using stated preference discrete choice modelling to inform health care decision making a pilot study of breast screening participation this study was an important start to explore the feasibility of applying stated preference discrete choice modelling spdcm for use in developing breast screening participation enhancement strategies it needs to be followed by further research to establish model validity and authoritative results in the meantime a random effects binary probit choice model was estimated using a main effects with selected 2 way interaction design and a convenience sample of australian breast cancer screening participants a response rate of 48 was obtained clear preferences for different service configurations were revealed and used to demonstrate how potential strategies to enhance future participation rates of women placed on routine recall could be identified as anticipated accuracy of screening was the most important attribute of the service to influence the probability of uptake but others were screening time travel time information about screening benefits and the desire for privacy lending support to the view

which fiscal multipliers are regime dependent a meta regression analysis we analyse whether estimated multiplier effects are systematically higher if the economy suffers a downturn for that purpose we conduct a meta regression analysis on a unique data set of 98 empirical studies with more than 1800 observations on multiplier effects and control for regime dependence of the multiplier we find that spending multipliers are much higher by about 0 7 0 9 units during a downturn tax multipliers are not sensitive to the economic regime and generally lower than spending multipliers finally for all spending categories other than government consumption the multiplier significantly exceeds one during downturns

corporate social responsibility failures how do consumers respond to corporate violations of implied social contracts this research documents consumers potential to monitor corporations license to operate through their consumption responses to corporate social responsibility failures the premise is that the type of social contracts or standards in place may determine how consumers through their individual and collective behaviors can play a direct role in influencing corporate behavior when corporations fail to meet social responsibility standards an experiment conducted with a large sample of consumers in the united states shows that consumers respond differently to a company s failure in its social responsibilities depending on whether the violated standard is a government mandate or a voluntary commitment and depending on the consumers own environmental consciousness the findings highlight the potential power of individual consumers and consumer collectives in narrowing the governance gaps relative to social and environmental issues and reducing the likelihood of csr failures

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

are all financial crises created equal wholesale funding and two financial crises we use financial information on banks from asia europe north america and oceania to examine the role of wholesale funding on the transmission of financial crises to bank lending as well as to study the response of financial institutions in different regions during the crises we consider the role of wholesale funding during the global financial crisis gfc and asian financial crisis afc our results suggest that during the gfc wholesale funding dependence had a negative effect on loans growth across regions but with substantial regional heterogeneity the growth of loans from financial institutions in asia and europe was consistently sensitive to wholesale funding dependence although wholesale funding did not play a significant role in the transmission mechanism of the afc a subsample of financial institutions in asia who depended more heavily on wholesale funding experienced a faster loan growth and may have been able to better withstand the crisis

international financial integration and crisis contagion international financial integration helps to diversify risk but also may spread crises across countries we provide a quantitative analysis of this trade off in a two country general equilibrium model with collateral constrained borrowing using a global solution method borrowing constraints bind occasionally depending upon the state of the economy and levels of inherited debt we examine different degrees of international financial integration moving from financial autarky to bond and equity market integration financial integration leads to a significant increase in global leverage substantially escalates the probability of crises for any one country and dramatically increases the degree of contagion across countries outside of crises the impact of financial integration on macroeconomic aggregates is relatively small but the impact of a crisis with integrated international financial markets is much less severe than that under financial market autarky thus a trade off emerges between the probability of crises and the severity of crises using a large cross country database of financial crises in developing and developed economies over a forty year period we find evidence in support of the model

what ended the great depression re evaluating the role of fiscal policy conventional wisdom contends that fiscal policy was of secondary importance for the economic recovery in the 1930s the recovery is then connected to monetary policy that allowed non sterilised gold inflows to increase the money supply often this is shown by measuring the fiscal multipliers and demonstrating that they were relatively small this paper shows that problems with the conventional measures of fiscal multipliers in the 1930s may have created an incorrect consensus on the irrelevance of fiscal policy the rehabilitation of fiscal policy is seen as a necessary step in the reinterpretation of the positive role of new deal policies for the recovery

responsible entrepreneurship in developing countries understanding the realities and complexities developing countries have recently experienced a burgeoning of small scale individual entrepreneurs sies who range from petty traders to personal service workers like small street vendors barbers and owners of small shops as a result of market based reforms rapid urbanisation unemployment landlessness and poverty while sies form a major part of the informal workforce in developing countries and contribute significantly to economic growth their potential is being undermined when they engage in irresponsible and deceptive business practices such as overpricing sale of underweight or substandard products or attempts to hoard goods to name a few despite the growing interest in corporate social responsibility csr initiatives of small businesses in developing countries the sies have received almost no attention to address this void in the literature we explore the reasons for the less than optimal level of social responsibility demonstrated by some sies in developing countries we do so by drawing upon the existing literature to develop a comprehensive framework of social responsibility of sies highlighting their unique characteristics and the different contextual factors that they encounter in developing countries based on this framework we then present a set of propositions specifying the influence of these contextual factors such as business environment cultural traditions socio economic conditions and both international and domestic pressures on the business practices of sies the framework offers an explanation for the lack of responsible entrepreneurship of sies and has important implications for promoting sustainable business practices in developing countries where businesses are striving hard to survive and compete

how successful was the new deal the microeconomic impact of new deal spending and lending policies in the 1930s the new deal during the 1930s was arguably the largest peace time expansion in federal government activity in american history until recently there had been very little quantitative testing of the microeconomic impact of the wide variety of new deal programs over the past decade scholars have developed new panel databases for counties cities and states and then used panel data methods on them to examine the impact of new deal spending and lending policies for the major new deal programs in most cases the identification of the effect comes from changes across time within the same geographic location after controlling for national shocks to the economy many of the studies also use instrumental variable methods to control for endogeneity the studies find that public works and relief spending had state income multipliers of around one increased consumption activity attracted internal migration reduced crime rates and lowered several types of mortality the farm programs typically aided large farm owners but eliminated opportunities for share croppers tenants and farm workers the home owners loan corporation s purchases and refinancing of troubled mortgages staved off drops in housing prices and home ownership rates at relatively low ex post cost to taxpayers the reconstruction finance corporation s loans to banks and railroads appear to have had little positive impact although the banks were aided when the rfc took ownership stakes

was the deflation during the great depression anticipated evidence from the commodity futures market futures prices were well above spot prices for most commodities during most of the great depression evidently the spectacular declines in agricultural prices caught many people by surprise based on the historical correlations between commodity prices and consumer prices commodity markets anticipated stable consumer prices during the first year of the great depression the dramatic drop in nominal treasury bill yields thus should be read as a drop in ex ante real rates later in the great depression markets anticipated deflation but not as severe as actually occurred copyright 1992 by american economic association

identifying fiscal policy in effectiveness from the differential counter cyclicality of government spending in the interwar period differences across decades in the counter cyclical stance of fiscal policy can identify whether the growth in government spending affects output growth and so speeds recovery from a recession we study government spending reaction functions from the 1920s and 1930s for twenty countries there are two main findings first surprisingly government spending was less counter cyclical in the 1930s than in the 1920s second the growth of government spending did not have a significant effect on output growth so that there is little evidence that this feature of fiscal policy played a stabilizing role in the interwar period resume identifier le caractere effectif ou non de la politique fiscale a partir de la contra cyclicite differentielle des depenses gouvernementales pendant l entre deux guerres des differences dans le degre de contra cyclicite de la politique budgetaire peuvent servir a identifier si la croissance des depenses publiques a un effet sur la croissance de l output et accelere ainsi la reprise de l activite suivant une recession nous etudions des fonctions de reaction des depenses publiques pour les annees 1920 et 1930 ce pour vingt pays il en ressort deux resultats principaux premierement et fait surprenant les depenses publiques etaient moins contra cycliques durant les annees 1930 que 1920 deuxiemement la croissance des depenses publiques n a pas eu d effet significatif sur la croissance de l output ce qui permet de douter que cet aspect de la politique budgetaire ait joue un role stabilisateur durant l entre guerre

fiscal policy and economic recovery the case of the 1936 veterans bonus conventional wisdom has it that in the 1930s scal policy did not work because it was not tried this paper shows that scal policy though inadvertent was tried in 1936 and a variety of evidence suggests that it worked a decit nanced veterans bonus provided 3 2 million world war i veterans with cash and bond payments totaling 2 percent of gdp the typical veteran received a payment equal to annual per capita personal income this paper uses time series and cross sectional data to identify the eects of the bonus i exploit four sources of quantitative evidence a detailed household consumption survey cross state and cross city regressions aggregate time series and a previously unused american legion survey of veterans the evidence paints a consistent picture in which veterans quickly spent the majority of their bonus spending was concentrated on cars and housing in particular narrative accounts support these quantitative results a simple calculation suggests that the bonus added 2 5 to 3 percentage points to 1936 gdp growth

corporate social responsibility in transnational spaces exploring influences of varieties of capitalism on expressions of corporate codes of conduct in nigeria drawing from the varieties of capitalism theoretical framework the study explores the home country influences of multinational corporations mncs on their corporate social responsibility csr practices when they operate outside their national regional institutional contexts the study focusses on a particular csr practice i e corporate expressions of code of conducts of seven mncs from three varieties of capitalism coordinated 2 mixed 2 and liberal 3 market economies operating in the oil and gas sector of the nigerian economy the study concludes that the corporate codes of conduct of these mncs operating in nigeria to a large extent reflect the characteristics of their home countries model of capitalism respectively albeit with certain degree of modifications the home countries model of capitalism is also found to have implications for the degree of adaptability of these mncs csr practices to the nigerian institutional context with the mixed market economy model of capitalism adapting more flexibly than the liberal and coordinated market economies respectively the findings of this study will contribute to the emerging literature on the institutional embeddedness of csr practices in transnational social spaces understanding of varieties of capitalism and csr in developing economies

is individual environmental consciousness one of the determinants in transport mode choice this article models negative impact on the environment as one of the attributes of transport mode by this modelling we are able to examine whether individual environmental consciousness of this impact plays a significant role in his her choice of transport mode a survey data from saito and onohara area in northern osaka of japan is used to estimate the model with the heteroscedastic extreme value specification both of the estimated and simulated results imply that individual environmental consciousness does influence his her decision on transport mode choice in the sample furthermore the likelihood ratio tests indicate that both the utility and scale parameters are not equivalent across sub samples of university commuters research facility commuters and residents the results of the comparison across sub samples suggest that sometimes we may learn more from sub dividing a whole sample into several sub samples if we could distinguish them by their characteristics

keynesian government spending multipliers and spillovers in the euro area the global financial crisis has led to a renewed interest in discretionary fiscal stimulus advocates of discretionary measures emphasize that government spending can stimulate additional private spending the keynesian multiplier effect thus we investigate whether the spending package announced by euro area governments for 2009 and 2010 is likely to boost gdp by more than one for one because of modelling uncertainty it is essential that such policy evaluations be robust to alternative modelling assumptions and parameterizations we use five different empirical macroeconomic models with keynesian features such as price and wage rigidities to evaluate the impact of the fiscal stimulus four of them suggest that the planned increase in government spending will reduce private consumption and investment significantly only a model that largely ignores the forward looking behavioural response of consumers and firms implies crowding in of private spending we review a range of issues that may play a role in the recession of 2008 2009 implementation lags are found to reinforce crowding out and may even cause an initial contraction zero bound effects may lead the central bank to abstain from interest rate hikes and increase the gdp impact of government spending crowding in however requires an immediate anticipation of at least two years at the zero bound using a multi country model we find that spillovers between euro area countries are negligible or even negative because direct demand effects are offset by the indirect effect of a euro appreciation new keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge models provide a strong case for government savings packages announced with sufficient lead time spending cuts induce a significant short run stimulus and crowding in of private spending tobias cwik and volker wieland

making corporate self regulation effective in developing countries summary self regulation by multinational corporations of social environmental impacts has been advocated as a solution to the regulatory capacity problems faced by developing states market pressures can provide incentives for firms to implement codes and standards and also rely on widely available information about corporate behavior voluntary schemes attempt to provide reliable standardized reporting of information but government action in the north and south remains vital to effective regulation by setting social goals and upholding the freedom of civil society actors to organize and mobilize international organizations and legal instruments may be able to assist developing country governments in fulfilling these roles

latent class model or mixed logit model a comparison by transport mode choice data this article applies two recently stated choice survey datasets of japan to investigate the difference between the latent class model lcm and the mixed logit model mlm for transport mode choice a detailed comparison is carried out focusing on comparing values of time savings direct choice elasticities predicted choice probabilities and prediction success indices furthermore a test on nonnested model is also utilized to help determine which model is superior to another one the results suggest that the lcm performs better than the mlm in both datasets

do corporate codes of ethics reflect national character evidence from europe and the united states this paper analyses the usage and contents of corporate codes of ethics the results from a sample of 600 large european companies are contrasted with findings reported for similar u s firms the comparison reveals that significantly fewer european than u s firms adopted codes of ethics in europe the large majority of codes have been introduced only very recently and there are indications that codes made their way into europe via subsidiaries of u s firms however there are striking differences in content between u s and european codes of ethics pointing to the existence of a distinctly european approach to codifying ethics

from great depression to great credit crisis similarities differences and lessons the great depression of the 1930s and the great credit crisis of the 2000s had similar causes but elicited strikingly different policy responses while it remains too early to assess the effectiveness of current policy it is possible to analyse monetary and fiscal responses in the 1930s as a natural experiment or counterfactual capable of shedding light on the impact of current policies we employ vector autoregressions instrumental variables and qualitative evidence for 27 countries in the period 1925 39 the results suggest that monetary and fiscal stimulus was effective that where it did not make a difference it was not tried they shed light on the debate over fiscal multipliers in episodes of financial crisis they are consistent with multipliers at the higher end of those estimated in the recent literature and with the argument that the impact of fiscal stimulus will be greater when banking systems are dysfunctional and monetary policy is constrained by the zero bound miguel almunia agustin benetrix barry eichengreen kevin h o rourke and gisela rua

what enables rapid economic progress what are the needed institutions abstract in recent years institutions have again become a central focus of economists and other scholars studying the processes of economic growth and the reasons why nations have differed so greatly in their achievements on this front however with few exceptions the exploration of the role of institutions has not been connected with a coherent analysis of the relationships between institutions and institutional change and technological advance this paper proposes a way of analyzing these relationships the concept of social technologies which support physical technologies plays a key role in the analysis

using a choice experiment to estimate the benefits of a reduction of externalities in urban areas with special focus on electrosmog traffic noise air pollution and electromagnetic pollution i e nonionizing radiation also called electrosmog are typical negative local externalities in urban areas they are side effects of human and economic activities e g road transport telecommunication and they affect individuals well being negatively without compensation in recent years the increased number of mobile phone antennas in residential areas and thus the increased intensity of radiated power has aroused public concern discussions and protests the view of an antenna is annoying an increasing number of inhabitants in this article the stated choice experiment ce is used to estimate the willingness to pay wtp residents in the cities of zurich and lugano place on the reduction of these three environmental loads estimation results reveal that there is a positive and significant wtp for a reduction of air pollution and traffic noise levels to those limit values fixed by the government respondents also show wtp for reducing

new estimates of the canadian money stock 1871 1967 in this paper the authors construct historical data series beginning in 1871 for canadian m1 m2 and monetary base the new series are at a monthly frequency and use the bank of canada s definition of the monetary aggregates institutional and reporting changes however make perfect backwards extrapolation of the bank s series impossible there are only end of month data rather than average weekly since january 1994 daily data and the authors cannot precisely match savings accounts at chartered banks and trust companies that are included in the modern monetary aggregates their adjustments for these changes and their impact on the aggregates are documented

government spending and heterogeneous consumption dynamics abstract what is the effect of government spending on consumption neoclassical and new keynesian models deliver opposing predictions and empirical studies differ in their conclusions this paper takes a data driven approach and exploits information from over 200 variables via a bayesian factor augmented var model i use sign restrictions for identifying effects that both classes of models agree upon this approach imposes a minimal set of restrictions on the empirical model leaving the sign and magnitude of the effect of government spending on consumption free to be determined by the data i find that i government spending increases aggregate consumption ii the estimated spending multiplier is close to 2 iii there exists heterogeneity even within durable nondurable and service consumption variables which is undocumented in the literature finally i show that my identified structural shocks are not predictable by economic agents and are uncorrelated with traditional monetary policy shocks suggesting that these effects are not confounded by monetary policy

energy based economic development abstract the fields of economic development and energy policy and planning have converged in recent years to form an emerging discipline which we term energy based economic development ebed despite the significant amount of stimulus funds as well as state and local funding that are being allocated to ebed initiatives in the united states the emerging discipline has received scant attention in the energy policy and development literature the link between energy and economic development in the literature is still theoretical mostly focused on the need for and the potential benefits of ebed and rarely applied furthermore funding for ebed has outpaced understanding of the discipline development of rigorous technical approaches and meaningful ways to measure impact such information would not only help practitioners and policymakers more thoroughly understand the confines of the discipline and shape goals and approaches accordingly but also help researchers identify track and evaluate a variety of activities in the field with national and international attention focused on the convergence of these fields researchers and practitioners have a rare opportunity to develop and implement the tools necessary to evaluate and communicate the potentially broader impacts that ebed may hold for society if ways to leverage and sustain the injection of funds in this discipline are not identified the opportunity may end before we can achieve either energy policy or economic development goals in an attempt to respond to this need this analysis explores the connection between energy and economic development beginning with a review of the trends in each field and the goals that each seeks to achieve on the basis of this information we define the discipline of ebed review the existing literature on it and offer insights and perspectives on its emergence

great expectations and the end of the depression what ended the great depression in the united states this paper suggests that the recovery was driven by a shift in expectations this shift was triggered by president franklin delano roosevelt s fdr policy actions on the monetary policy side roosevelt abolished the gold standard and announced an explicit policy objective of inflating the price level to pre depression levels on the fiscal policy side roosevelt expanded real and deficit spending which helped make his policy objective credible the key to the recovery was the successful management of expecta tions about future policy roosevelt s rise to power is modeled as a policy regime change as in thomas sargent 1983 and peter temin and barry wigmore 1990 this paper formalizes temin and wigmore s argu ment in a repeated game setting using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model and argues that the regime change can account for the recovery in the model a regime change means the elimination of certain policy dogmas that constrain the actions of the government the regime change generates an endogenous shift in expectations due to a coordination of mon etary and fiscal policy this coordination ended the great depression by engineering a shift in expectations from contractionary i e the private sector expected future economic contrac tion and deflation to expansionary i e the public expected future economic expansion and inflation the expectation of higher future inflation lowered real interest rates thus stimulating demand while the expectation of higher future income stimulated demand by raising permanent income

temporal aggregation and svar identification with an application to fiscal policy abstract we show how to assess identifying assumptions for a low frequency svar using estimates from a higher frequency model in our application quarterly data support identified annual svars in government spending and output by assuming zero within year impact of output on spending

macroeconomic effects from government purchases and taxes for u s annual data that include world war ii the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0 4 0 5 contemporaneously and 0 6 0 7 over 2 years if the change in defense spending is permanent gauged by ramey s defense news variable the multipliers are higher by 0 1 0 2 since all estimated multipliers are significantly less than 1 greater spending crowds out other components of gdp particularly investment the lack of good instruments prevents estimation of reliable multipliers for nondefense purchases multipliers in the literature of two or more likely reflect reverse causation from gdp to nondefense purchases increases in average marginal income tax rates measured by a newly constructed time series have significantly negative effects on gdp when interpreted as a tax multiplier the magnitude is around 1 1 the combination of the estimated spending and tax multipliers implies that the balanced budget multiplier for defense spending is negative we have some evidence that tax changes affect gdp mainly through substitution effects rather than wealth effects

decomposing the determinants of road traffic demand this study presents a decomposition of the basic fundamental determinants of road traffic and fuel demand a general framework is proposed as a means of analysing the impacts of changes in prices and income on the demand for fuel and traffic volume the objective is to provide a general basis for comparing different road traffic elasticity estimates and for understanding how a variety of different factors work together to create overall road traffic and fuel demand responses the study emphasizes relationships between different price and income elasticity measures and uses estimates from the literature to evaluate the main determinants of demand including some previously unobserved effects

price differentials in monetary unions the role of fiscal shocks we study the effect of regional expenditure and revenue shocks on price differentials for 47 us states and 9 eu countries we identify shocks using sign restrictions on the dynamics of expenditures revenues deficits and output and construct two estimates for structural price differentials dynamics one for the average and one for each unit which optimally weight information contained in the data for all units on average expansionary fiscal disturbances produce positive while distortionary balance budget shocks produce negative price differential responses the negative price differentials responses in some units is partially explained by spillovers and labour supply effects

chaos sunspots and automatic stabilizers abstract we consider a real business cycle model with an externality in production depending on parameter values the model has sunspot equilibria cyclical and chaotic equilibria and equilibria with deterministic or stochastic regime switching we study the implications of this model environment for automatic stabilizer tax systems stabilization is desirable because the efficient allocations are characterized by constant employment and output growth we identify an automatic stabilizer income tax subsidy schedule with two properties i it specifies the tax rate to be an increasing function of aggregate employment and ii earnings are subsidized when aggregate employment is at its efficient level the first feature eliminates inefficient fluctuating equilibria while the second induces agents to internalize the externality

corporate social responsibility in the multinational enterprise strategic and institutional approaches what is the relationship of global and local country specific corporate social responsibility csr to international organizational strategy applying the strategic logic of the bartlett and ghoshal typology to the realm of csr multinational firms should respond to pressures for integration and responsiveness from salient stakeholders however an institutional logic would suggest that multinational firms will simply replicate the existing product market organizational strategy multidomestic transnational global in their management of csr these alternative approaches are tested with a survey instrument sent to mnes operating in mexico the results of this study are consistent with the proposition that institutional pressures rather than strategic analysis of social issues and stakeholders are guiding decision making with respect to csr we develop implications for mne management and research as well as public policy

the effects of public spending shocks on trade balances and budget deficits in the european union we investigate the consequences of an increase in public spending for trade balances and budget deficits in the european union using a panel var approach whereas the literature tends to treat the trade balance gdp ratio as a single variable we include exports and imports as separate variables this allows us to track in more detail the sources of trade balance movements further we use annual rather than quarterly data this facilitates the interpretation of the shocks and reduces potential anticipation effects of fiscal policy changes however the identification assumptions become stronger and we extensively check their validity according to our baseline estimate a 1 gdp increase in public spending produces a 1 2 on impact with a 1 6 peak rise in gdp rising imports and falling exports are responsible for a fall of the trade balance by 0 5 of gdp on impact and a peak fall of 0 8 in addition the spending increase produces a 0 7 impact and peak budget deficit thereby pointing to the potential relevance of the twin deficits hypothesis for the european union jel e62 h60

fiscal policy in an expectations driven liquidity trap we study the effects of fiscal policy interventions in a liquidity trap in a model with nominal rigidities and an interest rate rule in a liquidity trap caused by a self fulfilling state of low confidence higher government spending has deflationary effects that reduce the spending multiplier when the zero lower bound is binding instead cuts in marginal labor tax rates are inflationary and become more expansionary when the zero lower bound is binding these findings contradict popular views about the effects of fiscal policy in a liquidity trap

is utility additive further evidence this paper investigates the question of additive structure of the utility function using the data for nine broad commodity groups from 45 countries further evidence is presented in support of the preference independent utility structure

overvalued swedish monetary policy in the 1930s the article discusses sweden s monetary policy in the 1930s which has been hailed as the first and only example of successful price level targeting our contribution is twofold first we argue that the crucial measure that immediately ended deflationary expectations and enabled a swift recovery was a strong and involuntary devaluation of the currency not the adoption of a new monetary policy framework second starting from the recent literature on monetary policy at the zero lower bound we conclude that sweden s exchange rate policy is more relevant for the current discussion than its tentative experience with price level targeting

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

us monetary and fiscal policy in the 1930s the paper provides a survey of fiscal and monetary policies during the 1930s under the hoover and roosevelt administrations and how they influenced the policies during the recent great recession the discussion of the causal impacts of monetary policy focuses on papers written in the last decade and the findings of scholars using dynamic structural general equilibrium modelling the discussion of fiscal policy shows why economists do not see the new deal as a keynesian stimulus describes the significant shift toward excise taxation during the 1930s and surveys estimates of the impact of federal spending on local economies the paper concludes with discussion of the lessons for the present from 1930s monetary and fiscal policy

corporate social responsibility in challenging and non enabling institutional contexts do institutional voids matter the extant literature on comparative corporate social responsibility csr often assumes functioning and enabling institutional arrangements such as strong government market and civil society as a necessary condition for responsible business practices setting aside this dominant assumption and drawing insights from a case study of fidelity bank nigeria we explore why and how firms still pursue and enact responsible business practices in what could be described as challenging and non enabling institutional contexts for csr our findings suggest that responsible business practices in such contexts are often anchored on some csr adaptive mechanisms these mechanisms uniquely complement themselves and inform csr strategies the csr adaptive mechanisms and strategies in combination and in complementarity then act as an institutional buffer i e institutional immunity which enables firms to successfully engage in responsible practices irrespective of their weak institutional settings we leverage this understanding to contribute to csr in developing economies often characterised by challenging and non enabling institutional contexts the research policy and practice implications are also discussed

british monetary and fiscal policy in the 1930s current economic turbulence has revived interest in interwar macroeconomic instability and policy this paper provides a guide to the current state of knowledge on british macroeconomic policy between 1929 and the eve of the second world war for today s economists and policy makers mindful that some will seek lessons from this earlier age it makes clear the very particular economic and policy context of the time including the marked difference between british and american economic performance and policies and the challenge posed by the massive rise in debt brought about by the first world war knowledge transfer is possible here for policy learning but what transpires is that lessons are typically stronger as negatives than as positives namely what should not be done in general as against what might be done this largely situation specific the focus is the role and effectiveness of the monetary and fiscal policies pursued together with an assessment of the principal policy not adopted namely the keynesian solution of significant loan financed public works to remedy mass unemployment the analysis is comparative with respect to us macroeconomic economic performance and policy it explores the different macroeconomic shocks of the contraction phase the term great depression is not really appropriate to the british experience in the two countries comparative policy regimes and then in turn analyses the policy mix and policy effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy including for britain the counterfactual keynesian solution a business cycle periodization is adopted with the key role for the abandonment of the gold standard in terms of regaining freedom of choice in macroeconomic policy itself experiencing significant developments after 1931 the traditional role of the cheap money induced housing boom in britain s post 1932 economic recovery is reaffirmed the impact of the fiscal policies actually pursued are then discussed as are assessments of the likely effectiveness of the keynesian solution had the 1929 liberal party s we can conquer unemployment spending package been implemented

entrepreneurship in and around institutional voids a case study from bangladesh abstract in many developing countries those living in poverty are unable to participate in markets due to the weakness or complete absence of supportive institutions this study examines in microcosm such institutional voids and illustrates the activities of an entrepreneurial actor in rural bangladesh aimed at addressing them the findings enable us to better understand why institutional voids originate and to unpack institutional processes in a setting characterized by extreme resource constraints and an institutional fabric that is rich but often at odds with market development we depict the crafting of new institutional arrangements as an ongoing process of bricolage and unveil its political nature as well as its potentially negative consequences

employment and unemployment in the 1930s the great depression is to economics what the big bang is to physics as an event the depression is largely synonymous with the birth of modern macroeconomics and it continues to haunt successive generations of economists with respect to labor and labor markets these facts evidently include wage rigidity persistently high unemployment rates and long term joblessness traditionally aggregate time series have provided the econometric grist for distinguishing explanations of the great depression recent research on labor markets in the 1930s however has shifted attention from aggregate to disaggregate time series and towards microeconomic evidence this shift in focus is motivated by two factors first disaggregated data provide many more degrees of freedom than the decade or so of annual observations associated with the depression and thus may prove helpful in distinguishin g macroeconomic explanations second disaggregation has revealed aspects of economic behavior hidden in the time series that may be essential to their proper interpretation and in any case are worthy of study in their own right although the substantive findings of recent research are too new to judge their permanent significance i believe that the shift towards disaggregated analysis is an important contribution the paper begins by reviewing the conventional statistics of the united states labor market during the great depression and the paradigms to explain them it then turns to recent studies of employment and unemployment using disaggregated data of various types the paper concludes with discussions of

what really caused the great recession rhyme and repetition in a theme from the 1930s diagnoses of the 2008 financial crisis have invoked arguments involving real sector developments that though much debated in the 1930s had largely disappeared from the literature in recent decades prompted by these revivals the present study re examines an inter war conviction that the depression had its origins in uneven technological progress and monopolistic competition effectively reversing the induced roundaboutness view of the austrian thesis these writings noted a conflict between the resulting need for monetary accommodation and its potentially destabilising distributional consequences a common framework permits the extent of similarity in inter war and contemporary american experience to be assessed with the comparison drawing attention to the 1990s nasdaq boom and the subsequent financial behaviour of the us corporate sector consistently with the earlier literature but contrary to recent conclusions financial sector excess is seen as an aggravating factor rather than an initiating cause of the recession

modeling heterogeneity and state dependence in consumer choice behavior in frequently purchased consumer goods markets consumer brand choices exhibit substantial persistence across purchase occasions in this article i estimate a choice model that admits of both heterogeneity in preferences and true state dependence as sources of this persistence using nielsen scanner data on ketchup i find evidence for true state dependence in the choice process even after controlling for a rich heterogeneity structure simulation of the model indicates that the long term effect of a promotion induced purchase on future purchase probabilities is positive but small

trade spill overs of fiscal policy in the european union a panel analysis we explore the international spillovers from fiscal policy shocks via trade in europe a fiscal expansion stimulates domestic activity which leads to more foreign exports and hence higher foreign output to quantify this we combine a panel var model in government spending net taxes and gdp with a panel trade model on average a public spending increase equal to 1 of gdp implies 2 3 more foreign exports over the first two years the corresponding figure for an equal size net tax reduction is 0 6 both estimates are statistically significant as far as the effect on foreign activity is concerned a 1 of gdp spending increase net tax reduction in germany on average raises gdp of trading partners by 0 23 0 06 over the first two years these figures are likely to form lower bounds for the actual effects and suggest that it may be worthwhile to further investigate the benefits from coordinated fiscal expansions contractions in response to european wide cyclical downturns upswings

the great crash and the onset of the great depression this paper argues that the collapse of stock prices in october 1929 generated temporary uncertainty about future income which led consumers to forgo purchases of durable goods that the great crash generated uncertainty is evidenced by the decline in surety expressed by contemporary forecasters that this uncertainty affected consumer behavior is shown by the fact that spending on consumer durables declined drastically in late 1929 while spending on perishable goods rose slightly this effect is confirmed by the fact that there is a significant negative relationship between stock market variability and the production of consumer durables in the prewar era

what are the effects of fiscal policy shocks we propose and apply a new approach for analyzing the effects of fiscal policy using vector autoregressions specifically we use sign restrictions to identify a government revenue shock as well as a government spending shock while controlling for a generic business cycle shock and a monetary policy shock we explicitly allow for the possibility of announcement effects i e that a current fiscal policy shock changes fiscal policy variables in the future but not at present we construct the impulse responses to three linear combinations of these fiscal shocks corresponding to the three scenarios of deficit spending deficit financed tax cuts and a balanced budget spending expansion we apply the method to us quarterly data from 1955 to 2000 we find that deficit financed tax cuts work best among these three scenarios to improve gdp with a maximal present value multiplier of five dollars of total additional gdp per each dollar of the total cut in government revenue 5 years after the shock copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

cross country experiences and policy implications from the global financial crisis the financial crisis of 2007 2008 is rooted in a number of factors some common to previous financial crises others new analysis of post crisis macroeconomic and financial sector performance for 58 advanced countries and emerging markets shows a differential impact of old and new factors factors common to other crises like asset price bubbles and current account deficits help to explain cross country differences in the severity of real economic impacts new factors such as increased financial integration and dependence on wholesale funding help to account for the amplification and global spread of the financial crisis our findings point to vulnerabilities to be monitored and areas of needed national and international reforms to reduce risk of future crises and cross border spillovers they also reinforce a sad state of knowledge much of how crises start and spread remains unknown stijn claessens giovanni dell ariccia deniz igan and luc laeven

buying without using biases of german bahncard buyers we use a large data set of german railway travellers to analyse the purchasing decision for fare reducing bahncards we expect that this tariff choice is neither completely rational nor irrational but bounded rational in a meaningful way actually we predict a flat rate bias i e an under use of their bahncards by many customers however we estimate that this bias is not too large the empirical results approve our hypotheses for the most part especially for the more expensive bahncard50 bc50 whereas the under use of the cheaper bahncard25 bc25 is so extensive that it is not worthwhile on average

unconventional economic policies and sentiment an international assessment this paper estimates using bayesian and global vars the spillover effects of unconventional fiscal and monetary policies implemented in the united states and in the eurozone during the last decade consumer confidence and investor sentiment indicators are introduced in the models in order to highlight the signalling channel in the responses to economic policy innovations in times of crisis our results reveal that consumer and investor perceptions of innovative economic measures are relevant to study the pass through of economic policies to the real sector in times of crisis and zero lower bound interest rates in particular the signalling channel plays an important role in successful unconventional economic policies moreover if unconventional economic policies have an impact abroad the effects are similar to those measured in the domestic country region consequently coordination and transparency are a prerequisite for ensuring short term growth after a global financial crisis

the euro area government spending multiplier at the effective lower bound abstract we build a factor augmented interacted panel vector autoregressive model of the euro area ea and estimate it with bayesian methods to compute government spending multipliers the multipliers are contingent on the overall monetary policy stance captured by a shadow monetary policy rate whether the fiscal shock occurs when the economy is at the effective lower bound elb or in normal times matters for the size of the multiplier median estimates vary conditional on the specification but the difference between multipliers at the elb and in normal times is systematically positive with very high probability over the medium run 5 years median cumulated multipliers range between 0 3 and 1 4 in normal times and between 1 6 and 2 9 at the elb we show that the results are not driven by the state of the business cycle and that the multiplier is inversely correlated with the level of the shadow monetary policy rate the econometric approach deals with several technical problems highlighted in the empirical macroeconomic literature including the issues of fiscal foresight and limited information

transmission of shocks across global real estate and equity markets an examination of the 2007 2008 housing crisis this study analyses the impact of the 2007 2008 u s financial crisis on the structure of interdependence among several major global real estate and equity markets moreover it performs a step by

a test of policy labels in environmental choice modelling studies abstract a question that arises in the application of environmental choice modelling cm studies is whether to present the choice sets in a generic or labelled form the former involves labelling the policy options to be presented to respondents in a generic way for example as option a option b etc the labelled approach assigns alternative specific descriptors to each option these may relate to the names of proposed policies different locations or any other policy relevant details both approaches have their advantages a potential advantage of using alternative specific labels is that respondents may be better able to base their choices on the true policy context this can increase predictive validity whilst at the same time reducing the cognitive burden of the cm exercise a potential advantage of the generic labelling approach is that respondents may be less inclined to base their choices wholly or largely on the labels and as a consequence may provide better information regarding trade offs among attributes the two approaches to choice set design are compared in the context of a cm study of the values of remnant vegetation in the desert uplands of central queensland results indicate a difference in the cognitive processes generated by choice models using the different approaches this difference is reflected in both the alternative specific constants and the taste parameters and cannot be accounted for by differences in error variance across the two treatments the implications for environmental valuation are discussed

personal values as a catalyst for corporate social entrepreneurship the literature acknowledges a distinction between immoral amoral and moral management this paper makes a case for the employee at any level as a moral agent even though the paper begins by highlighting a body of evidence which suggests that individual moral agency is sacrificed at work and is compromised in deference to other pressures this leads to a discussion about the notion of discretion and an examination of a separate contrary body of literature which indicates that some individuals in corporations may use their discretion to behave in a socially entrepreneurial manner my underlying assumption is that csr isn t solely driven by economics and that it may also be championed as a result of a personal morality inspired by employees own socially oriented personal values a conceptual framework is put forward and it is suggested that individuals may be categorized as active or frustrated corporate social entrepreneurs conformists or apathetics distinguished by their individualistic or collectivist personal values in a discussion of the nature of values this paper highlights how values may act as drivers of our behavior and pays particular attention to the values of the entrepreneur thereby linking the existing debate on moral agency with the field of corporate social responsibility

how resilient and countercyclical were emerging economies to the global financial crisis during the crises of the 1990s emerging economies usually lacked the policy tools to deal with external shocks that were available to advanced economies worldwide turbulent episodes found most emerging economies unable to perform countercyclical policies and in many cases their own vulnerabilities and poor institutional frameworks amplified negative external shocks leading to sharper recessions this paper shows that the 2008 2009 global financial crisis represents a structural break in the way emerging economies conduct their policies with more countercyclical policies pursued before and during the global crisis moreover breaking with the past emerging economies did not fall more than developed economies during the global financial crisis thus becoming more similar to developed economies the resilience of emerging economies during the 2008 2009 crisis might be partly attributed to a combination of sounder macroeconomic and financial policy frameworks with a shift towards safer domestic and international financial stances

fiscal shocks and their consequences this paper investigates the response of hours worked and real wages to fiscal policy shocks in the post world war ii us we identify these shocks with exogenous changes in military purchases and argue that they lead to a persistent increase in government purchases and tax rates on capital and labor income and a persistent rise in aggregate hours worked as well as declines in real wages the shocks are also associated with short lived rises in aggregate investment and small movements in private consumption we describe and implement a methodology for assessing whether standard neoclassical models can account for the consequences of a fiscal policy shock simple versions of the neoclassical model can account for the qualitative effects of a fiscal shock once we allow for habit formation and investment adjustment costs the model can also account reasonably well for the quantitative effects of a fiscal shock

the time for austerity estimating the average treatment effect of fiscal policy after the global financial crisis a controversial rush to fiscal austerity followed in many countries yet research on the effects of austerity on macroeconomic aggregates was and still is unsettled mired by the difficulty of identifying multipliers from observational data this article reconciles seemingly disparate estimates of multipliers within a unified and state contingent framework we achieve identification of causal effects with new propensity score based methods for time series data using this novel approach we show that austerity is always a drag on growth and especially so in depressed economies a 1 of gdp fiscal consolidation translates into a loss of 3 5 of real gdp over five years when implemented in a slump rather than just 1 8 in a boom

macrofinancial imbalances in historical perspective a global crisis index abstract global crisis episodes are rare events that can be properly studied by adopting the long run view of macroeconomic history in this study we explore the strength of the relationship between current account imbalances credit growth and equity returns at global level and document new evidence of a recurring sequencing pattern ahead of global crisis periods where credit booms are preceded by growing external imbalances and crisis episodes occur at the low end of the contraction phase of equity returns we use this information to construct a single aggregate measure with the aim of signaling periods of increasing risk of macroeconomic and financial instability at global level three major crisis episodes are identified with our global crisis index the 1929 crisis the breakdown of the bretton woods system and the recent financial crisis since past global crisis episodes at international level culminated with the collapse of existing international monetary systems the ongoing debate on the reforms needed to enhance the stability of international financial markets indicates the recent global financial crisis as a major turning point in the evolution of the international financial and monetary system

the political lessons of depression era banking reform ironically the primary motivations for the main bank regulatory reforms in the 1930s regulation q the separation of investment banking from commercial banking and the creation of federal deposit insurance were to preserve and enhance two of the most disastrous policies that contributed to the severity and depth of the great depression unit banking and the real bills doctrine other regulatory changes affecting the allocation of power between the fed and the treasury were intended to reduce the independence of the fed while giving the opposite impression the ill conceived banking legislation of the 1930s took very little time to pass but a great deal of time to disappear the overarching lesson is that the aftermath of crises are moments of high risk in public policy the great depression provoked banking reform legislation that was quick comprehensive and unusually responsive to popular opinion each of these three aspects increases the risk that regulation will have adverse consequences

on constraining fiscal policy discretion in emu we review the theoretical and empirical literature on the benefits and costs of imposing restrictions on fiscal policy we emphasize that the arguments in favour of restricting discretion of fiscal policy go beyond the notion of avoiding unsustainable budgetary plans that can lead to pressure on the central bank restrictions on fiscal policy can also be justified on the grounds that discretionary changes in spending or taxes can lead to unnecessary volatility in output and lower economic growth empirically there is evidence that implicit constraints on governments can be as effective as explicit constraints i e rules from the analysis in emu countries in the last 10 years we conclude that there has been a significant change in the conduct of fiscal policy in terms of increased discipline and less use of discretion however since 1999 there are clear signs of fatigue in this process as previous trends have either stopped or even reversed copyright 2003 oxford university press

the great recession us dynamics and spillovers to the world economy abstract this paper provides an empirical investigation of both the within us and international channels of transmission of macroeconomic and financial shocks by means of a 50 country macroeconometric model estimated over the 1980 2009 period including measures of excess liquidity and financial fragility specifically designed in order to evaluate the relevance of the boom bust credit cycle view put forward as an interpretation of the recent great recession episode we find that such a view is consistent with the empirical evidence moreover concerning the real effects of financial shocks within the us we detect stronger evidence of an asset prices channel rather than a liquidity channel concerning the spillovers to the world economy we find that while financial disturbances are transmitted to foreign countries through us house and stock price dynamics as well as excess liquidity creation the trade channel is the key trasmission mechanism of real shocks

corporate social responsibility in europe and the u s insights from businesses self presentations the paper compares the extent and content of businesses communications about corporate social responsibility csr in france the netherlands the u k and the u s in particular the study investigates the nature of csr principles processes and stakeholder issues discussed in web pages the results show that businesses in the four countries do not display the same eagerness to appear as socially responsible and employ diverse means to convey social responsibility images

the politics of shareholder activism in nigeria shareholder activism has become a force for good in the extant corporate governance literature in this article we present a case study of nigeria to show how shareholder activism as a corporate governance mechanism can constitute a space for unhealthy politics and turbulent politicking which is a reflection of the country s brand of politics as a result we point out some translational challenges and suggest more caution in the diffusion of corporate governance practices across different institutional environments we contribute to the literature on corporate governance in africa whilst creating an understanding of the political embeddedness of shareholder activism in different institutional contexts i e a step closer to a political theorising of shareholder activism

how does environmental corporate social responsibility matter in a dysfunctional institutional environment evidence from china drawing on institutional and signaling theories this study examines how environmental corporate social responsibility ecsr affects firm performance in a dysfunctional institutional environment we extend the ecsr literature by suggesting that ecsr indirectly influences firm performance through the mediating effects of business and political legitimacy based on a dataset of 238 firms in china we find that ecsr affects business and political legitimacy followed by firm performance moreover legal incompleteness weakens and legal inefficiency strengthens the effects of ecsr on business and political legitimacy

different markets for different folks exploring the challenges of mainstreaming responsible investment practices the link between corporate social responsibility csr and financial performance has continued to generate mixed and inconclusive results most studies in this area seem to assume that corporate social and financial performance share the same underpinning logic drawing from a qualitative analysis of practitioners accounts of the challenges of mainstreaming the market for responsible investments as part of the broader csr agenda this article re examines this taken for granted assumption in the extant literature and reaches the conclusion that csr as a complex private governance of externalities does not easily lend itself to measurability and profitability in other words not everything about csr is measurable and profitable as much as the financial markets would expect comparing what is rendered measurable and profitable on one hand and what is yet to fully lend itself to measurability and profitability on the other is identified as one of the fundamental flaws of this literature as such csr and financial performance will continue to run on competing logics until their different markets are distinctively articulated and or aligned

convergence versus divergence of csr in developing countries an embedded multi layered institutional lens this paper capitalizes on an institutional perspective to analyze corporate social responsibility csr orientations in the lebanese context specifically the paper compiles a new theoretical framework drawing on a multi level model of institutional flows by scott institutions and organizations ideas and interests 2008 and the explicit implicit csr model by matten and moon acad manag rev 33 2 404 424 2008 this new theoretical framework is then used to explore the csr convergence versus divergence question in a developing country context the findings highlight the usefulness of the compiled multi layered institutional framework and the varied nuances and profound insights it offers in analyzing csr in context they also suggest that a cosmetic level of global convergence in explicit csr may materialize in light of mimetic isomorphic pressures but that the path dependence hypothesis is indeed salient in light of national history trajectories and socio politico configurations the findings correspond most closely to patterns of csr crossvergence combining elements of both convergence and divergence and reflecting in complex hybridized csr expressions the findings and their implications are presented and assessed

cross of euros the eurozone currently confronts severe short run macroeconomic adjustment problems and a deficient institutional architecture that has to be reformed in the longer run europe s efforts at economic and monetary union are historically unprecedented however the gold standard provides lessons regarding what will and won t work macroeconomically and politically in the short run while us history provides long run lessons regarding appropriate institutional structures the latter also suggests that institutional reform only happens at times of great crisis and that it cannot be taken for granted the eurozone s leaders may therefore ultimately have to take heed of the lessons of history regarding currency union breakups