the impact of political majorities on firm value do electoral promises or friendship connections matter this paper simultaneously estimates the impact of political majorities on the values of firms that would benefit from the platforms of the two main candidates at the 2007 french presidential election segolene royal and nicolas sarkozy and of those that are ruled or owned by sarkozy s friends we use prediction market data to track each candidate s victory probability and investigate how this relates to firms abnormal returns our estimates suggest that the value of firms that would likely benefit from the platforms of royal and sarkozy changed by 1 and 2 respectively with the candidates victory probabilities and that firms connected to sarkozy out performed others by 3 due to his election

inequality of opportunity in energy consumption in china abstract this paper proposes an empirical implementation of the concept of inequality of opportunity in energy consumption expenditure and applies this to data from chinese general social survey cgss we examine the role played by circumstances beyond the control of individuals for instance gender hukou status family background and region of birth in generating inequality in energy consumption expenditure in china this study shows that the relative share of inequality of opportunity ior in energy consumption expenditure in china is 10 02 for the entire sample ior turns out to be larger for the older cohort peaking at 14 40 for the 1955 64 cohort a shapley value decomposition presents that hukou status and region of birth are the two largest contributors to inequality of opportunity across birth cohorts a heterogeneity analysis further shows that more disadvantaged groups for instance female individuals born in the west of rural china with worse family backgrounds are facing more unequal opportunities in energy consumption in china these results suggest that energy policies focused on zero discrimination in opportunities should be encouraged

are policy platforms capitalized into equity prices evidence from the bush gore 2000 presidential election abstract this paper tests for the capitalization of policy platforms into equity prices using a sample of 70 firms favored under bush or gore platforms during the 2000 u s presidential election two sources of daily data during the six months leading up to the election are incorporated firm specific equity returns and the probability of a bush victory as implied by prices from the iowa electronic market for this group of politically sensitive firms the daily baseline estimates demonstrate that platforms are capitalized into equity prices under a bush administration relative to a counterfactual gore administration bush favored firms are worth 3 more and gore favored firms are worth 6 less implying a statistically significant differential return of 9 estimates based on weekly returns are even stronger suggesting a differential return of 16 the most sensitive sectors include tobacco worth 13 more under a favorable bush administration microsoft competitors worth 15 less under an unfavorable bush administration and alternative energy companies worth 16 less under an unfavorable bush administration a corresponding analysis of campaign contributions which allows for heterogeneity in the importance of policy platforms to the firms supports the baseline estimates

shrinking ageing population and other drivers of energy consumption and co2 emission in the residential sector a case from eastern europe energy use and the resulting environmental impacts are interrelated with socioeconomic development of a certain region what is more the residential sector plays an important role as a major consumer of the energy thus it is important to identify the underlying patterns of energy consumption and the resulting co2 emission amidst the external shocks this paper focuses on the case of residential energy consumption and co2 emission in lithuania over 2004 2016 this example is important given the context of shifts in the size and structure of population economy and energy transformation in lithuania that occurred over the period covered the analysis relies on the index decomposition analysis and factorizes the changes in co2 emission into the effects of population size household size dwelling area energy intensity and carbon factor the results indicate that decline in energy intensity and population played the most important role in pushing the co2 emission down yet these effects were offset by the changes in the lifestyle of the population i e household size and dwelling area along with increasing carbon factor these findings are contrasted to the corresponding findings form the earlier studies around the world and the resulting policy implications are delivered

u s household energy consumption and intensity trends a decomposition approach concerns over impacts from u s energy use on the environment the economy and the national security warrant an understanding of the key drivers of energy consumption this paper focuses on decomposing u s household energy consumption changes into several factors that have affected its growth the interval analyzed is based on household surveys conducted by the u s energy information administration from 1980 through 2005 drivers of total household energy consumption total household electricity consumption and natural gas use for space heating are analyzed and contrasted while not definitive sub period analyses split at 1990 show greater reductions in energy intensity in the later sub period and provide prima fascia evidence of the efficacy of u s efforts to promote energy efficiency through various standards and programs

macroeconomic policy in a two party system as a repeated game this paper considers the interaction of two parties with different objectives concerning inflation and unemployment and rational and forward looking wage setters if discretionary policies are followed an economic cycle related to the political cycle results in equilibrium this cycle is significantly different from the traditional political business cycle reputational mechanisms due to the repeated interaction of the two parties and the public or commitments to a common policy rule can improve upon the discretionary outcome by reducing or eliminating the magnitude of the economic fluctuations

monetary integration and the cost of borrowing with european monetary union emu there was an increase in the adjusted spreads of euro area sovereign securities over germany corrected from the foreign exchange risk causing a lower than expected fall in borrowing costs the objective of this paper is to study the reasons for this increase and in particular whether the change in the price assigned by markets was due to domestic factors credit risk and or market liquidity or to international risk factors the empirical evidence suggests that it may have been a change in the market assessment of domestic both liquidity and default risk rather than international factors that caused the observed increase in adjusted spreads with monetary integration even though since market size scale economies have increased since emu their effect differs according to the size of the market

does urbanization lead to more direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions evidence from china during 1996 2012 china is experiencing a stage of rapid urban development the energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions of households continue to increase this paper calculates direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households based on the input output method in china from 1996 to 2012 the results reveal that there were more total carbon dioxide emissions from urban households than from rural households far more indirect emissions from urban households than from rural households slightly more direct emissions from urban households than from rural households and differences in direct carbon dioxide emissions from various fuels and in indirect emissions from various sectors between urban and rural households to examine the causal relationship between urbanization and the carbon dioxide emissions of households cointegration and granger causality tests are applied a unidirectional causal relation was found running from urbanization to both direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions and the direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households would increase 2 9 and 1 1 respectively for every increase of one percent in urbanization we discuss the reasons of why the development of urbanization will lead to more household direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions and suggest certain policy implications for urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions based on the results of this study

decomposition analysis of gas consumption in the residential sector in ireland abstract to date decomposition analysis has been widely used at the macro economic level and for in depth analyses of the industry and transport sectors however its application in the residential sector has been rare this paper uses the log mean divisia index i lmdi i methodology to decompose gas consumption trends in the gas connected residential sector in ireland from 1990 to 2008 which despite an increasing number of energy efficiency policies experienced total final consumption growth of 470 the analysis decomposes this change in gas consumption into a number of effects examining the impact over time of market factors such as a growing customer base varying mix of dwelling types changing share of vacant dwellings changing size of new dwellings the impact of building regulations policy and other factors such as the weather the analysis finds the most significant effects are changing customer numbers and changing intensity the analysis also quantifies the impact of building regulations and compares it with other effects such as changing size of new dwellings by comparing the historical impact on gas consumption of policy factors and non policy factors this paper highlights the challenge for policy makers in achieving overall energy consumption reduction

decomposition analysis of the variations in residential electricity consumption in brazil for the 1980 2007 period measuring the activity intensity and structure effects abstract introduced at the end of the 1970s to study the impacts of structural changes on electricity consumption by industry index decomposition analysis techniques have been extended to various other areas to help in the formulation of energy policies notably in developed countries however few authors have applied these techniques to study the evolution of energy consumption in developing countries in brazil the few available studies have focused only on the industrial sector in this article we apply the decomposition technique called the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi to electricity consumption of the brazilian residential sector to explain its evolution in terms of the activity structure and intensity affects over the period from 1980 to 2007 the technique is sufficiently robust and flexible to perform this analysis by disaggregating residential consumers by consumption classes and regions of the country among the main results is measurement of the impact of government programs for income transfer and universal service on variations in residential consumption typical of developing countries

an economic analysis of interest rate swaps interest rate swaps a financial innovation in recent years are based upon the principle of comparative advantage an interest rate swap is a useful tool for active liability management and for hedging against interest rate risk the purpose of this paper is to provide a simple economic analysis of interest rate swaps alternative uses of and the appropriate valuation procedure for interest rate swaps are described the significant increase in both the levels and the volatilities of market interest rates since the late 70 s has resulted in substantially higher interest rate risks faced by business firms and financial institutions the problem and consequences of interest rate risk exposure are particularly serious for firms in which the duration of assets does not match the duration of the liabilities for instance most financial institutions and many corporations financed long term fixed rate assets with short term floating rate liabilities such firms lose when the shortterm interest rates in the market rise unexpectedly because for given fixed rates of return on their assets the short term interest costs that they have to pay rise with the market interest rates conversely these firms gain from an unexpected decline in short term market interest rates in recent years the introduction and the development of new financial products in the capital markets such as interest rate futures interest rate options and interest rate swaps represent logical responses to the increased need to reduce firms exposure to interest rate risk

credibility and policy convergence in a two party system with rational voters the traditional approach to modeling political parties behavior based upon the contribution of anthony downs 1957 assumes that the parties unique objective is to win elections thus they maximize their popularity the crucial implication of this assumption for a two party system is that if the two parties have the same information about voters preferences full convergence of policies results from electoral competition this is the crucial implication of the median voter theorem more generally it may be argued that different parties are motivated differently because they represent different constituencies parties may not care only about winning elections per se but also about the quality of the policies resulting from an election in this case the candidates of the two parties view winning an election not only as a goal per se but also as a means of implementing a better policy for their respective constituencies this paper shows that electoral competitions imply dynamic inconsistency if the voters are modeled as rational and forwardlooking agents and parties do not care exclusively about being elected but also about which policy to implement once elected the dynamic inconsistency arises as follows the parties have an incentive to announce convergent platforms to increase their chances of election however if the elected party is not committed to its electoral platform it has an incentive to follow its most preferred policy rather than the policy announced in its platform if voters are rational they account for this incentive thus in general in a one shot electoral game the only timeconsistent equilibrium is one in which no convergence is possible the two parties follow their most preferred policies and the voters rationally expect this outcome full convergence of parties platforms results only as a limiting case when the parties are completely indifferent with respect to the quality of the policies resulting from the election thus these results differ from the existing literature on ideologically motivated politicians for instance donald wittman 1977 1983 randall calvert 1985 which implicitly assumes the possibility of binding commitments to electoral platforms complete or partial policy convergence can be the outcome of political competition if the interaction between the parties and the voters is modeled as an infinitely repeated game in fact if the candidates have concave objective functions the welfare maximizing policy rule implies a complete convergence of parties policies however this cooperative and agreed upon policy may or may not be sustainable as a subgame perfect equilibrium depending on parameter values in particular it depends on the discount rates of the two parties the degree of polarization of their preferences and the relative popu graduate school of industrial administration carnegie mellon university pittsburgh pa 15213 and national bureau of economic research cambridge ma 02138 this paper is based upon a chapter of my unpublished doctoral dissertation at harvard university i am greatly indebted to jeffrey sachs for directing my attention toward these issues and for many conversations i also wish to thank andrew abel dilip abreu olivier blanchard ramon caminal andrew caplin alex cukierman morris fiorina benjamin friedman herschel grossman howard rosenthal and the referees for very useful comments the responsibilitv af anv n mtnkieis af calrirp nfnlv mine the result of policy convergence in a two party system is more general than the median voter theorem for discussions of convergence results not at the median see john ledyard 1984 peter coughlin 1984 coughlin and shmuel nitzan 1981 melvin hinich 1977 for earlier work on spatial competition see richard mckelvey 1975 hinich ledyard and peter ordeshook 1972 1973 and the references quoted therein the present paper focuses on the result of convergence rather than on the median voter theorem per se

size matters for liquidity evidence from emu sovereign yield spreads abstract the objective is to study the relative importance of domestic components of emu sovereign yield spreads since the start of monetary integration the results indicate a change in the market value of liquidity as measured by market size after emu

the lmdi approach to decomposition analysis a practical guide in a recent study ang energy policy 32 2004 compared various index decomposition analysis methods and concluded that the logarithmic mean divisia index method is the preferred method since the literature on the method tends to be either too technical or specific for most potential users this paper provides a practical guide that includes the general formulation process summary tables for easy reference and examples

the impact of urbanization on residential energy consumption in china an aggregated and disaggregated analysis abstract although the relationship among urbanization energy consumption and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to the effect of urbanization on residential energy consumption china as the largest developing country still has tremendous potential for urbanization in the future and this paper thus explores the effect of urbanization on the changes of residential energy consumption during 1996 2012 for china both from aggregated and disaggregated perspectives using the divisia decomposition method the findings on aggregated energy show that the urbanization contributes 15 4 to the increase of residential energy consumption during 1996 2012 but with a diminishing trend over time meanwhile from the disaggregated perspective the urbanization process contributes to an improvement of residential energy consumption structure specifically 1 of increase in urbanization rate may result in a decrease of 420 thousand million tonnes of residential coal consumption and an increase of 301 thousand tonnes of oil consumption

drivers of urban and rural residential energy consumption in china from the perspectives of climate and economic effects abstract in this study we investigate the driving forces behind the changes in residential energy consumption rec in china s urban and rural areas over the 2001 2012 period based on the logarithmic mean divisia index method the rec changes are decomposed into seven driving forces which are climate change energy price energy expenditure mix energy cost share in total expenditure expenditure share in income per capita income and population effects according to the results climate effect due to increasing days with abnormal temperature energy cost share effect characterized by more expenditure to be paid for energy use income effect describing constant income growth in the residential sector definitely increase rec in both urban and rural areas in contrast energy prices and energy expenditure mix effects negatively contribute to the rec increase respectively because of the increase in energy prices and the transition from the low priced energy to high priced energy expenditure share and population effects play opposite roles in urban and rural areas and the reasons and implications are analysed in depth

examining political connections to study institutional change evidence from two unexpected election outcomes in south korea we argue that the analysis of multiple political connections in an event study framework can improve the study of institutional change based on a unique data set of multiple political relationships of 4 936 south korean board of director members we show that the large business conglomerates the chaebol did not benefit from the unexpected conservative election victories in the 2012 south korean parliamentary and presidential elections personal connections to the presidential candidates and to the opposition party were relevant for the stock returns of small firms our findings suggest that korea s political economy has evolved into a hybrid regime in which the political power of large multinational corporations is limited but political connections still matter for smaller firms the corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of president park in 2017 and the long term development of market capitalisation appear to be congruent with the results of our study

the division of markets is limited by the extent of liquidity spatial competition with externalities liquidity considerations will limit the number of markets in a competitive economy welfare implications are ambigious since liquidity is a positive externality there may be too little liquidity per market at a noncooperative equilibrium and too many markets compared to the surplus maximizing market structure but liquidity is also self reinforcing given an existing equilibrium new markets may not open because nobody wants to use a new market with low liquidity there may be too few markets to achieve efficiency a nondiscriminating monopolist will operate smaller and more numerous markets compared to optimality as well as to the equilibrium of independent auctioneers copyright 1988 by american economic association

emu and european government bond market integration in this study we adopt the capm based model of bekaert and harvey 1995 to compare the differences in the relative importance of two sources of systemic risk world and eurozone on government bond returns in two groups of countries in eu 15 results show that euro markets are less vulnerable to the influence of world risk factors and more vulnerable to emu risk factors however they are only partially integrated for their part the markets of the countries that decided to stay out of the monetary union present a higher vulnerability to external risk factors

capitalization of capital gains taxes evidence from stock price reactions to the 1997 rate reduction abstract we empirically document that stock prices moved inversely with dividend yields during the may 1997 week when the white house and congress agreed on a budget accord that included a reduction in the capital gains tax rate the findings are consistent with equity prices capitalizing expected capital gains taxes two scenarios are possible first to the extent returns are expected to be taxed as capital gains a reduction in the expected capital gains tax rate enhances market value second to the extent individuals hold a stock a reduction in the expected personal capital gains tax rate increases market value

suckers are born but markets are made individual rationality arbitrage and market efficiency on an electronic futures market the iowa electronic markets are specially designed futures markets that appear to aggregate information efficiently to predict events such as election outcomes yet in theory perfect information aggregation is impossible further the markets are populated by a nonrepresentative sample of mistake prone and biased traders that is traders are prone to the behavioral anomalies predicted by behavioral finance how can this be reconciled with market efficiency here we take a first step by analyzing the behavior of two self selected types of traders dramatic differences in mistake rates across traders can help us answer the question market making traders who set prices are less mistake prone and appear to be more rational than price taking traders this highlights an important feature of markets marginal in this case market making not average traders set prices this can drive the efficiency of market prices in spite of large numbers of traders who display patently suboptimal behavior

smart meter devices and the effect of feedback on residential electricity consumption evidence from a natural experiment in northern ireland abstract using a unique set of data and exploiting a large scale natural experiment we estimate the effect of real time usage information on residential electricity consumption in northern ireland starting in april 2002 the utility replaced prepayment meters with advanced meters that allow the consumer to track usage in real time we rely on this event account for the endogeneity of price and payment plan with consumption through a plan selection correction term and find that the provision of information is associated with a decline in electricity consumption of 11 17 we find that the reduction is robust to different specifications selection bias correction methods and subsamples of the original data the advanced metering program delivers reasonably cost effective reductions in carbon dioxide emissions even under the most conservative usage reduction scenarios

high yields the spread on german interest rates this paper is a first attempt at evaluating the determinants of the interest rate differentials on government bonds between high yielders namely italy spain and sweden and germany in particular we concentrate on daily frequencies where the relevance of economic fundamentals is rather limited and address the question of the relative importance of local and global factors in the determination of such spread we identify and measure three components of total yield differentials one due to expectations of exchange rate depreciation which we call the exchange rate factor another which reflects the market assessment of default risk and a last one due to the different taxation treatment of long term yields

yield spreads on emu government bonds government bond spreads we provide evidence that the movements in yield differentials between euro zone government bonds explained by changes in international risk factors as measured by banking and corporate risk premiums in the united states are more pronounced for bonds issued by italy and spain liquidity factors play a smaller role so policies meant to increase financial market efficiency do not appear sufficient to deliver a seamless bond market in the euro area the risk of default is a small but important component of yield differentials movements which signal market perceptions of fiscal vulnerability impose market discipline on national fiscal policies and may be reduced only by further convergence in debt ratios lorenzo codogno carlo favero and alessandro missale

campaign contributions as investments the u s house of representatives 1980 1986 this paper treats the market for special interest campaign contributions and political favors as a simple asset market the model yields a simple equilibrium relationship among three variables the total amount of investor contributions a candidate receives the monetary value of the favors he has promised and his probability of winning using data on open seat races for the u s house of representatives i confront the model with a series of tests despite the starkness of the model the results of these tests are highly supportive

how much does violence tax trade abstract we investigate the empirical effect of violence as compared to other trade impediments on trade flows our analysis is based on a panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 1999 which brings together information from the rose data set the iterate data set for terrorist events and data sets of external and internal conflict we explore these data with traditional and theoretical gravity models we calculate that for a given country year the presence of terrorism together with internal and external conflict is equivalent to as much as a 30 tariff on trade this is larger than estimated tariff equivalent costs of border and language barriers and tariff equivalent reduction through generalized systems of preference and wto participation

sovereign risk premiums in the european government bond market this paper provides a study of bond yield differentials among eu government bonds issued between 1993 and 2005 on the basis of a unique dataset of issue spreads in the us and dm euro bond market interest differentials between bonds issued by eu countries and germany or the usa contain risk premiums which increase with fiscal imbalances and depend negatively on the issuer s relative bond market size the start of the european monetary union has shifted market attention to debt service payments as the key measure of indebtedness and eliminated liquidity premiums in the euro area

the jeffords effect abstract in may 2001 senator james jeffords left the republican party and tipped control of the u s senate to the democrats this paper uses the surprise event to demonstrate what i term the jeffords effect changes in the political landscape have large effects on the market value of firms i use a firm s soft money donations to the national parties as the measure of how the firm aligns itself politically in this event study a firm lost 8 percent of market capitalization the week of jeffords s switch for every 250 000 it gave to the republicans in the previous election cycle on the basis of the point estimates the stock price gain associated with democratic donations is smaller than the loss associated with republican donations but the estimates are consistent with the effects being equal and opposite the results withstand several robustness checks and the effects appear to persist over time

residential energy consumption in urban china a decomposition analysis abstract residential energy consumption rec is the second largest energy use category 10 in china and urban residents account for 63 of the rec understanding the underlying drivers of variations of urban rec thus helps to identify challenges and opportunities and provide advices for future policy measures this paper applies the lmdi method to a decomposition of china s urban rec during the period of 1998 2007 at disaggregated product activity level using data collected from a wide range of sources our results have shown an extensive structure change towards a more energy intensive household consumption structure as well as an intensive structure change towards high quality and cleaner energy such as electricity oil and natural gas which reflects a changing lifestyle and consumption mode in pursuit of a higher level of comfort convenience and environmental protection we have also found that china s price reforms in the energy sector have contributed to a reduction of rec while scale factors including increased urban population and income levels have played a key role in the rapid growth of rec we suggest that further deregulation in energy prices and regulatory as well as voluntary energy efficiency and conservation policies in the residential sector should be promoted

why is there so little money in u s politics in this paper we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy buying but are rather a form of political participation and consumption we summarize the data on campaign spending and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals not special interests are the main source of campaign contributions moreover we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal good dependent upon income and campaign contributions as a percent of gdp have not risen appreciably in over 100 years if anything they have probably fallen we then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular notion that contributions buy legislators votes finally we illustrate that when one controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects there is little relationship between money and legislator votes thus the question is not why there is so little money politics but rather why organized interests give at all we conclude by offering potential answers to this question this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

another look at the evidence for rational partisan cycles in presenting evidence in favor of rational partisan cycles where electoral victories by leftist parties are expected to create temporary expansions and electoral victories by rightist parties are expected to create temporary recessions alesina cohen and roubini 1999 rely upon autoregressive time series intervention regressions these regressions however are not consistent with their model in this paper a model is derived which is consistent with the intervention approach in its reduced form the differences between the models are highlighted and new empirical estimates are presented on a panel of seven oecd nations which generally does not support the rational partisan cycle implications

do credit markets discipline sovereign borrowers evidence from u s states the degree to which credit markets discipline sovereign borrowers is investigated by estimating the supply curve for debt faced by u s states the results generally support an optimistic view of the market discipline hypothesis with credit markets providing incentives for sovereign borrowers to restrain borrowing while the risk premium on bond yields is estimated to increase only gradually at low levels of debt this effect appears to become much larger as debt rises there is also some evidence that credit markets may withhold access to credit at very high levels of debt copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in china s 11th five year plan a performance evaluation in the 11th five year plan fyp 2005 2010 the chinese government initiated a series of energy saving and emission reduction policies in many key fields in response to environmental pollution and climate change this paper quantitatively evaluates the performance of energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in this period the impact of these policies and potentials by integrating the contributions of energy conversion efficiency and energy utilization efficiency improvement industrial restructuring fuel mix shift and renewable energy development in a unified framework as a first attempt to introduce energy conversion efficiency improvement into a decomposition approach comprehensive and specific policies are summarized as a policy list to be investigated the results show that energy intensity and conversion efficiency effects were mainly responsible for driving down energy consumption by 637 4 mtce and 85 4 mtce respectively and they reduced co2 emissions by 1345 3 mt and 243 8 mt respectively due to a significant improvement in the 11th fyp period most of the contributions made by the conversion efficiency effect 94 come from thermal power generation and the emission coefficient effect reduced co2 emissions by 17 4 mt through developing renewable energy economic growth is still the biggest driver of energy consumption and increasing emissions while industrial restructuring and fuel mix shift effects contributed relatively little developing renewable energy and promoting economic restructuring to limit the increase of energy intensive sectors are still the main challenges and the next policy focus to achieve the targets for energy saving and carbon emission reduction in the 12th five year plan

wishes expectations and actions a survey on price formation in election stock markets abstract with error prone and biased individual traders can markets aggregate trader information and produce efficient outcomes we review election stock market evidence that suggests this does happen individual traders appear biased and error prone consistently yet these markets prove quite efficient in predicting election outcomes we also review work which documents comparable but substantially different phenomena in related laboratory markets in addition we report the results from a new laboratory session which shows how we can create particular biases that mirror those in election stock markets finally we discuss how combined laboratory and field experiments can help us understand trader market interactions

collateral damage trade disruption and the economic impact of war abstract conventional wisdom in economic history suggests that conflict between countries can be enormously disruptive of economic activity especially international trade we study the effects of war on bilateral trade with available data extending back to 1870 using the gravity model we estimate the contemporaneous and lagged effects of wars on the trade of belligerent nations and neutrals controlling for other determinants of trade as well as the possible effects of reverse causality we find large and persistent impacts of wars on trade national income and global economic welfare we also conduct a general equilibrium comparative statics exercise that indicates costs associated with lost trade might be at least as large as the conventionally measured direct costs of war such as lost human capital as illustrated by case studies of world wars i and ii

the immediate effect of monetary union on eu 15 sovereign debt yield spreads yield spreads corrected for exchange rate risk over 10 year german securities of european union eu countries that did not join economic and monetary union emu experienced an average decrease of 14 20 basis points during the first 3 years after the beginning of currency union conversely euro area countries adjusted spreads registered an average rise of 11 98 basis points in the same period this article examines the elements a possible change in the relative importance of domestic or international risk factors behind these results using both panel estimations in the two groups of countries and a country by country specification in each of them

sovereign bond yield spreads a time varying coefficient approach abstract we study the determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads across 10 emu countries between q1 1999 and q1 2010 we apply a semiparametric time varying coefficient model to identify to what extent an observed change in the yield spread is due to a shift in macroeconomic fundamentals or due to altering risk pricing we find that at the beginning of emu the government debt level and the general investors risk aversion had a significant impact on interest differentials in the subsequent years however financial markets paid less attention to the fiscal position of a country and the safe haven status of germany diminished in importance by the end of 2006 two years before the fall of lehman brothers financial markets began to grant germany safe haven status again one year later when financial turmoil began the market reaction to fiscal loosening increased considerably the altering in risk pricing over time period confirms the need of time varying coefficient models in this context

driving forces of residential co2 emissions in urban and rural china an index decomposition analysis abstract there exist many differences between urban and rural china among which residential co 2 emissions arising from energy consumption is a major one in this paper we estimate and compare the energy related co 2 emissions from urban and rural residential energy consumption from 1991 to 2004 the logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition analysis is then applied to investigate the factors that may affect the changes of the co 2 emissions it is found that energy intensity and the income effects respectively contributed most to the decline and the increase of residential co 2 emissions for both urban and rural china in urban china the population effect was found to contribute to the increase of residential co 2 emissions with a rising tendency however in rural china the population effect for residential co 2 emissions kept decreasing since 1998

electoral competition and special interest politics have fixed positions on some issues but vary their positions on others in order to attract votes and campaign contributions in this context we examine whether special interest groups are governed by an electoral motive or an influence in their campaign giving and how their contributions affect the equilibrium platforms we show that each party is induced to behave as if it were maximizing a weighted sum of the aggregate welfares of informed voters and members of special interest groups the party that is expected to win a majority of seats caters more to the special interests

the information content of elections and varieties of the partisan political business cycle this event study uses economic forecasts and opinion polls to measure the response of expectations to election surprise use of forecast data complements older work on partisan cycles by allowing a tighter link between election and response thereby mitigating concerns of endogeneity and omitted variables i find that forecasters respond swiftly and significantly to election surprise i further argue that the response ought to vary across countries with different institutional foundations in support i find that there exist three distinct patterns in forecasters responses to partisan surprise corresponding to hall and soskice s three varieties of capitalism

trading and voting complete financial markets transform the political choice between candidates with different redistribution policies if redistribution policies do not affect aggregate wealth then financial trade implies that wealth considerations have no effect on voting and so do not affect who wins however an election in which one candidate would redistribute results in redistribution and redistribution is the same whether or not he wins furthermore he proposes and if elected carries out more redistribution than he prefers if redistribution policies do affect aggregate wealth then everybody expects more wealth if the candidate with the higher aggregate wealth policy wins

partisan impacts on the economy evidence from prediction markets and close elections analyses of the effects of election outcomes on the economy have been hampered by the problem that economic outcomes also influence elections we sidestep these problems by analyzing movements in economic indicators caused by clearly exogenous changes in expectations about the likely winner during election day analyzing high frequency financial fluctuations following the release of flawed exit poll data on election day 2004 and then during the vote count we find that markets anticipated higher equity prices interest rates and oil prices and a stronger dollar under a george w bush presidency than under john kerry a similar republican democrat differential was also observed for the 2000 bush gore contest prediction market based analyses of all presidential elections since 1880 also reveal a similar pattern of partisan impacts suggesting that electing a republican president raises equity valuations by 2 3 percent and that since ronald reagan republican presidents have tended to raise bond yields

identifying the influencing factors of the sustainable energy transitions in china abstract this paper aims to explore the influencing factors that facilitate sustainable energy transitions in china for this purpose this paper assumes that the impact of the energy transition is from three main factors energy technology innovations the energy market and socio technical regimes which can be subdivided into 11 subfactors to empirically test the proposed hypotheses questionnaire survey data collected from chinese energy enterprises are statistically analysed by structural equation models sems the results show that first energy technology innovations the energy market and socio technical regimes are the major forces in the transition to sustainable energy in china second the effects of the three main factors on the energy transition vary according to 11 different subfactors some subfactors i e innovation strategy innovation factors innovation policy innovation network and new energy competitiveness have very important positive effects on the energy transition some subfactors i e competitiveness of the coal industry customer habits and coal based infrastructure have negative effects on the transition to sustainable energy in china third the influence of the subfactors on the transition performance is diminished as a result of the joint intermediate effects of transition behaviours

historical presidential betting markets this paper analyzes the large and often well organized markets for betting on u s presidential elections that operated between 1868 and 1940 four main points are addressed first we show that the market did a remarkable job forecasting elections in an era before scientific polling second the market was fairly efficient despite the limited information of participants and active attempts to manipulate the odds third we argue political betting markets disappeared largely because of the rise of scientific polls and the increasing availability of other forms of gambling finally we discuss lessons this experience provides for the present

the lender of last resort abstract this paper develops a model of the lender of last resort lolr from a central bank cb viewpoint the model in a static setting suggests that the cb would only rescue banks which are above a threshold size consistent with the insight of too big to fail in a dynamic setting cb s optimal policy in liquidity support depends on the trade off between contagion and moral hazard effects our results show that contagion is the key factor affecting cb s incentives in providing lolr and they also provide a rationalization for constructive ambiguity

lmdi decomposition approach a guide for implementation since it was first used by researchers to analyze industrial electricity consumption in the early 1980s index decomposition analysis ida has been widely adopted in energy and emission studies lately its use as the analytical component of accounting frameworks for tracking economy wide energy efficiency trends has attracted considerable attention and interest among policy makers the last comprehensive literature review of ida was reported in 2000 which is some years back after giving an update and presenting the key trends in the last 15 years this study focuses on the implementation issues of the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition methods in view of their dominance in ida in recent years eight lmdi models are presented and their origin decomposition formulae and strengths and weaknesses are summarized guidelines on the choice among these models are provided to assist users in implementation

elections and political risk new evidence from the 2008 taiwanese presidential election abstract we examine the effects of party platforms on the economic opportunities of firms using a unique data set from a political prediction market in taiwan a country with two dominant parties whose political cleavage derives mainly from a single issue the one china principle we find that during the 2008 presidential campaign the share price of taiwanese firms with investments in the mainland responded strongly and positively to a positive electoral outlook for the kmt the party which advocates lifting caps on cross strait investment in mainland china the response is strongest for those firms who have already hit their caps

granger causality in peripheral emu public debt markets a dynamic approach our research aims to analyze the possible existence of granger causal relationships in the behavior of public debt issued by peripheral member countries of the european economic and monetary union emu with special emphasis on the recent episodes of crisis triggered in the eurozone sovereign debt markets since 2009 with this goal in mind we make use of a database of daily frequency of yields on 10 year government bonds issued by five emu countries greece ireland italy portugal and spain covering the entire history of the emu from its inception on 1 january 1999 until 31 december 2010 in the first step we explore the pair wise granger causal relationship between yields both for the whole sample and for changing subsamples of the data in order to capture the possible time varying causal relationship this approach allows us to detect episodes of significant increase in granger causality between yields on bonds issued by different countries in the second step we study the determinants of these episodes analyzing the role played by different factors paying special attention to instruments that capture the total national debt domestic and foreign in each country

event studies in economics and finance the event study is an important research tool in economics and finance the goal of an event study is to measure the effects of an economic event on the value of firms event study methods exploit the fact that given rationality in the marketplace the effects of an event will be reflected immediately in security prices thus the impact can be measured by examining security prices surrounding the event in this paper event study methods are described including some of the potential complications an example is included to illustrate the approach