme introduced by the incoming coalition government during 2010 the reasoning for that programme is critically examined and largely dismissed it is argued that the drive for major cuts in public expenditure comes from seeking to achieve a balanced structural budget and reductions in estimated potential output the significance of the latter are discussed the paper is completed by a brief consideration of alternatives

contestability reconsidered the meaning of market exit costs abstract this paper analyses the main result of the contestable market approach namely that potential competition reaches its maximum power if market entry and exit is costless and newcomers can use the hit and run strategy different time lag structures are considered average cost pricing turns out to be no equilibrium if there are no market exit costs furthermore exit costs don t necessarily create a barrier to entry but may even strengthen the discipline arising from the threat of entry

truncation bias and the measurement of income inequality 1988 truncation bias and the measurement of income inequality journal of business economic statistics vol 6 no 3 pp 335 337

entry and price dynamics in a perfect foresight model abstract this paper studies firms entry and price dynamics in a model that combines the assumptions of free entry and perfect foresight with the hypothesis of consumer s loyalty postulated by phelps and winter the analysis of the transition to long run equilibrium reveals that in such a model the entry of firms is related to the difference between current prices and costs in relation to the growth of the firms output it is shown that the model is consistent with gibrat s law finally it is shown that the size distribution of firms approaches asymptotically a pareto distribution

fixed costs sunk costs entry barriers and sustainability of monopoly this paper shows that i fixed costs of sufficient magnitude assure the existence of a vector of sustainable prices for the products of a natural monopolist prices making him invulnerable against entry ii nevertheless fixed costs do not constitute barriers to entry that is they need not have undesirable welfare consequences iii indeed in market forms that we call perfectly contestable large fixed costs are completely compatible with many desirable attributes of competitive equilibrium iv sunk costs do however constitute barriers to entry and v finally the profit and welfare consequences of entry barriers are described formally in this paper it is shown that i fixed costs of sufficient magnitude assure the existence of a vector of sustainable prices a set of product prices that make a natural monopolist invulnerable against successful entry ii nevertheless costs that are truly fixed do not constitute barriers to entry that is they do not have the welfare consequences normally attributed to barriers to entry iii indeed there are markets of a form which we call perfectly contestable markets and whose properties may be approximated in practice in which large fixed costs are completely compatible with many if not most of the desirable attributes of competitive equilibrium iv sunk costs do however constitute barriers to entry and v finally the resource allocation problems that stem from fixed costs are formally identical with those that accompany public goods both their sources and their character are the same thus the rationale for public supply of public goods may be no different from that pertaining to nationalization of natural monopolies

oligopolistic models of investment and employment decisions in a regional context the purpose of this paper is to analyse and estimate employment and investment functions derived from a model of an imperfectly competitive firm with a putty clay technology in which both the level and the spatial allocation of factors of production are determined it will be shown that in general while for a given region the choice of technique is a function of factor prices of that region alone the optimal level of production depends upon a comparison of cost conditions across different regions in estimating the investment and employment function attention is paid to the appropriate way of modelling expected output the empirical application is based on data for southern italy disaggregated by industrial sectors using a fixed effect time series cross section model

theory of the firm in short run industry equilibrium a number of economists have studied the long run input behavior eugene silberberg 1974a lowell bassett and thomas borcherding 1 970a b c c e ferguson and thomas saving and paul meyer 1967 of a competitive industry in which entry or exit continues until industry output price moves to the minimum average cost of the marginal firm in the industry however this analysis requires very strong assumptions which severely restrict diversity between firms silberberg 1974a for example assumes all firms production functions are identical except for a scale factor complementary to these long run investigations i will present a compact but thorough analysis of the short run case in which technology and the number of firms are fixed but industry output price responds to aggregate supply changes of existing firms resulting from changes in factor prices in contrast to the long run analysis no assumptions limiting interfirm diversity nor any other restrictions beyond definition of the usual neoclassical firm are needed furthermore results are obtained for industry factor demand which do not necessarily hold for individual firms when they respond to factor prices jointly with other firms in the industry this contradicts the older methodology associated with paul samuelson 1947 in which factor demand responses are derived for firms acting in isolation from each other and their isolated responses are aggregated to obtain the industry factor response for example traditional theory shows input response obeys the law of demand for isolated firms but this standard result no longer holds when a firm adjusts within a larger industry of firms whose collective output response can affect output price thus the law of demand for industry factor behavior cannot be established by aggregation of isolated firm responses however its validity does nevertheless hold in the short run in which the number of firms in the industry is constant therefore the purpose of this paper is to characterize the short run industry level factor demand implications and to show how these implications relate to the traditional theory of isolated firm behavior in addition it is briefly shown how these short run results also imply that the law of demand is likely to hold even in the long run where entry and exit from the industry can occur even for an industry of quite dissimilar firms given the well established literature of the standard neoclassical firm the main body of the paper will confine presentation to required definitions and the statement plus interpretation of the main results all proofs and derivations are reserved for the appendix

europe s hunger games income distribution cost competitiveness and crisis the dominant view both on the mainstream right and on the left holds that the eurozone crisis is a crisis of labour cost competitiveness with trade imbalances and hence foreign indebtedness being driven by divergences in relative unit labour costs rulcs between surplus and deficit countries to re balance eurozone growth the mainstream solution is a deflationary policy of internal devaluation i e cutting the wage share by as much as 30 in the deficit countries the progressive view holds that the surplus countries should adjust by raising their wage shares we argue that both sides of this debate are wrong and unhelpful europe s trade imbalances are determined by domestic and world demand whilst rulc divergences play only a negligible role eurozone growth can only be revived when eurozone demand growth is restored not by lowering wages here and or raising them there the current deflationary adjustment forced on the wage led economies of greece italy portugal and spain is self destructive it is a confidence killer not only deepening the free fall of southern european incomes but also damaging their productive base and productivity growth the outlook is depressing further increases in already high unemployment rates inequality measures and poverty rates inconceivable in prosperous europe just a few years ago and arguably dystopian