the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox author s paul a david source the american economic review vol 80 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundred and second annual meeting of the american economic association may 1990 pp 355 361 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2006600 accessed 08 12 2010 01 40

the dynamics of credit markets in a model with learning abstract a dynamic credit market is modeled in which the production and processing of information leads to alternating and persistent periods of growth and contraction in the model the number of projects engaged in determines the precision of estimates of future returns obtained from current investment shocks to underlying returns to risky projects are magnified and prolonged by the learning process multiple equilibria may exist and the magnification effect may be even larger since shocks can move the credit market to a new equilibrium the allocation of credit is generally not a constrained pareto efficient allocation

monetary policy and bank lending in the euro area is there a stock market channel or an interest rate channel abstract in this paper i compare a traditional demand oriented model of bank lending with its focus on short term interest rates in the money market to a non traditional capital budgeting model of bank lending based on movements in share valuations for the euro area using non nested hypothesis tests omitted variables tests and granger causality tests i reject the traditional demand oriented model of bank lending and fail to reject the capital budgeting model of bank lending for monetary financial institutions mfi s in the euro area even though europe is a bank based financial system it appears the stock market plays a key role in the lending decisions and allocation of resources in europe one possible policy implication of this research is that the central bank should try and stabilize stock prices in order to achieve their goal of stabilizing bank lending and the economy

financial crisis and credit crunch in korea evidence from firm level data abstract this paper analyzes the credit crunch following the recent financial crisis in korea using enterprise level data we find that there were big differences in the magnitude of the credit contraction across different types of firms in particular chaebol conglomerate affiliated firms appeared to have lost the preferential access to credit that they had enjoyed in the pre crisis period and credit appears to have been reallocated in favor of more efficient firms this suggests that the credit crunch suffered by certain sectors can be attributed to the adjustment by banks and enterprises to the restructuring of the financial sector rather than tight monetary policy or an external credit constraint

how capital regulation and other factors drive the role of shadow banking in funding short term business credit abstract this paper empirically analyzes how capital regulation risk and other factors altered the relative use of shadow banking funded short term business debt since the early 1960s results indicate that the share was affected over the long run not only by changing information and reserve requirement costs but also by shifts in relative regulation of bank versus nonbank credit sources such as basel i in 1990 and reregulation in 2010 in the short run the shadow bank share rose when deposit interest rate ceilings were binding on traditional banks the economic outlook improved or risk premia declined and fell when event risks arose

the economics of biodiversity conservation a study of a coffee growing region in the western ghats of india this paper analyses the economics of biodiversity conservation in the context of a tropical forest ecosystem in the western ghats region of india where coffee is the main competitor for land use using primary data covering a cross section of coffee growers the study notes that the opportunity costs of biodiversity conservation in terms of coffee benefits foregone are quite high even after including external costs due to wildlife damages and defensive expenditure to protect against wildlife the npvs and irrs from coffee for all land holding groups were high including external costs these npvs across different land holding groups ranged between rs 17 thousand to over rs 106 thousand per acre at 12 discount rate and the irrs between 16 6 and 23 even if the expected benefits were to decrease by 20 and costs rise by a similar proportion still the irrs from coffee were quite high 19 5 20 1 the study notes that the external costs accounted for between 7 and 15 of the total discounted costs of coffee cultivation and smaller holdings proportionately incurred higher external costs as compared to large holdings the study also notes high transaction costs incurred by the growers to claim compensation for wildlife damages notwithstanding these disincentives the study notes that the local community had a positive attitude towards biodiversity conservation and were willing to pay in terms of spending time for participatory biodiversity conservation taking elephants a keystone and threatened species in asia and the study region for the contingent valuation survey the study notes that the respondents are willing to spend 25 8 humandays per household annually which works to over rs 6003 per household per annum in terms of the income foregone they also preferred a decentralized government institution for participatory biodiversity conservation d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

valuing ecosystem services on the basis of service providing units a potential approach to address the endpoint problem and improve stated preference methods abstract standardized methods are required to measure ecosystem services in order to value them in this paper we argue that the service providing unit spu concept may help achieve this objective by promoting the systematic quantification of the key components of nature that provide services e g population density of a key pollinator and linking these with measurable outcomes for human well being we discuss and provide examples of the potential role of the spu concept in improving economic valuation of ecosystem services further we suggest the concept may contribute to addressing the endpoint problem which can be defined simply as the inability of researchers to communicate the implications of environmental change in a way that is understood by a broad cross section of society the endpoint problem is of particular relevance to stated preference approaches and we discuss the capacity of the spu concept to refine these approaches we argue that the concept enhances interdisciplinary collaboration promoting more validated well informed valuation applications it also has the potential to minimize warm glow effects and put the notion of marginal changes in the provision of ecosystem services in a new light

money income prices and interest rates including data from the 1980s sharply weakens the postwar time series evidence indicating significant relationships between money however defined and nominal income or between money and either real income or prices separately focusing on data from 1970 onward destroys this evidence altogether evidence indicating cointegration of real income and real money balances with due allowance for the effect of interest rates also deteriorates when the sample extends through the 1980s a positive finding is that the spread between the commercial paper rate and the treasury bill rate consistently contains highly significant information about future movements in real income copyright 1992 by american economic association

path dependence and the korean keyboard abstract this paper recounts the evolution of the korean keyboard as a case in which the disadvantages of the inherited standard turn into a nonissue with the advancement of auxiliary technologies the persistence of an inherited standard when a superior alternative is available is usually regarded as market failure however if the transition costs to the new standard are such that the net gains from the transition are insufficient the situation is unfortunate but not market failure the situation may change over time if the net gain from the alternative standard increases or transition costs to new alternative decrease or both the situation turns into one in which entrepreneurs can profit by making the transition where appropriate an institutional reform may lower transition costs substantially this paper suggests an additional possibility of technological changes that make the transition unnecessary in the case of the korean keyboard changes in auxiliary technologies have rendered the disadvantages of the inherited standard innocuous the case provides a cautionary tale against the temptation to drastically alter a seemingly hopelessly inferior inherited standard the lesson of the korean keyboard applies to japanese and chinese keyboards with even greater force

valuing forest ecosystem services what we know and what we don t abstract ecosystem services valuation has achieved considerable prominence in research and policy circles in recent years this paper reviews the studies that have tried to estimate the value of forest ecosystem services broadly this study addresses the following questions 1 what insights do these studies provide on the value of forest ecosystems 2 what lessons do they offer from an economic and policy perspective 3 what are the shortcomings of the existing studies and what are the challenges and issues for future research evidence from a cross section of forest sites countries and regions suggests that not only the total valuation of ecosystem services varies widely across studies but also the valuation of individual services this variation suggests that policies to conserve ecosystems and their services should emphasise local contexts and values this paper concludes by discussing the shortcomings of existing studies and suggests that among other things future research should focus on the neglected ecosystem services disservices assess the role of dynamic factors and environmental catastrophes on the provision of ecosystem services and assess the benefits of keeping forests intact versus converting them to alternative uses

flight to quality in banking and economic activity abstract recent explanations of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy have emphasized that riskier lower net worth borrowers are more dependent on bank lending than larger less risky borrowers evidence from the federal reserve s survey on terms of bank lending indicates that the proportion of relatively high quality new loans safe moves countercyclically and granger causes gdp and inventory investment in the aftermath of a tightening of monetary policy the safe variable increases and in turn policy tends to relax once safe has risen

network externality an uncommon tragedy economists have defined network externality and have examined putative inframarginal market failures associated with it this paper distinguishes between network effects and network externalities where the latter are market failures the authors argue that while network effects are important network externalities are theoretically fragile and empirically undocumented some network externalities are merely pecuniary network ownership or transactions among network participants can internalize some network effects the type of market failure that has been associated with these externalities is a transition problem that has little to do with externality

heterogeneous borrowers liquidity and the search for credit abstract we develop a general equilibrium model of credit formation where borrowers and lenders must search for matches and where the composition of borrowers adjusts to satisfy equilibrium entry conditions when market liquidity dries up as a result of fundamental shocks to the system fewer borrowers will participate in the credit market with low quality borrowers suffering disproportionately because of a flight to quality however less liquid credit markets need not be associated with lower social output because the effect of higher average quality may outweigh that of reduced market participation depending crucially on the source of the liquidity shock

tortoises and hares choice among technologies of unknown merit recent work in the area of competing technologies and increasing returns has largely been concerned with the effectiveness of the market in delivering optimal outcomes the existence of inefficient market outcomes suggests that there might be a place for intervention in the technology choice process this paper develops a model of sequential choice in which the choice process is subject to centralized control the model is used to show that intervention can increase the expected present value of the technology adoption process it remains however that one technology and not necessarily the best will come to dominate the market copyright 1991 by royal economic society

the economic sustainability of certified coffee recent evidence from mexico and peru consumers increasingly act on preferences for a more just and sustainable world by purchasing certified agricultural products using survey data from coffee growers in mexico and peru we explore the economic sustainability of certified coffee looking at conventional fair trade organic and rainforest alliance certified growers the analysis reveals that yields rather than price premiums are most important for increasing net cash returns for coffee growing households given the link between net returns and producer participation in certified coffee schemes the findings suggest that certification norms that permit improving yields are essential for improving grower welfare and attracting and maintaining growers

organic certification agro ecological practices and return on investment evidence from pineapple producers in ghana the recent empirical literature on economic sustainability of certified export crops shows that certification standards that enhance yields are important for improving farm revenues and household welfare however limited evidence exists on the impact of organic certification on the adoption of agro ecological practices in this study we use unique farm level data from pineapple producers in ghana to examine the impact of organic certification on the use of agro ecological practices such as organic fertilizers organic pest and weed control crop rotation and soil and water conservation as well as how using these measures affect farm outcomes such as return on investment our empirical results reveal that organic certification increases agro ecological practice use although from a very low starting point using a generalized propensity score approach we show that there is a positive but nonlinear relationship between the intensity of agro ecological practice use and return on investment

information and bank credit allocation abstract private information obtained by lenders leads to borrower capture to the extent that such information cannot be communicated credibly to outsiders we analyze how this capture affects the loan portfolio allocation of informed lenders first we show that banks charge higher interest rates and finance relatively less creditworthy borrowers in market segments with greater information asymmetries second when faced with greater competition from outside lenders banks reallocate credit toward more captured borrowers flight to captivity third if borrower quality and captivity are sufficiently correlated an increase in the competitiveness of uninformed lenders can worsen the informed lender s overall loan portfolio the model explains observed consequences of financial liberalizations