development fertility and childbearing age a unified growth theory during the last two centuries fertility has exhibited in industrialized economies two distinct trends the cohort total fertility rate follows a decreasing pattern while the cohort average age at motherhood exhibits a u shaped pattern this paper proposes a unified growth theory aimed at rationalizing those two demographic stylized facts we develop a three period olg model with two periods of fertility and show how a traditional economy where individuals do not invest in higher education and where income rises push towards advancing births can progressively converge towards a modern economy where individuals invest in higher education and where income rises encourage postponing births our findings are illustrated numerically by replicating the dynamics of the quantum and the tempo of births for swedish cohorts born between 1876 and 1966

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

public versus private investment in human capital endogenous growth and income inequality in this paper we present an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents in which human capital investment through formal schooling is the engine of growth we use simple functional forms for preferences technologies and income distribution to highlight the distinction between economies with public education and those with private education we find that income inequality declines more quickly under public education on the other hand private education yields greater per capita incomes unless the initial income inequality is sufficiently high we also find that societies will choose public education if a majority of agents have incomes below average

fertility volatility and growth abstract empirically growth rates are negatively correlated with birth rates they are also correlated with production risk we argue that these stylized facts are related and arise jointly from the decision of how many children to have in a risky environment

modeling monetary trends in italy using historical data the demand for broad money 1861 1990 in this paper we estimate a stable demand for money relationship for italy using a long series of historical data we extend previously available data sets to obtain a sample for the years 1861 to 1990 and use cointegration analysis and two stage estimation procedures to obtain a dynamic model for m2 demand by employing a small number of explanatory variables and a nonlinear error correction model we find a stable demand for money relationship our model incorporates significant inflation and interest rate effects in contrast to previous studies of this type

the demand for money a rational expectations approach the authors derive a model of money demand for an optimizing consumer with rational expectations in a discrete time infinte hortizon framework under uncertainty mone y demand responds to unanticipated changes in income one period expe ctations of future bond and money interest rates unanticipated curre nt interest rates and past anticipations of current rates the deriv ed consumption function mirrors money demand behavior joint estimati on of the consumption and money demand equations by weighted nonlinea r least squares corroborates the predicted effects particularly inco me neutrality this money demand model substantially outperforms a co nventional specification in post sample simulation over 1975 85 copyright 1988 by mit press

on long run solutions to dynamic econometric equations under rational expectations models of this type abound in the re literature and include inter alia the permanent income model of consumption hall i 978 sargent i 978 a models of factor demand sargent i978 b portfolio balance during hyperinflations sargent i977 foreign exchange rate determination mussa i976 i982 the term structure of interest rates shiller i972 modigliani and shiller i973 and the demand for money cuthbertson and taylor i987 the general formulation and estimation of such models is discussed in hansen and sargent i 980 in particular this type of equation arises naturally in models displaying the familiar re saddle path properties where the unstable root is solved forward sargent i979 if we define x zt i a e ai xt i o 3 may be written yt kytt1 te t et

monetary economic myth and econometric reality few of the main macro economic forecasting systems can produce sensible forecasts without the tender loving care of their proprietors many econometric equations in com mon use show significant deterioration in the accuracy with which they characterise data as time passes and many economists are sceptical about empirical evidence feeling it lacks credibility monetary relationships have the dubious distinction of being among the leaders in this field as witnessed by the very large mispredictions of m1 models in the usa over what is now known as the missing money period 1973 76 as well as during the recent great velocity decline 1979 82 in the uk models of m1 and m3 demand experienced large structural breaks following the competition and credit control regu lation changes and the move to floating exchange rates perhaps it is no surprise that goodhart s law should have been formulated with respect to money demand equations

an alternative approach to the american demand for money with a decade of evidence behind it the profession seems to have agreed on the fact that a structural break shifted the american demand for money shortly after 1973 it is difficult to pinpoint the source of the trouble precisely let alone to explain the event with an econometric model in their survey judd and scadding 1982 tentatively concluded that financial innovation is the source of the problem while this conclusion has not been universally accepted the instability of the money demand function is largely taken as a given stylized fact the primary goal of this article is to provide an alternative solution to the case of the missing money using the methods of hendry 1979 it should be stressed at the outset that as this paper deals with a problem in the applied literature it is unabashedly empirical in nature the paper attempts to explain an empirical difficulty without presenting a new theoretical model of money demand rather in the context of the standard transactions demand theory for narrow money a number of questions are analyzed with an atypical econometric model was there actually a shift or a series of shifts in the demand for money if not why have other investigators concluded that there was in fact a shift most importantly what function seems to be the most reasonable approximation to the data generation process during the period in question

the search for a stable money demand function a survey of the post 1973 literature phe question of whether the demnand function for money is stable is one of the most important recurring issues in the theory and application of macroeconomic policy what is being sought in a stable demand function is a set of necessary conditions for money to exert a predictable influence on the economy so that the central bank s control of the money supply can be a useful instrument of economic policy as such the notion of a stable demand function appears to involve three key elements e g john t boorman 1976 p 317 and david e w laidler 1977 pp 34 35 first the demand for money relation should be highly predictable in a statistical sense as measured by the usual goodness of fit statistics precision of estimated coefficients and presumably its ability to forecast accurately out of sample second a stable demand function for money has relatively few arguments a relationship that requires knowledge about a large number of variables in order to pin it down is in effect not predictable finally the variables that appear as arguments in the function should represent significant links to spending and economic activity in the real sector in sum a stable demand function for money means that the quantity of money is predictably related to a small set of key variables linking money to the real sector of the economy the importance of a stable money demand function for monetary policy can be illustrated with the standard is lm model in which interest rates and gnp are the endogenous variables in this context a stable demand function for money translates into a well defined relationship between money interest rates and gnp

the population problem theory and evidence this study is concerned with the relationships among population growth poverty and environmental degradation with particular focus on the situation in developing countries the author rejects the concept of a general theory of fertility behavior in favor of an interpretation of these relationships which might be applicable to certain situations in the poorest parts of the indian subcontinent and sub saharan africa such situations include unacceptable risks of maternal death for poor illiterate women and a condemnation to extreme poverty in conditions of the deterioration of local resources and of the environment the author concludes that population growth rates are too high in certain specific areas and that an appropriate policy reaction to such conditions would be to try to change the options that men and women face so that their reasoned choice would be to lower their fertility

school attendance and child labor a model of collective behavior this paper theoretically investigates how community approval or disap proval aects school attendance and child labor and how aggregate behavior of the community feeds back towards the formation and persistence of an anti or pro schooling norm the proposed community model continues to take aggregate and idiosyncratic poverty into account as an important driver of low school attendance and child labor but it provides also an explanation for why equally poor villages or regions can display dierent attitudes towards schooling distinguishing between three dierent modes of child time allocation school attendance work and leisure the paper shows how the time costs of schooling and child labor productivity con tribute to the existence of a locally stable anti schooling norm it proposes policies that eectively exploit the social dynamics and initiate a permanent escape from the anti schooling equilibrium an extension of the model explores how an education contingent subsidy paid to the poorest families of a community manages to initiate a bandwagon eect towards education for all the optimal mechanism design of

the demand for money a dynamic rational expectations model macroeconomic modelling generally has widely adopted the use of forwardlooking variables in behavioural relationships studies of the demand for money being something of an exception the aim of this paper is to provide preliminary empirical results of a model which explicitly incorporates expectations of the future into the demand function for narrow money the approach adopted is the modelling of the demand for money within a multi period costs of adjustment framework under the assumption of rational expectations agents are assumed to pursue a target or long run level of money balances which is itself a function of prices income and interest rates this results in an empirical specification which consists of both backwardlooking and forward looking components the model is estimated using uk data for the period i963i i983iii the remainder of the paper is divided into four sections in section i we outline the framework in which our model is derived in the following section we discuss the econometric techniques used and in section iii we present our empirical results a final section concludes

the long run stability of the demand for money italy 1861 1996 this paper examines the stability of the demand for money in italy using a newly extended data set for the period 1861 1996 we examine how the evolution of the financial system in italy and policy shifts have affected the behavior of the long run demand for money and present tests of structural stability we find the demand for broad money to be remarkably stable despite periods of considerable economic turbulence in addition we present evidence on the monetary transmission mechanism our results shed light on attempts to model long run relationships in other countries such as the uk and the us

money demand instability expectations and policy regimes a note on the case of italy 1964 1986 abstract this paper compares the stability performance of feedback and feedforward specifications of the demand for m2 in italy over the period 1962 1986 a clear change in the monetary policy regime occurred in 1969 1970 together with marked breaks in the processes generating several relevant variables in the mid 70s making this period particularly appropriate for the investigation of the potential role of expectations our main results show that the feedback specification suffers from instability at both relevant dates whereas the feedforward specification is remarkably stable during the policy regime change but displays signs of instability during the mid 70s

social norms savings behavior and growth we argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets we interpret an agent s status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector the existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in for example the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status moreover it can naturally yield multiple equilibria it is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences technologies or endowments different social organizations lead to different reduced form preferences which lead to different growth rates

a cautionary note on the interpretation of long run equilibrium solutions in conventional macro models in recent years the modelling methodology associated with hendry and mizon i978 and davidson et al i978 has become standard practice in the econometric estimation of many key relationships in uk macro models this note takes issue with one aspect of this methodology namely the recommendation that the static equilibrium solution of final estimated forms should conform with static steady state economic theory the main contention is that dynamic estimated forms that make no explicit acknowledgement of expectational processes will often prove incapable on their own of yielding estimates of true steady state equilibrium or long run parameters particularly under rational expectations it is stressed that the long run solutions of conventional distributed lag equations cannot be interpreted in isolation from the parameters of the sample period datageneration processes for the rationally expected variables the point applies equally well to the interpretation of either staticor dynamic equilibrium solutions after developing the reasoning in a static equilibrium framework the natural extension to the context of dynamic equilibrium as characterised by currie i98i is presented the basic principles on which the argument is based are in no way new they were originally developed by sargent i97i and lucas i972 and have gained widespread application in the rational expectations literature for example in lucas s i976 critique of econometric policy evaluation recently mccallum i984 has applied them to discredit the general validity of using the lowfrequency or long periodicity components of economic time series to test the long run propositions of economic theory this note merely attempts a reexposition with particular reference to the evaluation of equation properties in models that purport to represent intertemporal behaviour without explicitly characterising expectational processes were it not a prevalent practice to identify the long run solutions particularly the static versions of such equations with the parameters of static steady state economic theory this note would not be necessary however the evidence suggests otherwise and seems to justify the need for a restatement that exposes the potential for this procedure to give rise to seriously misleading conclusions when expectational processes are important in the case of rational expectations it is shown that if proper thought is given to the dependence of expectations formation on sample period time series behaviour then the problems are by no means insurmountable

national account of timber and forest environmental resources in sweden this paper outlines an extension of the national account of income from forest resources in sweden 1987 incorporating changes in timber inventories production of nonmarketed timber and nontimber goods and depletion or improvement in vital environmental stocks such as soil nutrients biodiversity and carbon sinks the total net value added provided by forest resources and forestry labour 1987 is estimated to 22 billions sek this is one third more than the contribution of forestry to ordinary gnp

contraception and the demographic transition inspired by the historical english experience we modify the beckerian paradigm of fertility by incorporating costly societal influence on contraception heterogeneous generationally linked households choose between traditional and modern contraception the modern has a higher fixed but lower variable cost of averting childbirths initially the rich adopt the modern which unleashes society wide diffusion eventually everyone switches lowering fertility further and across households hastening the switch is falling child mortality quantitative experiments suggest contraception was a vital link between the historical mortality and fertility transitions though not the latter s proximate cause implications for more recent transitions are discussed

social norms fertility and economic development abstract this paper presents an overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility and human capital accumulation within such a framework it shows how the presence of family size norms can lead to multiple equilibria it can thus potentially explain different development patterns without recourse to increasing returns and differences in initial conditions furthermore it derives sufficient conditions under which different equilibria can be pareto ranked finally it shows that the main results hold also in the case where there exists parental altruism

european integration and monetary transmission mechanisms the case of italy the focus in this paper is on the monetary transmission mechanism in italy and how it has changed with the increased independence of the italian central bank and the increasingly fixed exchange rates of the erm the sample period 1974 1994 is divided into two parts approximately corresponding to the different systems based on a var model for money income prices and interest rates the cointegration properties of the data in nominal and real terms are analysed long run price homogeneity is empirically rejected and the economic and econometric consequences for a real money analysis are described altogether we find little evidence that the use of m2 and the short interest rate as intermediate targets has effectively controlled price inflation in this period copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

the conduct of monetary policy nowadays the central bank of a country is the monopoly supplier of legal tender currency the commercial banks are committed to making their deposits convertible at par into such currency so the banks need to keep reserves in the form of currency and deposits at the central bank the central bank primarily conducts its policy by buying and selling financial securities e g treasury bills or foreign exchange in exchange for its own liabilities i e open market operations academic economists generally regard such operations as adjusting the quantitative volume of the banks reserve base and hence of the money stock with rates prices in such markets simultaneously determined by the interplay of demand and supply central bank practitioners almost always view themselves as unable to deny the banks the reserve base that the banking system requires and see themselves as setting the level of interest rates at which such reserve requirements are met with the quantity of money then simultaneously determined by the portfolio preferences of private sector banks and non banks this difference in perceptions is discussed again in section iii whether the monetary policy operations of central banks should be viewed primarily in terms of quantity or rate setting actions though of course one is the dual of the other these had allowed inflation and inflationary expectations to become entrenched by the end of the i970s a selection of representative statistics for a number of the leading industrialised countries is given in table i below this table indicates a common pattern among the countries of interaction between interest rates inflation and the growth of output the first period i969 78 is marked by high inflation negative real interest rates and slightly above average growth the second period i979 82 by very high nominal and high real interest rates high but falling inflation and very low output growth the final period i983 7 is marked by much lower inflation lower nominal but still high real interest rates and a recovery in output growth in some cases to above average rates in contrast the relationship in these countries between the growth of their chosen key monetary aggregate and nominal incomes appears much weaker also see clinton and chouraqui i987 especially p 7 whether measured in terms of monetary growth or in terms of real interest rates i e after adjustment for prospective future inflation policy during the

a mass phenomenon the social evolution of obesity this paper proposes a theory for the social evolution of obesity it considers a society in which individuals experience utility from consumption of food and non food the state of their health and the evaluation of their appearance by others the theory explains under which conditions poor persons are more prone to be overweight although eating is expensive and it shows how obesity occurs as a social phenomenon such that body mass continues to rise long after the initial cause e g a lower price of food is gone the paper investigates the determinants of a steady state at which the median person is overweight and how an originally lean society arrives at such a steady state extensions of the theory towards dietary choice and the possibility to exercise in order to lose weight demonstrate robustness of the basic mechanism and provide further interesting results

endogenous fertility multiple growth paths and economic convergence abstract this paper extends the cass koopmans optimal growth model to allow for endogenous fertility choice it is shown that if agents choose their fertility rate then the net rate of return on capital marginal product of capital minus the population growth rate may not be monotonically decreasing in capital in this case multiple steady states and growth paths may emerge which can explain the persistent differentials in income between poor and rich countries as well as the existence of development miracles and disasters the paper provides also empirical evidence which supports the existence of multiple convergence groups and is consistent with the theoretical model

gender inequality endogenous cultural norms and economic development this research focuses on the role played by cultural norms in the long run persistence of gender inequalities cultural norms about gender roles are considered to be endogenous and can generate gender inequality and low development traps indeed when the gender gap is internalized it leads to inegalitarian views about gender roles due to these inegalitarian beliefs boys receive more education and the initial gender gap is reinforced the existence of gender inequality traps is pointed out by the world bank as a major obstacle for economic development wdr 2006 the present article allows for a better understanding of the persistence of such traps and the means to escape

fertility choice under child mortality and social norms abstract in most demographic transitions declines in child mortality precede declines in net fertility rates variants of the barro becker model of fertility fail to deliver this link a simple extension the inclusion of social norms regarding fertility generates the desired effect

natural resources national accounting and economic depreciation stock effects abstract hartwick s analysis of incorporating resource depletion in standard national income accounting is extended to the consideration of stock effects under both certainty and uncertainty