limited participation and exchange rate dynamics does theory meet the data the paper explores the empirical dimensions of a new open economy macronomy model characterized by credit market frictions we find that these frictions are essential for the model to match a large set of moments of german data moreover the simulated impulse response functions to supply and nominal shocks are consistent with var findings since the model is estimated on moments rather than on conditional irfs this underlines the ability of the model to match the data finally monetary shocks do not seem to be the primary driving force behind the aggregate dynamics which is consistent with the var literature

some empirical evidence on the effects of shocks to monetary policy on exchange rates this paper investigates the effects of shocks to u s monetary policy on exchange rates we consider three measures of these shocks orthogonalized shocks to the federal funds rate orthogonalized shocks to the ratio of nonborrowed to total reserves and changes in the romer and romer index of monetary policy in sharp contrast to the literature we find substantial evidence of a link between monetary policy and exchange rates specifically according to our results a contractionary shock to u s monetary policy leads to i persistent significant appreciations in u s nominal and real exchange rates and ii significant persistent deviations from uncovered interest rate parity in favor of u s interest rates

household fuelwood demand and supply in nepal s tarai and mid hills choice between cash outlays and labor opportunity abstract subsistence households are a leading source of deforestation and their consumption of fuelwood in particular is important in many developing countries yet the empirical economic examinations of fuelwood consumption are sparse particularly for rural areas where the deforestation occurs and we would argue that forest policy is often designed without a good understanding of the potential responses of subsistence households to the new policy this paper addresses these issues with household evidence from the two major populated regions of nepal market prices labor opportunities the availability of substitutes and measure of access to the basic resource are the most reliable predictive variables for fuelwood consumption and production there are however regional differences and important distinctions between the elasticities of fuelwood collecting or purchasing households with respect to these predictive variables the difference between collecting and purchasing households is notable it recommends forestry policies that target the labor opportunity and the physical resource in regions where collecting households dominate and policies that affect the fuelwood market itself in regions where purchasing households are important a second interesting finding is that fuelwood is relatively scarcer prices are higher in the mid hills and both collecting and purchasing households in this region are beginning to respond to deforestation by using their own land for fuelwood production

eva versus earnings does it matter which is more highly correlated with stock returns dissatisfaction with traditional accounting based performance measures has spawned a number of alternatives of which economic value added eva is currently the most prominent how can we tell which performance measures best capture managerial contributions to value there is currently a heated debate among practitioners about whether the new performance measures have a higher correlation with stock values and their returns than do traditional accounting earnings academic researchers have relied instead on the variance of performance measures to gauge their relative accuracy to formally address the above debate we use a relatively standard principal agent model in which contracts can be based on any two accounting based performance measures plus the stock price rather than model detailed differences between eva and traditional measures such as earnings we focus on the problem that while the variability of each measure is observable its exact information signal content is not the model provides a formal method for researchers to ascertain the relative value of alternative accounting based measures based on two distinct uses of the stock price first as is well known prices provide a noisy measure of managerial value added in our model stock prices also can reveal the signal content of alternative accounting based performance measures we then show how to combine stock prices earnings and eva to produce an optimally weighted compensation scheme we find that the simple correlation between eva or earnings and stock returns is a reasonably reliable guide to its value as an incentive contracting tool that is a firm could reasonably gauge the merits of adding a measure like eva by examining its correlation with the firm s stock price this is not because stock returns are themselves an ideal performance measure rather it is because correlation places appropriate weights on both the signal and noise components of alternative measures we then calibrate the theoretical improvement in incentive contracts from optimally using eva in addition to accounting earnings specifically we empirically estimate the value added of eva by firm and industry these estimates are positive and significant in predicting which firms have actually adopted eva as an internal performance measure

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

policies for a sustainable biomass energy sector in malawi enhancing energy and food security simultaneously summary biomass energy still dominates the energy sector in sub saharan africa in particular as the main cooking energy source in rural and urban areas the strong linkages to food security and the environment place biomass energy at the heart of sustainable development a fact that is largely ignored by policy makers in favor of modern energy at the same time population and gdp growth are exacerbating already existing supply demand imbalances in highly populated countries such as malawi these trends make it imperative to identify policy interventions that promote sustainable biomass energy while simultaneously considering linkages with other sectors we use new data on demand and supply for biomass energy in malawi and develop a model that estimates fuelwood demand based on actual diets and project demand in future years we simulate how demand side interventions in the form of improved cookstoves affect biomass demand and built a behavioral model to analyze the potential of agroforestry for promoting a sustainable biomass energy sector in malawi our findings show that policy measures aimed at increasing cooking efficiency are not enough to decrease demand for cooking energy due to high population growth supply side interventions like agroforestry on the other hand will not only increase sustainable supply but can also enhance food security and protect the environment we find that biomass energy can be inherently sustainable and should be an integral part of every energy sector strategy in developing countries as well as of the sustainable development goals

exchange rate pass through exchange rate volatility and exchange rate disconnect abstract this paper explores the hypothesis that high volatility of real and nominal exchange rates may be due to the fact that local currency pricing eliminates the pass through from changes in exchange rates to consumer prices exchange rates may be highly volatile because in a sense they have little effect on macroeconomic variables the paper shows the ingredients necessary to construct such an explanation for exchange rate volatility in addition to the presence of local currency pricing we need a incomplete international financial markets b a structure of international pricing and product distribution such that wealth effects of exchange rate changes are minimized and c stochastic deviations from uncovered interest rate parity together it is shown that these elements can produce exchange rate volatility that is much higher than shocks to economic fundamentals and disconnected from the rest of the economy in the sense that the volatility of all other macroeconomic aggregates are of the same order as that of fundamentals

impact of government subsidies on household biogas use in rural china abstract in this paper we evaluate empirically the impact of biogas subsidies on household biogas energy use in rural china special attention was given to the problem of sample selection bias in assessing the impact of subsidies on biogas energy use because biogas subsidies often change the propensity for installing biogas digesters using data from a large scale household survey the results indicate that biogas subsidies did promote the construction of biogas digesters the results suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in subsidy cost ratio would lead to a 3 increase in digester installations we also found that biogas subsidies correlated negatively with average time of digester use a 10 percentage point increase in the subsidy cost ratio would result in a 4 3 reduction in the average working time of digesters these results suggest that the net effect of the current subsidy policy on rural household biogas use was near negligible indeed a 10 percentage point increase in the subsidy cost ratio resulted in a mere 1 15 increase in biogas use these findings indicate that biogas subsidies have possibly not been targeted effectively at households that would actually prefer to use biogas energy

accrual reversals earnings and stock returns we show that accruals consist of at least two distinct underlying processes one with positive serial correlation and the other with negative serial correlation we also find that the accrual reversals characterizing the negatively serially correlated process are predominantly good accruals that correctly anticipate fluctuations in working capital accrual estimation error is the least persistent component of earnings while accruals relating to firm growth are less persistent than cash flows finally the mispricing of accruals appears to be driven by a combination of accrual estimation error and firm growth

rational speculation and exchange rates abstract models of exchange rates have typically failed to produce results consistent with the key fact that real and nominal exchange rates move in ways not closely connected to current or past macroeconomic variables models that rely on the same shocks to drive fluctuations in macroeconomic variables and exchange rates typically imply counterfactually strong co movements between them we develop a model in which new information leads agents to change their rational beliefs about risk premia on foreign exchange markets these changes in risk premia work through asset markets to cause real and nominal exchange rates to change without corresponding changes in gdp productivity money supplies and other key macro variables

can information heterogeneity explain the exchange rate determination puzzle empirical evidence shows that most exchange rate volatility at short to medium horizons is related to order flow and not to macroeconomic variables we introduce symmetric information dispersion about future macroeconomic fundamentals in a dynamic rational expectations model in order to explain these stylized facts consistent with the evidence the model implies that a observed fundamentals account for little of exchange rate volatility in the short to medium run b over long horizons the exchange rate is closely related to observed fundamentals c exchange rate changes are a weak predictor of future fundamentals and d the exchange rate is closely related to order flow

financial market integration and macroeconomic volatility the process of financial market integration is modeled in an intertemporal general equilibrium framework as the elimination of trading frictions between financial markets in different countries goods markets are assumed to be imperfectly competitive and goods prices are subject to sluggish adjustment simulation experiments show that increasing financial market integration increases the volatility of a number of variables when shocks originate from the money market but decreases the volatility of most variables when shocks originate from real demand or supply copyright 1996 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

household biomass energy choice and its policy implications on improving rural livelihoods in sichuan china abstract it is widely known that a switch from traditional biomass energy to modern clean safe and efficient energy could improve local rural livelihoods by enhancing the access to high quality energy and reducing the negative impacts of traditional biomass energy on health environment and living standards hence in this paper we used alternative specific conditional logit model asclm to examine the rural household energy choice behaviors in sichuan province of china from the perspective of revealed and stated preferences the results show that the fuel switching in our study region is not a simple unidirectional process from traditional biomass energy to modern fuels as incomes improve household energy choice behaviors could be not only affected by energy specific characteristics such as fuel price smoky level and safety risk but also influenced by household specific factors such as income level age and educational level of the decision maker household demographic structure number of people frequently eating at home distance to the nearest biomass collecting spot and household location suggesting that government should attach more importance to simultaneously improve energy quality control energy price and enhance household socio economic status

analysis of u s residential wood energy consumption 1967 2009 the residential sector consumes about 23 of the energy derived from wood wood energy in the u s an estimated error correction model with data from 1967 to 2009 suggests that residential wood energy consumption has declined by an average 3 per year in response to technological progress urbanization accessibility of non wood energy and other factors associated with a time trend such as increasing income per capita and number of houses but the rising price of non wood energy has had a positive effect on the consumption and offset the downward trend effect in the last decade residential wood energy consumption has also been sensitive to changes in wage rate in both long run and short run but the total estimated wage rate effect since 1967 is negligible wood energy is expected to continue to account for a small share of residential energy consumption unless public policies improve wood energy cost competitiveness relative to non wood energy

an analysis of the use of accounting and market measures of performance in executive compensation contracts prior research has provided useful insights into the structure of compensation plans and their incentive effects however one important limitation of these studies is the virtual absence of any cross sectional analyses of the attributes of compensation contracts 2 this absence is related in part to the problems associated with controlling for other factors that affect compensation that is compensation contracts are

a theory of ambiguity credibility and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information this paper develops a positive theory of credibility ambiguity and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information the monetary policymaker maximizes his own politically motivated objective function that is positively related to economic stimulation through monetary surprises and negatively related to monetary growth the relative importance he assigns to each target shifts stochastically through time his current preference trade off is known to him but not to the public when choosing the state contingent path of money growth for the present and the future the policymaker compares the benefits from current stimulation with the costs associated with higher future inflation expectations current monetary growth conveys information to the public about future money growth because there is persistence in the policymaker s objectives although expectations are rational information is imperfect because monetary control procedures are imprecise as a result the public cannot correctly distinguish persistent changes of emphasis on different policy objectives from transitory monetary control errors the public becomes aware of changes gradually by observing past monetary growth credibility is defined in terms of the speed with which the public recognizes changes in the objectives of the policymaker credibility is lower the noisier monetary control and the more stable the objectives of the policymaker looser monetary control and a higher degree of time preference on the part of the policymaker induce him to produce higher and more variable monetary growth when the policymaker is free to determine the accuracy of monetary control he does not always choose the most effective control available in spite of the fact that monetary surprises always have an expected value of zero the reason is that ambiguous control procedures enable the policymaker to generate positive surprises when he cares more than on average about economic stimulation he leaves the inevitable negative surprises for periods in which he cares more about inflation prevention this result provides an explanation for the fed s preference for ambiguity recently documented by goodfriend 1986 the policymaker is more likely to pick more ambiguous control procedures the more uncertain his objectives and the higher his time preference the paper also provides a theoretical underpinning for the well documented crosscountry positive correlation between the level and the variability of inflation

farmers perceptions of developing forest based bioenergy in china abstract farmers awareness of forest based bioenergy developments will greatly determine the direction and succession of forestry projects to obtain a better understanding of this awareness a logistic regression model was applied to analyze the factors influencing farmers willingness to participate in the construction of bioenergy bases the model was developed based on a survey of 573 household farmers in eight chinese provinces this study found that a majority of households have increased their daily use of commercial fuel moreover a significant number of farmers are either uncertain about or unfamiliar with the concept of forest based bioenergy the model found that households with young and educated individuals a higher forestland endowment and a higher cognition and understanding of fossil fuels have a higher willingness to learn about and participate in forest based bioenergy issues the findings of this study will be useful for bioenergy forest cultivators extension foresters forest landowners and policy makers

factors underlying rural household energy transition a case study of china abstract this paper identifies factors underlying the energy transition of rural households in china based on province level panel data for years of 1991 2014 it indicates that there exists the energy stacking process of rural household energy transition characterized by the significant consumption inertia effects of traditional biomass energy tbe traditional commercial energy tce and advanced commercial energy ace respectively the insignificant substitution effect of tce and ace for tbe and the significant partial substitution of ace for tce with regard to the factors underlying rural household energy transition 1 per capita disposal income is negatively correlated with tbe tce and ace consumption 2 the number of motorcycles is positively correlated with tce and ace consumption 3 the number of firewood saving stoves and the price for ace are positively correlated with tbe consumption 4 household size and the number of motorcycles and the number of appliances are positively correlated with ace consumption 5 education level is positively correlated with tbe but negatively with tce consumption 6 the number of rural energy management institutions is positively correlated with tbe but negatively correlated ace consumption therefore some policy implications are discussed

new directions for stochastic open economy models the paper develops a simple stochastic new open economy macroeconomic model based on sticky nominal wages explicit solution of the wage setting problem under uncertainty allows one to analyze the effects of the monetary regime on welfare expected output and the expected terms of trade despite the potential interplay between imperfections due to sticky wages and monopoly the optimal monetary policy rule has a closed form solution to motivate our model we show that observed correlations between terms of trade and exchange rates are more consistent with our traditional assumptions about nominal rigidities than with a popular alternative based on local currency pricing 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the demand for coal among china s rural households estimates of price and income elasticities abstract china s residential sector has experienced rapid electrification and gasification among rural households however coal still accounts for a large share of energy use especially in the north use of coal for cooking and heating brings large health and pollution risks from a theoretical viewpoint economic tools such as taxes and subsidies have the potential to play a crucial role in addressing this issue in this paper a provincial level dataset is used to estimate the price and income elasticities of aggregate coal demand by rural households we find that coal is a non giffen inferior good for the rural household sector this means that future income growth may help to induce switching from coal demand is becoming more price elastic as rural incomes grow we also find that rural residential coal demand is more price and income responsive in the south than the north perhaps because of fewer substitution options in the north our results provide benchmarks and parameters for policy simulation research

zombie board board tenure and firm performance we show that board tenure exhibits an inverted u shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance the quality of corporate decisions such as m a financial reporting quality and ceo compensation also has a quadratic relation with board tenure our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors on the job learning improves firm value up to a threshold at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers to address endogeneity concerns we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from toward the empirically observed optimum level in the cross section are associated with negative positive announcement returns the quality of corporate decisions also follows an inverted u shaped pattern in a sample of firms affected by the death of a director

information diversity and market behavior the paper addresses two major issues raised by information diversity in a speculative market first we analyze what property of an investor s information leads to an expected speculative profit and show that independence is more important than accuracy second we consider whether the market price must become fully efficient in the sense that every investor s information is accurately discounted when traders use it rationally as an information source we prove that for any information structure there is a unique equilibrium weighting of investor beliefs at which the price is fully efficient and also every trader s expected profit is zero except for special structures however this equilibrium need not be attained in finite time much of modern capital market theory depends heavily on the assumption that investors know the expected values variances and covariances of asset returns although the assumption of homogeneous expectations is a conventional one and necessary for many theoretical results it is not one which can be offered with much confidence real world investors have access to differing information and may also disagree on the correct interpretation of widely held information when asset returns are assumed to be governed by a known probability distribution many features of trading in real world markets are eliminated from consideration there is no role for information gathering and no way for an investor to profit from having superior information indeed this term has no real meaning since all relevant information is contained in the known returns distribution speculative trading is also hard to explain without divergence of opinion a speculator who thought the market price impounded all available information would never trade against it with heterogeneous information we lose some of the neat results of standard capital market theory but new questions can be addressed about how information diversity among investors affects the markets in which they participate one issue concerns the impact of informational differences on investor profits investors who are better informed than others or are better able to evaluate widely held information should be able to earn higher returns all effort devoted to security analysis and market research depends on the belief that this is so but what makes one investor s information superior to another s beyond the circular observation that those investors with consistent profits must be better informed than those with losses do investors with inferior information however measured continually lose money until they are squeezed out of the market or can an

energy consumption practices of rural households in north china basic characteristics and potential for low carbon development reducing the climate impact of rural household energy consumption in china is complicated since it is bound up with deeply routinized daily practices and dependent from existing infrastructural systems of energy supply to assess the potential for low carbon development we first estimate the overall co2 emissions of rural households followed by a more in depth description and characterization of the different energy use practices within the households space heating turns out to be the largest emission source among domestic energy practices in north china we present lifestyle and context related factors that help to explain existing differences in domestic energy use practices of households the potential for low carbon development is discussed both at the demand side and the supply side at the demand side the use of more efficient technologies and cleaner energy sources for space heating seems to be a high potential measure for achieving low carbon households at the supply side the reduction of rural domestic co2 emissions could be effectively supported by making available to householders renewable and cleaner energy sources and technologies in order to be effective such low carbon energy options should take into account the income characteristics and lifestyles of rural householders

fuelwood consumption and forest degradation a household model for domestic energy substitution in rural india this paper disusses domestic en ergy supply and demand in rural india links be tween forest scarcity and household fuel collec tion are analyzed in a non separable household model focusing on substitution of non commer cial fuels from the commons and the private do main based on data from villages bordering a protected area a novel maximum entropy ap proach is used for estimation it is found that households respond to forest scarcity and in creased fuelwood collection time by substituting fuels from private sources for forest fuelwood however the magnitude of the response appears insufficient to prevent current fuelwood collection practices from causing serious forest degrada tion jel q24

agricultural expansion and deforestation modelling the impact of population market forces and property rights abstract this paper compares four different modelling approaches to agricultural expansion and deforestation and explores the implications of assumptions about the household objectives the labour market and the property rights regime a major distinction is made between population and market based explanations many of the popular policy prescriptions are based on the population approach assuming subsistence behaviour and limited market integration within a more realistic particularly for the long term effects market approach well intentioned policies such as agricultural intensification programmes may boost deforestation many forest frontier contexts are also characterized by forest clearing giving farmers land rights deforestation becomes an investment to the farmer and a title establishment strategy land titling and credit programmes may therefore increase deforestation

are preliminary announcements of the money stock rational forecasts abstract we develop a theoretical framework of analyzing preliminary announcements of economic data and then apply this framework to the money stock we find that preliminary announcements of the money stock are best characterized as measured with classical errors in variables that is the revision is not correlated with the true value of the series the revision is however forecastable using information available at the time of the preliminary announcement our ability to forecast the revision implies that preliminary announcements are not rational estimates of the true money stock

pricing to market limited participation and exchange rate dynamics abstract explaining the wide gap between exchanges rates fluctuations and those of their macroeconomic fundamentals since 1973 remains a challenging task for international macroeconomics betts and devereux 1996 the exchange rate in a model of pricing to market european economic review 96 1007 1021 among others stress the role of pricing to market ptm hairault et al 2004 overshooting and the exchange rate disconnect puzzle a reappraisal journal of international money and finance 23 615 643 highlight an alternative explanation based on credit market frictions through the limited participation assumption lp the paper investigates the combined role of both types of frictions in a two country framework given ptm and lp we show that monetary shocks generate amplified exchange rate volatilities the model hence contributes to a better understanding of the large observed exchange rate fluctuations

monetary policy rules based on real time data this paper examines the magnitude of informational problems associated with the implementation and interpretation of simple monetary policy rules using taylor s rule as an example i demonstrate that real time policy recommendations differ considerably from those obtained with ex post revised data further estimated policy reaction functions based on ex post revised data provide misleading descriptions of historical policy and obscure the behavior suggested by information available to the federal reserve in real time these results indicate that reliance on the information actually available to policy makers in real time is essential for the analysis of monetary policy rules

the fuelwood consumption in a rural area of greece abstract renewable energy sources are called to play an important role as regards the increasing energy demand worldwide in particular the need to address the problems created by the oil crises has distinguished the importance of renewable energy in economic development biomass is recognized as one of the most important renewable energy sources that can contribute decisively to the energy needs of modern society and the environment protection in both industrialized and developing countries a very important source of biomass is wood and especially fuelwood in greece because of the economic crisis there is an increased consumption of fuelwood especially in rural areas in this paper using a questionnaire and descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis we explore the determinants of fuelwood consumption in a rural area in order to propose appropriate policies for the efficient supply of the market

household fuel use in developing countries review of theory and evidence because of recent concerns about the negative externalities of traditional fuel use on the environment and health the issue of the household fuel transition in developing countries from dirty fuels towards clean fuels has received growing research attention this paper provides an up to date survey of the economic literature on household fuel use in these countries first we present the conceptual and theoretical frameworks then we discuss the empirical results that show how a wide range of factors drive the household fuel transition finally we suggest priorities for policy initiatives and highlight areas of future research

discretion and bias in performance evaluation most of the economics literature on compensation and organizations builds from the theory of agency for the most part the literature analyzes situations in which agents performance can be controlled by tying compensation to objective performance measures such as output or sales it ignores the fact that most compensation arrangements involve superiors subjectire and hence non contractible judgements about employee performance in our view much of what is interesting about actual employment relations follows from the observation that performance appraisal is a process by which humans judge other humans milkovich and wigdor 1991 this paper studies the implications of subjective performance evaluation for compensation policies and for the efficiency of employment relations our objectives are two fold first we propose the importance of subjectivity of evaluations to better understand organizatlonal practices such as politicking favoritism and compression of wage scales second we hope to orient the study of subjective performance evaluation in ways that are consistent with empirical evidence on what organizations actually do

exchange rate determination the role of factor price rigidities and nontradeables this paper introduces factor labor markets into the intertemporal monetary model of obstfeld and rogoff and combines this richer market structure with a new utility independent representation of nontradeables this allows us to explore the international monetary transmission mechanism for factor price wage rigidities under different degrees of macroeconomic openness factor price rigidities imply similar properties for the international transmission mechanism as domestic producer price rigidities nontradeables give raise to interesting new effects under asymmetric monetary shocks they create short run ppp deviations increase exchange rate volatility relative to price level volatility and reduce positive consumption and negative output comovements 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

federal reserve information and the behavior of interest rates this paper tests for the existence of asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public by examining federal reserve and commercial inflation forecasts it demonstrates that the federal reserve has considerable information about inflation beyond what is known to commercial forecasters it also shows that monetary policy actions provide signals of the federal reserve s information and that commercial forecasters modify their forecasts in response to those signals these findings may explain why long term interest rates typically rise in response to shifts to tighter monetary policy jel e52 e43 d82 asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public is a phenomenon that is often posited but rarely tested numerous models of central bank behavior for example show that the existence of asymmetric information has important implications for the effectiveness of policy and the consequences of dynamic inconsistency yet there

discussion of are executive stock options associated with future earnings abstract hanlon rajgopal and shevlin conclude that grant of stock options to executives is associated with a positive impact on future operating performance this discussion comment examines the impact of endogeneity model structure and the choice of a benchmark model on this conclusion while some results indicate that there is a position relation between stock option grants and operating performance alternative econometric approaches produce distinctly different results

the determinants of household energy demand in rural beijing can environmentally friendly technologies be effective with the recent rapid economic growth total energy demand in rural china has increased dramatically and the energy structure is in the transition from non commercial to commercial sources simultaneously it is expected that households in rural areas will face energy shortages and additional environmental problems unless they have more access to renewable energy technologies however little is known about i the transition of energy use patterns and ii whether introduced technologies have been effective to analyze these issues we estimated the energy demands of rural households by using survey data taken from beijing s ten suburban districts the data contain information on both non commercial and commercial energy use key characteristics of the households and several renewable energy technologies our empirical analysis yielded three main results first the per capita income is a key factor in the per capita energy consumption more specifically the marginal increase or marginal change in per capita coal consumption strongly diminishes or declines as per capita income increases second coal and liquefied petroleum gas lpg prices do not exhibit substitution effects but an increase in these prices has strong negative effects on the use of these energy resources third renewable energy technologies are identified to reduce coal consumption and to improve energy efficiency overall these findings suggest a positive perspective if the chinese government were to design appropriate policies associated with renewable energy technologies and related energy prices then coal consumption can be reduced in the near future and the substitution to cleaner energy use will accelerate therefore a smooth energy transition in rural china could be made in a more environmentally sustainable manner

household energy mix in uganda abstract this paper presents evidence that household energy use in uganda conforms to the energy ladder theory as household income increases solid and transitional fuel use evolves in an inverse u manner while electricity consumption shows a direct relationship with income public infrastructure provision income and education are the key variables which can be targeted to reduce household dependence on solid fuels while increasing non solid fuel use while education and public infrastructure have varying impacts on rural and urban households energy mix these variables generally reduce rudimentary fuel use and increase modern fuel consumption timely investment in electricity infrastructure is necessary to cater for burgeoning electricity demand as households become affluent strategies for reforestation dissemination of improved cookstoves relieving supply side constraints for modern fuels and staggered payment options to lower the cost of entry for modern fuels can improve ugandan households energy security

stoves or sugar willingness to adopt improved cookstoves in malawi malawi has set a target of adoption of two million improved cookstoves ics by 2020 meeting this objective requires knowledge about determinants of adoption particularly in rural areas where the cost of traditional cooking technologies and fuels are non monetary and where people have limited capacity to purchase an ics we conducted a discrete choice experiment with 383 households in rural malawi asking them if they would chose a locally made ics or a package of sugar and salt of roughly equal value six months later we assessed adoption and stove use patterns sixty six percent of households chose the ics we find that having a larger share of crop residues in household fuel supply awareness of the environmental impacts of woodfuel reliance time the primary cook devotes to collecting fuelwood and peer effects at the village level increase the odds of choosing the ics having a large labor supply for fuelwood collection and experience with a non traditional cooking technology decreased the odds of choosing the ics in a rapid assessment six months after stoves were distributed we found 80 of households were still using the ics but not exclusively our findings suggest considerable potential for wide scale adoption of ics in malawi

rising wages and energy consumption transition in rural china abstract residential energy consumption in rural china is undergoing a transition from traditional biomass energy to modern commercial energy this paper examines the impact of rising wage rates on energy consumption mix in rural china using a unique panel data set from our two round surveys of 409 rural households in 4 provinces the results show that the wage rate at the village level has a significant negative impact on traditional biomass energy consumption and significant positive effects on consumption of electricity and new renewable energy in rural china as traditional biomass energy is mainly collected with family labor and is relatively labor intensive an increase in rural wage rates would enhance the opportunity costs of traditional biomass energy leading to a reduction in biomass energy consumption continuously rising rural wage rates could accelerate the transition from biomass energy to electricity in rural areas these findings could have important policy implications not only for indoor air quality and environmental and health issues in rural areas but also for greater security in rural energy supply and policies to incentive farmers to better utilize biomass resource after harvest

welfare and macroeconomic interdependence we develop a baseline model of monetary and fiscal transmission in interdependent economies the welfare effects of expansionary policies are related to monopolistic supply in production and monopoly power of a country in trade an unanticipated exchange rate depreciation can be beggar thyself rather than beggar thy neighbor as gains in domestic output are offset by deteriorating terms of trade smaller and more open economies are more prone to suffer from inflationary shocks larger economies benefit from moderate demand led expansions but may be worse off if policy makers attempt to close the output gap fiscal shocks are generally beggar thy neighbor in the long run in the short run they raise domestic demand at given terms of trade thus reducing the welfare benefits from monetary expansions analytical tractability makes our model uniquely suitable as a starting point to approach the recent new open economy macroeconomic literature

international transmission of transitory and persistent monetary shocks under imperfect information abstract we analyze the transmission of monetary shocks in a new open economy macroeconomics model with one period nominal contracts and imperfect information shocks may have transitory and persistent components that can be disentangled only through the accumulation of information over time as a consequence the responses to shocks are significantly altered compared with the case of full information there are persistent effects on international relative prices and delayed exchange rate overshooting is possible following a persistent shock in some cases there are ex post excess returns as a positive interest rate spread is accompanied by an appreciating currency or vice versa lastly it is demonstrated that staggering reinforces persistence

household energy consumption in rural china historical development present pattern and policy implication abstract household energy consumption in rural areas is strongly related to living standards poverty alleviation air pollution and health but lacks solid analysis due to limited data this paper first presents a systematical overview of rural household energy consumption in china from 1985 to 2013 to quantify and illustrate the pattern of rural household energy consumption we use a comprehensive household survey the chinese residential energy consumption survey crecs 2013 to illustrate the energy consumption by seven types of energy and five types of end use demand moreover we compare the rural household energy consumption in terms of quantity fuel mix and demand structure by north south regions east middle west areas and various countries we identify the biomass still dominate chinese rural household energy supply while cooking and space heating are the most energy intensive demand the overall energy efficiency for a rural household is 33 mainly attributed to the massive use of biomass policy implications are summarized and discussed

are overhead costs strictly proportional to activity evidence from hospital departments abstract using cross sectional data from hospitals in washington state we test whether overhead costs are proportional to overhead activities this assumption is at the heart of nearly all cost accounting systems which implicitly assume that marginal cost is equal to average cost empirically the proportionality hypothesis can be rejected for most of the overhead accounts on average across the accounts the average cost per unit of activity overstates marginal costs by about 40 and in some departments by over 100 thus the average cost per activity should be used with a great deal of caution in decisions

effect of fuelwood scarcity and socio economic factors on household bio based energy use and energy substitution in rural ethiopia abstract in ethiopia biomass is predominantly utilized for household energy needs often using inefficient rudimentary stoves which cause adverse environmental and welfare effects this paper examined the contribution of biomass resources to rural household energy use and energy substitution the analysis applied the ordinary least square in the final stage estimation of fuelwood and overall biomass energy consumption by using predicted shadow prices the paper used tobit model to estimate charcoal and agricultural fuel consumption due to the presence of censoring an increase in fuelwood shadow price was associated with reduced household fuelwood consumption with price elasticity of 0 38 the cross price elasticity between fuelwood and agricultural fuels revealed no evidence of energy substitution which conforms to the findings of previous studies household access to electricity was associated with lower household biomass energy utilization but kerosene was not fuelwood substitute household energy use conformed to the fuel stacking or multiple fuel use concept but households preferred modern energy options as welfare increased in areas where modern energy is available this suggests that there is a promising prospect for fuel transition but access to modern energy and economic growth have key roles the findings suggest that a concerted policy effort is required that would help diversify rural livelihoods improve living standards and encourage economic growth encourage inter fuel substitution through improved modern energy access and afforestation to increase biomass supply

imperfect credibility and inflation persistence in this paper we formulate a dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered nominal contracts in which households and rms use optimal ltering to disentangle persistent and transitory shifts in the monetary policy rule the calibrated model accounts quite well for the dynamics of output and insation during the volcker disinsation and implies a sacri ce ratio very close to the estimated value our approach indicates that insation persistence and substantial costs of disinsation can be generated in an optimizing agent framework without relaxing the assumption of rational expectations or relying on arbitrary modi cations to the aggregate supply relation jel classi cation e31 e32 e52

employee stock options equity valuation and the valuation of option grants using a warrant pricing model we investigate the use of a warrant pricing approach to incorporate employee stock options esos into equity valuation and to account for the dilutive effect of esos in the valuation of option grants for financial reporting purposes our valuation approach accounts for the jointly determined nature of eso and shareholder values the empirical results show that our stock price estimate exhibits lower prediction errors and higher explanatory powers for actual share price than does the traditional stock price estimate we use our valuation approach to assess the implications of dilution on the fair value estimates of eso grants we find that the fair value is overstated by 6 if we ignore the dilutive feature of esos furthermore this bias is larger for firms that are heavy users of esos small and r d intensive and for firms that have a broad based eso compensation plan

energy consumption in rural china a household model for three villages in jiangxi province abstract in china fuelwood and coal are the most important energy sources for rural households in poor areas along with population and economic growth excessive fuelwood collection is a major cause of deforestation burning coal contributes to environmental problems such as air pollution acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions the purpose of this article is to analyze factors determining choice of energy source and labor input into fuelwood collection in poor forest rich regions and to provide policy recommendations on ways to affect these choices to this end a nonseparable household model reflecting choices in labor allocation and energy demand of rural households is estimated from available data for three villages in a poor forest rich region in jiangxi province southeast china innovative aspects of this article are the analyses of factors driving household substitution between forest and non forest fuels and of dissimilarities in household responses under different market access conditions

macroeconomic expectations of households and professional forecasters economists have long emphasized the importance of expectations in determining macroeconomic outcomes yet there has been almost no recent effort to model actual empirical expectations data instead m acroeconomists usually simply assume that expectations are rational this paper shows that while empirical household expectations are not rational in the usual sense expectational dynamics are well captured by a model in which households views derive from news reports of the views of professional forecasters which in turn may be rational the model s estimates imply that people only occasionally pay attention to news reports this inattention generates stickyness in aggregate expectations with important macroeconomic consequences

assessing empirical research in managerial accounting a value based management perspective this paper applies a value based management framework to critically review empirical research in managerial accounting this framework enables us to place the exceptionally diverse set of managerial accounting studies from the past several decades into an integrated structure our synthesis highlights the many consistent results in prior research identifies remaining gaps and inconsistencies discusses common methodological and econometric problems and suggests fruitful avenues for future managerial accounting research

application of an almost ideal demand system aids to ethiopian rural residential energy use panel data evidence abstract it is well known that poor rural households in low income economies are reliant on traditional fuels to meet basic domestic energy needs but little is known about the specific underlying socio economic drivers of residential fuel choices in ethiopia i used the linear approximation almost ideal demand system laaids with normalized prices to compute expenditure elasticity and a multinomial logit model mlm to examine household fuel use the laaids model result showed that expenditure was elastic for modern fuels but inelastic for traditional fuels regression results from the mlm indicated that fuel choice behaviour of rural households could be more accurately described as fuel stacking behaviour as opposed to the energy ladder hypothesis in rural areas household fuel choice may be constrained by limited access to commercial fuels and efficient cook stoves supply dependency and affordability consumer preferences and a web of other intricate factors rural households had less incentive for fuel switching due to underlying factors and the availability of fuel wood without direct financial cost with continued deforestation and receding forests households are expected to develop inter fuel substitution and switching behaviour conditional on access to modern energy technologies

who is energy poor evidence from the least developed regions in china abstract energy poverty has become one of the major challenges faced by the world s energy system however there is no consensus on the measure of energy poverty several approaches have been proposed among which the energy poverty line has been defined as the minimum quantity of energy required for basic life particularly for cooking and heating this paper estimates the relationship between energy expenditure and household income and identifies the energy poverty line based on the threshold above which the energy share becomes insensitive to household income using household survey data from rural qinghai china considering the ongoing energy transition and the negative impacts of biomass energy consumption for the environment and health the study sets a scenario in which all bioenergy consumption is replaced with electricity the findings show that 57 of rural households in rural qinghai are energy poor the phase of energy poverty in terms of basic energy access has passed so increasing the share of efficient modern energy in household energy consumption requires more attention considering the existence of a population that is not income poor but is energy poor a conventional policy design that primarily targets income poor households may be inappropriate in this case

technological innovation and dispersion environmental benefits and the adoption of improved biomass cookstoves in tigrai northern ethiopia this paper empirically analyzes adoption and fuel savings efficiency of improved biomass cookstove technology using survey data from a cross section of 200 farm households from the highlands of tigrai northern ethiopia results indicate that these farm households are willing to adopt improved biomass cookstove innovations if this leads to economic savings moreover results suggest significant positive environmental externalities on a per household basis we found that adopters collect about 70 kg less wood and about 20 kg less dung each month the adoption of improved biomass cookstoves reduces harvest pressure on local forest stands assuming an average of 120 metric tons of biomass per ha we find the potential reduction in deforestation amounts to some 1400 ha per year an important saving further the reduced use of dung as a fuel has a positive impact on soil productivity in agriculture

accounting earnings and top executive compensation abstract this paper investigates the role of accounting earnings in top executive compensation contracts it provides evidence in support of the hypothesis that earnings based incentives help shield executives from market wide factors in stock prices the paper demonstrates that earnings reflect firm specific changes in value but are less sensitive to market wide movements in equity values as a result the inclusion of earnings based performance measures in executive compensation contracts helps shield executives from fluctuations in firm value that are beyond their control the hypothesis is shown to explain cross sectional variation in the use of earnings based incentives

the new open economy macroeconomics a survey since the 1995 publication of obsteld and rogoff s redux model there has been an outpouring of research on open economy dynamic general equilibrium models that incorporate imperfect competition and nominal rigidities this paper offers an interim survey of this recent literature 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

fiscal policy targeting under imperfect information abstract systematic deficit biases and the sovereign debt crisis have increased interest in fiscal rules and institutions in particular the setting of intermediate fiscal policy targets theoretical arguments point to targeting of the structural budget balance but it is difficult in practice because this variable is riddled with measurement problems and noise this paper first briefly documents the noise in measures of the structural budget balance and then proceeds to analyse how this inherent information problem affects budget targeting a strict targeting of the structural budget balance leads to excessive policy responses to transitory influences and thus causes excessive policy activism in contrast to the underlying smoothing aim motivating fiscal policy targets this points to a fundamental weakness of the recently implemented fiscal compact for eu countries requiring member states to target the structural budget balance on an annual basis

impact of off farm income on household energy expenditures in china implications for rural energy transition abstract this study examines the impact of off farm income on rural household energy expenditures paying special attention to clean energies such as electricity and gas and non clean energy such as coal we use instrumental variable approaches to address the endogeneity issues of off farm income and analyze household survey data collected from rural gansu henan and shandong provinces of china econometric results show that off farm income promotes rural energy transition in particular off farm income significantly increases both electricity and gas expenditures but decreases coal expenditure of rural households further analyses reveal that the energy transition effects generated by off farm income are more pronounced for households in shandong where the economy is relatively better developed relative to henan and gansu our findings highlight the importance of income diversification through off farm activities by farm households to enhance clean energy accessibility and boost sustainable rural economic development

is the fed too timid monetary policy in an uncertain world estimates of the taylor rule using historical data from the past decade or two suggest that monetary policy in the u s can be characterized as having reacted in a moderate fashion to output and in

rural household energy use and its determinants in china how important are influences of payment for ecosystem services vs other factors abstract fuelwood is an essential environmental good for livelihood in rural china heavy reliance on fuelwood is associated with numerous negative externalities due to decades of rapid economic growth in china we hypothesize that the increase in rural household income would reduce reliance on fuelwood using data from a survey of 481 households conducted in 2014 we examined the effects of two payments for ecosystem services programs the conversion of cropland to forest program ccfp and the ecological welfare forest program ewfp on energy use along with other factors we found that the ccfp did not significantly affect fuel choice nor the quantity of fuelwood used but households with more forestland in ewfp were less likely to adopt modern fuels and likely to use more fuelwood household per capita annual income was the main factor promoting adoption of modern fuels while household size was the most important factor determining the quantity of fuelwood used per capita overall the gradually increasing adoption of modern fuels has thus far not resulted in any significant abandonment of fuelwood fuelwood remains the dominant fuel across all income groups suggesting that households in the study area are in the early stages of the energy transition