multi product budget constrained acquisition and pricing with uncertain demand and supplier quantity discounts abstract we consider the joint acquisition and pricing problem where the retailer sells multiple products with uncertain demands and the suppliers provide all unit quantity discounts the problem is to determine the optimal acquisition quantities and selling prices so as to maximize the retailer s expected profit subject to a budget constraint this is the first extension to consider supplier discounts in the constrained multi product newsvendor pricing problem we establish a mixed integer nonlinear programming minlp model to formulate the problem and develop a lagrangian based solution approach computational results for the test problems involving up to thousand products are reported which show that the proposed approach can obtain high quality solutions in a very short time

adapting prices or quantities in the presence of adjustment costs it is often hypothesized that costs of adjusting both price and quantities may have important implications for the macroeconomic adjustment process not least to nominal shocks we analyse this in an explicit intertemporal general equilibrium model considering the empirically relevant case of fixed costs of adjusting prices and fixed and variable costs of adjusting quantities we find that the presence of both price and quantity adjustment costs changes the response to shocks significantly it is an implication that small shocks do not support the menu cost case but rather both fixed prices and quantities rationing a numerical analysis based on available evidence on adjustment costs is used to illustrate the likelihood that the various adjustment patterns actually arise

resource and waste taxation in the theory of the firm with recycling activities the management of solid waste has become an urgent problem in nations with a great population density accordingly waste reduction through source reduction and recycling has become increasingly important our purpose is to show how prevention recycling and disposal of waste could be part of a theory of the firm we first derive efficient production functions from production processes with waste as a by product waste obtained as new scrap can partially be recycled by using additional inputs in order to cut back the purchase of virgin material waste not completely recyclable will leave the firm as disposal which also entails cost to the firm we use the dual cost function approach to develop a theory of the firm under solid residual management since the producer does not bear the full cost of disposal there will be a bias toward virgin materials and away from recycling the goal of the government is to stimulate the firms to recycle with respect to the preservation of exhaustible resources an incentive to recycle is a tax on resources or on waste in order to determine the tax levels the government maximizes welfare subject to the dynamic constraint for decumulation of land fill for waste deposits this gives the user cost and its time profile for taxing waste disposal or virgin material in a comparative statics analysis we compare the effect of taxes on waste vs virgin material on effort to produce in a resource saving manner on the quantity of recycled material on output and on the reduction of waste since the impact of environmental regulation on employment is important our model detects seven effects on labor demand as part of resource conservation policy we finally carry out a comparative statics analysis of waste intensive firms operating in different market structures of interest is the impact of a resource or waste taxation on market volume on the number of firms on resource saving effort and on profit

capital flows and real exchange rate fluctuations following spain s entry into the european community abstract spain s 1986 entry into the european community was followed by a dismantling of restrictions on international capital flows initial trade deficits and real exchange rate appreciation were followed by trade surpluses and real exchange rate depreciation this paper analyzes spain s financial liberalization using a dynamic general equilibrium model with a traded and nontraded good where a capital poor country opens itself to its capital rich neighbors a carefully calibrated model has trouble accounting for the large changes in relative prices observed given the small changes in quantities variants of the model with frictions in factor mobility between sectors fare better

tastes and technology in a two country model of the business cycle explaining international trade on international financial markets allows people to insure country specific risk and smooth consumption intertemporally equilibrium models of business cycles with trade on global financial markets typically yield international consumption correlations near one and excessive volatility of investment the authors incorporate nontraded goods in the model and find that the implications for aggregate consumption investment and the trade balance are consistent with business cycle properties of industrialized countries however the model driven by technology shocks alone yields counterfactual implications for comovements between consumption and prices at the sectoral level taste shocks produce price quantity relationships more consistent with the data copyright 1995 by american economic association

an economic order quantity model with partial backordering and all units discount abstract the classic economic order quantity model assumes that the unit purchasing cost is not based on the order quantity in practice a supplier may offer purchasers an all units discount we develop a model and solution procedure for the eoq with all unit discounts and partial backordering at a constant rate we show and illustrate with a numerical example how that model can be used to find the solution for the eoq with discount and full backordering a multi factor experiment is used to gain insights into the improvement in performance of the proposed procedure relative to using the basic eoq or the eoq with full backordering and to identify the model parameters that have the greatest impact on the model s performance

efficiency wage models of unemployment one view h lorne carmichael persistent wage rigidity and involuntary unemployment appear to be recurrent problems in most economies what could be preventing the wage adjustment necessary to clear the labor market many recent papers claim to have found the answer in efficiency wage models this paper surveys this literature and attempts to evaluate its accomplishments it concludes that the efficiency wage models fail to explain wage rigidity or persistent involuntary unemployment persistent involuntary unemployment of workers is a recurrent problem in labor markets all over the world unemployed workers seem unable to find work even though they are willing to accept lower wages than those being paid employed workers with similar skills what could be preventing wages from adjusting to clear these markets many recent papers known collectively as the efficiency wage literature now claim to have the answer this paper will survey the efficiency wage literature and critically evaluate some of its accomplishments efficiency wage models have already been examined by yellen 1984 katz 1986 and stiglitz 1987 and have received generally favorable reviews this paper is more critical its overall conclusion is that efficiency wage models provide some useful insights into the workings of the labor market but they do not provide a satisfactory account of wage rigidity or involuntary unemployment there are at least five separate versions of the efficiency wage model they share a common structure however and this is outlined in the first section of the paper this section also attempts to relate efficiency wage models to other recent models of unemployment section ii examines and criticizes the different approaches in detail section iii evaluates the achievements of this approach and suggests some directions for future work i a general efficiency wage model efficiency wage models as the name suggests are first of all models of wages they generate unemployment by showing that firms will sometimes want to set wages at non market clearing levels it is useful to begin therefore by reviewing how wages and employment are determined in some related models in a perfectly competitive labor market the wage for each type of labor is adjusted constantly to maintain equality of supply and demand overall employment fluctuates in response to demand changes as workers move up and down their labor supply curves unemployment is voluntary in that anyone who is not working prefers that state to employment at the going wage for people of his skills as well the value of a worker s marginal product is equal to the marginal value of his leisure so there are no unexploited wage bargains between unemployed workers and firms this model is successful in predicting the long term response of wages to shifts in demand and supply but it is clear that in the short run its depiction of voluntary unemployment and flexible wages is unrealistic a natural way to generate more realism is to assume that wages are inflexible in the short run in this case a reduction in demand away from a long run equilibrium will lead to rationing of jobs by employers as they attempt to stay on their labor demand curves the unemployment here is involuntary in that the unemployed would prefer to be working at the going wage and is inefficient in that there are lost gains from trade between these workers and firms the weakness of this model is that it is silent about the mechanism that keeps wages rigid unemployed workers who offer to work for less than the fixed wage ought to find work the early implicit contract models of azariadis 1975 baily 1974 and gordon 1974 provide one explanation for wage rigidity these models introduced the idea that wages can do more than just clear the market for labor wages in an implicit contract model are used to shift the risk generated by uncertain output market conditions from risk averse workers to the risk neutral firm

demand disturbances and aggregate fluctuations the implications of near rationality the paper investigates some properties of near rational models of the cycle examining two types of framework in the first an otherwise classical competitive economy is shown to respond to demand disturbances when some firms follow a near rational hiring policy in the second model a dynamic setting is addressed and a criterion termed stochastic near rationality is employed simulation results are consistent with recent empirical findings and suggest that further quantitative evaluation is merited copyright 1987 by royal economic society

retrospectives the cyclical behavior of labor productivity and the emergence of the labor hoarding concept the concept of labor hoarding at least in its modern form was first fully articulated in the early 1960s by arthur okun 1963 by the end of the 20th century the concept of labor hoarding had become an accepted part of economists explanations of the workings of labor markets and of the relationship between labor productivity and economic fluctuations the emergence of this concept involved the conjunction of three key elements the fact that measured labor productivity was found to be procyclical rising during expansions and falling during contractions a perceived contradiction with the theory of the neoclassical firm in a competitive economy and a possible explanation based on optimizing behavior on the part of firms each of these three elements fact contradiction and explanation has a history of its own dating back to at least the opening decades of the twentieth century telling the story of the emergence of the modern labor hoarding concept requires recounting these three histories histories that involve the work of economists motivated by diverse purposes and often not mainly if at all concerned with the questions that the labor hoarding concept was ultimately used to address as a final twist to the story the long standing positive relationship between labor productivity and output in the us economy began to disappear in the late 1980s and during the great recession labor productivity rose while the economy contracted

interpreting the procyclical productivity of manufacturing sectors can we really rule out external effects recent empirical contributions on procyclical productivity have focused on the dynamic implications of persistent aggregate fluctuations on sectoral productivity given a permanent innovation in aggregate output unobserved variations of labour or capital utilization may have only a transitory effect on measured productivity whereas external effects should produce permanent effects it is found that persistent aggregate fluctuations have a permanent effect on productivity of four digit us manufacturing industries while a number of alternative explanations of this evidence are discussed and ruled out the findings are consistent with a simple model with external or thick market effects

a post consumer waste management model for determining optimal levels of recycling and landfilling the present study examines the optimal recycling rate for municipal solid waste first an optimal control model is developed to account for the physical costs of recycling the social costs of landfilling and consumers environmental preferences second an optimal solution is simulated using waste disposal data from the helsinki region in finland the benefits from recycling are included in the simulation using the results of a recent contingent valuation study the results of the present research suggest that mandates for achieving 50 recycling in municipalities are not far fetched and are both economically and environmentally justified

real rigidities and real exchange rate volatility abstract this paper shows that certain real rigidities can help explain high volatility of real exchange rates relative to other macroeconomic aggregates an international real business cycle model is used to demonstrate that real exchange rate volatility increases if i it is costly to move labor between sectors and ii the consumption of tradable goods requires distribution services model dynamics are generated by shocks to productivity and preferences based on sectoral output employment and consumption data from g 7 countries the introduction of intersectoral adjustment and distribution costs substantially increases the real exchange rate volatility generated by the model

sectoral adjustment costs and real exchange rate dynamics in a two sector dependent economy abstract this paper develops a two sector model in which intersectoral capital movements involve adjustment costs expressed as capital lost in the transformation process these costs have important consequences for the dynamics of capital accumulation and particularly for real exchange rate dynamics persistent deviations of the real exchange rate from its equilibrium are derived and for plausible values of the adjustment cost parameters are consistent with the observed degree of real exchange rate persistence for low adjustment costs the dynamics are qualitatively similar to those of the standard heckscher ohlin technology for high adjustment costs the model converges to the specific factors model thus our framework includes these two standard models as polar extremes

optimal pricing of depletable replaceable resources the case of landfill tipping fees abstract we develop a general model for pricing a depletable replaceable asset and discuss its application in determining optimal tipping fees for a sanitary landfill we show that the optimal fee includes a component that grows at the real interest rate as space in the landfill is depleted and then drops when a new landfill is built because the scarcity cost of landfill space increases as the landfill is filled it may be optimal to delay a waste reduction program such as recycling composting or incineration until the landfill is partially full

labour hoarding price rigidity and the theory of imperfect competition under uncertain demand it is shown that a monopolistic firm under uncertainty may be inclined to keep some of its output unsold when demand is low this gives rise to changes in conventional results under uncertainty a risk neutral monopolistic firm produces more than in a deterministic environment and it refuses to sell its total output when demand is low because the marginal revenue could become negative or lower than the cost of selling the product moreover in this framework prices are shown to be more rigid downwards than upwards the model also provides a new explanation for labour hoarding jel classification d24 d42

the newsboy problem under progressive multiple discounts abstract previous research on the newsboy problem is based on the assumption that excess inventory is either discounted once and sold or disposed of real world settings especially in the apparel industry involve many cases where multiple discounts are used under multiple discounts a retailer has a series of discounts that are progressively used as the product remains on the shelf in this paper we formulate and solve a newsboy problem with multiple e discounts the new problem is solved with the objectives of 1 maximizing the expected profit and 2 maximizing the probability of achieving a target profit we show that multiple discounts when possible provide higher expected profit than using a single discount we verify the analytical results using numerical integration and illustrate the results with numerical examples

real exchange rate dynamics the role of elastic labor supply abstract empirical evidence suggests that the flexibility of labor supply is closely related to the dynamic adjustment of the real exchange rate this paper investigates this relationship in a two sector dependent economy model while the long run equilibrium real exchange rate is independent of the elasticity of labor supply our analysis confirms that the nature of the labor supply can be a crucially important determinant of its short run dynamics the extent to which this is so depends to some degree on the source of the underlying structural change that is driving the dynamics of the real exchange rate numerical simulations confirm that this mechanism may help explain the larger short run volatility and more rapid convergence typically associated with developing countries having less flexible labor markets

dynamics of the trade balance and the terms of trade the j curve the authors provide a theoretical interpretation of two features of international data the countercyclical movements in net exports and the tendency for the trade balance to be negatively correlated with current and future movements in terms of trade but positively correlated with past movements they document the same properties in a two country stochastic growth model in which trade fluctuations reflect in large part the dynamics of capital formation the authors find that their general equilibrium perspective is essential the relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade depends critically on the source of fluctuations copyright 1994 by american economic association

measurement of natural and cyclical excess capacity in china s coal industry abstract overcapacity is a persistent problem in china s economy previous de capacity measures based on the quantity of the total excess capacity have failed to prevent the recurrence of increasingly worse overcapacity to solve this problem we attempt to quantitatively analyze china s excess coal capacity by dividing it into the long term natural excess capacity and short term cyclical excess capacity using the state space model and kalman filter algorithm the results show that china s excess coal capacity can indeed be divided into natural excess capacity and cyclical excess capacity and they have different causes fluctuations roles and effects on the price in 1995 2001 cyclical excess capacity was the main factor of overcapacity but in 2002 2015 natural excess capacity played a key role cyclical excess capacity has a negative effect on the price whereas natural excess capacity has little effect on it therefore policy makers should focus on the causes the fluctuations and the roles of natural excess and cyclical excess in addition to those of the total excess capacity they should also consider the relationship between the capacity and price based on the different effects of the natural excess capacity and cyclical excess capacity on the price

asymmetric adjustment costs in non linear labour demand models for the netherlands and u k manufacturing sectors the costs of hiring a worker generally differ in size from the firing costs this article investigates optimal labour demand schedules for production and nonproduction workers of firms that operate under uncertainty and face asymmetric costs of adjusting their workforce in the empirical part generalised methods of moments gmm estimates of the structural parameters of the euler conditions for production and nonproduction workers are presented together with specification and structural stability tests using time series data of the netherlands and uk manufacturing sectors we find that asymmetric adjustment costs play an important role in the explanation of unbalanced labour demand between upward and downward movements of the business cycle moreover hiring costs exceed firing costs of production workers whereas firing costs exceed hiring costs of nonproduction workers

structural adjustment to a terms of trade disturbance the role of relative prices abstract this paper investigates the impact of a terms of trade disturbance on a small economy which responds gradually to changes in relative prices the key intertemporal link is as in dornbusch 1983 between the price of nontraded goods the real interest rate savings and the current account if the traded and nontraded goods are bad substitutes in consumption then an improvement in the terms of trade leads to a transitory current account surplus and conversely international capital mobility reduces the impact of a terms of trade disturbance on relative prices and also reduces the speed with which the economy adjusts to the disturbance

intertemporal rules with variable speed of adjustment an application to u k manufacturing employment this paper presents a procedure to estimate intertemporal dynamic decision rules where adjustment costs are assumed to be variable the estimation is based on the euler equation for purposes of illustration the authors concentrate on an employment function for the u k manufacturing sector where they find very significant effects of some variables that influence adjustment costs finally they point out an empirical result that has interesting implications when evaluating tests of efficient bargain models copyright 1989 by royal economic society

landfill construction and capacity expansion we study the optimal capacity and lifetime of landfills taking into account their sequential nature such an optimal capacity is characterized by the so called optimal capacity condition particular versions of this condition are obtained for two alternative settings first if all the landfills are to have the same capacity and second if each of them is allowed to have a different capacity in the second case we obtain an optimal control problem with mixed elements of both continuous and discrete time the resulting optimization problems involve dividing a time horizon of planning into several subintervals of endogenously decided length the results obtained may be useful to address other economic problems such as private and public investments consumption decisions on durable goods etc

excess labor and the business cycle this paper compares the medoff fay estimates of labor hoarding during troughs which are based on data from manufacturing plants with aggregate estimates of excess labor on hand the two sets of estimates seem consistent which provides a strong argument in favor of the excess labor hypothesis this is one of the few examples in macroeconomics where a hypothesis has been so strongly confirmed using detailed micro data this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abs this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

are productivity fluctuations due to real supply shocks abstract shapiro 1987 draws support for real business cycle theories from the behavior of cost based and output based measures of productivity this evidence is examined and shown to rely on spurious correlations

price stickiness and the contractionary effect of technology shocks abstract we derive a measure of technological change from a dynamic cost minimization model that controls for imperfect competition increasing returns and unobserved factor utilization we estimate this measure using highly detailed panel data of a representative sample of italian manufacturing firms for the period 1984 1997 our key finding is that technological improvements result in a contraction of labor input on impact in principle this result can be reconciled with the transmission mechanism of flexible price models by resorting to reorganization and reallocation effects on the other hand however it is consistent with the predictions of a sticky price model using survey information on the frequency of price revisions we corroborate the latter interpretation by showing that the contractionary effect of technology shocks is much stronger for firms with stickier prices

intertemporal depletion of resource sites by spatially distributed users mineral deposits and other exhaustible resources are scattered around the globe as are their users yet the theory for analyzing depletion of such resources assumes that all resource sites and all users are located in the same place when applying the theory therefore one is forced to disregard what often seems to be an important real world consideration our purpose here is to generalize harold hotelling s 1931 theory of exhaustible resources to accommodate situations in which resource sites and their users are spatially distributed our analysis has many applications it can be applied to a conventional exhaustible resource like oil alternatively it can be applied to an unconventional exhaustible resource like scarce landfill space shipments of solid waste to landfills in other states or countries have become a prominent public policy issue eduardo ley et al 2000 finally our analysis can be applied in situations where the space reflects not geographical location but characteristics of the resource e g the sulfur content hardness and so forth of coal which users find distinctive 2 only two theoretical papers in resource economics have introduced spatial considerations 3 jean jacques laffont and michel moreaux 1986 studied the extraction of resources from sites located along a line segment with all users at one end charles kolstad 1994 was the first to consider spatially distributed users in his formulation consumers are distributed uniformly along a line segment with resource sites at each end kolstad s approach although innovative requires that the set of users be parti

theoretical foundations for sticky wages abstract the paper compares three different types of theoretical explanation of sticky wages they are implicit contracts efficiency wage models and insider outsider models it then reconsiders keynes rationale for sticky wages which focuses on relative wage issues finally the paper considers possible directions for future research

inventories employment and hours abstract this paper develops a model that integrates inventory and labor decisions we extend a model of inventory behavior to include a detailed specification of the role of labor input in the production process distinguishing between employment hours and effort per worker we estimate jointly the euler equations for inventories and employment a labor compensation schedule and an hours requirement function with the cross equation restrictions imposed the econometric results shed light on several important topics including the shape of the marginal cost of output the role of labor hoarding as an explanation of pro cyclical productivity and the persistence of inventory stocks

excess labour and the business cycle a comparative study of japan germany the united kingdom and the united states against the background of firm specific human capital theory this paper investigates empirically the relative propensity of manufacturing industries in japan germany the united kingdom and the united states to hold excess labour over the business cycle both stock and utilization dimensions of the labour input are integrated into the study throughout discussion is linked to earlier research that has analysed the relative international performance of the japanese labour market

transition and enterprise restructuring the role of budget constraints and bankruptcy costs the focus of analysis is on the impact of financial leverage as a measure of bankruptcy costs on enterprise restructuring based on budget constraints in the economy data of bulgarian manufacturing firms allow comparison of firm behavior under soft and hard budget constraints as distinguished by the inception of a currency board in 1997 controlling for change in sales firm size and type of ownership statistically significant relationship between financial leverage and firm restructuring through labor adjustments is found to exist under hard budget constraints only

the single item newsboy problem with dual performance measures and quantity discounts abstract this paper considers models for the single item newsboy problem with quantity discount and the following dual performance measure maximize the expected profit subject to a constraint that the probability of achieving a target profit level is no less than a predetermined risk level we also consider two types of quantity discount all unit and incremental for our models with zero shortage cost a closed form solution for determining the optimal order quantity is derived however models with positive shortage cost can only be solved numerically

flexible waste management under uncertainty in this paper we use stochastic dynamic programming to model the choice of a municipality which has to design an optimal waste management program under uncertainty about the price of recyclables in the secondary market the municipality can by undertaking an irreversible investment adopt a flexible program which integrates the existing landfill strategy with recycling keeping the option to switch back to landfilling if profitable we determine the optimal share of waste to be recycled and the optimal timing for the investment in such a flexible program we find that adopting a flexible program rather than a non flexible one the municipality i invests in recycling capacity under circumstances where it would not do so otherwise ii invests earlier and iii benefits from a higher expected net present value c 2013 elsevier b v all rights reserved less

why real wages do not fall when there is unemployment abstract erroneous anticipations of fiscal policy results in involuntary unemployment if mutually agreeable unemployment may be eradicated by recontracting the real wage and employment level however if labor demand is inelastic unit elastic or within a bounded elastic range unemployment persists

intersectoral labor mobility and the growth of the service sector one of the most striking changes in the u s economy over the past 50 years has been the growth in the service sector between 1950 and 2000 service sector employment grew from 57 to 75 percent of total employment however over this time the real hourly wage in the service sector grew only slightly faster than in the goods sector in this paper we assess whether or not the essential constancy of the relative wage implies that individuals face small costs of switching sectors and we quantify the relative importance of labor supply and demand factors in the growth of the service sector we specify and estimate a two sector labor market equilibrium model that allows us to address these empirical issues in a unified framework our estimates imply that there are large mobility costs output in both sectors would have been double their current levels if these mobility costs had been zero in addition we find that demand side factors that is technological change and movements in product and capital prices were responsible for the growth of the service sector

a risk tolerance analysis for a joint price differentiation and inventory decisions problem with demand leakage effect abstract price differentiation is a commonly used practice in revenue management rm to improve a firm s profitability however most studies in the literature have considered a risk neutral firm to demonstrate the benefits of price differentiation the main contribution of this paper is in considering several important objectives while determining the optimal product prices and order production quantities for a risk adjusted firm with demand leakage effects in the presence of a price dependent stochastic demand the objectives considered include the maximization of a firm s expected profit and maximizing the probability of exceeding the risk adjusted expected revenue closed form expressions for optimal product prices and production quantities are derived for several of these objectives a numerical study is also presented to calibrate the impact of a firm s risk tolerance and other factors such as demand leakage market demand variability on the firm s profitability and its optimal decision

the newsvendor problem review and directions for future research in this paper we review the contributions to date for analyzing the newsvendor problem our focus is on examining the specific extensions for analyzing this problem in the context of modeling customer demand supplier costs and the buyer risk profile more specifically we analyze the impact of market price marketing effort and stocking quantity on customer demand how supplier prices can serve as a coordination mechanism in a supply chain setting integrating alternative supplier pricing policies within the newsvendor framework and how the buyer s risk profile moderates the newsvendor order quantity decision for each of these areas we summarize the current literature and develop extensions finally we also propose directions for future research

accounting for u s real exchange rate changes this study measures the proportion of u s real exchange rate movements that can be accounted for by movements in the relative prices of nontraded goods the decomposition is done at all possible h

restricting the trash trade in early 1999 the mayor of new york city announced a plan for exporting most of his city s waste about 13 000 tons per day to other states the responses escalated an already growing war of words about interstate waste shipments a pennsylvania state legislator bluntly called the mayor s plan irresponsible and the governor of new jersey labeled it a direct assault on her state a spokesperson for new york city s department of sanitation coolly staked out the city s position you can t stop interstate commerce if virginia is the least expensive place to deliver this solid waste then that is where it is going to go the response was swift various legislators joined environmental activists to send 50 pounds of trash to the mayor s office led by the governor s efforts the virginia general assembly subsequently responded with proposed legislation to restrict significantly imports of waste see r h melton 1998 virginia s legislative proposal came on the heels of numerous similar proposals by other states to which large shipments of waste are transported interstate shipments of waste involve almost the entire nation 47 states export waste and 44 states import waste and represent nearly 1 billion annually in disposal and transportation fees since the early 1990 s these shipments have increased by more than 30 percent as officials in importing states have sought to curb these flows the u s supreme court has repeatedly struck down their proposed restrictions as violations of the interstate commerce clause in response the congress has advanced proposals to exempt waste from jurisdiction of that clause to date however very little is known about the positive and normative effects of the various proposals to restrict municipal solid waste transshipments how are the effects of restrictions likely to be distributed among the owners of waste disposal facilities and the users of these services given that the northeast is a net exporter and the midwest is a net importer of waste are the effects likely to differ among regions of the country in this paper we model the interstate market for municipal solid waste and evaluate the potential economic effects of public policies proposed to restrict waste flows these restrictions include local and state requirements stipulating where waste must be landfilled prohibitions on the import or export of waste across state boundaries quantitative limits on these flows and extra fees levied on imported waste to our knowledge this research is the first to evaluate these proposals quantitatively we develop both a conceptual and a computable economic model of the use over time of spatially differentiated resources characteristics which well describe the nation s landfill facilities landfills rather than recycling or other disposal options are the dominant destination of most interstate shipments the model characterizes the efficient intertemporal allocation of spatially distributed waste disposal capacity among users who are also spatially distributed in addition

organizational and financial correlates of a contrarian human resource investment strategy correlates of the contrarian investment strategy of countercyclical hiring were investigated through the use of regression models that explain variance in four measures of such hiring at the indi

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

animal spirits through creative destruction we show how a schumpeterian process of creative destruction can induce rational herd behavior by entrepreneurs across diverse sectors as if fueled by animal spirits consequently a multisector economy in which productivity improvements are made by independent profit seeking entrepreneurs exhibits regular booms slowdowns and downturns as part of the long run growth process our cyclical equilibrium has higher average growth but lower welfare than the corresponding acyclical one we show how a negative relationship can emerge between volatility and growth across cycling economies and assess the extent to which our model matches several features of actual business cycles

firm leverage consumer demand and employment losses during the great recession this article argues that firms balance sheets were instrumental in the transmission of consumer demand shocks during the great recession using micro level data from the u s census bureau we find that establishments of more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger employment losses in response to declines in local consumer demand these results are not driven by firms being less productive having expanded too much prior to the great recession or being generally more sensitive to fluctuations in either aggregate employment or house prices likewise at the county level we find that counties with more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger declines in employment in response to local consumer demand shocks accordingly firms balance sheets also matter for aggregate employment our results suggest a possible role for employment policies that target firms directly besides conventional stimulus