demand for money in open economies abstract the demand for real cash balances deduced from an underlying portfolio model of the financial market is shown to depend upon domestic variables and foreign monetary developments the model is estimated using quarterly postwar data for canada germany uk and us there is clear evidence that demand for money is affected not only by changes in domestic variables such as permanent income domestic interest rate and price expectations but also by fluctuations in exchange rate expectations and foreign interest rates the conclusion that domestic monetary policy is fairly ineffective and domestic financial markets are highly vulnerable to changes in foreign financial and monetary developments need to be modified in light of the results presented in this paper

competition in taxes and performance requirements for foreign direct investment abstract tax incentives offered to attract firms engaged in foreign direct investment are often tied to performance requirements such as domestic content restrictions or adherence to environmental standards the tax competition literature has repeatedly shown that competition between municipalities for mobile firms tends to drive taxes to low levels one would expect a comparable result for burdensome performance requirements despite this the evidence suggests that while taxes have indeed been driven down performance requirements are as popular as ever we explain this seeming conundrum by showing that in the presence of spillovers binding performance requirements can act as a coordination device for firms in equilibrium municipalities choose performance requirements which maximize joint surplus from investment competition between municipalities then transfers this surplus to firms via tax subsidies

sprawl or reagglomeration the dynamics of employment deconcentration and industrial transformation in greater paris from 1975 to 1999 employment in the paris metropolitan area became more and more decentralised the losses from central areas were divided equally between sprawl and peripheral clusters parallel to the deconcentration of jobs the growth of a services oriented economy has led to an increase in sectoral concentration however there is no clear evidence of a vertical spatial disintegration because at the same time the economy of all places has tended to diversify one explanation might be that sprawl relies both on endogenous job creation and on job relocation relocations tend to increase the specialisation of the clusters while endogenous growth is more diverse thanks to the importance of domestic activities

dual labor markets urban unemployment and multicentric cities a two sector model of urban employment is developed which focuses on the formation of a secondary sector in response to a primary sector demand shock the optimal location of this single firm sector is shown to give rise to a multicentric urban spatial structure conditions are then established under which the new labor market equilibrium involves both a decrease in unemployment and an increase in net income for those unemployed these results are extended to a case where all unemployment benefits are financed by local taxation of firms here it is shown that profit incentives may exist for the primary sector to subsidize entry of the secondary sector c 1997 academic press

what do market calibrated stochastic processes indicate about the long term price of crude oil abstract stochastic process models of commodity prices are important inputs in energy investment evaluation and planning problems in this paper we focus on modeling and forecasting the long term price level since it is the dominant factor in many such applications to provide a foundation for our modeling approach we first evaluate the empirical characteristics of crude oil price data from 1990 to 2013 using unit root and variance ratio tests statistical evidence from these tests shows only weak support for the applicability of stationary mean reverting type processes up through 2004 with non stationary brownian motion type processes becoming more plausible when the data from 2005 to 2013 is added we then apply a kalman filtering method with maximum likelihood approach to estimate the model parameters for both a single factor geometric brownian motion gbm process as well as the two factor schwartz and smith 2000 process the latter process decomposes the spot price into unobservable factors for the long term equilibrium level and short term deviation and it accommodates aspects of both a gbm process and a mean reverting process both empirical and simulated data are analyzed with these models and we quantify the increases in both the drift rate and volatility of these processes that result from developments in the crude oil markets since the middle of the last decade we conclude by comparing and contrasting both historical accuracy and forecasts from the parameterized models and show that when the emphasis is on the long term expectations a single factor gbm forecast may be sufficient

carbon subsidies taxes and optimal forest management we consider the effect of carbon credit payment schemes on forest owners land use and harvest decisions we study two possible credit allocation regimes one where credits are allocated according to the actual amount of carbon sequestered by the trees on a piece of land and another where credits are allocated according to the long run potential to sequester carbon on the land using a real options model with uncertain future timber prices we examine the effect on the timing of harvests and the replanting abandonment decision we show that both schemes discourage deforestation compensating growers for actual carbon sequestration leads to longer rotation periods between harvests while basing compensation only on the long run potential level of sequestration induces shorter rotation periods the former scheme leads to greater benefits of carbon sequestration at lower cost than the latter scheme although inducing moderate levels of sequestration is expensive under both schemes the cost falls dramatically when the level of payments climbs above some threshold indeed providing the payments are sufficiently generous carbon credit payment schemes offer an effective means of increasing carbon sequestration

do polycentric urban regions promote functional spillovers and economic performance evidence from china although the literature often suggests that the economic prowess of polycentric urban regions partly results from the ability of their constituent cities to promote functional spillovers through

spatial competition with a land market hotelling and von thunen unified we introduce into the standard spatial competition model the consumption of land by households and study the spatial competition under the influence of a land market in contrast to the standard assumption of a fixed given distribution of households we introduce the possibility of households relocation in reaction to firms location decisions thus the spatial distribution of households is treated as endogenous and a land market is introduced on which households compete for land use households consume simultaneously land and firms output accordingly the demand of each household becomes in turn endogenous as it depends on the income left after the land rent is paid not surprisingly the results obtained within this more general framework prove to be very different from the standard results for example in the 2 and 3 firm cases the optimal configuration of firms is a nash equilibrium when transport costs are high enough or the amount of vacant land is large enough the existence property is restored in the 3 firm case when the transport costs are high enough the introduction of vacant land causes a discontinuous change in the set of equilibrium configurations

the black market exchange rate vs the official rate in testing ppp which rate fosters the adjustment process abstract in testing the purchasing power parity theory ppp researchers hardly pay attention to the speed with which the exchange rate adjusts to a change in relative prices in this paper we show that the speed of adjustment is faster when the black market exchange rate is used in testing the ppp as compared to the official exchange rate this could be another reason as to why central banks should unify the two rates

the effects of potential land development on agricultural land prices abstract we conduct a national scale analysis of the determinants of agricultural land values the theoretical basis for the study is a spatial city model with stochastic returns to future land development the empirical model of agricultural land prices is estimated with a cross section on approximately three thousand counties in the contiguous us the results provide evidence that option values associated with irreversible and uncertain land development are capitalized into current farmland values for each county we decompose the current agricultural land value into components measuring rents from agricultural production and rents from future land development

on the endogeneous formation of secondary employment centers in a city a new approach is proposed to explain the formation of secondary employment centers in a monocentric city specifically a large firm considers locating a new plant in a city where none of the existing businesses has a significative share of the labor force so that its location can be viewed as a secondary employment center the choice of this location results from the interplay between the process of competition on both the labor and land markets and the technological externalities generated by the proximity of the city center where other firms are located

economic reforms and long run money demand in china implications for monetary policy although money demand equations have been estimated for many western countries only recently have researchers investigated the demand for money in centrally planned economies like china chow 7 who helped pioneer the analysis of chinese macro data estimates a simple money demand function derived from the quantity theory using annual data from 1952 through 1983 he concludes that the quantity theory provides a reasonable first approximation in explaining the demand for money in china 7 325 portes and santorum 27 use real and nominal adjustment specifications and test for the homogeneity of money demand with respect to the price level and real income feltenstein and farhadian 11 estimate a money demand function based on cagan s 3 work and blejer et al 1 estimate an error correction model using data for only the 1980s both studies find that the demand for real balances is explained by real income and an opportunity cost measure

human capital and fdi inflow an assessment of the african case summary this study assesses the role of human capital hk on fdi inflows to sub saharan africa it uses panel data for the period 1980 2012 to asses if changing skill needs influence fdi inflows several measures of hk are used to assess whether the quality of labor explains fdi flows over the study period various versions of an fdi model were estimated and the results show that all measures of hk have a significant influence on fdi as are the traditional variables there is no evidence of the increasing importance of hk on fdi over time probably reflecting the type of fdi flowing into ssa

the impact of economic and monetary uncertainty on the demand for money in emerging economies by introducing uncertainty monetary volatility and economic volatility are said to make the public cautious hence increase their cash holdings or their demand for money on the other hand because of monetary and economic uncertainty if the public seek safer assets than money they may hold less cash in the absence of any paper testing for the impact of economic and monetary uncertainty on the demand for money in emerging economies this article fills the gap by considering the experiences of six central and eastern european emerging economies and four other emerging economies we found that the impact is transitory in most countries moreover money demand is found correctly specified and stable in most countries suggesting that policy based on monetary targeting could still be effective despite significant output and monetary uncertainty

bidding for firms recently toyota sought a plant location in the united states the 800 million plant will employ 3000 workers and numerous states offered toyota generous investment incentives hoping this would induce toyota to select their state the commonwealth of kentucky won this competition but the price was high the present value of the payments exceeds 125 million the payment of investment incentives for the toyota plant is not unique in 1976 pennsylvania paid 75 million to attract a volkswagen plan nissan honda and mazda received generous investment incentives when locating plants in the united states and this bidding is not limited to states to attract the headquarters of the presbyterian church usa with its 1300 jobs and 38 million annual payroll civic leaders in louisville kentucky offered the church a warehouse and 6 2 million for renovation of the structure bidding the church away from kansas city missouri in this paper we contend that this competition may result from the average cost pricing of publicly provided goods and services 2 when the marginal cost of providing a firm and its workers with public services is less than the tax revenue they generate a government may offer the firm subsidies that reduce the distortions the average cost pricing of the public service creates thus this competition for industry is not a zero sum game where the subsidies are only transfers from the government to the firm rather these subsidies may facilitate the efficient location of industry

work location residence location and the intraurban wage gradient abstract the monocentric city model implies that work and residence locations are likely to be positively correlated and that wages decline with distance from the city center the first implication has not been explicitly tested before we provide strong support for it in census data for cleveland columbus dayton detroit indianapolis philadelphia and pittsburgh previous wage gradient estimates were hindered by lack of individual data on employment location and worker characteristics we solve this problem by estimating probit models that predict optimal work location and using the results to explain wages we find evidence of significant wage gradients

options uncertainty and sunk costs an empirical analysis of land use change abstract in a real option model of land conversion incorporating return uncertainty and sunk costs optimal conversion thresholds are significantly higher than those from expected net present value models not accounting for these factors empirical tests of conversion from agriculture to forest suggest that landowners value the option to convert when making conversion decisions higher uncertainty in returns to all potential uses and lower correlation between shocks to agricultural and forest returns decreases the likelihood of conversion estimates indicate a significant impact on conversion decisions with approximations of option values ranging from 7 to 81 of the expected value of the land asset

monetary variability united states and japan note many economists have criticized the federal reserve because of the high variability of monetary growth in the united states since the change in operating procedures on october 6 1979 chairman paul volcker has responded to this criticism in congressional testimony november 19 1980 and in a letter to senator garn february 18 1982 by asserting that international comparisons all appear to demonstrate the same point u s monetary aggregates rank at or near the top of the league in terms of low variability and this is true even allowing for the technical difficulties involved in making such international comparisons

how stable is the demand for money in emerging economies one of the key elements of implementing the monetary policy is stability of the demand for money the literature includes a large number of studies that have tested the stability of the money demand in developed as well as less developed countries but not in emerging economies of eastern europe as market based data becomes available from these countries there is an urgency to test old theories for these modern market oriented economies in this article we consider the experiences of armenia bulgaria the czech republic hungary poland russia and the slovak republic using the bounds testing approach to error correction modelling and cointegration we show that money demand is stable in these countries

competition for foreign direct investments abstract this paper models international competition for foreign direct investment as a common agency problem using the theory of menu auctions developed by bernheim and whinston in the model national governments act as principals and a multinational corporation as the single agent governments are assumed to maximize the net wage income generated by the corporation s investment it is shown that in the equilibrium of this game a high wage country may be able to attract investment even though all countries use subsidies furthermore it is shown that a country may choose to pay the highest subsidies even if it attracts less investment than in the unsubsidized regime our framework can also be used to study interregional subsidy competition within a country

local fiscal competition an application to sales taxation with multiple federations abstract local sales tax rates influence the location of retail activity this paper develops a theory and empirical identification strategy for studying sales tax competition with multiple federations as exemplified by multiple counties each containing several cities in addition to strategic interactions with nearby cities and a city s own county city tax rates are influenced by the tax rates of neighboring counties cities react heterogeneously to own county sales tax rates depending on distance to the county border using data on the driving time to county borders and a comprehensive cross section of local sales tax rates i exploit variation in proximity to county borders to identify vertical fiscal competition cities located near county borders react more intensely to their county s tax rate in comparison to towns at the interior an increase in the neighboring county tax rate raises city tax rates in nearby counties

the costs of carbon sequestration a revealed preference approach increased concem by policy makers with the threat of global climate change has brought with it considerable attention to the possibility of encouraging the growth of forests as a means of sequestering carbon dioxide national academy of sciences nas 1992 james p bruce et al 1996 1 the kyoto protocol to the united nations framework convention on climate change 1997 which establishes emission reduction targets for the united states and other industrialized nations states that carbon sequestration can be used by participating nations to achieve their targets moreover even before the kyoto agreement this approach had become an explicit element of both u s and intemational climate policies u s department of energy 1991 united nations general assembly 1992 william j clinton and albert gore 1993 this high level of interest has been due in part to suggestions that sufficient lands are available to use the approach to mitigate a substantial share of annual carbon dioxide c02 emissions greg marland 1988 daniel a lashof and dennis a tirpak 1989 mark c trexler 1991 and claims that growing trees to sequester carbon is a relatively inexpensive means of combating climate change roger a sedjo and allen m solomon 1989 daniel j dudek and alice leblanc 1990 nas 1992 in other words the serious attention given by policy makers to carbon sequestration can partly be explained by implicit assertions about respective marginal cost functions i develop and demonstrate a method by which the costs of carbon sequestration can be estimated on the basis of evidence from landowners behavior when confronted with the opportunity costs of alternative land uses the simplest of previous economic analyses derived single point estimates of average costs associated with particular sequestration levels marland 1988 sedjo and solomon 1989 dudek and leblanc 1990 edwin s rubin et al 1992 omar masera et al 1995 often it has been assumed that land opportunity costs are zero g van kooten et al 1992 j k winjum et al 1992 new york state energy office 1993 robert k dixon et al 1994 another set of studies essentially engineering costing models has constructed marginal cost schedules by using information on revenues and costs of production for altemative uses on representative types or locations of land and then sorting these in ascending order of cost robert j moulton and kenneth r richards 1990 richards et al 1993 simulation models include a model of the lost profits due to removing land from agricultural production peter j parks and ian w hardie 1995 a mathematical programming model of the agricultural sector and the timber market richard m adams et al 1993 a related model incorporating the effects of agricultural price support programs j m callaway and bruce mccarl 1996 and a dynamic simulation model of forestry susan swinehart 1996 lastly an analysis by andrew j plantinga 1995 adopts land use elasticities from an econometric study to estimate sequestration costs we draw on some of the best features of the previous studies including the carbon levelization method of moulton and richards john f kennedy school of government harvard university 79 john f kennedy street cambridge ma 02138 and resources for the future richard newell supplied excellent research assistance and valuable comments on a previous version were provided by lawrence goulder william nordhaus andrew plantinga kenneth richards two anonymous referees participants in seminars at the universities of california at los angeles and santa barbara the university of maryland the university of michigan the university of texas harvard university stanford university yale university resources for the future and the national bureau of economic research the author alone is resdonsible for any errors 1 after fossil fuel combustion deforestation is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions estimates of annual global emissions from deforestation range from 0 6 to 2 8 billion tons compared with slightly less than 6 0 billion tons annually from fossil fuel combustion cement manufacturing and natural gas flaring combined r a houghton 1991 t m smith et al 1993

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

the economics of tropical forest land use options tropical deforestation is generally characterized as conversion of forest land to alternative uses notably agriculture this would suggest the need for rational decision making concerning the optimal allocation of tropical forest land between competing uses the following paper explores this problem by devising rules for determining optimal land use allocation between timber and agriculture at the stand and forest levels a complementary intertemporal model for optimal allocation of forest land to agricultural conversion at the forest level is also developed and used to derive a demand relationship for agricultural conversion which is then approximated through empirical estimation

information and the concept of option value this paper examines the arrow fisher henry concept of option value and analyzes its properties including its relationship to the value of information and the effects of increasing uncertainty about the future consequences of irreversible development it is shown that this option value is distinct from but bounded by the value of information in the overall decision problem also it is distinct from a concept of option value that appears in b s bernanke quart j econom 98 85 106 1983 however when there is a continuum of development levels rather than a binary choice between full development and no development some of these conclusions need to be modified

the valuation of forestry resources under stochastic prices and inventories a contingent claims approach to capital budgeting may be preferable to traditional methods where uncertainty and managers strategic reactions to changing conditions are impor tant as an example of such a case we solve the classical problem of the duration of an investment in forestry resources i e when to cut down the trees in the general case of stochastic output prices and stochastic natural growth rate and timber inventories a con tingent claims approach is used to value the forestry resources as a function of 1 sto chastic prices and inventories and 2 an asymmetric optimal production policy that incorporates the option to halt timber production temporarily i introduction classical capital budgeting techniques are based on the assumption that fu ture cash flows follow a rigid pattern and can be accurately predicted far into the future on the basis of such cash flow predictions the project is either accepted or rejected the uncertainty in the project and management s strategic reactions to changing conditions are dealt with only superficially at best a risk adjusted interest rate is employed and various deterministic scenarios are plotted out in situations where uncertainty and management s strategic reactions to it are im portant the classical technique is apt to lead to wrong decisions the technology needed to deal with such problems more accurately is becoming available the purpose of this paper is to present a stylized example of how it can be used our example is a general solution to the classical duration problem of the optimal control of a long term renewable resource investment such as forestry resources i e when to chop down a tree 1 if the prices and the natural growth rate of the inventory of forest timber are assumed to be deterministic the optimal control is very simple to derive but when both the price and inventory of timber are stochastic the problem becomes both stochastic and asymmetric the asym

permanent and temporary policy incentives for conservation under stochastic returns from competing land uses rapid conversion of private land for agricultural and urban use has raised concern worldwide over the loss of ecological services to inform conservation policy we model privately optimal land use decisions using a real options framework that assumes both the ecological and commercial values of land are stochastic and that land conversion is irreversible we analyze permanent and temporary land conservation policy incentives using this dynamic framework to guide policy makers interested in designing efficient payment mechanisms to achieve ecological preservation goals we find that while the financial cost of temporary policy incentives is generally much lower than permanent policy incentives this difference is very small in scenarios with high discount rates and lower uncertainties in conversion returns and lower expected trend in conservation returns alternately the financial cost of temporary conservation is substantially lower than that of permanent conservation when the expected trend in conservation returns and uncertainties in conservation and conversion returns is high and the discount rate is low comparison with net present value and single source uncertainty models indicates that the presence of a second uncertainty increases the option value of delaying conversion and shows that permanent and temporary policy incentives based on either of the two simpler models can be seriously misguided if multiple uncertainties are present we illustrate the analytical results with a case study of tropical deforestation in indonesia where private landowners can either conserve forests and earn carbon credits or convert to palm oil agriculture and earn profits from the sale of palm oil

an empirical investigation of intraurban wage gradients abstract intraurban wage gradients have received little attention in the urban literature but have been shown theoretically to be important indicators of the spatial characteristics of urban economic activity this study examines the spatial distribution of wages of five groups of municipal public employees in the chicago smsa negative wage gradients significant at the 0 05 level are found for four of the five labor groups results show that monthly wages decrease on average as much as 24 per additional mile from the city center

politicians decision making with re election concerns abstract we study the impact of elected officials re election concerns on their decisions on whether to undertake new projects the value of a project to a jurisdiction depends in part on its elected official s uncertain ability at providing some public goods our main result is that the elected official s willingness to pay for the project differs from voters willingness to pay if the incumbent official expects to lose win the election then she is willing to pay more less than the project s total value to voters we show how our analysis can be applied to bidding wars among jurisdictions for firms

the spatial labour market and spatial competition nakagome m 1986 the spatial labour market and spatial competition reg studies 20 307 312 we examine the effects of spatial competition on wages and regional unemployment it is demonstrated in this article that the perverse results concerning wage levels are also seen to prevail in the spatial labour market i e competition among neighbouring firms may yield lower equilibrium wage levels than a spatial monopsony wage our study investigates the extent to which such spatial theory replicates the conclusions of classical non spatial labour economics we also attack the problem of why regional unemployed workers do not change their location to obtain a higher level of job opportunities

employment decentralisation polycentricity or scatteration the case of barcelona at the present time most large cities in the world are polycentric and at the same time they are undergoing processes of employment decentralisation and deconcentration it has been argued that polycentricity is just an intermediate stage between monocentricity and a more unstructured chaotic and amorphous location model scatteration for the case of the polycentric barcelona the aims of this study are to test whether its employment is moving from polycentricity to scatteration and whether its employment location model is increasingly random and unstructured the results show that in spite of the decentralisation and deconcentration processes employment concentrated in centres still represents a significant percentage of total employment and new sub centres have emerged in the periphery what is more the results also show an increasing influence of employment sub centres on employment location and density conditions as a result polycentricity has been reinforced

european co2 prices and carbon capture investments we assess the option to install a carbon capture and storage ccs unit in a coal fired power plant operating in a carbon constrained environment we consider two sources of risk namely the price of emission allowance and the price of the electricity output first we analyse the performance of the eu market for co2 emission allowances specifically we focus on the contracts maturing in the kyoto protocol s first commitment period 2008 to 2012 and calibrate the underlying parameters of the allowance price process then we refer to the spanish wholesale electricity market and calibrate the parameters of the electricity price process we use a two dimensional binomial lattice to derive the optimal investment rule in particular we obtain the trigger allowance prices above which it is optimal to install the capture unit immediately we further analyse the effect of changes in several variables on these critical prices among them allowance price volatility and a hypothetical government subsidy we conclude that at current permit prices immediate installation does not seem justified from a financial point of view this need not be the case though if carbon market parameters change dramatically carbon capture technology undergoes significant improvements and or a specific governmental policy to promote these units is adopted

urban economic theory land use and city size this book examines the economic reasons why people choose to live where they live and develops through analysis of the bid rent function a unified theory of urban land use and city size the first part of the book explicates the basic theory of urban land use and optimal city size residential location behavior of households is examined in a microeconomic framework and equilibrium and optimal patterns of residential land use are discussed the corresponding equilibrium and optimal city sizes are studied in a variety of contexts part two extends the classical theories of von thunen and alonso with the addition of externality factors such as local public goods crowding and congestion and racial prejudice the rigorous mathematical approach and theoretical treatment of the material make urban economic theory of interest to researchers in urban economics location theory urban geography and urban planning

species preservation and biodiversity value a real options approach abstract we evaluate biodiversity in a real options framework when the resources in use are substitutable we examine optimal conservation decisions given that a biodiversity loss is irreversible and that future use values are uncertain while species substitutability has been shown to reduce the value of diversity we show that the flexibility associated with substitutability is a source of value marginal species value is decreasing in the number of species but rising and convex in the value of the marginal species as we show in the two species homogenous model increased volatility raises biodiversity value and a positive correlation between species values both reduces the value of the pool of species and the value of biodiversity the role played by the correlation between the value of a species and the value of other species is reminiscent of the beta of a financial asset just like an asset with a negative beta derives additional value by providing insurance against fluctuations in the market portfolio a species whose value tends to move in the opposite direction as the species in use derives additional value from its higher probability to be available for substitution if the value of the species in use diminishes

wages and commuting quasi natural experiments evidence from firms that relocate we examine individual level compensating differentials for commuting distance in a quasi natural experiment setting by examining how wages respond to changes in commuting distance induced by firm relocations this set up enables us to test for the relevance of job search frictions within labour market models due to the quasi experimental set up we are able to avoid a range of endogeneity issues we demonstrate that a 1 km increase in commuting distance induces an almost negligible wage increase in the year after the relocation but a more substantial wage increase of about 0 15 three years later 2013 royal economic society

a money demand function with output uncertainty monetary uncertainty and financial innovations in a general equilibrium framework incorporating the money in the utility function approach we show that output uncertainty and monetary uncertainty as well as output interest rates and financial innovations affect money demand the estimated long run relationships are consistent with our postulated relation but not with the conventional one our model delivers a high income elasticity consistent with cross sectional evidence and helps resolve m1 demand puzzles the model estimated in dynamic error correction form exhibits a good level of stability and forecastability providing little support for the recent de emphasis of monetary aggregates due to the instability of money demand

mean reversion in equilibrium asset prices evidence from the futures term structure we use the term structure of futures prices to test whether investors anticipate mean reversion in spot asset prices the empirical results indicate mean reversion in each market we examine for agricultural commodities and crude oil the magnitude of the estimated mean reversion is large for example point estimates indicate that 44 percent of a typical spot oil price shock is expected to be reversed over the subsequent eight months for metals the degree of mean reversion is substantially less but still statistically significant we detect only weak evidence of mean reversion in financial asset prices in this study we provide evidence of mean reversion in the prices of several real and financial assets rather than examining evidence of ex post reversion using time series of asset prices we use price data from futures contracts with varying delivery horizons to test whether investors expect asset prices to revert this approach offers two advantages first since futures prices are readily available for many markets our procedure can be implemented for many assets including those for which reliable spot price data is elusive second there is little ambiguity as to the source of any mean reversion detected using our method subject only to the maintained assumption that the no arbitrage cost of carry condition holds our test detects mean reversion that is expected to occur in equilibrium but has no power to detect mean reversion resulting from noise or inefficiencies our methodology focuses on relations between price levels and the slope of the futures term structure defined as the change across delivery dates in the futures prices observed on a given trading date an inverse relation between prices and the futures term slope constitutes evidence that investors expect mean reversion in spot prices to illustrate initially assume there are no

the mechanisms of spatial mismatch the spatial mismatch hypothesis smh argues that low skilled minorities residing in us inner cities experience poor labour market outcomes because they are disconnected from suburban job opportunities this assumption gave rise to an abundant empirical literature which is rather supportive of the smh surprisingly it is only recently that theoretical models have emerged which probably explains why the mechanisms of spatial mismatch have long remained unclear and not properly tested this article presents relevant facts reviews the theoretical models of spatial mismatch confronts their predictions with available empirical results and indicates which mechanisms deserve further empirical tests

an extension of the monocentric urban spatial equilibrium model to a multicenter setting the case of the two center city abstract firms in a monocentric city conforming in substance to the new urban economics produce an export commodity under agglomeration economies and employ homogeneous labor and capital workers reside about the cbd in decreasing densities with distance a developer establishes a second export production center within the city s residential area conditions for economic viability and growth of the subcenter are examined and its impacts on short run and long run city location patterns are discussed a limiting condition on subcenter employment size is provided

another visit to the cagan model of money demand the latest russian experience abstract this paper investigates empirically the cagan style money demand function for russia during the recent hyperinflation era 1992 1994 using the johansen multivariate cointegration test results indicate that rate of change of exchange rate currency depreciation is required in the demand function for real m2 and real currency in order to obtain a stationary long run relationship error correction model results show that there exists a bidirectional causality between real money balances and determinants of real money demand including currency depreciation exchange rate sensitivity of the demand for money indicates currency substitution

exchange rate sensitivity of demand for money and effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies one of the arguments between proponents and opponents of floating exchange rates centres around the relative effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy while proponents of floating rates argue that monetary policy is more effective under floating rates its opponents contend that fiscal policy is more effective under fixed rates however economic theory suggests that there is room for both policies under both types of exchange rate system depending upon degree of sterlization concentrating on the floating rates mundell 1963 has argued that the relative effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies would also depend upon sensitivity of money demand to exchange rate more precisely he has conjectured that the demand for money is likely to depend upon the exchange rate in addition to the interest rate and the level of income this would slightly reduce the effectiveness of a given change in the quantity of money and slightly increase the effectiveness of fiscal policy on income and employment under

double tax discrimination to attract fdi and fight profit shifting the role of cfc rules abstract governments worldwide use targeted tax policies to trade off the gains from increased fdi against the cost of excessive profit shifting by multinational firms we show that nationally optimal tax systems generally incorporate both thin capitalization rules which tax discriminate between purely national and multinational firms and controlled foreign company cfc rules which discriminate between home based and foreign based multinationals in the non cooperative policy equilibrium both thin capitalization rules and cfc rules are set more lenient than if tax policies were chosen cooperatively implying an excessive tax discrimination in favor of multinationals we also analyze the effects of reduced transaction costs for fdi and reduced costs for debt shifting on the optimal policy mix our results correspond to the observed developments of anti avoidance rules in oecd countries

eu regional policy and tax competition the european union eu provides coordination and financing of trans european transport infrastructures i e roads and railways which link the eu member states and reduce the cost of transport and mobility this raises the question of whether eu involvement in this area is justified by inefficiencies of national infrastructure policies moreover an often expressed concern is that policies enhancing mobility may boost tax competition we analyze these questions using a model where countries compete for the location of profitable firms we show that a coordination of investment in transport cost reducing infrastructures within union countries enhances welfare and mitigates tax competition in contrast with regard to union periphery infrastructure the union has an interest in a coordinated reduction of investment expenditures here the effects on tax competition are ambiguous our results provide a rationale for eu level regional policy that supports the development of intra union infrastructure

a real options approach to the valuation of a forestry investment abstract the theory of real options is used to model the optimal tree harvesting decision the value of the option to harvest is estimated using a dynamic programming approach and a general numerical solution technique suitable for any type of stochastic process for prices the conditions under which the optimal harvest time is independent of price are examined in addition the impact of assuming future lumber prices are mean reverting is considered it is found that option value and optimal cutting time are significantly different under the mean reversion assumption compared to geometric brownian motion

the decision to conserve or harvest old growth forest abstract the decision to harvest or conserve old growth forest is formulated as a stochastic decision problem in continuous time uncertainty in future amenity values for standing forest and in future timber revenues for harvested forest are included in the model along with the risk of catastrophic destruction by fire pest infestation etc it is shown how the decision problem can be expressed as an optimal stopping problem which can be solved analytically the optimal decision rule is shown to depend on how the ratio of current timber value to the current expected present value of amenity benefits foregone through harvesting compares with some critical level the effects of changes in uncertainty and other parameters on the optimal rule are discussed also it is shown how the cost benefit analysis and certainty equivalence procedures lead to premature harvesting and the expected loss in survival time for these sub optimal procedures is calculated

unintended impacts of public investments on private decisions the depletion of forested wetlands by affecting relative economic returns infrastructure investments can induce major changes in private land use the authors find that 30 percent of forested wetland depletion in the mississippi valley has resulted from private decisions induced by federal flood control projects despite explicit federal policy to preserve wetlands the model aggregates individual land use decisions using a parametric distribution of unobserved land quality dynamic simulations are used to quantify the impacts on wetlands of federal projects and other factors copyright 1990 by american economic association

policy uncertainty and the demand for money in the united kingdom limited studies that have assessed the impact of economic uncertainty on the demand for money have concentrated on using a volatility measure of money supply and output certainly other factors such as regulation taxes budget deficits national debt etc can contribute to an uncertain environment this new measure of uncertainty which is called policy uncertainty is now constructed for several countries and published we investigate the impact of this new measure on the demand for money in the uk and find that it has a negative and significant short run effect but not any log run effects