the inverted pyramid a neo ricardian view on the economy environment relationship abstract in ecological economics natural resources which may contribute only a small amount to gdp are viewed as fundamental to the functioning of the economy they are sometimes pictured as sitting at the base of an inverted pyramid with the rest of the economy balanced on top of them in this paper we show that when prices are set by markup a standard heterodox assumption then the inverted pyramid picture of the economy emerges naturally in a neo ricardian model we demonstrate the use of the model with brief applications to biophysical economics the paper is one of a growing number that use heterodox macroeconomics to address questions in ecological economics

why do women still earn less than men decomposing the dutch gender pay gap 1996 2006 despite major improvements in women s labour market attachment women still earn considerably less than men international research shows that the persistence of the gender pay gap may be due to the fact that although the gap in characteristics between men and women is diminishing changes in the wage structure counteract this change this article will study whether this swimming upstream phenomenon is also playing a role in the rather slow convergence between male and female wages in the netherlands our results indicate that this is not the case most of the changes in the dutch wage structure have been rather favourable to women the lacking convergence in wages has to be explained from the fact that despite the favourable changes the dutch wage structure still contains a considerable implicit gender bias

idiosyncratic variation of treasury bill yields i document a dramatic increase in the importance of two types of variation in treasury bill yields beginning in the early 1980s the first is idiosyncratic variation in individual short maturity less than three months bill yields the second is a common component in treasury bill yields that is not shared by yields on other instruments such as short maturity privately issued instruments or longer maturity treasury notes and bonds some evidence suggests the first type reflects increased market segmentation these results have important implications for the calibration and testing of no arbitrage term structure models and interpreting tests of the expectations hypothesis united states treasury bill yields play a central role in economists efforts to understand the behavior of financial markets the focus on treasury bills is driven by the belief that bill yields can be viewed as benchmarks from which yields on other debt instruments are derived for example in no arbitrage models of the default free term structure the stochastic properties of the hypothetical instantaneous interest rate determine bond prices researchers often construct and evaluate these models using short maturity bill yields as proxies for instantaneous interest rates similarly bill yields are frequently used to test the expectations hypothesis of the term structure 2 economists standard pricing models for default risky securities also view treasury yields as building blocks in such models yields on default risky securities depend at least in part on the yields of default free securities and the underlying stochastic default process therefore yields on treasury bills have been used in studies of the effects of monetary policy on the business cycle not because bills are intrinsically critical to the economy but because

structural changes and sustainability a selected review of the empirical evidence abstract the paper offers a review of selected topics in the empirical literature on structural change and sustainability we focus on aspects of structural change that directly affect emissions and energy intensity changes of the sectoral composition of economies trade and international fragmentation of production technological change and innovation and demand we identify several empirical facts first only a few countries have experienced a decoupling between growth and emissions due to proportionately faster growth rather than greater energy efficiency second the long term shift from manufacturing to services has not led in all cases to the de materialisation of economies and a lower environmental burden exploitation of energy efficiency increases depends on the ability of the service sectors to incorporate technical changes to reduce energy intensity third global trade and energy and emissions intensity trends support the pollution haven hypothesis which predicts displacement of the environmental burden from developed to emerging countries the pursuit by developing countries of a long term strategy of trading jobs for emissions is likely to exacerbate the asymmetry related to emissions intensities between developed and less developed economies the review should inform debate on environmental policy within the broader context of innovation and development policies

the implications of industrial development for diversification of fuels abstract the central role of energy in economic growth and development is substantiated by both theory and data much of the analysis of energy in economics has focused on the study of the aggregate output here we deviate from this approach and study the role of fuel diversification in industrial development we build the energy space describing the space of energy technologies which a country can use in the production of manufacturing goods as countries grow they diversify their industries producing more diverse products over time we show that the process is accompanied by diversification of fuels which countries use in the manufacturing sector in particular countries move in the energy space by adopting novel fuels while their movements can be linked to structural changes in the industry over time countries build unique production capabilities which drives divergence in fuel diversity between countries our results provide insight into the limits of fuel substitution in the manufacturing sector as well as they carry important implications for the assessment of potential reductions in co 2 emissions in the future

optimal investment policies with exhaustible resources an information based model an information based model of the optimal control type is developed using concepts from information theory to explore the dynamics of fossil resource exhaustion and the phenomenon of substitution by other forms of capital and technological knowledge all exhaustible resources stocks and forms of capital and knowledge are taken to be equivalent to forms of information in the physical sense it is shown that with optimal policies the planning period or cycle has several distinct phases with different optimal investment patterns the model has two important qualitative implications 1 economic growth rates are inherently discontinuous and 2 the model predicts an evolutionary structural change viz the creation of a new sector in response to the progressive exhaustion or obsolescence of previously essential resources or capital stocks a multiperiod extension is suggested leading to a tentative explanation for the kondratieff long wave phenomenon

dematerialization decoupling and productivity change abstract the prospects for long term sustainability depend on whether and how much we can absolutely decouple economic output from total energy and material throughput while relative decoupling has occurred that is resource use has grown less quickly than the economy absolute decoupling has not raising the question whether it is possible this paper proposes a novel explanation for why decoupling has not happened historically drawing on a recent theory of cost share induced productivity change and an extension of post keynesian pricing theory to natural resources cost share induced productivity change and pricing behavior set up two halves of a dynamic which we explore from a post keynesian perspective in this dynamic resource costs as a share of gdp move toward a stable level at which the growth rate of resource productivity is typically less than the growth rate of gdp this provides a parsimonious explanation of the prevalence of relative over absolute decoupling the paper then presents some illustrative applications of the theory

quantitative versus qualitative growth with recyclable resource we reassess the issue of limits to growth in an endogenous growth model of a decentralized economy where final productions require a recyclable essential material input the model follows a material balance approach and relies on technological assumptions consistent with the material balance principle and on explicit distinction between the material content and the quality of produced goods growth follows from research activities that allow firms to improve the quality of their output and to reduce the material resource intensiveness of their production process even though recycling is assumed perfect we show that 1 the material balance constraint affect the whole transitory dynamics of the growth process 2 quantitative growth i e positive growth of material output can only be a transitory phenomenon long term economic growth taking exclusively the form of perpetual improvements in the quality of final goods a long term growth path is characterized by constant values of material variables or in a less favorable scenario by a constant negative growth rate of those variables we establish the existence conditions of a growth path based on quality improvements and constant material variables it may fail to exist in a decentralized framework even though it is quite feasible from a purely physical point of view

swimming upstream floating downstream comparing women s relative wage progress in the united states and denmark applying a new decomposition method to u s psid and danish longitudinal sample data the authors compare how u s and danish gender wage gaps developed between 1983 and 1995 in denmark they find the wage gap widened because the worsening in women s relative returns to observable human capital attributes as well as in their ranking relative to men in unobserv able productive attributes more than offset their wage gains from improved observable qualifications relative to men s in the united states in contrast the gender convergence in qualifications offset adverse influences including in creasing wage dispersion throughout the labor market to result in a narrowing of the gap the largest increase in the gap in denmark was experienced by women in the top earnings decile and the largest decline in the gap in the united states affected those at the top and in the middle of the distribution

a theory of economic growth with material energy resources and dematerialization interaction of three growth mechanisms the nature of energy and material resources in a non optimizing growth theory framework is clarified this involves two modifications of the conventional theory firstly multiple feedback mechanisms or growth engines are identified such that the impact of the cost of production through demand on growth is accounted for secondly a production function distinguishes between resource use technical efficiency and value creation the resulting model is analytically solved under the condition of a constant growth rate given model complexity numerical experiments are performed as well providing relevant insights to the academic and political debates on environmental kuznets curves and dematerialization

the impacts of china s household consumption expenditure patterns on energy demand and carbon emissions towards 2050 abstract this paper explores how china s household consumption patterns over the period 2005 2050 influence the total energy demand and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in two baseline scenarios and how it influences carbon prices as well as the economic cost in the corresponding carbon mitigation scenarios to this end we first put forward two possible household consumption expenditure patterns up to 2050 using the working leser model taking into account total expenditure increase and urbanization for comparison both expenditure patterns are then incorporated in a hybrid recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model the results reveal that as income level increases in the coming decades the direct and indirect household energy requirements and co2 emissions would rise drastically when household expenditure shifts from material products and transport to service oriented goods around 21 000 mtce 1 of primary energy and 45 billion tons of co2 emissions would be saved over the 45 year period from 2005 to 2050 moreover carbon prices in the dematerialized mitigation scenario would fall by 13 in 2050 thus reducing the economic cost

the end of the month as a preferred habitat a test of operational efficiency in the money market this paper argues that an aggregate preferred habitat for investors exists on or about the last day of the calendar month due to standardizations in the nation s payments system resulting in a concentrated flow of funds on this date thus equilibrium yield discounts are predicted for securities maturing on such dates empirical tests on monthly and daily treasury bill data support the principal hypothesis as well as several ancillary hy potheses the results have implications for treasury debt management for the short term cash and debt management practices of businesses and banks and for the empirical esti mation of daily weekly or monthly return premiums on risky securities

oil consumption and economic efficiency a comparative analysis of advanced developing and emerging economies abstract this paper investigates the economic efficiency oil consumption relationship in 42 countries during the period 1986 2006 in a first stage by using dea window analysis countries economic efficiencies are obtained in a second stage an econometric analysis based on robust gmm estimators reveals an inverted u shape relationship between oil consumption and economic efficiency in order to capture heterogeneities among countries development stages the analysis has been separated into two groups advanced economies and developing emerging economies the results show that advanced economies have much higher turning points compared to emerging and developing economies it appears that oil consumption increases countries economic efficiency in addition the consumption patterns of oil products and its derivatives have changed through years and among countries the different turning points from the econometric analysis indicate the dependence of oil consumption in advanced economies higher turning points is driven mainly by household purchasing activities and their standards of living transport housing and water food etc finally it appears that oil consumption is the main driver behind the progress of industrialization and urbanization regardless of the country s development stage

liquidity maturity and the yields on u s treasury securities the efrect8 of aaaet liquidity on expected retuma for ts with infinite maturities toc ka are eumined for bonda treuury notes and bills with matched maturities of lellll than 6 months the yield to maturity ill higher on notes which have lower liquidity the yield di1ferential between notes and billa is a decreuing and convex function of the time to maturity the results provide a robult confirmation of the liquidity effect in auet pricing this paper studies empirically the effects of the liquidity of capital assets on their prices amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 proposed that liquidity affects asset prices because investors require a compensation for bearing transaction costs transaction costs paid whenever the asset is traded form a sequence of cash outflows the discounted value of this cost stream proxies for the value 1088 due to illiquidity which lowers the asset s value for any given cash flow that the asset generates 1 as a result the return on assets should be an increasing function of their illiquidity other things equal for stocks the illiquidity effect is expected to be strong because their transaction cost sequence is infinite amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 demonstrated that common stocks with lower liquidity yielded significantly higher average returns after controlling for risk and for other factors these results on the importance of liquidity in the pricing of stocks raise additional questions i does the liquidity effect depend on the specific controls used by amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 1 ii does illiquidity have a similarly strong effect on the pricing of bonds whose maturities are finite and iii if liquidity affects bond yields how is this effect related to the bond s time to maturity

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

wage structure and gender earnings differentials an international comparison using microdata to analyse the gender pay gap in ten industrialized nations we focus on the role of wage structure the prices of labour market skills in influencing the gender gap we find wage structure enormously important in explaining why the us gender gap is higher than that in most other countries we conclude that the us gap would be similar to that in sweden and australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their levels of wage inequality this finding reflects the larger penalty in the united states for those with low skill levels or employed in low wage sectors 650 o 75 the united states was amoung the countries with the largest differ entials oecd ilo usbls this paper uses microdata to analyse inter national differences in the gender pay gap among a sample of ten industrialized nations we focus particularly on explaining the surprisingly low ranking of the united states in comparison with other industrialized countries an advan tage of an international perspective is that countries vary considerably with respect to governmental policies women s relative labour market qualifications and wage setting institutions such variability allows one to infer reasons for differences in the pay gap and by implication the impact of alternative govern ment policies empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender differences in qualifications and on differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers i e labour market dis crimination analyses of trends over time in the gender differential within countries as well as inter country comparisons of gender earnings ratios have tended to emphasize these types of gender specific factors an innovative feature of our study is to focus on the role of wage structure as an additional factor influencing the gender gap to analyse the impact of wage structure we adapt a framework developed by juhn et al 1991 to analyse trends over time in race differentials in the united states our findings suggest that labour market institutions that affect overall wage inequality have an extremely impor tant effect on the gender earnings gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labour market skills measured and unmeasured and rents received for employment in par

materials capital direct indirect substitution and mass balance production functions a foundation is provided for a correct and accurate analysis of the relationship between monetary values and physical dimensions in economic production a distinction is proposed between direct and indirect substitution linked to this a classification is offered of various types of substitutability and complementarity relationships between production factors it is argued that the neoclassical production function may be consistent with mass balance but is unsuitable for a detailed and accurate understanding of changes in production that influence materials use for this purpose general production functions satisfying mass balance are formulated drawing upon the proposed classifications

will history repeat itself economic convergence and convergence in energy use patterns in this paper a difference in differences estimator on panel data for 30 developing and 21 industrialized countries is employed over the period 1971 2005 to examine how patterns of energy use characterized by the consumption of primary energy carriers sectoral energy use and carbon emissions are changing in the process of economic development for the average developing country in our sample the results indicate that economic catch up has been accompanied by above average growth of the use of most primary energy carriers the consumption of final energy in most sectors and total co2 emissions for industrialized countries we find that economic growth is partially decoupled from energy consumption and that above average rates of economic growth were accompanied by larger improvements in energy efficiency these results emphasize the need to identify the relevant engines of economic growth their implications for energy use and possibilities to achieve low carbon growth centered on productivity and efficiency improvements rather than on capital accumulation

feasibility and optimality of sustainable growth under materials balance abstract pollution from consumption and production is an inevitable part of economic processes we employ a materials balance approach and develop an endogenous growth theory with recycling activity to examine the evolution of the economic and environment systems this paper provides feasibility and optimality conditions for sustainable economic growth with rising environmental quality the fundamental condition of feasibility is that the flow of natural resources which eventually returns to the environment as waste and pollution has a negative growth rate in the long run

is the gender wage gap declining in the netherlands in this paper i try to answer the question whether the gender wage gap in the netherlands is declining i posed this question because on several other indicators labour market differences between men and women in the netherlands declined or disappeared altogether first of all the labour market participation of women has increased and women on the labour market are no longer a small minority second the difference in productive characteristics between men and women is disappearing third both product and labour markets have become increasingly competitive due to changes in regulation like anti trust laws which should have an effect on the gender wage gap contrary to these expectations i did not find a declining gender wage gap the data in dutch institute for labour studies osa labour supply panel show a steady gender gap of approximately nineteen per cent at most twenty five to thirty per cent of the gap can be explained by productivity differences the largest part of the gender wage gap is due

comparison of energy transitions in the united states and developing and industrializing economies summary we compare the energy transitions of the united states with several developing and industrializing economies the analysis reveals three important differences between trends first the developing world experiences energy related transitions at lower levels of income with faster rates of change in conditions over time and in a more simultaneous fashion than that of the united states second over similar income ranges i e segments of economic growth current developing economies are using less energy per capita than the united states did historically finally this more efficient economic growth translates into lower systemic environmental impact per capita than that of the united states

the puzzling price behavior of treasury bills that mature at the turn of calendar months abstract this paper documents the unusual price behavior of treasury bills that mature at the turn of calendar months there is a kink in the yield curve as it crosses calendar months and this kink is most pronounced as the yield curve crosses between calendar years potential seasonality in the spot rate of interest could not explain these results nor could they be explained by the mispricing of either the last bill or first bill in a month the exceptionally large premium on the first bill in a month tended to be earned throughout the lifetime of the bill

the rebound effect an evolutionary perspective the rebound effect presents a major flaw in to energy conservation policies that aim to reduce energy consumption through energy efficiency development economics and energy related disciplines have thus far developed tools to measure such a phenomenon this paper attempts to explain this seeming paradox using a thermodynamic evolutionary theoretical framework in addition to the traditional economic approach we here propose that evolutionary systems such as biological or even economic systems may rearrange themselves in a more complex fashion under the pressure of an increasing flux of energy driven by the higher conversion rate of greater efficiency higher complexity due to a greater energy density rate counteracts the positive effects of energy efficiency we investigated this hypothesis in the context of the road freight transport system and the productive structure the qualitative analysis in this paper further substantiated by figures provides a link between the dynamics of production patterns and the effect of efficiency in the light of the macro economic effects of increased energy demand the analysis departs from a rigorous investigation of the actual energy efficiency evolution in the road freight transport system to develop through a survey of the subsequent worldwide economic revolution in the production system it is then shown how outsourcing the key feature of globalization can be identified as the main source of traffic density growth finally four paradigms are used to stress how the shift in the production system must be considered a leap in structural complexity that consequently serves to increase the frequency of components interactions

liquidity taxes and short term treasury yields this article investigates differences in yields on identical treasury notes and bills and shows that they reflect differences in liquidity immediacy risk and taxes it proposes an empirical measure for differences in the liquidity risk of notes and bills the volatility ofthe underlying rate times the ratio of bills turnover to notes turnover because differential taxes affect sellers but not buyers of bills and notes the results reject free of informational problems the hypothesis that the notes demand curve is horizontal note bill yield differences also decrease with inventories of notes the less liquid asset

further evidence on segmentation in the treasury bill market abstract this paper shows that differences in supplies of 13 and 12 week treasury bills have statistically significant and economically meaningful effects on their yield differentials from january 1985 through october 1991 controlling for the general slope of the treasury bill yield curve the tendency of bills maturing at month ends to have lower yields and the tendency of bills whose supply is augmented by cash management bills to have higher yields the finding that market participants do not arbitrage away yield differentials that owe to differences in supplies indicates that demand curves for individual bills are downward sloping and that segmentation in the treasury bill market is more pervasive than previously documented

family policies wage structures and gender gaps sources of earnings inequality in 20 countries this study uncovers an unexpected effect of family friendly policies on women s economic attainments using hierarchical linear models the analysis combines individual level data obtained from th

swimming upstream trends in the gender wage differential in the 1980s using michigan panel study of income dynamics data for 1979 and 1988 we analyze how a falling gender wage gap occurred despite changes in wage structure unfavorable to low wage workers the decrease is traced to gender specific factors which more than counterbalanced changes in measured and unmeasured prices working against women supply shifts net of demand were unfavorable for women generally and hurt high skilled more than middle and low skilled women by analyzing wages we find support for the notion of a gender twist in supply and demand having its largest negative effect on high skilled women