china s oil use 1990 2008 abstract over the past two decades china s oil demand has risen steeply in 1990 it was only about 25 higher than that of 1978 the year economic reform was introduced by 2008 it had reached 396 0 million tons roughly four times the 1978 level making china the second largest oil user worldwide the country became a net oil importer in 1993 and between 1993 and 2008 its net import dependency a yardstick for energy security soared from 7 5 to 50 0 china s increased demand for oil has made the country a global energy player of critical importance although the literature on the global implications of china s oil use has proliferated relatively few studies have attempted to examine how china uses oil hence this study covers every oil consuming facility and sector in china exploring the patterns of and factors involved in oil demand by power plants oil refineries heat plants and gas works and industrial transport agricultural household and commercial sectors it concludes that in virtually all sectors in china oil demand will grow with transport and industry leading the way

imperfect competition multiple equilibria and unemployment policy this paper takes a simple imperfectly competitive macro model with increasing returns and shows how it can lead to nonexistence or multiplicity of equilibria the consequences for government policy toward unemployment are explored and shown to be very different from the traditional model it is argued that a multiple equilibrium model is an attractive possible explanation of the behavior of u k unemployment in the 1980s copyright 1990 by royal economic society

aggregate returns to scale in greek manufacturing this paper takes an imperfect competition model of the economy in order to investigate for retuns to scale in greek manufacturing and examines through a small scale macroeconomic model the implication of estimates for this purpose a price wage and demand for output equations are estimated using annual data for the period 1954 94 prices come through the profits maximization process and depend on wage capital rental demand and a number of other variables denoing technology and market competition results are clearly in favour of increasing returns to scale hypothesis although alternative explanations for the negative demand effect on prices cannot be excluded

the high unemployment trap a model of the labor market under firing restrictions and endogenous quits is constructed it is shown that in the spirit of blanchard and summers the model can generate multiple equilibria for plausible parameter values with a low quits high unemployment equilibrium coexisting with a high quits low unemployment equilibrium

was the great depression a low level equilibrium abstract if the great depression indeed was a bad equilibrium then there was another better equilibrium that the economy might have been in but wasn t this is the multiple equilibrium explanation but another explanation is that equilibrium was unique and that there were especially bad real shocks that caused output and employment to fall so much the data tentatively support the second story the depression can not be blamed on a massive coordination failure this conclusion hinges however on the assumption that the money supply did not act as an equilibrium selection device but since in the u s at least money is not the best leading indicator there are more natural variables that could have played this role and we find this assumption reasonable if this is correct our results offer little if any support to the view that the depression was the result of a coordination failure

unemployment in britain male unemployment in britain has risen from around 2 per cent in the 1950s to around 17 per cent in 1985 see figure 1 the figures are for male unemployment because there is no consistent series for women 1 even more remarkably unemployment has fallen in only three years out of the last twenty 1973 1978 and 1979 to account for this we need a model that explains both changes in the natural or non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment nairu and deviations from it we use a three equation supply side model centred on the labour market this has two main features the first concerns the determination of employment in the short run the labour demand function that we use cuts through the fruitless debate now raging especially in europe as to whether current unemployment is classical or keynesian according to the classical view employment is too high because real wages are too high according to the keynesian view real wages are not binding and unemployment is high because the product market does not clear with prices too high relative to nominal demand the whole debate is set in the framework of perfect competition yet in perfect competition prices are set by impersonal forces and it is not clear what could possibly stop prices clearing the market it is much more reasonable to think of prices as being set by imperfectly competitive firms existing prices being the best they can think of given the demand they face in this context firms demand for labour will depend on both the real product wage and the level of real aggregate demand this is the demand function we estimate and it conforms both to common sense and to the data however this does not imply that employment can be made to grow without limit by pumping up real demand for in the medium term when price surprises are eliminated our model determines three variables employment real wages and real demand on the basis of three equations an employment equation a price equation and a wage equation thus in the medium term there is a natural level of employment and corresponding to this a natural level of real aggregate demand the second key feature of our model concerns the medium term determination of unemployment in the medium term the planned mark up of wages over prices in wage settlements must be consistent with the mark up of prices over wage costs in employers pricing behaviour for if wage setters try to set real product wages higher than is consistent with employers pricing behaviour this generates ever increasing inflation thus the key to understanding unemployment in the medium term is the behaviour of wage setters if events occur that push them towards too high real wages then unemployment has to rise to offset these influences we shall call these influences wage pressure variables or push factors and they are clearly crucial in understanding unemployment the variables here include the social security system employment protection

almost efficient information transmission in elections abstract we study a model in which two parties compete by announcing their policies after receiving conditionally independent private signals about the true state of the world parties are both office and policy motivated our model can explain radically different policy positions even when parties receive identical signals and have unbiased preferences this holds in an asymmetric equilibrium in which both parties reveal their private information to the voters and the implemented policy is almost first best for all possible realizations of parties signals in this equilibrium one party adopts extreme and the other one moderate policy positions

work norms and unemployment abstract this paper outlines a simple model of a social work norm and unemployment the analysis shows that such a norm may generate multiple unemployment equilibria taken at face value this norm may explain why unemployment differs between otherwise similar regions

the integration of china into the world crude oil market since 1998 abstract the integration of china into the world oil market is an important issue for at least two reasons first the influence of the country on the world oil market is dependent on the level of the integration second integration into the world oil market means that china is opening itself up to potential disturbances in the world market and this leads to significant energy security concerns for the country the aim of this paper is to investigate whether or not china is an integral part of the world oil market by reviewing the relevant trade and pricing policies of the chinese government as well as the behavior of the chinese national oil companies we find that china is actively engaging itself in the world oil market our time series results show that the chinese oil price is cointegrated with the major oil prices in the world and a high degree of co movement between the prices is found causality between the price pairs is found to be bi directional in most cases the empirical results suggest that china is now an integral part of the world oil market

the determinants of wage pressure some implications of a dynamic model most models of wage determination are static this paper analyzes a simple dynamic model of collective bargaining and argues that this provides insights into the determinants of wage pressure that a static model cannot provide in particular it is shown how the length of labor contracts and the dynamics of the labor market affect the level of aggregate wage pressure the policy implications of the model are very different from those traditionally put forward to moderate wage pressure copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

what goes up recent trends in china s energy consumption since 1996 china s energy output has dropped by 17 while primary energy use has fallen by 4 driven almost entirely by shrinking output from coal mines and declining direct use since china is the world s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases it is important to understand the sources of this apparent transformation and whether it portends a permanent change in patterns of energy use this remarkable reversal of the long term expansion of energy use has occurred even as the economy has continued to grow albeit more slowly than in the early 1990s generation of electric power has risen implying a steep fall in end uses particularly in industry available information points to a variety of forces contributing to this phenomenon including rapid improvements in coal quality structural changes in industry shutdowns of factories in both the state owned and non state segments of the economy improvements in end use efficiency and greater use of gas and electricity in households a combination of slowing economic growth industrial restructuring broader economic system reforms and environmental and energy efficiency policies has apparently led to at least a temporary decline in and perhaps a long term reduction in the growth of energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions

equilibrium selection in imperfectly competitive economies with multiple equilibria this paper investigates the selection of an equilibrium in an economy with multiple pareto ranked nash equilibria a history dependent selection criterion is proposed which induces correlated behavior in equilibrium even though agents are playing one shot games and disturbances are not correlated over time the model economy may experience prolonged periods in which a low productivity technology is in use and then as a consequence of a large real disturbance may switch to an alternative equilibrium in which a high productivity technology is utilized thus the model qualitatively matches observations of serially correlated movements in output and employment and generates procyclical productivity though there are no exogenous technology shocks copyright 1994 by royal economic society

the relation between price and marginal cost in u s industry an examination of data on output and labor input reveals that some u s industries have marginal cost well below price the conclusion rests on the finding that cyclical variations in labor input are small compared with variations in output in booms firms produce substantially more output and sell it for a price that exceeds the costs of the added inputs the paper documents the disparity between price and marginal cost where marginal cost is estimated from annual variations in cost it considers a variety of explanations of the findings that are consistent with competition but none is found to be completely plausible

monopolistic competition and the effects of aggregate demand how important is monopolistic competition to an understanding of the effects of aggregate demand on output we ask the question at three levels can monopolistic competition by itself explain why aggregate demand movements affect output can it together with other imperfections generate effects of aggregate demand in a way that perfect competition cannot if so can it give an accurate account of the response of the economy to aggregate demand movements the answers are no yes and yes

china on the move oil price explosion abstract rapid expansion of highway and jet traffic in china has created a surge of demand for oil products putting pressure on world energy markets and petroleum product prices this paper examines trends in freight and passenger traffic to assess how growth in china s transport demand relates to growth in china s economy as well as the energy intensity of transport based on assumptions about demand elasticity and energy intensity a range of scenarios is developed for china s oil demand through 2020 incremental oil demand from china s transport sector is then compared with world oil demand projections to assess the likely impact on world oil prices the finding is that new demand from china s transport sector would likely raise world oil prices in 2020 by 1 3 in reference scenarios or by 3 10 if oil supply investment is constrained

the cyclical behavior of marginal cost and price the author examines the cyclical behavior of price marginal cost margins for u s manufac turing after 1956 short run marginal cost is markedly procyclical this is primarily due to procyclical overtime payments incurred beca use employment is not perfectly flexible in most industries output price fails to respond to the cyclical movement in marginal cost so price marginal cost margins are markedly countercyclical the res ults contradict business cycle theories that explain low production i n a recession by a high real cost of producing they support theories that explain low production in a recession by the inability of firms to sell their output copyright 1987 by american economic association

imperfect competition underemployment equilibria and fiscal policy it is often claimed that the demand externality created by imperfect competition can provide an analytical basis for keynesian fiscal policy prescriptions here this demand externality is embedded in a model of monopolistic competition where saving and employment are determined by optimizing choices it turns out that underemployment equilibria do exist that there is scope for fiscal intervention but that keynesian fiscal prescriptions are turned on their head thus demand externalities among imperfect competitors do not provide a general theoretical basis for these prescriptions unless supplemented by other deviations from the walrasian standard in the labor or capital market copyright 1990 by royal economic society

unemployment insurance in theory and practice a hallmark of modern labor economics is the close interplay between the development of theory data sources and econometric testing the evolution of the economic analysis of unemployment insurance provides a good illustration new theoretical approaches in particular job search theory have inspired a large amount of empirical research some of it methodologically innovative and most of it highly relevant for economic policy the paper presents a broad survey and an assessment of the economic analysis of unemployment insurance as it has evolved since the 1970s

multiple equilibria in the british labour market some empirical evidence abstract this paper takes a simple imperfectly competitive aggregate labour market model with increasing returns which can lead to non existence or multiplicity of equilibria the model is estimated using annual aggregate data for britain some evidence is found and recent british economic history is interpreted using the model