looking for hysteresis in coal consumption in the us abstract this paper estimates an unobserved components model to explore coal consumption in the usa we ask whether coal consumption exhibits hysteresis defined as a dynamic structure in which the cyclical component of coal consumption has permanent effects on the natural component in contrast to previous analysis we provide evidence in favor of hysteresis in coal consumption by using the nonlinear framework proposed recently by perez alonso and di sanzo 13 in which threshold type nonlinearities are introduced by allowing past cyclical consumption to have a different impact on the natural component depending on the regime the article discusses implications of the findings for energy conservation policies

the observed landholding fertility relationship is it monotonic empirical studies of fertility in traditional agriculture report either a positive or a negative estimate for landholding estimation with data from rural bangladesh in this study shows that the uncontrolled effect of landholding on fertility is positive however when the impact of pooling land in extended families is controlled for the effect turns negative yet the addition of a quadratic term for landholding provides a significantly u shape relationship the non monotonic relationship is analysed in terms of prestige cost of child labour which is assumed to increase with landholding but to generate differential child contributions to household income and potential old age support to parents

the prisoners dilemma in the invisible hand an analysis of intrafirm productivity this paper attempts to show that it is useful to view productivity as a prisoners dilemma problem that conventions are alternative solutions to the prisoners dilemma that effort conventions are usually nonoptimal and that a shock is necessary in order to shift from one nonoptimal solution to another within this framework the invisible hand does not produce a pareto optimal result it is consistent with any number of nonoptimal effort conventions

habit formation interdependent preferences and demographic effects in the almost ideal demand system the authors model myopic habit formation interdependence of preferences among consumers and demographic effects as taste shifters in a micro consumer demand model of the almost ideal demand variety the model is estimated for dutch micro data the authors investigate the dynamic properties of the model and find that it behaves very differently from models without interdependence of preferences the implications for micro macro modeling are discussed copyright 1991 by royal economic society

revisited are shocks to energy consumption permanent or temporary new evidence from a panel suradf approach abstract this paper explores whether the hypothesis of energy consumption stationarity is supported in different regions the stationarity properties indicate that the impact of a reduction in energy consumption or a realignment policy is only temporary and over time the series will revert back to the trend path this paper first applies the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller panel suradf test developed by breuer et al breuer j b mcnown r wallace m s 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 3 482 493 which allows us to account for possible cross sectional effects and to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root the main conclusion is that the stationarity of energy consumption will be affected by the differences among the five regions made up of 84 countries during the period 1971 2003 similar conclusions are reached when we analyze country groups based on levels of development moreover the results reveal that conventional panel unit root tests can lead to misleading inferences which are biased towards stationarity even if only one series in the panel is strongly stationary lastly some policy implications emerge from our results

the causality relationship between energy consumption and gdp in g 11 countries revisited abstract this paper explores whether energy conservation policies can be implemented in countries with the same level of development that is is restraining energy consumption without compromising economic growth feasible in all industrialized countries a new granger non causality testing procedure developed by toda and yamamoto 1995 journal of econometrics 66 225 250 is applied to re investigate the relationship if any between energy consumption and income in 11 major industrialized countries the results clearly do not support the view that energy consumption and income are neutral with respect to each other except in the case of the united kingdom germany and sweden where a neutral relationship is found bi directional causality in the united states and uni directional running from energy consumption to gdp in canada belgium the netherlands and switzerland are found this indicates that energy conservation may hinder economic growth in the latter five countries further the causality relationship appears to be uni directional but reversed for france italy and japan which implies that in these three countries energy conservation may be viable without being detrimental to economic growth

oil and gas markets in the uk evidence from a cointegrating approach the paper examines the relationship between uk wholesale gas prices and the brent oil price over the period 1996 2003 in order to investigate whether oil and gas prices decoupled during this period as orthodox gas market liberalisation theory suggests tests for unit roots and cointegration are carried out and it is discovered that a long run equilibrium relationship between uk gas and oil prices exists moreover this relationship pre dates the opening of the uk mainland europe interconnector following a recursive methodology hansen h and johansen s 1999 some tests for parameter constancy in cointegrated var models econometrics journal 2 306 333 it was found that the cointegrating relationship is present throughout the sample period however the long run solutions seem to be more volatile evidence is provided that the short run relationship is linear and impulse response functions are used to examine the effects that a shock in oil would have on gas these findings do not support the assumption that gas prices and oil prices decouple

the response of labour effort to falling real wages the mexican peso devaluation of february 1982 abstract this paper reports empirical evidence on the effect of the february 1982 mexican peso devaluation with its concomitant reduction in real income on the output of individual workers using a set of pooled data for 46 workers employed in two textile plants in mexicali over a 22 week period the regression results show a significant increase in average output of about 15 in response to the 25 decrease in wages due to the devaluation the study also finds that there was no significant response in output to the legislated annual increase in money wages of january 1982

household energy consumption versus income and relative standard of living a panel approach our fundamental premise is that energy consumption at the household level is a key indicator of standard of living we employ state of the art panel cointegration techniques to evaluate the nature of the relationship between income measures and energy consumption measures for seven east indian ocean countries the general finding is that income and household electricity consumption are not cointegrated given this finding we conclude that standard of living measures that rely on income measures and do not include household level energy consumption information will necessarily miss important indications of both levels and changes of standard of living

nutrition and labor producvivity in agriculture estimates for rural south india using panel data for rural south india a fixed effects individual wage equation and farm production function are estimated that have calorie intake and nutritional status weight for height of workers as their arguments neither market wages nor farm output are observed to be responsive to changes in the daily energy intake of workers however both are highly elastic with respect to weight for height these results suggest that while the human body can adapt to inadequate nutrition in the short run it cannot adapt as readily to chronic malnutrition that eventually results in loss of weight for height copyright 1988 by mit press

are fluctuations in coal consumption per capita temporary evidence from developed and developing economies abstract this paper investigates the unit root properties of coal consumption per capita for the 47 developed and developing countries for 1965 2010 period to examine the stationary properties of coal consumption per capita lagrange multiplier lm unit root test with one break and two breaks crash model has been utilized according to empirical results the coal consumption is stationary in almost all the countries analyzed thus if the coal consumption is mean or trend reverting then it follows that the series will return to its mean value or trend path and it might be possible to forecast future movements in the coal consumption based on past behaviors of the series for the policy makers it is not necessary to pay attention to coal consumption excepting for indian and italian however for the researchers it is important to take into account the stationarity property of coal consumption and also structural breaks should be modeled in their future studies

poverty and the forward falling labor supply function a microeconomic analysis abstract existing subsistence efficiency target income and limited aspiration theories impose a backward bending labor supply behavior on poor workers in less developed countries recent empirical studies of worker behavior in the unorganized sectors of ldcs contradict this view and report evidence of both a forward falling and an upward rising labor supply this study formulates an increasing elasticity of substitution utility function model to analyze the observed behaviors the function displays both nonhomotheticity and variable elasticity properties and is capable of generating labor supply curves with forward falling and upward rising segments while the upward rising supply is considered to be usual worker behavior the forward falling segment represents a below subsistence distress sale phenomenon and the subsistence income of the worker is implied to occur at the turning point joining the two segments of the supply curve econometric estimates of the utility and the labor supply functions provide support to the theoretical results

are shocks to disaggregated energy consumption in malaysia permanent or temporary evidence from lm unit root tests with structural breaks abstract the objective of this paper is to examine whether energy consumption in malaysia disaggregated by sector and type is stationary or contains a unit root to realize our objective we apply the lagrange multiplier lm family of unit root tests with up to two structural breaks depending on the decision rule for selecting between results in the no break one break and two break cases we find that energy consumption is stationary for between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of the disaggregated energy series and between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of sectors implications for the malaysian government s attempts to reduce fossil fuel consumption are discussed

new evidence on purchasing power parity from 17 oecd countries there is a large literature that investigates whether or not real exchange rates are stationary in an attempt to unravel support for purchasing power parity ppp at best the empirical results are mixed this paper applies a unit root test that allows for a simultaneous structural break in the intercept and slope shown by sen 2003 to minimize power distortions to examine ppp for 17 oecd countries our results on ppp are mixed when the real exchange rate is based on the us dollar evidence is found of ppp for only france portugal and denmark when the real exchange rate is based on the deutschmark we find evidence of ppp for austria belgium norway spain netherlands switzerland and denmark

the role of energy in real business cycle models abstract this paper modifies hansen s 1985 analysis of a real business cycle mode with indivisible labor by explicitly including energy as a productive input and modelling the relative price of energy as an exogenous random process one goal is to determine the extent to which the introduction of energy price shocks reduces the reliance of the real business cycle model on unobserved technology shocks the other goal following christiano and eichenbaum 1991 is to compare the correlation between real wages and hours predicted by the energy inclusive model to that predicted by hansen s model

convergence in per capita energy use among oecd countries abstract unlike previous studies which mainly focus on the integration properties of energy consumption and production this study examines the convergence of per capita energy use among 25 oecd countries over the period 1960 to 2010 in particular newly developed lm and rals lm unit root tests with allowance for two endogenously determined structural breaks are employed the results indicate significant support for per capita energy use convergence among oecd countries

electricity consumption employment and real income in australia evidence from multivariate granger causality tests this paper examines the relationship between electricity consumption employment and real income in australia within a cointegration and causality framework we find that electricity consumption employment and real income are cointegrated and that in the long run employment and real income granger cause electricity consumption while in the short run there is weak unidirectional granger causality running from income to electricity consumption and from income to employment

geometric brownian motion and structural breaks in oil prices a quantitative analysis the purpose of this paper is to present a quantitative analyses of oil price s path we try to argue that despite its parsimony and simplicity geometric brownian motion can perform well as a proxy for the movement of oil prices and for a state variable to evaluate oil deposits we base our argument on evidences of very low speed of mean reverting or long half life since unit root tests only can reject its null hypothesis in a sample longer than 100 years on the other hand we reject the null hypothesis of unit root with two endogenous breaks showing that the usual rejection can be attributed to omitted structural breaks we conclude that the average half life of oil price between 4 and 8 years depending on the model chosen is long enough to allow a good approximation as a geometric brownian motion

are oil shocks permanent or temporary panel data evidence from crude oil and ngl production in 60 countries this paper examines the unit root properties of crude oil production for 60 countries employing a range of panel data unit root tests for the period 1971 to 2003 the study first employs a number of panel data tests that do not accommodate structural breaks and then proceeds to apply the lagrange multiplier lm panel unit root test with one structural break the results of the panel data tests without a structural break are inconclusive with at best mixed support for joint stationarity the findings from the lm panel unit root test with a structural break however are conclusive suggesting that for a world panel and smaller regional based panels crude oil and ngl production are jointly stationary

u s disaggregated renewable energy consumption persistence and long memory behavior abstract this study examines the degree of time persistence in u s disaggregated renewable energy consumption hydropower geothermal solar wind wood waste and biofuels using innovative fractional integration and autoregressive models with monthly data for the period 1994 2 to 2011 10 the results indicate that in the case of hydropower solar wind waste and biofuels the estimates of fractional integration are higher than 0 5 but less than 1 0 implying nonstationary but mean reverting behavior in the case of geothermal and waste the estimates of fractional integration are around 0 5 and in the boundary case between stationarity and nonstationarity for wood the estimate of fractional integration is significantly smaller than 0 5 and thus showing stationary behavior with long memory behavior furthermore the study incorporates the presence of breaks in the data with the absence of breaks in hydropower geothermal solar wind wood and biofuels but a single break in the case of waste due to the inclusion of non renewable waste from non biogenic sources through 2000 the results reveal that u s disaggregated renewable energy consumption measures are better explained in terms of a long memory model that incorporates persistence components and seasonality

is per capita electricity consumption stationary time series evidence from oecd countries this study examines the stationary properties of per capita electricity consumption in which the endogenously determined break points are incorporated in 23 high income oecd countries by using annual data over 1960 2005 period we utilize lagrange multiplier lm unit root test that endogenously determines structural breaks in level and or trend we find that 21 country series reject the unit root null hypothesis at the 5 significance level except for 2 country series thus our empirical findings provide significant evidence that per capita electricity consumption is stationary in almost all countries considered in the study the stationarity of per capita electricity consumption indicates that it should be possible for the series to forecast future movements in the energy consumption based on the past behaviors of the series important policy implications emerge from our empirical results of the unit root test with multiple structural breaks

policies for eliminating low efficiency production capacities and improving energy efficiency of energy intensive industries in china abstract china faced the greatest challenge in balancing its economic growth energy and resource security as well as environmental pollution the energy intensive industries which used to be the major force driving china s economic growth had seriously exhausted the countries natural resources and energy and at the same time polluted the environment because of the severe surplus of low efficiency production capacities as a result the chinese government had initiated multiple economic and administrative policies to eliminate these low efficiency production capacities intended to improve the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries these policies are summarized in this paper along with export tax rebating rate resource tax administrative audit and approvals differential electric power pricing and shutting down the low efficiency production capacities the paper also evaluates the effects of these policies by analyzing several key indicators about the energy intensive industries including fixed asset investment growth rate energy intensity of industrial added value waste gas emission intensity of industrial added value the valdex methodology is selected to examine the improving trends of energy efficiency for energy intensive industries the analyzing results show that firstly the development of low efficiency capacities tends to be more sensitive to the policies so the policies that china had enacted really exert very important effects on improving the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries however the effects of economic policies seem more faster and obvious than the fiscal policies besides the results also show that polices which are designed to reserve energy may not necessarily exert the same effects on reducing emissions there is still large room for improving the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries substantial improvement still needs to be done for current policies system some suggestions for future work are provided

land holdings living standards and labour supply functions evidence from a poor agrarian economy recent empirical studies of labour supply in ldc agriculture show both positive and negative sloping curves contrary to the traditional claims that such functions are backward bending in this study the causes for these differing results are traced empirically to the economic status of workers and the level of development of their villages in sharp contrast to prior assertions that workers in developing nations are limited by low aspirations

models of energy use putty putty versus putty clay energy use is inelastic in time series data but elastic in international cross section data two models of energy use reproduce these elasticities a putty putty model with adjustment costs developed by pindyck and rotemberg 1983 and a putty clay model in the pindyck rotemberg model capital and energy are highly complementary in both the short run and the long run in the putty clay model capital and energy are complementary in the short run but substitutable in the long run we highlight the differences in the cross section implications of the models by considering the effect of an energy tax on output in both models in the putty putty model an energy tax that doubles the price of energy leads to a fall in output in the long run of 33 in contrast the same tax in the putty clay model leads to a fall in output of only 5 3

energy gdp relationship revisited an example from gcc countries using panel causality abstract this work investigates the causality relationship between gross domestic product gdp and energy consumption in the six countries of the gulf cooperation council gcc recently developed panel cointegration and causality techniques are used to uncover the direction of energy gdp causality in the gcc empirical results indicate a unidirectional causality running from gdp to energy consumption evidence shows no support for the hypothesis that energy consumption is the source of gdp growth in the gcc countries such results suggest that energy conservation policies may be adopted without much concern about their adverse effects on the growth of gcc economies

strategic implications of darwinian economics for selling efficiency and choice of integrated or independent sales forces most managers when confronted with a difficult strategic decision would like to know what is the prevailing practice in their industry prevailing practice interests managers in part because it may indicate which decisions are good even best the rationale is darwinian economics which proposes that competitive markets operate to force at least an approximation of optimal behavior because wrong decisions are extinguished by the market mechanism if so the bulk of survivors make good business decisions and their collective practice is worth knowing meaning it should be difficult to improve upon this paper tests whether prevailing practice represents good decisions the context is the decision whether to fill a sales district with a company integrated sales force or with outside agents independents the outcome of the choice is the ratio of sales to the cost of running the sales force i e selling efficiency a model is described which summarizes industry decisions and two propositions are developed proposition 1 a simple version states that efficiency declines as firms depart from the industry rule as to when they should integrate proposition 2 a contingent version states that efficiency declines as firms depart from the industry rule in unpredictable selling environments but that conforming to the rule has no impact in predictable environments the rationale is that firms learn the environment well enough to know when to depart from the rule in predictable settings but not otherwise the relationship between efficiency and conformity to prevailing practice is examined for 93 sales districts of 11 recognized electronic component manufacturers the results support proposition 2 the most efficient sales forces conform to prevailing practice and the least efficient deviate but only in uncertain environments in more certain environments conformity and efficiency are unrelated implications such as when it pays to be different and suggestions for future research are discussed

oil prices and real exchange rates in this paper we investigate the long run relationship between real oil prices and real exchange rates by using a monthly panel of g7 countries from 1972 1 to 2005 10 we first test whether exchange rates are cointegrated with real oil prices it is shown that real oil prices may have been the dominant source of real exchange rate movements and that there is a link between real oil prices and real exchange rates we then examine the ability of real oil prices to forecast future real exchange returns panel predictive regression estimates suggest that real oil prices have significant forecasting power the out of sample prediction performances demonstrate greater predictability over longer horizons

imperfect competition and the effects of energy price increases on economic activity the authors show that modifying the standard neoclassical growth model by assuming that competition is imperfect makes it easier to explain the size of the declines in output and real wages that follow increases in the price of oil plausibly parameterized models of this type are able to mimic the response of output and real wages in the united states the responses are particularly consistent with a model of implicit collusion where markups depend positively on the ratio of the expected present value of future profits to the current level of output copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

a new approach to energy consumption per capita stationarity evidence from oecd countries abstract applying a new panel stationary test procedure to data from 32 oecd countries from 1971 to 2013 this study examines the time series properties of per capita energy consumption the results indicate that energy consumption per capita follows a mean reverting process for 16 oecd countries whereas for the remaining 16 oecd countries a mean reverting process is not the case besides energy consumption per capita exhibits some sharp and smooth structural shifts breaks in its mean and or trend levels and the endogenously identified break dates correspond to specific macroeconomic events such as oil crises gulf war asian and global financial crises these results also have important policy implications for the 16 oecd countries that have stationary energy consumption per capita series government policies intended to stabilize energy demand will have no long lasting effects and therefore governments should not adopt unnecessary policy targets for energy demand level however for the remaining 16 oecd countries such policies will have long lasting effects

are shocks to renewable energy consumption permanent or transitory an empirical investigation for brazil china and india abstract this paper investigates whether there is a unit root in renewable energy consumption in three large developing economies brazil china and india over the period 1971 2014 to do so it uses four unit root tests assuming one structural break two structural breaks and more than two structural breaks it observes that renewable energy consumption is a unit root process in brazil but it is found as stationary in china and india the paper also tackles issues and challenges in the unit root test methodology in energy economics literature and provides implications for renewable energy consumption in three economies

the effect of price and income changes on food energy intake in sri lanka data is used to analyze the food acquisition behavior of households from a 1980 81 survey designed to be nationally sectorally and regionally representative of sri lanka the poor are shown to be much more responsive to price and income changes than other income groups the urban population generally exhibits lower income elasticities of demand for food commodities the poor appear to efficient substitutors thereby mitigating the effects of a price change on caloric intake the important exception is rice whose elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to price was about 4 times higher than for any other commodity the reluctance of households to substitute for rice even when faced with rising prices coupled with its large budget share show rice to be the most important consumption good higher rice prices are an important determinant of poverty for landless and urban workers moderating food prices preferably through technological change is a key ingredient to raising consumption among the poor simulations show that even if there are rapid and proportional increases in expenditures of all income groups this will not dramatically increase caloric intake among the poor however if the absolute value of the increase in real expenditures were distributed equally to all households there would be a marked increase in the of households consuming an adequate diet

are fluctuations in electricity consumption per capita transitory evidence from developed and developing economies abstract this paper investigates the unit root properties of electricity consumption per capita of 67 developed and developing countries for the period 1971 2010 to examine the stationary properties of electricity consumption per capita we have adopted lee and strazicich 2003 2004 test of unit root that allows us to test for at most two endogenous breaks and uses the lagrange multiplier lm test statistics results show that 65 country series reject the unit root null hypothesis except for 2 country series thus our empirical findings provide significant evidence that electricity consumption per capita is stationary in almost all countries considered the stationarity of electricity consumption per capita indicates that it should be possible for the series to forecast future movements in the energy consumption based on the past behaviors of the series

decomposition of electricity demand in china s industrial sector in the past five years china s demand for electricity has accelerated far beyond what central planners had forecasted leading to supply constraints and costly brownouts throughout the country this paper presents analysis of the effect of changes in the industrial sector on electricity demand an important economic sector contributing to these above patterns as it consumes nearly 70 of the electricity generated in china using decomposition analysis it is found that both increased industrial activity and fuel shifts helped increase industrial sector electricity demand between 1998 and 2002 the period of focus in this study but significant increases in energy efficiency countered this

is energy consumption per capita broken stationary new evidence from regional based panels abstract for the first time a new panel unit root testing procedure developed by 51 carrion i silvestre et al 2005 breaking the panels an application to gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 is applied to re investigate the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for 7 regional panel sets covering the 1971 2002 period with structural breaks and cross sectional correlations introduced into the model it becomes clear that all regional based panels of energy consumption per capita are stationary the structural breakpoints identify the likely causes of major changes in energy consumption in the past the findings underscore the importance of accounting for exogenous shocks to a series and offer several important implications for policy makers and energy economists

long memory and disaggregated energy consumption evidence from fossils coal and electricity retail in the u s abstract in this paper the long memory properties of disaggregated fossils coal and electricity retail consumption in the u s over the 1989 2009 period are examined the presence of long memory is related to autocorrelation persistence of each series our results show that there is heterogeneity in the order of integration between these types of energy consumption and for the different sectors employed which is affected by the inclusion of a break event the order of integration was generally higher for the case of a break in the intercept than in the slope with the latter being more plausible for all series

assets subsistence and the supply curve of labor the backward bending supply curve of labor is now accepted as a matter of course by most economists it has no doubt been perplexing to observe that the most commonly employed types of utility functions do not yield such curves under the usual textbook analysis of the problem 1 particular preference maps have been found that generate backward bending curves 2 however they are nonparametric leading to difficulties of estimation and upon closer examination seem to imply counter intuitive results we will show that taking into account the wealth position of an individual on the one hand and survival consideration on the other greatly expands the variety of shapes that can be derived for the supply curve from some simple utility functions the use of a specific simple utility function also implies some severe restrictions on the form the supply curve can take rendering it testable empirical evidence is shown to support the conclusion that the supply curve is monotonic we will also show that the notion that the aggregate supply curve of labor slopes down rests in part on an error of aggregation and that the empirical evidence usually cited in support of the negative slope when correctly interpreted cannot be so construed

organizational culture and performance abstract organizations are all around us culture is trickier to analyze and even to see we consider both the effect of management on culture and the effect of culture on performance we begin by describing an intervention that dramatically improved outcomes and conspicuously included a culture change component we then use details from this intervention to describe potential empirical analyses of the association between organizational culture and performance in this and similar settings finally we describe opportunities for theoretical models to explore how and why organizational culture might influence organizational performance

impacts of renewable energy consumption on the german economic growth evidence from combined cointegration test abstract germany is the largest economy in europe and the leading renewable energy user comparable to none in the entire of the european continents it is in reference to these developments that this study investigates whether the impacts of renewable energy have consolidated the economic growth prospects of the country to ensure this quarterly time series data from 1971q1 to 2013qiv was used the study employed the clemente montanes reyes detrended structural break test the bayer hanck combined cointegration test and the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration in addition the causality analysis was observed using vecm granger causality framework the results confirmed the existence of cointegration among the variables the results show that renewable energy consumption in germany consolidates the country s economic growth prospects to the extend that a 1 increase in renewable energy consumption boosts german economic growth by 0 2194 in addition to that a 1 increase in capital lead to the rise in economic growth by 1 1320 while a 0 5125 increase in economic growth is due to 1 increase in labor productivity the causality analysis on the other hand revealed the existence of feedback effect between renewable energy consumption and economic growth while the relationship between renewable energy consumption and capital is found to be bidirectional and same inference was found to exist between capital and economic growth the study proposes solid mechanisms that will help in averting renewable energy market failure locally and internationally among others

organizational economics and institutions as missing elements in economic development analysis abstract the main objective of this paper is to apply x efficiency theory to the analysis of organizations and state enterprises with special reference to developing countries in particular the black box relating to the internal operation of organizations is opened up to understand better the decision mechanisms operating within firms and institutions intrafirm conventions are explored as they relate to the impact of external and internal pressures on the decision making process implications are drawn to improve the internal efficiency of institutions in developing countries

are bilateral real exchange rates stationary evidence from lagrange multiplier unit root tests for india the paper examines the stationarity of india s real exchange rate vis a vis 16 of its major trading partner countries for the period 1960 2000 application of the conventional adf unit root test the lagrange multiplier lm unit root test with one structural break and the lm unit root test with two structural breaks provides evidence that india s exchange rate vis a vis 15 out of 16 countries is stationary implying support for purchasing power parity

political regime change and the real interest rate the effect of changes in policy regimes on real interest rates has important implications for financial and economic theory there is little current evidence that policy regime changes have any impact on the level of real interest rates we use large political changes as our measure of policy regime changes changes in presidential administration are more significantly correlated with real rate changes than are changes in the federal reserve chair or the mean shift points identified by garcia and perron 1996 using time series methods we also show that change of party control of congress is a significant factor explaining real rates we argue that theoretical models built on the assumptions of constant or policy invariant real interest rates are at variance with the empirical evidence

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

the neglect of society in the theory of the firm a systems theory perspective the prevailing theories of the firm acknowledge the importance of trust and loyalty but neglect such behaviour in the substance of their analyses the present paper unravels this paradox by drawing on niklas luhmann s ground breaking insight that the complexity reducing function of social systems leads them to neglect their critical environmental dependencies thereby compromising their own sustainability if the firm is conceived as a social system luhmann s theory implies that the neglect of social behaviour by the predominant theories of the firm can be explained as reflecting the neglect of society by actual firms this argument promises to not only furnish the theory of the firm with a concern for sustainability but also render it more amenable to unconventional institutions such as cooperatives and non profit organisations that help compensate for the damage inflicted by conventional firms on the social environment

the concept and measurement of subsistence a survey of the literature abstract subsistence is a widely used concept but most of the time its precise meaning is not property stated this study attempts to provide an appropriate exposition of the concept by examining the manner in which it is used and the role it plays in different theoretical analyses and policy formulations it has been shown that contrary to the conventional notion of a minimum standard of physical needs only subsistence is an absolute minimum standard of physical and mental survival and productive efficiency the lowest standard of social desirability is given by the needs of physical and mental survival in addition to these the standard of subsistence includes the needs of physical and mental efficiency for productive living in the society the attainment of a certain minimum of physical mental and social magnitudes provides the standard of subsistence commodities or their characteristics are the needs of this standard income by providing the command over these needs affords an individual the capability to attain it hence income is used to characterize subsistence three different methods of subsistence determination have been identified the most commonly used methods the social and the scientific ones are found to be arbitrary the determination of subsistence from the analysis of the agents declaration or behavior seems to be a better method while the declaration or expenditure based studies suffer from various limitations studies based on the behavior of income earning offer a better direction

what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract strong evidence is found that oil prices no longer granger cause many u s macroeconomic indicator variables in data after 1973 a number of potential explanations are explored that sample stability issues are responsible that oil prices are now endogenous and that linear and symmetric specifications misrepresent the form of the oil price interaction none of these hypotheses are supported by the data the opec price increases do appear to have had significant impacts while the effects of the price declines of the 1980s are smaller and harder to characterize these results have potentially important implications for the large body of research which utilizes oil prices as an instrumental or explanatory variable

firing the furnace an econometric analysis of utilities fuel choice abstract this paper attempts to estimate how the fuel mix of german electricity producers does react to fuel price changes the empirical analysis is based on panel data 1968 1998 of major utilities two different aspects of fuel choice are distinguished at the one hand the construction of usually fuel specific capacities for electric power generation i e investment decisions that determine the fuel mix in the long run at the other fuel use conditional on existing generation capacities i e short run inter fuel substitution according to the results from panel unit root tests both the econometric models which describe these two aspects are specified in changes rather than levels the partly discrete nature of investment decisions is taken into account by constructing a discrete model of capacity adjustment our estimation results suggest that the fuel mix of electric utilities is price inelastic either if long term investment or short term inter fuel substitution is considered finally the empirical results are used to predict the potential impacts of co 2 emissions trading on fuel choice in the german electric power industry

a behavioural analysis of the subsistence standard of living subsistence is analysed as an endogenous variable contrary to its conventional exoge nous treatment it is postulated that the subsistence livers perceive their own standard of subsistence direct their earnings behaviour towards attaining maintaining or exceeding this standard and thus reveal the standard through this behaviour the labour supply function of the working poor which displays a forward falling segment at low wages and an upward rising segment at higher wages is hypothesised to offer measures of subsistence and survival standards the concepts are rationalised using sen s concept of freedom of choice and arrow s concept of freedom as flexibility it is argued that at below subsistence living individuals lack freedom of flexibility in choosing their preferences and thus suffer the loss of freedom of choice while subsistence offers a reasonable minimum of this freedom the freedom is completely lost at the lowest survival standard

are shocks to energy consumption permanent or temporary evidence from 182 countries this article applies univariate and panel data unit root tests to annual panel data for 182 countries over the period 1979 2000 to examine the stationarity properties of per capita energy consumption the univariate unit root test can only reject the unit root null for 56 countries or 31 of the sample at the 10 level or better however univariate unit root tests have low power with short spans of data and therefore failure to reject the unit root null should be treated with caution when we apply the panel data unit root test we find overwhelming evidence that energy consumption is stationary we discuss the policy implications of these findings and offer suggestions for future research

hysteresis in unemployment evidence from 48 u s states i introduction one central idea in macroeconomics is the equilibrium unemployment rate hypothesis 1 in many macroeconomic models which allow for some degree of price stickiness fluctuations in demand and supply may lead to deviations of the actual unemployment rate from its equilibrium value these deviations in turn trigger changes in the inflation rate there is nothing in the equilibrium unemployment rate literature which even vaguely suggests such a rate is constant indeed many studies have analyzed the factors which cause the equilibrium unemployment rate to change over time or across areas for example summers 1986 presents evidence of an increased normal u s unemployment rate since the mid 1960s and argues that this increase has in large part resulted from high and growing noncompetitive wage differentials barro 1988 addresses the issue of persistence of unemployment in various countries over a number of time periods and relates measures of persistence to variables that matter theoretically for the economy s speed of adjustment blanchard and summers 1986 1987 propose the so called hysteresis hypothesis of unemployment hysteresis is the term used to describe the long lasting influence of history on the natural rate a recession potentially has permanent effects if it changes attitudes and or characteristics of the unemployed and particularly the long term unemployed furthermore the latter may exert less pressure on the wage setting because they will become outsiders in the labor market the insiders union members or currently employed workers have much incentive to keep wages from falling 2 the hysteresis hypothesis of unemployment has important policy implications it suggests that high unemployment if left by itself may persist and continue to be a serious problem in the economy even in the long run this possibility leaves more room for active government policies to fight recessions and manage the economy the fact that the actual unemployment rate may not fluctuate around some natural rate suggests the possibility of nonstationarity in the unemployment series this relationship can be illustrated with a simple model from wyplosz 1987 or brunello 1990 consider the following phillips curve 1 mathematical expression omitted where p sub t is the current inflation rate e sub t i p sub t is the expected inflation rate of time t given information at time t 1 u sub t is the current unemployment rate mathematical expression omitted is the natural unemployment rate beta is the slope of the phillips curve and xi sub t is an error term the possibility of hysteresis arises when the natural rate is a function of past unemployment rates this can be expressed as follows 2 mathematical expression omitted where c and alpha are constants and zeta sub t is an error term substituting 2 into 1 yields 3 u sub t c alpha u sub t 1 epsilon sub t where epsilon sub t 1 beta e sub t 1 p sub t p sub t xi sub t zeta sub t hysteresis requires the parameter alpha in 3 to be equal to one 3 it implies that once disturbed the unemployment rate tends to wander around without returning to a mean value in this case the unemployment rate and also the natural rate contain a unit root in contrast when alpha is between zero and one the natural rate evolves towards its steady state level c 1 alpha and the weak version of the natural rate hypothesis holds as long as alpha is larger than zero there is persistence in unemployment rate in the sense that past unemployment affects the natural rate we however seek to test for the existence of hysteresis the extreme version of persistence finally when the parameter alpha equals zero the natural rate stays at a constant level c

exogenous oil supply shocks how big are they and how much do they matter for the u s economy abstract the paper proposes a new measure of exogenous oil supply shocks the timing the magnitude and the sign of this measure may differ greatly from current state of the art estimates it is shown that only a small fraction of the observed oil price increases during oil crisis periods can be attributed to exogenous oil production disruptions exogenous oil supply shocks cause a sharp drop of u s real gdp growth after five quarters rather than an immediate and sustained reduction in economic growth and a spike in cpi inflation after three quarters overall exogenous oil supply shocks made remarkably little difference for the evolution of the u s economy since the 1970s although they did matter for some historical episodes

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

china s economic system reform underlying factors and prospects abstract three important determinants of economic growth in the chinese context are the motivation of economic units the absorption of foreign technology and its diffusion and agricultural productivity the stalin model of the 1950s served china well especially when sustained by chinese sub models such as ties of trust with rural brigades workers innovation etc after that investment effectiveness declined and today the structural changes necessary point to the need to alter existing institutions which have become obsolete in agriculture the use of cash inputs is more common now and a sense of economic efficiency is increasingly required care should be taken in comparing china with east european countries given that china s per capita gross domestic product is much lower as is the percentage of agricultural output reaching the market the comprehensiveness of the economic reform likely in china means that it will only be possible to judge it over a time horizon longer than five years for such economic reforms to be wholly successful they need to continue to incorporate chinese sub models mentioned in the paper and must develop a network of supplying industries and inter dependent factories

oil and energy price volatility it is commonly believed that since the 1973 oil crisis oil and energy prices have been more volatile than other commodity prices this study examines monthly producer prices for thousands of products over the period january 1945 through august 2005 the results show that crude oil refined petroleum and natural gas prices are more volatile than prices for about 95 of products sold by domestic producers relative to crude commodities however crude oil prices are currently more volatile than about 65 of other products and oil price volatility first exceeded the median for crude commodities following the 1986 drop in oil prices

consistent multi level energy efficiency indicators and their policy implications in order to cope with the global warming issue most of the asia pacific economic cooperation apec economies have made energy conservation policy a top priority in terms of their energy policies the energy efficiency indicators included in the present paper focus on the micro foundation aspects there are basically two types of energy efficiency indicators namely the economic thermodynamic energy efficiency indicators that use real gdp as the denominator and the physical thermodynamic energy efficiency indicators that are based on the output volume index while the common definitions and consistent methodology used in the present paper fulfill the iea pyramid eei concept the new methodology in this paper compares the decomposition effects between upstream and downstream industries when aggregating efficiency changes these decomposition effects can thereby provide valuable explanations for the energy conservation policy needed by energy policy and government administrators

are fluctuations in energy consumption per capita transitory evidence from a panel of pacific island countries this study applies the panel stationarity test developed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 breaking the panels an application to gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 to examine the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for a panel of 13 pacific island countries over the period 1980 2005 this test has the advantage that it allows for multiple structural breaks at unknown dates that can differ across countries and can account for all forms of cross sectional correlation between countries the conclusion from the study is that energy consumption per capita in approximately 60 of countries is stationary and that energy consumption per capita for the panel as a whole is stationary the study offers several suggestions for modelling energy consumption and policy making in the pacific islands

an empirical analysis of electricity consumption in cyprus abstract the paper presents the first empirical analysis of electricity consumption in cyprus using annual data from 1960 to 2004 we have examined electricity use in the residential and the services sectors which are the fastest growing electricity consumers in the island and its interaction with income prices and the weather the analysis was performed with the aid of time series analysis techniques such as unit root tests with and without a structural break in levels cointegration tests vector error correction models granger causality tests and impulse response functions results show long term elasticities of electricity use above unity for income and of the order of 0 3 to 0 4 for prices in the short term electricity consumption is rather inelastic mostly affected by weather fluctuations granger causality tests confirm exogeneity of electricity prices and bidirectional causality between residential electricity consumption and private income the commercial sector is less elastic and reverts faster to equilibrium than the residential sector despite the relatively small sample size results reported here are quite robust and can be used for forecasts and policy analyses

a review of optimal energy policy instruments on industrial energy efficiency programs rebound effects and government policies abstract industrial energy efficiency programs ieeps are defined as one of the most popular government policies that aim to reduce energy consumption in industrial energy intensive sectors in this paper we review and classify the most important academic studies that have addressed the environmental and economic aspects of ieeps using a systematic review the classification of energy policy instruments has been developed based on an analytical approach we discuss also the outputs benefits and barriers of ieeps besides a comprehensive argument about the restrictive policies on the rebound effects made after the implementation of these programs the results disclose that china usa and sweden are the most addressed countries on ieeps and their applications in this regard incentive energy policies e g voluntary agreements and subsidies have been applied more than others in the last decade furthermore most of the reviewed studies emphasize energy price reform as an effective practical policy while a few analytical methods can be seen to help policy makers determine the optimal levels of decision variables finally according to the state of the art analysis the authors provide some novel recommendations to improve the performance of ieeps using some restrictive policies on the negative impacts of rebound effects

measurement of deprivation and poverty based on the proportion pent on food an exploratory exercise this paper attempts to broaden the scope of poverty measurement first a brief review of measurements based on nutritional and monetary norms is presented then it is suggested that data on the proportion spent on food psf by per capita expenditure can be exploited to measure the incidence of deprivation and the incidence of poverty it is postulated that until the food needs are satisfied people spend relatively more of their incremental income on food and this behavior reveals itself as increasing or invariant psf as income increases up to a critical level the proportion of people up to that critical level is deprived of the required food and the proportion constitutes the incidence of deprivation the average expenditure at the deprivation point can be used to develop an arbitrary poverty line data for rural india are used to illustrate the measurement of deprivation and poverty

managerialism revisited in the light of bargaining game theory abstract this lecture proposes to view the modern firm as a coalition of shareholders employees and business partners rather than to identify it with a single maximizer such as an entrepreneur this view may be thought of as a revival of the original thought of managerialism but tries to go further by analyzing implications of the interactions of those agents on the behavior of the firm in a bargaining game theoretic framework the lecture reviews the literature on game theoretic approaches to the theory of the firm and discusses a few important theoretical and institutional issues

selling labor low wage responses to productivity shocks in developing countries productivity risk is pervasive in underdeveloped countries this paper highlights a way in which underdevelopment exacerbates productivity risk productivity shocks cause larger changes in the wage when workers are poorer less able to migrate and more credit constrained because of such workers inelastic labor supply this equilibrium wage effect hurts workers in contrast it acts as insurance for landowners agricultural wage data for 257 districts in india for 1956 87 are used to test the predictions with rainfall as an instrument for agricultural productivity in districts with fewer banks or higher migration costs the wage is much more responsive to fluctuations in productivity

the power industry reform in china 2015 policies evaluations and solutions abstract more than a decade ago in china s electric power industry the investment for generation side and power grids was inadequate and the gap between power supply and demand kept enlarging in order to relief the problems above power industry reform has been carried out in 2002 under the guidance of no 5 document by the central government the reform in 2002 has made a series of achievements including the enhancement of operation efficiency of power industry and the fulfillment of power demand all over the country during the past decade as the rapid development of the society and economy the external environment of china s power industry has changed greatly however the pricing and planning mechanism of china s power industry still operates following the requirements of no 5 document this has led to a number of problems including twisted pricing mechanism irrational power system planning inefficient utilization of renewable energy and so on these problems have not only hindered the development of power industry in china for quite a long time but also brought negative influence on the business operation of upstream and downstream industries therefore chinese government has issued no 9 document in 2015 and launched a new round of power industry reform policies were carried out to form new pricing mechanism new policies about renewable energy generation and power system planning process to solve the problems mentioned above this paper has reviewed the history of reform in 2002 and summarized the existing problems of china s power industry besides the main policies of no 9 document were deeply analyzed and their significance as well as backwards were illustrated at last solutions were proposed accordingly and these solutions have considerable theoretical and practical significance to china s electric power industry reform in the future

structural break unit root and the causality between energy consumption and gdp in turkey abstract this paper tries to investigate a series of unit root and causality tests to detect causality between the gdp and energy consumption in turkey employing hsiao s version of granger causality method for the 1950 2000 period the conventional unit root tests indicate the series are i 1 whereas the endogenous break unit root tests proposed by zivot and andrews zivot e and andrews d w k 1992 further evidence on the great crash the oil price shock and the unit root hypothesis journal of business and economics statistics 10 251 270 and perron perron p 1997 further evidence on breaking trend functions in macroeconomic variables journal of econometrics 80 355 385 reveal that the series are trend stationary with a structural break therefore it is inappropriate to take the first difference of the data to achieve stationarity the main conclusion of this study is that there is no evidence of causality between energy consumption and gdp in turkey based on the detrended data

a comparison between the food ratio poverty line and the leyden poverty line as the cross sectional characteristics of that process which most other studies have not been able to undertake we find that on average the price of a stock moves in a negative direction significantly and within 4 days in response to the filing of an antitrust suit by the department of justice or the federal trade commission further the magnitude of the response is related to variables that indicate the likely effects of the suit on future earnings

labor supply the family and poverty the s shaped labor supply curve abstract the canonical model of labor supply is extended to account for subsistence needs and a frequently rigid division of labor within families gender various theories that have been put forward are thus reconciled in particular with respect to the distinct work choices of the poor the model predicts negative labor supply elasticities for secondary workers at low wage rates and positive ones at higher rates but near 0 for primary workers at all levels detailed time allocation data of the rural philippines support these conclusions as well as evidence from other studies including of industrialized countries policy implications are briefly discussed

the effects of human capital on wages and the determinants of labor supply in a developing country abstract the heckman procedure is used to correct for sample selection bias in estimating wage offer and net labor market supply equations the findings show that wages are affected by education and experience in addition the wage offer is influenced by other genetic and environmental influences captured in the wage of one s father calories as predicted by exogenous instruments are also shown to influence the wage offer suggesting that better nutrition increases labor productivity the probability of market labor participation as well as the amount of net market labor supply declined with the size of paddy landholding in addition to the net market supply elasticity increasing with the amount of land owned and being lower for urban than rural workers

searching for stationarity purchasing power parity under the current float abstract using panel data methods we investigate long run purchasing power parity by testing for unit roots in real exchange rates of industrial countries under the current float the evidence against the unit root hypothesis is stronger for larger than for smaller panels for monthly than for quarterly data and when the german mark rather than the united states dollar is used as the base currency while we find that accounting for serial correlation considerably weakens the evidence against the unit root null the results as a whole are consistent with long run purchasing power parity

oil prices and economic activity an asymmetric cointegration approach the aim of this paper is to study the long term relationship between oil prices and economic activity proxied by gdp to account for asymmetries existing in the links between the two variables we propose an approach based on asymmetric cointegration our empirical analysis concerns the u s economy but also the g7 europe and euro area economies results indicate that while standard cointegration is rejected there is evidence for asymmetric cointegration between oil prices and gdp

the energy growth nexus in thailand does trade openness boost up energy consumption the nexus between trade openness and energy demand is hot topic of discussion among academicians and researchers and numerous studies are available in existing literature while investigating the nexus between trade openness and energy demand this paper explores the relationship between energy consumption trade openness and economic growth in case of thailand in doing so we have applied bayer and hanck cointegration approach to test whether the long run relationship exists between the variables our results confirm the presence of cointegration between the variables energy consumption stimulates economic growth trade openness adds in economic growth the causality analysis reveals that energy consumption granger causes economic growth and in resulting economic growth granger causes energy consumption trade openness and energy consumption are interdependent i e trade openness granger causes energy consumption and in return energy consumption granger causes trade openness this paper openness up new directions for policy making authorities in thailand to design a comprehensive energy and trade policies to sustain economic growth for long run

will disruptions in opec oil supply have permanent impact on the global oil market abstract opec has long been a major stakeholder and strong player in the global energy market especially in the petroleum sub sector in recent time however there have been questions over the influence of opec in the sub sector due to changing petroleum production landscape specifically as a result of the discovery of unconventional energy resources in north america and emergence of non opec petroleum producing and exporting countries this development could have significant effect on the global energy market and the macro economy of opec member countries the stationarity or otherwise of opec oil production supply has important implications for determining whether fluctuations in opec market supply has temporary or permanent effect using the zivot andrews structural break stationarity test and production data of opec member countries from 1980 to 2011 this paper investigates whether fluctuations in opec market supply has temporary or permanent effect the empirical analysis shows that for only 5 opec members nigeria saudi arabia ecuador kuwait and uae is the hypothesis of unit root rejected this implies that for the five 5 opec members the effects of shocks to oil production are not permanent and future pattern of oil production can be predicted following past trend the practical implication of this finding is that opec production quota strategy may not have long term impact on the global oil market thus the cartel needs to improve oil production policy coordination among members and ensure strict adherence to production quota while also stressing the need for diversification in member countries

a review of industrial energy and climate policies in japan and sweden with emphasis towards smes abstract the threat of increased global warming resulting from the use of fossil fuels stresses decision makers to formulate and adopt policies towards different sectors of the economy in light of the great earthquake in japan 2011 energy efficiency also plays an important role in meeting the challenge of power supply shortage energy policies towards industry are of particular importance as a major part of the energy in the economy is used in industrial production the number of papers investigating and presenting experience from energy end use policies are scarce furthermore for those present they often only include a very brief analysis from a public point of view evaluations of energy programs are of major importance to measure the performance of the programs from an energy policy designer point of view it is of major importance to not only see the cost effectiveness of the policy but also to understand the fundamental mechanisms for the success or failure of an industrial energy program in order to learn how to improve future programs the aim of this paper is to present a review of energy end use policy instrument in japan and sweden towards the industrial sector from 1990 to 2014 with special emphasis on industrial smes from the results presented some general conclusions can be made 1 results show that the cost effectiveness differs substantially between the evaluated programs and 2 that from a governmental point of view subsidies towards energy audit programs seem like the most cost effective policy in addition to this 3 the results from the review also stress the importance of a clear strategy for every energy program on how the program is going to be evaluated ex ante or ex post and how the performance of the program is to be measured this structure should be included from the start of the program

a synthetic cohort analysis of female labour supply the case of thailand abstractthis study analyzes trends and patterns in employment hours worked and women s wages for thai women and relations among these variables in models of female labour supply labour supply behaviour of thai women is investigated with synthetic cohort data defined by age year of birth and level of educational attainment constructed from annual labour force surveys from 1985 to 2004 according to pseudo panel estimates wage increases lead to a reduction in hours worked but also an increase in the employment population ratio with elasticity estimates that are robust across a variety of specifications estimates based on disaggregation by marital status show that marriage provides protection against wage decreases allowing married women greater choice between hours of work and other household activities alternative disaggregations find that younger cohorts of women and those with the highest education show the greatest positive response of the employment rate to wage changes leading to a fut

the overvaluation of purchasing power parity abstract recent panel studies of purchasing power parity have reported strong evidence of mean reversion in real exchange rates however these studies fail to control for cross sectional dependence in the data this failure has dramatic consequences raising the significance level of tests with a nominal size of 5 percent to as much as 50 percent it is shown in this paper that controlling for cross sectional dependence no evidence against the random walk null can be found in panels of up to 64 real exchange rates this finding cannot be attributed to low power as there is ample power in panels of this size to reject the unit root null