addressing leakage in the eu ets border adjustment or output based allocation the eu ets has been criticised for threatening the competitiveness of european industry and generating carbon leakage i e increasing foreign greenhouse gas emissions two main options have been put forward to tackle these concerns border adjustments and output based allocation i e allocation of free allowances in proportion to current production we compare various configurations of these two options as well as a scenario with full auctioning and no border adjustment against this background we develop a model of the main sectors covered by the eu ets electricity steel cement and aluminium we conclude that the most efficient way to tackle leakage is auctioning with border adjustment which generally induces a negative leakage a spillover this holds even if the border adjustment does not include indirect emissions if it is based on eu rather than foreign specific emissions or for some values of the parameters if it covers only imports another relatively efficient policy is to combine auctioning in the electricity sector and output based allocation in exposed industries especially if free allowances are given both for direct and indirect emissions i e those generated by the generation of the electricity consumed although output based allocation is generally less effective than border adjustment to tackle leakage it is more effective to mitigate production losses in the sectors affected by the ets which may ease climate policy adoption c 2011 elsevier b v all rights reserved

buffer stocks and precautionary savings with loss aversion abstract this paper reexamines buffer stocks and precautionary savings in the presence of loss aversion we assume that agents are disappointment averse as in gul econometrica 59 1991 667 686 we show that the concavity of the marginal utility continues to determine precautionary saving but its effect is of a second order magnitude proportional to the square of the coefficient of variation compared to the first order effect proportional to the coefficient of variation induced by loss aversion we show that a stabilization fund that is rather small when agents are maximizing the conventional expected utility turns out to be rather large with loss aversion

multi product budget constrained acquisition and pricing with uncertain demand and supplier quantity discounts abstract we consider the joint acquisition and pricing problem where the retailer sells multiple products with uncertain demands and the suppliers provide all unit quantity discounts the problem is to determine the optimal acquisition quantities and selling prices so as to maximize the retailer s expected profit subject to a budget constraint this is the first extension to consider supplier discounts in the constrained multi product newsvendor pricing problem we establish a mixed integer nonlinear programming minlp model to formulate the problem and develop a lagrangian based solution approach computational results for the test problems involving up to thousand products are reported which show that the proposed approach can obtain high quality solutions in a very short time

environmental and economic effects of the copenhagen pledges and more ambitious emission reduction targets abstract a multi region multi sector dynamic computable general equilibrium model is applied to explore the economic and welfare effects of the pledges submitted by developed countries annex i countries and major developing non annex i countries for 2020 under the copenhagen accord in addition to analyzing scenarios reflecting the upper and lower bounds of the copenhagen pledges one additional policy scenario where annex i countries as a group reduce co 2 emissions by 30 in 2020 compared to 1990 levels and where major non annex i countries reduce co 2 emissions 15 below baseline is also analyzed economic effects are measured as changes in gdp compared to baseline and welfare effects are measured via the equivalent variation assuming that countries with emission targets may trade certificates average reductions in gdp for countries with targets range between 0 1 and 0 7 in 2020 for the policy scenarios while the gdp losses are larger for major non annex i countries with emission targets compared to annex i countries this is not the case for the changes in welfare with the exception of mexico the welfare losses for the major non annex i regions as a percentage of projected gdp in 2020 are lower than for the large annex i countries

the impact of customer returns on pricing and order decisions abstract in this paper we address the simultaneous determination of price and inventory replenishment when customers return product to the firm we examine cases when the quantity of returned product is a function of both the quantity sold and the price in single and multi period problems with and without uncertainty in demand we derive results for optimal prices and order quantities and discuss how the firm should change price and inventory quantities in order to mitigate the negative effects of returns from customers

pricing and the news vendor problem a review with extensions in the newsvendor problem a decision maker facing random demand for a perishable product decides how much of it to stock for a single selling period this simple problem with its intuitively appealing solution is a crucial building block of stochastic inventory theory which comprises a vast literature focusing on operational efficiency typically in this literature market parameters such as demand and selling price are exogenous however incorporating these factors into the mode l can provide an excellent vehicle for examining how operational problems interact with marketing issues to influence decision making at the firm level in this paper we examine an extension of the newsvendor problem in which stocking quantity and selling price are set simultaneously we provide a comprehensive review that synthesizes existing results for the single period problem and develop additional results to enrich the existing knowledge base we also review and develop insight into a dynamic inventory extension of this problem and motivate the applicability of such models

multi item quick response system with budget constraint quick response mechanisms based on effective use of up to date demand information help retailers to reduce their inventory management costs we formulate a single period inventory model for multiple products with dependent multivariate normal demand distributions and a given overall procurement budget after placing orders based on an initial demand forecast new market information is gathered and demand forecast is updated using this more accurate second forecast the retailer decides the total stocking level for the selling season the second order is based on an improved demand forecast but it also involves a higher unit supply cost to determine the optimal ordering policy we use a computational procedure that entails solving capacitated multi item newsboy problems embedded within a dynamic programming model various numerical examples illustrate the effects of demand variability and financial constraint on the optimal policy it is found that existence of a budget constraint may lead to an increase in the initial order size it is also observed that as the budget available decreases the products with more predictable demand make up a larger share of the procurement expenditure

drift control of international reserves abstract we develop a model of optimal reserve holdings where the reserve authority controls the upward and downward drift of international reserves and chooses the trigger points that induce changes in drift we argue that this drift control model better describes the dynamic behavior of reserves than does the popular buffer stock model we present an innovative mathematical tool for analyzing the drift control based on martingale stopping theory since the reserve authority has more instruments with drift control than with a buffer stock strategy it can manage reserves at significantly lower cost

joint pricing and procurement of fashion products in the existence of clearance markets abstract this paper focuses on the joint pricing and procurement of fashion products in the existence of clearance markets it is assumed that the expected regular season demand is a linear decreasing function of the price and the end of period excess inventory is sold at a known discounted price in a clearance market where the demand is a random variable that follows a general distribution it is shown that the expected profit function is unimodal and the optimal procurement quantity and price can be found from the first order conditions existence of a clearance market increases the profit price and the procurement quantity in order to prove this the optimal procurement and pricing policy of a price setting retailer who does not have a clearance market is provided as opposed to the literature it is shown that the expected profit function of this problem is unimodal as well a numerical study demonstrating the magnitude of the increase in profit procurement quantity and price is reported

cost pass through of the eu emissions allowances examining the european petroleum markets this paper explores the ability of european refineries to pass through costs associated with the introduction of the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets we estimated a sequence of vector error correction models vecm within a multi national setting which covers 14 eu member states using weekly data at the country level this paper finds a significant influence of prices for european union allowances euas on unleaded petrol retail prices during the trial phase of the eu ets from 2005 to 2007 petrol prices are found to be elastic with respect to crude oil prices and exchange rates but rather inelastic with respect to carbon costs the long run elasticity of petrol prices with respect to the eua prices typically ranges between 0 01 and 0 09 furthermore by computing the variance decomposition our analysis shows that a significant fraction of petrol price changes in austria germany france and spain can be explained by changes in allowances prices between 10 and 20

carbon abatement and international spillovers carbon abatement policies in large open economies affect both the allocation of domestic resources and international market prices a change in international prices implies an indirect secondary burden or benefit for all trading countries based on simulations with a large scale computable general equilibrium model of global trade and energy use we show that international spillovers have important welfare implications for carbon abatement policies designed to meet exogenous emission reduction targets we present a decomposition of the total welfare effect of carbon abatement policies into a primary domestic market effect at constant international prices and a secondary international spillover impact as a result of changes in international prices this decomposition reveals the extent to which domestic abatement costs are increased or decreased as a result of the impact of carbon abatement on international prices

higher price lower costs minimum prices in the eu emissions trading scheme this paper examines the introduction of a price floor in an emissions trading system ets when some emissions are regulated outside of the ets we theoretically characterize the conditions under which a price floor enhances welfare using a numerical simulation model of the european union we find that moderate minimum prices in the eu ets can reduce the costs of eu climate policy by up to thirty percent we also find that due to tax interaction effects the optimal minimum price in the eu ets should be about four times higher than the average marginal abatement cost in non ets sectors this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

optimal inventory decisions for a risk averse retailer when offering layaway abstract layaway allows economically disadvantaged budget constrained consumers to purchase expensive items through amortized payments and nominal program fees as opposed to using high interest financing options such as credit cards and payday loans we consider a risk averse retailer s ordering decisions when offering a layaway program we use the net loss and total loss functions found in the literature to determine a risk averse retailer s optimal order quantity under conditional value at risk cvar we next analyze the effects of the model parameters retailer s risk aversion the market default rate enrollment fee cancellation fee and so on on the optimal order quantity decisions we show that the optimal order quantity depends on different loss functions and different demand distribution functions further we show that as market default rate increases or the retailer becomes more risk averse then a rational retailer will not offer a layaway program

how effective are capital controls a number of authors have recently argued that in order to avoid financial instability emerging countries should rely on capital controls two type of controls have been considered controls on capital outflows and controls on capital inflows in this paper i review the historical evidence on the effectiveness of these two type of controls i argue that controls on outflows have been ineffective they are circumvented and breed corruption i also analyze chile s recent experience with controls on inflows and i argue that their effectiveness has been exaggerated

the economics of pollution permit banking in the context of title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments abstract this paper presents a model of the collective emission permit banking behavior of electricity generating units affected by title iv of the clean air act amendments of 1990 a rigorous treatment of the constraint that pollution permits cannot be borrowed from future allocations is introduced this approach enables an analysis of the impact of future changes in electricity demand regulations and technologies on the present permit price and emissions level the effect of uncertainty on the banking behavior is also explored

europe s climate goals and the electricity sector abstract eu s objective of attaining 20 reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 is analysed with a general equilibrium model detailing electricity generation technologies and capital vintaging consistent with theory and other analysts we find that the nonuniform treatment of emitting sectors in eu raises abatement costs by a factor of two to three under cost effective emission reductions a more comprehensive tradable cap electricity generation abates more than its proportional share in emissions the european economy abates by substitution towards natural gas by energy efficiency improvements and by reductions in emission intensive manufactures applied policies such as renewable support and responses such as carbon leakage hold down the prices for emission and electricity thus also holds down incentives for energy efficiency and technological change this leads to little preparation for the future and global mitigation

the newsboy problem under progressive multiple discounts abstract previous research on the newsboy problem is based on the assumption that excess inventory is either discounted once and sold or disposed of real world settings especially in the apparel industry involve many cases where multiple discounts are used under multiple discounts a retailer has a series of discounts that are progressively used as the product remains on the shelf in this paper we formulate and solve a newsboy problem with multiple e discounts the new problem is solved with the objectives of 1 maximizing the expected profit and 2 maximizing the probability of achieving a target profit we show that multiple discounts when possible provide higher expected profit than using a single discount we verify the analytical results using numerical integration and illustrate the results with numerical examples

a foreign expansion model with multi site locations in service industries abstract capital budget constrained foreign expansion model with multi site locations may have far reaching implications for the service sectors this paper aims to present a foreign expansion model with multi site locations which is capable of optimizing the commodity pricing and capital investment policy having found some properties of the model we propose a solution method which consists of the newton raphson method and the technique of piecewise linear approximation the results of proposed model may be beneficial for foreign expansion in services with regard to businesses like fast food steak restaurant cafe shops and so on

optimal ordering quantities for multi products with stochastic demand return cvar model abstract multi product ordering problem with stochastic demand is often optimized by the expected cost reduction or the expected profit improvement in most of previous works moreover risk preference of decision maker is often ignored evidently this approach is impracticable when the corresponding volatility is larger based on the outstanding characteristics of conditional value at risk cvar as a risk measure the paper proposes an optimal order model for multi product with cvar constraints also the model is finally formulated as a linear programming problem the model is simulated for the case of a newsvendor to analyze to what degree it succeeds the solution in fact is bound consistent fully with the decision maker s intuition on return risk decision making finally results of return cvar model and the classical model are compared and shows that return cvar model is more flexible than the classical model

economic impact assessment of turkey s post kyoto vision on emission trading for the post kyoto period turkey strongly emphasizes the establishment of national emission trading system by 2015 and its integration with the eu ets along its accession process to the eu in this paper we study the mechanisms of adjustment and economic welfare consequences of various ets regimes that turkey considers to apply by 2020 i e regional ets and international trading within the eu ets we conduct our analysis under the current eu 20 20 20 emission target 20 and also under its revised version 30 we find that turkey has economic gains from linking with the eu ets under the 20 cap in comparison to the domestic etss despite the eu s welfare loss under linkage in comparison to the case where turkey has domestic abatement efforts it still prefers linking as it increases economic well being compared to the case where turkey does not abate under 30 cutback turkey has critical output loss under linkage due to high abatement burden on the eu while the eu is better off as it passes some of its abatement burden to turkey therefore emission quotas and their allocation across the ets and non ets sectors become highly critical in distributing the overall economic gains from bilateral trading

embodied carbon tariffs in a world where the prospects of a global agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions are bleak the idea of using trade policy as an implicit regulation of foreign emission sources has gained many supporters in countries contemplating unilateral climate policies embodied carbon tariffs tax the direct and indirect carbon emissions embodied in imported goods the appeal seems obvious as oecd countries are on average large net importers of embodied emissions from non oecd countries carbon tariffs could substantially extend the reach of oecd climate policies we investigate this claim by simulating the effects of embodied carbon tariffs with a computable general equilibrium model of global trade and energy use we find that embodied carbon tariffs do effectively reduce carbon leakage however the scope for improvements in the global cost effectiveness of unilateral climate policy is limited the main welfare effect of the tariffs is to shift the burden of oecd climate policy to the developing world

a sketch of the economics of the greenhouse effect over the last decade scientists have studied extensively the greenhouse effect which holds that the accumulation of carbon dioxide co2 and other greenhouse gases ghgs is expected to produce global warming and other significant climatic changes over the next century see stephen schneider 1989 the present study presents an economic approach for analyzing policies to slow climate change

a new robustness analysis for climate policy evaluations a cge application for the eu 2020 targets this paper introduces a new method for stochastic sensitivity analysis for computable general equilibrium cge model based on gauss quadrature and applies it to check the robustness of a large scale climate policy evaluation the revised version of the gauss quadrature approach to sensitivity analysis reduces computations considerably vis a vis the commonly applied monte carlo methods this allows for a stochastic sensitivity analysis also for large scale models and multi dimensional changes of parameters in the application an impact assessment of eu2020 climate policy we focus on sectoral elasticities that are part of the basic parameters of the model and have been recently determined by econometric estimation alongside with standard errors the impact assessment is based on the large scale cge model pace we show the applicability of the gauss quadrature approach and confirm the robustness of the impact assessment with the pace model the variance of the central model outcomes is smaller than their mean by order four to eight depending on the aggregation level i e aggregate variables such as gdp show a smaller variance than sectoral output

a literature based multi criteria evaluation of the eu ets abstract this article reviews the existing literature on the european union emission trading scheme eu ets focusing on empirical ex post research since the end of the first period 2007 the literature is presented through a multi criteria evaluation concerning environmental effectiveness despite over allocation during the first period abatement is estimated between 2 5 and 5 trade driven carbon leakage was not observed even if long term economic models predict divergent leakage estimates for certain at risk sectors the abatement target was likely to be below an economically efficient level but was reached in a fairly cost effective way even if free allocation gave rise to several distortional effects equity concerns were manifold and constitute a major drawback to the policy finally institutional feasibility can be considered positive in that the eu ets passed the european legislative process unlike the previously proposed eu wide carbon tax

shared resource capacity expansion decisions for multiple products with quantity discounts abstract when multiple products compete for the same storage space their optimal individual lot sizes may need to be reduced to accommodate the storage needs of other products this challenge is exacerbated with the presence of quantity discounts which tend to entice larger lot sizes under such circumstances firms may wish to consider storage capacity expansion as an option to take full advantage of quantity discounts this paper aims to simultaneously determine the optimal storage capacity level along with individual lot sizes for multiple products being offered quantity discounts either all units discounts incremental discounts or a mixture of both by utilizing lagrangian techniques along with a piecewise linear approximation for capacity cost our algorithms can generate precise solutions regardless of the functional form of capacity cost i e concave or convex the algorithms can incorporate simultaneous lot sizing decisions for thousands of products in a reasonable solution time we utilize numerical examples and sensitivity analysis to understand the key factors that influence the capacity expansion decision and the performance of the algorithms the primary characteristic that influences the capacity expansion decision is the size of the quantity discount offered but variability in demand and capacity per unit influence the expansion decision as well furthermore we discover that all units quantity discounts are more likely to lead to capacity expansion compared to incremental quantity discounts our analysis illuminates the potential for significant savings available to companies willing to explore the option of increasing storage capacity to take advantage of quantity discount offerings for their purchased products

climate change policy market structure and carbon leakage abstract the 1997 kyoto protocol on climate change obliges the industrialized countries to initiate the international effort of abating anthropogenic greenhouse gas ghg emissions if such an initiative is to be taken the associated competitive effects may lead to significant relocation of developed countries energy intensive production this paper examines this issue i adopt an oligopolistic structure combined with increasing returns to scale production technologies to represent the strategic interaction among the firms producing energy intensive products this representation is then embedded within a multi regional computable general equilibrium model which in turn is used for quantifying these relocational effects the results suggest that significant relocation of energy intensive industries away from the oecd may occur depending on the type of market structure with leakage rates as high as 130 in which case ghg control policies in the industrialized countries actually lead to higher global emissions

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technologies and the cost of limiting us co2 emissions abstract in the us the bulk of co 2 abatement induced by carbon taxes comes from electric power this paper incorporates technology detail into the electricity sector of a computable general equilibrium model of the us economy to characterize electric power s technological margins of adjustment to carbon taxes and to elucidate their general equilibrium effects compared to the top down production function representation of the electricity sector the technology rich hybrid specification produces less abatement at a higher welfare cost suggesting that bottom up models do not necessarily generate lower costs of abatement than top down models this result is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity with which technologies generating capacities adjust to relative prices

the newsstand problem a capacitated multiple product single period inventory problem abstract practically all of the many earlier papers on the newsboy problem consider a single newsboy product with no capacity constraint this paper presents formulations and solution procedures for handling multiple newsboy type products under two cases a one resource capacity constraint and b multiple resource constraints for case a we present a necessary extension to the classical hadley whitin result for handling general demand distributions for case b we present a solution procedure that can efficiently handle the common situation where a very large number of products are involved

a cost benefit analysis of the eu 20 20 2020 package the european commission did not publish a cost benefit analysis for its 2020 climate package this paper fills that gap comparing the marginal costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction the uncertainty about the marginal costs of climate change is large and skewed and estimates partly reflect ethical choices e g the discount rate the 2010 carbon price in the eu emissions trading system can readily be justified by a cost benefit analysis emission reduction is not expensive provided that policy is well designed a condition not met by planned eu policy it is probably twice as expensive as needed costing one in ten years of economic growth the eu targets for 2020 are unlikely to meet the benefit cost test for a standard discount rate 3 pure rate of time preference the benefit cost ratio is rather poor 1 30 so that benefits need to be very much higher or costs very much lower than typically assumed to justify the 2020 targets only a very low discount rate 0 prtp would justify the 20 emission reduction target for 2020

coordinating pricing and production decisions in the presence of price competition abstract in this paper we study the effects of coordinating pricing and production decisions on the improvement of a firm s position in a price competitive environment assuming duopolistic market conditions we use game theoretic concepts and models to analyze two scenarios a firm s marketing and production departments may vertically coordinate their pricing and production quantity decisions and the two firms may horizontally compete for price sensitive random demand the two scenarios include i no coordination and ii coordination in both firms we show that by coordinating their pricing and production decisions competing firms can increase their profitability especially when conditions are unfavourable i e with smaller market sizes higher unit costs and lower unit revenues while it may be intuitive to expect that coordination will outperform non coordination our models provide a means for formalizing and quantifying the differences between the two policies

the eu 20 20 2020 targets an overview of the emf22 assessment three computable general equilibrium models are used to estimate the economic implications of a stylized version of eu climate policy if implemented at the lowest possible cost the 20 emissions reduction would lead to a welfare loss of 0 5 2 0 by 2020 second best policies increase costs a policy with two carbon prices one for the ets one for the non ets could increase costs by up to 50 a policy with 28 carbon prices one for the ets one each for each member state could increase costs by another 40 the renewables standard could raise the costs of emissions reduction by 90 overall the inefficiencies in policy lead to a cost that is 100 125 too high the models differ greatly in the detail of their results the ets non ets split may have a negligible impact on welfare while the renewables standard may even improve welfare the models agree however that the distortions introduced by total eu package imply a substantial welfare loss over and above the costs needed to meet the climate target the marginal total and excess costs reported here are notably higher than those in the impact assessment of the european commission

discount pricing for a family of items the supplier s optimal decisions abstract consider a family of skus for which the supplier will offer a quantity discount according to the aggregate purchases of the product group management of those items is based on the modified periodic policy from the supplier s point of view what are the optimal parameters breakpoint and discount percentage for deterministic demand we discuss the cases in which demand is both constant and price sensitive first as a noncooperative stackelberg game and then when the two parties make the discount and replenishment decisions jointly we illustrate the impact of price sensitivity and joint decision making on the supplier s discount policy

demand for international reserves in developing nations a quantile regression approach abstract i estimate the determinants of the demand for international reserves using quantile regressions employing a dataset of 108 developing nations over the period of 1980 2007 i find considerable differences at different points of the conditional distribution of reserves the estimates of elasticities that were found to be insignificant in ordinary least squares regressions become statistically significant at various quantiles of the distribution furthermore majority of the explanatory variables have lower coefficients for the nations that are located on the right tail of the conditional reserve distribution this finding shows that the level of reserves is as important as the other determinants of the demand for reserves

the single item newsboy problem with dual performance measures and quantity discounts abstract this paper considers models for the single item newsboy problem with quantity discount and the following dual performance measure maximize the expected profit subject to a constraint that the probability of achieving a target profit level is no less than a predetermined risk level we also consider two types of quantity discount all unit and incremental for our models with zero shortage cost a closed form solution for determining the optimal order quantity is derived however models with positive shortage cost can only be solved numerically

the world price of coal a significant increase in the seaborne trade for coal over the past 20 years has unified formerly separate coal markets into a world market in which prices move in tandem by virtue of its large domestic market the usa has become the residual supplier and price setter in the world coal market changes in multifactor productivity have been the primary cause of the long term fluctuations in coal prices that have been observed in the usa since the end of the second world war and in the world coal market

robust multi item newsboy models with a budget constraint abstract in this paper we present robust newsboy models with uncertain demand the traditional approach to describing uncertainty is by means of probability density functions in this paper we present an alternative approach using deterministic optimization models we describe uncertainty using two types of demand scenarios namely interval and discrete scenarios for interval demand scenarios we only require a lower and an upper bound for the uncertain demand of each item while for discrete demand scenarios we require a set of likely demand outcomes for each item using the above scenarios to describe demand uncertainty we develop several minimax regret formulations for the multi item newsboy problem with a budget constraint for the problems involving interval demand scenarios we develop linear time optimal algorithms we show that the corresponding models with discrete demand scenarios are np hard and that they are solvable by dynamic programming finally we extend the above results to the case of mixed scenarios where the demand of some of the items is described by interval scenarios and the demand of the remaining items is described by discrete scenarios

assessment of european union transition scenarios with a special focus on the issue of carbon leakage this paper uses the model gemini e3 to simulate and assess the transition scenario to 2020 framed by the european union in its energy climate directive and it raises several issues in this connection after a brief description of the model the paper presents the results of the scenarios mainly the values of the major indicators of carbon price both in the ets and in non ets sectors and the welfare cost of the eu policy under the various configurations considered while it is independent of the scenario in the ets sector in the non ets sector the value of carbon is very sensitive to the provisions of the directive and in particular the option of resorting to the flexibility mechanisms the welfare cost also varies significantly according to scenarios and its value for the entire eu is more than double in the scenario closest to the directive as compared to the least cost one the paper also addresses the very sensitive issue of carbon leakage and argues in favor of a new concept of net leakage the analysis shows that while carbon leakage may affect some specific sectors at the aggregate level it does not represent a real concern with a magnitude of at most a few percent of ghg abatement by annex b countries

the main support mechanisms to finance renewable energy development considering that the major part of greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide there is a global concern aimed at reducing carbon emissions additionally major consumer countries are looking for alternati

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed

carbon taxes with exemptions in an open economy a general equilibrium analysis of the german tax initiative abstract sectoral exemptions from environmental regulation are applied in many countries to avoid adverse adjustment effects in specific industries the problem with exemptions is that they can make environmental policy more costly our paper analyzes the welfare costs of exemptions in environmental policy together with the issue of unilateral carbon taxes in an open economy several countries within the eu have introduced or contemplated unilateral taxes to reduce anthropogenic co2emissions taxes which are unilaterally imposed in an open economy can have significant impacts on production and employment of energy and export intensive industries to save jobs by maintaining international competitiveness most co2taxation schemes include exemptions for energy and export intensive industries as a compromise between environmental objectives and employment in these sectors this paper shows that such compromises are costly as the tax base narrows the dead weight loss increases our calculations illustrate this point in the framework of a static general equilibrium model for west germany calibrated to 1990 data we evaluate the excess costs of exemptions as a means of saving jobs in specific industries relative to an alternative instrument a uniform carbon tax cum wage subsidy which achieves an identical level of national emissions and employment at a fraction of the cost