a globally flexible almost ideal demand system the almost ideal demand system is combined with the fourier expenditure system subject to the assumption that preferences are of the price independent generalized logarithmic class the resulting demand system has the desirable features of each of its components aggregate demand equations are consistent with preferences of a representative consumer and consistent estimates of elasticities are obtained for all observed prices application of the new demand system to u s consumption of meats and fish reveals that it fits the data well and that the restriction to the usual specification is rejected

central bank design abstract starting with a blank slate how could one design the institutions of a central bank for the united states this paper explores the question of how to design a central bank drawing on the relevant economic literature and historical experiences while staying free from concerns about how the fed got to be what it is today or the short term political constraints it has faced at various times the goal is to provide an opinionated overview that puts forward the trade offs associated with different choices and identifies areas where there are clear messages about optimal central bank design

the nested piglog model an application to u s food demand a new demand system is introduced the nested piglog model nesting thirteen other demand systems including five that are also new this new model and its nested special cases are applied to models of u s food demand that include food at home fah food away from home fafh and alcoholic beverages although nested tests and out of sample forecasting performance favor generalizing models to a certain degree statistically insignificant improvements to in sample fit and even poorer out of sample forecast accuracy undermine further generalizations based on a subset of preferred models fafh is found to be price and income elastic compared to fah which is price and income

explaining european union citizens trust in the european central bank in normal and crisis times we study the determinants of trust in the european central bank ecb as measured by the european commission s eurobarometer survey in particular during the global financial crisis and the european sovereign debt crisis we find that the fall in trust in the ecb in crisis times can be rather well explained based on the pre crisis determinants we also show that the fall in trust reflected the macroeconomic deterioration a more generalized fall in the trust in european institutions in the wake of the crisis and the severity of the banking sector s problems to which the ecb was associated in the public opinion

demand for prepared meals by u s households using the 1987 88 nfcs a heckman two stage procedure was used to estimate the demand for prepared meals by u s households prepared meals were defined as those ready to eat and those ready to cook households headed by younger more educated and time constrained managers were more likely to purchase prepared meals income elasticities ranged from 0 07 to 0 13 while own price elasticities ranged from 0 23 to 0 66 evidence exists to indicate that prepared meals and food away from home are substitutes the presence of teenagers in a household is positively associated with expenditures of prepared meals

reputation matters spillover effects for developing countries in the enforcement of us food safety measures abstract we use data on us food import refusals to show for the first time that reputational spillovers are important factors in the enforcement of food safety measures the odds of a country experiencing at least one import refusal increase by over 100 if there was a refusal of the same product from a neighboring country in the preceding year similarly the odds of a refusal increase by 62 if there was a refusal of a related product from the same country in the preceding year these findings have important policy implications for exporters of agricultural products particularly in middle income developing countries

trust no more the impact of the crisis on citizens trust in central banks abstract citizens trust in economic institutions has generally declined since the onset of the crisis in particular eurobarometer surveys show that trust in the european central bank ecb has fallen significantly during the crisis this paper studies the determinants of public trust in the ecb over the lifetime of the euro net trust in the ecb has decreased significantly in those countries which have experienced increasing sovereign bond yields and financial market turbulence the finding that country specific variables affect citizens trust in the ecb may seem counterintuitive however it is consistent with strong evidence in the political science literature showing that domestic considerations play a significant role when citizens get an opportunity to express their opinion on eu matters

food safety as a global public good globalization of the food system increases the shared risks from food safety making it a global public good globally shared food safety risks include microbial pathogens pesticide residues or mycotoxins food safety is addressed as a global public good through improved private sector information institutional innovations such as the sanitary and phytosanitary standards agreement under the world trade organization and trade capacity building to improve food safety in developing country exports although meeting standards for high income consumers motivates trade facilitation there could be large positive spillovers for developing country consumers from such investments

model selection and forecasting ability of theory constrained food demand systems out of sample forecasting of annual u s per capita food consumption applying data from 1923 to 1992 is used as a basis for model selection among the absolute price rotterdam model a first differenced linear approximate almost ideal demand system fdla alids model and a first differenced double log demand system conditional on price consumption forecasts derived from elasticities are determined to be superior to direct statistical model forecasts models with consumer theory imposed through parametric restrictions provide better forecasts than models with little theory imposition for these data a double log demand system is a superior forecaster to the rotterdam model which is superior to the fdla alids model

nesting the aids and translog demand systems this paper shows that there exists a relatively simple demand model that is consistent with utility maximization and has nested within it both the almost ideal demand system and translog models this model is exactly aggregated then estimated using aggregate u s demand data the results are used to test the relative adequacy of the almost ideal demand system and translog models copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

politics and monetary policy abstract how and why do politicians preferences about monetary policy differ from the interest rates set by independent central banks looking at the european central bank ecb this paper shows that politicians on average favor significantly lower interest rates three factors explain the different preferences first politicians put relatively less weight on inflation and more on output in their preferred monetary policy reaction function second their preferences are affected by political economy motives third different preferences are also and largely due to different constituencies as politicians primarily focus on national economic objectives rather than the euro area as a whole

the role of central bank transparency for guiding private sector forecasts central banks have become remarkably more transparent over the last few decades in this paper we study the effects of this evolution focusing on whether enhanced central bank transparency lowers dispersion among professional forecasters of key economic variables we use a large set of proxies for central bank transparency in 12 advanced economies we find evidence for a sizeable effect e g by announcing a quantified inflation objective or by publishing inflation and output forecasts however there are decreasing marginal effects to increases in transparency and the disagreement among the expectations of the general public is not affected this suggests that there are possible limits to transparency

working wives and food away from home the box cox double hurdle model household expenditures on food away from home are analyzed with the use of the bls 1989 consumer expenditure survey parameterization and distributional assumptions of cragg s double hurdle model are generalized for this purpose and the resulting model outperforms the more traditional ones results suggest households with working wives and those with higher income are more likely to consume food away from home and also to consume more than others wife s age and household size increase the conditional level of consumption education has conflicting effects on probability and conditional level of consumption

is the mpc s voting record informative about future uk monetary policy it is shown that the voting record of the monetary policy committee of the bank of england helps predict future policy rate changes this result is robust to the inclusion of market participants expectations as measured by the slope of the term structure of money market rates and interest rate futures moreover expectations seem to adjust to the information contained in the voting record which suggests that publishing the minutes of mpc meetings increases the transparency of monetary policy

central bank communication and monetary policy a survey of theory and evidence over the last two decades communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy these real world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication mostly empirical and almost all of it written in this decade we survey this ever growing literature the evidence suggests that communication can be an important and powerful part of the central bank s toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions and potentially to help achieve central banks macroeconomic objectives however the large variation in communication strategies across central banks suggests that a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy

household consumption of food away from home total expenditure and by type of food facility consistent with prior expectations based on household production theory household income time value size and composition and the environment in which production and consumption occurred were all important determinants of total household expenditures on food away from home however the importance of these factors varied by type of food facility conventional restaurants fast food facilities and other commercial establishments decomposition of the tobit elasticities indicated the differential importance of market participation effects of household size income and time value by level of the variable and by type of food facility

transparency and trust the case of the european central bank abstractwe examine how the transparency of the european central bank s monetary policy affects the amount of trust that the citizens of the european union have in this institution we use nearly half a million individual responses from the european commission s eurobarometer survey from 2000 to 2011 and estimate probit regressions with sample selection we find that transparency exerts a non linear effect on trust transparency increases trust but only up to a certain point too much transparency harms trust this result is robust to controlling for a number of macroeconomic conditions financial stability transparency measures and economic and socio demographic characteristics of respondents including examining respondents in european union countries that do not use the euro and addressing clustering issues

optimal central bank transparency should central banks increase their degree of transparency any further we show that there is likely to be an optimal intermediate degree of central bank transparency up to this optimum more transparency is desirable it improves the quality of private sector inflation forecasts but beyond the optimum people might 1 start to attach too much weight to the conditionality of their forecasts and or 2 get confused by the large and increasing amount of information they receive this deteriorates the perceived quality of private sector inflation forecasts as a result inflation is set in a more backward looking manner resulting in higher inflation persistence by using a large scale panel data set on the transparency of central banks we find empirical support for an optimal intermediate degree of transparency at which inflation persistence is minimized our results indicate that while several central banks would benefit from further transparency increases some already have reached the optimal level

the german public and its trust in the ecb the role of knowledge and information search abstract in this paper we analyse the effects of objective and subjective knowledge about monetary policy as well as the information search patterns of german citizens on trust in the ecb we rely on a unique representative public opinion survey of german households conducted in 2011 we find that subjective and factual knowledge as well as the desire to be informed about the ecb foster citizens trust specific knowledge about the ecb is more influential than general monetary policy knowledge objective knowledge is more important than subjective knowledge however an increasing intensity of media usage especially newspaper reading has a significantly negative influence on trust we conclude that the only viable way for the ecb to generate more trust in itself is to spread monetary policy knowledge

dietary fiber intake away from home and at home in the united states abstract this paper examines the impact of socio economic and demographic factors on individual intake of dietary fiber in both the away from home and at home markets empirical results generally indicated that height region sex diet status household size age and income significantly affect dietary fiber intake away from home on the other hand weight urbanization region race ethnicity sex diet status household size day of consumption age and income significantly affect dietary fiber intake at home knowledge of the influence of sociodemographic factors provides food policy makers with information necessary for the design and implementation of nutrition programs dealing with dietary fiber intake

testing the transparency benefits of inflation targeting evidence from private sector forecasts abstract using inflation forecast data for 11 it adoption countries it adoption is found to promote convergence in forecast errors suggesting that it enhances transparency this result which is subjected to several robustness checks and found to be robust supports morris and shin s 2002 contention that better public information is most beneficial for forecasters with bad private information however it does not support their hypothesis that better public information could make private forecasts less accurate