endogenous business cycles and systematic stabilization policy we study the effects of fiscal policy rules on the determinacy of rational expectations equilibrium in a perfectly competitive monetary model with constant returns government spending implies a distortion of the monetary steady state due to the implied taxation we show that policy rules that let the gnp share of government spending depend sufficiently negatively on increases in gnp stabilize the economy with respect to endogenous fluctuations for arbitrarily little distortion of the steady state at which stabilization occurs the rules do not involve lump sum taxation negative income taxation or exact knowledge of the economy s laissez faire steady state

wage inflation unionization and monopoly power this paper uses panel data from 301 four digit manufacturing industries over the years 1959 to 1980 to examine how market structure affects the wage response to aggregate demand disturbances the authors use a new classical macroeconomic framework in which such shocks are identified with the unexpected component of money growth they find that product market power does not affect the response of wages to such shocks but that unionization does to be specific greater unionization leads to a faster wage response they also find that wages rise equiproportionately with expected money growth i e expected money is neutral copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

carbon pass through in the electricity sector an econometric analysis abstract we conduct an econometric analysis to investigate the carbon pass through in the greek electricity sector for this reason we utilize a rich micro level panel dataset including hourly data for 24 thermal power plants spanning the period from january 2014 to december 2017 in order to study the pass through of emissions costs to wholesale electricity prices we employ an instrumental variable approach our findings survived several robustness checks accounting for logged linear and non linear econometric specifications the empirical results indicate the existence of an almost complete pass through revealing that retailers fully internalize the cost of co2 permits this study incurs important policy implications since the complete pass through signify that wholesale electricity prices will increase at least in the short run however the overall effect on retail prices will be mostly affected by the amount of co2 permits and the fuel energy mix

a characterization of erratic dynamics in the overlapping generations model abstract in this paper we characterize and give examples o wide classes of utility functions which generate erratic dynamics in the standard deterministic overlapping generations model erratic dynamics refers to feasible trajectories which are bounded but which do not converge to stationary points or periodic orbits we show that such trajectories are pareto efficient we introduce credit into the model and show how a constant credit expansion rate can result in erratic trajectories in prices and the real value of credit finally we briefly discuss certain technical aspects of the mathematics used and the statistical nature of the dynamics that can arise from deterministic dynamical systems

cost of living clauses in union contracts determinants and effects this study investigates for the period 1969 81 the determinants of the incidence and strength of cost of living adjustment cola clauses in u s manufacturing and the effect of those clauses on wage inflation the sample includes approximately 5 570 union contracts in over 2 600 bargaining relationships the authors find that both union bargaining power and inflation uncertainty positively affected the probability that a cola clause was adopted as well as the strength of the clause adopted negatively influencing the incidence and strength of cola clauses during the period studied were unanticipated changes in an industry s prices the authors also find evidence that wage inflation was greater under contracts with uncapped colas than under all other contracts a result that also was positively influenced by the amount of unanticipated inflation from these results the authors suggest a number of possible trends in the use and effects of cola clauses

benchmarking in the european union emissions trading system abatement incentives abstract this paper investigates abatement incentives for allowance allocation based on output and sector specific benchmarks here called output based allocation or benchmarking special attention is given to updated allocation and we assume that allowances can be traded with other sectors open cap we confirm earlier studies that output based allocation based on ex ante data provide the same abatement incentives as auction or grandfathering and also confirm that output based allocation with updated output and ex ante benchmarks provides as high abatement incentives as auction but constitutes a production subsidy however we also find that benchmarking with updated output and updated benchmarks reduces abatement incentives somewhat but less so than updated grandfathering an allocation rule where the sector cap is prescribed ex ante for instance based on historic emissions and distributed to installations in proportion to their updated production preserves full abatement incentives and avoids some of the costs associated with the determination of benchmarks however this rule also constitutes a production subsidy which decreases with industry concentration if a sector is split into smaller groups each with one benchmark per sub sector benchmarking evolves toward grandfathering since benchmarking is conditioned on production this allocation method protects production from leakage i e migrating to areas where firms face no emissions cost this may actually be the most compelling reason for choosing benchmarking

inventories rational expectations and the business cycle abstract the simplest macroeconomic models in which markets clear instantaneously and expectations are rational preclude the existence of business cycles that is of serially correlated deviations of output from trend this paper studies one of several mechanisms that can be used to make these so called new classical models produce business cycles the mechanism is the gradual adjustment of inventory stocks two macroeconomic models of inventory holdings are formulated both imply first that current output should be a decreasing function of the stock of inventories and second that inventories once perturbed from equilibrium levels should adjust only gradually these two features are then embedded into an otherwise standard macroeconomic model in which markets clear instantaneously and expectations are rational two principal conclusions are reached first disturbances such as unanticipated changes in money will set in motion serially correlated deviations of output from trend second if desired inventories are sensitive to the real interest rate then even fully anticipated changes in money can affect real variables

how competitive are eu electricity markets an assessment of ets phase ii this paper studies the interactions between electricity and carbon allowance prices in the year ahead energy markets of france germany united kingdom and the nordic countries during phase ii of the eu ets var and granger causality methods are used to analyze causal interfaces whereas the volatility of electricity prices is studied with basic and asymmetric ar garch models among the main results the marginal rate at which carbon prices feed into electricity prices is shown to be ca 135 in the eex and nord pool markets where electricity and carbon prices display bidirectional causality and 109 in the uk therefore generators in these markets internalized the cost of freely allotted emission allowances into their electricity prices considerably more than the proportionate increase in costs justified by effective carbon intensity moreover electricity prices in france are found to granger cause the carbon price this study also shows how european electricity prices are deeply linked to coal prices among other factors both in terms of levels and volatility regardless of the underlying fuel mix and that coal was marginally more profitable than gas for electricity generation eu policies aimed at increasing the carbon price are likely to be crucial in limiting the externalities involved in the transition to a low carbon system

money and economic activity inventories and business cycles abstract incomplete information is a necessary condition for any real effects produced by monetary impulses an alternative to the local global inference problem is explored in this paper agents are confronted with permanent and transitory shocks even with full knowledge about the stochastic structure their best perception at any particular time will usually be erroneous prices for each period are set at the beginning of the period on the basis of market conditions the realization of the shock process thus creates a short run disequilibrium absorbed by inventory adjustments this adjustment translates perceived transitory monetary shocks into serially correlated output movements the analysis proceeds within the context of rational expectations it offers a generalization of equilibrium analysis in two respects prices are always in equilibrium relative to perceived conditions but they do not reflect all ongoing shocks quantity adjustments reflect the perceived transitory shocks the framework used involves moreover a stock flow interaction operated by inventory adjustments the stock flow interaction imposes at any time a future expected adjustment path for price level and quantities to the system s unique stock equilibrium a major implication of the analysis resolves a puzzle experienced in a recent paper by robert hall it reconciles intertemporal substitution with lagged effects of monetary impulses it also reconciles small and inconclusive cyclic movements in real wages with the occurrence of production function and large variations in unemployment lastly the nature of the inference problem determined by the pattern of incomplete information produces serially correlated movements conditioned on large permanent shocks

cross sectional versus panel estimates of union wage effects abstract the main objective of this paper is to compare and reconcile the cross sectional and the panel estimates of union wage effects it uses panel survey of income dynamics psid data for a period of 6 years 1979 1984 unlike what freeman 1984 predicted i e panel union wage estimates would be smaller than pure cross sectional estimates due to the cumulative nature of the errors in reporting union status in the former both the cross sectional and panel estimates of union wage effects are very similar ranging from 11 to 13 unions seem to have flattering effect on the age earnings profiles not surprisingly the rate of return to schooling of non union members is larger than that of the union members

information goods vs industrial goods cost structure and competition we study markets for information goods and find that they differ significantly from markets for traditional industrial goods markets for information goods in which products are vertically differentiated lack the segmentation inherent in markets for industrial goods as a result a monopoly will offer only a single product competition leads to highly concentrated information good markets with the leading firm behaving almost like a monopoly even with free entry and without network effects we study how the structure of the firms cost functions drives our results this paper was accepted by barrie r nault information systems

monopoly plant and union effects on worker wages this paper examines the effects of industry concentration plant size and unionization on the wages of blue collar manufacturing workers the author points out that few previous wage studies have included all three of those variables or have employed data sufficiently detailed to test adequately their effect on wages this study using data primarily from the 1977 quality of employment survey demonstrates that concentration plant size and unionization all exercise significant and independent effects on wages

the impact of china s carbon allowance allocation rules on the product prices and emission reduction behaviors of ets covered enterprises abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission allowance to realize its carbon reduction target and establish carbon trading market china has designed several allocation rules within seven pilot regions what influence those rules may cause is closely related with the enthusiasm of emission trading scheme ets covered enterprises participation in carbon market and more importantly with the mechanism design and sustainable development of carbon market for this purpose the multi stage profit model is developed to analyze the ets covered enterprises product prices and emission reduction behaviors under different allocation rules the results show that first under the rules of grandfathering self declaration and auctioning when deciding the optimal product price and optimal carbon emission reduction those enterprises may focus on maximizing current stage profit however under the rule of benchmarking those enterprises may care more about the impact of current decisions on the profit in next stage second the optimal product price policy is positively correlated with the price of the same kind products consumers low carbon awareness and government subsidy finally along with the increase of carbon price consumers low carbon awareness and government subsidy and the decrease of carbon emission cap those enterprises tend to reduce carbon emissions

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

real wages over the business cycle evidence from panel data one topic on which keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages keynes 1936 as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically quoting the general theory p 17 in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages thus i am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have rightly asserted as indefeasible this prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short run capital stock increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and through diminishing product lower real wages for this reason evidence by dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical both dunlop and tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages which given the procyclical movement of money wages implies a positive correlation between

carbon leakage grandfathering as an incentive device to avert firm relocation emission allowances are sometimes distributed for free in an early phase of a cap and trade scheme to reduce adverse effects on the profitability of firms this paper investigates whether grandfathering can also be used to avert the relocation of firms to countries with lower carbon prices we show that under certain conditions relocation can be averted in the long run even if the grandfathering scheme is phased out over time and immediate relocation is profitable in its absence this requires that the permit price triggers sufficient investments into low carbon technologies or abatement capital that create a lock in effect which makes relocation unprofitable

carbon dioxide emissions allocation a review carbon dioxide co2 emissions allocation plays a fundamental role in determining reduction responsibility at economy level or emission permits at firm level past decades have seen the development and applications of various methods for co2 emissions allocation this paper provides a literature review of co2 emissions allocation with emphasis on the evolution of allocation methods used it begins with a summary of the most popular allocation principles and criteria that lay a foundation for the development of allocation methods we then classify the existing allocation methods into four groups namely indicator optimization game theoretic and hybrid approaches the main features and findings of past studies are identified and summarized while the fairness principle prevails in earlier studies the efficiency principle has been found to receive increasing attention recently we also present a comparison of the empirical results based on ten popular indicator methods to show how indicator choice affects the allocation results issues related to selecting appropriate methods in co2 emissions allocation are finally discussed further research may be carried out to strike a balance between fairness and efficiency so that the allocation results become more widely acceptable and economically feasible

union vs nonunion wage norm shifts empirical investigations of wage determination have often produced autocorrelated residuals from time series wage equations runs of overor underprediction have usually been regarded as weaknesses in specification to be corrected or explained away in 1980 however george perry suggested that such runs represent an important if neglected characteristic of american wage setting he argued that norms of wage change develop in the labor market these norms according to perry change discretely there are periods of more or less wage pushiness aggregate wage indexes can be influenced even if norm shifts are not fully reflected everywhere providing those sectors that are affected have sufficient weight in the indexes an obvious division in the labor market is between the union and nonunion sectors there is reason to believe that while there has been a downward shift in wage norms recently the impact has been concentrated in the union sector see my 1985 article indeed the union sector is probably inherently more prone to norm shifts than the nonunion

marginal co2 cost pass through under imperfect competition in power markets abstract in line with economic theory carbon ets determines a rise in marginal cost equal to the carbon opportunity cost regardless of whether carbon allowances are allocated free of charge or not this paper aims at evaluating to what extent firms in imperfectly competitive markets will pass through into electricity prices the increase in cost by using the load duration curve approach and the dominant firm with competitive fringe model we show that the result is ambiguous the increase in price can be either lower or higher than the marginal co2 cost depending on several structural factors the degree of market concentration the available capacity whether there is excess capacity or not the power plant mix in the market and the power demand level peak vs off peak hours the empirical analysis of the italian context an emblematic case of imperfectly competitive market which can be split into four sub markets with different structural features provides a contribution supporting the model predictions market power therefore would determine a significant deviation from the full pass through rule but we cannot know the sign of this deviation a priori i e without before taking carefully into account the structural features of the power market

the response of real wages to unanticipated money growth abstract this paper investigates the response of real wages to unanticipated money growth in the light of equilibrium theories of the business cycle these theories in their main different versions do not deliver a common and unambiguous hypothesis on this issue while some models implu a countercyclical real wage response during monetary cycles others yield the opposite result of a procyclical real wage econometric analysis of annual and quarterly u s data reported in the paper indicates that there is a weak negative real wage response to an unanticipated increase in money growth

the intra unit wage structure and unions a median voter model this study adopts the median voter model to analyze the influence of unions on wage structures within collective bargaining units the model predicts that the intra unit wage structure will be changed to increase the share of the total wage bill received by the median members of the bargaining unit this prediction is examined through a case study of a collective bargaining unit the faculty of the state university system in minnesota the changes in the wage structure of the unit proposed by the union and those ultimately implemented are both consistent with the median voter model

monetary shocks market structure and administered prices this paper examines interindustry variation in the response of prices to nominal aggregate demand disturbances this subject has been the focus of numerous investigations in recent years 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 17 and 28 a long standing motivation for this attention has been debate over gardiner means s 22 administered price ap thesis which in broad terms seems to imply that cyclical price flexibility diminishes with increases in market power more recently researchers have focused on imperfect competition as a source of price stickiness because of the importance of this mechanism for the emerging new keynesian analysis of business cycles 1 3 6 thus far however the empirical studies on this subject have reported mixed results and the relationship between imperfect competition and price flexibility remains unsettled curiously an alternative to the market power explanation of inter industry variation in cyclical price flexibility has been largely ignored in these past studies even though it lies at the heart of the new classical macro models the lucas 21 supply function lsf which is key to the striking policy results of these models predicts that output will respond more to a demand shockand by implication absolute prices will respond less in those industries with a history of greater variation in their relative demand or price industry level investigation of price movements thus provides a partial test of the lsf which like the ap thesis remains open to question this paper presents evidence on the explanatory power of both the ap and the lsf approaches we begin with a price change equation that can be derived from a standard lsf model as shown by robert gordon 15 an important feature of this specification is its distinction between anticipated and unanticipated money growth we then show that this same price equation can be given an ap interpretation relying principally on recent work of rotemberg and saloner 29 both approaches predict variation across industries in their price response to unanticipated money growth but they offer different explanations of the cause the lsf theory suggests dependence on the industry s relative demand instability the ap models suggest dependence on industry structure evidence on the competing theories is developed from annual price data on 328 four digit

the effect of allowance allocations on cap and trade system performance abstractan implication of the coase theorem is that under certain conditions the market equilibrium in a cap and trade system will be cost effective and independent of the initial allocation of tradable rights that is the overall cost of achieving a given aggregate emission reduction will be minimized and the final allocation of permits will be independent of the initial allocation we call this the independence property this property is important because it means that the government can establish the overall pollution reduction goal for a cap and trade system by setting the cap and leaving it up to the legislature to construct a constituency in support of the program by allocating the allowances to various interests without affecting either the environmental performance of the system or its aggregate social costs we examine the conditions under which the independence property is likely to hold both in theory and in practice

unionism and wages a longitudinal analysis the impact of unionism on relative wage rates is a topic of long standing interest in labor economics over the years researchers have used a variety of approaches to estimate the wage advantage associated with union membership initially researchers compared the average wages of union and nonunion workers in specific sectors such as an industry this approach has the obvious limitation of not accounting very well for the various quality or productivity differences that exist among workers differences that command compensating wage payments more recent studies have used cross section wage regressions to control for these other determinants of wages and thereby improve estimates of the union wage effect using large microeconomic data files containing detailed information on characteristics of individual workers numerous studies have estimated wage regressions that include controls for worker characteristics education experience etc and a dichotomous variable indicating union membership status as explanatory variables 2 the coefficient of the union membership variable in these regressions is taken as an estimate of the average impact that unionism has on wage rates controlling for measured differences in characteristics among workers unfortunately the wage regression approach does not completely resolve the problem of standardizing the union nonunion wage comparison for differences in worker quality even with detailed microdata on the characteristics of individual workers it is simply not possible to specify a set of variables that completely captures all worker specific differences in productive ability some aspects of human capital are too subtle to be operationally specified and included in a wage regression although they are recognized and paid for by employers to the extent that these unmeasured worker specific differences are correlated with union membership the wage regression will incorrectly attribute a relative wage impact to unionism 3 an alternative measurement approach that has several advantages over the wage regression is to compare the wage received by the same worker as a union and nonunion member in the past data limitations have prevented researchers from making such a comparison since only a small portion of workers change union status in a given period an unusually large longitudinal file is needed to yield a sufficient number of observed changes for a meaningful analysis 4 recently however large longitudinal data files on individuals participating in the current population survey have become available this paper uses these data to estimate the impact a change in union status has on the worker s wage the

business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

does emission permit allocation affect co2 cost pass through a theoretical analysis abstract carbon emissions trading may result in co 2 cost pass through and its rate is influenced by a number of factors this paper theoretically investigates how emission permit allocation affects co 2 cost pass through rate by developing a nash cournot oligopolistic market equilibrium model we find that the derived co 2 cost pass through rates are consistent when grandfathering and auctioning rules are used for permit allocation which are higher than that for benchmarking rule it has also been found that the magnitude of co 2 cost pass through rate is relevant to the type of definition product market structure and average carbon intensity of the industry we suggest that policy makers first use benchmarking rule to attract firms to participate at the early stage of emissions trading system ets and then take auctioning rule when ets is well developed

the interindustry structure of unionism earnings and earnings dispersion this study examines the relationship between unionism and earnings dispersion within u s manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries the author hypothesizes not only that unionism narrows earnings dispersion as others have shown but also that the dispersion in earnings reflecting the degree of worker homogeneity influences the level of unionism estimation of a three equation model using 1970 three digit industry data provides evidence regarding the simultaneous determination of unionism earnings and earnings dispersion within u s industries the estimated equalizing effects of unionism on within industry earnings distributions are found to be significant both in the manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors the size of these estimates increasing after accounting for simultaneity in addition the dispersion in earnings does appear to affect the level of unionism although the evidence on this point is ambiguous

on endogenous competitive business cycles the belief that the long run equilibrium of a competitive monetary economy that does not experience any exogeneous shocks whether originating from the external environment or from policy should be modelled as a state that is stationary or perhaps growing at a constant rate seems to be deeply rooted in the mind of some economists

a literature review of economic studies on carbon pricing and australian wholesale electricity markets abstract with the ongoing development of australian anthropogenic climate change mitigation policies there has been a steady increase in modelling studies undertaken to estimate australian carbon prices and their impact on existing electricity markets this article summarises some of the more prominent studies completed by many of australia s foremost economic modelling firms we developed a simple approach for testing the consistency of these studies and their findings in relation to carbon pass through unfortunately we have established that the studies are entirely inconsistent in their estimation of carbon pass through furthermore we were unable to establish why the estimation of carbon pass through varies so significantly this has important implications for policy makers given much of the compensation to be paid to households and businesses under the clean energy future package is predicated on simple assumptions of carbon pass through based upon our analysis of these economic studies our conclusion is that australian policy makers are best guided by relying upon the numerous a posteriori estimations of pass through in the european union emissions trading scheme ets rather than australian a priori studies

the wage price spiral this paper rehabilitates the old wage price spiral it shows that after an increase in aggregate demand the process of adjustment of nominal prices and nominal wages results from attempts by workers to maintain or increase their real wage and by firms to maintain or increase their markups of prices over wages under continuous price and wage setting the process of adjustment would be instantaneous under staggering of price and wage decisions the adjustment takes time the more inflexible real wages and markups are to shifts in demand the higher is the degree of price level inertia and the longer lasting are the effects of aggregate demand on output

price inertia and policy ineffectiveness in the united states 1890 1980 this paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the lucas sargent wallace lsw policy ineffectiveness proposition which compares the lsw hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run but only gradually in the short run to nominal aggregate demand disturbances the empirical equations estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890 exhibit uniformly high responses of real output and low responses of price changes to anticipated changes in nominal gnp the paper compares and tests three alternative methods of introducing persistence effects into the lsw framework

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

the relative adjustment of wages and prices direct tests within a multiple equation system in order to assess the relative rigidity of the aggregate price level and the nominal wage rate most researchers have focused on the implied behaviour of the real wage rate in response to a purely demand disturbance the present work examines the explicit behaviour of the two variables and is therefore able to analyse the variables short run responses within the context of their defined long run behaviour while the paper reports evidence of long run stability in the real wage rate additional evidence is presented which supports both sticky price and sticky wage models the determining factor is the choice of lag

serial correlation and the fixed effects model this paper generalizes the durbin watson type statistics to test the ols residuals from the fixed effects model for serial independence also generalized are the tests proposed by sargan and bhargava for the hypothesis that the residuals form a random walk a method for efficient estimation of the parameters is also developed finally an earnings function is estimated using the michigan survey of income dynamics in order to illustrate the uses of the tests and the estimation procedures developed in this paper

allocation of carbon permits within a country a general equilibrium analysis of the united kingdom abstract the kyoto agreement includes international trade in carbon permits from 2008 we have used a cge model to evaluate methods of allocating permits within the uk auctioning is broadly similar to a carbon tax with revenues recycled to reduce other distortions grandfathering some permits free to large firms would mean a loss of recycling and possibly give windfall profits to foreigners alternatively regularly revised allocation using best practice estimates would be similar to recycling revenue as an output subsidy such a system could allow much of the potential double dividend to be realised though an auction system might still be preferable

monopolistic competition and the effects of aggregate demand how important is monopolistic competition to an understanding of the effects of aggregate demand on output we ask the question at three levels can monopolistic competition by itself explain why aggregate demand movements affect output can it together with other imperfections generate effects of aggregate demand in a way that perfect competition cannot if so can it give an accurate account of the response of the economy to aggregate demand movements the answers are no yes and yes

evaluating effective income tax progression abstract an algorithm to compute effective income tax progression is devised for use when taxes are a function of both money income and other socioeconomic attributes and the data is in grouped summary form suppressing non income information effective progression can be evaluated at percentiles in the distribution of either money or equivalent income the normative significance of the new measures is explained in both cases the methodology is illustrated by application to u s individual income tax annual data for 1950 1987 yielding contour plots which show how effective progression has varied across the income distribution and with the passage of time

externalities internalization and fluctuations in this paper the authors introduce consumption externalities as developed by k arrow in overlapping generations economies they show how the internalization of externalities through exchanges at markets for externalities may give rise to new phenomena such as altered stability properties and fluctuations even though it restores optimality copyright 1997 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the allocation of co2 emissions as a claims problem abstract in the context of multilateral negotiations on climate change this paper proposes to use the claims approach as a reasonable and practicable alternative in order to allocate the admissible co2 emissions per region the proposed methodology entails analyze the application of a broad group of theoretical solutions through the establishment of equity and stability criteria to this regard the empirical analyzing combines several co2 world endowments from meinshausen et al 2009 together with claims forecasts associated with the rcp representative concentration pathways scenarios the results obtained indicate that the constrained equal awards and minimal solutions are clearly equity sensitive given that the co2 emission reduction imposed by the constrained equal awards solution on asia and the oecd are very important and considering the better balance between equity and proportionality associated with the min solution it could be that this latter solution would be the most practicable and acceptable

unionism oligopoly and rigid wages t he proposition that imperfections in product and labor markets lead to wage rigidity has been stressed by many authors in their analysis of wage inflation the most commonly held view is that wage differentials which result from these imperfections behave countercyclically that is periods of rapid inflation and or low unemployment are believed to be associated with reduction of the wage premium attributed to both unionization and oligopolistic structure on the labor market side it is argued that wage rigidity is primarily due to lags introduced by collective bargaining 7 in periods of low demand union wage levels are maintained through long term agreements on the upswing these same long term agreements do not allow the union wage to react as quickly as the nonunion wage to increases in demand cross sectional estimates of economy wide union nonunion differentials are often used to support this hypothesis 3 on the product market side it is often argued that concentrated industries have the ability to raise prices in periods of economic slack this market power is a permissive factor which may allow workers in these industries to demand a share of the excess profits 4 of course the work force must have some method of demanding this share it is usually assumed that union power is relatively great in these concentrated industries thus this argument is really conditioned on imperfections in both the labor and product market and is therefore much closer to an interaction hypothesis than a pure oligopolistic structure hypothesis proponents of this argument further hypothesize that concentrated industries do not increase prices as fast as competitive industries in an economic upturn wage differentials between concentrated and unconcentrated industries are therefore expected to narrow in periods of rapidly increasing prices with one exception 5 the support for this hypothesis comes from studies of wage changes in concentrated versus unconcentrated industries 6 this paper is a reexamination of the wage rigidity hypotheses the impacts of unionization and concentration on average wage levels are first estimated for a series of cross sectional observations in manufacturing between 1947 and 1976 the differences in these cross sectional impacts across time are then analyzed using rates of inflation and unemployment levels as explanatory variables

first evidence of asymmetric cost pass through of eu emissions allowances examining wholesale electricity prices in germany abstract we test the hypothesis that rising prices of emission allowances have a stronger impact on wholesale electricity prices than falling prices asymmetric cost pass through using an autoregressive distributed lag model we confirm this hypothesis for the german market

economic implications of alternative allocation schemes for emission allowances political feasibility of emission trading systems may crucially depend on the free initial allocation of emission allowances to energy intensive industries in order to ameliorate adverse production and employment effects we investigate the potential trade off between such compensation and economic efficiency for alternative allocation rules where emission allowances are based on either emissions or output based on analytical partial equilibrium and numerical general equilibrium analysis we show that in open trading systems the trade off becomes the more severe the higher the international permit price is whenever the permit price can be considered exogenous to firms or industries the output based allocation rule is distinctly less costly than the emission based rule to preserve output and employment in energy intensive sectors the reason is that emission based allocation of allowances not only provides an implicit output subsidy but also lowers the effective price of emission inputs to regulated firms emissionbased allocation is particularly expensive towards higher international permit prices where the implicit subsidies to emission use in energy intensive sectors produce drastic efficiency losses since they imply high expenditures for carbon permit imports rather than high net revenues from efficient carbon permit exports

what will china s carbon emission trading market affect with only electricity sector involvement a cge based study abstract on december 29 2017 china s carbon trading scheme ets was officially launched and it may be the largest emission trading platform in the world this paper establishes 5 counter measured scenarios based on the recently launched china s national ets market and constructs a dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium model to study the impact of national ets on the economy energy and environment we find that the national ets will have a negative impact on gdp by 0 19 1 44 the national ets can significantly increase the price of electricity however the increase in the prices of other commodities will be much lower than that of electricity as long as the mechanism of the ets market remains unchanged emission reduction per year will increase linearly economic output and co2 emission are sensitive to annual decline factor adf this paper argues that china s national ets market is an effective tool to reduce co2 emission and we suggest that adf could be 0 5 when allocating carbon allowance for the electricity sector this could balance economic output and co2 reduction also it is easy to achieve the goal of double control total amount and intensity in china

how carbon offsetting scheme impacts the duopoly output in production and abatement analysis in the context of carbon cap and trade abstract in the context of addressing climate change the carbon emission trading scheme has become one of the main measures adopted by many countries and regions to achieve emission reduction goals noticing this current lack of research based on a duopoly model this paper quantitatively explores the impact of carbon offsetting scheme on both emission trading participants profits and industry s output by drawing on advanced experience of carbon offsetting scheme from developed countries such as us switzerland and eu and thus provides a perspective for government to design optimal aggregate standard for carbon cap and trade results show a negative correlation between enterprises carbon intensity and their equilibrium output in the product market and indicate a threshold for the relative magnitude of the duopoly enterprises carbon intensity above which their absolute output will differ dramatically the incorporation of carbon offsetting scheme into a non offset quota trading scheme will reduce its equilibrium carbon price thereby mitigate its negative impact on industry s total output in the product market by an either linear or quadratic form depending on the design for the proportion ceiling of offsetting quota

longitudinal analyses of the effects of trade unions but union members are different from nonmembers in unobserved ways biasing your estimates y ou should make a selectivity bias correction simultaneously determine union status and economic outcomes develop an unobservables model use longitudinal data archetypical comment on virtually any study of the economic effects of umomsm or suitably modified on any other empirical subject

union wage settlements during a disinflation this paper examines the role of union wage contracts in the persistence of inflation and the implication of these contracts for the problem of disinflation in the united states a quantitative model of overlapping con tracts explicitly oriented toward the major union sector is developed the model takes account of expectations of future wage price and employment conditions as in more aggregated models that have been used in macroeconomic research in addition the distribution of workers according to contract length as well as deferred wage increases and escalator clauses are explicitly used in the model the main aim of the model is to determine the constraints which these contracts impose on disinflation paths the model indicates that the maximum speed of disinflation is extremely slow in the early phases if a rise in unemployment is to be avoided but increases considerably before the new lower rate of inflation is reached the disinflation path is considerably slower than that observed after hyperinflation periods however the existence of a path of inflation reduction raises questions about whether the institution of union wage con tracts is really the direct cause of costly disinflations or whether their influence works indirectly by raising credibility problems about a monetary disinflation this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

symmetric smooth consumption externalities abstract based on arrow s model of a pure exchange economy with smooth consumption externalities this paper studies how the internalization of external effects through a network of markets between agents introduces symmetry breakings in the set of equilibria it shows indeed how identical agents can be treated asymmetrically by complete markets this work emphasizes that equilibrium allocations may be very sensitive to the way coase type rights are distributed journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d50 d62 h23 k11

an overview of co2 cost pass through to electricity prices in europe this paper investigates the link between wholesale electricity prices in europe and the co2 cost i e the price of european union allowances euas over the two first phases of the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets we set up a theoretical framework and an empirical model to estimate to what extent daily fluctuations of co2 costs may have impacted electricity prices regarding estimation results for the first phase of the eu ets about 42 of estimated pass through rates appear to be statistically significant while only one third of them are statistically different from zero in the second phase we try to improve those results by proposing alternative estimates based on the eu ets compliance periods

the relative stickiness of wages and prices i introduction a continuing challenge to macroeconomics is to explain how a purely nominal disturbance produces short term aggregate real effects in the classical paradigm in which wages and prices are perfectly flexible a positive nominal aggregate demand disturbance will cause nominal wages and output prices to rise in the same proportion leaving real wages unchanged thus neither employment nor output will be affected consequently many business cycle theories posit the existence of wage and or price stickiness to explain how nominal aggregate demand disturbances generate real macroeconomic effects according to these theories the failure of nominal wages or prices to fully adjust in the short run to purely nominal disturbances explains why shocks to aggregate demand will cause both employment and output to temporarily deviate from their natural rates the relative importance of wage and price stickiness in the transmission of nominal shocks to the real economy however remains an unsettled issue the purpose of this paper is to exploit evidence on the behavior of real wages in an attempt to assess the relative importance of these two sources of stickiness first consider models emphasizing sticky or slowly adjusting nominal wages 1 if for example output prices are free to adjust but nominal wages are sticky a positive aggregate demand shock will cause prices to rise and real wages to temporarily fall below market clearing levels the fall in real wages will stimulate employment and thus output as the aggregate demand shock induces movement along a stable labor demand curve consequently sticky wage models predict a negative correlation between aggregate demand shocks and real wages if on the other hand wages are flexible while output prices are sticky 2 aggregate demand disturbances and real wages will tend to be positively correlated in the short run in sticky price models imperfectly competitive firms may resist adjusting output prices in response to changes in demand perhaps due to menu costs instead increases in demand are met by corresponding increases in output this requires an increase in labor inputs which in turn requires an increase in the real wage rate if wages are flexible and the labor supply curve is positively sloped thus when prices are sticky but wages are flexible a positive aggregate demand shock is associated with an increase in real wages it may be that neither prices nor wages are fully flexible if prices and wages both exhibit stickiness we would expect real wages to be positively correlated or negatively correlated with aggregate demand shocks depending in large part on whether prices or wages are stickier thus knowledge of the direction of the short run response of real wages to aggregate demand disturbances would offer important evidence on the relative stickiness of nominal wages and output prices if all business cycle fluctuations are due solely to aggregate demand disturbances such evidence could be obtained by examining the cyclical behavior of real wages since regardless of the source of stickiness aggregate demand disturbances are positively correlated with employment and output countercyclical procyclical real wages would indicate that nominal wages are stickier more flexible than output prices indeed some consider the stylized fact of slightly procyclical real wages 3 to be an important challenge to models that emphasize wage stickiness for example bennett mccallum 1986 argues for the superiority of models with sticky output prices since if wage stickiness alone were responsible for the real effects of monetary actions with product prices adjusting flexibly then we should observe countercyclical movements in the real wage that we do not has recently been reconfirmed in a study by bils 1985 gregory mankiw 1987 107 has concluded the final and perhaps most serious problem with the unadorned nominal wage story is that real wages do not move over the business cycle as the theory predicts

in search of a stylised fact do real wages exhibit a consistent pattern of cyclical variability the paper surveys the studies on the cyclical behaviour of real wages published from the twenties onwards the traditional simple neoclassical model of the labour market suggests that real wages tend to move countercyclically however from a theoretical viewpoint there are few reasons to expect this behaviour once the simple model is extended to account for imperfect competition uncertainty lagged responses or contracting between firms and workers empirical studies give different answers to the problem the contributions reviewed in the paper are arranged roughly in a chronological order the interwar period the postwar pre econometric studies the econometric work using aggregate data the evidence produced on the basis of longitudinal data the analyses of the shock responsiveness of real wages and finally the most recent papers attempting a reconciliation of the somewhat conflicting evidence derived from aggregate and panel data

shifting wage norms and their implications at least since the early 1970 s it has been apparent that the cyclical variations in inflation summarized by the short run phillips curve are only one part of the inflation problem that confronts modern industrial economies another part is the relative persistence of an established rate of inflation there is a good deal that we do not understand about this persistence but i find the most useful way to model it is to start with the concept of a relatively stable wage norm by which i mean a norm for the rate of wage increase the model distinguishes sharply between the cycle and the trend in inflation with the wage norm determining the trend the variations in inflation of the typical business cycle take place around the existing wage norm and generate the empirical short run phillips curve the wage norm itself is affected little if at all by the typical business cycle historically the wage norm has been shifted by prolonged departures from typical business cycles or by other extreme economic developments figuring out more precisely what it takes to shift wage norms or what might keep them from shifting is a central challenge for understanding inflation better before turning to its implications let me sketch the behavioral underpinnings of the wage norm model and the empirical evidence about wage norms the norm rate of wage increase has no allocational significance and describes the trend of nominal wages independent of real aggregate demand or relative demand effects in this respect it is like the anticipated rate of inflation in many familiar models wages are not determined in an auction like labor market that clears over any reasonable interval of time rather they are established by wage setting firms with a profit maximizing interest in their long run relation with their employees in some cases in a bargaining situation with unions under both the implicit and explicit contracts that thus dominate wage setting keeping up with the norm is the neutral standard for firms an individual firm that raises wages in line with the norm neither improves nor worsens its relative position as an employer a firm that wants to expand employment will typically offer a higher wage than would be required just to keep up with the norm relative wages and relative employment levels are thus codetermined in this process when most firms want to expand employment as in a cyclical upturn the same behavior is part of the process producing the modest cyclical rise in inflation that we observe as the short run phillips curve thus the onset of cyclical inflation is not a sign that capital and labor resources are being overutilized nor is it a sign that inflation is on an accelerating path or even that wage norms are shifting up in analyzing u s postwar data i have found the wage norm shifted up substantially by the end of the 1960 s and down again though not by as much by the end of the 1980 82 recession see my 1983 paper the first episode was a period with a historic expansion that ended with several years of very low unemployment rates the second was a recession of unusual length and severity that ended with the highest unemployment rates since the 1930 s there is also evidence of a small shift down in the wage norm after the weak economic performance of 1957 61 which featured two recessions with only an aborted recovery in between i also found evidence for germany the united kingdom and japan of upward shifts in wage norms in manufacturing industries after the 1960 s and downward shifts in the early 1980 s see my 1986 paper all these episodes suggest the kinds of extreme cyclical developments that have shifted wage norms in the postwar period the brookings institution 1775 massachusetts avenue nw washington d c 20036 in preparing this paper i benefited from discussions with charles schnl t7 e

the union nonunion wage differential over the business cycle evidence from psid abstract there is some prior evidence lewis 1963 mellow 1981 freeman 1984 to support the notion that union wage premium is counter cyclical this phenomenon may be a product of union wage rigidity which results from a long term union contracts and b union reliance on layoffs due to seniority dominance rather than work share practices in response to worsening economic conditions and efficiency wage considerations this paper within a pooled cross section time series framework empirically tests for the presence of perceived counter cyclical nature of the union nonunion wage differential using the psid data from 1979 1984 results from this study do support the presence of counter cyclical union wage premium during the time period studied