the role of energy in productivity growth the objective of this paper is to analyze the role of energy in the growth of productivity the special significance of energy in economic growth was first established in the classic study energy and the american economy 1850 1975 by sam schurr and his associates 1960 at resources for the future for the period from 1920 to 1955 schurr noted that energy intensity of production had fallen while both labor and total factor productivity were rising the simultaneous decline in energy intensity and labor intensity of production ruled out the possibility of explaining the growth of productivity solely on the basis of substitution of less expensive energy for more expensive labor since the quantity of both energy and labor inputs required for a given level of output had been reduced technical change is also a critical explanatory factor an alternative explanation for growth of output with declining energy and labor intensity required an examination of the character of technical change this examination was motivated by the fact that from 1920 to 1955 the utilization of electricity had expanded by a factor of more than ten while consumption of all other forms of energy only doubled the two key features of technical change during this period were that the thermal efficiency of conversion of fuels into electricity increased by a factor of three and that the unusual characteristics of electricity had made it possible to perform tasks in altogether different ways than if the fuels had to be used directly schurr 1983 p 3 schurr 1982 has recently extended the analysis of energy and the american economy through 1981 for the period through 1969 his conclusions are as follows although the inverse relationship between total factor productivity and energy intensity virtually disappeared during the 1953 1969 period it is still noteworthy that high rates of improvement in total factor productivity were essentially not associated with increases in energy intensity 1982 p 6 schurr 1982 has analyzed the experience of the u s economy in the aftermath of the oil embargo of 1973 he points out that energy intensity of production has fallen steadily since 1973 and that the rate of decline accelerated sharply after the second oil price shock in 1979 following the iranian revolution he goes on to point out that

is the energy led growth hypothesis valid new evidence from a sample of 85 countries abstract the energy growth literature contains a large number of discussions on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth the central debate focuses on whether energy consumption contributes or not to economic growth since it has direct implications for the formulation of strategic policies nevertheless current studies cannot provide a conclusive suggestion due to mixed causality results this inconclusive evidence is potentially attributed to model specifications and the stage of economic development of the countries under investigation hence this study attempts to empirically re investigate the validity of the energy led growth hypothesis using a different model specification and different stages of economic development for 85 selected countries around the globe overall although the causality results are mixed among countries we do find a systematic pattern in particular granger causality models with three and four variables are more likely to support the hypothesis compared to their counterparts that contain only two variables in addition both developed and developing countries are more likely to support the energy led growth hypothesis compared to the less developed or low income countries therefore causality results are very sensitive to the choice of the model specification along with the stages of economic development finally energy conservation policies should only focus on low income countries as these policies may not retard the process of economic growth

economic policy uncertainty and sovereign credit rating decisions panel quantile evidence for the eurozone we employ a panel quantile framework that quantifies the relative importance of quantitative and qualitative factors across the conditional distribution of sovereign credit ratings in the eurozone area we find that regulatory quality and competitiveness have a stronger impact for low rated countries whereas gdp per capita is a major driver of high rated countries a reduction in the current account deficit leads to a rating or outlook upgrade for low rated countries economic policy uncertainty impacts negatively on credit ratings across the conditional distribution however the impact is stronger for the lower rated countries in other words the creditworthiness of low rated countries takes a much bigger hit than that of high rated countries when european policy uncertainty is on the rise

the causality relationship between energy consumption and gdp in g 11 countries revisited abstract this paper explores whether energy conservation policies can be implemented in countries with the same level of development that is is restraining energy consumption without compromising economic growth feasible in all industrialized countries a new granger non causality testing procedure developed by toda and yamamoto 1995 journal of econometrics 66 225 250 is applied to re investigate the relationship if any between energy consumption and income in 11 major industrialized countries the results clearly do not support the view that energy consumption and income are neutral with respect to each other except in the case of the united kingdom germany and sweden where a neutral relationship is found bi directional causality in the united states and uni directional running from energy consumption to gdp in canada belgium the netherlands and switzerland are found this indicates that energy conservation may hinder economic growth in the latter five countries further the causality relationship appears to be uni directional but reversed for france italy and japan which implies that in these three countries energy conservation may be viable without being detrimental to economic growth

analyzing the analysts career concerns and biased earnings forecasts this paper examines the career concerns of security analysts we relate long histories of their earnings forecasts to job separations we find that relatively accurate past forecasts lead to favorable career outcomes such as remaining at or moving up to a high status large prestigious brokerage house controlling for accuracy optimistic forecasts relative to the consensus increase the chances of favorable job separations job separations depend much less on accuracy for analysts who cover stocks that are underwritten by their brokerage houses such analysts are also much more likely to be rewarded for optimistic forecasts than other analysts furthermore job separations were much less sensitive to accuracy and somewhat more sensitive to optimism during the stock market mania of the late 1990s these findings suggest that the well documented analyst forecast optimism bias is likely due to incentives to promote stocks

growth and renewable energy in europe a random effect model with evidence for neutrality hypothesis this is an empirical study on the causal relationship between economic growth and renewable energy for 27 european countries in a multivariate panel framework over the period 1997 2007 using a random effect model and including final energy consumption greenhouse gas emissions and employment as additional independent variables in the model empirical results do not confirm causality between renewable energy consumption and gdp although panel causality tests unfold short run relationships between renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions and employment the estimated cointegration factor refrains from unity indicating only a weak if any relationship between economic growth and renewable energy consumption in europe suggesting evidence of the neutrality hypothesis which can partly be explained by the uneven and insufficient exploitation of renewable energy sources across europe

energy consumption and economic growth revisited in african countries abstract the aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for 21 african countries over the period from 1970 to 2006 using recently developed panel cointegration and causality tests the countries are divided into two groups net energy importers and net energy exporters it is found that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between energy consumption real gdp prices labor and capital for each group of countries as well as for the whole set of countries this result is robust to possible cross country dependence and still holds when allowing for multiple endogenous structural breaks which can differ among countries furthermore we find that decreasing energy consumption decreases growth and vice versa and that increasing energy consumption increases growth and vice versa and that this applies for both energy exporters and importers finally there is a marked difference in the cointegration relationship when country groups are considered

cdos and the financial crisis credit ratings and fair premia abstract we study risk and return characteristics of cdos using the market standard models we find that fair spreads on cdo tranches are much higher than fair spreads on similarly rated corporate bonds our results imply that credit ratings are not sufficient for pricing which is surprising given their central role in structured finance markets this illustrates limitations of the rating methodologies that are solely based on real world default probabilities or expected losses and do not capture risk premia we also demonstrate that cdo tranches have large exposure to systematic risk and thus their ratings and prices are likely to decline substantially when credit conditions deteriorate

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from the commonwealth of independent states abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries of the commonwealth of independent states over the period 1991 2005 within a multivariate panel data framework based on pedroni 1999 pedroni 2004 heterogeneous panel cointegration test and corresponding error correction model cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the results of the error correction model reveal the presence of unidirectional causality from energy consumption to economic growth in the short run while bidirectional causality between energy consumption and economic growth in the long run thus the results lend support for the feedback hypothesis associated with the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

is energy intensity important for the productivity growth of eet adopters abstract energy efficient technologies eet have attracted strong interest because of their role in reducing environmental damage their adoption however remains rather low while their impact on productivity is substantial and differentiating with respect to technological characteristics energy intensity being such an obvious characteristic could be employed to classify eet adopters thus giving rise to two heterogeneous technologies i e those corresponding to firms of low and high energy consumption hence this paper examines the impact of energy intensity on the productivity growth of firms adopting eet in varying time intervals through a metafrontier based framework while also decomposing that impact in terms of technical efficiency and scale efficiency changes the analysis is complemented by examining the role of firm specific characteristics on the productivity growth through linear regression

does renewable and or non renewable energy consumption matter for total factor productivity tfp growth evidence from the brics abstract studies proved that output growth is mainly associated with the total factor productivity tfp growth and variables that affect the tfp have an important explanatory power on output in this regards the aim of this study is to examine the causal relationship between different types of energy consumption and tfp growth in the brics from 1992 to 2012 a panel bootstrap granger causality test by konya 2006 68 was employed to investigate the direction of possible connection between energy consumption and tfp growth results show that no remarkable causal link exists between renewable energy consumption and tfp growth in the brics however in the case of non renewables energy consumption creates a positive externality that contributes economic development in brazil and south africa by the growth of tfp as well as energy use itself in this respect policies that promote coal and non renewable electricity consumption in south africa and natural gas consumption in brazil may be beneficial for their economic development

estimating the linkage between energy efficiency and productivity abstract many analyses have referred to industrial productivity benefits associated with energy efficiency that are at least as great or larger than the energy benefits if plants with higher energy intensity also tend to have lower productivity then energy policy needs to consider this this study examines this issue for two segments of the glass industry using plant level data from the census bureau productivity is defined by the difference in best practice production efficiency as measured by data envelopment analysis dea this study uses regression analysis to estimate how differences in plant level electricity and fossil fuel intensity i e energy use per unit of production are attributable to differences in plant level productivity and other economic variables like energy prices and cumulative production in every case productivity differences between plants are statistically significant in explaining differences in plant energy intensity the coefficient that links productivity to energy efficiency yields a less than proportional impact for only one industry and fuel type for others the relationship is implies that a 1 increase in productivity increase energy efficiency by more than 1 this effect is statistically significant for flat glass but not container glass the estimates of the price and learning by doing coefficients seem reasonable but without imposing the assumption that all plants in the industry are equally productive this lends further credence to a significant relationship between productivity and energy efficiency

economic welfare impacts from renewable energy consumption the china experience over the last years renewable energy sources have increased their share on electricity generation of china due to environmental and security of supply concerns in this work author assesses the role of both the amount and share of renewable energy consumption in economic welfare using cobb douglas type production functions this assessment is carried out by multivariate ols and spss software for china from 1978 to 2008 results indicate that a 1 increase in renewable energy consumption rec increases real gdp by 0 120 gdp per capita by 0 162 per capita annual income of rural households by 0 444 and per capita annual income of urban households by 0 368 respectively the impact of renewable energy consumption share srec on economic welfare is insignificant and an increasing share of rec negatively affects economic welfare growth to a certain extent in this paper the cost structural demand accounting mechanism and policy reasons of renewable energy development are interpreted marginal effects analysis show that the shape of sound and robust renewable energy institutions and policies would matter for increasing the standards of economic welfare in the context of speeding up renewable energy development and increasing share of renewable energy consumption especially the goal oriented policy refinement should be addressed efficiently in improvement households income while increasing share of renewable energy consumption c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

collusion over the business cycle we present a theory of collusive pricing for markets in which demand alternates stochastically between fast growth boom and slow growth recession phases we show that 1 the most collusive prices are weakly procyclical countercyclical when demand growth rates are positively negatively correlated through time and 2 the amplitude of the collusive pricing cycle is larger when the expected duration of boom phases decreases and when the expected duration of recession phases increases we also offer a generalization of rotemberg and saloner s 1986 model interpreting their findings in terms of transitory demand shocks that occur within broader business cycle phases

bank ratings what determines their quality this paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks by the three largest rating agencies we interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on banks expected default frequencies our results suggest that on average large banks receive more positive bank ratings particularly from the agency to which the bank provides substantial securitization business these competitive distortions are economically significant and contribute to perpetuate the existence of too big to fail banks we also show that overall differential risk weights recommended by the basel accords for investment grade banks bear no significant relationship to empirical default probabilities harald hau sam langfield and david marques ibanez

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

letter from the editor in chief the jibs decade award integrating international acquisitions the 2009 jibs decade awardthe first issue of jibs each year begins with a reprint of the articlethat won the previous year s jibs decade award followed bya retrospective written by the author or authors and one ormore invited commentaries the 2009 award winning article is knowledge transfer in international acquisitions by henrikbresman julian birkinshaw and robert nobel published in 1999 jibs 30 3 the jibs decade award recognizes the most influential articlepublished in the volume 10 years ago the 2009 selectioncommittee members were stephen tallman chair torbenpedersen 2009 aib program chair john cantwell 2008 aibprogram chair and the jibs editor in chiefasanexofficiomember the award is presented by palgrave macmillan duringa special session honoring the authors at the annual meetingof the academy of international business aib the 2009 aibsession in san diego was chaired by thejibs editor in chief julianbirkinshawspokeonbehalfoftheauthors andalainverbeke and udo zander provided commentaries after the conference the presentations were revised sent out forsingle blind review to selected jibs area and consulting editors and also circulated among the authors to encourage cross fertilizing of ideas the end product i believe is a wonderful setof papers that should and will be read together and i suspectoften assigned as a set for phd seminars i thank all the area andconsulting editors who read these manuscripts and provided suchthoughtful comments for the authors the first paper in this issue of jibs is a reprint of the decadeaward winning article by bresman birkinshaw and nobel thearticle is a qualitative study of the post acquisition integrationprocess in three international acquisitions by swedish multi nationals the authors argue that successful acquisitions createa social community where two way knowledge sharing occursbetween the acquirer and acquired firms the reprinted article is followed by knowledge transfer ininternational acquisitions a retrospective by birkinshaw bresmanand nobel the retrospective explores the origins of their award winning article situating it in the knowledge based view of themultinational enterprise mne kogut zander 1993 they arguethat their paper makes three contributions to the internationalbusiness ib literature mapping out the territory comparing the

honest certification and the threat of capture abstract this paper derives conditions under which reputation enables certifiers to resist capture these conditions alone have strong implications for the industrial organization of certification markets 1 honest certification requires high prices that may even exceed the static monopoly price 2 honest certification exhibits economies of scale and constitutes a natural monopoly 3 price competition tends to a monopolization the results derive from a general principle of reputation models that favors concentration this principle implies benefits from specialization and explains specialized certifiers as efficient market institutions that sell reputation as a service to other firms

a non parametric analysis of productivity the case of u s and japanese manufacturing a nonparametric analysis of technology technical change and productivity is presented in the context of cost minimizing behavior a number of nonparametric tests concerning the existence and nature of technical change are applied to u s and japanese manufacturing data nonparametric measures of technical change are presented copyright 1990 by american economic association

a literature survey on energy growth nexus abstract this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of energy consumption economic growth and electricity consumption economic growth causality nexus the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of energy electricity in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of energy on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies a general observation from these studies is that the literature produced conflicting results and there is no consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of causality between energy consumption electricity consumption and economic growth as a policy implication to avoid from conflicting and unreliable results the authors may use the autoregressive distributed lags bounds test two regime threshold co integration models panel data approach and multivariate models including new variables such as real gross fixed capital formation labor force carbon dioxide emissions population exchange rates interest rates etc thus the authors should focus more on the new approaches and perspectives rather than by employing usual methods based on a set of common variables for different countries and different intervals of time

productivity growth and energy consumption in the nigerian manufacturing sector a panel data analysis this paper examines the impact of efficiency in energy consumption on the growth in productivity in the nigerian manufacturing sector the study utilizes a panel data technique covering a period of substantial energy price reviews in nigeria the study shows that for most industries productivity growth has been energy using whereas in a few attempts have been made to switch productivity growth towards energy saving however it will take some time for the effect of current energy pricing policy to permeate the whole manufacturing sector due to the high cost required to invest in energy saving equipment especially in the face of a rapid decline in real income coupled with high product prices

energy consumption and economic growth in central america evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for six central american countries over the period 1980 2004 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship based on the heterogeneous panel cointegration test by pedroni pedroni p 1999 critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 61 653 670 pedroni p 2004 panel cointegration asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the ppp hypothesis new results econometric theory 20 597 627 cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate the presence of both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis

good ipos draw in bad inelastic banking capacity and hot markets we posit that screening ipos requires specialized labor which is in fixed supply a sudden increase in demand for ipo financing increases the compensation of ipo screening labor this results in reduced screening encouraging sub marginal firms to enter the ipo market further fueling the demand for screening labor the model s conclusions are consistent with empirical findings of increased underpricing during hot markets positive correlation between issue volume and underpricing and with tipping points between hot and cold markets finally the model makes sharp predictions relating the ipo market to fundamental values of firms and to investment banking returns

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

a public good approach to credit ratings from concept to reality abstract from the onset of the 2008 2009 financial crisis to the subsequent european sovereign debt crisis credit rating agencies have been assigned considerable blame reforming the credit rating industry has hence become an important policy issue in addition to the regulatory efforts in the context of accepting the for profit business model of ratings there is a growing realization that credit ratings bear the characteristics of a public good financial market participants need reliable transparent and independent assessment of credit risks credit ratings are therefore better viewed as an infrastructure matter however the proposed regulations seem to have missed this point this paper introduces a new approach to credit ratings undertaken by the risk management institute at the national university of singapore that is predicated on the provision of credit ratings as a public good with a public good alternative in place the currently predominant for profit business model may be counterbalanced

energy consumption and gdp causality relationship in g 7 countries and emerging markets abstract the causality relationship between energy consumption and income is a well studied topic in energy economics this paper studies the time series properties of energy consumption and gdp and reexamines the causality relationship between the two series in the top 10 emerging markets excluding china due to lack of data and g 7 countries we discover bi directional causality in argentina causality running from gdp to energy consumption in italy and korea and from energy consumption to gdp in turkey france germany and japan hence energy conservation may harm economic growth in the last four countries

the asymmetric granger causality analysis between energy consumption and income in the united states abstract we investigated granger causality between variants of the energy consumption sources and gross domestic product gdp for the united state of america usa to accomplish this objective we utilized a recent approach of asymmetric granger causality developed by hatemi j for the period january 1973 october 2011 our results indicated presence of asymmetric granger causality between a few variants of energy consumption sources i e coal consumption cc natural gas consumption ng primary energy consumption pe and total renewable energy consumption tre and gdp all measured in growth rates additionally when positive shocks are analyzed we found the evidence of unidirectional granger causality running from gdp growth rate to growth rate of cc and from growth rate of total electricity end use ec to gdp growth rate additionally we find significant evidence of bidirectional granger causality between ng and gdp pe and gdp and tre and gdp all measured in growth rates however in case of negative shocks we find that the null hypothesis that growth rates in cc and tre do not granger cause gdp growth rate is rejected at 5 level of significance these results have important implications for research analysts as well as policy makers of the usa economy

asset portfolio securitizations and cyclicality of regulatory capital this paper analyzes the level and cyclicality of regulatory bank capital for asset portfolio securitizations in relation to the cyclicality of capital requirements for the underlying loan portfolio as under basel ii iii we find that the cyclicality of capital requirements is higher for i asset portfolio securitizations relative to primary loan portfolios ii ratings based approach rba relative to the supervisory formula approach iii given the rba for a point in time rating methodology relative to a rate and forget rating methodology and iv under the passive reinvestment rule relative to alternative rules capital requirements of the individual tranches reveal that the volatility of aggregated capital charges for the securitized portfolio is triggered by the most senior tranches this is due to the fact that senior tranches are more sensitive to the macroeconomy an empirical analysis provides evidence that current credit ratings are time constant and that economic losses for securitizations have exceeded the required capital in the recent financial crisis

the value of delegated quality control this paper studies the case in which a firm delegates quality control to an independent monitor in a repeated game consumers trust provides incentives to acquire information about whether the good is defective and withhold defective goods from sale if third party reports are observable to consumers delegation lessens the first and dispenses with the second moral hazard concern but also creates agency costs internal quality control is optimal only if trades are sufficiently frequent and consumer information is sufficiently precise this result holds in the presence of the possibility of collusion fully non verifiable presale information and economies of scale in external quality control

renewable energy consumption and income in emerging economies abstract increased economic growth and demand for energy in emerging economies is creating an opportunity for these countries to increase their usage of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates two empirical models of renewable energy consumption and income for a panel of emerging economies panel cointegration estimates show that increases in real per capita income have a positive and statistically significant impact on per capita renewable energy consumption in the long term a 1 increase in real income per capita increases the consumption of renewable energy per capita in emerging economies by approximately 3 5 long term renewable energy per capita consumption price elasticity estimates are approximately equal to 0 70

ratings quality over the business cycle credit rating agencies cras have long held that reputational concerns discipline their behavior the value of reputation however depends on economic fundamentals that vary over the business cycle in a model of ratings incorporating endogenous reputation and a market environment that varies we find that ratings quality is countercyclical specifically a cra is more likely to issue less accurate ratings when fee income is high competition in the labor market for analysts is tough and securities default probabilities are low persistence in economic conditions can diminish our results while mean reversion exacerbates them the presence of naive investors reduces overall quality but quality remains countercyclical finally we demonstrate that competition among cras yields similar results

cause and effect of renewable energy consumption on urbanization and economic growth in china s provinces and regions abstract renewable energy development is one of the cleaner production paths for china s transformation of urbanization and economic development recognizing the nexus among them may help china to formulate a targeted policy for efficient and clean energy utilization as well as for carbon reduction based on the panel data of 30 provinces and seven geographical regions over the period of 1997 2015 we apply a bootstrap panel causality test to explore the cause and effect of renewable energy consumption on urbanization and economic growth in china after a cross sectional dependence test and a slope homogeneity test we find that china s renewable energy consumption urbanization and economic growth in one region might be influenced by the others however no causality is found in 80 of provinces and 71 of geographical regions for the nexus of renewable energy consumption and urbanization and no causality is found in 53 of provinces and 43 of geographical regions for the nexus of renewable energy consumption and economic growth besides significant geographical differences are found for the nexus therefore the chinese government should not only strengthen a unified renewable energy management system to advocate regional cooperation but also give full play to the weak joint linkages and adopt differentiated renewable energy policies according to local conditions the interactive mechanism and a virtuous cycle among the three indicators should be established in the medium and long term to help china s energy use towards a cleaner transition

renewable energy and macroeconomic efficiency of oecd and non oecd economies abstract this article analyzes the effects of renewable energy on the technical efficiency of 45 economies during the 2001 2002 period through data envelopment analysis dea in our dea model labor capital stock and energy consumption are the three inputs and real gdp is the single output increasing the use of renewable energy improves an economy s technical efficiency conversely increasing the input of traditional energy decreases technical efficiency compared to non oecd economies oecd economies have higher technical efficiency and a higher share of geothermal solar tide and wind fuels in renewable energy however non oecd economies have a higher share of renewable energy in their total energy supply than oecd economies

the effects of openness trade orientation and human capital on total factor productivity abstract we study the effects of openness trade orientation and human capital on total factor productivity for a pooled sample of developed and developing countries total factor productivity emerges from a parsimonious specification of the aggregate production function potential determinants of total factor productivity include measures of openness trade orientation and human capital higher openness benefits total factor productivity outward oriented countries experience higher total factor productivity over and above the positive effect of openness human capital generally contributes positively to total factor productivity in poor countries however human capital interacts with openness to achieve a positive effect

total factor productivity differences appropriate technology vs efficiency abstract recent development and growth accounting studies have established that total factor productivity is an important source of cross country differences in income levels and growth rates this paper makes two contributions first it examines the sensitivity of the development accounting results to the cobb douglas specification of the production function second within the cobb douglas framework it weighs evidence of the two alternative explanations of total factor productivity differences the inefficiency view and the appropriate technology view to accomplish these tasks the world production frontier is estimated using a nonparametric deterministic approach known as data envelopment analysis i find that the fraction of income differences explained by physical and human capital increases from 32 to 55 when departing from the cobb douglas assumption there is also evidence consistent with the appropriate technology view countries with an inadequate mix of inputs are unable to access the most productive technologies moreover the world technology frontier appears to be shifting out faster at input combinations close to that of the rd it explains 43 of output variation in 1995 and its importance has increased over time

on the effect of aggregate uncertainty on certification intermediaries incentives to distort ratings abstract we analyze a certification intermediary s incentives to distort ratings in a model with a monopolistic profit maximizing certification intermediary a continuum of heterogeneous sellers and a competitive market of risk neutral buyers the value of a seller s good is known to the seller and observable by the certifier but not by buyers sellers can choose to get a rating the certification intermediary can reveal a signal of arbitrary precision about the quality of the good in contrast to the existing literature we allow aggregate uncertainty as in the existing literature one rating class is optimal however the certification intermediary does not generally choose a socially optimal cutoff the certifier is more likelyto be too lenient if the distribution of aggregate uncertainty has a lower mean a higher variance and is more left skewed it is more likely to be too strict if the opposite holds

reputation and competition this paper shows how competition generates reputation building behavior in repeated interactions when the product quality observed by consumers is a noisy signal of firms effort level there are two types of firms and good firms try to distinguish themselves from bad firms although consumers get convinced that firms which are repeatedly successful in providing high quality are good firms competition endogenously generates the outside option inducing disappointed consumers to leave firms this threat of exit induces good firms to choose high effort allowing good reputations to be valuable but its uncompromising execution forces good firms out of the market jel c7 d8

imperfect competition and reputational commitment abstract competition can both aid and hinder reputational commitments for quality these are self sustaining depending on future profits after maintaining or deviating from the commitment and on current costs of sustaining it competition can affect these three elements at different rates

traders vs relationship managers reputational conflicts in full service investment banks we present a model that explains why investment bankers struggle to manage conflicts of interest banks can build a type reputation for technical competence by performing complex deals that may not serve their clients interest on the other hand banks can sustain a behavioral reputation by refraining from doing so a behavioral reputation is a luxury reserved for banks that have proven their abilities the model sheds light on conflicts between the trading and advisory divisions of investment banks as well as the consequences of technological change for time variation in the relative strength of behavioral and type reputation concerns

renewable energy consumption and economic growth evidence from a panel of oecd countries abstract this study examines the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of twenty oecd countries over the period 1985 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship the heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run

contracting to compete for flows abstract we present a model in which asset managers design their contracts to attract flows of investor capital we find that they make their contracts depend on public information e g credit ratings or benchmark indices as a way to attract flows rather than as a way to mitigate incentive problems as has been emphasized in the literature unfortunately asset managers competition for flows triggers a race to the bottom asset managers use public information in their contracts even though it is socially inefficient this inefficiency arises because contracting on public information prevents risk sharing

on the evolution of the world income distribution the post world war ii period has seen substantial changes in the distribution of gdp per worker around the world in the upper half of the distribution a number of countries have exhibited large increases in income relative to the richest countries in the bottom half several countries have seen incomes fall relative to the richest countries the net result of these changes is a movement in the shape of the world income distribution from something that looks like a normal distribution in 1960 to a bi modal twin peaks distribution in 1988 projecting these changes into the future suggests a number of interesting ndings first it seems likely that the united states will lose its position as the country with the highest level of gdp per worker second growth miracles have been more common in recent decades than growth disasters if these dynamics continue the future income distribution will involve far more rich countries and far fewer poor countries than currently observed

malmquist productivity indexes and fisher ideal indexes comment fare and grosskopf i992 henceforth abbreviated as fg showed that under some conditions the productivity index defined as the geometric mean of two input based malmquist productivity indexes is equal to the quotient of the fisher input quantity index and the fisher output quantity index both fisher indices can be computed from observed prices and quantities these conditions appear to be so strong that they will almost certainly never be fulfilled in practice this is shown by a careful inspection of fg s proof however under slightly milder but more plausible conditions it can be shown that the quotient of the fisher input index and the fisher output index is a reasonable approximation of the productivity index consider a firm at two time periods t o i with different technologies which are modelled by the input correspondences lt y x x can produce y x c rn yce rm it is assumed that the sets lt y are closed and convex and that inputs are strongly disposable the vectors x yt wt pt t o i denote observed inputs observed outputs observed input prices and observed output prices respectively the productivity index is defined as

credit rating industry a helicopter tour of stylized facts and recent theories the recent subprime crisis and the ongoing euro zone crisis have generated an enormous interest in the credit rating industry not only among economists but also among average citizens as a consequence we have seen an explosion of the economic literature on the industry the objective of this survey is to introduce readers to the key stylized facts of the credit rating industry and to the recent theoretical economic literature on this industry

from nonrenewable to renewable energy and its impact on economic growth the role of research development expenditures in asia pacific economic cooperation countries abstract this study disaggregates energy i e non renewable and renewable energy consumption and investigates its effect on economic growth the period of 1990 2015 is used to examine asia pacific economic cooperation apec countries this paper determines the cross sectional dependence and employs a second generation panel unit root test for precise estimation westerlund cointegration test is used to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between the variables and confirm the presence of cointegration in the long run the continuously updated fully modified ordinary least square cup fm approaches are applied to investigate long term output elasticities between the variables the results show the stimulating role of energy renewable and nonrenewable consumption in economic growth research and development expenditures and trade openness have a positive effect on economic growth moreover the time series individual country analysis also confirms that renewable energy has a positive impact on economic growth the heterogenous causality analysis reveals the feedback effect i e bidirectional causal associations among economic growth renewable energy consumption and nonrenewable energy consumption this empirical evidence suggests that countries should increase investment in renewable energy sectors and plan for development in renewable energy for sustainable energy growth

sources of productivity growth using the fare primont decomposition an empirical application to the irish beef sector several competing methodologies for tfp estimation have been developed in the past decades a popular approach in the literature is index number computation the most widely implemented tfp indices

renewable energy consumption and growth in eurasia this study examines the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for 13 countries within eurasia over the period 1992 2007 within a multivariate panel data framework the heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship exists between real gdp renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and labor force the results from the error correction models indicate bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short run and long run thus the empirical findings lend support for the feedback hypothesis of the interdependent relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth

energy consumption and economic growth relationship evidence from panel data for low and middle income countries abstract this paper uses the panel data of energy consumption ec and economic growth gdp for 51 countries from 1971 to 2005 these countries are divided into three groups low income group lower middle income group and upper middle income group countries firstly a relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated by employing pedroni 1999 panel cointegration method secondly panel causality test is applied to investigate the way of causality between the energy consumption and economic growth finally we test whether there is a strong or weak relationship between these variables by using pedroni 2001 method the empirical results of this study are as follows i energy consumption and gdp are cointegrated for all three income group countries ii the panel causality test results reveal that there is long run granger causality running from gdp to ec for low income countries and there is bidirectional causality between ec and gdp for middle income countries iii the estimated cointegration factor is not close to 1 in other words no strong relation is found between energy consumption and economic growth for all income groups considered in this study the findings of this study have important policy implications and it shows that this issue still deserves further attention in future research

sovereign ratings and their asymmetric response to fundamentals abstract the evolution of sovereign ratings is strongly asymmetric as downgrades tend to be deeper and faster than upgrades in other words once a country loses its initial status it takes a long time to recover it using s p data we characterize rating cycles in terms of their duration and amplitude then we study whether the reaction of this agency to new domestic economic and financial information is also different during upgrade and downgrade phases our results indicate that favorable fundamentals could be helpful in terms of smoothing and slowing down rating downgrades whereas they do not seem to accelerate rating upgrades

on the causal dynamics between emissions nuclear energy renewable energy and economic growth this paper examines the causal relationship between co2 emissions nuclear energy consumption renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a group of 19 developed and developing countries for the period 1984 2007 using a panel error correction model the long run estimates indicate that there is a statistically significant negative association between nuclear energy consumption and emissions but a statistically significant positive relationship between emissions and renewable energy consumption the results from the panel granger causality tests suggest that in the short run nuclear energy consumption plays an important role in reducing co2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption does not contribute to reductions in emissions this may be due to the lack of adequate storage technology to overcome intermittent supply problems as a result electricity producers have to rely on emission generating energy sources to meet peak load demand

foreign direct investment and investment under uncertainty we show that in uncertain environments ownership and internalization advantages may be negatively rather than positively associated with fdi this reversal from extant theory occurs because ownership advantages often serve to make fdi delayable while internalization advantages often serve to make it less reversible when fdi becomes either more delayable or less reversible it is less likely to occur at a point in time our approach enriches the who where and why explanations offered by current fdi theory to incorporate the question of when

does the market understand rating shopping predicting mbs losses with initial yields we study rating shopping on the mbs market outside of aaa losses are higher on single rated tranches than on multi rated ones and yields predict future losses for single rated tranches but not for multi rated ones conversely ratings have less explanatory power for single rated tranches these results suggest that single rated tranches have been shopped whereby pessimistic ratings never reach the market for aaa rated mbs by contrast 93 receive two or three such ratings and those ratings agree 97 of the time this ratings convergence suggests that agencies cater to investors who cannot purchase a tranche unless it has multiple aaa ratings

renewable energy oil prices and economic activity a granger causality in quantiles analysis this paper analyzes the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption oil prices and economic activity in the united states from july 1989 to july 2016 considering all quantiles of the distribution although the concept of granger causality is defined for the conditional distribution the majority of papers have tested granger causality using conditional mean regression models in which the causal relations are linear we apply a granger causality in quantiles analysis that evaluates causal relations in each quantile of the distribution under this approach we can discriminate between causality affecting the median and the tails of the conditional distribution we find evidence of bi directional causality between changes in renewable energy consumption and economic growth at the lowest tail of the distribution besides changes in renewable energy consumption lead economic growth at the highest tail of the distribution our results also support the unidirectional causality from fluctuations in oil prices to economic growth at the extreme quantiles of the distribution finally we find evidence of lower tail dependence from changes in oil prices to changes in renewable energy consumption our findings call for government policies aimed at developing renewable energy markets to increase energy efficiency in the u s

rating the raters are reputation concerns powerful enough to discipline rating agencies abstract credit rating agencies cras are accused of bearing a strong responsibility for contributing to the subprime crisis by having been deliberately too lax in the ratings of some structured products in response to this accusation cras argue that such an attitude would be too dangerous for them since their reputation is at stake the objective of this article is to examine the validity of this argument within a formal model are reputation concerns sufficient to discipline rating agencies we show that the reputation argument only works when a sufficiency large fraction of the cra income comes from other sources than rating complex products by contrast when rating complex products becomes a major source of income for the cra we show that it is always too lax with a positive probability and inflates ratings with probability one when its reputation is good enough we provide some empirical support for this prediction by showing that ceteris paribus the proportion of subprime residential mortgage backed securities rmbs that were rated aaa by the three main cras indeed increased over the last eight years we analyze the policy implications of our findings and advocate for a new business model of cras that we call the platform pays model

sectoral change catching up and slowing down oecd post war economic growth revisited abstract regression analysis of gdp growth since 1950 on pooled oecd cross sections indicates uniform technological catch up in all sectors but lower marginal labour productivity in agriculture the decline in opportunities to reallocate labour explains some of the post 1973 productivity slowdown

correlated demand shocks and price wars during booms the supergame theoretic model of price competition rotemberg and saloner 1986 is re examined in the case of serially correlated demand shocks the equilibrium price is shown to exhibit the same counter cyclical movement as in the i i d case if the discount factor and the number of firms satisfy certain relationship

renewable and non renewable energy consumption growth nexus evidence from a panel error correction model abstract unlike previous renewable energy consumption growth studies this study examines the relationship between renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic growth for 80 countries within a multivariate panel framework over the period 1990 2007 the pedroni 1999 2004 heterogeneous panel cointegration test show a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption non renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficient estimates positive and statistically significant there is little difference in the elasticity estimates with respect to renewable and non renewable energy consumption the results from the panel error correction model reveal bidirectional causality between renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run also there is bidirectional short run causality between renewable and non renewable energy consumption indicative of substitutability between the two energy sources

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

regulatory reforms and productivity an empirical analysis of the japanese electricity industry the japanese electricity industry has experienced regulatory reforms since the mid 1990s this article measures productivity in japan s steam power generation sector and examines the effect of reforms on the productivity of this industry over the period 1978 2003 we estimate the luenberger productivity indicator which is a generalization of the commonly used malmquist productivity index using a data envelopment analysis approach factors associated with productivity change are investigated through dynamic generalized method of moments gmm estimation of panel data our empirical analysis shows that the regulatory reforms have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power generation sector in japan

energy consumption and economic growth nexus in portugal italy greece spain and turkey an ardl bounds test approach 1965 2009 abstract the paper examines the nexus between primary energy consumption and growth in portugal italy greece spain and turkey pigst with annual time series data from 1965 to 2009 pigst are southern european economies which have experienced several episodes that make them of particular interest to the study of periods of economic expansion and stagnation an ardl bounds test approach is a suitable technique to examine energy growth nexus within the context of countries with both sporadic shocks outliers and permanent shocks structural breaks empirical results suggest bidirectional causality between energy and growth in both the long run and short run supporting the feedback hypothesis the results reveal themselves to be robust to panel framework an energy conservation policy will reduce gdp growth while a saving phenomenon is observed since one additional unit of product requires less than one unit of energy

energy consumption and gdp in tunisia cointegration and causality analysis abstract in this paper the johansen cointegration technique is used to examine the causal relationship between per capita energy consumption pcec and per capita gross domestic product pcgdp for tunisia during the 1971 2004 period in order to test for granger causality in the presence of cointegration among the variables a vector error correction model vecm is used instead of a vector autoregressive var model our estimation results indicate that the pcgdp and pcec for tunisia are related by one cointegrating vector and that there is a long run bi directional causal relationship between the two series and a short run unidirectional causality from energy to gross domestic product gdp the source of causation in the long run is found to be the error correction terms in both directions hence an important policy implication resulting from this analysis is that energy can be considered as a limiting factor to gdp growth in tunisia conclusions for tunisia may also be relevant for a number of countries that have to go through a similar development path of increasing pressure on already scarce energy resources

estimating the costs of issuer paid credit ratings we compare the stability and timeliness of credit ratings produced by a traditional issuer paid rating agency moody s investors service and a subscriber paid rater rapid ratings moody s ratings exhibit less volatility but are slower to identify default risk we control for moody s aversion to ratings volatility and still find its ratings lag rapid ratings more importantly accuracy ratios indicate that rapid ratings provides a better ordinal ranking of credit risk we quantify the loss avoidance associated with rapid ratings signals to estimate costs associated with regulatory and contractual systems based on issuer paid ratings the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

tacit collusion under interest rate fluctuations previous literature has shown that demand fluctuations affect the scope for tacit collusion i study whether discount factor fluctuations can have similar effects i find that collusion depends not only on the level of the discount factor but also and more surprisingly on its volatility collusive prices and profits increase with a higher discount factor level but decrease with its volatility these results have important implications for empirical studies of collusive pricing the role that collusive pricing may play in economic cycles and the study of cooperation in repeated games

energy consumption and gdp in turkey is there a co integration relationship energy consumption and gdp are expected to grow by 5 9 and 7 annually until 2025 in turkey this paper tries to unfold the linkage between energy consumption and gdp by undertaking a co integration analysis for turkey with annual data over the period 1970 2003 the analysis shows that energy consumption and gdp are co integrated this means that there is a possibly bi directional causality relationship between the two we establish that there is a unidirectional causality running from gdp to energy consumption indicating that energy saving would not harm economic growth in turkey in addition we find that energy consumption keeps on growing as long as the economy grows in turkey

energy consumption income and carbon emissions in the united states abstract this paper investigates the effect of energy consumption and output on carbon emissions in the united states earlier research focused on testing the existence and or shape of an environmental kuznets curve without taking energy consumption into account we investigate the granger causality relationship between income energy consumption and carbon emissions including labor and gross fixed capital formation in the model we find that income does not granger cause carbon emissions in the us in the long run but energy use does hence income growth by itself may not become a solution to environmental problems

energy consumption and economic growth new insights into the cointegration relationship abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp including energy prices for 25 oecd countries from 1981 to 2007 the distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long run relationship indeed cointegration between the common components of the underlying variables indicates that international developments dominate the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp furthermore the results suggest that energy consumption is price inelastic causality tests indicate the presence of a bi directional causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from 11 sub sahara african countries abstract the paper examines the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries in sub saharan africa using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test the study finds that energy consumption is cointegrated with economic growth in cameroon cote d ivoire gambia ghana senegal sudan and zimbabwe moreover this test suggests that energy consumption has a significant positive long run impact on economic growth in ghana kenya senegal and sudan granger causality test based on vector error correction model vecm shows bi directional relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for gambia ghana and senegal however granger causality test shows that economic growth granger causes energy consumption in sudan and zimbabwe the neutrality hypothesis is confirmed in respect of cameroon and cote d ivoire the same result of no causality was found for nigeria kenya and togo the result shows that each country should formulate appropriate energy conservation policies taking into cognizance of her peculiar condition

last bank standing what do i gain if you fail banks are highly leveraged institutions potentially attracted to speculative lending even without deposit insurance a counterbalancing incentive to lend prudently is the risk of loss of charter value which depends on future rents we show in a dynamic model that current concentration does not reduce speculative lending and may in fact increase it in contrast a policy of temporary increases in market concentration after a bank failure by promoting a takeover of failed banks by a solvent institution is very effective by making speculative lending decisions strategic substitutes it grants bankers an incentive to remain solvent subsequent entry policy fine tunes the trade off between the social costs of reduced competition and the gain in stability

underlying causal factors of the european union energy intensity econometric evidence abstract the aim of the research is to determine the main factors that define the level of energy intensity in the countries of the european union the research was conducted by estimation of six baseline and six auxiliary regressions with and without time lags in form of one way fixed and random effects error component models on different unbalanced panel data samples covering the period 1995 2015 the obtained baseline regressions results generate three sets of findings the first set consists of extremely robust findings relating to the positive influence of gross fixed capital formation and industrial gross value added and negative effects of real per capita gross domestic product and oil products retail price these variables are statistically significant in all 36 baseline empirical models the second set of results consists of quite robust findings relating to insignificant influence of foreign direct investment and negative influence of coal price according to the results it cannot be confirm the hypothesis of energy saving technology transfer via foreign direct investments in european union member states the third set of results shows that the research has failed to generate any robust findings for economic openness import ratio urbanization and natural gas price which means that the effect of these determinants on energy intensity in european union member states is unspecified finally auxiliary regressions estimation results show that changes in the sectorial composition within the european union member states economies have not enhanced energy saving technological transfer via foreign direct investments

does sovereign risk in local and foreign currency differ abstract sovereign debt in local currency has been considered safer than in foreign currency the literature offers scant guidance as to why such a gap existed or why it has slowly and steadily diminished over the past two decades we suggest and empirically test five hypotheses we find fx reserves and original sin greater financing in local currency to consistently be robust determinants of the gaps in local and foreign currency ratings as for why the gap has declined we identify as important factors the surge in global reserves and to a lesser extent the decline of original sin

energy efficiency rebound effects and the environmental kuznets curve technological change is one factor used to justify the existence of an environmental kuznets curve and technological improvements have been argued to be a key factor in mitigating the impacts of economic growth on environmental quality in this paper we use a cge model of the scottish economy to consider the factors influencing the impacts of one form of technological change improvements in energy efficiency on absolute levels of co2 emissions on the carbon intensity of the economy co2 emissions relative to real gdp and the per capita ekc relationship these factors include the elasticity of substitution between energy and non energy inputs responses in the labour market and the structure of the economy our results demonstrate the key role played by the general equilibrium price elasticity of demand for energy and the relative influence of different factors on this parameter

knowledge transfer in international acquisitions this paper reports on a multimethod study of knowledge transfer in international acquisitions using questionnaire data we show that the transfer of technological know how is facilitated by communication visits meetings and by time elapsed since acquisition while the transfer of patents is associated with the articulability of the knowledge the size of the acquired unit and the recency of the acquisition using case study data we show that the immediate post acquisition period is characterized by imposed one way transfers of knowledge from the acquirer to the acquired but over time this gives way to high quality reciprocal knowledge transfer

ratings competition in the cmbs market we consider the relationship between competition among credit rating agencies and the ratings of commercial mortgage backed securities cmbs using data from 2002 to 2007 we characterize competition using fitch s aggregate share of cmbs ratings and a measure of fitch s deal specific market share constructed as the probability of fitch being hired for a specific transaction controlling for deal characteristics we find that subordination levels were lower when fitch s aggregate and deal specific market shares were higher which suggests that ratings competition yielded less stringent ratings when fitch was a more significant competitor although this effect dissipates when fitch s market shares were high

the impact of disaggregated energy on productivity abstract the issue of the productivity slowdown of the 1970s and 1980s has received considerable analysis in the literature however the issue of the impact of energy on productivity is still debated this study contributes to the debate with the hope that some sight could be provided through disaggregating the factor input energy into two components a petroleum component and a non petroleum component by analysing labour productivity growth total factor productivity growth and labour intensity ratios the disaggregated energy component can be viewed as a major influence in explaining the productivity decline

economic potential of biomass based fuels for greenhouse gas emission mitigation use of biofuels diminishes fossil fuelcombustion thereby also reducing net greenhousegas emissions however subsidies are neededto make agricultural biofuel productioneconomically feasible to explore the economicpotential of biofuels in a greenhouse gasmitigation market we incorporate data onproduction and biofuel processing for thedesignated energy crops switchgrass hybridpoplar and willow in an u s agriculturalsector model along with data on traditionalcrop livestock production and processing andafforestation of cropland net emissioncoefficients on all included agriculturalpractices are estimated through crop growthsimulation models or taken from the literature potential emission mitigation policies ormarkets are simulated via hypothetical carbonprices at each carbon price level theagricultural sector model computes the newmarket equilibrium revealing agriculturalcommodity prices regionally specificproduction input use and welfare levels environmental impacts and adoption ofalternative management practices such asbiofuel production results indicate no rolefor biofuels below carbon prices of 40 perton of carbon equivalent at these incentivelevels emission reductions via reduced soiltillage and afforestation are more costefficient for carbon prices above 70 biofuels dominate all other agriculturalmitigation strategies

energy consumption and growth in south america evidence from a panel error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of nine south american countries over the period 1980 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship pedroni s heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis

ratings shopping and asset complexity a theory of ratings inflation abstract many identify inflated credit ratings as one contributor to the recent financial market turmoil we develop an equilibrium model of the market for ratings and use it to examine possible origins of and cures for ratings inflation in the model asset issuers can shop for ratings observe multiple ratings and disclose only the most favorable before auctioning their assets when assets are simple agencies ratings are similar and the incentive to ratings shop is low when assets are sufficiently complex ratings differ enough that an incentive to shop emerges thus an increase in the complexity of recently issued securities could create a systematic bias in disclosed ratings despite the fact that each ratings agency produces an unbiased estimate of the asset s true quality increasing competition among agencies would only worsen this problem switching to an investor initiated ratings system alleviates the bias but could collapse the market for information

disclosure policy and industry fluctuations this paper examines voluntary disclosures in a repeated oligopoly and their association with price setting behavior and industry profits along industrial fluctuations the analysis focuses on the collectively optimal equilibrium among oligopoly firms we show that in industries that are highly concentrated or feature low cost of capital nondisclosure is prevalent and results in stable product prices and high profit margins otherwise firms may selectively disclose to soften competition in the product market under partial disclosure firms withhold information during sharp industry expansions or declines consequently the disclosure policy dampens the dissemination of shocks to the industry this paper was accepted by mary barth accounting

conflict of interest and the credibility of underwriter analyst recommendations brokerage analysts frequently comment on and sometimes recommend companies that their firms have recently taken public we show that stocks that underwriter analysts recommend perform more poorly than buy recommendations by unaffiliated brokers prior to at the time of and subsequent to the recommendation date we conclude that the recommendations by underwriter analysts show significant evidence of bias we show also that the market does not recognize the full extent of this bias the results suggest a potential conflict of interest inherent in the different functions that investment bankers perform

the impact of cyclical demand movements on collusive behavior recent work by rotemberg and saloner 1986 investigates the effect of the business cycle on optimal collusive pricing by specifying that demand is subject to i i d shocks an implication of the i i d assumption is that firms expectations on future demand are unrelated to the current level of demand we put forth a model that allows for both the level of current demand and firms expectations on future demand to change over time thus it captures two important properties of the business cycle our analysis reveals that while the gain to deviating from a collusive agreement is greatest during booms firms find it most difficult to collude during recessions as the forgone profits from inducing a price war are relatively low an implication of this effect for pricing behavior is that at the same level of demand price is lower when demand is declining than when demand is rising consistent with previous theoretical work we find that firms price countercyclically for a range of values for the discount factor however numerical simulations reveal a greater tendency for firms to price countercyclically during recessions than during booms