real interest rates and endogenous growth in a monetary economy abstract in endogenous growth models where the engine of growth is human capital acquired via formal education inflation taxes may raise or lower real interest rates depending upon whether or not physical and or human capital are liquidity constrained cases are examined

the inflation tax in a real business cycle model money is incorporated into a real business cycle model using a cash in advance constraint the model economy is used to analyze whether the business cycle is different in high inflation and low inflation economies and to analyze the impact of variability in the growth rate of money in addition the welfare cost of the inflation tax is measured and the steady state properties of high and low inflation economies are compared

speculative and hedging activities in the european carbon market abstract we explore the dynamics of the speculative and hedging activities in european futures carbon markets by using volume and open interest data a comparison of the three phases in the european union emission trading scheme eu ets reveals that i phase ii of the eu ets seems to be the most speculative phase to date and ii the highest degree of speculative activity for every single phase occurs at the moment of listing the contracts for the first time a seasonality analysis identifies a higher level of speculation in the first quarter of each year related to the schedule of deadlines of the eu ets in addition a time series analysis confirms that most of the speculative activity each year occurs in the front contract whereas the hedging demand concentrates in the second to deliver futures contract

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

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

global trading versus linking architectures for international emissions trading abstract international emissions trading is widely seen as an indispensable policy pillar of climate change mitigation stern n 2007 the economics of climate change the stern review cambridge university press new york this article analyzes five different types of trading architectures classified into two top down unfccc driven and three bottom up driven by individual countries or regions approaches the two types of approaches are characterized by a trade off between environmental effectiveness and political feasibility respectively whereas their relative cost effectiveness depends on implementation details bottom up architectures constitute imperfect substitutes for top down architectures in terms of environmental effectiveness and thus remain mere fallback options however especially the formal linking architecture can act as complement in terms of cost effectiveness

cities matching and the productivity gains of agglomeration abstract the striking geographical concentration of economic activities suggests that there are substantial benefits to agglomeration however the nature of those benefits remains unclear in this paper we take advantage of a new data set to quantify the role of one of the main contenders the matching of workers and jobs we show that thicker urban labor markets are associated with more assortative matching in terms of worker and firm quality when we estimate establishment level production functions we also find evidence of complementarities between worker and firm quality putting together the production and matching relationships we show that production complementarity and assortative matching is an important source of the urban productivity premium

white discrimination in provision of black education plantations and towns abstract we present a model of public provision of education for blacks in two discriminatory regimes white plantation controlled and white yeoman town controlled we show that the ability to migrate to a non discriminating district constrains the ability of both types of regimes to discriminate the model produces time series of educational outcomes for whites and blacks that mimic the behavior seen in post reconstruction south carolina to the onset of the civil rights act it also fits the post world war ii black white income differentials

testing the scale effect predicted by the fujita krugman urbanization model abstract this paper tests the scale effect predicted by the fujita krugman fujita m krugman p 1995 when is the economy monocentric von th nen and chamberlin unified regional science urban economics 25 505 528 urbanization model which implies a monotonically positive relationship between the average firm size and the degree of urbanization given that population and fixed cost do not decrease empirical data from seven oecd countries are examined and the fujita krugman model is tested the results suggest that the prediction in the fujita krugman model is incompatible with empirical observation the evidence in the paper seems to support the alternative classical urbanization theory proposed by xenophon gordon b 1975 economic analysis before adam smith macmillan london and william petty petty w 1683 another essay on political arithmetics in hull c h ed economic writings of sir william petty augustus m kelly new york p 947 reissued in 1963 and formalized by yang yang x 1991 development structure change and urbanization journal of development economics 34 199 222 yang and rice yang x rice r 1994 an equilibrium model endogenizing the emergence of a dual structure between the urban and rural sectors journal of urban economics 25 346 368 and sun and yang sun g yang x 2002 agglomeration economies division of labor and the urban land rent escalation a general equilibrium analysis of urbanization australian economic papers 41 164 183

the division of labor local markets and worker organization the model developed here explains differences in the degree of the division of labor across local markets for example the typical doctor in one local market may treat a wider range of patients problems than his counterpart in another local market the extent of the division of labor depends on variables affecting the local demand for services two different forms of worker organization cooperation and noncooperation yield divergent results for example specialization increases with the local number of producers under cooperation but may decrease under noncooperation with the number of producers constant local demand variables affect individual specialization under noncooperation but not under cooperation

specialization and human capital incentives for specialization trade and the production of comparative advantage through investment are shown to arise from increasing returns to utilization of human capital indivisibilities imply fixed cost elements of investment that are independent of subsequent utilization hence the rate of return is increasing in utilization and is maximized by utilizing specialized skills as intensively as possible identically endowed individuals have incentives to specialize their investments in skills and trade with each other for this reason even if production technology exhibits constant returns to scale

cointegration analysis of spot electricity prices insights on transmission efficiency in the western us abstract the us energy policy act of 1992 promoted the development of spot markets for electric power by requiring utilities to open their transmission systems to wholesale power sales in this paper we specify and estimate a vector error correction model using peak and off peak electricity spot prices during 1994 1996 covering 11 regional markets in the western united states and test these prices for evidence of market integration the results show evidence of an efficient and stable wholesale power market

socially optimal social security and education subsidization in a dynastic model with human capital externalities fertility and endogenous growth abstract this paper considers socially optimal government policies in a dynastic family model with physical capital human capital endogenous fertility and positive spillovers from average human capital such spillovers reduce human capital investment but raise fertility from their social optimum we first characterize the social optimum with a non convex feasible set due to the quantity quality tradeoff concerning children we then show that social security and education subsidization together financed by labor income taxes can fully eliminate the efficiency losses of the spillovers and achieve the social optimum under plausible conditions however none of the policies can do so alone

is the division of labour limited by the extent of the market evidence from french cities abstract this paper provides supportive evidence to the notion that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the local market we first propose a theoretical model its main prediction is that scarce specialists occupations are over represented in large cities using census data for french cities we find strong empirical support for this prediction

general equilibria in large economies with endogenous structure of division of labor abstract we study a general equilibrium model with specialization and division of labor the market coordinates all individuals decisions in choosing their patterns of specialization in order to utilize positive network effects of division of labor net of transaction costs we establish the equilibrium existence theorem the first and second welfare theorems and the core equivalence for a family of general equilibrium models with both possible increasing returns and transaction costs using an analytical framework with consumer producers economies of specialization and transaction costs we resurrect the spirit of the classical economics of the division of labor in a modern body of mathematical formalism

a time series test of innovation driven endogenous growth this article finds evidence that ideas and innovation are a key force explaining postwar growth in the u s economy utilizing data on patents issued since 1851 i construct a measure of the growth rate of knowledge capital stock estimates human capital estimates and real gross domestic product per worker growth rates are combined with the knowledge growth series to construct a time series test of endogenous innovation growth models the results support the endogenous innovation approach but suggest that the accumulation of the per worker capital stock and changes in average human capital per worker are at least as important jel 030 c32

the clean development mechanism stochastic permit prices and energy investments abstract we analyze the impact on energy investments stemming from different emission permit classes by considering permits that are allocated inside the european emission trading scheme and secondary certified emission reduction scer permits originating from the clean development mechanism one price taking firm which is subject to emission regulation has the choice to invest in gas or wind power plant the firm faces uncertainty regarding stochastically evolving permit prices while it receives a premium on the electricity price for wind energy as a first step we determine the value of the option to invest into a gas power plant over time then we calculate the investment probability of a gas power investment in a range of policy scenarios we find that allowing the usage of scer permits in the present policy framework has a positive impact on gas power investment decoupling the price processes has a similar effect if the quota of scer permits is doubled the decrease in the investment probability for wind power is large we carry out sensitivity tests for different parameter values and find that investment behavior changes significantly with differing interest rates the wind energy premium and volatility

price drivers and structural breaks in european carbon prices 2005 2007 this article aims at characterizing the daily price fundamentals of european union allowances euas traded since 2005 as part of the emissions trading scheme ets the presence of two structural changes on april 2006 following the disclosure of 2005 verified emissions and on october 2006 following the european commission announcement of stricter phase ii allocation allows to isolate distinct fundamentals evolving overtime the results extend previous literature by showing that eua spot prices react not only to energy prices with forecast errors but also to unanticipated temperatures changes during colder events besides the sub period decomposition of the pilot phase gives a better grasp of institutional and market events that drive allowance price changes

the effects of inflation on economic growth lessons from latin america this paper investigates the relationship between inflation and long run growth it presents an endogenous growth model that illustrates the channels through which inflation affects growth the model highlights the effects of inflation on the productivity of capital and the rate of capital accumulation the reduction in growth is caused by a diversion of resources away from activities that lead to faster rates of growth toward activities associated with reducing the costs of inflation the negative association between inflation and growth is assessed empirically for a sample group of latin american countries this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

modeling co2 emission allowance prices and derivatives evidence from the european trading scheme this paper studies the three main markets for emission allowances within the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets powernext nord pool and european climate exchange ecx the analysis suggests that the prohibition of banking of emission allowances between distinct phases of the eu ets has significant implications in terms of futures pricing motivated by these findings we develop an empirically and theoretically valid framework for the pricing and hedging of intra phase and inter phase futures and options on futures respectively

long term association between european and indian markets on carbon credit price abstract this study tries to explore cointegration and granger causality of daily cer prices in european energy exchange and multi commodity exchange mcx in india in a multivariate framework after controlling euro rupee exchange rate and inter bank offer rate a measure of country specific risk both ardl bounds tests and johansen juselius maximum likelihood procedures fail to establish a cointegrating relationship among the variables indicating that an arbitrage opportunity exists between these two markets the study however establishes a short term granger causality running from change in cer price in european energy exchange and exchange rate to indian exchange generalised error variance decomposition of variables indicates that the price of cer at the indian stock exchange is most endogenous in nature

liquidity loanable funds and real activity abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of two traditional explanations of the monetary black box linking money and real activity the liquidity effect and the loanable funds effect these effects are modeled with a monetary production economy in which central bank injections of cash are funnelled into the economy through the credit market since only borrowers have direct access to the newly injected cash monetary injections cause nominal interest rates to fall if firms are borrowers then monetary injections also increase current and future real activity

catalysts for price discovery in the european union emissions trading system abstract we provide the first evidence on catalysts for price discovery in the european union emissions trading system specifically by employing high frequency data across a wide range of fungible securities we find that trading costs are a more important determinant of price discovery than either the implicit provision of leverage in securities such as futures and options or the existence of market segmentation moreover securities with low trading costs display greater price discovery than those with high trading costs

dynamic behavior of capital accumulation in a cash in advance model abstract this paper analyzes the dynamic behavior of capital accumulation in stockman s cash in advance model if the cash in advance constraint applies only to consumption then money is superneutral along the transition path as well as in the long run alternatively if the cash in advance constraint applies to gross investment as well as consumption then a permanent increase in the rate of monetary growth reduces the steady state capital stock the effect on the speed of adjustment depends on the sign of a certain simple function of the parameters of preferences and technology

modeling the price dynamics of co2 emission allowances abstract in this paper we analyze the short term spot price behavior of carbon dioxide co 2 emission allowances of the new eu wide co 2 emissions trading system eu ets after reviewing the stylized facts of this new class of assets we investigate several approaches for modeling the returns of emission allowances due to different phases of price and volatility behavior in the returns we suggest the use of markov switching and ar garch models for stochastic modeling we examine the approaches by conducting an in sample and out of sample forecasting analysis and by comparing the results to alternative approaches our findings strongly support the adequacy of the models capturing characteristics like skewness excess kurtosis and in particular different phases of volatility behavior in the returns

local market size social capital and outsourcing evidence from emilia romagna based on a unique dataset concerning small firms operating in the machinery and equipment industry in emilia romagna italy we estimate the separate effects of social capital and local market size on the probability to either fully or partially outsource parts of the production process we are able to distinguish 29 different phases of the production cycle from design to early processing to post production our estimates show that 1 social capital influences the full outsourcing of core assembly and post assembly activities while local market size affects the full outsourcing of early processing activities 2 neither social capital nor local market size have a statistically significant effect on the probability of partially outsourcing any step of the production process robustness tests confirm our results vis a vis the endogeneity of the local market size and social capital and the potential modifiable area unit problem relating to local market size

power couples changes in the locational choice of the college educated 1940 1990 college educated couples are increasingly located in large metropolitan areas these areas were home to 32 percent of all college educated couples in 1940 39 percent in 1970 and 50 percent in 1990 we investigate whether this trend can be explained by increasing urbanization of the college educated or the growth of dual career households and the resulting severity of the colocation problem we argue that the latter explanation is the primary one smaller cities may therefore experience reduced inflows of human capital relative to the past and thus become poorer

human capital and economic development abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital human capital accumulation lowers mortality inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling and the rate of return to schooling and positively to fertility the data indicate a negative relationship between tfp growth and schooling accumulation the model fits the data on country populations per capita incomes human capital total fertility rates infant mortality life expectancy and conditional life expectancy

the division of labour worker organisation and technological change the model developed in this article explains differences in the division of labour across firms as a result of computer technology adoption changes in the division of labour result from reduced production time and improved communication possibilities the first shifts the division of labour towards generic structures while the latter enhances specialisation our estimates for a sample of dutch establishments in the period 1990 6 suggest that productivity gains have been the main determinant for shifts in the division of labour these productivity gains induced skill upgrading while in firms gaining from improved communication possibilities specialisation increased and skill requirements have fallen the rapid spread of computer technology has led to substantial changes in the division of labour and a shift in the demand for labour in favour of skilled workers mostly these changes have been accompanied by flatter organisational structures larger autonomy for workers or workgroups the application of innovative human resource management practices and so on there are also less typical examples where computerisation is associated with increased specialisation e g the rapid increase of call centres scripting of communication with clients and stricter procedures although the empirical relationship between information and communication technology ict adoption and organisational change has been well documented disagreement remains about the reasons why computerisation provides firms with incentives to change the structure of their organisation and the skill requirements of their workforce

linking with uncertainty the relationship between eu ets pollution permits and kyoto offsets carbon offsets from the kyoto flexible mechanisms can be used by firms in the eu emissions trading scheme for compliance in lieu of eu allowances making these carbon assets interchangeable we offer an explanation of the price spread using a structural model of the price for certified emissions reductions that combines three features a limit for the use of kyoto offsets within the eu ets a disconnect between the current price of offsets and their marginal cost of production for institutional reasons and uncertainty about future supply and demand of offsets our model expresses the offset price as an average of the eu allowance price and an offset s outside value weighted by the probability of a binding import limit using a monthly series of the united nation s clean development mechanism and joint implementation about offset supply and demand we provide empirical support for our theory of offset price formation counterfactual simulations suggest that the price process is dominated by uncertainty

the inflation tax in a convex model of equilibrium growth a general equilibrium monetary economy is described that exhibits equilibrium growth the production technology is consistent with jones and manuelli 1990 and rebelo 1991 the inflation tax and nominal interest rates are shown to be inversely related to the equilibrium growth rates of real variables until a critical point is reached at this point equilibrium growth is eliminated and the predictions of stockman 1981 and abel 1985 concerning the level effects of distortionary monetary policies appear for the nominal side of the model a version of the prediction of friedman 1969 is shown to hold for a particular balanced growth path following king and rebelo 1990 a linear growth version of the model is calibrated to illustrate the potentially large growth and welfare effects of moderate inflations

equity and efficiency in human capital investment the local connection a general model of community formation and human capital accumulation with social spillovers and decentralized school funding is used to analyse the causes of economic segregation and its consequences for equity and efficiency significant polarization arises from minor differences in endowments preferences or access to capital markets this makes income inequality more persistent across generations but the same need not be true for wealth equilibrium stratification tends to be excessive resulting in low aggregate surplus whether state equalization of school resources can remedy these problems hinges on how purchased social and family inputs interact in education and in mobility decisions

physicians services and the division of labor across local markets this paper reports empirical evidence of systematic cross locale variation in the degree of division of labor among physicians a theoretical model based on an individual producer s trade off between increasing returns and falling marginal revenue within each activity motivates the empirical tests at two levels of aggregation specialization is correlated with local demand shifters for medical services at the individual level i find systematic differences in the range of procedures performed within a specialty class general practitioners working fewer hours practicing in more populated counties or practicing in countries with more elderly produce a narrower range of procedures

the market microstructure of the european climate exchange abstract this paper analyzes the market microstructure of the european climate exchange the largest eu ets trading venue the ecx captures 2 3 of the screen traded market in eua and more than 90 in cer volume growth has averaged 277 in eua between 2005 and 2009 and 724 in cer since 2007 spreads range from 0 0188 to 0 0406 for eua and 0 0276 to 0 0796 for cer the median proportion of the spread due to adverse selection reaches 76 for eua and 75 for cer realized volatility bid ask spreads and adverse selection costs decline with verified emission releases market impact estimates imply that an average trade will move the eua market by 1 06 euro centimes and the cer market 1 45 the ecx is providing between 75 and 88 of price discovery for eua trading and between 64 and 72 for cer we find imbalances in the order book help predict returns for up to three days a simple trading strategy that enters the market long or short when the order imbalance is strong is profitable even after accounting for spreads and market impact

cross section estimation of the matching function evidence from england and wales this paper analyses how the levels of unemployment and vacancies affect the rate at which unemployed workers find employment the worker firm matching function in particular we test the robustness of previous empirical work by checking whether we obtain the same estimated function using cross section data rather than aggregate time series data we find strong evidence of constant returns to scale similar to previous work we also find larger cities have higher wages this provides indirect support for increasing returns but where those returns are taken in the form of better quality matches

efficient equilibrium convergence heterogeneity and growth abstract an endogenous growth model arising from task specialization is used to examine the effects of differing initial human capital distributions two macroeconomic phenomena are produced income convergence and leapfrogging of living standards income convergence occurs for all countries in the same market arising from diminishing returns to individual human capital leapfrogging occurs by comparing countries in two separate markets income leapfrogging can occur because the stationary growth rate increases with market size and human capital heterogeneity reduces growth the introduction of coordination costs of task assignment can produce gains in welfare and growth from human capital heterogeneity

anticipated inflation and the capital stock in a cash in advance economy abstract an economy is constructed in which the steady state capital stock is inversely related to the rate of inflation as a result that is directly opposite the usual conclusion

thick market effects and churning in the labor market evidence from u s cities using u s census microdata we show that on average workers change occupation and industry less in more densely populated areas the result is robust to standard demographic controls as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix analysis of the displaced worker surveys shows that this effect is present in cases of involuntary separation as well on the other hand we actually find the opposite result higher rates of occupational and industrial switching for the subsample of younger workers these results provide evidence in favor of increasing returns to scale matching in labor markets results from a back of the envelope calibration suggest that this mechanism has an important role in raising both wages and returns to experience in denser areas

equilibrium in a production economy with an income tax this paper develops a method to study an infinite horizon production economy distorted by a state dependent income tax this setting permits taxes to depend on the capital stock an endogenous state variable and thus captures situations where the evolution for capital and taxes is jointly determined to solve this model the consumption function is represented as a fixed point of a nonlinear monotone operator that is defined such that its nth iteration computes the consumption function n steps away from the horizon for a corresponding finite horizon economy the oparator s monotonicity is exploited in proving the existence of and constructing an equilibrium copyright 1991 by the econometric society

eua and scer phase ii price drivers unveiling the reasons for the existence of the eua scer spread abstract this article studies the price relationships between eu emissions allowances euas valid under the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets and secondary certified emissions reductions scers established from primary cers generated through the kyoto protocol s clean development mechanism cdm given the price differences between euas and scers financial and industrial operators may benefit from arbitrage strategies by buying scers and selling euas i e selling the eua scer spread to cover their compliance position as industrial operators are allowed to use scers towards compliance with their emissions cap within the european system up to 13 4 our central results show that the spread is mainly driven by eua prices and market microstructure variables and less importantly as we would expect by emissions related fundamental drivers this might be justified by the fact that the eu ets remains the greatest source of cer demand to date

increasing returns human capital and the kuznets curve abstract we present a simple model of human capital accumulation which generates the kuznets curve as an equilibrium outcome the central ingredient that helps generate the kuznets curve in the model is what we call short run increasing returns to scale in the learning technology the learning technology exhibits increasing returns to scale but only in the short run since one of the factors of production time is bounded above by the endowment we show that short run increasing returns to scale is necessary to obtain the kuznets curve but not sufficient

risk spillovers across the energy and carbon markets and hedging strategies for carbon risk this study examines the risk spillovers between energy futures prices and europe based carbon futures contracts we use a markov regime switching dynamic correlation generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity ms dcc garch model in order to capture the time variations and structural breaks in the spillovers we further evaluate the optimal weights hedging effectiveness and dynamic hedging strategies for the ms dcc garch model based on both the regime dependent and regime independent optimal hedge ratios we finally complement our analysis by examining the in and out of sample hedging performances for alternative strategies our results mainly show significant volatility and time varying risk transmission from energy markets to carbon market we also find that spot and futures segments of the emission markets exhibit time varying correlations and volatile hedging effectiveness the subsample estimates show significant changes in the hedge effectiveness over the different phases of the european carbon market these results have important investment and policy implications

integration and shock transmissions across european electricity forward markets abstract new results are presented relating to the integration of the french german british dutch and spanish power markets at day ahead week ahead one month ahead and two month ahead lead times overall there is evidence of market integration increasing over time despite an underlying inefficiency in each market with respect to the forward and spot price convergence the spatial analysis on a financial dimension is undertaken using causality tests cointegration and impulse response techniques for both price levels and volatilities in general we find less influence of the size and proximity of neighbouring markets than other studies more integration at baseload than peak and surprisingly less integration in forwards than spot prices

integration of the global carbon markets abstract this paper analyzes the market architecture and common factors of emission reduction instruments in europe and north america spot and futures prices across exchanges in europe are cointegrated but the futures curve beyond the calendar year evolves independently despite narrower spreads political uncertainties about the clean development mechanism have kept eua and cer prices from converging rggi allowances share a common trend with eua and the european markets adjust to the u s price trend a 0 10 shock to rggi prices leads to a one month 0 64 cumulative increase in eua prices the introduction of cap and trade legislation in the u s has broken a cointegrating relationship in voluntary prices voluntary instruments that are convertible into mandatory allowances imply less than a 20 probability of price convergence between the u s and europe by 2013

heterogeneity stratification and growth macroeconomic implications of community structure and school finance this paper examines how socioeconomic stratification and alternative systems of education finance affect inequality and growth agents interact through local public goods or externalities school funding neighborhood effects and economywide linkages complementary skills knowledge spillovers sorting families into homogeneous communities often minimizes the costs of existing heterogeneity but mixing reduces heterogeneity faster integration therefore tends to slow down growth in the short run yet raise it in the long run a move to state funding of education presents society with a similar intertemporal trade off local and global complementarities play major roles in determining the efficient social and educational structures copyright 1996 by american economic association

labor specialization and the extent of the market this paper presents an analytical model of labor specialization workers make human capital investment decisions on the depth and the breadth of their skill given that firms have diverse job requirements and increasing returns to scale workers invest more for the depth of their human capital and less for the breadth as the size of the labor market increases also the larger the size of the market the more varieties of job requirements are used so that the average match between a worker and a firm improves

does talent migration increase inequality a quantitative assessment in football labour market abstract i analyze the links between talent migration and cross country inequality by exploiting the 1995 elimination of mobility restrictions on the european football labor market i develop a simple model and employ an empirical dataset to estimate its parameters through simulation analysis i compare actual data with a counterfactual no mobility restriction trajectory and conclude that the elimination of mobility barriers increases not only cross country inequality by 25 but also global output in the football economy by stimulating the production of new talent in africa latin and central america

the relationship between crude oil spot and futures prices cointegration linear and nonlinear causality the present study investigates the linear and nonlinear causal linkages between daily spot and futures prices for maturities of one two three and four months of west texas intermediate wti crude oil the data cover two periods october 1991 october 1999 and november 1999 october 2007 with the latter being significantly more turbulent apart from the conventional linear granger test we apply a new nonparametric test for nonlinear causality by diks and panchenko after controlling for cointegration in addition to the traditional pairwise analysis we test for causality while correcting for the effects of the other variables to check if any of the observed causality is strictly nonlinear in nature we also examine the nonlinear causal relationships of vecm filtered residuals finally we investigate the hypothesis of nonlinear non causality after controlling for conditional heteroskedasticity in the data using a garch bekk model whilst the linear causal relationships disappear after vecm cointegration filtering nonlinear causal linkages in some cases persist even after garch filtering in both periods this indicates that spot and futures returns may exhibit asymmetric garch effects and or statistically significant higher order conditional moments moreover the results imply that if nonlinear effects are accounted for neither market leads or lags the other consistently videlicet the pattern of leads and lags changes over time

inflation and growth in an open economy this paper examines the relationship between growth and inflation in an open economy where private agents can transfer resources abroad to obtain endogenous growth we assume that the international credit market is imperfect we show that when the governments behave rationally the growth and inflation rates should not be correlated and that the optimal inflation rate can be found by setting the interest rate elasticity of money holdings equal to the tax rate elasticity of the tax base

the workweek of capital and its cyclical implications abstract the neoclassical growth model studied in the kydland and prescott time to build paper is modified to permit the capital utilization rate to vary the effect of this modification is to increase the amplitude of the aggregate fluctuations predicted by theory as the equilibrium response to technological shocks if following solow the changes in output not accounted for by changes in the labor and tangible capital inputs are interpreted as being the technology shocks the statistical properties of the fluctuations in the postwar united states economy are close in magnitude and nature to those predicted by theory

arbitrage pricing and the stochastic inflation tax in a multisector monetary economy abstract a dynamic general equilibrium multifactor asset pricing model for a monetary economy with capital accumulation and multisector production is constructed equilibrium clower constraints on some investment goods and some consumption goods are imposed an equilibrium apt model is constructed where the covariance between the inflation tax distorted equilibrium investment returns and fundamental forcing processes are important in determining equilibrium risk prices the model is used to address issues concerning the relative importance of real and nominal factors in asset pricing raised in recent papers by chen roll and ross 1986 and cochrane 1991 1992

employment risk diversification and unemployment this paper studies determinants of the geographic distribution of unemployment in the united states since 1950 we argue that equilibrium differences in unemployment among markets are partially supported by corresponding differences in the covariance structure of sectoral demands for labor when workers are mobile greater diversification of sectoral demands reduces unemployment we confirm this point using pooled time series cross section data on state unemployment and employment by industry we also find evidence for nonneutrality of aggregate disturbances based on geographic differences in industrial composition and that permanent changes in the sectoral composition of employment lead to transitory fluctuations in unemployment

the division of labor coordination costs and knowledge this paper considers specialization and the division of labor a more extensive division of labor raises productivity because returns to the time spent on tasks are usually greater to workers who concentrate on a narrower range of skills the traditional discussion of the division of labor emphasizes the limitations to specialization imposed by the extent of the market we claim that the degree of specialization is more often determined by other considerations especially emphasized are various costs of coordinating specialized workers who perform complementary tasks and the amount of general knowledge available