oil price shocks and gdp growth do energy shares amplify causal effects abstract the paper estimates the effect of oil price fluctuations on gdp growth using linear and nonlinear var models with data from 12 countries by using an ivar approach it reports strong significance for the existence of non linear moderator effects caused by a decline in the oil to energy share which weakens the causal effect of oil prices on economic growth a consideration of the relationship of oil prices and gdp over 44 years confirms the exclusion of symmetry of previous studies moreover the paper indicates that the effect of negative oil price movements is causal for more countries than has been suggested so far

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

oil price shocks and real gdp growth empirical evidence for some oecd countries this study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries multivariate var analysis is carried out using both linear and non linear models the latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature namely the asymmetric scaled and net specifications evidence of a non linear impact of oil prices on real gdp is found in particular oil price increases are found to have an impact on gdp growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases among oil importing countries oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but japan moreover the effect of oil shocks on gdp growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample with the uk being negatively affected by an oil price increase and norway benefiting from it

understanding household energy use decision making and behaviour in guinea conakry by applying behavioural economics abstract for decades generalized frauds have left the electrical sector of guinea with an entirely defective financial scheme as a developing nation guinea s electricity consumption has been relatively low for a long time although it has been increasing recently due to increasing power generation the growth in power capacity is due to the construction of two new dams kaleta dam 240 mw which is already operational and souapiti dam 550 mw which is still under construction taking into account that the country has so far been without electricity there is a need to assess and predict consumer behaviour before the full completion of these projects the aim of this study is to make the household and community reactions to public policy interventions less surprising however even sufficient knowledge of how to conserve energy and a stated desire to do so many consumers still fail to take perceptible measures to increase energy efficiency and conservation why is this so by focusing on crucial insights from behavioural economics and psychology we highlight the incentive factors the basic cognitive biases and the psychological phenomena that cause this disconnect understanding these factors can help us to design sustainable energy use among consumers in guinea conakry

limits of floating exchange rates the role of foreign currency debt and import structure abstract a traditional argument in favor of flexible exchange rates is that they insulate output better from real shocks because the exchange rate can adjust and stabilize demand for domestic goods through expenditure switching this argument is weakened in models with high foreign currency debt and low exchange rate pass through to import prices the present study evaluates the empirical relevance of these two factors we analyze the transmission of real external shocks to the domestic economy under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes for a broad sample of countries in a panel var and let the responses vary with foreign currency debt and import structure we find that flexible exchange rates do not insulate output better from external shocks if the country imports mainly low pass through goods and foreign indebtedness is high

social norms and pro environmental behavior a review of the evidence in light of the growing attention that social norm interventions have garnered as policy tools we review the current body of evidence on their effectiveness with respect to pro environmental behaviors we identify the various conceptualizations of social norms currently in use and inventory the experimental economics and social psychology literature that has examined the impacts of social norm interventions on pro environmental behavior for each study included in this inventory we note several contextual features the data collection and analytical methods used and any significant main effects attributed to the social norm intervention we also review several theoretical models of behavior that incorporate social norms based on this empirical and theoretical review we draw a number of policy implications and identify avenues for future research on the role of social norms with respect to pro environmental behavior

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

crude oil and the macroeconomy tests of some popular notions a note perhaps no other economic events in the post world war ii era have generated as much attention as the series of crude oil price shocks that have jolted the world economy since the opec boycott of 1973 a tremendous amount of space in the popular and professional literature has been devoted to analyzing the impacts of these shocks on the developed economies and the adjustments these shocks have induced one residual of this literature has been a general impression that since 1973 the functional relationship between crude oil prices and the developed macroeconomies has been dramatically and fundamentally altered yet to our knowledge no one has formally tested this impression recent evidence of hamilton 1983 suggests that crude oil prices had a strong impact on the u s business cycle well before 1973 further while textbook treatments of oil price shocks tend to highlight cost push inflationary effects the research of berndt and wood 1975 1979 and wilcox 1983 indicates the net complementarity between energy and capital in the u s economy is quite strong both before and after 1973 thus oil price shocks may have stronger real effects than generally believed in this paper we formally test three popular notions associated with the so called

do oil prices help forecast u s real gdp the role of nonlinearities and asymmetries there is a long tradition of using oil prices to forecast u s real gdp it has been suggested that the predictive relationship between the price of oil and one quarter ahead u s real gdp is nonlinear in that a oil price increases matter only to the extent that they exceed the maximum oil price in recent years and that b oil price decreases do not matter at all we examine first whether the evidence of in sample predictability in support of this view extends to out of sample forecasts second we discuss how to extend this forecasting approach to higher horizons third we compare the resulting class of nonlinear models to alternative economically plausible nonlinear specifications and examine which aspect of the model is most useful for forecasting we show that the asymmetry embodied in commonly used nonlinear transformations of the price of oil is not helpful for out of sample forecasting more robust and often more accurate real gdp forecasts are obtained from symmetric nonlinear models based

changes in the international distribution of resources and their impact on u s comparative advantage t he heckscher ohlin h o theory suggests international trade is determined by relative resource supplies among countries prior empirical research such as work on the determinants of u s comparative advantage in a single year has concentrated on the static predictions of h o theory however h o theory also suggests changes over time in resource supplies will alter trade structure the present paper investigates this aspect of h o theory particular emphasis is given to the role of world resource changes as an explanation of changes in u s trade and of the increased international competition in manufactured goods faced by the united states some recent studies have examined the relationship between changes in resource endowments and trade heller 1976 examined changes in the factor content of japan s trade between 1958 and 1968 and found the observed patterns consistent with changes in japan s physical and human capital endowments stern and maskus 1981 investigated changing factor input determinants of u s trade by estimating annual cross section regressions over 1958 77 they suggested u s net exports made less direct use of unskilled labor over time further analysis of the factor content of u s trade suggested increased u s abundance in physical capital relative to human capital between 1958 and 1971 balassa 1979 using a 1970 crosssection of countries concluded that physical and human capital accumulation largely explained changing patterns of comparative advantage in manufactures although these studies made important contributions a number of issues remain concerning the relationship between resources and trade stern and maskus in listing directions for further research cite first an examination of how and why endowments of physical capital human capital and labor have changed within the u s and our major trading partners this paper reports a substantial data effort which addresses this topic another important consideration is that the direct effect of resource endowment variation on trade has yet to be determined previously inferences about the effect of resource endowments on trade have been based primarily on results from industry cross section regressions authors of such work indirectly infer the effect of resource variation on trade by assuming the coefficients from such regressions reflect resource abundance however leamer and bowen 1981 recently demonstrated that signs of coefficients from such regressions need not reflect a country s true resource abundance thus the usual negative coefficient for the capital labor ratio in an analysis of u s trade cannot be used to infer the scarcity of capital and thus cannot be used to infer the effect of an increase in capital endowment on u s trade similarly balassa s procedure of first regressing for each of a sample of countries industry trade on input intensity and then using the estimated coefficients as the dependent variable in a cross country regression on resources is an inappropriate method for inferring the effect of resources on trade this paper advances consideration of these issues by investigating aspects of the relationship between resources and trade section ii examines changing patterns of resource supply among thirty four countries over 1963 75 section iii investigates whether these resource changes are associated with altered comparative advantage in manufactured goods section iv uses cross country regressions to estimate the resource endowment as opposed to factor input determinants of u s manufacturing trade and thereby the direct effect of resource variation on u s trade the received for publication april 23 1981 revision accepted for publication november 30 1982 new york university this paper is an outgrowth of research in bowen 1980a and of further work conducted at ucla under a ford foundation grant directed by edward e leamer an earlier version was presented at the 1980 southern economic association meetings in washington d c comments by c michael aho robert baldwin edward leamer joseph pelzman leo sveikauskas and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged the author remains responsible for errors

the impact of industrial policy on japan s trade specialization recent research has demonstrated the possibility of welfare enhancing industrial policy this paper analyzes the impact of industrial policy on japan s trade pattern and explores the possibility that it has been welfare enhancing econometric results indicate that industrial policies have had an impact on japan s trade specialization these results are obtained contemporaneously and when the explanatory variables are lagged suggesting either that policymakers have been forward looking or that policy interventions have had persistent long lasting effects although some cases of successful targeting are uncovered welfare enhancing interventions appear to have been the exception not the rule copyright 1993 by mit press

are oil shocks inflationary asymmetric and nonlinear specifications versus changes in regime this paper identifies a structural break in core u s inflation phillips curves such that oil prices contributed substantially before 1981 but since that time pass through has been negligible this characterization is robust to a variety of re specifications and fits the data better than asymmetric and nonlinear oil price alternatives evidence does not support the hypotheses that declining energy intensity or deregulation of energy producing and consuming industries played an important role monetary policy did not itself become less accommodative of oil shocks but may have helped create a regime where inflation is less sensitive to price shocks more generally

uk competitiveness policy vs japanese industrial policy it is often claimed that japanese industrial policy targeted high growth or high productivity growth sectors see inter alia johnson i982 carliner i986 nester i99i tyson 1992 it is then argued that because both the targeted industries and the japanese economy have prospered it follows that japanese industrial policy must have been successful hence britain and other advanced nations either are justified in emulating or should hasten to follow the japanese example this raises the question of whether the united kingdom s competitiveness policy is the appropriate response or is a completely different animal the purpose of this paper is to explore the main areas in contention but before doing so it is important to be clear about what one means by industrial and competitiveness policies

what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract strong evidence is found that oil prices no longer granger cause many u s macroeconomic indicator variables in data after 1973 a number of potential explanations are explored that sample stability issues are responsible that oil prices are now endogenous and that linear and symmetric specifications misrepresent the form of the oil price interaction none of these hypotheses are supported by the data the opec price increases do appear to have had significant impacts while the effects of the price declines of the 1980s are smaller and harder to characterize these results have potentially important implications for the large body of research which utilizes oil prices as an instrumental or explanatory variable

this is what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many of the quarterly oil price increases observed since 1985 are corrections to even bigger oil price decreases the previous quarter when one looks at the net increase in oil prices over the year recent data are consistent with the historical correlation between oil shocks and recessions

the effects of protection on the factor content of japanese and american foreign trade data on pre tokyo round tariffs and ad valorem approximations of nontariff barriers are used in the michigan computational model of world production and trade to calculate changes in commodity trade attributable to protection in japan and the united states data on factor requirements in production are then used to calculate the factor contents of these computed changes in trade results indicate that japanese protection is more distortionary of factor markets in japan and the united states than is american protection and that u s manufacturing labor would be the least likely to gain from trade liberalization in japan and or the united states copyright 1988 by mit press

an evaluation of factor endowments and protection as determinants of japanese and american foreign trade we consider the relationship between the factor content of japanese and american foreign trade and examine empirically whether discrepancies between the heckscher ohlin theoretical predictions and the observed patterns of trade can be attributed to protection the michigan model of world production and trade is used for computational purposes we find some evidence of discrepancies between predicted and observed trade patterns but removal of protection either worsens these discrepancies or reduces them by only a small amount some possible reasons for the empirical shortcomings of the heckscher ohlin theory are offered in conclusion

the economic effects of energy price shocks large fluctuations in energy prices have been a distinguishing characteristic of the u s economy since the 1970s turmoil in the middle east rising energy prices in the u s and evidence of global warming recently have reignited interest in the link between energy prices and economic performance this paper addresses a number of the key issues in this debate what are energy price shocks and where do they come from how responsive is energy demand to changes in energy prices how do consumers expenditure patterns evolve in response to energy price shocks how do energy price shocks affect u s real output inflation and stock prices why do energy price increases seem to cause recessions but energy price decreases do not seem to cause expansions why has there been a surge in the price of oil in recent years why has this new energy price shock not caused a recession so far have the effects of energy price shocks waned since the 1980s and if so why as the paper demonstrates it is critical to account for the endogeneity of energy prices and to differentiate between the effects of demand and supply shocks in energy markets when answering these questions

welfare enhancing export subsidies this paper shows that export subsidies on marginal goods and those on nonmarginal goods have opposite welfare effects for the country imposing these subsidies where marginal goods are the ones that would be exported by only a small amount or not at all under free trade but whose export can be promoted considerably by export subsidies the former enhances the imposing country s welfare while the latter worsens it the paper also throws light on related issues such as industrial targeting policy

public praise vs private pay effects of rewards on energy conservation in the workplace any solution to rising levels of co2 depends on human behavior one common approach to changing human behavior is rewarding desired behavior because financial incentives often have side effects that diminish efficacy we predict that social rewards are more effective because they invoke adherence to descriptive and injunctive social norms we investigated this by measuring electricity use for 13 weeks at a dutch firm each week employees were rewarded for conserving energy they either received monetary rewards 0 5 or social rewards grade points with a descriptive comment rewards were either private or public in both the short and long term public rewards outperformed private rewards and social rewards outperformed monetary rewards this suggests that private monetary rewards although popular may be ineffective instead public social rewards may be a more promising approach to stimulating energy conservation we argue that this approach should be considered more frequently by policy makers

economic growth and transitions between renewable and nonrenewable energy resources abstract we study transitions between nonrenewable and renewable energy forms at different development stages of an economy it is shown that in the historical context the emphasis on energy production may evolve from renewables to nonrenewables and back to renewables typically both energy forms are used simultaneously along the equilibrium path nonrenewable resource consumption may increase and their price decrease an inverted u relation between carbon emissions and income level may follow even without environmental policy

differential effects of incentive motivators on work performance in this field experiment we first compared the performance effects of money systematically administered through the organizational behavior modification o b mod model and routine pay for perfo

oil and the macroeconomy when prices go up and down an extension of hamilton s results in an important paper hamilton 1983 demonstrated a strong correlation between oil price changes and gross national product growth in u s data however his study pertained to a period in which all the large oil price movements were upward and thus it left unanswered the question whether the correlation persists in periods of price decline moreover the price variable he used was somewhat distorted by price controls in the 1970s this note investigates whether hamilton s results continue to hold when the sample is extended to include the recent oil market collapse and the oil price variable is corrected for the effects of price controls particular attention is given to the possibility of asymmetric responses to oil price increases and decreases as suggested in the structural employment literature loungani 1986 davis 1987 hamilton 1988 like hamilton i based my investigation on the gnp equation in sims s 1 980b six variable quarterly vector autoregressive model