some macroeconomic implications of alternative compensation systems a basic theme of this paper is the idea that some structural reform of employee compensation arrangements is necessary to make reasonable price stability compatible with reasonably full employment in this view even the best designed macroeconomic policies are much too aggregative to get at the heart of the stagflation problem the ultimate solution involves going inside the workings of a modern capitalist economy and correcting the underlying structural flaw directly on the level of the individual firm stagflation represents an especially intractable policy dilemma for macroeconomics without a decisive tendency of the economic system to remain near full employment there is a strong prima facie case for fighting recessions by exogenously stimulating aggregate demand but the usual keynesian expansionary policies tend to impart an inflationary inertia that is difficult to choke off and of course the basic strategy for fighting inflation is to cool down the economy by restrictive monetary and fiscal policy thereby increasing unemployment and closing the viscous circle because the practical macroeconomic policies for dealing with unemployment and inflation are so diametrically opposed stagflation is a pervasive structural problem when for whatever reason there is basically an unfavourable short run tradeoff between unemployment and inflation economic policy tends to vacillate between expansion of demand to fight unemployment and restriction of demand to fight inflation polarising the electorate and distracting society from dealing effectively with its underlying real economic problems even the difficulty of attaining external balance in foreign accounts is largely a spillover into the international payments arena of an inability to achieve an acceptable internal balance between full employment and price stability this paper takes what might be called a comparative systems approach to the problem of stagflation at the heart of modern industrial capitalism is an incredibly complicated system of overlapping monopolistic competitors 2 a starting point for the paper is the realisation that the coordination difficulty which can cause some systems to suffer involuntary unemployment is not inherent in laissez faire private enterprise per se it is closely tied to one particular property of a conventional wage payment system namely compensation of each firm s employees is stuck to an outside numeraire whether money or a cost of

urban spatial structure urban structure is increasingly characterized by decentralization dispersion and multiple employment centers much is known empirically about such patterns and about how the interplay between agglomerative and dispersive forces generates spatial structures that are complex and prone to multiple equilibria and dynamic path dependence these forces operate at different spatial scales many entail unpriced interaction and external scale economies deriving from product differentiation and endogenous technical change appear particularly important because these forces interact in complex ways inefficiencies in urban structure are resistant to simple policy interventions

market segmentation and willingness to pay for green electricity among urban residents in china the case of jiangsu province the objective of this study is to identify market segments and estimate the residents willingness to pay wtp for green electricity green e in china for the large scale promotion of energy projects from renewable sources that do not rely solely on energy policies based on an analysis of non use values of green e as well as the application of the contingent valuation cv method and payment card pc introduction technology the average wtp ranges from rmb 7 91 yuan month to 10 30 yuan month approximately us 1 15 1 51 month with an exchange rate of 6 83 yuan us yuan us for urban residents in jiangsu province the current work also explores the differences in demographic variables across varying wtp amounts and the different marginal effects of demographic variables at the same level of wtp the findings reveal that there are significant differences in demographic variables such as level of education household income and location of residence across the population segments moreover the finding that some respondents with high income and higher education prefer higher wtp amounts to lower wtp amounts suggests that green e is a luxury product and consequently a veblen effect exists in certain chinese market segments

dynamic inefficiency in decentralized capital markets abstract we study the efficiency implications of bargaining in frictional capital markets in which firms match bilaterally with dealers in order to buy or sell capital we show how two of the distinguishing characteristics of capital ownership and the intertemporal nature of investment give rise to a dynamic inefficiency firms that anticipate buying capital in the future overinvest because this increases their outside option of no trade in negotiations with dealers in the future thereby lowering the bargained purchase price vice versa firms that anticipate selling capital in the future strategically underinvest because this increases the bargained sale price if the only motive for trade is capital depreciation there is overinvestment with stochastic productivity high productivity firms underinvest and low productivity firms overinvest in equilibrium the inefficiency interacts with the externality from dealer entry and implies that no bargaining power achieves the constrained efficient allocation we propose a regressive tax on capital that can restore efficiency finally we calibrate the model to data on physical capital markets and show that depending on bargaining power the welfare loss from the inefficiency can be large

the role of firm size in bilateral bargaining a study of the cable television industry we examine the effect of buyer merger on bilateral negotiations between a supplier and n buyers merger may have bargaining effects in addition to the usual efficiency effects the effect of merger on the buyers bargaining position depends on the curvature of the supplier s gross surplus function merger enhances worsens the buyers bargaining position if the function is concave convex based on a panel of advertising revenue in the cable television industry our estimates indicate that the gross surplus function for suppliers of program services is convex this result suggests that cable operators integrate horizontally to realize efficiency gains rather than to enhance their bargaining position vis a vis program suppliers

assessment of public acceptance and willingness to pay for renewable energy sources in crete abstract the aim of this study is to analyse and to evaluate the citizens public acceptance and willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy sources res in crete for this purpose a contingent valuation study was conducted using a double bound dichotomous choice format to elicit people s wtp and factors affecting it residents of 1440 households all over crete were interviewed face to face major conclusions can be used as a basis for sustainable energy planning for policies and the formulation of awareness campaigns and for res investment programs and projects in order to prepare implementation conditions and enhance public acceptance of renewable energy investments and programmes mean wtp per household was found to be 16 33 to be paid quarterly as an additional charge on the electricity bill larger willingness to pay was reported by those with high family income and residence size those having a higher level of energy information and awareness concerning climatic change those who have invested in some energy saving measures and those who suffer from more electricity shortages than others

the macroeconomic consequences of raising the minimum wage capital accumulation employment and the wage distribution we study the quantitative impact of a rise in the minimum wage on macroeconomic outcomes such as employment the stock of capital and the distribution of wages our modeling framework is the large firm search and matching model our comparative statics are in line with previous empirical findings a moderate increase in the minimum wage barely affects employment while it compresses the wage distribution and generates positive spillovers on higher wages the model also predicts an increase in the stock of capital next we perform the policy experiment of introducing a 10 dollar minimum wage our results suggest large positive effects on capital 4 0 and output 1 8 with a decrease in employment by 2 8 the introduction of a 9 dollar minimum wage would instead produce similar effects on capital accumulation without harming employment

preferences for energy efficiency vs renewables how much does a ton of co2 emissions cost concerns about climate change are growing and so is the demand for information about the costs and benefits of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions this paper seeks to estimate the benefits of climate change mitigation as measured by the public s willingness to pay for such policies we investigate the preferences of italian and czech households towards climate change mitigation policy options directly related to residential energy use we use discrete choice experiments which are administered in a standardized fashion to representative samples in the two countries through computer assisted web interviews our preferred estimates of the willingness to pay per ton of co2 emissions avoided is 133 for the italians and 94 euro for the czech respondents at 2014 purchasing power parity we find evidence of considerable heterogeneity in wtp driven by income the two samples differ in their within sample income elasticities of wtp but comparison across the two countries suggests an income elasticity of wtp of one or even greater than one for certain mixed logit specifications

environmental pricing of externalities from different sources of electricity generation in chile abstract the rapid increase in electricity demand in chile means a choice must be made between major investments in renewable or non renewable sources for additional production current projects to develop large dams for hydropower in chilean patagonia impose an environmental price by damaging the natural environment on the other hand the increased use of fossil fuels entails an environmental price in terms of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change this paper studies the debate on future electricity supply in chile by investigating the preferences of households for a variety of different sources of electricity generation such as fossil fuels large hydropower in chilean patagonia and other renewable energy sources using double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation a novel advanced disclosure method and internal consistency test are used to elicit the willingness to pay for less environmentally damaging sources policy results suggest a strong preference for renewable energy sources with higher environmental prices imposed by consumers on electricity generated from fossil fuels than from large dams in chilean patagonia policy results further suggest the possibility of introducing incentives for renewable energy developments that would be supported by consumers through green tariffs or environmental premiums methodological findings suggest that advanced disclosure learning overcomes the problem of internal inconsistency in sb db estimates

equilibrium price dispersion with sequential search abstract the paper studies equilibrium pricing in a product market for an indivisible good where buyers search for sellers buyers search sequentially for sellers but do not meet every seller with the same probability specifically a fraction of the buyers meetings lead to one particular large seller while the remaining meetings lead to one of a continuum of small sellers in this environment the small sellers would like to set a price that makes the buyers indifferent between purchasing the good and searching for another seller the large seller would like to price the small sellers out of the market by posting a price that is low enough to induce buyers not to purchase from the small sellers these incentives give rise to a game of cat and mouse whose only equilibrium involves mixed strategies for both the large and the small sellers the fact that the small sellers play mixed strategies implies that there is price dispersion the fact that the large seller plays mixed strategies implies that prices and allocations vary over time we show that the fraction of the gains from trade accruing to the buyers is positive and nonmonotonic in the degree of market power of the large seller as long as the large seller has some positive but incomplete market power the fraction of the gains from trade accruing to the buyers depends in a natural way on the extent of search frictions

consumers in the green electricity market in finland abstract green electricity i e electricity produced from environmentally less harmful sources and marketed as such has been available to finnish households since 1998 but the demand for it has remained low in this paper we discuss the barriers identified by consumers to purchasing green electricity and contrast these with the interpretation energy sector actors give to consumer passivity the empirical material consists of thematic interviews energy policy actors often assume that consumers passivity signifies their lack of interest or low environmental consciousness this results partly from the failure to differentiate between the roles of consumer and citizen the interpretation the energy sector actors give to consumer passivity and the role they assign to consumers affect the direction of green electricity policy we argue that consumers need more information on both the environmental impact of different electricity products and in particular about the electricity supply and electricity contracts in a liberalised electricity market if they are to become active in the market

organizational design and technology choice under intrafirm bargaining comment the authors consider a wide number of applications of an intrafirm bargaining game within organizations where employees and the firm engage in wage negotiations under their presumption that contracts cannot bind employees to the organization the resulting stable wage and profit profiles give rise to an objective function for the firm that places weight on inframarginal profits in an economically significant manner the authors in turn employ this methodology to explore applications of organizational design hiring and capital decisions training and cross training the importance of labor and asset specificity managerial hierarchies preferences for unionization responses to competition and internal capital budgeting copyright 1996 by american economic association

bargaining orders in a multi person bargaining game abstract this paper studies a complete information bargaining game with one buyer and multiple sellers of different sizes or bargaining strengths the bargaining order is determined endogenously with a finite horizon there is a unique subgame perfect equilibrium outcome in which the buyer purchases in order of increasing size from the smallest to the largest with an infinite horizon if the sellers have sufficiently different sizes there is a unique equilibrium outcome which has the same bargaining order if the sellers have similar sizes with an infinite horizon there may be multiple equilibrium outcomes with different bargaining orders

intra firm bargaining under non binding contracts we present a new methodology for studying the problem of intra firm bargaining based on the notion that contracts cannot commit the firm and its agents to wages and employment we develop and analyse a general non cooperative multilateral bargaining framework between the firm and its employees and consider outcomes which are immune to renegotiations by any party equilibrium firm profits are characterizable as both a weighted average of a neo classical non bargaining firm s profits and a generalization of shapley value for a corresponding cooperative game furthermore the resulting payoffs induce economically significant distortions in the firm s input and organizational design decisions

preferences for green electricity investment and regulatory incentives abstract this paper develops a theoretical model to investigate how consumers preferences for green electricity affect the incentives of a regulated firm to provide and invest in electricity from green sources optimal incentive regulation implies a trade off between providing an optimal match of consumers with green and brown electricity and efficient incentives to invest in cost reductions we show that a single price cap on green electricity is ineffective as it yields the same expected market outcome as with an unregulated firm price caps on both green and brown electricity are akin to a market share target policy which implements efficient investment but gives an inefficient ex post consumer allocation a single price cap on brown electricity weakly dominates these schemes and gives rise to three different optimal regulation regimes as a function of the underlying technology parameters

wage compression within the firm evidence from an indexation scheme we revisit the role of labour market institutions by showing how they affect the sharing of firm specific rents between employers and employees we look at an italian wage indexation mechanism scala mobile that compressed the distribution of wages imposing real wage increases at the bottom of the distribution after developing a simplified version of a search model with intra firm bargaining and on the job search we document that skilled workers received lower wage adjustments when employed at firms with many unskilled workers and they tended to move towards more skill intensive firms moreover the system drove the least skill intensive firms out of the market

competition for jobs in a growing economy and the emergence of dualism we aim to explain the rising share of short term employment in europe using a matching model with growth we find that a slow down in growth of labour productivity leads to the emergence of temporary short term jobs that explains their increasing share in total employment lower growth rates also shift the beveridge curve to the right and weaken the bargaining position of workers these effects generate a relation between growth and unemployment which can be negative when the adverse effect of growth on wage setting dominates over its positive effect on labour demand in addition higher population growth increases the share of temporary jobs and unemployment finally the often blamed firing costs are found to be neutral when there is no floor on wages

good jobs versus bad jobs this article develops a model of noncompetitive labor markets in which high wage good and low wage bad jobs coexist minimum wages and unemployment benefits shift the composition of employment toward high wage jobs because the composition of jobs in the laissez faire equilibrium is inefficiently biased toward low wage jobs these labor market regulations increase average labor productivity and may improve welfare

cross sectional efficiency and labour hoarding in a matching model of unemployment we study positive and normative aspects of steady state equilibrium in a market where firms of endogenous size experience idiosyncratic shocks and undergo a costly search process to hire their workers the stylized model we propose highlights interactions between job security provisions and sectoral shocks in determining the natural rate of unemployment the allocation of labour and the extent of labour hoarding and rationalizes cross sectional asymmetries of gross employment flows at the firm level in our model where productivity and search costs are dynamically heterogeneous across firms decentralized wage bargains imply important cross sectional inefficiencies which overshadow the static search inefficiencies on which simpler models focus

markets for ownership the prevailing economic theory of the firm based on a property rights perspective has demonstrated that ownership by dispensable outside parties is an inefficient outcome relative to ownership by productive agents in order to better understand observed patterns of ownership this paper considers the outcome of ma rkets for ownership that operate prior to production taking place the main result is that outside parties will often become the equilibrium asset owners this is precisely because but for ownership such parties would not earn rents in contrast productive agents earn rents even when they do not own assets given that their contribution is complementary with other productive agents their willingness to pay for ownership is less than that of an outside party this result is robust to the introduction of moderate levels of inefficiency arising from outside ownership and to a consideration of opportunities for re sale before production begins the main conclusion drawn is that the nature of the operation of markets for ownership stands alongside incentive effects as important predictors of firm boundaries journal of economic literature classification numbers d23 l22

consumers willingness to pay for green electricity a meta analysis of the literature at present electricity generated from power plants using renewable sources costs more than electricity generated from power plants using conventional fuels consumers bear these expenses directly or indirectly through higher prices for renewable energy or taxes the number of studies published over the last few years focusing on people s preferences for renewables has increased steadily making it more and more difficult to identify key explanatory factors that determine people s willingness to pay wtp for renewables we present results of a meta regression on valuation of consumer preferences for a larger share of renewable energy in their electricity mix our meta regression results reveal a number of important factors that explain the differences in wtp values for renewable energy different valuation methods show widely different values with choice experiments producing the highest estimates our results further indicate that consumers wtp for green electricity differs by source with hydropower being the least valued variables that are often omitted from primary valuation studies are important in explaining differences in values these variables describe individual and household characteristics as well as information on the type of power plant that will be replaced by renewables further the marginal effect of a survey conducted in the us is pronounced we also assess the potential for using the results for out of sample value transfer and find a median error of 21 c 2015 elsevier b v all rights reserved

mandatory versus voluntary payment for green electricity summary renewable energy sources have a critical role to play in contributing to the diversity sustainability and security of energy supplies the main objective of the paper is to gain an understanding of the support mechanism of renewable energy sources most preferred by households in the united kingdom this paper analyses households preferences and willingness to pay under a mandatory scheme where all households contribute compared to a voluntary scheme where only those who wish to pay to support renewables do so such as the green tariffs offered by electricity suppliers in the uk two self designed contingent valuation method cvm surveys are used to explore whether the type of payment option has an impact on households willingness to pay wtp for increasing share of renewable energy in electricity generation the paper also investigates whether the type of payment mode affects respondents self reported certainty of paying their stated valuations the results indicate that the likelihood of paying a positive amount for supporting renewable energy is higher under a mandatory scheme compared to a voluntary payment option in the uk respondents have a higher level of certainty in paying their stated wtp under a mandatory payment scheme

employment hours and the welfare effects of intra firm bargaining intra firm bargaining between a multiple worker firm and an individual employee leads to overhiring taking advantage of the decreasing returns to scale in employment the firm can reduce the marginal product by hiring an additional worker thereby reducing the bargaining wage paid to all existing employees we show that this externality is amplified when firms can adjust hours per worker as well as employment hours are too low at the steady state this misallocation of labor leads to sizeable welfare losses our finding is important for economies in which hours adjustment play an important role as it does in many euro area countries

do matching frictions explain unemployment not in bad times this paper models unemployment as the result of matching frictions and job rationing job rationing is a shortage of jobs arising naturally in an economic equilibrium from the combination of some wage rigidity and diminishing marginal returns to labor during recessions job rationing is acute driving the rise in unemployment whereas matching frictions contribute little to unemployment intuitively in recessions jobs are lacking the labor market is slack recruiting is easy and inexpensive so matching frictions do not matter much in a calibrated model cyclical fluctuations in the composition of unemployment are quantitatively large

holdups and overinvestment in capital markets abstract this paper considers a decentralized capital market characterized by trading frictions in which firms and suppliers need to make investment decisions before meeting with each other and bargaining over the price of capital the resulting holdup problem provides firms with a strategic incentive to overaccumulate capital so as to reduce their marginal productivity and thus the bargained price in equilibrium this strategic incentive can outweigh the usual distortionary effects of holdup problems that on their own would lead to underinvestment thus resulting in the economy to overinvest in a setting with both capital and labor the holdup problem in capital markets interacts with holdup problems in labor markets this presents firms with a trade off that has non trivial equilibrium effects and that depending on the substitutability of capital and labor and the firm s bargaining power in each market can mitigate or exacerbate the overinvestment result

the union threat this paper studies the impact of unions on wage inequality output and unemployment to do so it proposes a search and matching model of union formation in which unions arise endogenously through a voting process within firms in a union firm workers bargain their wages collectively in a nonunion firm each worker bargains individually with the firm because of this wage setting asymmetry a union lowers the profit of a firm and compresses the wage distribution of the workers furthermore to prevent unionization nonunion firms distort their hiring decisions in a way that also lowers the dispersion of wages after being calibrated on the united states the model shows that even though a partial equilibrium estimate would predict a small impact of unions on inequality removing the threat of unionization increases the variance of wages substantially completely outlawing unions increases wage inequality further moreover outlawing unions increases welfare and output and lowers unemployment these results suggest that even with a small membership unions might have a significant impact on the economy through general equilibrium mechanisms and the way they distort firms decisions i am greatly indebted to nobuhiro kiyotaki esteban rossi hansberg and oleg itskhoki for their invaluable advice and support throughout this project special thanks go to esteban for suggesting the title i also wish to thank manuel amador orley ashenfelter francisco buera jeff campbell pablo fajgelbaum henry farber baris kaymak david lee thomas lemieux benjamin moll justinas pelenis edouard schaal andrew shephard christopher sims liz tennant as well as seminar participants at princeton university and the chicago fed rookie seminar for helpful comments and suggestions i gratefully acknowledge financial support from the fonds quebecois de recherche sur la societe et la culture email mtascher princeton edu address 001 fisher hall department of economics princeton university princeton nj 08544 for the most recent version go to http sites google com site mathtd

intra firm bargaining and shapley values we study two wage bargaining games between a firm and multiple workers we revisit the bargaining game proposed by stole and zwiebel we show that in the unique subgame perfect equilibrium the gains from trade captured by workers who bargain earlier with the firm are larger than those captured by workers who bargain later as well as larger than those captured by the firm the resulting equilibrium payoffs are different from those reported in stole and zwiebel as they are not the shapley values we propose a novel bargaining game the rolodex game which follows a simple and realistic protocol in the unique no delay subgame perfect equilibrium of this game the payoffs to the firm and to the workers are their shapley values

a new unified approach to evaluate economic acceptance towards main green technologies using the meta analysis the aim of this paper is to analyze the main determinants of the economic acceptability of four green technologies gts alternative fuel vehicles energy savings in residential buildings smart meters and renewable electricity using a meta analysis on a sample of 35 selected papers which provided 245 primary data this approach allows detecting relationships across heterogeneous studies avoiding the subjectivity of qualitative surveys we implement a new two step procedure first we compute a measure of the implicit price for a kilogram of co2 avoided pco2 homogenizing the usable information for the gts considered second we conduct a meta regression using the computed pco2 values to estimate the socio economic determinants impact in general our results show a wide degree of acceptability for gts which is stronger among european citizens in particular it emerges that on average the estimated pco2 is positive for the gts considered and additional positive effects exist when respondents are confronted with an explicit reference to quantitative targets in terms of co2 abatement a clear proposal for payment timing and a specific renewable electricity mix these results indicate that information and transparency are crucial to spur gts deployment therefore to support gts market penetration public and private institutional stakeholders have to provide ad hoc information to the end users setting a clear and suitable system of prices to increase the economic value end users place on gts

willingness to pay lip service applying a neuroscience based method to wtp for green electricity abstract consumers willingness to pay wtp represents a central question for providers of renewable energy most studies on the subject have used contingent valuation and choice experiments however all empirical designs employed to date suffer from serious biases such as strategic behavior we introduce a novel neuroscience based approach to renewable energy related wtp research neuropricing which eliminates some of these biases we tested consumers wtp for two different green electricity products and found wtp for these products to be about 15 above that for a non green electricity tariff our results suggest that neuropricing is indeed able to eliminate strategic behavior moreover this approach allows for wtp studies with much smaller sample sizes than traditional methods require the neuroscience methodology can be used by researchers and marketers alike not only for testing the effects of product attributes on wtp but also for evaluating wtp effects of specific messages in marketing communications thus it may lead to a better understanding of consumer behavior and hence facilitate more successful marketing of renewable energy

citizen versus consumer challenges in the uk green power market abstract this paper investigates the potential advantages and disadvantages of green power products as opposed to the traditional fossil fuel levy which was the uk s chosen tax regime as a means of developing renewable energy in the uk willingness to pay for electricity generated from renewables is investigated results indicate that willingness to pay varies with social status and income however results demonstrate that there is a significant minority in full support of some sort of fiscal initiative electricity generated from renewables is a concept supported by the majority however given the stated willingness to pay it is unlikely that any new renewable capacity will result from green tariff schemes in the near term it is concluded that the green citizen must continue to co exist with the green power purchaser if the uk is to make any significant improvement in the contribution of renewable energy to electricity demand the authors would like to acknowledge the support of irene lorenzoni and jane powell of the centre for social and economic research on the global environment university of east anglia leicester energy efficiency advice centre and leicester energy agency

worker substitutability and patterns of unionisation a strategic three party bargaining model is developed in which one distinguished party the firm has to reac h agreements with the other two each of which is a group of workers in the prebargaining stage the two worker groups decide whether to organize jointly or separately the main observation relates the equi librium pattern of unionization to the substitutability in production between the two groups the outcome is joint or separate unions acco rding to whether the two groups are substitute or complementary facto rs of production the analysis also considers possibilities for firm s strategic intervention in the unionization process copyright 1988 by royal economic society

households willingness to pay for safeguarding security of natural gas supply in electricity generation abstract security of energy supply is a major issue for all eu member states due to europe s increasing dependence on imported fossil fuel sources and the continuous rise in energy demand the latter is of particular importance in electricity sector given the continuously increasing use of gas for electricity generation in order to properly tackle with the problem concerted actions are required by the eu member states in several levels i e legislative political etc nevertheless these actions will come at an additional cost paid by the society either through increased electricity bills or through public financing for energy security investments thus such policies should be justified on the basis of cost benefit analysis towards this direction it may be necessary to take into account non market costs and benefits i e the value that consumers place on interruptions avoided in order to explore households perceptions and willingness to pay for securing gas supply for electricity production an empirical study was conducted by means of the contingent valuation method the results indicate that consumers are willing to pay a premium on their electricity bills in order to internalize the external costs of electricity production in terms of energy security which are caused from imported fuels

the effectiveness of hiring credits this article analyses the effectiveness of hiring credits using comprehensive administrative data we show that the french hiring credit implemented during the great recession had significant positive employment effects and no effects on wages relying on the quasi experimental variation in labour cost triggered by the hiring credit we estimate a structural search and matching model simulations of counterfactual policies show that the effectiveness of the hiring credit relied to a large extent on three features it was non anticipated temporary and targeted at jobs with rigid wages we estimate that the cost per job created by permanent hiring credits either countercyclical or time invariant in an environment with flexible wages would have been much higher

political economy of class struggle and economic growth in china 1950 1982 abstract the chinese economic cycle is both a cycle of accumulation and construction activity and a political cycle exercising its influence by trial and error methods and changes from voluntarist to pragmatic planning approaches as a result of some excessive accumulation in the form of net investment in non productive sectors there was a lag in infrastructures like energy and transport and trade off against consumption more severe than expected structural imbalances in the economy would have had to have been tackled after 1976 even if the voluntarists had been in office the eclipse of central planning supporters was of 1979 1980 duration only thereafter the line on planning and the market became less enthusiastic as the concept of market socialism faded stabilization of the relative growth rates of heavy industry and light industry was compatible with both the programme of the chen yun reformers and those reluctant to give ground from realistic plans to the law of value in agriculture the masses of small peasant proprietors rather than party factions decided the shift to the new system of material incentives based on households in this weaknesses of maoist practice in solving rural poverty played a role nevertheless the left can defend collectivist ownership to some extent by adopting a more reasonable programme than in 1966 1976

a theory of wages and labor demand with intra firm bargaining and matching frictions this article provides a model of labor market equilibrium with search and within firm strategic bargaining we yield explicit closed form solutions with heterogeneous labor inputs and capital the solution exhibits overemployment we show that higher relative bargaining power for some groups of workers may lead to overemployment relative to other groups with such other groups being underemployed instead if they have a lower relative bargaining power similarly the hold up problem between capitalists and employees does not necessarily lead to underinvestment in physical capital beyond the neo classical analysis firms are the field of several strategic interactions between capital owners and labor between marginal employees and incumbents and more generally between different groups with various bargaining positions within the firm it is usually considered that the bargaining power of workers entails an employment level that is lower than in a competitive labor market and any increase in the bargaining power of workers raises unemployment these results are true for a wide class of models and notably in the now standard framework to analyze unemployment namely search and matching models of pissarides 2000 however stole and zwiebel 1996a 1996b show that the above results are totally changed in the intra firm bargaining model where employees engage in individual wage negotiation with the firm in fact under the assumption that contract incompleteness does not enable either party to commit to future wages and employment decisions they show that intra firm bargaining yields no rent for employees and gives rise to overemployment compared to a competitive labor market the basic idea of stole and zwiebel is that a firm with a diminishing marginal productivity of labor can decrease the bargained wage which increases in the marginal productivity of labor by raising employment in stole and zwiebel s setting firms overemploy strategically up to the point where workers get their reservation wage

can renewable energy be financed with higher electricity prices evidence from a spanish region abstract in this paper we estimate the willingness to pay for mix of renewable sources of electric power by means of a discrete choice experiment survey conducted in spain in 2010 two main categories of power supply attributes are explored source of renewable power wind solar and biomass and the origin of such power the findings suggest that most consumers are not willing to pay a premium for increases in the shares of renewable in their electricity mix for two of the three renewable sources considered wind and biomass an increase of the renewable mix would require a discount instead we record positive willing to pay for increases in the share of both solar power and locally generated power however preferences for types of renewable solar and wind are found to be heterogeneous by classifying respondents in two groups according to the implied importance of the share of renewable sources in their power mix we identify a market segment consisting of 20 of respondents that could promote renewable energy in the absence of subsidies this is because such a segment shows willingness to pay higher than the current feed in tariffs

evaluating the performance of the search and matching model abstract does the search and matching model fit aggregate u s labor market data while the model has become an important tool of macroeconomic analysis recent literature pointed to some significant failures in accounting for the data this paper aims to answer two questions i does the model fit the data and if so on what dimensions ii does the data fit the model i e what are the data which are relevant to be explained by the model the analysis shows that the model fits certain specifications of the data on many dimensions though not on all this includes capturing the high persistence and high volatility of most of the key variables the negative co variation of unemployment and vacancies and the behavior of the worker job finding rate a key role in this fit is played by the convexity of hiring costs and the stochastic properties of the separation rate the latter is a major component of the rate discounting the future value of the job worker match the paper offers a workable empirically grounded version of the model for the analysis of aggregate u s labor market dynamics

valuing a wind farm construction a contingent valuation study in greece abstract our analysis is based on data from a double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation study implemented to elicit public attitudes towards renewable energy generation and their willingness to pay for the construction of a wind farm in the area of messanagros in the island of rhodes greece results indicate that there are significant positive values deriving from the proposed project respondents report a mean willingness to pay a premium in their bi monthly electric bills of 8 86 for the sole purpose of the construction of the wind farm the estimated economic benefits to the local population are weighed against the investment cost in a cost benefit analysis to inform policy making and implications for eu energy policy are provided

dynamic forecasting behavior by analysts theory and evidence abstract we develop a multi period learning model to examine the relation between analysts forecasting behavior and their performance in a competitive market for banking services the surplus and the analyst s payoff which is determined through bargaining are convex in her reputation the convexity of her payoff structure and the presence of employment risk lead to a u shaped relation between the analyst s forecast boldness and prior performance and a positive relation between forecast boldness and experience we find support for these predictions in our empirical analysis significant underperformers outperformers face higher lower employment risk and are more likely to issue bolder forecasts

household willingness to pay for green electricity in slovenia abstract this paper analyses the willingness to pay for electricity generated from renewable energy sources in slovenia the results confirm that age household income education and environmental awareness play the most important role in explaining household attitudes to green electricity programmes while the willingness to participate in green electricity programmes is influenced by education and environmental awareness the willingness to pay for green electricity predominantly depends on household income the results imply that green marketing should be accompanied by awareness raising campaigns and should target younger well educated and high income households the expressed median willingness to pay is found to exceed the current level of mandatory charges for green electricity nevertheless recent increases in final electricity prices might have already exhausted the capacity for additional voluntary contributions

communications on energy household energy conservation abstract this study assesses the influence of attitudinal and socio economic factors on household energy conservation actions a household interview survey in regina saskatchewan found that respondents perceive an energy problem although no association with energy conservation actions was determined two attitudinal and five socio economic variables influence household energy conservation energy and monetary savings are available to households through energy conservation public awareness of household energy conservation through the media can reinforce existing energy conservation actions and encourage new actions

understanding the city size wage gap in 2000 wages of full time full year workers were more than 30 percent higher in metropolitan areas of over 1 5 million people than rural areas the monotonic relationship between wages and city size is robust to controls for age schooling and labor market experience in this paper we decompose the city size wage gap into various components we propose an on the job search model that incorporates latent ability search frictions firm worker match quality human capital accumulation and endogenous migration between large medium and small cities counterfactual simulations of the model indicate that variation in returns to experience and differences in wage intercepts across location type are the most important mechanisms contributing to the overall city size wage premium steeper returns to experience in larger cities is more important for college graduates while differences in wage intercepts is more important for high school graduates sorting on unobserved ability within education group and differences in labor market search frictions and distributions of firm worker match quality contribute little or slightly negatively to observed city size wage premia in both samples

stuck between a roc and a hard place barriers to the take up of green energy in the uk abstract this paper examines the uk mechanisms for ensuring future investment in renewable energy through consumer adoption of green energy tariffs and the renewable obligation certificate roc system using a national survey and focus groups the stated willingness by uk customers to pay a premium for renewable or green energy and actual take up of such tariffs is assessed substantial differences between willingness to pay for and the adoption of green energy tariffs are reported this disparity is linked to a range of factors including consumer confusion lack of supply complexities of constructing green source tariffs under the roc system and a lack of customer trust it is concluded that the re definition of the green energy market in favour of green source tariffs greater direct compliance with the renewable obligation by addressing supply constraints and efforts in providing clearer information and choices for consumers via a compulsory green energy accreditation scheme are required if willing consumers are to contribute to investment in renewable energy

sunk capital unions and the hold up problem theory and evidence from cross country sectoral data abstract in this paper we study the hold up problem by considering the effect of union bargaining power on the level of investment per worker across sectors characterised by different levels of sunk capital investment we develop a search and matching model with heterogeneous sectors and ex post collective wage bargaining and test the predictions of the model using a difference in difference approach on manufacturing sector data in a set of oecd countries during the period 1980 2000 we find that union power reduces investment per worker particularly in sunk capital intensive industries we refine our empirical analysis showing that the underlying hold up problem is exacerbated when strikes are not regulated after a collective contract is signed and there is no arbitration while the presence of social pacts may sustain cooperative equilibria that alleviate the hold up problem our results are robust to a series of controls and possible endogeneity of union power

estimating arizona residents willingness to pay to invest in research and development in solar energy abstract we estimate arizona residents willingness to pay wtp to invest in a solar energy research and development fund using data obtained from a dichotomous choice contingent valuation mail survey we examine differences in wtp estimates using different categorizations for respondent uncertainty we also employ both commonly used maximum likelihood and less frequently applied bayesian estimation techniques we find that respondent uncertainty has an economically significant impact on wtp estimates while wtp estimates are robust to different estimation techniques our robust specification with strict uncertainty coding indicates the average arizona household is wtp approximately 17 per month to invest in research and development in solar energy

policy v individual heterogeneity in the benefits of climate change mitigation evidence from a stated preference survey abstract we use stated preference methods to investigate the public s preferences for decarbonization policies we ask three research questions first does the willingness to pay wtp for each ton of co2 emissions reductions depend on the policies and on individual characteristics of the respondents second how extensive is the variation associated with these factors third what factors affect support for or opposition to a carbon tax based on the responses to discrete choice experiments from a sample of italians we find that the wtp per ton of co2 ranges between zero and 230 the variation associated with the policy instrument is approximately of the same order of magnitude as that associated with individual characteristics of the respondents

deep habits and the cyclical behaviour of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies we extend the standard textbook search and matching model by introducing deep habits in consumption this assumption generates amplification in the response of labour market variables to technology shocks by producing endogenous countercyclical mark ups the cyclical fluctuations of vacancies and unemployment in our model can replicate those observed in the us data with labour market tightness being 20 times more volatile than consumption vacancies display a hump shaped response to technology shocks and the numerical simulations generate an artificial beveridge curve that is in line with the data our model preserves the assumption of fully flexible wages for new hires and the calibration is consistent with the estimated elasticity of unemployment to unemployment benefits finally we show that in contrast to models with exogenous mark up shocks the deep habits model does not require an implausible variation in the elasticity of demand to match the volatility of labour market variables and the cyclical properties of the mark up are in line with empirical evidence

assessment of korean customers willingness to pay with rps abstract to increase the use of renewable energy the korean government will introduce the renewable portfolio standard rps in 2012 the rps places responsibility for extra renewable energy costs on the consumers and allows price competition among different renewable sources accordingly this study analyzes through the contingent valuation cv the willingness of korean households to pay more for electricity generated by wind photovoltaic pv and hydropower our empirical results show that although the willingness to pay or wtp was highest for wind power and lowest for hydropower the differences in wtp among the renewable sources were statistically insignificant this suggests that korean consumers prefer a renewable portfolio that minimizes power supply costs the average wtp for all three energy types was krw 1562 7 usd 1 350 per month per household which was approximately 3 7 of the average monthly electricity bill in 2010 this amount represents only 58 2 of what the korean government allocated in its budget to the new and renewable energy dissemination program in 2010 thus our results imply that the promotion of the new and renewable energy dissemination program may be difficult only with the wtp for electricity generated from renewable sources specifically the mean wtp will not support the set aside dissemination capacity for pv after 2014

green power voluntary purchases price elasticity and policy analysis abstract green power schemes offer electricity from renewable energy sources to customers for a higher price than ordinary electricity this study examines the demand characteristics of green power in australia and policies which could increase its sales a sample of 250 pooled time series and cross sectional observations was used to estimate a statistically significant elasticity of demand for green power with respect to price of 0 96 with a 95 confidence interval of 68 the wide variation in market penetration between jurisdictions and between countries for green power and the low awareness of green power found by surveys indicate that green power sales could be increased by appropriate marketing and government policies the most cost effective means to increase sales was found to be advertising campaigns although only one australian example was found in the state of victoria in 2005 it was also found that full tax deductibility of the green power premium to residential customers exemption from the goods and services tax and a tax rebate for green power are all probably less cost effective for promoting sales than direct government purchase of green power in terms of cost per unit of increased sales

renewable electricity as a differentiated good the case of the republic of korea this paper examines the willingness for korean consumers to pay a premium for renewable electricity under a differentiated good framework by applying the contingent valuation method korean consumers have been required to pay for their use of renewable electricity as of 2012 first we find that korean consumers recognise renewable electricity as a differentiated good from traditional electricity generated from fossil fuels or nuclear energy the mean willingness to pay to use renewable electricity is usd 1 26 per month second we confirm the existence of perfect substitution relationships among variant renewable technologies which suggests that korean consumers do not perceive them as differentiated goods one reason for this perception is that korean consumers are more inclined to favour economic feasibility over sustainability or the availability of the resource stock when choosing between renewable technology types in sum we can say that korean consumers recognise renewable electricity as a differentiated good but that they do not differentiate between variant renewable technologies thus the imposition of the cost of renewable electricity on consumers in the form of increased electricity charges would be acceptable to consumers as long as any price rise properly reflects their preferences

imports as a major complication liberalisation of the green electricity market in the netherlands abstract liberalisation of the green electricity market in the netherlands has proceeded in a context of relatively generous fiscal incentives and in line with the position that demand is the limiting factor to dutch green electricity production the main result was a massive rise of imports partly covered by renewable energy credits and partly virtual in nature whereas the domestic expansion of green electricity production remained limited this shows the importance of a supply side focus in designing policies aimed at the expansion of domestic green electricity production in the context of a common market with different incentives in place

urban spatial structure transport related emissions and welfare in this paper we study the effects of urban design on pollution and welfare we build a theoretical model of residential choices with pollution externalities arising from commuting where the size of the central business district cbd and the demand for housing are endogenous we show that a polycentric city is desirable from welfare and ecological perspective provided that travel speed and or the number of roads directly connected with the cbd are sufficiently high the spatial extension of cities remains the critical variable to curb transport related urban pollution

willingness to pay for green power in an unreliable electricity sector part 1 the case of the lebanese residential sector abstract a willingness to pay wtp analysis for renewable based electricity is undertaken for the lebanese residential sector a survey of 600 samples was conducted based on a stratified random sampling method in which energy use and expenditures socioeconomic and demographic characteristics were collected four scenarios for wtp for green power were designed to best reflect the possibilities of integrating renewable energy re sources in lebanon s unreliable electricity sector 1 local system covering partial electricity needs 2 local system covering entire electricity needs 3 utility provided green power covering partial electricity needs and 4 utility provided green power covering entire electricity needs the results based on a tobit model highlight the importance of re options that displace completely the diesel generator sets i e options 2 and 4 other parameters such as ownership of the home age perception of trust in government institutions and awareness of re were also found significant in influencing wtp

a strategic model of social and economic networks we study the stability and efficiency of social and economic networks when self interested individuals can form or sever links first for two stylized models we characterize the stable and efficient networks there does not always exist a stable network that is efficient next we show that this tension persists generally to assure that there exists a stable network that is efficient one is forced to allocate resources to nodes that are not responsible for any of the production we characterize one such allocation rule the equal split rule and another rule that arises naturally from bargaining of the players

business cycles and labor market search the quantitative implications of labor market search for economic fluctuations are evaluated in the context of a real business cycle model incorporating labor market search into the model is found to improve its empirical performance along several dimensions in particular hours now fluctuate substantially more than wages and the contemporaneous correlation between hours and productivity falls in addition the model replicates the observation that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons overall the empirical results suggest that the labor market search environment embodies a quantitatively important propagation mechanism copyright 1996 by american economic association

on the timing and efficiency of creative destruction we analyze the timing pace and efficiency of ongoing job reallocation that results from product and process innovation there are strong reasons why an efficient economy ought to concentrate both job creation and destruction during recessions when the opportunity cost of reallocation is lowest incomplete contracting between labor and capital can disrupt this synchronized pattern and decouple creation and destruction transactional difficulties also lead to technological sclerosis characterized by excessively slow renovation government incentives to production may alleviate high unemployment but exacerbate sclerosis in contrast creation incentives increase the pace of reallocation an optimal combination of both policies restores economic efficiency

supplier choice and wtp for electricity attributes in an emerging market the role of perceived past experience environmental concern and energy saving behavior abstract this study analyzes customers preferences and their willingness to pay wtp for certain service attributes in an electricity supplier choice context specifically a stated preference choice experiment is conducted in the canary islands residential market where limited competition exists preferences for different electricity suppliers and three level of service attributes are investigated namely supply reliability share of renewable energies and availability of a complementary energy audit service the results might be interpreted as an indication of different aspects new firms need to consider if they plan to enter in the market there is an opportunity for new companies to establish in the market though evidence of brand loyalty to the current company and or significant switching costs are also found especially in the case of older people regarding the estimated wtp several results should be highlighted first customers who have experienced more serious outages in the past tend to show a higher wtp to reduce the outage frequency second highly educated respondents those who state a great concern for the greenhouse gases ghg emissions and those who carry out energy saving actions in their homes exhibit a larger wtp for renewable energies this empirical evidence provides useful information for authorities responsible for energy policy design

does collective wage bargaining restore efficiency in a search model with large firms existing search and bargaining models show that firms hire an inefficiently large number of workers we ask whether decentralised collective wage bargaining may result in a second best allocation collective bargaining restores efficiency when the bargained wage is independent of employment conditions that we characterise firms then behave as if collective bargaining was over both wages and employment thus linking the large firm search and bargaining environment to the efficient bargaining model mcdonald and solow 1981 under more realistic conditions workers can bargain for a share of output so that the wage is then a function of employment in equilibrium firms are too large and firm entry is inefficient

employment and distributional effects of restricting working time we study the employment and distributional effects of regulating reducing working time in a general equilibrium model with search matching frictions job creation entails fixed costs but existing jobs are subject to diminishing returns we characterize the equilibrium in the de regulated economy where firms and individual workers freely negotiate wages and hours then we consider the effects of a legislation restricting the maximum working time while we let wages respond endogenously employment effects are sensitive to the representation of preferences in our benchmark small reductions in working time starting from the laissez faire equilibrium solution always result in a small increase in the equilibrium employment while larger reductions reduce employment the regulation benefits workers both unemployed and employed even if wages decrease and even in cases where employment falls but reduces profits and output

intra urban wage variation employment location and commuting times abstract theory predicts that within a metropolitan area employers located where there is difficult commuting will have to compensate their workers with appropriately higher wages this should hold whether one is comparing central city work locations with those at the fringe or simply differences between suburban edge cities in the longer run if employers are concerned primarily with labor costs firm mobility should equalize wages or else agglomeration economies must exist to sustain the differences using microdata from the 1990 census for 2 large metropolitan areas in the u s wage equations are estimated for urban workers allowing for different wage levels depending on zone of employment the results show that observationally equivalent workers have wages that vary substantially across employment zones within a metro area and that this variation is strongly and significantly correlated with the average commute time of the workers employed in that zone these results hold across several different econometric specifications wages and average travel times also are found to be highly correlated with the aggregate number of workers in each zone but are not affected by zone employment specialization thus there is inconclusive evidence as to whether wage commuting cost differences result from equilibrium agglomeration effects or from a disequilibrium distribution of employment

social acceptance of renewable energy sources a review of contingent valuation applications abstract this paper presents a literature review addressing the public acceptance of renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels in electricity production this review was motivated by the global tendency for a substitution of conventional fuels by renewable energy sources res during the global financial crisis it studies research on the preferences and attitudes of local communities towards investments in renewable energy projects and their perception of the use of new energy technologies in their daily lives through various case studies worldwide an effort is made to identify the parameters that influence consumers energy behaviour together with their interest or lack thereof in the environmental impact of using fossil fuels to produce energy and their willingness to reduce it applications of contingent valuation are examined which are employed to analyse public attitudes towards the use of res for electricity production willingness to pay is observed to be correlated to socioeconomic characteristics including education interest in environmental issues and knowledge of res finally the profile of a typical green energy consumer and appropriate policy paths for the penetration of res into the energy market are outlined

the energy implications of city size and density abstract this paper develops a new open city urban simulation model capable of showing the urban form and energy consumption effects of variation in city size the model is able to consider city size differences caused by wage and amenity differentials both with and without housing and land use regulation the surprising conclusion is that per capita energy use is relatively invariant to city size when growth is driven by wages but falls modestly with growth induced by rising amenity common land use policies specifically density limits and greenbelts can positively or negatively affect both city welfare and energy use

subsistence economies and unsustainable development and trade some simple theory three possible development patterns for subsistence economies with a restricted range of resources are explored in this paper the models may be particularly relevant to small island countries for example in the pacific ocean in the first model it is shown that neither international trade nor an advanced sector is sustainable in the long run in the type of subsistence economy envisaged both international trade and advanced sectors eventually disappear as population levels increase in the second model the possibility is explored that export opportunities may foster unsustainable development it may sustain population levels that cannot be maintained should the demand for exported goods collapse there is a high risk of such a collapse in small subsistence economies with their restricted resource basis the third case which has similarities with the previous one except that collapse comes about by exhaustion of supply rather than deterioration in demand is development made possible by the export

a theory of the firm with non binding employment contracts this paper examines an employment relation in which individual workers enjoy some bargaining power vis a vis the firm although they are not unionized the main elements of the situations studied here are that the employment contracts are non binding across periods of production and that the firm has opportunities to replace workers the paper analyzes a dynamic model in which the processes of contracting and recontracting between the firm and its workers are intertwined with the dynamic evolution of the firm s workforce the analysis of the model is somewhat complicated because the employment level is a nondegenerate state variable that evolves over time and is affected by past decisions the main analytical results characterize certain important equilibria the profit maximizing and stationa ry equilibria the unique stationary equilibrium is markedly inefficient it exhibits inefficient over employment and the steady state wages coincide with the workers reservation wage it confirms earlier results derived by stole and zwiebel 1996a b in the context of a static model and shows that they are very robust even when the firm has nearly frictionless hiring opportunities in contrast in the profit maximizing equilibrium the outcome is nearly efficient and the wage exhibits a mark up over the reservation wage

are compact cities environmentally friendly there is a wide consensus among international institutions and national governments in favor of compact i e densely populated cities as a way to improve the ecological performance of the transport system indeed when both the intercity and intra urban distributions of activities are given a higher population density makes cities more environmentally friendly because the average commuting length is reduced however when we account for the possible relocation of activities within and between cities in response to a higher population density the latter may cease to hold indeed an increasing density policy affects prices wages and land rents which in turn incentivizes firms and households to change place this reshapes the urban system in a way that may generate a higher level of pollution thus although an increase in compactness is environmentally desirable when locations are given compactness may not be environmentally friendly when one accounts for the general equilibrium effects generated by such a policy

valuation for renewable energy a comparative review abstract environmental cost benefit analysis is applied for the evaluation of renewable energy projects since some benefits and costs do not have monetary values economic valuation techniques are applied to estimate them this paper reviews the literature on the valuation evaluation of renewable energy resources and summarizes the methods used in them it discerns four main streams of valuation in renewable energy the first is economic welfare oriented and comprises stated and revealed preference methods the second is the financial option analysis with a financial background the third is emergy analysis which is mostly an ecological engineering based method with capable economic links and the fourth is again economic but not welfare based the paper discusses the main directions discerned in these studies and recognizes first that proper valuation takes place only in the first method while the other methods describe only evaluation procedures and second that there is a research gap that has yet to be filled in as compared to other areas of environmental resource and energy economics

willingness to pay for green electricity in korea a contingent valuation study abstract green electricity is energy that is generated from renewable energy sources such as solar power wind power small scale hydroelectric power tidal power and biomass power these sources mostly do not produce pollutants and are considered environmentally friendly however considering the current state of technology they are more costly government should take visible actions to compensate for the increased production costs this paper attempts to apply a contingent valuation cv method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits that ensue from the introduction of the policy that raises the percentage of green electricity consumption from 0 2 of the total electricity supply to 7 by 2011 overall the cv survey was successful in eliciting the willingness to pay wtp for green electricity considering that the cv method operated within respondents abilities to answer and the wtp estimates were statistically significant the monthly mean wtp estimates from parametric and non parametric methods were krw 1681 usd 1 8 and krw 2072 usd 2 2 respectively the estimates of the annual benefits to relevant residents amounted to krw 150 5 billion usd 157 5 million and krw 185 6 billion usd 194 2 million respectively

the rise and fall of centralized wage bargaining during the three decades spanning the early 1950s to the early 1980s the wage setting process in most northern european countries was dominated by centralized bargaining i e peak level labor and employer associations set wages nationwide in the early 1980s centralized wage bargaining began to collapse in this paper we assess a novel explanation for both the initial establishment of a centralized wage setting process and its subsequent collapse according to our theory centralized wage bargaining was set up as a response to the spillovers created by the unemployment benefit program its collapse was the result of the increase in the productivity gap across workers brought about by equipment specific technological progress and equipment skill complementarity

efficiency wages revisited the internal reference perspective the missing wage rigidity in general equilibrium models of e ciency wages is an artifact of the external wage reference perspective conventionally adopted by the literature e ciency wage models based on an internal perspective in which the wage reference is made dependent on the flrm s ability to pay are capable of generating strong wage rigidity this paper makes the point in the context of the gift exchange framework originally proposed by akerlof 1982 jel classiflcation e24 e32 j50

informality in developing economies regulation and fiscal policies abstract this paper proposes a unified theoretical framework where formal and informal firms coexist and face the same type of product and labor market imperfections they have monopoly power in the goods market they are subject to matching frictions in the labor market and wages are determined by bargaining between large firms and their workers through either individual or collective bargaining our model matches the main stylized facts on informality for developing countries and appears to be a good candidate for policy analysis in this framework we study the impact on informality wages and unemployment of policies that may be used to reduce informality we consider changes in product market regulation pmr and in two types of fiscal policies labor taxes and formality enforcement we find that lessening pmr decreases informality and unemployment simultaneously indicating that there is not necessarily a tradeoff between informality and unemployment the tradeoff appears when fiscal policies are used though moreover the impacts of pmr on unemployment and on wages are larger under collective than individual bargaining with respect to wage inequality lessening pmr reduces it while lower taxes tend to increase the formal sector wage premium

buyer power and intrabrand coordination we analyze the competitive effects of vertical contracts in a contracting situation where rival retailers offer contracts to a manufacturer in contrast to bernheim and whinston 1998 who study the situation in which competing manufacturers offer contracts to a common retailer we find that two part tariffs even if contingent on exclusivity or not do not suffice to implement the monopolyoutcome richer arrangements including e g conditional fixed fees and upfront payments are thus required to internalize all contracting externalities the welfare implications are ambiguous on the one hand richer contracts ensure that no efficient retailer is excluded on the other hand they allow firms to maintain monopoly prices despite intrabrand competition simulations suggest that the latter effect may be more significant

labor and the market value of the firm what role does labor play in a firm s market value we explore this question using a production based asset pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor we posit that hiring of labor is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact with the interaction being a crucial determinant of the time series behavior of market value we use aggregate u s corporate sector data to estimate firms optimal hiring and investment decisions and the consequences for firms value the model generates a good fit of the data we decompose the estimated market value thereby quantifying the link between firms value and gross hiring flows employment gross investment flows and physical capital we find that a conventional specification quadratic adjustment costs for capital and no hiring costs performs poorly hiring and investment flows unlike employment and capital stocks are volatile and both are essential to account for market value volatility a key result is that firms value embodies the value of hiring and investment over and above the capital stock

employment and hours of work abstract this paper develops a dynamic model of the labor market in which the degree of substitution between employment and hours of work is determined as part of a search equilibrium each firm chooses its demand for working hours and number of vacancies and the earnings profile is determined by nash bargaining the earnings profile is generally nonlinear in hours of work and defines the trade off between employment and hours of work concave production technology induces firms to overemploy and as a result hours of work are below their optimal level the hosios condition is not sufficient for efficiency when there are two industries workers employed by firms with higher recruitment costs work longer and earn more that is good jobs require longer hours of work interestingly technology differentials cannot account for working hours differentials

determinants of green electricity tariff uptake in the uk a number of countries offer domestic consumers the option of buying their electricity supply through a green tariff whereby the supplier typically guarantees that all or part of the supply has been generated using renewable energy sources previous studies that have sought to identify variables predicting why consumers choose to purchase a green tariff have utilized surveys specifically about the topic this study builds on previous work by reviewing the uk market using data from the understanding society survey a general survey of households which should be free from framing or focalism concerns in addition this data includes variables that to the authors knowledge have not been tested through other work results find that individuals in the highest income quartile those with higher qualifications those supporting the green political party and those exhibiting strong environmental behaviour were all more likely to have purchased green tariffs significant to a lesser degree were strong environmental attitudes and those households with some form of renewable energy technology installed