global energy use decoupling or convergence we examine the key factors driving change in energy use globally over the past four decades we test for both strong decoupling where economic growth has less effect on energy use as income increases and weak decoupling where energy use declines overtime in richer countries ceteris paribus our econometric approach is robust to the presence of unit roots unobserved time effects and spatial effects our key findings are that the growth of per capita energy use has been primarily driven by economic growth convergence in energy intensity and weak decoupling there is no sign of strong decoupling

fixing exchange rates a virtual quest for fundamentals abstract fixed exchange rates are less volatile than floating rates but the volatility of macroeconomic variables such as money and output does not change very much across exchange rate regimes this suggests that exchange rate models based only on macroeconomic fundamentals are unlikely to be very successful it also suggests that there is no clear tradeoff between reduced exchange rate volatility and macroeconomic stability

calculating and using second order accurate solutions of discrete time dynamic equilibrium models we describe an algorithm for calculating second order approximations to the solutions to nonlinear stochastic rational expectations models the paper also explains methods for using such an approximate solution to generate forecasts simulated time paths for the model and evaluations of expected welfare differences across different versions of a model the paper gives conditions for local validity of the approximation that allow for disturbance distributions with unbounded support and allow for non stationarity of the solution process

real exchange rate volatility and economic openness theory and evidence this paper relates the volatility of the trade weighted effective real exchange rate to the degree of trade openness of an economy the theoretical part presents an intertemporal monetary model of a small open economy with nominal rigidities both monetary and aggregate supply shocks are shown to produce ceteris paribus smaller real exchange rate movements if the country is more open to foreign trade empirical evidence on a cross section of forty eight countries confirms this relationship differences in trade openness explain a large part of the cross country variation in the volatility of the effective real exchange rate

estimation of the inconvenience cost of a rolling blackout in the residential sector the case of south korea abstract south korea is experiencing a serious imbalance in electricity supply and demand which caused a blackout in 2011 the korean government has planned to perform a rolling blackout to prevent large scale blackouts when the electricity supply reserve margin reaches less than 1 million kw this study attempts to estimate the inconvenience cost of household customers from a rolling blackout by using survey data to this end we apply a contingent valuation method cvm to measure their willingness to pay wtp in order to avoid a rolling blackout i e the suspension of electricity supply in this study we estimate the inconvenience costs stemming from both an unannounced and an announced rolling blackout as a result we find that the inconvenience cost of a sudden rolling blackout is estimated at 3900 67 krw 3 56 usd per month per household while that of an announced rolling blackout stands at 3102 95 krw 2 83 usd this difference in costs shows that people place value in receiving prior notice of a blackout and that inconvenience costs of between 166 0 billion krw 151 6 million usd and 174 3 billion krw 159 2 million usd per year can be reduced nationwide by giving households advance notice of a planned rolling blackout

disability job mismatch earnings and job satisfaction in australia we examine the relationship between disability job mismatch earnings and job satisfaction using panel estimation on data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey 2001 08 while we do not find any relationship between work limiting disability and overskilling it appears that there is a positive relationship between work limiting disability and overeducation which is consistent with disability onset leading to downward occupational movement at least in relative terms we find a negative correlation between work limiting disability and both earnings and job satisfaction however there is only evidence of a causal relationship in terms of the latter where the impact of disability is found to be multifaceted

exchange rate pass through exchange rate volatility and exchange rate disconnect abstract this paper explores the hypothesis that high volatility of real and nominal exchange rates may be due to the fact that local currency pricing eliminates the pass through from changes in exchange rates to consumer prices exchange rates may be highly volatile because in a sense they have little effect on macroeconomic variables the paper shows the ingredients necessary to construct such an explanation for exchange rate volatility in addition to the presence of local currency pricing we need a incomplete international financial markets b a structure of international pricing and product distribution such that wealth effects of exchange rate changes are minimized and c stochastic deviations from uncovered interest rate parity together it is shown that these elements can produce exchange rate volatility that is much higher than shocks to economic fundamentals and disconnected from the rest of the economy in the sense that the volatility of all other macroeconomic aggregates are of the same order as that of fundamentals

expenditure switching vs real exchange rate stabilization competing objectives for exchange rate policy this paper develops a view of exchange rate policy as a trade off between the desire to smooth fluctuations in real exchange rates so as to reduce distortions in consumption allocations and the need to allow flexibility in the nominal exchange rate so as to facilitate terms of trade adjustment we show that optimal nominal exchange rate volatility will reflect these competing objectives the key determinants of how much the exchange rate should respond to shocks will depend on the extent and source of price stickiness the elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods and the amount of home bias in production quantitatively we find the optimal exchange rate volatility should be significantly less than would be inferred based solely on terms of trade considerations moreover we find that the relationship between price stickiness and optimal exchange rate volatility may be non monotonic

rational speculation and exchange rates abstract models of exchange rates have typically failed to produce results consistent with the key fact that real and nominal exchange rates move in ways not closely connected to current or past macroeconomic variables models that rely on the same shocks to drive fluctuations in macroeconomic variables and exchange rates typically imply counterfactually strong co movements between them we develop a model in which new information leads agents to change their rational beliefs about risk premia on foreign exchange markets these changes in risk premia work through asset markets to cause real and nominal exchange rates to change without corresponding changes in gdp productivity money supplies and other key macro variables

changes in wage discrimination against people with disabilities 1984 93 a group of health impaired workers who self report in the survey of income and program participation that their productivity is not affected by their impairment is used to separately measure the effects of discrimination from the effects of poor health on earnings in 1984 and 1993 the results indicate that in 1984 only 3 7 percentage points of the earnings gap is due to discrimination and the amount of discrimination did not decrease by 1993 although discrimination did not change over the 1984 to 1993 period the negative effects of poor health on the earnings of people with disabilities fell substantially

spurious welfare reversals in international business cycle models several papers have documented spurious welfare reversals incompletemarkets economy produces a higher level of welfare than the completemarkets economy this paper first demonstrates how conventional linearization can generate approximation errors that can result in welfare reversals using a two country production economy we argue that spurious welfare reversals are not only possible but also plausible under reasonable values for model parameters this paper then proposes an approximation method that modifies the conventional linearization by a bias correction this method can be easily implemented and approximates welfare as accurately as a second order perturbation method

household electricity end use consumption results from econometric and engineering models information about total electricity consumption is available for most households however the electricity consumption related to different end uses e g space heating lighting and services from household appliances are usually not metered metering data are costly to achieve and in this paper we study two methods for end use estimation which can be applied on household data for appliance holdings demographic and economic variables the first method is the engineering model which has been used to calculate the so far only documented norwegian end use results applied on data from a norwegian energy survey the second method is an econometric conditional demand model applied on data from the same survey we compare the numerical results from the two models and give some recommendations regarding choice of end use approach and what questions to implement in household surveys designed to disaggregate electricity consumption

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

the relationship between energy demand and real gdp growth rate the role of price asymmetries and spatial externalities within 34 countries across the globe abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between energy demand and real gross domestic product gdp growth and to investigate the role of regional externalities on per capita final energy consumption fec in 34 countries during the period from 2005 to 2013 the paper utilizes a dynamic panel generalized method of moments dpggm approach and spatial econometric techniques in order to analyse the effect of real gdp growth rate on fec through an error correction model ecm and to examine clustered patterns of energy consumption the results show that a the demand is elastic both in the industrial and the household services sectors b electricity and natural gas are demand substitutes c the relationship between real gdp growth rate and per capita energy consumption exhibits an inverted u shape for all the sample countries under scrutiny 34 countries eurozone and eu28 but not for all the employed sectors of the economy d price electricity and gas and gdp growth asymmetries are supported from the employed parametric tests and e distance does not affect per capita fec but economic neighbours have a strong positive effect

nominal price rigidity money supply endogeneity and business cycles abstract this paper investigates the ability of nominal price rigidity to explain the co movement of inflation with the cyclical component of output observed in the post war u s data a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed with the introduction of monopolistic competition and nominal price rigidity in a standard real business cycle model allowing for an endogenous money supply rule it is then demonstrated that sticky price models can explain the observed associations between movements in inflation and output much better than flexible price models this result depends little on whether money supply is assumed to be endogenous or not

measuring over education previous work on over education has assumed homogeneity of workers and jobs relaxing these assumptions we find that over educated workers have lower education credentials than matched graduates among the over educated graduates we distinguish between the apparently over educated workers who have similar unobserved skills as matched graduates and the genuinely over educated workers who have a much lower skill endowment over education is associated with a pay penalty of 5 11 for apparently over educated workers compared with matched graduates and of 22 26 for the genuinely over educated over education originates from the lack of skills of graduates this should be taken into consideration in the current debate on the future of higher education in the uk

modeling international trends in energy efficiency article i nfo article history i use a stochastic production frontier to model energy ef ciency trends in 85 countries over a 37 year period differences in energy ef ciency across countries are modeled as a stochastic function of explanatory variables and i estimate the model using the cross section of time averaged data so that no structure is imposed on technological change over time energy ef ciency is measured using a new energy distance function ap proach the country using the least energy per unit output given its mix of outputs and inputs de nes the global production frontier a country s relative energy ef ciency is given by its distance from the frontier the ratio of its actual energy use to the minimum required energy use ceteris paribus energy ef ciency is higher in countries with inter alia higher total factor productivity undervalued currencies and smaller fossil fuel reserves and it converges over time across countries globally technological change was the most impor tant factor counteracting the energy use and carbon emissions increasing effects of economic growth

the role of the exchange rate in monetary policy rules for a country that chooses not to permanently fix its exchange rate through a currency board or a common currency or some kind of dollarization the only alternative monetary policy that can work well in the long run is one based on the trinity of i a flexible exchange rate ii an inflation target and iii a monetary policy rule while not often put into this threepart format the desirability of such a monetary policy in an open economy is in my view the clear implication of three corresponding strands of recent monetary research i research on fixed exchange rates regimes including the influential 1995 article the mirage of fixed exchange rates by maurice obstfeld and kenneth rogoff and the many analyses of the breakdown of fixed exchange rate regimes in the late 1990 s ii research on the practical success with inflation targeting by ben bernanke et al 1999 and iii research on the benefits of simple monetary policy rules see e g taylor 1999a this clear policy implication however does not end the debate about how exchange rates should be taken into account in formulating monetary policy even if one excludes capital controls and sterilized exchange market intervention from consideration because they are not effective or attractive ways to de link exchangerate movements from the domestic interest rate a crucial question remains how should the instruments of monetary policy the interest rate or a monetary aggregate react to the exchange rate should policymakers avoid any reaction and focus instead on domestic indicators such as inflation and real gdp or is the rule of thumb that a substantial appreciation of the real exchange rate furnishes a prima facie case for relaxing monetary policy as characterized by obstfeld and rogoff 1995 p 93 a better monetary policy rule or perhaps policymakers should heed the obstfeld rogoff warning that substantial departures from ppp purchasing power parity in the short run and even over decades make such a policy reaction to the exchange rate undesirable more generally if one accepts the trinity concept of monetary policy in an open economy then what is the role of the exchange rate in the monetarypolicy rule

the effects of exchange rate volatility on exports some new estimates investigations of the impact of exchange rate volatility on exports have not allowed for the integrated non stationary of the variables employed in estimation the results reported in this note are suggestive that in the context of an error correction framework real exchange rate volatility has a significant impact on exports

residential electricity demand dynamics in turkey abstract this article provides fresh empirical evidences for the income and price elasticies of the residential energy demand both in the short run and long run for turkey over the period 1968 2005 using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration the computed elasticities of income and price are consistent with the previous studies and as expected the long run elasticities are greater than the short run elasticities an augmented form of granger causality analysis is implemented among residential electricity income price and urbanization in the long run causality runs interactively through the error correction term from income price and urbanization to residential energy but the short run causality tests are inconclusive the parameter stability of the short run as well as long run coefficients in the residential energy demand function are tested the results of these tests display a stable pattern

mismatch in the spanish labor market overeducation the objective of this article is to explain the job match which is assessed by comparing attained education and job required education as reported by workers we frame our empirical work according to the occupational mobility theory using a cross section of workers from a representative survey of the spanish labor force we consider overeducated workers to be those who report that the level of education their jobs require is below the level of education they have attained our results indicate that overeducated workers have less experience decreased on thejob training and higher turnover than other comparable workers we also observe an improvement in the job match over age and mobility

equal pay as a moving target international perspectives on forty years of addressing the gender pay gap this paper provides an overview of the key factors impacting upon the gender pay gap in the uk europe and australia forty years after the implementation of the first equal pay legislation the pay gap remains a key aspect of the inequalities women face in the labour market while the overall pay gap has tended to fall in many countries over the past forty years it has not closed in some countries it has been stubbornly resistant or has even widened in reviewing the collection of papers that make up this special issue we identify four broad themes with which to group the contributions and draw out the explanations for diverse trends theoretical and conceptual debates legal developments and their impacts wage setting institutions and changing employer demands and newly emerging pay inequalities between and within educational and ethnic groups across the four themes we underline how the trends in the gender pay gap capture the dynamism of inequalities as the market power of different groups and stakeholders changes over times three key dimensions emerge from the papers to provide a framework for future research and policy discourse the relationship between litigation and bargaining strategies the interaction between wage setting institutions and new organisational practices and the increasing and range of diversity or equality strands competing for equal treatment we conclude that progress towards closing the gender pay gap will not be easy will require a collective effort of various actors and will not be quick

new directions for stochastic open economy models the paper develops a simple stochastic new open economy macroeconomic model based on sticky nominal wages explicit solution of the wage setting problem under uncertainty allows one to analyze the effects of the monetary regime on welfare expected output and the expected terms of trade despite the potential interplay between imperfections due to sticky wages and monopoly the optimal monetary policy rule has a closed form solution to motivate our model we show that observed correlations between terms of trade and exchange rates are more consistent with our traditional assumptions about nominal rigidities than with a popular alternative based on local currency pricing 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the impact of surplus schooling on productivity and earnings this article examines the impact of surplus schooling on individual productivity and earnings it proposes a model that divides workers education into two components education that is required and thus fully utilized in the job and education that exceeds the amount required and thus may be underutilized in the job the model is tested with data from the 1969 1973 and 1977 quality of working life surveys quinn and staines 1979 required schooling for each occupation is derived from estimates by job incumbents and by the dictionary of occupational titles the results show thqt surplus or underutilized education is rewarded at a lower rate than required education with the actual return dependent on the type of job

speculation and the decision to abandon a fixed exchange rate regime this paper investigates the extent to which it is possible for speculative attacks to be predictable given information on economic fundamentals a standard model of predictable attacks is extended to incorporate an optimizing monetary authority it is shown that while incorporating a forward looking monetary authority improves our understanding of many observed phenomena it also implies that the branch of the literature that places emphasis on predictable movements in fundamentals cannot generate predictable speculative attacks in addition the model provides useful insights into the viability of temporary nominal anchor policies and a theoretical foundation for an important empirical methodology

the mirage of fixed exchange rates this paper discusses the profound difficulties of maintaining fixed exchange rates in a world of expanding global capital markets contrary to popular wisdom industrialized country monetary authorities easily have the resources to defend exchange parities against virtually any private speculative attack but if their commitment to use those resources lacks credibility with markets the costs to the broader economy of defending an exchange rate peg can be very high the dynamic interplay between credibility and commitment is illustrated by the 1992 swedish and british crises and the 1994 95 mexican collapse we also discuss the small number of successful fixers

home bias exchange rate disconnect and optimal exchange rate policy abstract this paper examines how much the central bank should adjust the interest rate in response to real exchange rate fluctuations the paper first demonstrates in a two country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model that home bias in consumption is important to replicate the exchange rate volatility and exchange rate disconnect documented in the data when home bias is high the shock to uncovered interest rate parity uip can substantially drive up exchange rate volatility while leaving the volatility of real macroeconomic variables such as gdp almost untouched the model predicts that the volatility of the real exchange rate relative to that of gdp increases with the extent of home bias this relation is supported by the data a second order accurate solution method is employed to find the optimal operational monetary policy rule our model suggests that the monetary authority should not seek to vigorously stabilize exchange rate fluctuations in particular when the central bank does not take a strong stance against the inflation rate exchange rate stabilization may induce substantial welfare loss the model does not detect welfare gain from international monetary cooperation which extends obstfeld and rogoff s obstfeld m rogoff k 2002 global implications of self oriented national monetary rules quarterly journal of economics may 503 535 findings to a dsge model

the changing labor market position of canadian immigrants this paper uses pooled 1971 1981 and 1986 canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which 1 the earnings of canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable canadian born individuals and 2 immigrants earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the canadian born variations in the labour market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analysed the results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the canadian labour market than earlier ones an apparent consequence of recent changes in canadian immigration policy labour market discrimination against visible minorities and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s summary in fre excerpt

global implications of self oriented national monetary rules author s obstfeld maurice rogoff kenneth abstract it is well known that if international linkages are relatively small the potential gains to international monetary policy coordination are typically quite limited but what if goods and financial markets are tightly linked is it then problematic if countries unilaterally design their institutions for monetary stabilization are the stabilization gains from having separate currencies largely squandered in the absence of effective international monetary coordination we argue that under plausible assumptions the answer is no unless risk aversion is very high lack of coordination in rule setting is a second order problem compared to the overall gains from monetary policy stabilization

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

long run gasoline demand for passenger cars the role of income distribution it is commonly agreed that the level of income and prices are crucial determinants of the consumption of motor gasoline the respective long run price and income elasticities are regularly calculated using cross sectional models despite the acknowledgement of the role of income distribution it plays no role in intercountry cross sectional models this is due to a lack of appropriate data this paper shows that the omission of distributional characteristics provides misleading elasticities using available distributional measures this paper is referring to an income threshold which is crucial to the acquisition of an automobile it is shown that on the one hand in poor countries an unequal income distribution is needed to enable at least some people to buy automobiles on the other hand in wealthy countries an unequal income distribution would exclude some people from acquiring automobiles hence depending on the income level inequality has a diverging impact on the ability to buy durable goods the second part of this paper develops a pooled 90 country model to examine this approach empirically it could be shown that distribution variables are highly significant to explain the demand for automobiles and motor gasoline moreover the consideration of the distribution of income leads to a considerable decrease in income elasticity values this is mainly due to the positive correlation between income level and income equality within the sample

modelling oecd industrial energy demand asymmetric price responses and energy saving technical change abstract the industrial sector embodies a multifaceted production process consequently modelling the derived demand for energy is a complex issue made all the more difficult by the need to capture the effect of technical progress of the capital stock this paper is an exercise in econometric modelling of industrial energy demand using panel data for 15 oecd countries over the period 1962 2003 exploring the issue of energy saving technical change and asymmetric price responses although difficult to determine precisely it is tentatively concluded that the preferred specification for oecd industrial energy demand incorporates asymmetric price responses but not exogenous energy saving technical change

international welfare effects of monetary policy abstract in this paper i examine the international welfare effects of monetary policy i develop a new keynesian two country model where central banks in both countries follow the taylor rule i show that a decrease in the domestic interest rate under producer currency pricing is a beggar thyself policy that reduces domestic welfare and increases foreign welfare in the short term regardless of whether the cross country substitutability is high or low in the medium term it is a beggar thy neighbour beggar thyself policy if the marshall lerner condition is satisfied violated under local currency pricing a decrease in the domestic interest rate is a beggar thy neighbour policy in the short term but a beggar thyself policy in the medium term both under producer and local currency pricing a monetary expansion increases world welfare in the short term but reduces it in the medium term

welfare effects of a monetary union the role of trade openness this paper evaluates the welfare effects of a monetary union mu compared to a e oating exchange rate regime using a quantitative business cycle model of a two country world with sticky prices it is assumed that under a e oat there are shocks to the uncovered interest rate parity uip condition these shocks are shown to have a negative effect on welfare the detrimental effect is stronger the higher the degree of trade openness a mu eliminates uip shocks and it may thus raise welfare the welfare gain from mu is positively linked to openness jel e4 f3 f4

duration of disability job mismatch and employment outcomes abstractworkers with disabilities have functional limitations that affect their productivity in some but not necessarily all jobs workers who find a job that is a good match for their functional limitations i e a job where their limitations have little or no impact on important job functions should expect better employment outcomes e g higher wages longer job tenure than workers with similar disabilities who are mismatched in their jobs merging data from the survey of income and program participation with o net data on job demands we construct two continuous measures of job mismatch for workers with physical disabilities we then extend the literature on disability and employment by exploring relationships between duration of disability job mismatch wages and hours worked the results indicate that workers with long durations of disability are employed in jobs that are a better match to their physical limitations than are similar workers with shorter durations of disability and workers who

inflation targeting what inflation rate to target abstract in an economy with nominal rigidities in both an intermediate good sector and a finished good sector and thus with a natural distinction between cpi and ppi inflation rates a benevolent central bank faces a tradeoff between stabilizing the two measures of inflation a final output gap and unique to our model a real marginal cost gap in the intermediate sector so that optimal monetary policy is second best we discuss how to implement the optimal policy with minimal information requirement and evaluate the robustness of these simple rules when the central bank may not know the exact sources of shocks or nominal rigidities a main finding is that a simple hybrid rule under which the short term interest rate responds to cpi inflation and ppi inflation results in a welfare level close to the optimum whereas policy rules that ignore ppi inflation or ppi sector shocks can result in significant welfare losses

does exchange rate variability matter for welfare a quantitative investigation of stabilization policies abstract this paper studies what degree of exchange rate stabilization is optimal for several types of open economies this is accomplished through a quantitative evaluation of optimal monetary policy rules in a two country sticky price model first a calibrated benchmark model with incomplete asset markets supports past conclusions from simpler models emphasizing inflation stabilization rather than exchange rate stabilization it also highlights that the utility gains from optimal stabilization policy are small second while an economy extended to include consumer habits implies greater sensitivity by households to consumption variability it has only minor effects on the benchmark conclusions and benefits finally these conclusions are altered under an alternative environment where international asset markets exhibit asymmetry in the form of original sin such countries can benefit from policies that aggressively stabilize the exchange rate with utility gains larger than the previous cases

the social and political consequences of overeducation this study employs national survey data to estimate the extent of overeducation in the u s labor force and its impact on a variety of worker attitudes estimates are made of the extent of overeducation and its distribution among different categories of workers according to sex race age and class background the effects of overeducation are examined in four areas of worker attitudes job satisfaction political leftism political alienation and stratification ideology evidence is found of significant effects of overeducation on job satisfaction and several aspects of stratification ideology the magnitude of these effects is small however and they are concentrated almost exclusively among very highly overeducated workers no evidence is found of generalized political effects of overeducation either in the form of increased political leftism or in the form of increased political alienation these findings fail to support the common prediction of major political repercussions of overeducation and suggest the likelihood of alternative forms of adaptation among overeducated workers

the relationship between unions and job satisfaction this paper examines the assoication between canadian unions and their member attitudes data on job satisfaction indicate that unionized workers in canada are less happy with the quality of their jobs than non union workers the former however are more satisfied with their financial compensation and job security than non members

optimal mismatch and promotions i introduction a substantial proportion of workers are employed in jobs for which they appear to be either overqualified or underqualified for instance using data from the panel study of income dynamics sicherman 1991 finds that 40 percent of his sample are overeducated and another 16 percent are undereducated rumberger 1987 reports similar values using data from the quality of employment surveys other studies which find substantial education mismatch include duncan and hoffman 1981 verdugo and verdugo 1989 and hersch 1991 and evidence that a single firm hires both under and overqualified workers is presented here this paper provides an explanation for why firms hire both overqualified and underqualified workers firms hire overqualified workers because these workers require less training for their initial positions such workers also form a pool from which promotions are made which lowers hiring costs for higher level positions within the firm workers accept positions for which they are overqualified to enhance their probability of promotion and because of search and mobility costs but if they fail to be promoted to a position that better matches their qualifications they are more likely to quit firms hire underqualified workers despite their longer training requirement since such workers are less likely to quit and provide continuity of the labor force over time thus contrary to job matching arguments that would explain these hires as a result of imperfect information hiring of seemingly mismatched workers is optimal and these matches are made with perfect information the model developed in this paper yields three testable hypotheses 1 training time for entry level jobs is inversely related to overqualification at the time of hire 2 workers who are overqualified on their current job are those who have failed to be promoted to a job which better matches their qualifications and such workers are more likely to quit and 3 workers overqualified at time of hire are more likely to be promoted to test these hypotheses i use new data collected for this purpose previous empirical research such as that cited above was restricted by data availability to examining only the match between education and the worker s current job thus the quality of the match with the worker s initial job and the match between worker qualifications other than education has gone unexplored however various worker characteristics in addition to education are often substituted for each other in determining a worker s qualification for a job thus i examine additional qualifications including the match between the worker s experience level of previous job and use of skills information on the match between the worker s qualifications and those required for the initial job with the employer is particularly important since entry level qualifications determine training time for the initial job as well as the likelihood of promotion further individual specific training time for the initial job is necessary but typically not available since data sets providing information on training such as the panel study of income dynamics and quality of employment surveys request information on training time for the average worker and not for the individual worker the data set reveals several interesting statistics qualification mismatch at hire is fairly common for this firm 29 percent of the sample report themselves overqualified for their first job with the firm while 13 percent report themselves as underqualified lateral intra firm mobility is common and occurs far more frequently than promotions workers in the sample average 1 3 promotions but four different jobs with the employer this suggests that the job matching process occurs not only by turnover but through intrafirm mobility consistent with the assumptions and implications of the model the empirical results indicate that workers who are overqualified at hire receive less training and more promotions and that workers overqualified for their current job are more likely to quit

real exchange rate volatility and the us bilateral trade a var approach this paper uses var models to investigate the impact of real exchange rate volatility on u s bilateral imports from the united kingdom france germany japan and canada the var systems include u s and foreign macro variables and are estimated separately for each country the major results suggest that the effect of volatility on imports is weak although permanent shocks to volatility do have a negative impact on this measure of trade and those effects are relatively more important over the flexible rate period copyright 1989 by mit press

the longitudinal structure of earnings losses among work limited disabled workers this paper asks what are the dynamic effects of disability on earnings unlike most of the previous literature it uses panel data and fixed effects methods are used to assess how the earnings of disabled workers depart from expected levels over many years before and after the date of onset of their disability the paper also examines how worker characteristics affect earnings losses from disability with particular attention paid to the age at which the person suffers onset disabled men are found to experience sharp drops in earnings that predate the measured date of onset earnings recover rapidly soon after onset with much of the immediate reduction made up in the first two post onset years a modest downward trendfollows resulting in significant long term losses in expected annual earnings of about 12 percent per year being older at onset nonwhite more chronically disabled and less educated cause the losses from disability to be larger and the recovery smaller a large portion of these differences across groups appear to derive from industry affiliation after onset the paper argues the facts are all consistent with a simple human capital explanation of the disability process

establishment size job satisfaction and the structure of work this paper empirically investigates a the relationship between establishment size and the degree of flexibility in the work environment and b the extent to which establishment size differences in workers satisfaction with their jobs can be accounted for by differences in their work environment the main findings are that large establishments do organize production in a less flexible fashion than do smaller establishments and that observed lower levels of job satisfaction in larger establishments net of wage and fringe benefit effects can largely be explained by the inflexibility in the work environment

competitive devaluations toward a welfare based approach abstract this paper revisits the international transmission of exchange rate shocks in a multicountry economy providing a choice theoretic framework for the policy analysis of competitive devaluations as opposed to the traditional view a devaluation by one country does not necessarily have an adverse beggar thy neighbor effect on its trading partners because they can benefit from an improvement in their terms of trade furthermore a retaliatory devaluation need not be the optimal strategy for the neighbor countries as the induced terms of trade deterioration can be large enough to offset the gains from defending their export market share the concern over competitive devaluations reflected in the fund s charter and the system wide implications of changes in exchange rates still motivate fund policy recommendations a major fund concern in the asian crisis has been the fear that asian currencies would become so undervalued and current account surpluses so large as to damage the economies of other countries developing countries included this is one reason the fund has stressed the need first to stabilize and then to strengthen exchange rates in the asian countries now in crisis and for this purpose not to cut interest rates until the currency stabilizes and begins to appreciate

vehicle ownership to 2015 implications for energy use and emissions abstract this paper forecasts the growth in car ownership to the year 2015 for organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries and a number of asian economies and estimates the implications of this growth on energy demand and emissions the vehicle forecasts are based on models derived from distribution functions which relate the car stock to income and population the models are dynamically specified so that short and long run income elasticities are estimated for the individual countries the question of vehicle saturation both in terms of ownership levels and time is analysed as are the similarities and differences in the demand relationships among the various countries the forecasts of car ownership are combined with income and population projections and assumptions on possible trends in vehicle use fuel efficiency and fuel prices to produce a range of estimates of fuel consumption co 2 emissions the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for energy environmental and transport policy

field experiments of discrimination in the market place controlled experiments using matched pairs of bogus transactors to test for discrimination in the marketplace have been conducted for over 30 years and have extended across 10 countries significant persistent and pervasive levels of discrimination have been found against non whites and women in labour housing and product markets rates of employment discrimination against non whites in excess of 25 have been measured in australia europe and north america a small number of experiments have also investigated employment discrimination against the disabled in britain and the netherlands and against older applicants in the united states

understanding the energy gdp elasticity a sectoral approach abstract this paper uses per capita data for 132 countries over 1960 2010 to estimate elasticities of sectoral energy use with respect to national gross domestic product gdp we estimate models in both levels and growth rates and use our estimates to sectorally decompose the aggregate energy gdp elasticity our estimates show that residential energy use is very inelastic to gdp if primary solid biofuels are counted in energy use tallies especially at low income levels residential use of electricity is more tightly linked to gdp as is energy use by the transportation industrial and services sectors agriculture typically accounts for a small share of energy use and has a modest energy gdp elasticity the aggregate energy gdp elasticity tends to be higher for countries at higher income levels in large part because traditional use of primary solid biofuels is less important gasoline prices winter temperature population and land area are among other factors influencing sectoral energy use

the robustness and efficiency of monetary policy rules as guidelines for interest rate setting by the european central bank abstract this paper examines the implications of recent research on monetary policy rules for practical monetary policy making with special emphasis on strategies for setting interest rates by the european central bank ecb the paper draws on recent research and new simulations of a large open economy model to assess the efficiency of a simple benchmark rule in comparison with other proposed rules further it stresses new results on the robustness of monetary policy rules in which each rule that is optimal or good according to one model or researcher is tested for robustness by other researchers using different models because of the large increase in the number of economists focussing on econometric evaluation of monetary policy rules for the interest rate instrument and because of the parallel increase in the variety of models being developed for this purpose much more evidence is becoming available on the robustness of simple monetary policy rules for the interest rate than ever before

the responses of prices at different stages of production to monetary policy shocks this paper examines the responses of prices at different stages of production to monetary policy shocks in aggregate price analysis the var of christiano et al 1996a 1996b is used to identify the policy shock as the federal funds rate innovation and trace out the responses of prices in disaggregate price analysis the adjustment of prices is examined by comparing inflation before and after a recent policy tightening identified by romer and romer 1989 1992 at early stages of production a monetary tightening causes input prices to fall more rapidly and by a larger amount than output prices

business cycles and the exchange rate system some international evidence this paper investigates the differences in time series behavior of key economic aggregates under alternative exchange rate systems we use a postwar sample of 49 countries to compare the behavior of output consumption trade flows government consumption spending and real exchange rates under alternative exchange rate systems pegged floating and cooperative systems such as the ems we then examine evidence from two particular episodes involving canada and ireland of changes in the exchange rate system aside from greater variability of real exchange rates under flexible than under pegged nominal exchange rate systems we find little evidence of systematic differences in the behavior of macroeconomic aggregates or international trade flows under alternative exchange rate systems these results are of interest because a large class of theoretical models implies that the nominal exchange rate system has important effects on a number of macroeconomic quantities

endogenous money or sticky prices abstract what explains the correlations between nominal and real variables in the postwar us data are these correlations indicative of significant nominal rigidity or do they simply reflect the particular way that monetary policymakers react to developments in the real economy to answer these questions this paper uses maximum likelihood to estimate a model of endogenous money this model allows but does not require nominal prices to be sticky the results show that nominal price rigidity over and above endogenous money plays a role in accounting for key features of the data

exchange rate pass through abstract the resilience of trade balances of the major industrialized economies to changes in their exchange rates has evoked interest in the exchange rate pass through relationship so far there has not been a comprehensive survey of this literature the paper aims to fill this gap in two ways first it pieces together the theoretical literature on exchange rate pass through second it provides a critical survey of the empirical literature on exchange rate pass through emphasis is placed on the data and methodology employed in previous work this is done in order to guide future work in this growing area of research

the impact of surplus schooling on earnings some additional findings this paper examines the impact of overeducation or surplus schooling on earnings overeducated workers are defined as those with educational attainments substantially above the mean for their specific occupations two models are estimated using data from the 1980 census though our models data and measure of overeducation are different from those used by rumberger 1987 our results are similar our results show that overeducated workers often earn less than their adequately educated and undereducated counterparts

i m too clever for this job a bivariate probit analysis on overeducation and job satisfaction in australia using data from the first wave of the household income and labour dynamics in australia data set this article establishes an empirical relationship between overeducation and workplace satisfaction for australian adult males in the labour force in a departure from much of the existing literature both univariate and bivariate probit models are used to account for potential unobserved heterogeneity we find that estimates in the univariate probit models are positively biased for three of the six measures of workplace satisfaction studied this suggests that consideration should be given to the use of bivariate models when studying the determinants of workplace satisfaction and overeducation results show although levels of satisfaction remain high that across all measures of workplace satisfaction overeducated workers are less satisfied compared to their nonovereducated counterparts this intimates that satisfaction levels should be viewed from a relative rather than an absolute perspective pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work aristotle 384bc 322bc

commodity trade and international risk sharing how much do financial markets matter abstract this paper evaluates the social gains from international risk sharing in some simple general equilibrium models with output uncertainty a simulation model calibrated to selected moments of u s and japanese data estimates the incremental loss from a ban on international portfolio diversification to be on the order of 0 20 percent of output per year even the theoretical gains from asset trade may disappear under alternative sets of assumptions on preferences and technology the paper argues that the small magnitude of potential trade gains may help explain the apparently inconsistent findings of empirical studies on the degree of international capital mobility

overeducation undereducation and the british labour market this paper addresses the issue of overeducation and undereducation using for the first time a british dataset which contains explicit information on the level of required education to enter a job across the generality of occupations three key issues within the overeducation literature are addressed first what determines the existence of over and undereducation and to what extent are over and undereducation substitutes for experience tenure and training second to what extent are over and undereducation temporary or permanent phenomena third what are the returns to over and undereducation and do certain stylized facts discovered for the us and a number of european countries hold for britain

introducing mozleap an integrated long run scenario model of the emerging energy sector of mozambique since recently mozambique is actively developing its large reserves of coal natural gas and hydropower against this background we present the first integrated long run scenario model of the mozambican energy sector our model which we name mozleap is calibrated on the basis of recently developed local energy statistics demographic and urbanization trends as well as cross country based gdp elasticities for biomass consumption sector structure vehicle ownership and energy intensity we develop four scenarios to evaluate the impact of the anticipated surge in natural resources exploration on aggregate trends in energy supply and demand the energy infrastructure and economic growth in mozambique our analysis shows that until 2030 primary energy production is likely to increase at least six fold and probably much more this is roughly 10 times the expected increase in energy demand most of the increase in energy production is destined for export as a result mozambique may well become one of the leading global producers of natural gas and coal we discuss the opportunities and challenges that this resource wealth poses for the country

dynamics of final sectoral energy demand and aggregate energy intensity this paper proposes a regional and sectoral model of global final energy demand for the main end use sectors of consumption industrial commercial and public services residential and road transportation per capita demand is expressed as an s shaped function of per capita income other variables intervene as well like energy prices temperatures and technological trends this model is applied on a panel of 101 countries and 3 aggregates covering the whole world and it explains fairly well past variations in sectoral final consumption since the beginning of the 2000s further the model is used to analyze the dynamics of final energy demand by sector and in total the main conclusion concerns the pattern of change for aggregate energy intensity the simulations performed show that there is no a priori reason for it to exhibit a bell shape as reported in the literature depending on initial conditions the weight of basic needs in total consumption and the availability of modern commercial energy resources various forms might emerge

the energy demand in the british and german industrial sectors heterogeneity and common factors abstract this paper estimates energy demands for the german and british industrial sectors over the 1978 2004 and the 1991 2004 samples from time series models we can conclude that there is a considerable variation in the value of the coefficients across sectors even though energy demands with sensible parameters can rarely be estimated when using a panel approach the ability of some estimators to allow for diversity across subsectors was an important factor in explaining the estimates for price elasticity on the other hand correlation across panel members or common factors did not markedly influence our results with regard to the estimated parameters our preferred choice for elasticity of economic activity and price in the longer sample is 0 52 and 0 64 similar values are found in the case of the shorter samples bearing in mind the high price elasticity energy taxes can be considered an effective strategy for reducing energy consumption

is there a genuine under utilization of skills amongst the over qualified two theories of over qualification are considered namely mismatch whereby workers do not find the most appropriate jobs for their skills because of imperfect information or labour market rigidities and heterogeneous workers whereby individuals with the same qualifications have different actual skill levels so that they can be over qualified in terms of formal qualifications while their skills are actually appropriate for the jobs that they do the evidence suggests that both theories are relevant in certain situations

fixed exchange rates and trade abstract a classic argument for a fixed exchange rate is its promotion of trade empirical support for this however is mixed while one branch of research consistently shows a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility on trade another more recent branch presents evidence of a large positive impact of currency unions on trade this paper helps resolve this disconnect our results which use a new data based classification of fixed exchange rate regimes show a large significant effect of a fixed exchange rate on bilateral trade between a base country and a country that pegs to it these results suggest an economically relevant role for exchange rate regimes in trade determination since a significant amount of world trade is conducted between countries with fixed exchange rates

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed