what has driven oil prices since 2000 a structural change perspective abstract this paper characterizes weekly international oil price fundamentals since 2000 by analyzing the transformation of the market mechanism based on structural change perspective using endogenously determined break tests that allow for changes in both level and trend we divide the price fluctuations in the international oil market after 2000 into three stages relatively calm market period january 07 2000 to march 12 2004 the bubble accumulation period march 19 2004 to june 06 2008 and the global economic crisis period june 13 2008 to september 11 2009 the results show the existence of structural breaks refutes the utility of investigation of the full sample period as a whole and in different structural periods the main drivers of oil price changes and their way of influence and degree are significantly distinct then we demonstrate the evolving process of market mechanism since 2000 through establishing comparative models we also quantitatively measure the roles of speculation and episodic events in oil price fluctuations

strikes and holdouts in wage bargaining theory and data we develop a private information model of union contract negotiations in which disputes signal a firm s willingness to pay previous models have assumed that all labor disputes take the form of a strike yet a prominent feature of u s collective bargaining is the holdout negotiations often continue without a strike after the contract has expired production continues with workers paid according to the expired contract we analyze the union s decision to strike or hold out and highlight its importance to strike activity strikes are more likely to occur after a drop in the real wage or a decline in unemployment

currency misalignments and growth a new look using nonlinear panel data methods the aim of this article is to investigate the link between currency misalignments and economic growth relying on panel cointegration techniques we calculate real exchange rate rer misalignments as deviations of actual rers from their equilibrium values for a set of advanced and emerging economies estimating panel smooth transition regression pstr models we show that rer misalignments have a differentiated impact on economic growth depending on their sign whereas overvaluations negatively affect economic growth rer undervaluations significantly enhance it this result indicates that undervaluations may drive the exchange rate to a level that encourages exports and promotes growth

public versus private governance a study of incentives and operational performance abstract this study explores incentives and performance in organizations governed by publicly elected boards of directors and subsidized by taxes such organizations are likely to underpay chief executive officers ceos resulting in selection and incentive problems and hence poor operating performance we compare municipal district hospitals to private nonprofit hospitals ceo compensation in district hospitals is significantly lower than in the nonprofits operating margins in district hospitals are lower and deteriorate more rapidly over time we rule out a number of other factors that could explain differences in performance we conclude that the weak governance structure hampers district hospitals

speculation and the 2008 oil bubble the dcot report analysis abstract this article analyzes the cftc s disaggregated commitments of traders dcot report to get more insights into the behavior of different traders during the 2008 oil bubble the analysis shows that 1 the money manager category perfectly played the oil bubble got in early and started selling shortly before the bubble peak 2 the producer merchant processor user category and the nonreportable category were covering their short positions into the peak of the bubble 3 the swap dealer category benefited while the price of oil was rising but incurred heavy losses as the price of oil collapsed 4 we find no indications of speculation by any group of traders via the positive feedback trading or rational destabilization and 5 we do however criticize the commercial hedgers for failing to arbitrage the soaring oil prices in 2008

price movements and price discovery in futures and cash markets r isk transfer and price discovery are two of the major contributions of futures markets to the organization of economic activity working 1962 evans 1978 p 80 and silber 1981 risk transfer refers to hedgers using futures contracts to shift price risk to others price discovery refers to the use of futures prices for pricing cash market transactions working 1948 wiese 1978 p 87 and lake 1978 p 161 the significance of both contributions depends upon a close relationship between the prices of futures contracts and cash commodities this paper examines the characteristics of price movements in cash or spot markets and futures markets for storable commodities section ii presents an analytical model of simultaneous price dynamics which suggests that over short intervals of time the correlation of price changes is a function of the elasticity of arbitrage between the physical commodity and its counterpart futures contract greater elasticity fosters more highly correlated price changes and thereby facilitates the risk transfer function the elasticity of supply of arbitrage services is constrained by among other things storage and transaction costs thus futures contracts will not in general provide perfect risk transfer facilities over short time horizons the essence of the price discovery function of futures markets hinges on whether new information is reflected first in changed futures prices or in changed cash prices hoffman 1932 pp 258259 the model in section ii provides a framework for analyzing whether one market is dominant in terms of information flows and price discovery in section iii we develop a model based on section ii which is appropriate for estimating the lead lag relationship between cash prices and futures prices section iv presents empirical estimates of the parameters of the model for seven different storable commodities wheat corn oats frozen orange juice concentrates copper gold and silver the cost of arbitrage between cash and futures differs across these commodities for this reason we are not surprised to find inter commodity differences in the correlation of short run price changes and in the substitutability of futures contracts for cash market positions with respect to the price discovery function of futures markets we find that while futures markets dominate cash markets cash prices do not merely echo futures prices there are reverse information flows from cash markets to futures markets as well

impacts of exchange rate volatility and international oil price shock on china s regional economy a dynamic cge analysis abstract a multi regional dynamic computable general equilibrium model is constructed in this paper to explore the macroeconomic effects of international oil price shocks and rmb exchange rate changes on china the results show that 1 in terms of regional development differences the decrease in international oil prices and depreciation of rmb are both conducive to economic growth although the impact of rmb devaluation is more obvious increases in international oil prices will further widen the output gap between the rich and the poor regions whereas oil price decreases and rmb devaluation will narrow the regional development differences 2 in terms of employment the depreciation of the exchange rate and the decline in international oil prices will help increase the employment rate in most regions but oil price hikes will be most beneficial for improving oil industry employment in the northeast 3 the impact of oil price volatility is asymmetric compared with rising oil prices falling oil prices have significantly greater effects on gdp industrial output employment and other aspects furthermore the impacts of exchange rate fluctuations and oil price changes on the regional economy exhibit a time lag

union negotiations and corporate policy a study of labor concessions in the domestic steel industry during the 1980s abstract this paper studies managerial compensation financial reporting and dividend policies of the seven major domestic steel producers during requests for union concessions substantial layoffs reported losses and sacrifices by nonunion stakeholders buttressed managers case for union concessions from 1980 to 1988 sample firms reduced their work force by about 300 000 almost two thirds and annual wage payments from 16 1 to 8 6 billion reported income is lower during union negotiations controlling for cash flows as is managerial pay with average ceo salary plus bonus declining 18 dividend reductions and white collar pay cuts are substantial pervasive and clustered during union negotiations

testing for common features in north american energy markets abstract using recent advances in the field of applied econometrics we explore the strength of shared trends and shared cycles between north american natural gas and crude oil markets in doing so we use daily data from january 1991 to april 2001 on spot u s henry hub natural gas and wti crude oil prices the results show that there has been decoupling of the prices of these two sources of energy as a result of oil and gas deregulation in the united states we also investigate the interconnectedness of north american natural gas markets and find that north american natural gas prices are largely defined by the u s henry hub price trends

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

modeling returns and volatility transmission between oil price and us nigeria exchange rate article i nfo this paper models returns and volatility transmission between oil price op and us nigeria exchange rate exr consequently it provides five main innovations i it analyzes op and exr using the recently devel oped test by narayan and popp 2010 np which allows for two structural breaks in the data series ii it employs the narayan and liu 2011 nl garch unit root test to evaluate robustness of np test iii it con siders the newly developed var garch model to capture the spillover effects in the returns and volatility of op and exr iv it modifies the var garch model to account for structural breaks obtained from the np procedure and v using the results obtained from the var garch model it examines the optimal weights of holding oil and foreign exchange fx assets and also computes the hedging ratios in the presence of oil risk based on the np and nl tests it finds robust structural breaks that coincide with the period of global fi nancial crisis as well as period of fx crisis in nigeria also it establishes a bidirectional returns and spillover transmission between oil and fx markets finally its findings reveal evidence of hedging effectiveness involving oil and fx markets in nigeria and thus the inclusion of oil into a diversified portfolio of fx will improve its risk adjusted return performance

price dynamics among u s electricity spot markets combining recent advances in causal flows with time series analysis relationships among 11 u s spot market electricity prices are examined results suggest that the relationships among the markets vary by time frame in contemporaneous time the western markets are separated from the eastern markets and the electricity reliability council of texas at longer time frames these separations disappear even though electricity transmission between the regions is limited it appears the relationships among markets are not only a function of physical assets such as transmissions lines among markets but by similar and dissimilar institutional arrangements among the markets

the use of accounting flexibility to reduce labor renegotiation costs and manage earnings abstract we investigate the determinants of discretionary sfas 106 choices of non regulated firms we find that more unionized firms are more likely to use immediate recognition consistent with incentives to reduce labor renegotiation costs immediate recognition is more prevalent among post adoption plan modifiers particularly if their transition obligation is large consistent with incentives to increase future reported earnings immediate recognition together with post adoption benefit plan reduction frees future income from the transition obligation amortization expense and adds a positive component as negative prior service costs are amortized immediate recognition is less prevalent among firms with higher potential debt contracting costs

pension plan accounting estimates and the freezing of defined benefit pension plans abstract this study provides evidence that when hard freezing their defined benefit pension plans employers select downward biased accounting assumptions to exaggerate the economic burden of their benefit plans downward biased expected rates of return and discount rates allow managers to increase reported pension expenses and for discount rates allow managers to increase reported pension liabilities we find that prior to the sarbanes oxley act both rates are downward biased when firms freeze their plans whereas after sox the bias is lower this finding is consistent with managers opportunistically biasing pension estimates to obtain labor concessions during periods of reduced regulatory scrutiny

jeea fbbva lecture 2018 the microeconomic foundations of aggregate production functions aggregate production functions are reduced form relationships that emerge endogenously from input output interactions between heterogeneous producers and factors in general equilibrium we provide a general methodology for analyzing such aggregate production functions by deriving their first and second order properties our aggregation formulas provide nonparametric characterizations of the macroelasticities of substitution between factors and of the macrobias of technical change in terms of microsufficient statistics they allow us to generalize existing aggregation theorems and to derive new ones we relate our results to the famous cambridge cambridge controversy

the extreme value in crude oil and us dollar markets abstract this study constructs a flexible range based volatility model by considering extreme value information to explore the volatility and dependence structures between the oil price and the us dollar exchange rate an asset allocation strategy is implemented to evaluate the economic value and confirm the efficiency of this model the empirical results indicate that the use of extreme value information can not only enhance the explanatory power of volatility structures but also sort out the asymmetric volatility effect in the oil market besides investors can obtain extra benefits of between 72 and 713 annualized basis points by incorporating extreme value information into their asset allocation strategies less risk averse investors can generate higher benefits the empirical results have potentially important implications for asset allocation and risk management

price index convergence among united states cities we study the dynamics of price indices for major u s cities using panel econometric methods and find that relative price levels among cities mean revert at an exceptionally slow rate in a panel of 19 cities from 1918 to 1995 we estimate the half life of convergence to be approximately nine years the surprisingly slow rate of convergence can be explained by a combination of the presence of transportation costs differential speeds of adjustment to small and large shocks and the inclusion of nontraded goods prices in the overall price index do price indices in major u s cities share a common trend and if so how quickly do they revert to that trend following a local shock to the price index to answer this question we study the dynamics of consumer price indices for 19 major u s cities over the period from 1918 to 1995 the panel time series methods we employ are now commonly used for studying real output growth rates and levels of real exchange rates across countries we estimate that price index divergences across u s cities are temporary but surprisingly persistent with a half life of nearly nine years our research has two primary motivations first we hope to gain a better understanding of the sources of persistence in the deviations from purchasing power parity ppp found in studies of national price indices and exchange rate data second and more importantly we see the european monetary union as having many similarities to the united states and believe that studying the behavior of prices across u s cities will help us in understanding the likely nature of inflation convergence in the euro area the european central bank s stated inflation objective is a year on year change in the harmonized index of consumer prices hicp of not more than 2 but how large might we expect regional deviations from this euro area wide average to be and how long are they likely to persist the lack of data prevents us from answering this question directly using european prices under monetary union instead we look to the united states a mature common currency area of similar regional diversity size and industrial development

the non linear impact of oil price on the oil demand a panel smooth transition regression model was adopted to analyse the non linear impact of oil prices on oil demand data for 42 countries was obtained from the international energy agency for the

the role of trader positions in spot and futures prices for wti abstract we extend the analysis of causal relations between trader positions and oil prices and the process of price discovery by estimating a cointegrating vector autoregression cvar model that expands the cash and carry relation between spot and futures prices to quantify long and short run relations among oil prices trader positions interest rates and oil inventories results indicate that oil inventories and trader positions are needed to generate cointegration between spot and futures prices the presence of trader positions and oil inventories suggest that both play a role in price discovery furthermore the cointegrating relation for price loads into the equation for both oil prices and trader positions this suggests a bi directional simultaneous adjustment process between oil prices and trader positions this expands the unidirectional causal relation from oil prices to trader positions that is generated by previous studies additional results suggest that price discovery occurs in the market for heavily traded near month futures contracts but discovery for thin far month futures markets occurs in the spot market together these results suggest mechanisms by which speculation could affect oil prices but the results presented here are moot regarding their effects

smooth transition regime shifts and oil price dynamics abstract the interaction between rational hedgers and informed oil traders is parameterized and tested empirically with the help of a complex non linear smooth transition regime shift ccc garch procedure in spite of their gyrations futures price changes are usually self correcting well informed producers and consumers will ensure that crude oil prices and thus the prices of the corresponding futures contracts fluctuate within a long run equilibrium range determined by market fundamentals during a steep price upswing however shifts in positions in the futures markets by well informed optimizing agents that usually dampen price changes result in destabilizing positive feedback trading futures price changes that can be classified as speculative are due to destabilizing hedgers reactions to movements in the variability of the return of their covered cash position the paper provides in this way an innovative interpretation of the 2008 oil price bubble

when will occur the crude oil bubbles abstract in this paper we apply a recursive unit root test to investigate whether there exist multiple bubbles in crude oil price the method is best suited for a practical implementation of a time series and delivers a consistent date stamping strategy for the origination and termination of multiple bubbles the empirical result indicates that there exist six bubbles during 1986 2016 when the oil price deviate from its intrinsic value based on market fundamentals specifically oil price contains the fundamentals and bubble components the dates of the bubbles correspond to specific events in the politics and financial markets the authorities should actively fight speculative bubbles or just observe their evolutions and speculation activities may decrease which is favour of the stabilisation of the staple commodities including crude oil price these findings have important economic and policy implications to recognise the cause of bubbles and take corresponding measures to reduce the impact on the real economy cause of the fluctuation of crude oil price

speculative bubbles in recent oil price dynamics evidence from a bayesian markov switching state space approach abstract motivated by repeated spikes and crashes during previous decades we investigate whether the heavily financialized market for crude oil has been driven by speculative bubbles in our theoretical modeling we draw on the convenience yield approach in order to approximate the fundamental value of the oil price we separate the oil price fundamental from the bubble component by expressing a standard present value oil price model in state space form we then introduce two markov regimes into the state space representation in order to distinguish between two distinct phases in the bubble process namely one in which the oil price bubble is a stable process and one in which the bubble explodes we estimate the entire markov switching state space specification using an econometrically robust bayesian markov chain monte carlo mcmc methodology based on inferential techniques designed for statistically separating both markov regimes in the bubble process from each other we find robust evidence for the existence of speculative bubbles in recent oil price dynamics

labor unions and tax aggressiveness abstract we examine the impact of unionization on firms tax aggressiveness we find a negative association between firms tax aggressiveness and union power and a decrease in tax aggressiveness after labor union election wins this relation is consistent with labor unions influencing managers in one or both of two ways 1 constraining managers ability to invest in tax aggressiveness through increased monitoring or 2 decreasing returns to tax aggressiveness that arise from unions rent seeking behavior we also find preliminary evidence that the market expects these reductions around union elections and discounts firms that likely add shareholder value via aggressive tax strategies

market integration among electricity markets and their major fuel source markets dynamic price information flows among u s electricity wholesale spot prices and the prices of the major electricity generation fuel sources natural gas uranium coal and crude oil are studied multivariate time series methods applied to weekly price data show that in contemporaneous time peak electricity prices move natural gas prices which in turn influence crude oil in the long run price is discovered in the fuel sources market except uranium as these prices are weakly exogenous in a reduced rank regression representation of these energy prices

the integration of major fuel source markets in china evidence from panel cointegration tests abstract the paper tests for energy price co movement in china over the new regime as part of a strategy to test for the existence of a national energy market panel cointegration test statistics suggest that not all energy commodities are spatially homogenous in prices and the processes of energy price cointegration are different over time and over groups of fuels the statistics demonstrate china s gradual spatially partial and idiosyncratic energy reform process coal and electricity price series have co moved since 2003 while the national panel cointegration test statistics suggest that gasoline and diesel price series have co moved since 1997 regional panel tests also show that there are apparently differences in the emergence of energy price co movement this suggests that regional energy markets have emerged in china one of the important lessons of the research is that an energy market has to some extent already emerged in china and as a consequence energy prices are much less distorted than previously if correct this fact is of major global significance both in terms of future environmental effects and future trade and investment negotiations as china is seen internationally as a market driven economy

explaining crude oil prices using fundamental measures abstract oil is the world s most important commodity and improving the understanding of drivers of its price is a longstanding research objective this article analyses real oil prices during 1984 2007 using a monthly dataset of fundamental and market parameters that cover financial markets global economic growth demand and supply of oil and geopolitical measures the innovation is to incorporate proxies for speculative and terrorist activity and dummies for major industry events and quantify price impacts of each new findings are positive links between oil prices and speculative activity bond yields an interaction term incorporating opec market share and oecd import dependence and the number of us troops and frequency of terrorist attacks in the middle east shocks also prove significant with a 6 18 per barrel impact on price for several months

reform without losers an interpretation of china s dual track approach to transition this paper develops a simple model to analyze the dual track approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient pareto improving economic reform that is reform achieving efficiency without creating losers the approach based on the continued enforcement of the existing plan while simultaneously liberalizing the market can be understood as a method for making implicit lump sum transfers to compensate potential losers of the reform the model highlights the critical roles of enforcement of the plan for achieving pareto improvement and full liberalization of the market track for achieving efficiency we examine how the dual track approach has worked in product and labor market liberalization in china

financialisation oil and the great recession abstract this article addresses the role of world oil price hike of 2007 08 in serving to transform the financial and banking crisis into what is commonly referred to the great recession existing literature on the global crisis of 2007 09 tends to view it as a financial or banking phenomenon with analyses focusing mainly on state policies governance mechanisms and market dynamics in transforming the banking crisis of 2007 08 into the economic recession of 2008 12 13 although often attributing the global meltdown to wider phenomenon of financialisation rarely do existing perspectives delve into the role of the commodity sector in the global credit crunch in this paper we aim to fill this gap by inquiring into the role played by oil as a financial asset class in the political economy of the global crisis

testing the monetary model of exchange rate determination a closer look at panels abstract in this paper we undertake an extensive evaluation of panel tests of the long run monetary model of exchange rate determination we first show how poorly the monetary model performs on a country by country basis for us dollar exchange rates over the post bretton woods period for a large number of industrialized countries in sharp contrast we find considerable support for the monetary model using panel procedures as in groen 2000 and mark and sul 2001 given the disparity in the country by country and panel approaches we carefully analyze the homogeneity restrictions inherent in the panel procedures the evidence on the appropriateness of the homogeneity restrictions is mixed in the end whether the monetary model conforms to post bretton woods data largely depends on one s prior beliefs

does the s p500 index lead the crude oil dynamics a complexity based approach abstract taking the complex property of nonlinear feedback connectivity into consideration the goal of this paper is to apprehend the interdependences between the financial and energy sectors our contribution is both theoretical and methodological we conduct a multivariate analysis employing nonlinear tools namely the partial transfer entropy and the asymmetric mackey glass causality test in particular we build a system comprising the petroleum complex crude oil gasoline and heating oil the s p500 index and the 1 month futures spot spread for crude oil by adopting a rolling window approach we observe a persistent lead lag relationship between the s p500 index and the market participants expectations for crude oil from 2004 to 2009 depending on the bubble period in the stock market it appears that the resulting coupling becomes subject to the deterioration of global economic activity induced by large common shocks

oil exploration and perceptions of scarcity the fallacy of early success abstract it has been suggested that oil exploration may lead to false perceptions of decreasing scarcity we perform a simulation of the exploration process using bayesian updating the approach enables us to isolate the information effect on the success rate and also to quantify the subjective expectation of the total resource size the area under exploration consists of a number of regions which may differ in their oil content exploration is performed with the goal to maximize the expected success rate the resulting information about the distribution of oil and the total resource size is assumed public knowledge a number of scenarios with variations in the dimensions of the area under exploration the oil distribution and initial beliefs are considered the results indicate that the information effect on the success rate is significant but brief it might have a considerable impact on price but is an unlikely mechanism behind a long term declining price trend however the information effect on expectations is gradual and persistent since exploration is performed in regions where the expected success rate is the highest the historical success rate will not be representative of the area as a whole an explorer will tend to overestimate the total resource size thereby suggesting an alternative mechanism for false perceptions of decreasing scarcity a mechanism that could be called the fallacy of early success

are strikes less effective in conglomerate firms the author develops an extension of the ashenfelter johnson model of union wage bargaining to account for how diversification can improve a firm s ability to take strikes and therefore reduce wage settlements to test the model a wage equation is derived that is conditioned on the occurrence of a strike and is then estimated using union wage settlement data for 15 manufacturing firms covering contract settlements from 1954 to 1988 the estimation results support organized labor s contention that conglomerate firms enjoy a significant bargaining advantage over labor unions

u s stock returns and oil prices the tale from daily data and the 2008 2009 financial crisis abstract using daily data from january 1999 to december 2011 we examine u s stock returns s p 500 dow jones nasdaq and russell 2000 based on a wide range of information including equity vix volatility inflation expectations interest rates gold prices and the usd euro exchange rate the focus is on oil price returns which have been previously found to exert mostly negative effects on u s stock returns identifying the crisis of 2008 2009 as a significant period of economic contraction and subsequent recovery we check the stability of the stock oil relationship by garch and mgarch dcc models prior to the financial crisis stock returns are slightly negatively affected by oil prices and by the usd euro for the subsample of mid 2009 onwards however stock returns are positively affected by oil prices and a weaker usd euro as with inflation expectations we interpret these findings as u s stocks responding positively to expectations of recovery worldwide our proposed explanation is due to the changing correlation between stock markets and oil either by standard garch models or by mgarch dcc models allowing the implied correlation to vary over time

will policies to promote renewable electricity generation be effective evidence from panel stationarity and unit root tests for 115 countries abstract this study examines whether policies to promote renewable electricity generation are likely to be effective by applying panel unit root and stationarity tests to time series data on renewable electricity generation for 115 countries over the period 1980 2008 we find that for the panel as a whole and almost three quarters of the individual countries renewable electricity generation is characterized by a unit root this result implies that policies to promote renewable electricity generation such as renewable portfolio standards which result in annual increases in renewable energy and as such which represent permanent positive shocks to the long run growth path of renewable electricity generation will be more effective in increasing renewable electricity generation than policies with a pre specified time horizon

technical change and model specification u s agricultural production u s agricultural crop and livestock relationships are examined in the context of both duality and time series econometrics based on time series test results cointegrated models are estimated traditional models generally overestimated the precision of statistical relationships and gave a considerable number of spurious results particularly with regard to technical change when time series properties of the data were addressed there was much less evidence of bias in technical change model specification test results were sensitive both to the time series specification of the maintained model and its functional form preferred functional form depended on the choice criterion

economic impacts of new unionization on private sector employers 1984 2001 economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large representative data on establishments with union status information estimates are also confounded by selection bias because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more likely to grow and pay higher wages using multiple establishment level data sets that represent establishments that faced organizing drives in the united states during 1984 1999 this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of unionization on business survival employment output productivity and wages essentially outcomes for employers where unions barely won the election e g by one vote are compared with those where the unions barely lost the analysis finds small impacts on all outcomes that we examine estimates for wages are close to zero the evidence suggests that at least in recent decades the legal mandate that requires the employer to bargain with a certified union has had little economic impact on employers because unions have been somewhat unsuccessful at securing significant wage gains

derivation of the hicks or direct elasticity of substitution using the input distance function abstract i derive a new symmetric elasticity of complementarity from the input distance function by imposing a constant distance condition assuming technical efficiency and a single output the hicks elasticity of substitution is its reciprocal

how do dynamic responses of exchange rates to oil price shocks co move from a time varying perspective abstract with globalization and financialization exchange rates could be sensitive to oil price shocks due to differences of exchange rate policy oil dependence status and other factors the responses of exchange rates to oil price shocks could be either similar or heterogeneous therefore in this paper we integrate a hybrid research framework to investigate the co movement of responses to oil price shocks of four major exchange rate of currencies included in the special drawing rights basket from january 2000 to september 2018 from a time varying aspect and considering the asymmetric effect of the oil price shocks the main results are as follows compared with the general oil price shocks unexpected oil price shocks could have greater influence on currency markets over time with the asymmetric effect happening only when extreme market situations and unexpected oil price shocks appear simultaneously pairwise exchange rates tend to move in either a negatively or a positively similar way rather than in an unrelated manner in 50 of the sampled market time the co movement situation of exchange rates response could be captured by specific small numbers of co movement modes with the euro us dollar usd and great british pound usd tending to co move in more stable manner and having the potential to serve as an early warning of risk while other pairwise exchange rates are characterized by time varying features

the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates revisiting theory and evidence abstract this paper reviews existing theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates we start with theoretical transmission channels which point to bi directional causality empirical research is classified and shows that the evidence varies substantially depending on sample country choice and empirical method yet there are some common patterns i strong links between exchange rates and oil prices are frequently observed over the long run and ii either exchange rates or oil prices are a potentially useful predictor of the other variable in the short run but the effects are strongly time varying we also identify some important avenues for future research

humps in the volatility structure of the crude oil futures market new evidence abstract this paper analyses the volatility structure of commodity derivatives markets the model encompasses hump shaped unspanned stochastic volatility which entails a finite dimensional affine model for the commodity futures curve and quasi analytical prices for options on commodity futures using an extensive database of crude oil futures and futures options spanning 21 years we find the presence of hump shaped partially spanned stochastic volatility in the crude oil market the hump shaped feature is more pronounced when the market is more volatile and delivers better pricing as well as hedging performance under various dynamic factor hedging schemes

the impact of energy prices on the volatility of ethanol prices and the role of gasoline emissions abstract the contribution of renewable energy resources is vital for a country s economic growth by providing high efficiency in energy as well as an effective tool for the confrontation of climate change in particular concerning the eu an increase in the consumption of renewable energy resources as a proportion of the total energy consumption by its member states was set as an objective until 2020 ethanol has been widely used as a substitute to conventional energy like gasoline and oil the present paper surveys the role of alternative energy prices and gas emissions in the formation of the ethanol prices the results of the empirical survey confirmed the existence of a sole relationship among the variables employed according to the results obtained an increase in the volume of emissions or in gasoline prices results in an increase in ethanol prices while the opposite is confirmed in the case of crude oil he elasticity of ethanol prices to the increase of the emissions is another result worth mentioning indicative of the significant role of the emissions in the formation of ethanol prices

the economic value of co movement between oil price and exchange rate using copula based garch models article i nfo the us dollar is used as the primary currency of international crude oil trading as such the recent substantial depreciation in the us dollar has resulted in a corresponding increase in crude oil prices in addition oil price and exchange rate returns have been shown to be skewed and leptokurtic and to exhibit an asymmetric or tail dependence structure therefore this study proposes dynamic copula based garch models to explore the dependence structure between the oil price and the us dollar exchange rate more importantly an asset allocation strategy is implemented to evaluate economic value and confirm the efficiency of the copula based garch models in terms of out of sample forecasting performance a dynamic strategy based on the cgarch model with the student t copula exhibits greater economic benefits than static and other dynamic strategies in addition the positive feedback trading activities are statistically significant within the oil market but this information does not enhance the economic benefits from the perspective of an asset allocation decision finally a more risk averse investor generates a higher fee for switching from a static strategy to a dynamic strategy based on copula based garch models

on the link between forward energy prices a nonlinear panel cointegration approach abstract this paper investigates the relationship between forward prices of oil gas coal and electricity using a nonlinear panel cointegration framework to this end we consider a panel of 35 maturities and control for the economic and financial environment using equity futures prices estimating the cointegrating relationship we find that oil gas and coal forward prices are positively linked while the negative link between oil and electricity prices is consistent with a substitution effect between the two energy sources on the long run estimating panel smooth transition regression pstr models we show that the forward oil price adjustment process toward its equilibrium value is nonlinear and asymmetric putting forward the key role played by self sustaining dynamics and speculation phenomena

the effect of labor unions on ceo compensation we find evidence that labor unions affect chief executive officer ceo compensation first we find that firms with strong unions pay their ceos less the negative effect is robust to various tests for endogeneity including cross sectional variations and a regression discontinuity design second we find that ceo compensation is curbed before union contract negotiations especially when the compensation is discretionary and the unions have a strong bargaining position third we report that curbing ceo compensation mitigates the chance of a labor strike thus providing a rationale for firms to pay ceos less when facing strong unions

interaction between oil and us dollar exchange rate nonlinear causality time varying influence and structural breaks in volatility abstractthis article examines the nonlinear granger causality and time varying influence between crude oil prices and the us dollar usd exchange rate using the hiemstra and jones hp test the diks and panchenko dp test and the time varying parameter structural vector autoregression model by applying the iterated cumulative sums of squares icss algorithm and the dcc garch model the effects of structural breaks in volatility of the two markets are also investigated the empirical analysis indicates that first crude oil prices are the nonlinear granger cause of the usd exchange rate but not vice versa second the usd exchange rate exerts a stronger and more stable negative influence on crude oil prices in the short term and the influence gradually weakens after 2012 finally ignoring structural breaks can increase the negative volatility correlation between the oil and usd exchange rate markets which is particularly remarkable during the financial crisis

financial liquidity geopolitics and oil prices abstract this paper aims simultaneously to study the global dynamic relationship of oil prices financial liquidity and geopolitical risk on the one hand and the economic performance of oil exports dependent economies on the other global and country specific dynamics are studied together in a global vector autoregression gvar model that allows different lag structures for different variables in different countries global impulse response functions from the estimated model suggest that new waves of high oil prices are unlikely despite the likely continuation of high global financial liquidity and heightened geopolitical risk which had driven earlier episodes of very high oil prices with oil remaining at modest to low prices by recent historical standards we study the prospects for economic growth in oil export dependent economies through dramatic increases in domestic investment as planned under visions 2030 of some arab countries and conclude that unfortunately success is unlikely

renewable energy policy and electricity market reforms in china the article examines the potential effectiveness of the renewable energy policy in china and its regulatory law framework it frames the option of renewable energy technology within the background of the long lasting electricity problems that china has faced including serious supply shortages reliance on coal and severe environmental contamination its dual administrative and ownership system based on state and privately owned industry is discussed together with the market reform measures adopted in the sector current renewable energy policy is analysed and the scope of the 2005 renewable energy promotion law is investigated this is conducted within the context of the electricity sector reform that china adopted and its effects upon the prospects of encouraging as well as expanding the development of renewable energy this study draws upon primary information collected from interviews with stakeholders on the policy adequacy and identifies three main types of shortcomings that have interfered with a more successful expansion of renewable energy in china

oil and us dollar exchange rate dependence a detrended cross correlation approach abstract this paper examines the relationship between oil prices and the us dollar exchange rate using detrended cross correlation analysis for a wide set of currencies in the periods before and since the onset of the recent global financial crisis we characterized the oil price exchange rate relationship at different time scales and documented two main findings first the cross correlation analysis indicated that oil price exchange rate correlations were negative and low having in general lower values for longer time scales second negative dependence between oil and the us dollar increased after the onset of the global financial crisis for all time scales thereby providing evidence of both contagion and interdependence this empirical evidence has important implications for monetary and fiscal policies asset management and risk assessment

unionization and profitability evidence from the capital market this paper examines the effect of unionization on the profitability of firms abnormal monthly common stock returns for a sample of 253 nyse listed firms are estimated for the month in which the union petitions for an election and for the month in which the national labor relations board certifies the election outcome the results suggest that unionization on average is associated with a reduction in equity value when unions win an election the average loss associated with the unionization drive is 3 8 percent of equity value when unions lose an election there is an average net reduction of 1 3 percent in the equity value of the firm

energy consumption and economic growth in the light of meeting the targets of energy policy in the eu the bootstrap panel granger causality approach abstract the aim of the paper is to assess linkages between energy consumption and economic growth in the light of compliance with the eu energy policy targets stated in the climate and energy package for 2020 in the european union member states in the period 1993 2011 the study is divided into two main stages during the first one using cluster analysis methods four groups of countries which met three energy policy targets stated in the package at similar levels were identified during the second stage the bootstrap granger panel causality approach proposed by konya 2006 was used to verify the hypothesis of causality between energy consumption and economic growth in the countries from four groups created in the previous step the global financial crisis was also taken into account the results obtained reveal that the level of compliance with energy policy targets influences linkages between energy consumption and economic growth the results indicate causal relations in the group of countries with the greatest reduction of greenhouse gas emissions the highest reduction of energy intensity and the highest share of renewable energy consumption in total energy consumption in the remaining groups the results mostly confirm the neutrality hypothesis

rational destabilizing speculation positive feedback trading and the oil bubble of 2008 abstract this article examines how the interaction of different participants in the crude oil futures markets affects the crude oil price efficiency normally the commercial market participants such as oil producers and oil consumers act as arbitrageurs and ensure that the price of crude oil remains within the fundamental value range however institutional investors that invest in crude oil to diversify their portfolios and or hedge inflation can destabilize the interaction among commercial participants and liquidity providing speculators we argue that institutional investors can impose limits to arbitrage particularly during the financial crisis when the investment demand for commodities is particularly strong in support we show that commercials hedgers had significantly reduced their short positions leading to the 2008 oil bubble they were potentially aggressively offsetting their short hedges as a result by essentially engaging in a positive feedback trading commercial hedgers at least contributed to the 2008 oil bubble these findings have been mainly overlooked by the existing research

disentangling the determinants of real oil prices in this study we quantify the impacts of economic fundamentals and derivative market speculation on the real price of crude oil using a structural var with sign restriction we determine that oil demand from the us and china particularly the latter one plays a crucial role in oil price changes after the year 2000 the contribution of speculation does not exceed 10 of oil price variations in our sample period

correlations and volatility spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy and technology companies abstract in this paper multivariate garch models are used to model conditional correlations and to analyze the volatility spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy companies and technology companies four different multivariate garch models bekk diagonal constant conditional correlation and dynamic conditional correlation are compared and contrasted the dynamic conditional correlation model is found to fit the data the best and generates results showing that the stock prices of clean energy companies correlate more highly with technology stock prices than with oil prices on average a 1 long position in clean energy companies can be hedged for 20 cents with a short position in the crude oil futures market

endogenously chosen boards of directors and their monitoring of the ceo author s hermalin benjamin e abstract this paper develops a model in which the effectiveness of a board s monitoring of the ceo depends on the board s independence the independence of new directors is determined through negotiations implicit or explicit between the existing directors and the ceo the ceo s bargaining position and thus influence over the board selection process depends on an updated estimate of the ceo s ability based on prior performance many empirical findings about board structure and performance arise as equilibrium phenomena in this model we also explore the implications of this model for proposed regulations of corporate governance structures please contact the program in law and economics at boalt hall school of law uc berkeley berkeley ca 94720 for a copy of this paper

endogenous scope of firm union bargaining with vertical pay comparisons abstract there is strong evidence that employees motivation and incentives in the workplace are affected by vertical pay comparisons in a stylized cournot duopoly model with firm specific unions that institutionalize workers vertical fairness concerns we show that universal wage employment w e bargaining may arise as the equilibrium scope of bargaining institution we thus propose that intra firm vertical fairness concerns may resolve the mismatch between recent findings in the empirical literature on labor market institutions and the predictions of traditional models that universal w e bargaining will never arise in equilibrium the scope of bargaining puzzle we derive a number of testable hypotheses that address the recent shift towards more decentralized bargaining institutions the decline in unions bargaining power and the prevalence of w e bargaining

risk appetite and oil prices abstract we demonstrate that oil prices and their volatility are no longer determined solely by real economic shocks to supply of and demand for oil but are also driven by shocks originating in the economic uncertainty and risk appetite of investors that prevail in the equity market the contribution of the latter factor has become particularly remarkable since the mid 2000s to establish these results we dismantle the squared vix index determined in the s p 500 options market into the conditional variance in stock returns to proxy for economic uncertainty and the equity variance risk premium to proxy for risk appetite using threshold garch structural vector auto regression and causality models we provide evidence about the link between risk appetite oil price returns and volatility furthermore investors appetite for risk drives changes in the ovx which measures perceptions about future oil volatility but not vice versa our results provide a better understanding of the relationship between oil the vix and its two proposed components in particular we show that changes in the risk appetite of investors are an important determinant not only for the price of equities but also for that of the most important energy resource oil

feedback traders and stock return autocorrelations evidence from a century of daily data the authors investigate whether the degree of autocorrelation shown by high frequency stock returns changes with volatility this may result from nontrading effects feedback trading strategies or variable risk aversion the authors results indicate that when volatility is low daily and hourly stock returns exhibit positive autocorrelation but when it is high returns exhibit negative serial correlation they also find an important asymmetry negative serial correlation is more likely after price declines this is consistent with price declines being more likely to induce positive feedback trading the authors also find no significant relation between margin requirements and the autocorrelation of returns copyright 1992 by royal economic society

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

speculative trading and oil price dynamic a study of the wti market abstract the aim of this paper is to study the oil price dynamic in west texas intermediate wti market in the us by using statistical and econometric tools we first attempt to identify the long term relationship between wti spot prices and the prices of futures contracts on the new york mercantile exchange nymex subsequently we model the short term dynamic between these two prices and this analysis points up several breaks on this basis a short term markov switching vectorial error correction model ms vecm with two distinct states standard state and crisis state has been estimated finally we introduce the volumes of transactions observed on the nymex for the wti contracts and we estimate the influence of the non commercial players we conclude that the hypothesis of an influence of non commercial players on the probability for being in the crisis state cannot be rejected in addition we show that the rise in liquidity of the first financial contracts as measured by the volume of open interest is a key element to understand the dynamics in market prices

bidirectional causality in oil and gas markets abstract do events in the natural gas market cause repercussions in the crude oil market this paper studies linkages between the two markets using high frequency intraday oil and gas futures prices by analyzing the effect of weekly oil and gas inventory announcements on price volatility we show a bidirectional causal relationship both inventory gluts and shortages have a cross commodity effect on price volatility not only for the next month nearby futures contract but also for the following six months contracts

using stockpile delegation to improve china s strategic oil policy a multi dimension stochastic dynamic programming approach abstract there has been much attention paid to oil security in china in recent years although china has begun to establish its own strategic petroleum reserve spr to prevent potential losses caused by oil supply interruptions the system aiming to ensure china s oil security is still incomplete this paper describes and provides evidence for the benefits of an auxiliary strategic oil policy choice which aims to strengthen china s oil supply security and offer a solution for strategic oil operations with different holding costs in this paper we develop a multi dimension stochastic dynamic programming model to analyze the oil stockpile delegation policy which is an intermediate policy between public and private oil stockpiles and is appropriate for the chinese immature private oil stockpile sector the model examines the effects of the oil stockpile delegation policy in the context of several distinct situations including normal world oil market conditions slight oil supply interruption and serious oil supply interruption operating strategies that respond to different oil supply situations for both the spr and the delegated oil stockpile were obtained different time horizons interruption times and holding costs of delegated oil stockpiles were examined the construction process of china s spr was also taken into account

crude oil commodity or financial asset abstract we examine the relation among daily returns to crude oil prices equity prices and commodity markets by modifying previous efforts in two important ways expanding the model to include the equity price for an oil producing firm conocophillips which ameliorates omitted variable bias and estimating the expanded model using the kalman filter which reduces uncertainty associated with ols estimates from rolling windows consistent with the notion of a commodity price beta for oil industry stocks there is a positive correlation between returns to the spot price of wti and conocophillips this correlation indicates not all price changes in crude oil are expected to persist indeed some of the price reductions associated with the asian financial crisis and the price increase associated with the 2008 price spike are not included in our estimate for long run prices in 2008 q4 the correlations between daily returns to crude oil and equities flip from negative to positive we hypothesize that this flip is triggered by a large reduction in interest rates in the fourth quarter of 2008 which is associated with a reduction in convenience yields and a change from backwardation to contango in futures markets these changes increase the returns to holding crude oil as a financial asset relative to holding oil as a commodity

oil price dynamics and speculation a multivariate financial approach abstract this paper assesses empirically whether speculation affects oil price dynamics the growing presence of financial operators in the oil markets has led to the diffusion of trading techniques based on extrapolative expectations strategies of this kind foster feedback trading that may cause considerable departures of prices from their fundamental values we investigate this hypothesis using a modified capm following shiller 1984 and sentana and wadhwani 1992 first a univariate garch 1 1 m is estimated assuming the risk premium to be a function of the conditional oil price volatility the single factor model however is outperformed by the multifactor icapm merton 1973 which takes into account a larger investment opportunity set analysis is then carried out using a trivariate ccc garch m model with complex nonlinear conditional mean equations where oil price dynamics are associated with both stock market and exchange rate behavior we find strong evidence that oil price shifts are negatively related to stock price and exchange rate changes and that a complex web of time varying first and second order conditional moment interactions affects both the capm and feedback trading components of the model despite the difficulties we identify a significant role played by speculation in the oil market which is consistent with the observed large daily upward and downward shifts in prices a clear evidence that it is not a fundamental driven market thus from a policy point of view given the impact of volatile oil prices on global inflation and growth actions that monitor speculative activities on commodity markets more effectively are to be welcomed

the translog production function and variable returns to scale this paper examines existing methods of estimating the translog production function and provides a general framework that allows for variable returns to scale the model is based on the inverse input demand function and embeds a nonhomothetic production technology previous estimation methods are valid only for homogeneous technologies with fixed scale effects estimation results for u s manufacturing show that neither homotheticity and homogeneity nor constant returns to scale is a proper characterization of the underlying structure of production thereby vindicating the empirical relevance of the inverse demand framework that entails a nonhomothetic technology copyright 1992 by mit press

the effect of wage bargains on the stock market value of the firm the author estimates the change in the value of common stock resulting from an unexpected change in collectively bargained labor costs using bargaining unit wage data and nyse stock returns he estimates a dollar for dollar trade off between these variables this result is consistent with stock valuations based on present value maximizing managerial decisions that is the results are consistent with hotelling s lemma the author also finds support for the hypothesis that collective bargains maximize the sum of shareholder and union member wealth that is the results are consistent with strong efficiency in the contracting environment copyright 1989 by american economic association

an investigation into the determinants of u s strike activity this paper outlines the steps involved in constructing a new panel dataset of u s contract negotiations and strike activity this data set has a much broader coverage of firms and unions than micro data sets analyzed to date key findings include the discovery that the variability and not the level of firm profitability affects the probability of a strike personal characteristics of the union workforce also emerge as key determinants of strike activity finally strikes are found to be more likely when the local labor market is tight but less likely when the industry labor market is tight copyright 1986 by american economic association

the effect of the financial sector on the evolution of oil prices analysis of the contribution of the futures market to the price discovery process in the wti spot market abstract the aim of this article is to empirically measure the contribution of the futures market to the price discovery process in the spot market for benchmark crude oils specifically that for west texas intermediate wti for this purpose we test the hypothesis that the recent evolution of the financial markets has affected the future oil market so as to increase its contribution to the price discovery process of the spot market we modeled the relation between wti spot and future prices as a cointegration relation by using the kalman filter technique it was possible to obtain a time varying measure of the contribution of future markets to the price discovery mechanism the results show that in the case of wti the contribution of the futures market has been increasing especially between 2003 and 2008 and then again after the start of 2009 evidencing the growing importance of factors particular to the financial markets in determining oil prices in recent years during 2009 the spot prices adjusted to agents future expectations rather than to the current supply and demand conditions

co integration of ice gas oil and crude oil futures abstract in this paper the relationship between gas oil and brent crude oil futures prices is investigated the analysis is based on daily price series for five different contract lengths traded on ice futures europe the price series and their first differences are tested for stationarity linear relationships between the pair wise gas oil and crude oil contracts are then tested for co integration a co integrated relationship is found for the 1 and 2 month contracts covering data from 1994 to 2009 and error correction models are established to estimate the relationships no co integrated relationships are found for the 3 6 and 12 month contracts covering the period 2002 2009 nor for the 1 and 2 month contracts for this period the futures prices for this period are collected from a volatile market including hurricane katrina the economic boom and the following financial crises which might explain these results thus in such volatile periods the spread between gas oil and crude oil is likely to deviate and it might take several years until it reverts to its equilibrium value for energy traders and hedgers this will imply that exposures to the crack spread should be treated with great care in such market environments

an information diffusion based model of oil futures price abstract inspired by the increasing evidence of financialization speculation in commodity pricing this paper constitutes a first attempt to build an information diffusion based asset pricing framework for the oil futures market with gradual information dissemination slowly decaying uncertainty about the asset s future fundamentals generates persistent conditional volatility and a drift in asset return volatility based proxies for information flows are proposed to examine empirically the asset pricing implications the results confirm a significant intertemporal relationship between return on the price of oil futures information diffusion and volatility components an important implication of our study is that the slow diffusion of information generates predictability in price dynamics a forecasting model is then constructed and tested in relation to our theory it is found that the lagged series of the pricing factors possess significant predicting power for returns

what would nelson and plosser find had they used panel unit root tests in this study we systemically apply nine recent panel unit root tests to the same fourteen macroeconomic and financial series as those considered in the seminal paper by nelson and plosser 1982 the data cover oecd countries from 1950 to 2003 our results clearly point out the difficulty that applied econometricians would face when they want to get a simple and clear cut diagnosis with panel unit root tests we confirm the fact that panel methods must be very carefully used for testing unit roots in macroeconomic or financial panels more precisely we find mitigated results under the cross sectional independence assumption since the unit root hypothesis is rejected for many macroeconomic variables when international cross correlations are taken into account conclusions depend on the specification of these cross sectional dependencies two groups of tests can be distinguished the first group tests are based on a dynamic factor structure or an error component model in this case the non stationarity of common factors international business cycles or growth trends is not rejected but the results are less clear with respect to idiosyncratic components the second group tests are based on more general specifications their results are globally more favourable to the unit root assumption

the impacts of energy prices on energy intensity evidence from china in this paper we present a review of the deregulation of energy prices in china between 1985 and 2004 and assess the impacts of changes in energy prices on aggregate energy intensity and coal oil electricity intensity we used time series data to provide estimates of energy price elasticities empirical results showed that 1 the own price elasticities of coal oil and aggregate energy were negative in periods both before and after 1995 implying that higher relative prices of different energy types lead to the decrease in coal oil and aggregate energy intensities however the positive own price elasticity of electricity after 1995 probably indicates that the price effect was weaker than other factors such as income effect and population effect 2 the impacts of energy prices were asymmetric over time 3 sectoral adjustment also drove the decrease in aggregate energy intensity although raising energy prices to boost efficiency of energy use seems to be an effective policy tool other policy implications concerned with energy prices such as energy supply security and fuel poverty must also be considered

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