real exchange rates under the recent float unequivocal evidence of mean reversion standard multivariate tests of long run ppp may reject nonstationarity when a single real exchange rate series is stationary we apply a test where the null hypothesis is violated only when all series are stationary and reject nonstationarity for real dollar rates

parity reversion in real exchange rates during the post bretton woods period abstract a common view among recent studies on purchasing power parity is that the post bretton woods period is far too short to reveal any significant parity reversion in individual series of real exchange rates is this really so the answer this study shows depends very much on the statistical test being used two efficient univariate unit root tests are applied to uncover parity reversion these tests require much shorter sample sizes than conventional tests to attain the same statistical power empirical results show that parity reversion can be unveiled over the modern float if an efficient unit root test is applied

nonlinear dynamics in deviations from the law of one price a broad based empirical study abstract in this paper we test empirically the validity of the law of one price using data for five major bilateral us dollar exchange rates and nine goods sectors during the recent floating exchange rate regime since the early 1970s using threshold autoregressive models we find strong evidence of nonlinear mean reversion in deviations from the law of one price with plausible convergence speeds consistent with theoretical arguments on international goods markets arbitrage under transactions costs and with an emerging strand of empirical literature these results contribute towards forming a consensus view in favor of discrete regime switching in deviations from the law of one price and the presence of differing nonzero transactions costs across a broad range of goods and countries

getting ppp right identifying mean reverting real exchange rates in panels abstract recent advances in testing for the validity of purchasing power parity ppp focus on the time series properties of real exchange rates in panel frameworks one weakness of such tests however is that they fail to inform the researcher as to which cross section units are stationary as a consequence a reservation for ppp analyses based on such tests is that a small number of real exchange rates in a given panel may drive the results in this paper we examine the ppp hypothesis focusing on the stationarity of the real exchange rates in up to 25 oecd countries we introduce a methodology that when applied to a set of established panel unit root tests allows the identification of the real exchange rates that are stationary our results reveal evidence of mean reversion that is significantly stronger as compared to that obtained by the existing literature strengthening the case for ppp

why democracies produce efficient results by applying the standard tools of microeconomic analysis i argue that democratic markets work as well as economic markets in particular i show that previous work has greatly exaggerated the existence of principal agent and informational problems in electoral markets and has drawn incorrect conclusions

national price levels purchasing power parity and cointegration a test of four high inflation economies abstract the time series properties of exchange rates and wholesale prices from four high inflation countries show some evidence in support of purchasing power parity tests for stationarity of real exchange rates and cointegration among price and exchange rate variables are presented for argentina brazil chile and israel during the 1970s and 1980s error correction models describe the mechanism of adjustment to long run equilibrium

purchasing power parity in the long run a cointegration approach this paper utilizes cointegration analysis to examine purchasing power parity relationships over a long time horizon the results indicate that the exchange rate is cointegrated strongly with the wholesale price index ratio and somewhat weakly with the consumer price index ratio the cointegrating coefficient between the exchange rate and the price ratio is close to one when cointegration is confirmed the hypothesis that the real exchange rate follows a random walk is rejected in most cases finally a new test for common trends finds no such common trends in exchange rates or price ratios copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

are asian real exchange rates stationary by applying the newly developed nonlinear stationary test advanced by kapetanios et al journal of econometrics 112 2003 359 in examining the stationary property of 11 asian real exchange rates this paper rejects unit root in 8 us dollar based and 6 japanese yen based rates whereas the augmented dickey fuller adf test has led to no rejection at all

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

the behaviour of the real exchange rate evidence from regression quantiles abstract we test for mean reversion in real exchange rates using a recently developed unit root test for non normal processes based on quantile autoregression inference in semi parametric and non parametric settings the quantile regression approach allows us to directly capture the impact of different magnitudes of shocks that hit the real exchange rate conditional on its past history and can detect asymmetric dynamic adjustment of the real exchange rate towards its long run equilibrium it therefore provides a detailed mapping of the real exchange rate behaviour while being a robust alternative to previous unit root tests the latter is confirmed by a simulation analysis comparing the power of the alternative tests as concerns the real exchange rate our results suggest that large shocks tend to induce strong mean reverting tendencies in the exchange rate with half lives less than one year in the extreme quantiles mean reversion is faster when large shocks originate at points of large real exchange rate deviations from the long run equilibrium however in the absence of shocks no mean reversion is observed finally we report asymmetries in the dynamic adjustment of the rer

nonlinear adjustment to purchasing power parity in the post bretton woods era abstract this paper models the dynamics of adjustment to long run purchasing power parity ppp over the post bretton woods period in a nonlinear framework consistent with the presence of frictions in international trade we estimate exponential smooth transition autoregressive estar models of deviations from ppp which are obtained using the johansen cointegration method for both consumer price index cpi and wholesale price index wpi based measures and a broad set of us trading partners in several cases we find clear evidence of a mean reverting dynamic process for sizable deviations from ppp with the equilibrium tendency varying nonlinearly with the magnitude of disequilibrium analysis of impulse response functions also supports a nonlinear dynamic structure but convergence to long run ppp in the post bretton woods era is very slow

costly information acquisition is it better to toss a coin abstract this paper presents a strategic model of common value elections with endogenous information acquisition it proves that majoritarian elections can fail to aggregate information when voters have heterogeneous skills and provides necessary and sufficient conditions for information aggregation inefficiencies can be partially corrected by limiting participation to the most competent citizens a result which provides a rational foundation for epistocratic government

uncertainty in currency mispricing abstractdeclaring a currency to be mispriced is fraught with uncertainties in this article these uncertainties are explicitly recognized in a model of pricing a homogeneous commodity around the world this allows for a common driver of prices due to a base currency effect and country specific factors that lead to departures from absolute ppp on account of income differences local taxes and charges etc this approach leads to estimates of currency mispricing whose significance can be tested in the usual way using big mac prices we show that the approach has advantages over the popular big mac index to currency valuation

can the markov switching model forecast exchange rates abstract a markov swirching model is fit for 18 exchange rates at quarterly frequencies the model fits well in sample for many exchange rates by the mean squared error criterion the markov model does not generate superior forecasts to a random walk or the forward rate there appears to ne some evidence that the forecasts of the markov model are superior at predicting the direction of change of the exchange rate

environmental taxation and unemployment some evidence on the double dividend hypothesis in europe abstract the employment double dividend hypothesis suggests that an appropriately designed fiscal reform in which emission charges are used to subsidize employers social security contributions may realize at least two relevant policy goals a better quality of the environment and at the same time an increase in employment levels this paper uses a newly developed econometric general equilibrium model for the european union as well as for each member country and presents simulation results up to the year 2010 of the effects of a european carbon tax the revenues from which are recycled to reduce employers social security contributions the results show that recycling carbon tax revenues may provide an employment double dividend only in the short run

did women s suffrage change the size and scope of government this paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote using cross sectional time series data for 1870 1940 we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by u s house and senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise contrary to many recent suggestions the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s and it helps explain why american government started growing when it did

the handbook of international macroeconomics preface 1 introduction rick van der ploeg amsterdam 2 quantity constrained models of open economies neil rankin warwick 3 imperfect competition and open economy macroeconomics huw d dixon york 4 relative price movements in dynamic general equilibrium models of international trade david backus nyu patrick kehoe pennsylvania and finn kydland carnegie mellon 5 international fiscal policy coordination and competition assaf razin and efraim sadka tel aviv 6 capital taxation in the world economy a lans bovenberg tilburg 7 history of the international monetary system implications for research in international macroeconomics and finance barry eichengreen berkeley 8 on inflation unemployment and the optimal exchange rate regime george alogoskoufis athens 9 macroeconomic policy speculative attacks and balance of payments crisis pierre richard agenor and robert p flood imf 10 continuous time models of exchange rates and intervention giuseppe bertola princeton 11 stylized facts of nominal exchange rate returns casper g de vries leuven 12 partial versus general equilibrium models of international capital market equilibrium 13 sovereign debt kenneth kletzer santa cruz 14 growth and external debt daniel cohen cepremap 15 growth and deficits in an interdependent world index

real exchange rate behavior abstract using random simulations with artificial data with identical sample characteristics to the long sample exchange rate data employed by lothian and taylor lothian j r and taylor m p 1996 the recent float from the perspective of the past two centuries journal of political economy 104 488 509 we show that standard unit root tests have extremely low power over sample sizes corresponding to the recent float the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is false is extremely low with 20 years or even 50 years of data and only reaches an acceptable level over much longer spans

paying the piper and calling the tune a meta regression analysis of the double dividend hypothesis abstract we present a meta regression analysis of model based simulation studies assessing the employment effects of environmental tax reforms besides the role of central modeling assumptions we investigate the implications of contracting bodies on the simulation results our analysis reveals the importance of unobservable study characteristics for the prospects of a double dividend in terms of lower emissions along with higher employment levels while at first glance labor market assumptions and the contracting body seem to play a central role for the model outcome these observable features are no longer significant when unobservable study features are controlled for in contrast we find the simulated employment impacts of environmental tax reforms to be determined by a joint set of explicit model assumptions as well as implicit characteristics of the respective studies

nonexpert beliefs about the macroeconomic consequences of economic and noneconomic events economists assume that individuals think about the economy like economists which is especially important in all rational expectations and economic voting models despite contrasting evidence there has been little research on actual nonexpert macroeconomic beliefs in this paper i present the results of a survey among students designed to find out whether they distinguish macroeconomically relevant from irrelevant events i find that even people with some economic background tend to overestimate the effects of noneconomic events this bias is a function of gender economic training and the preferred means of mass communication

are real exchange rates nonstationary evidence from a panel data test it is well documented that real exchange rates between the united states and many industrialized countries in the post bretton woods period are integrated this result implies that purchasing power parity ppp does not hold even as a long run relationship this paper demonstrates that the failure to reject the unit root hypothesis may result from the low power of existing univariate test procedures i test for unit roots in real exchange rates by employing a more powerful panel based procedure using both cpi and wpi real dollar exchange rate data i strongly reject the null hypothesis of a unit root my results provide overwhelming support for the long run ppp under the current float copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

purchasing power parity and country characteristics evidence from panel data tests abstract we examine long run purchasing power parity ppp using panel data methods to test for unit roots in us dollar real exchange rates of 84 countries we find stronger evidence of ppp in countries more open to trade closer to the united states with lower inflation and moderate nominal exchange rate volatility and with similar economic growth rates as the united states we also show that ppp holds for panels of european and latin american countries but not for african and asian countries our findings demonstrate that country characteristics can help explain both adherence to and deviations from long run ppp

purchasing power parity and the euro area abstract this paper analyzes purchasing power parity ppp for the euro area we study the impact of the introduction of the euro in 1999 on the behavior of real exchange rates we test the ppp hypothesis for a panel of real exchange rates within the euro area over the period 1973 2003 our methodology exploits the cross sectional dependence across real exchange rates and allows for heterogeneity in the rates of mean reversion we present evidence in favor of ppp for the full panel of real exchange rates but we show that accounting for cross country differences within the euro area is essential the unit root hypothesis can be rejected for some real exchange rates but evidence for ppp is weak for others we also investigate ppp between the synthetic euro against several other major currencies over the period 1979 2003 we find support for the ppp hypothesis for the full panel of real exchange rates when the restriction of a common mean reversion coefficient is relaxed we reject the unit root hypothesis for the euro swiss franc rate only we conclude that the process of economic integration in europe has accelerated convergence toward ppp within the euro area

emporiophobia fear of markets cooperation or competition there is widespread emporiophobia fear of markets and this has important policy implications as it leads voters to demand anti market policies there are many reasons for this anti market attitude however economists could reduce emporiophobia if we stressed cooperation rather than competition in our writings and policy discussions in a sample of introductory textbooks competition is mentioned on average 8 times as often as cooperation the fundamental economic unit is the transaction and transactions are cooperative the benefit of a market economy increased consumer surplus comes from cooperation through transactions not from competition competition in a market economy is competition for the right to cooperate competition is important because it guarantees that the best cooperators will win and because it establishes the efficient terms for cooperation but cooperation is fundamental for most people competition has negative connotations as it focuses on losers while cooperation implies a winwin situation as an example if we say wal mart outcompeted its rivals we think of losing firms being bankrupted if we say wal mart did a better job of cooperating with its customers we think of the benefits created by wal mart economists in our policy and textbook writing should strive to use the second sort of locution not the first other implications involve the morality of the market giving back and characteristics of market failures

real and nominal exchange rates in the long run an empirical investigation abstract this paper reports on econometric tests of the hypothesis that purchasing power parity holds as a long run relationship using data on eight industrialized countries during the flexible exchange rate period the empirical work proceeds by i testing whether nominal exchange rates and relative price levels are co integrated and ii conducting impulse response analysis of long run exchange rate and relative price level changes to explain the data keynesian models suggest that shocks during the estimation period were due principally to exogenous shifts in aggregate demand while equilibrium models suggest that monetary factors have been relatively more important

purchasing power parity in less developed and transition economies a review paper abstract the concept of purchasing power parity ppp has been the subject of numerous studies many of which have been unable to prove conclusively this core principle of international finance although industrialized countries have received most of the attention studies that focus on less developed and transition economies have also attained mixed results this study surveys trends in this branch of the literature highlighting the econometric advances that have sought to solve this puzzle while pointing out that more needs to be done to address the reasons that might cause ppp not to hold

divided opinion on the fair minimum wage act of 2013 random or systematic differences this paper analyses economists support for the fair minimum wage act of 2013 i find systematic differences between those supporting the legislation and those opposing it with support higher among females young labour economists and those located further from chicago

expectations of future income and real exchange rate movements abstract we show that changes in expectations of future income driven by exogenous factors such as the discovery of oil and an increase in global demand for natural resources can cause movements in the real exchange rate rer in excess of and sometimes even in the opposite direction to what one would expect given the changes in current income we provide both a theoretical model and empirical evidence of this in particular we show that the signing of numerous production sharing agreements psas between the government of azerbaijan and foreign oil companies in 1994 1998 fueled expectations of higher future incomes resulting in a considerable appreciation of the rer some of these psas subsequently failed or ran into difficulties which led to a downward revision of expected future income and a depreciation of the rer in 1999 2003 even though the current income started to rise due to an increase in the current oil revenue

a friction model of daily bundesbank and federal reserve intervention abstract this paper takes a novel approach to derive a central bank intervention reaction function a garch model for exchange rates is amended to allow interventions to have an effect on both the mean and the variance of exchange rate returns an intervention reaction function is obtained by combining the model with a loss function for the central bank estimation results for the implied friction model reproduce the familiar leaning against the wind policy by the bundesbank and the federal reserve furthermore the central banks appear to have reacted to increases in the conditional variance of daily dm returns

is the evidence for ppp reliable a sustainability examination of the stationarity of real exchange rates abstract some recent time series studies testing the stationarity of real exchange rates rers produce conflicting results using nonlinear unit root tests and recursive analysis this paper tests whether the evidence on the stationarity of rers is sensitive to different numeraire currencies different sample periods covering regional and global crises and the inclusion of countries with different levels of economic or regional integration the results indicate that evidence for a stationary rer could be substantially sensitive to sample period changes but not so for the currencies of the countries involved in forming the euro area we also find that financial crises have a notable impact on testing the stationarity of rers depending on the numeraire currency used we discuss the policy implications of the findings

real exchange rate behavior the recent float from the perspective of the past two centuries using annual data spanning two centuries for dollar sterling and franc sterling real exchange rates we find strong evidence of mean reverting real exchange rate behavior using simple stationary autoregressive models estimated on prefloat data we easily outperform nonstationary real exchange rate models in dynamic forecasting exercises over the recent float such stationary univariate equations explain 60 80 percent of the in sample variation in real exchange rates although the degree of short run persistence may be high the econometric estimates imply a half life of shocks to the real exchange rate of about 6 years for dollar sterling and a little under 3 years for franc sterling

separability testing in production economics the implications of separability in production are examined using duality restrictions on the profit function implied by separability of the production function and vice versa are derived in a simple way these restrictions are then calculated for commonly used classes of functional forms then the method is used to test separability of the profit function using experimental production data the hypothesis that the profit function was separable plant nutrients from spacing unit costs could not be rejected this implies that an aggregate price index for nutrients is appropriate

how much intraregional exchange rate variability could a currency union remove the case of asean 3 abstract a multilateral currency union removes intraregional exchange rates but not the union rate the pre union intraregional exchange rate variability is thus latent a two step procedure is developed to measure this the measured variables are used to model inflation and intraregional trade growth of individual union members counterfactual simulations of the union impact are carried out using the resulting models application to asean 3 shows that the intraregional variability mainly consists of short run exchange rate shocks that the variability significantly affects inflation and intraregional trade of major asean 3 members and that a union would reduce inflation and promote trade regionwide

the choice of numeraire currency in panel tests of purchasing power parity we investigate the implications of the choice of numeraire currency on panel tests of purchasing power parity under the current regime of flexible exchange rates by conducting panel unit root tests with twenty one different base currencies we show that the conditions necessary for numeraire irrelevancy are not supported empirically and that the choice of numeraire currency can and does matter for ppp the evidence of ppp is stronger for european than for non european base currencies distance between the countries and volatility of the exchange rates are the most important determinants of the results

volatile and persistent real exchange rates with or without sticky prices the flexible price two country monetary model is extended to include a consumption externality with habit persistence two methodologies are employed to explore this model s ability to generate volatile and persistent exchange rates in the first actual data is used for the exogenous driving processes in the second the model is simulated using estimated forcing processes the theory in both cases is capable of explaining the high volatility and persistence of real and nominal exchange rates as well as the high correlation between real and nominal rates

the effects of additive outliers on tests for unit roots and cointegration this article discusses the properties of the univariate dickey fuller test and the johansen test for the cointegrating rank when there exist additive outlying observations in the time series we provide analytical as well as numerical evidence that additive outliers may produce spurious stationary hence the dickey fuller test will reject a unit root too frequently and the johansen test will indicate too many cointegrating vectors the results easily generalize to models with temporary change outliers through an empirical example we discuss how additive and temporary change outliers can be detected in practice and we show how dummy variables can be used to remove the influence of such extreme observations

purchasing power parity in the long run a test of the dollar pound exchange rate 1890 1978 this paper tests the purchasing power parity ppp hypothesis by analyzing t he long run tendency of the dollar pound exchange rate using data sin ce 1890 two different models are considered 1 a na ive model and 2 a modified monetary model the conditions of propor tionality and symmetry cannot be rejected when using the naive model the final results using the monetary model however indicate that t he existence of permanent deviations from ppp cannot be ruled out copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

meta regression analysis a quantitative method of literature surveys abstract pedagogically literature reviews are instrumental they summarize the large literature written on a particular topic give coherence to the complex often disparate views expressed about an issue and serve as a springboard for new ideas however literature surveys rarely establish anything approximating unanimous consensus ironically this is just as true for the empirical economic literature to harmonize this dissonance we offer a quantitative methodology for reviewing the empirical economic literature meta regression analysis mra is the regression analysis of regression analyses mra tends to objectify the review process it studies the processes that produce empirical economic results as though they were any other social scientific phenomenon mra provides a framework for replication and offers a sensitivity analysis for model specification in this brief essay we propose a new method of reviewing economic literature mra and discuss its potential

bounds tests of the theory of purchasing power parity abstract in this paper we test the absolute and relative purchasing power parity ppp hypotheses during the recent flexible exchange rate period using quarterly data for 21 oecd countries in doing so we use a new econometric technique developed by m h pesaran et al bounds testing approaches to the analysis of long run relationships university of cambridge department of applied economics working paper 9907 this approach is particularly interesting as it is capable of testing the existence of long run relations regardless of whether the underlying variables are stationary integrated or mutually cointegrated

exploring the present through the past claudia goldin is one of the world s leading economists and economic historians and has made a series of outstanding and original contributions particularly to the cliometric or the new economic history literature in this interview professor goldin discusses with brian snowdon who first provides a background introduction several important issues relating to her research on economic history and cliometrics the economics of slavery us economic history corruption in america the role of human capital and education in us economic development wage inequality female labour force participation and the quiet revolution the influence of the contraceptive pill women s surnames the reversal of the college gender gap and women in the economics profession

recycling of carbon energy taxes and the labor market this paper provides a quantitative assessmet of a cost shift from labor to energy by means of a carbon energy tax the analysis utilizes a general equilibrium model for the european community placing the emphasis on the modeling of labor supply the paper highlights the importance of the feedback from an induced increase in labor demand to wage formation it shows that the goals of co2 reduction and improved employment are complementary provided the reduction in labor costs financed by the carbon energy tax is not offset by increased wage claims under this condition reduced co2 is consistent with an increase in gdp

long run purchasing power parity in the 1920s abstract this paper presents an empirical analysis of long run purchasing power parity ppp during the 1920s float using recently developed methodology on the cointegration of economic time series our results are generally supportive of ppp as a long run equilibrium condition on which exchange rates tended to converge over the period for dollar sterling however there is some evidence of a non stationary drift away from fundamentals during the last year or so before britain s return to the gold standard perhaps due to speculation our results also appear to reconcile some apparently conflicting evidence in the literature

can markov switching models predict excess foreign exchange returns abstract this paper merges the literature on technical trading rules with the literature on markov switching to develop economically useful trading rules the markov models out of sample excess returns modestly exceed those of standard technical rules and are profitable over the most recent subsample a portfolio of markov and standard technical rules outperforms either set individually on a risk adjusted basis the markov rules high excess returns contrast with mixed performance on statistical tests of forecast accuracy there is no clear source for the trends but permitting the mean to depend on higher moments of the exchange rate distribution modestly increases returns

purchasing power parity and the theory of general relativity the first tests we implement novel tests of general relative purchasing power parity ppp defined as a long run unit elasticity of the nominal exchange rate with respect to relative national prices allowing for potentially permanent real exchange rate shocks the finite sample properties of the estimators used are analyzed through monte carlo analysis allowing for country heterogeneity cross sectional dependence and non stationary disturbances application to panel data sets of industrialized and developing economies reveals that inflation differentials are on average reflected one for one in long run nominal exchange rate depreciation i e that general relative ppp holds

equilibrium exchange rates in central and eastern europe a meta regression analysis abstract this paper analyses the ever growing literature on equilibrium exchange rates in the new eu member states of central and eastern europe in a quantitative manner using meta regression analysis the results indicate that the real misalignments reported in the literature are systematically influenced inter alia by the underlying theoretical concepts balassa samuelson effect behavioral equilibrium exchange rate fundamental equilibrium exchange rate and by the econometric estimation methods the important implication of these findings is that a systematic analysis is needed in terms of both alternative economic and econometric specifications to assess equilibrium exchange rates

purchasing power parity and the canadian float in the 1950s in this paper the authors present evidence that neither large differences in inflation nor long time periods are necessary for a finding favorable to purchasing power parity evidence from cointegrating regressions and tests of the real exchange rate indicate that purchasing power parity held as a long run constraint between the united states and canada for the period 1950 10 to 1961 5 the authors also find that government intervention can distort purchasing power parity over a finite period once the data were extended beyond the period of the free float the evidence is no longer favorable to purchasing power parity copyright 1991 by mit press

forecast improvements using a volatility index this paper explores the possibility of improved out of sample forecasting for stock returns and foreign exchange rates using observed nonlinearities in the two series forecasting is done using nonparametric techniques where important information is obtained from the current level of volatility in the series for both series forecast improvements are observed but for stock returns the improvements are only marginal these results indicate the usefulness and stability of some types of nonlinear modelling for financial markets

what makes people think like economists evidence on economic cognition from the survey of americans and economists on the economy abstract the positive economic beliefs of economists and the general public systematically differ what factors make noneconomists think more like economists using the survey of americans and economists on the economy this paper shows people think more like economists 1 if they are well educated 2 if they are male 3 if their real income rose over the last 5 years 4 if they expect their real income to rise over the next 5 years or 5 if they have a high degree of job security however neither high income nor ideological conservatism have this effect my findings for education gender and income have close parallels in political science on tests of objective political knowledge the better educated and males score higher controlling for numerous other variables and the independent effect of income is minor

separability testing in production economics comment pope and hallam ph proposed a test for indirect separability based on the rank of an appropriately defined matrix involving the bordered hessian of the production function this test is interesting and important but its presentation obscures the main idea because the discussion in the context of flexible functional forms is marred by a crucial error blackorby primont and russell showed that a test for weak separability of flexible functional forms imposes strong and unwanted restrictions on a model s structure after the publication of their paper the consensus has been that a test for weak separability of flexible functional forms cannot be performed with the available functions ph refer to this issue by stating this test moderates in some cases the criticism by blackorby primont and russell p 143 the reader is tantalized by this statement but the rest of the paper does not shed any further light upon it ph discuss necessary and sufficient rank conditions for indirect separability but present also a lengthy elaboration of a necessary condition the former set of conditions obviously provides a stronger test and thus we focus our discussion upon it furthermore ph s necessary rank condition as applied to the empirical example is wrongly stated and is inferior with respect to the stronger test we think that the contribution of ph can be stated in the following terms the principal interest in the rank condition rests upon the possibility of testing the necessary and sufficient conditions for indirect separability when not rejected ph s rank condition rank fxfl n nf 1 implies indirect separability and at least in two cases generalized leontief and quadratic functions does not imply direct separability conversely in flexible functional forms direct separability implies the rank condition for indirect separability and this is the reason why this second test is subject to the criticism of blackorby primont and russell thus the rank condition applied to dual functions is noteworthy however its application in the context of flexible functional forms suggests that for the translog function its test is equivalent to the separability test originally proposed by berndt and christensen while in the case of the generalized leontief and quadratic functions the two tests are substantially different the numerical example chosen by ph is not suitable for illustrating the working of the necessary and sufficient rank condition which furthermore is erroneously implemented the interesting question therefore is are there other flexible functional forms aside from the generalized leontief and quadratic functions for which the rank condition for indirect separability does not coincide with the conditions for direct separability an answer to this question is conjectured in the conclusion

economists views about parameters values and policies survey results in labor and public economics specialists in labor economics and public economics at 40 leading research universities provided opinions of policy proposals quantitative best estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for economic parameters and answers to values questions regarding income redistribution efficiency versus equity and individual versus social responsibility their positions on policy are more closely related to their values than to their estimates of relevant economic parameters average best estimates of the economic parameters agree well with the relevant literature but individual best estimates are usually widely dispersed the individual 95 percent confidence intervals are much narrower than the substantial cross respondent variation in estimates would warrant

pathways of representation a causal analysis of public opinion policy linkages theory altemative theories of the linkage process between mass policy preferences and public policies are tested empirically hypotheses opinion policy linkage may arise because mass preferences drive the policy process elite preferences drive the process or because of a shared preferences reciprocal influence process policy linkage may also be facilitated by higher voter mobilization and party competition methods a multiple equation model of the opinion policy process in the united states is tested with two stage least squares regression results the state policy process is best explained by an opinion sharing reciprocal influence model shared partisanship party competition and voter mobilization enhance the linkage process in theoretically anticipated ways

real exchange rates under the gold standard purchasing power parity is one of the most important equilibrium conditions in international macroeconomics empirically it is also one of the most hotly contested numerous recent studies for example have sought to determine the validity of purchasing power parity using data from the post bretton woods float and have reached different conclusions we assert that most such studies are flawed for two reasons first the post 1973 data contain by definition only a very limited amount of the low frequency information relevant for examination of long run parity second the dynamic econometric techniques used to model deviations from parity are typically quite crude with respect to admissible low frequency dynamics both deficiencies are rectified in the present paper with dramatic results we construct a new data set of 16 real exchange rates covering more than a century of the classic gold standard period and we study deviations from parity using long memory models that allow for subtle forms of mean

deviations from purchasing power parity under different exchange rate regimes do they revert and if so how abstract we propose an empirical model for deviations from long run purchasing power parity ppp that simultaneously accounts for three key features i adjustment toward ppp may occur via nominal exchange rates and relative prices at different speeds ii different exchange rate regimes may generate regime shifts in the structural dynamics of ppp deviations iii nonlinear reversion toward ppp in response to shocks this empirical framework encompasses and synthesizes much previous empirical research using over a century of data for the g5 countries we provide evidence that long run ppp holds the relative importance of nominal exchange rates and prices in restoring ppp varies over time and across different exchange rate regimes and reversion to ppp occurs nonlinearly at a speed that is fairly consistent with the nominal rigidities suggested by conventional open economy models

does the law of one price hold in international financial markets evidence from tick data abstract this paper investigates the validity of the law of one price lop in international financial markets by examining the frequency size and duration of inter market price differentials for borrowing and lending services one way arbitrage using a unique data set for three major capital and foreign exchange markets that covers a period of more than seven months at tick frequency we find that the lop holds on average but numerous economically significant violations of the lop arise the duration of these violations is high enough to make it worthwhile searching for one way arbitrage opportunities in order to minimize borrowing costs and or maximize earnings on given funds we also document that such opportunities decline with the pace of the market and increase with market volatility

a meta analysis of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a sur approach abstract automobile gasoline demand can be expressed as a multiplicative function of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership this implies a linear relationship between the price elasticity of total fuel demand and the price elasticities of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership in this meta analytical study we aim to investigate and explain the variation in empirical estimates of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a methodological novelty is that we use the linear relationship between the elasticities to develop a meta analytical estimation approach based on a seemingly unrelated regression sur model with cross equation restrictions this approach enables us to combine observations of different elasticities and thus increase our sample size furthermore it allows for a more detailed interpretation of our meta regression results the empirical results of the study demonstrate that the sur approach leads to more precise results i e lower standard errors than a standard meta analytical approach we find that with mean short run and long run price elasticities of 0 34 and 0 84 respectively the demand for gasoline is not very price sensitive both in the short and the long run the impact of a change in the gasoline price on demand is mainly driven by responses in fuel efficiency and mileage per car and to a slightly lesser degree by changes in car ownership furthermore we find that study characteristics relating to the geographic area studied the year of the study the type of data used the time horizon and the functional specification of the demand equation have a significant impact on the estimated value of the price elasticity of gasoline demand

long run purchasing power parity during the recent float abstract this paper examines the relevance of long run purchasing power parity ppp which allows for measurement errors during the recent floating exchange rate period previous empirical studies generally fail to find support for long run ppp over this period in this paper in this paper the cointegration property of exchange rates and prices is examined using maximum likelihood procedure and we find significant evidence favorable to long run ppp further tests for symmetry and proportionality indicate that these two conditions are not generally with the data the results support the hypothesis of long run ppp with measurement errors in prices

quantile unit root test and ppp evidence from 23 oecd countries abstractapplication of six different univariate unit root tests to real effective exchange rates of 23 oecd countries supports their stationarity or purchasing power parity theory ppp only in five countries a result consistent with previous research that is known as ppp puzzle however descriptive statistics of each effective rate reveals a clear sign of non normal distribution to account for this we use quantile unit root test which allows impact of different shocks to be realized at different quantiles when we applied this new test to the same rates number of countries in which ppp is supported increased to 16 apparently incorporating effects of shocks improves testing efficiency and provides more support for the ppp and reduces the severity of the puzzle

cointegration and tests of purchasing power parity nonstationarity in the levels of spot exchange rates and domestic and foreign price indices makes the use of conventional tests of the absolute version of purchasing power parity ppp inappropriate if ppp is true inter country commodity arbitrage ensures that deviations from a linear combination of spot exchange rates and domestic and foreign price levels should be stationary under these conditions exchange rates and price levels should form a cointegrated system we find the null hypothesis of no cointegration cannot be rejected for all five countries thus violating the long run absolute version of ppp

popular attitudes toward free markets the soviet union and the united states compared random samples of the moscow and new york populations were compared in their attitudes towards free markets by administering identical telephone interviews in the two countries in may 1990 although the soviet respondents were somewhat less likely to accept exchange of money as a solution to personal problems and although their attitudes toward business were less warm the authors found that the soviet and american respondents were basically similar in some very important dimensions in their attitudes toward fairness income inequality and incentives and in their understanding of the working of markets copyright 1991 by american economic association

central bank intervention exchange rate regime and the purchasing power parity motivated by the argument that central bank intervention leads to non linear exchange rate adjustment processes we examine purchase power parity ppp by applying quantile unit root tests to the exchange rates of the new taiwan dollar ntd vis a vis seven asian currencies we show that exchange rate regime matters in determining whether ppp holds while ppp holds overwhelmingly during the period when the ntd is under the fixed exchange rate regime it is present only for some exchange rates during the managed floating rate regime for exchange rates exhibiting mean reversion the reversion occurs mainly when the shocks are large in contrast to conclusion in the literature our test results show little evidence of asymmetric mean reversion between positive and negative shocks

the purchasing power parity debate originally propounded by the 16th century scholars of the university of salamanca the concept of purchasing power parity ppp was revived in the interwar period in the context of the debate concerning the appropriate level at which to re establish international exchange rate parities broadly accepted as a long run equilibrium condition in the post war period it first was advocated as a short run equilibrium by many international economists in the first few years following the breakdown of the bretton woods system in the early 1970s and then increasingly came under attack on both theoretical and empirical grounds from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s accordingly over the last three decades a large literature has built up that examines how much the data deviated from theory and the fruits of this research have provided a deeper understanding of how well ppp applies in both the short run and the long run since the mid 1990s larger datasets and nonlinear econometric methods in particular have improved estimation as deviations narrowed between real exchange rates and ppp so did the gap narrow between theory and data and some degree of confidence in long run ppp began to emerge again in this respect the idea of long run ppp now enjoys perhaps its strongest support in more than 30 years a distinct reversion in economic thought

transactions costs and nonlinear adjustment in real exchange rates an empirical investigation eolquilibrium models of real exchange rate determination in the presence of transactions costs imply a nonlinear adjustment process toward purchasing power parity ppp conventional cointegration tests which ignore the effect of transactions costs may be biased against the long run ppp hypothesis our results using both monthly data for the interwar period and annual data spanning two centuries clearly reject the linear framework in favor of an exponential smooth transition autoregressive process the systematic pattern in the estimates of the nonlinear models provides strong evidence of mean reverting behavior for ppp deviations and helps explain the mixed results of previous studies

searching for stationarity purchasing power parity under the current float abstract using panel data methods we investigate long run purchasing power parity by testing for unit roots in real exchange rates of industrial countries under the current float the evidence against the unit root hypothesis is stronger for larger than for smaller panels for monthly than for quarterly data and when the german mark rather than the united states dollar is used as the base currency while we find that accounting for serial correlation considerably weakens the evidence against the unit root null the results as a whole are consistent with long run purchasing power parity

understanding the empirical literature on purchasing power parity the post bretton woods era abstract this paper argues that the empirical failure of statistical tests of ppp in post bretton woods data is largely due to the low power of the tests employed this result is demonstrated using monte carlo experiments on the size and power of different testing procedures a new procedure based on horvath and watson econometric theory 11 pp 984 1014 1995 has greater power than previous approaches using the horvath watson procedure we find moderate evidence in favor of ppp in the post bretton woods era

smooth structural breaks and the stationarity of the yen real exchange rates this article examines and solves an interesting paradox in the literature that the tests for purchasing power parity ppp based on the yen real exchange rates rers refute the ppp hypothesis more often than those with other major currency based rers and the evidence is sensitive to the sample period used using a new empirical methodology accounting for both nonlinearity and multiple smooth temporary breaks in the data we show that the puzzling finding is due to the failure to take into account the long but temporary large rise and fall in the yen rers the results illustrate that the yen rers in the post bretton woods period are likely mean reverting with linear or nonlinear adjustment toward large long swing type of infrequent smooth temporary changes around constant equilibrium values supporting the validity of ppp and resolving the paradox

allocatable fixed inputs and two stage aggregation models of multioutput production decisions allocation decisions for a fixed input such as land are incorporated into a two stage aggregation model of multioutput production decisions the resulting two stage model is more realistic and is as tractable for empirical research as the standard model

positive versus normative economics what s the connection evidence from the survey of americans and economists on the economy and the general social survey previous research suggests that positive and normative beliefs about economics are largely unrelated using questions from two national surveys this study finds that a the underlying determinants of positive and normative beliefs are strikingly similar b education is by far the strongest overall determinant of both positive and normative beliefs and c the variables known to push positive beliefs in the same direction as formal economic training education male gender income growth and job security also push normative beliefs in the same direction these results strongly suggest that the positive normative connection has been underestimated