determinants of skills shortages and hard to fill vacancies in the hospitality sector abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the regional determinants of hard to fill vacancies and skills shortages in the hospitality sector the data source for this study was generated in the year 2000 and includes information on 181 hotels and 121 restaurants in andalusia the results of the estimations show that hourly net wages are the main instrument firms use to reduce hard to fill vacancies and skills shortages however there are several factors affecting the conditions of local labour markets such as unemployment rates the level of business activity real estate prices and the location of the firm in relation to the main regional tourism destinations that have a significant effect on the probability of having hard to fill vacancies and skills shortages

the symmetry between controlling pollution by price and controlling it by quantity under ideally competitive conditions both controlling pollution by price using a combined charge subsidy scheme and controlling it by quantity using a marketable permit scheme can achieve short and long run efficiency and also political acceptability provided that both schemes embody the same degree of environmental ownership the resulting full symmetry between control by price and control by quantity a symmetry overlooked in the literature because of the entry exit assumptions automatically made for most subsidy schemes allows a useful practical choice to be made between the two control systems

war peace and the size of countries this paper studies the relationship between international con ict and the size distribution of countries in a model in which both peaceful bargaining and non peaceful confrontations are possible we show how the size distribution of countries depends on the likelihood bene ts and costs of con ict and war we also study the role of international law and show how better de ned international property rights may lead to country breakup and more numerous local con icts

sharing the burden for climate change mitigation in the canadian federation dividing the burden for greenhouse gas abatement amongst the provinces has proven challenging in canada and is a major factor contributing to canada s poor historic performance on greenhouse gas abatement as the country aims to achieve substantial cuts to emissions over the next decade and by mid century such burden sharing considerations are likely to be elevated in importance this paper uses a calibrated multi region multi sector computable general equilibrium model to compare a number of archetypal rules for sharing the burden of a joint commitment amongst members for the case of greenhouse gas reductions in canada because of the substantial heterogeneity amongst canadian provinces these different burden sharing rules imply signifcantly different relative abatement effort amongst provinces and also signifcantly different welfare implications when emission permits are allocated on an equal per capita basis welfare is increased in ontario british columbia quebec and manitoba and signifcantly reduced in alberta and saskatchewan in contrast when emission permits are allocated based on historic emissions alberta and saskatchewan are made better off and ontario british columbia quebec and manitoba are made worse off we compare these archetypal burden sharing rules to existing provincial emission reduction commitments and find that none of the standard burden sharing rules comes close to existing commitments we argue that the debate on burden sharing of greenhouse gas abatement in canada could be objectified if informed by coherent quantitative analysis such as the one presented here

using contests to allocate pollution rights in this paper we advocate a new initial allocation mechanism for a tradable pollution permit market we outline a permit allocation contest pac that distributes permits to firms based on their rank relative to other firms this ranking is achieved by ordering firms based on an observable external action where the external action is an activity or characteristic of the firm that is independent of their choice of emissions in the tradable permit market we argue that this mechanism has a number of benefits over auctioning and grandfathering using this mechanism efficiently distributes permits allows for the attainment of a secondary policy objective and has the potential to be more politically appealing than existing alternatives

regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in china evidence from the shapley value method abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions so as to realize its carbon reduction targets and establish the national cap and trade carbon market meanwhile it is supposed to be cost effective to jointly reduce china s carbon emissions through some collaborative activities among regions then a natural question is how to allocate the quotas among regions in light of the collaboration for this purpose the shapley value method is adopted and the results show that first the regions with higher gdp higher carbon outflow and higher carbon reduction connection should be allocated more carbon quotas moreover when the collaboration is considered the optimal allocation of carbon quotas among regions will change significantly compared to the basic quotas by the entropy method and the central region is allocated the largest proportion of carbon quota among regions which indicates its largest radiation effect besides the collaboration between the central region and northern coast region and that between the central region and the eastern region should be paid close attention these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in china

distributional preferences and the incidence of costs and benefits in climate change policy we explore the relationship between willingness to pay wtp for climate change mitigation and distributional preferences by which we mean individuals opinions about who should be responsible for climate change prevention and whether the share of climate change impacts borne by the poor is a cause for concern we use 1 770 responses to an online stated preference survey the domestic costs in our survey s policy choice scenarios are expressed as a set of randomized shares across four different payment vehicles and the international cost shares are randomized across four groups of countries we also elicit respondents perceptions of the likely regressivity of climate change impacts under a policy of business as usual wtp is higher when larger cost shares are borne by parties deemed to bear a greater responsibility for mitigation and when respondents believe and care that the impacts of climate change may be borne disproportionately by the world s poor that wtp for an environmental policy depends on the distributional consequences of the policy is an unsettling result efficiency assessments are typically assumed to be separate from equity considerations in most benefit cost analyses

who should abate carbon emission we review the optimal pattern of carbon emission abatements across countries in a simple multi country world we model explicitly with the model in chichilnisky 4 the fact that the atmosphere is a public good within this framework we establish conditions for it to be necessary for optimality that the marginal cost of abatement be the same in all countries these condition are quite restrictive and amount to either ignoring distributional issues between countries or operating within a framework within which lump sum transfers can be made between countries these results have implications for the use of tradeable emission permits which as normally advocated will lead to the equalization of marginal abatement costs across countries the observation that the atmosphere is a public good implies that we may need to look at a lindahl equilibrium rather than a walrasian equilibrium in tradeable permits

the relevance of attitudinal factors for the acceptance of energy policy measures a micro econometric analysis abstract this paper empirically examines the individual support of the german energy transition in total and especially of six single energy policy measures which are components of the energy transition our micro econometric analysis with binary and ordered probit models on the basis of data from a broad survey of citizens reveals the important role of several attitudinal factors with respect to our indicators for perceived personal costs of the energy transition the estimation results point to a weak evidence for economic self interest due to some negative correlations between expected energy price increases due to the energy transition and the support of single energy policy measures interestingly however the concern that the energy transition alone causes strong energy price increases is not shared by the majority of the respondents the estimation results also suggest that the support of several energy policy measures is strongly correlated with environmental values however the most important attitudinal factor is obviously political identification the econometric analysis suggests that an overall left green policy identification is positively correlated with the support of the energy transition in total and an identification with ecological policy is positively correlated with the acceptance of several single energy policy measures the econometric analysis especially supports the more sophisticated categorization of political orientation since for example a liberal conservative policy orientation is not significantly correlated with the support of the energy transition in total

is fairness blind the effect of framing on preferences for effort sharing rules this paper uses a choice experiment to study citizens preferences for effort sharing rules for reducing carbon dioxide emissions for a given global cost and level of emission reduction we study the willingness to pay for various rules that imply different distributions of the cost between eu the us china and africa the focus of this paper is on the use of two different treatments one where the respondents were informed about the country or country group names and one where the names were replaced with anonymous labels a d this allows us to test whether people s preferences for effort sharing rules depend on the framing of the problem we find that the ranking of the rules and the strength of the preferences are not significantly different between the two treatments and hence we find no evidence of ingroup bias in preferences for effort sharing rules c 2011 elsevier b v all rights reserved less

free entry and efficient rent seeking this paper concerns rent seeking and the extent to which rents are dissipated under various circumstances gordon tullock s 1967 insight that expenditures made to capture an artificially created transfer represent a social waste suggested that the cost to the economy of monopoly and regulation is greater than the simple harberger 1954 deadweight loss indeed under tullock s original formulation and in the extensions of his work by krueger 1974 and posner 1975 rents are exactly dissipated at the social level 1 is spent to capture 1 so that the total welfare loss from such activities is equal to the harberger triangle plus the rectangle of monopoly profits

new firm formation and regional economic development an introduction and review of the scottish experience this paper introduces this special edition ofsmall business economics on new firm formation and regional economic development it integrates the articles appearing in this volume with others presented at the economic and social research council urban and regional economics seminar group conference on this theme in january 1994 in ayr scotland many of the studies are derived from a scottish enterprise research programme on the contribution of new enterprises and entrepreneurs to economic development and the factors explaining the low levels of business start ups in scotland comparative data research and experiences from across the uk european union and us are called upon to improve the understanding of the processes involved the findings are sometimes unsuspected challenging the super structure of business development agencies and their attitudes and behaviour towards indigenous potential entrepreneurs

globalization regionalism and labour markets should we recast the foundations of the eu regime in matters of regional rural and urban development globalization has been accused of being the source of many problems some claim that this would justify a fundamental change of the eu regime that takes international competitiveness of the economy as its point of departure this would have consequences for the present set up of the eu cohesion regime and thus also for the policy toolkits of individual regions the article analyses the effects of globalization and regionalism on labour markets it does so on the basis of an extensive review of the theoretical and empirical literature covering various strands of thought the survey shows that fears about negative effects are not justified provided a consistent set of policies is pursued so the review does not support claims for a change of the eu regime neither in matters of the macro aspects nor in matters of regional development and cohesion

labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields beatty c and fothergill s 1996 labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields reg studies 30 627 640 the paper explores the labour market consequences of the near terminal decline of employment in the uk coal industry despite the job loss registered unemployment has not risen using labour market accounts derived mainly from census of population data the paper examines the roles of migration commuting job creation and changes in labour force participation as mediating influences substantial hidden male unemployment is exposed and rates of real unemployment are also calculated beatty c et fothergill s 1996 l ajustement du marche du travail dans les zones serieusement touchees par le declin industriel cas d etude des bassins houillers au royaume uni reg studies 30 627 640 cet article cherche a examiner l impact sur le marche du travail du declin quasi terminal de l emploi dans l industrie houillere au royaume uni en depit des supp

economic theories of the break up and integration of nations abstract this paper surveys the recent political economy literature on the size distribution of nations the main themes of this literature are 1 a the spread of democracy leads to the creation of too many sovereign states 2 b the extent of factor mobility plays a key role in determining the incentives towards separation or integration 3 c economic integration through the development of international trade may require greater political integration to create and effectively maintain a level playing field in international trade at the same time economic integration by reducing the economic costs of separation increases the incentives towards political separation

revealing the political decision toward chinese carbon abatement based on equity and efficiency criteria abstract china s economic reform over the past 30 years has allowed the free market to drive economic development however government still plays a key role in the energy sector by allocating energy conservation and emissions abatement how does the government make an equity decision as a tradeoff to market efficiency this is an unanswered question the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the government s preference toward equity and efficiency using the provincial level co 2 intensity allocation data we investigate the political decision that the government made based on the equity and efficiency criteria we find that the equity index plays a more important role than the efficiency index in determining the co 2 intensity target in addition political factors such as social stability are found to be important factors

tradeable emission permits and the control of greenhouse gases this article reiterates the case for tradeable permits as a global policy option for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and considers the detailed design of a global tradeable permit regime emphasising the importance of the initial assignment of property rights and arguing that the relevant property rights in this case are the rights of every member of the world community to share in a sustainable global atmosphere and climate the allocation of permits should therefore be done on a per capita basis across the world community with the result that rents generated by the process of reducing carbon emissions would accrue to non polluters most of whom live in the south the international transfers of income and wealth implied by the proposed scheme are large but feasible there is therefore a real prospect that an international convention on carbon dioxide emissions could end the debt crisis and finance sustainable development in the south

old industrial regions and employability inactivity has been growing across the developed world and is especially high in old industrial areas a general move towards more flexible labour markets and the restructuring in these regions ove

anarchy and its breakdown anarchy defined as a system in which participants can seize and defend resources without regulation from above is not chaos but rather a spontaneous order however anarchy is fragile and may dissolve either into formless amorphy or into a more organized system such as hierarchy under anarchy each contestant balances between productive exploitation of the current resource base and fighting to acquire or defend resources anarchy is sustainable only when there are strongly diminishing returns to fighting effort the decisiveness parameter is sufficiently low and incomes exceed the viability minimum these considerations explain many features of animal and human conflict

the breakup of nations a political economy analysis this paper develops a model of the breakup or unification of nations in each nation the decision to separate is taken by majority voting a basic trade off between the efficiency gains of unification and the costs in terms of loss of control on political decisions is highlighted the model emphasizes political conflicts over redistribution policies the main results of the paper are i when income distributions vary across regions and the efficiency gains from unification are small separation occurs in equilibrium and ii when all factors of production are perfectly mobile all incentives for separation disappear i introduction following the demise of communism the entire map of europe from the atlantic coast to the urals is being redrawn and issues of separation unification and the redrawing of borders are yet again at the forefront of european concerns many of the issues raised by this process are primarily of a political cultural or linguistic nature however there are also economic considerations that bear on this problem the objective of this paper is to analyze some important economic and political determinants of the process of unification and separation of democratic nations the starting point of our analysis is to suppose that from an economic efficiency point of view separation of nations is never desirable a unified nation is always more efficient since free trade among regions is guaranteed duplication costs in defense and law enforcement are avoided and local public goods provision such as transportation and communication networks or common standards can be coordinated furthermore any benefits of decentralization that might be obtained in a world with several nations may also be achieved within a unified nation by replicating the administrative structure of the world with several

international equity and differentiation in global warming policy ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries long standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden sharing moreover individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations this paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits a non linear programming model which distinguishes between allocation based and outcome based rules is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes the model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications

skill shortages local perspectives from england g reen a e and o wen d 2003 skill shortages local perspectives from england reg studies 37 123 134 skill shortages have important implications for economic competitiveness and social inclusion this paper is concerned with examining contrasts in skill shortages between local areas in england drawing on information from the 1999 employers skill survey ess analyses of the incidence of skill shortage vacancies at local level reveals both broad regional and intra regional variations the relationships between the incidence of skill shortage vacancies and local labour market conditions are explored and a typology of local learning and skills council areas is developed distinguishing between areas on the basis of the incidence of skill shortages relative to the national average and their relative unemployment rates

war politics an economic rational voter framework the frequency of foreign conflict initiations in the united states is found to be significantly greater following the onset of recessions during a president s first term than in other periods the authors develop an economic theory of the political use of wars which links the election cycle war decisions and economic performance consistent with the observed relationships among these events an incumbent leader with an unfavorable economic performance record may initiate a war to force the learning of his war leadership abilities and thus salvage with some probability his reelection this obtains despite voter rationality and informational symmetry copyright 1995 by american economic association

economic integration and political disintegration in a world of trade restrictions large countries enjoy economic benefits because political boundaries determine the size of the market under free trade and global markets even relatively small cultural linguistic or ethnic groups can benefit from forming small homogeneous political jurisdictions this paper provides a formal model of the relationship between openness and the equilibrium number and size of countries and successfully tests two implications of the model firstly the economic benefits of country size are mediated by the degree of openness to trade secondly the history of nation state creations and secessions is influenced by the trade regime

domestic politics and international conflict this paper explores the interactions between domestic politics and international conflict the analysis shows that electoral uncertainty associated with competition between political parties each representing a specific group of the electorate imparts a negative bias on the nation s military spending given military spending by other nations in turn electoral uncertainty lowers other nations incentive to arm as well in this context democratic institutions can be thought of as a possible precommitment mechanism that reduces the severity of conflict between nations and thereby increases the amount of resources available globally for consumption copyright 1994 by american economic association

who should abate carbon emissions an international viewpoint abstract we review the optimal pattern of carbon emission abatements across countries in a simple multi country world we model explicitly with the model in chichilnisky 1993b the fact that the atmosphere is a public good within this framework we establish conditions for it to be necessary for optimality that the marginal cost of abatement be the same in all countries these conditions are quite restrictive and amount to either ignoring distributional issues between countries or operating within a framework within which lump sum transfers can be made between countries these results have implications for the use of tradeable emission permits which as normally advocated will lead to the equalization of marginal abatement costs across countries the observation that the atmosphere is a public good implies that we may need to look at a lindahl equilibrium rather than a walrasian equilibrium in tradeable permits

greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries an analysis of policies to bring developing countries to the bargaining table this paper examines the aggregate net costs and individual country cost savings of greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries we propose emission permit allocation rules designed to entice developing countries to participate absence of developing country involvement has served as an excuse for the lack by participation by the united states in the first compliance period of the kyoto protocol and may serve as a disincentive to even more countries in subsequent periods our analysis specifies permit allocation rules that could result in no net costs and even cost savings to developing countries for their involvement in the emissions trading market while at the same time providing extensive benefits to industrialized countries through access to lower cost mitigation alternatives

abatement costs of post kyoto climate regimes abstract this article analyses the abatement costs of three post kyoto regimes for differentiating commitments compatible with stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations at 550 ppmv co 2 equivalent in 2100 the three regimes explored are 1 the multi stage approach assumes a gradual increase in the number of parties involved who are adopting either emission intensity or reductions targets 2 the brazilian proposal approach i e the allocation or reductions based on countries contribution to temperature increase 3 contraction convergence with full participation in convergence of per capita emission allowances in 2050 the global costs increase up to about 1 of the world gdp ranging from 0 5 to 1 5 depending on baseline scenario and marginal abatement costs four groups of regions can be identified on the basis of similar costs expressed as the percentage of gdp these are 1 oecd regions with average costs 2 fsu the middle east and latin america with high costs 3 south east asia and east asia incl china with low costs and 4 south asia incl india and africa with net gains from emissions trading for most regimes the brazilian proposal approach gives the highest costs for groups 1 and 2 the distribution of costs for the contraction convergence approach highly depends on the convergence year the multi stage approach and contraction convergence convergence year 2050 seem to result in relatively the most even distribution of costs amongst all parties

war and democracy we present a general equilibrium model of conflict to investigate whether the prevalence of democracy is sufficient to foster the perpetual peace hypothesized by immanuel kant and whether the world would necessarily become more peaceful as more countries adopt democratic institutions our exploration suggests that neither hypothesis is true the desire of incumbent leaders with unfavorable economic performance to hold on to power generates an incentive to initiate conflict and salvage their position with some probability an equilibrium with positive war frequency is sustained even if all nations were to adopt representative democratic institutions and even in the absence of an appropriative motive for war

global environmental risks the need to manage climate risks is not a new it has shaped social institutions for many centuries in medieval england a peasant farmer s land was broken into many widely dispersed parcels economic historians interpret this as a way of hedging climate risk see references in bromley 9 land in different locations would be affected differently by droughts floods and frosts by spreading land holdings over different locations as well as by organizing agricultural cooperatives and buying insurance farmers have managed climate risk for many centuries

popular support for climate change mitigation evidence from a general population mail survey using a sample of 1 651 us households we explore some determinants of willingness to pay wtp for climate change mitigation programs our mail survey had a relatively low response rate so we first use several additional data sources to build a detailed sample selection model this model uses features of the survey instrument measures of geographic vulnerability to climate change seasonality the political mix in the county attributes of the address or addressee and a set of factor scores from an extensive factor analysis of all census tracts in the us we estimate this model jointly with a model to explain climate policy preferences as a function of the domestic and international distribution of policy costs as well as the climate change impacts that each respondent believes will occur under a policy of business as usual despite statistically significant patterns of nonresponse selectivity effects are minimal in this case wtp for climate change mitigation is greater when the domestic incidence of mitigation costs is borne mostly through higher energy taxes it is also greater when costs are understood to be shared internationally with other groups of countries rather than being borne mostly by a country group including the us people are generally more willing to pay for climate change mitigation if they believe that the harm caused by climate change impacts will be substantial rather than just moderate

conflict defense spending and the number of nations abstract this paper provides a formal model of endogenous border formation and choice of defense spending in a world with international conflict we examine both the case of democratic governments and of dictatorships the model is consistent with three observations first breakup of countries should follow a reduction in the likelihood of international conflicts second the number of regional conflicts between smaller countries may increase as a result of the breakup of larger countries third the size of the peace dividend the reduction in defense spending in a more peaceful world is limited by the process of country breakup

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

descriptive prescriptive and second best approaches to the control of global greenhouse gas emissions a prescriptive second best approach is developed for determining the control of greenhouse gas emissions in an inter temporal multi region model of the world concerns about inter and intra generational equity are reflected in the rate of time preference and regional weights of a social welfare function choices are narrowed down by the ethical principle of anonymity a third dimension of equity inequality aversion is subject to greater variation the aggressiveness of recommended abatement can be made to bracket results for a common descriptive model by the choice of inequality aversion in this manner the perception of a sharp dichotomy between descriptive and prescriptive approaches is moderated

political jurisdictions in heterogeneous communities we investigate whether political jurisdictions form in response to the trade off between economies of scale and the costs of a heterogeneous population we consider heterogeneity in income race ethnicity and religion and we test the model using american school districts school attendance areas municipalities and special districts we find strong evidence of a trade off between economies of scale and racial heterogeneity we also find evidence of a trade off between economies of scale and income heterogeneity conversely we find little evidence that ethnic or religious heterogeneity shapes jurisdictions to clarify the direction of causality between heterogeneity and jurisdictions we exploit shocks to racial heterogeneity generated by the two world wars

luther and suleyman this paper emphasizes that the evolution of religious institutions in europe was influenced by the expansionary threat posed by the ottoman empire between the mid 15th century and the early 17th century various historical accounts have suggested that the ottomans rise helped the protestant reform movement as well as its various offshoots such as zwinglianism anabaptism and calvinism survive their infancy and mature utilizing a comprehensive dataset on violent conflicts for the period between 1451 and 1650 i find strong empirical support for the idea that ottoman military engagements in continental europe lowered the number and extent of violent conflicts among and within the european states ottomans influence in europe extended to the feud between the protestant reformers and the catholic establishment during the time between the birth of lutheranism and the end of the thirty years war the likelihood and timing of military engagements between the protestant reformers and the counter reformation forces depended negatively and statistically significantly on ottomans military activities in europe

disaggregating energy use cap among china s provinces the 2015 paris climate change negotiations represents the most ambitious worldwide effort to date to combat climate change as the largest energy consumer and carbon emitter china pledges 60 65 cut in carbon intensity below 2005 levels by 2030 to accelerate china s climate efforts china has also committed to cap its primary energy use at 4 8 billion tons of coal equivalent in 2020 this paper proposes an equitable and efficient scheme to disaggregate this national goal among provinces a three step disaggregation procedure is proposed which takes into account the initial allocation national redistribution and inter provincial adjustment first this study allocates the incremental energy quota taking 2010 as the base year second part of the energy quota is set aside by the central government for redistribution purposes while an incremental energy quota index comprising equity and efficiency criteria is used for initial allocation among provinces finally historical efforts and inter provincial energy flows are considered for inter provincial adjustment this disaggregation scheme is flexible and can be easily extended to allocation and management of other resource and environmental targets the empirical findings can assist decision makers in identifying which provinces are likely to over consume the energy quota relative to the proposed allocation and which provinces are likely to perform better in energy conservation moreover the results show that the energy cap set for 2020 is unachievable without further action market based instruments such as an energy allowance trading market are strongly recommended to achieve the energy use target in an equitable and cost effective manner

perceptions on equity and responsibility in coastal zone policies this paper studies public perceptions of fairness in managed retreat policies we try to empirically test the acceptance of the following four principles of fairness efficiency need responsibility and priority to property rights using responses from a questionnaire the objective of the paper is to generate information on the issue of solidarity between people exposed to the risk of climate change induced flooding and those who are not as regards to funding managed retreat policies and damage compensation to that end two population zones coastal and hinterland were surveyed in order to characterise personal preferences of stakeholders and distributive preferences of third parties results show i a support for national solidarity in the funding of managed retreat policies ii a difference in people ssupport for the responsibility principle depending on whether it is embedded in a general principle of justice or in a particular compensation scheme and iii a difference between distributional judgments of the coastal inhabitants stakeholders and those of the hinterland third parties according to the choices of the funding principles of damages on private assets and the choices of the general principles of fairness in managed retreat policies

on self interested preferences for burden sharing rules an econometric analysis for the costs of energy policy measures abstract this paper examines the acceptance of burden sharing rules that refer to the costs of the german energy transition which is one of the most challenging and disputed national climate and energy policy measures based on data from a comprehensive survey of more than 2200 citizens the empirical analysis reveals that the polluter pays rule has by far the highest support compared with the ability to pay rule and especially compared with the equal pay rule which is widely refused in the sample since the distribution of the costs of the german energy transition is largely in line with a polluter pays rule its strong support seems to contribute to the high acceptance of the energy transition at all the main result of our econometric analysis with multivariate binary and ordered probit models is that not only some attitudinal factors like environmental values and political identification but especially economic self interest is relevant since equivalent energy expenditures have a significantly negative effect on the support of the polluter pays rule and especially equivalent income has a significantly negative effect on the preference for the ability to pay rule these results suggest that the use of distributional arguments for the criticism of energy policy measures is not necessarily value driven on the basis of real perceptions of distributive justice but can also be strategically motivated to prevent and combat economically unfavorable measures together with the strong general support of the polluter pays rule these results suggest that a sharp reorientation of the german energy transition due to distributional arguments is not very useful

federations coalitions and risk diversification we investigate the optimal size of a nation in the context of a portfolio choice model under uncertainty with an equal sharing rule we characterize the equilibrium coali tion structure which is shown to depend on income risks and market correlations specifi cally coalitions are likely to form among regions with similar variance in income and among regions with negative market correlations the conditions that yield a grand coalition two sub coalitions of different sizes and singletons are derived moreover the equilibrium coali tion structures are also examined when geographical contiguity is required

skill biased technology transfer around the world in this paper we consider the extent to which skill biased technological changes are transferring across international borders thereby altering the skill structure of labour markets evidence of increased relative demand for skilled workers is uncovered in the manufacturing sectors of 37 high middle and low income countries skill biased technology transfer is central to the increased demand for skilled workers in middle income countries in low income countries there is less evidence of such a mechanism operating

make trade not war this paper analyses theoretically and empirically the relationship between military conflicts and trade we show that the conventional wisdom that trade promotes peace is only partially true even in a model where trade is economically beneficial military conflicts reduce trade and leaders are rational when war can occur because of the presence of asymmetric information the probability of escalation is lower for countries that trade more bilaterally because of the opportunity cost associated with the loss of trade gains however countries more open to global trade have a higher probability of war because multilateral trade openness decreases bilateral dependence to any given country and the cost of a bilateral conflict we test our predictions on a large data set of military conflicts on the 1950 2000 period using different strategies to solve the endogeneity issues including instrumental variables we find robust evidence for the contrasting effects of bilateral and multilateral trade openness for proximate countries we find that trade has had a surprisingly large effect on their probability of military conflict

the allocation of co2 emissions as a claims problem abstract in the context of multilateral negotiations on climate change this paper proposes to use the claims approach as a reasonable and practicable alternative in order to allocate the admissible co2 emissions per region the proposed methodology entails analyze the application of a broad group of theoretical solutions through the establishment of equity and stability criteria to this regard the empirical analyzing combines several co2 world endowments from meinshausen et al 2009 together with claims forecasts associated with the rcp representative concentration pathways scenarios the results obtained indicate that the constrained equal awards and minimal solutions are clearly equity sensitive given that the co2 emission reduction imposed by the constrained equal awards solution on asia and the oecd are very important and considering the better balance between equity and proportionality associated with the min solution it could be that this latter solution would be the most practicable and acceptable

the concept of employability the concept of employability plays a crucial role in informing labour market policy in the uk the eu and beyond this paper analyses current and previous applications of the term and discusses its value as an exploratory concept and a framework for policy analysis it then traces the development of the concept discusses its role in current labour market and training strategies with particular reference to the uk and seeks to identify an approach to defining employability that can better inform labour market policy by transcending explanations of employment and unemployment that focus solely on either supply side or demand side factors although the literature offers a range of definitions of employability many policy makers have recently used the term as shorthand for the individual s employability skills and attributes it is argued that this narrow usage can lead to a hollowing out of the concept of employability the paper concludes by presenting a broad framework for analysing employability built around individual factors personal circumstances and external factors which acknowledges the importance of both supply and demand side factors

imperfect information and labor market bias against small and medium sized enterprises a korean case we examine the labor market s bias against small and medium sized enterprises focusing on the seoul digital industrial complex case we adopt heckman s approach to control selection bias and use primary data from questionnaire surveys conducted at both firm and employee levels we find that conventional firm specific factors such as wages fringe benefits and weekly work hours primarily explain the labor market bias but imperfect information is also positively associated with the bias for example a firm s inadequate ability to identify a pool of potential employee candidates or to provide them comprehensive firm or job specific information tends to worsen labor shortages and an employee s ex ante incomplete knowledge of on the job training or education opportunities tends to increase ex post turnover intentions our results suggest that reducing the market bias requires improving imperfect information as well as conventional firm specific conditions

theorizing regional economic performance and the changing territorial division of labour dunford m 2003 theorizing regional economic performance and the changing territorial division of labour reg studies 37 839 854 after identifying the general mechanisms underling the centripetal and centrifugal forces whose interplay shapes the relative performance of regional economies a case is made for disaggregating macroeconomic indicators and examining the sectoral and occupational changes they conceal once regional performance is seen as reflecting underling changes in the profiles of regional economies it is clear that research should examine the forces that determine the changing territorial division of labour to explain the latter a conceptual framework is presented this framework combines value chain approaches to the strategies of individual enterprises and analyses of the impact on the performance of enterprises of their wider social environment explicit links are established between this framework and some of the insights of the new economic geography dunford m 2003 la theor

can supply create its own demand implications for rising skill differentials in the 1980s several advanced countries saw rising skilled wage differentials at the same time as increases in the supply of skilled labour some commentators use the orthodox factor demand model based on a competitive labour market to deduce that there must have been shifts in the relative demand curve towards more educated labour in this paper we show that use of this argument is in some situations vulnerable to two criticisms i it is possible to write down reasonable economic models in which the increase in the relative supply of a group can actually increase its relative wage and employment ii as an empirical matter sample selection bias could be a problem to illustrate these two points we first present a simple matching model and then some empirical evidence based on the large increase in the relative supply of more educated workers that followed the late 1980s changes in the uk educational system but did not result in falling wage differentials of the more educated 1997 elsevier science b v

models for heterogeneous variable selection abstract preference heterogeneity is a major research stream in marketing aimed at quantifying and understanding the diversity of demand for product attributes and attribute levels in experimental settings in which consumers are presented with simple descriptions of product offerings continuous distributions of heterogeneity such as the multivariate normal provide a useful representation of preference however in more complex cases in which respondents have value for only a few of the benefits associated with an offering or cognitive constraints that result in selective attention to a subset of the information available continuous distributions of heterogeneity do not reflect the possibility that a subset of the variables has nonzero effect sizes for different respondents identifying which attributes are used in a brand choice decision is closely related to the statistical procedure of variable selection this article extends variable selection methods to accommodate heterogeneity across consumers

on the number and size of nations this paper studies the equilibrium determination of the number of countries in different political regimes and in different economic environments with more or less economic integration we focus on the trade off between the benefits of large jurisdictions and the costs of heterogeneity of large and diverse populations our model implies that i democratization leads to secessions ii in equilibrium one generally observes an inefficiently large number of countries iii the equilibrium number of countries is increasing in the amount of economic integration

population size and civil conflict risk is there a causal link does an expansion of the population size expose nation states to a higher risk of suffering from civil conflict obtaining empirical evidence for a causal relationship is difficult due to reverse effects and omitted variable bias this article addresses causality issues by using randomly occurring drought as an instrumental variable to generate exogenous variation in population size for a panel of 37 sub saharan countries over the period 1981 2004 instrumental variable estimates yield that a 5 increase in population size raises the risk of civil conflict by around six percentage points

swords or plowshares a theory of the security of claims to property this paper develops a general equilibrium model of the allocation of resources among appropriative and productive activities the model emphasizes the distinction between offensive weapons which are the instruments of predation and fortifications which provide defense against predation the analysis of this model shows how the equilibrium security of claims to property is determined the analysis focuses on the possibility of a nonaggressive equilibrium in which no resources are allocated to offensive weapons and claims to property are fully secure we also analyze the complex relation between economic welfare and the security of claims to property we find for example that a relatively poor agent could be better off in an equilibrium with less secure claims to property

extending employability or solving employers recruitment problems demand led approaches as an instrument of labour market policy for years labour market policy in the uk has been dominated by activation measures that seek to increase employment levels among the unemployed this supply side focus emphasises individual charac

reducing conflict in global warming policy the potential of equity as a unifying principle abstract international agreement on global warming mitigation is likely to prove difficult efficiency based policies will result in disparate costs and benefits among nations and thus hinder cooperation this paper suggests that consideration be given to an equitable sharing of the economic impacts of global warming policy acknowledging that there is no universally held concept of equity the policy implications of several alternatives are explored because there is considerable variation in these implications it will be important for decision makers to clarify their preferred concepts of equity during the course of their negotiations on policies to address global warming

establishing a central bank issues in europe and lessons from the us list of figures list of tables preface list of conference participants 1 introduction part i the design of a central bank 2 designing a central bank for europe a cautionary tale from the early years of the federal reserve system 3 the european central bank reshaping monetary politics in europe 4 the ecb a bank or a monetary policy rule part ii transition from national central banks to a european central bank 5 hard erm hard ecu and european monetary union 6 voting