technical efficiency in the spanish agrofood industry abstract this study estimates frontier production functions with cross section data for the spanish agrofood industry by using deterministic and stochastic parametric approaches we compute the individual technical efficiency for each firm compare the results and explain the relationship between technical efficiency and other relevant quantitative variables the results indicate that the spanish agrofood industry has a level of efficiency between 68 and 93 which means that it is potentially capable of increasing production without increasing its consumption of inputs this efficiency level is positively related to factor productivity and unitary labour costs

the north south divide questions of existence and stability this paper investigates the relationship between regional earnings and unemployment by use of information primarily from the general household surveys of 1975 and 1982 conventional earnings functions are augmented to capture the effects of the level and duration of unemployment and of regional differences in living costs in common with previous studies the authors find personal characteristics and the occupation or industry of employment to be important in earnings determination in this paper however they generally find that although higher unemployment is associated with reduced regional earnings ceteris paribus long term unemployment has little influence in regional earnings determination copyright 1990 by royal economic society

econometric evaluation of consumers expenditure equations large errors in forecasting consumption in the late 1980s and early 1990s were a major contribution to the poor performance in economic forecasting overall these errors have been attributed to the inability of existing models to capture important influences on consumer behavior such as the effects of financial deregulation and shifts in expectations revisions to models followed their failure to predict the late 1980s boom an important question is whether these developments help to explain the unanticipated downturn in consumers expenditure in the early 1990s this article presents an appraisal of eight recent u k consumption functions it is found that these models can explain much of the rise in consumption in the late 1980s however forecast errors for the early 1990s while within the historical range are predominantly negative the nature of this overprediction suggests that further research on household finances including the role of housing as collateral is required copyright 1994 by oxford university press

annual consumption functions a scottish uk comparison 1971 1985 holden d r and mcgregor p g 1990 annual consumption functions a scottish uk comparison 1971 1985 reg studies 24 247 259 this paper investigates the performance of a number of recently proposed consumption functions using annual scottish and uk data for the period 1971 to 1985 whilst the exercise is atheoretical in the sense that no attempt is made to tie estimated models to specific theories the influences considered do reflect an underlying conviction that a full understanding of consumption functions ultimately necessitates an integrated framework for modelling household behaviour in this context a number of recent models may be treated as non competing and separate investigation of non durable and durable expenditures may be helpful in evaluating competing explanations of recent consumption behaviour data coherent models of non durable expenditures are obtained although such specifications proved elusive for durables overall there was some supporting evidence for the intuitive sy

input output modelling of the urban and regional economy the importance of external trade harris r i d and liu a 1998 input output modelling of the urban and regional economy the importance of external trade reg studies 32 851 862 the modelling of regional and local economies especially through using the input output io approach is a standard practice for many economic consultants and yet quite often this is based on little if any primary data on interregional exports and imports this paper argues that the relative size of the trade sector in final demand and its importance in the literature on regional growth is such that current models are at best misspecified and are at worst likely to provide biased and possibly misleading results especially with regard to planning and policy at the local level on a more practical level this paper shows that with certain minimum information especially with regard to exports and imports a hybrid local io table can be constructed that provides reasonable accuracy in terms of estimates of io multipliers vis a vis a complete survey ta

endogenous gentrification and housing price dynamics in this paper we begin by documenting substantial variation in house price growth across neighborhoods within a city during citywide housing price booms we then present a model which links house price movements across neighborhoods within a city and the gentrification of those neighborhoods in response to a citywide housing demand shock a key ingredient in our model is a positive neighborhood externality individuals like to live next to richer neighbors this generates an equilibrium where households segregate based upon their income in response to a citywide demand shock higher income residents will choose to expand their housing by migrating into the poorer neighborhoods that directly abut the initial richer neighborhoods the in migration of the richer residents into these border neighborhoods will bid up prices in those neighborhoods causing the original poorer residents to migrate out we refer to this process as endogenous gentrification using a variety of data sets and using bartik variation across cities to identify city level housing demand shocks we find strong empirical support for the model s predictions

the impact of credit on peasant productivity and differentiation in nicaragua abstract an endogenous switching regressions framework is used to structure and identify the impact of credit on small farm food production in nicaragua the results which emerge weakly support the hypothesis that credit had a positive impact on production and could be expected to reduce the pattern of structurally unbalanced growth in nicaraguan agriculture however the estimated impact is of a form which implies a process of differentiation and unequal growth in the peasant sector in the wake of the new opportunities afforded by credit

the regional transmission of uk monetary policy dow s c and montagnoli a 2007 the regional transmission of uk monetary policy regional studies 41 797 808 concerns have been raised in the media about a one size fits all monetary policy for the uk if there are diverse economic conditions in different regions then a unitary monetary policy cannot suit all the purpose of this paper is to explore this issue further by breaking it down into two separate issues first there is the more conventional way of considering the question in terms of the effect of a particular interest rate change on regions experiencing different economic conditions this requires a consideration of the nature and causes of regional economic disparities in the uk and how these might be affected by particular interest rate changes but there is further the question of how monetary policy is transmitted to the different regions the possibility is considered that there may be regional differences in how a particular monetary policy is translated into different financial

efficiency in agricultural production the case of peasant farmers in eastern paraguay abstract this paper contributes to the productivity literature in developing country agriculture by quantifying the level of efficiency for a sample of peasant farmers from eastern paraguay a stochastic efficiency decomposition methodology is used to derive technical allocative and economic efficiency measures separately for cotton and cassava an average economic efficiency of 40 1 for cotton and of 52 for cassava is found which suggests considerable room for productivity gains for the farms in the sample through better use of available resources given the state of technology gains in output through productivity growth have become increasingly important to paraguay as the opportunities to bring additional virgin lands into cultivation have significantly diminished in recent years no clear strategy to improve farm productivity could be gleaned from an examination of the relationship between efficiency and various socioeconomic variables one possible explanation for this finding is the existence of a stage of development threshold below which there is no consistent relationship between socioeconomic variables and productivity if this is the case then our results suggest that this sample of paraguayan peasants are yet to reach such a threshold hence improvements in educational and extension services for example would be needed to go beyond this threshold once this is accomplished additional productivity gains would be obtained by further investments in human capital and related factors

policy review section in this policy review section gerry stoker of the institute of local government studies presents a critical review of the role of urban development corporations udcs in comparing the experience of the udcs consideration is given to the varying nature of the land and property market in each udc area to the relationship with local authorities and other local bodies and the regeneration strategies pursued by the udcs this is followed by an assessment of the impact of the udcs in economic social and political terms in the second article john britton of the university of toronto examines the theoretical case for interventionist public policies to assist the innovation process in small and medium sized enterprises these arguments are supported by a review of the experience of various national support programmes introduced in the uk in particular the manufacturing advisory service introduced in 1978 and the design advisory service launched in 1982

poor but allocatively efficient evidence from the eastern amazon this research empirically investigates the well known poor but efficient hypothesis formulated by schultz 1964 assuming that small scale farmers in developing countries are reasonably efficient in allocating their scarce resources by responding positively to price incentives deviating from schultz it is assumed here that scale effects explain a considerable proportion of small scale farmers relative efficiency the theoretical underpinnings of the scale efficiency concept are briefly reviewed before a normalized generalized leontief gl profit function is modeled by using its output supply and input demand system to capture the joint production of cassava flour and maize by a sample of small scale farmers in the bragantina region of the eastern amazon brazil the discussion of theoretical consistency and functional flexibility is considered by imposing convexity on the gl profit framework the empirical results confirm our revised hypothesis that small farmers in traditional development settings are poor but allocatively efficient by clearly suggesting considerable inefficiency with respect to the scale of operations

interjurisdictional sorting and majority rule an empirical analysis the goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of majority rule and tiebout sorting within a system of local jurisdictions the idea behind the estimation procedure is to investigate whether observed levels of public expenditures satisfy necessary conditions implied by majority rule in a general equilibrium model of residential choice the estimator controls for observed and unobserved heterogeneity among households observed and unobserved characteristics of communities and the potential endogeneity of prices and expenditures as well as the self selection of households into communities of their choice we estimate the structural parameters of the model using data from the boston metropolitan area the empirical findings reject myopic voting models more sophisticated voting models based on utility taking provide a potential explanation of the main empirical regularities

alternative stochastic specifications of the frontier production function in the analysis of agricultural credit programs and technical efficiency abstract the effect of subsidized credit on the technical efficiency of traditional farmers in southeastern brazil is analyzed under two alternative stochastic specifications for the production frontier it is found that the choice of stochastic specification significantly influences inferences regarding the effect of subsidized credit on measured technical efficiency

hybrid modelling of long term carbon reduction scenarios for the uk this paper summarizes the development of a new hybrid markal macro m m energy system model for the uk this hybrid model maintains the technological and sectoral detail of a bottom up optimisation approach with aggregated energy demand endogeneity and gdp impacts from a single sector neoclassical growth model the uk m m model was developed for underpinning analysis of the uk s groundbreaking mandatory long term 60 carbon dioxide co2 emissions reduction target hybrid modelling illustrates that long term uk co2 emission reductions are feasible however there are endemic uncertainties notably a trade off between behavioural and technological decarbonisation options with resultant energy system impacts in the requirements for zero carbon electricity uk m m model sensitivity runs further illustrate the range of energy system interactions including the deployment of the uk s limited co2 storage capacity alternate timing of power vs transport sectoral reductions the relative ease of switching between electricity generation portfolios and substitution opportunities between natural gas and coal the macro economic cost impacts range from 0 3 to 1 5 reduction in uk gdp by 2050 with higher cost estimates strongly influenced by pessimistic assessments of future low carbon technologies however cost impacts from the uk m m model are likely to be in the lower range for stringent co2 reduction pathways as the simplicity of the reduced form macro linkage omits competitiveness and transitional impacts on the uk economy c 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

energy efficiency rebound effects and the environmental kuznets curve technological change is one factor used to justify the existence of an environmental kuznets curve and technological improvements have been argued to be a key factor in mitigating the impacts of economic growth on environmental quality in this paper we use a cge model of the scottish economy to consider the factors influencing the impacts of one form of technological change improvements in energy efficiency on absolute levels of co2 emissions on the carbon intensity of the economy co2 emissions relative to real gdp and the per capita ekc relationship these factors include the elasticity of substitution between energy and non energy inputs responses in the labour market and the structure of the economy our results demonstrate the key role played by the general equilibrium price elasticity of demand for energy and the relative influence of different factors on this parameter

housing assets and consumer spending a regional analysis carruth a and henley a 1993 housing assets and consumer spending a regional analysis reg studies 27 611 621 this paper is concerned with the relationship between the housing market and consumer spending for the eleven standard regions of the uk pooled regional cross sectional and annual time series data are used to appraise the effect of housing assets on regional consumer spending in the 1980s a fixed effects estimator imposing common slope coefficients across the regions is employed and this assumption is tested using the sure estimator estimates of a dhsy specification of the consumption function and a model augmented with housing assets are compared the fixed effects models perform quite well indicating that the growth in regional housing equity has had a positive impact on regional consumer spending the sure results indicate that the assumption of common regional responses of consumer spending to the explanatory variables is not valid and that the housing wealth effect is strongest in

scotland the grey a linked demographic computable general equilibrium cge analysis of the impact of population ageing and decline lisenkova k mcgregor p g pappas n swales j k turner k and wright r e scotland the grey a linked demographic computable general equilibrium cge analysis of the impact of population ageing and decline regional studies this paper links a multi period economic computable general equilibrium cge modelling framework with a demographic model to analyse the economic impact on scotland of its projected ageing and declining population the model quantifies the effect on aggregate economic variables such as gross domestic product gdp employment and competitiveness and also on individual sectors with the principal demographic projections the fall in population and particularly working age population has a depressing impact on economic activity by changing the demographic parameters the impact of increasing net migration a policy actively being pursued by the scottish government is tracked however the required size of the annual net migration needed to neutralize the adverse natural

technical efficiency in developing country agriculture a meta analysis abstract a meta analysis is performed to review empirical estimates of technical efficiency te in developing country agriculture the objective of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence estimates of mean te a data set of 51 observations of te from 32 studies is used in order to test if specific characteristics of the data and econometric specifications account for systematic differences in the efficiency estimates results using the two limit tobit procedure indicate that factors such as primal versus dual number of fixed inputs and number of variable inputs increase average te estimates on the other hand using the cobb douglas functional form and cross sectional data yields a lower level of te other factors including the number of variables in the model crop type stochastic versus deterministic frontiers and sample size do not seem to significantly affect estimates of te across studies

old homes externalities and poor neighborhoods a model of urban decline and renewal abstract this paper investigates urban decline and renewal in the united states using three panels that follow neighborhoods on a geographically consistent basis over extended periods of time findings indicate that change in neighborhood economic status is common averaging roughly 13 percent per decade roughly two thirds of neighborhoods studied in 1950 were of quite different economic status fifty years later panel unit root tests for 35 msas indicate that neighborhood economic status is a stationary process consistent with long running cycles of decline and renewal in philadelphia county a complete cycle appears to last up to 100 years aging housing stocks and redevelopment contribute to these patterns as do local externalities associated with social interactions lower income neighborhoods appear to be especially sensitive to the presence of individuals that provide social capital many of the factors that drive change at the local level have large and policy relevant effects

tipping and the dynamics of segregation schelling dynamic models of segregation journal of mathematical sociology 1 1971 143 186 showed that extreme segregation can arise from social interactions in white preferences once the minority share in a neighborhood exceeds a tipping point all the whites leave we use regression discontinuity methods and census tract data from 1970 through 2000 to test for discontinuities in the dynamics of neighborhood racial composition we find strong evidence that white population flows exhibit tipping like behavior in most cities with a distribution of tipping points ranging from 5 to 20 minority share tipping is prevalent both in the suburbs and near existing minority enclaves in contrast to white population flows there is little evidence of nonlinearities in rents or housing prices around the tipping point tipping points are higher in cities where whites have more tolerant racial attitudes

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

negative rebound and disinvestment effects in response to an improvement in energy efficiency in the uk economy this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge framework to investigate the conditions under which rebound effects may occur in response to increases in energy efficiency in the uk national economy previous work for the uk has suggested that rebound effects will occur even where key elasticities of substitution in production are set close to zero the research reported in this paper involves carrying out a systematic sensitivity analysis where relative price sensitivity is gradually introduced into the system focusing specifically on elasticities of substitution in production and trade parameters in order to determine conditions under which rebound effects become a likely outcome the main result is that while there is positive pressure for rebound effects even where direct and indirect demands for energy are very price inelastic this may be partially or wholly offset by negative income competitiveness and disinvestment effects which also occur in response to falling energy prices the occurrence of disinvestment effects is of particular interest these occur where falling energy prices reduce profitability in domestic energy supply sectors leading to a contraction in capital stock in these sectors which may in turn lead to rebound effects that are smaller in the long run than in the short run a result that runs contrary to the predictions of previous theoretical work in this area

modelling a regional economic system the case of lombardy baussola m 2007 modelling a regional economic system the case of lombardy regional studies 41 19 38 during recent years the demand for quantitative economic investigation to be used for policy analysis has grown rapidly in addition the european economic and monetary integration process has increased the economic impact of regional economies thus calling for analytical instruments aimed at supporting the decision making process a regional econometric model of lombardy s labour market was set up in which both labour demand and supply are endogenously determined and thus unemployment is determined by their interaction therefore labour demand in both the industrial sector and in private services is modelled while labour supply is split into two components that define respectively the participation rate and self employment the model simulations evaluate the response of the regional labour market in comparison with the national one to exogenous shocks depending on shocks in either demand or

the regional implications of macroeconomic policy this article examines the relative impact of changes in uk fiscal and monetary policy on the economies of the uk regions this is done by first considering the relative importance of fiscal flows and balances to the uk regions and then assessing their sensitivity to fiscal policy changes second the impact of monetary policy on the regions is considered in four cases these are direct effects on spending exchange rate effects income effects and asset price effects the conclusions are that different policy levers have markedly different regional implications with southern regions being more sensitive to changes in income taxes and government consumption and investment while northern regions are more sensitive to changes in national insurance and transfer payments all regions have become more sensitive to interest rate changes over the past decade but regions in the south are considerably more vulnerable particularly to any knock on effect on house prices copyright 1995 by oxford university press

factors affecting the technical efficiency among smallholder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon abstract this paper estimates technical efficiency among small holder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon and identifies sources of inefficiency using detailed survey data obtained from 450 farmers over 15 villages throughout 2001 2002 growing season we find that the mean levels of technical efficiency are 77 73 and 75 respectively for groundnut monocrop maize monocrop and maize groundnut farming systems suggesting existence of substantial gains in output and or decreases in cost with available technology and resources the efficiency differences are explained significantly by credit soil fertility social capital distance of the plot from the access road and extension services policy recommendations are drawn from these findings

within city variation in urban decline the case of detroit when a city experiences a decline in either income or population do all neighborhoods within the city decline equally or do some neighborhoods within the city decline more than others if so what are the characteristics of the neighborhoods that decline the most in this paper we provide some answers to these questions by looking at what happened to different types of neighborhoods within the city of detroit as detroit experienced a sharp decline in average income and population from the 1980s to the late 2000s the large declines in population and aver age income during this period relative to other large cities make detroit a natural candidate to study the within city properties of urban decline we view our analysis through the recently developed model of guerrieri hartley and hurst 2011 hereafter ghh in that model individuals are endowed with either high or low income and all individuals have a prefer ence for living around richer neighbors this is a shorthand way to model individuals having preferences for amenities that are provided endogenously when neighborhood income rises such as lower crime more entertainment and

do increases in energy efficiency improve environmental quality and sustainability governments world wide increasingly see energy efficiency as an important aspect of sustainability however there is a debate in the literature as to whether the impact of improved energy efficiency on reducing energy use might be partially or more than wholly offset through rebound and backfire effects this paper clarifies the theoretical conditions under which such effects would occur and explores their likely significance using a computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy we find that for scotland a general improvement in energy efficiency in the production sectors of the economy initially produces rebound effects that eventually grow into backfire energy use ultimately increases in response to an efficiency gain and the ratio of gdp to co2 emissions falls the economic factors underpinning rebound effects are straightforward energy efficiency improvements result in an effective cut in energy prices which produces output substitution competitiveness and income effects that stimulate energy demands however the presence of strong rebound or even backfire does not mean that efficiency enhancing policies are irrelevant rather it suggests that such policies operating alone are insufficient to generate environmental improvements the implication is that a co ordinated portfolio of energy policies is required

housing market spillovers evidence from the end of rent control in cambridge massachusetts we measure the capitalization of housing market externalities into residential housing values by studying the unanticipated elimination of stringent rent controls in cambridge massachusetts in 1995 pooling data on the universe of assessed values and transacted prices of cambridge residential properties between 1988 and 2005 we find that rent decontrol generated substantial robust price appreciation at decontrolled units and nearby never controlled units accounting for a quarter of the 7 8 billion in cambridge residential property appreciation during this period the majority of this contribution stems from induced appreciation of never controlled properties residential investment explains only a small fraction of the total

economic efficiency in polish peasant farming an international perspective one decade following the market transition in poland the agricultural sector still exhibits low productivity policy makers often describe the sector as fragmented and inefficient to understand why small scale farming in poland is inefficient despite longstanding secure property rights a survey of economic efficiency in southern agriculture was conducted and compared with limited studies of efficiency in poland the most important issues particularly related to farm size and efficiency are price risk uncertainty and low rural development comparative studies across regions with varying institutional arrangements and economic organization are powerful but must be made carefully and critically

why has house price dispersion gone up we calibrate a dynamic general equilibrium island model to investigate the 30 year increase in the level of house prices and their dispersion across u s metropolitan areas the model is based on two main assumptions households o w in and out metropolitan areas in response to local productivity shocks and the housing supply cannot adjust instantly because of technological and regulatory constraints the calibration reveals that the observed tightening of housing supply regulation cannot quantitatively account for the rise in the level and dispersion of house prices in equilibrium workers o w out of tightly regulated towards less regulated metropolitan areas undoing most of the price impact of local supply restrictions in contrast the observed increase in wage dispersion across metropolitan areas does create the observed increase in the level and dispersion of house prices workers o w towards exceptionally productive metropolitan areas and drive house prices up the calibration also suggests that the welfare eects of housing supply regulation are large when wages become more dispersed

an assessment of the regional impact of the introduction of a community charge or poll tax in england barnett r r levaggi r and smith p 1990 an assessment of the regional impact of the introduction of a community charge or poll tax in england reg studies 24 289 297 in 1990 the system of local government finance in england will be changed dramatically with the reforms including the introduction of a community charge or poll tax to replace the existing system of domestic property taxation the reforms will result in major changes to the financial incentives operating on local government this paper concentrates on the regional implications using models of local government behaviour under the existing system to predict the likely expenditure responses to the reforms of the major local authorities estimates of regional welfare gains and losses for the domestic sector are also computed the findings indicate large disparities between regions in the consequences of the reforms drawing particularly strong distinctions between northern regions and the rest of the country barnett r r levaggi

frontier production functions and technical efficiency a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics abstract the modelling and estimation of frontier production functions has been an important area of econometric research during the last two decades forsund lovell and schmidt 1980 and schmidt 1986 present reviews of the concepts and models involved and cite some of the empirical applications which had appeared to their respective times of publication this paper seeks to update the econometric modelling of frontier production functions associated with the estimation of technical efficiency of individual firms a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics is an important part of the paper

the measurement of productive efficiency a reconsideration the purpose of this paper is to generalize the farrell indexes of productive efficiency to nonhomothetic production technologies and at the same time maintain the cost interpretation of the farrell measures since the generalized indexes rely heavily on recent developments in the estimation of frontier cost and production functions several frontier models are reviewed in addition to generalized indexes of technical allocative and overall productive efficiency a variety of single factor efficiency measures are discussed the applicability of the proposed efficiency measures is illustrated with a numerical example of electric power generation

rebound and disinvestment effects in refined oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the scottish commercial transport sector in this paper we use an energy economy environment computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial transport sector on the supply and use of energy we focus our analysis on scottish refined oil as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity we find that a 5 increase in energy efficiency in the commercial transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil based energy commodities in all time periods in the target sector and at the economy wide level however our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the scottish refined oil supply sector this disinvestment effect acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects however the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector particularly the substitutability of energy for non energy intermediate inputs to production

housing booms and city centers popular discussions often treat the great housing boom of the 1996 2006 period as if it were a national phenomenon with similar impacts across locales but across metropolitan areas price growth was dramatically higher in warmer less educated cities with less initial density and higher initial housing values within metropolitan areas price growth was faster in neighborhoods closer to the city center the centralization of price growth during the boom was particularly dramatic in those metropolitan areas where income is higher away from the city center we consider a number of different explanations for this connection and find that the connection between centralized price growth and decentralized income seems to be most explained by the faster price growth in central cities that use relatively more public transit

analyses of technical efficiency using sdf and dea models evidence from nepalese agriculture alleviation of poverty is a central issue in nepal given the limited stock of land and the infant unorganized manufacturing sector increased demand for food has to be satisfied by improving production efficiency this article examines how this could be achieved stochastic distance function and data envelopment analysis models identify the existence of a high degree of technical inefficiency in nepalese agriculture suggesting that there is a substantial prospect of increasing agricultural productivity using the existing level of inputs and resources more efficiently among the three farm sizes in the data set medium size farmers achieve a higher technical efficiency than large and small farm sizes suggesting that productive efficiency can be increased with the encouragement of creating medium size holdings the observed decreasing returns to scale also implies that productivity gains could be achieved by breaking up of large farms into small family farms the technical inefficiency model suggests the

the displacement and multiplier effects of regional selective assistance a computable general equilibrium analysis this paper uses a hybrid approach to simulate the effects of regional selective assistance rsa for scotland this combines industrial survey estimation of the direct impacts and computable general equilibrium cge modelling of the system wide effects the results are compared to those derived using the method currently adopted in official evaluation studies of rsa and other regional regeneration policy instruments the cge approach captures capacity labour market displacement and migration effects ignored in existing studies simulation identifies the conditions under which these effects are likely to be quantitatively important a partir d une facon hybride cet article cherche a simuler pour l ecosse l impact des primes regionales une estimation des effets directs a partir d une enquete aupres de l industrie se voit allier a la modelisation des effets generalises par une analyse d equilibre general sur ordinateur on compare les resultats a ceux qui proviennent des methodes employees actuellement

the impact of increased efficiency in the industrial use of energy a computable general equilibrium analysis for the united kingdom the conventional wisdom is that improving energy efficiency will lower energy use however there is an extensive debate in the energy economics policy literature concerning rebound effects these occur because an improvement in energy efficiency produces a fall in the effective price of energy services the response of the economic system to this price fall at least partially offsets the expected beneficial impact of the energy efficiency gain in this paper we use an economy energy environment computable general equilibrium cge model for the uk to measure the impact of a 5 across the board improvement in the efficiency of energy use in all production sectors we identify rebound effects of the order of 30 50 but no backfire no increase in energy use however these results are sensitive to the assumed structure of the labour market key production elasticities the time period under consideration and the mechanism through which increased government revenues are recycled back to the economy

an econometric model of merseyside validation and policy simulations minford p stoney p riley j and webb b 1994 an econometric model of merseyside validation and policy simulations reg studies 28 563 576 the paper estimates an econometric model of merseyside on annual data the model is derived from a heckscher ohlin framework for the traded sector set beside a non traded sector and facing a positively sloped supply curve of manual labour whose reservation wage is set by unemployment benefits with all other factor prices being set exogenously to the region through elastic supply the supply of manual labour responding to traded sector wages set by world market conditions determines the size of the region s output the model s fit over the past is acceptable though data is limited its simulation properties contrasting with those of previous demand driven models imply high returns to policies that reduce local costs such as taxes union mark ups and transport charges minford p stoney p riley j et webb b 1994 un modele econometrique de merseyside

fiscal devolution and dependency public spending devolution in practice is widely seen as more appropriate for addressing varied political aspirations within state boundaries than is tax devolution a drawback is that devolved public spending may be subject to irresistible upward pressure as illustrated by formula drift of the united kingdom devolved administrations by crowding out the private sector such public spending can exacerbate the problem it was originally intended to alleviate when taxpayers do not value increases in government output at least as highly as the private goods and services they must forgo to finance them then the public sector is too large this article estimates a three sector hecksher ohlin model of the economy with the greatest relative rise of the public spending ratio in the united kingdom wales simulation of the model shows a net gain in employment from a 1 cut in income tax matched by a corresponding reduction in government spending this result is consistent with the current level of intergovernme

negative equity and foreclosure theory and evidence abstract recent declines in housing prices have focused attention on the relationship between negative housing equity and mortgage default theory implies that negative equity is a necessary condition for default but not a sufficient one this often misunderstood result is clearly illustrated in a dataset of massachusetts homeowners during the early 1990s fewer than 10 percent of borrowers likely to have had negative equity at the end of 1991 experienced a foreclosure during the following three years an econometric model of default estimated on two decades of massachusetts housing data also predicts low default rates for current negative equity borrowers we develop a simple theoretical model to interpret these empirical findings and to assess potential foreclosure reduction policies our results imply that lenders and policymakers face an information problem in trying to help borrowers with negative equity because it is hard to determine which owners really need help in order to stay in their homes

barriers to energy efficiency in industrial bottom up energy demand models a review the goal of this paper is to review bottom up models for industrial energy demand with a particular focus on their capability to model barriers to the adoption of energy efficient technologies the integration of barriers into the models is an important prerequisite for a more detailed and realistic modeling of policies for energy efficiency particularly with the emergence of more and more varying policy instruments it also becomes crucial for the models to take account of these policies as well as the barriers they address in a more realistic way our review revealed that despite the broadly evident existence of market failures and barriers for energy efficient technologies they are only partly and in a rather aggregated form considered in today s bottom up models the state of the art bottom up model is based on an explicit representation of the technology stock and considers the costs of energy efficiency options in detail but with regard to barriers most models only make use of an aggregated approach like an adjusted discount rate while some models do not even consider technology costs and energy prices but instead use exogenous technology diffusion rates other more advanced models took first steps towards considering barriers in more detail the latter allows differentiation between multiple parameters that influence technology adoption still even in the most advanced models only a few of the observed barriers are explicitly considered at the same time new approaches to considering barriers like uncertainty or the slow spread of information are being developed in other disciplines we conclude the paper by summarizing promising ways to improve representation of barriers in bottom up models

credit standards and segregation abstract this paper explores the effects of changes in lending standards on racial segregation within metropolitan areas such changes affect neighborhood choices as well as aggregate prices and quantities in the housing market using the credit boom of 2000 to 2006 as a large scale experiment we put forward an iv strategy that predicts the relaxation of credit standards as the result of a credit supply shock predominantly affecting liquidity constrained banks the relaxed lending standards led to significant outflows of whites from black and racially mixed neighborhoods without such a credit supply shock black households would have had between 2 3 and 5 1 percentage points more white neighbors in 2010

economics of devolution decentralization in the uk some questions and answers mcgregor p g and swales k 2005 economics of devolution decentralization in the uk some questions and answers regional studies 39 477 494 the paper explores the economic implications of the radical process of devolution decentralization and delegation of decision making and policy delivery initiated by the post 1997 uk labour government it is argued that the economies of all the presently devolved regions ultimately suffer if the barnett formula is rigorously imposed it is shown that the efficiency of devolving fiscal authority involves a balance of positive and negative elements depending on wage bargaining and migration responses it is then argued that delegation devolution of regional economic development policies while exploiting regional information advantages neglects regional economic interdependence so there are potential gains from greater cooperation coordination