export instability export growth and gdp growth abstract the positive correlation between export instability and export expansion reported by lam in a recent paper is shown to be the result of a bias caused by the manner in which the instability index was calculated and by using data series which end in a year of unusually high exports it is shown that when correction is made for these factors there is no statistically significant correlation between export instability and export expansion or domestic income expansion

concentration diversification and earnings instability some evidence on developing countries exports of manufactures and primary products policies aimed at diversification of the commodity composition of exports continue to be advocated as a means of reducing instability in ldcs export earnings the usual assumptions are that earnings from manufactures are more stable than earnings from primary products and that diversification will reduce the covariances between earnings from different pairs of products it is suggested here that for several reasons these assumptions may not be valid evidence is then presented which indicates that across a sample of countries diversification has taken place but has not been accompanied by relatively greater stability in manufactures and favourable changes in covariances

wage and technology dispersion this paper explains why firms with identical opportunities may use different technologies and offer different wages our key assumption is that workers must engage in costly search in order to gather information about jobs stigler 1961 in equilibrium some firms adopt high fixed cost high productivity technologies offer high wages and fill job openings quickly other firms adopt less capital intensive technologies and offer low wages hiring mostly uninformed workers in equilibrium the amount of wage dispersion leaves workers indifferent about whether to gather information and the fraction of informed workers leaves firms indifferent about their wage and technology choice we show that worker search which would appear to be a rent seeking activity in partial equilibrium may be efficiency enhancing in general equilibrium

commodity price instability and economic goal attainment in developing countries abstract this paper reviews the theoretical and empirical micro and macro foundations for the frequent claims that instabilities in international commodity markets have deleterious effects on goal attainment in primary commodity exporting developing countries this review leads to the conclusion that the available evidence does not support these claims the paper concludes with speculation on why such claims are so strong despite the lack of supporting evidence perhaps it is because of measurement problems and perhaps because of small but articulate groups with vested interests in overstating the problem

did rabuka s military coups have a permanent effect or a transitory effect on tourist expenditure in fiji evidence from vogelsang s structural break test abstract the central aim of this paper is to investigate whether the military coups instigated by major general sitiveni rabuka in 1987 had a permanent effect or a transitory effect on tourist expenditures in fiji to accomplish this aim we use the vogelsang econ theory 13 1997 818 test for one break in linear trending data the vogelsang test reveals 1988 as the year of the break and based on a suite of test statistics recommended by vogelsang we reject the unit root null leading to the conclusion that rabuka s coups had a transitory effect on tourist expenditure in fiji

total factor spillovers similarities and competitions in the petroleum industry this chapter investigates multi dimensional spillovers similarities and competitions in the petroleum industry spatial techniques are applied first in production function in order to observe the cross sectional dependence in each of the four dimensions product technology segment and region wide these four single dimensional spatial models are then aggregated by a model averaging method that assigns weights to different models based on their ability to explain data taking all dependences into consideration this chapter estimates the total factor spillovers similarities and competitions in the spirit of total factor productivity negative spillover effects are observed in all the four dimensions moreover segment wide competition has negative effect on productivity some policy implications concerning human capital globalization and development strategies are also discussed

the measurement of export instability a methodological note abstract a general theory of the instability index is developed using spectral analysis depending on the assumptions pertaining to aversion towards fluctuations of different frequencies the generalized instability index derived here can be reduced to some commonly used instability indices

export fluctuations and economic growth an empirical analysis abstract the uncertainty associated with trade variability is generally resumed to exert a significant effect on the domestic economy of loss developed countries inadequately equipped to cope with these fluctuations the belief that it has a negative influence on these economies has been for several decades the dominant hypothesis among economists but it has been challenged on both theoretical and empirical growths the present paper proposes to investigate this problem from an empirical point of view cross country analysis is developed to investigate the influence of export instability on the domestic economy of less advanced nations the results show that no clear conclusions for the general case can be provided since they are sensitive to the particular time period considered a negative impact can be expected when price and quantity instability appear to reinforce each other but this is not always the case

productivity gains from unemployment insurance this paper argues that unemployment insurance increases labor productivity by encouraging workers to seek higher productivity jobs and by encouraging rms to create those jobs we use a quantitative model to investigate whether this eect is comparable in magnitude to the standard moral hazard eects of unemployment insurance our model economy captures the behavior of the u s labor market for high school graduates quite well with unemployment insurance more generous than the current u s level unemployment would increase by a magnitude similar to the micro estimates but because the composition of jobs also changes total output and welfare would increase as well

economic growth energy conservation and emissions reduction a comparative analysis based on panel data for 8 asian pacific countries this study was conducted to evaluate the causality between energy consumption gdp growth and carbon emissions for eight asia pacific countries from 1971 to 2005 using the panel data the results indicate that there are long run equilibrium relationships between these variables additionally causality from energy consumption to co2 emissions was observed generally but there were some opposite relationships also parameter estimations of the panel data model indicate that there are great differences in the carbon emissions the efficiencies of energy use carbon emissions of unit gdp and unit energy consumption between developed and developing countries the base carbon emissions per capita energy consumption and efficiency of energy use in developing countries are far lower than in developed countries however the co2 emissions per unit of energy use is higher although developing countries may reduce their co2 emission per unit energy use total energy consumption will rise rapidly with economic development thus developing countries must determine how to undergo economic growth while conserving energy and reducing emissions to respond to global climate change it is necessary to develop innovative technology for energy use transform the energy structure and conduct the clean development mechanism

from export instability effects to international stabilization policies abstract this paper examines how the analysis of export earnings instability effects can help in the search for international policies of export earnings stabilization export instability which has been increasing and has been a quantity instability as well as a price instability is seen as a development problem a judgment relying mainly on a new cross section study and its policy implications stabilization of export earnings is analyzed as a response to this problem shortfall compensation and its different alternative conditions are examined with regard to the assumed effects of export instability and with special reference to the imf compensatory financing facility to the stabex and to the new proposal of the 1985 unctad expert group

a management orientated approach to combination forecasting of tourism demand abstract volatility exponential smoothing regression and naive 2 models are considered singly and in combination in terms of forecasting demand for international tourism these models generate accurate predictions of tourism flows but their prime utility is when combined with other models usually models are combined by means of purely statistical criteria we show that goal programming gp offers an alternative flexible approach to model combination gp offers planners a practical solution to tourism forecasting problems since the method is more adaptable than conventional minimisation of prediction error by permitting practitioners to prioritise a series of management related goals forecasters can focus on longer and short term goals minimising forecast under and over estimation and or concentrate on prediction errors in tourism flows at various times of the year

a paradigm shift to a new strategy for small island economies embracing demand side economics for value enhancement and long term economic stability abstract the article answers three interrelated questions pertaining to small island economies and tourism development under the condition of globalization 1 why is tourism relevant for small island economies 2 why is a supply perspective inappropriate for these economies and 3 why is a demand perspective more appropriate for small island economies in the era of globalization empirical realities indicate that small islands have performed well in specializing as tourist destinations despite their size constraints and resulting disadvantage in economic terms the caribbean region is an appropriate proxy for small island economies however globalization may be taking its toll on sectoral specialization in the caribbean as a development strategy the supply side strategy seems to have lost its effectiveness to reverse this trend the study proposes the implementation of new tourism strategies based on a demand focused approach to sustain value enhancement these strategies have important managerial and policy implications

efficiency and equality in a simple model of efficient unemployment insurance abstract this paper describes the efficient allocation of consumption and work effort in an economy in which workers face idiosyncratic employment risk and considerations of moral hazard prevent full insurance we impose a lower bound on the expected discounted utility that can be assigned to any agent from any date onward and show with this feature added that the efficient unemployment insurance scheme induces an invariant cross sectional distribution of individual entitlements to utility the paper thus provides a simple prototype model suited to the study of the normative question what is the trade off between equality and efficiency in resource allocation journal of economic literature classification numbers d31 d63 d82 j65

tourism and economic development a survey this article surveys the literature on tourism and economic development identifying the contribution that tourism can make to development including foreign currency income and employment and the costs that it entails single equation and system of equations models for estimating tourism demand are provided indicating developing countries potential to benefit from increasing expenditure on tourism but their susceptibility to deterioration in price competitiveness the main sectors of tourism supply transportation tour operators travel agents and accommodation are examined and the importance of cross country integration between firms is highlighted the article argues that many of the problems associated with the use of environmental resources for tourism stem from market failure and it considers methods for increasing sustainably the returns from them

commodities in crisis an overview of the main issues abstract this introductory article provides a general review of some of the main issues facing the world commodity economy in the 1980s particularly those arising from the dramatic collapse in the foreign exchange earnings of developing countries from their exports of primary commodities the subject matter covered in this special issue of world development includes not only the more traditional concerns related to short term commodity market instability and longer term issues such as agricultural protectionism but also the relevance of the linkages between the commodity sector and the rest of the international economic system for the stability of the world economy as a whole this article covers more aspects of the commodity problem than can be considered in detail in the subsequent articles prepared for a single issue of this journal nonetheless the present introduction should make a contribution to identifying useful areas for further research as well as focusing on some of the options in the field of international commodity policy

endogenous adverse selection and unemployment insurance in this paper we consider how the presence of private information may explain the failure of the private sector to provide unemployment insurance in particular we show how the interaction of private information regarding employees preferences for work with the unobservable level of effort exerted on the job may explain the absence of private unemployment insurance we also reflect on the implications of our findings for the role of the public sector in providing unemployment insurance

potential for reducing carbon emissions from non annex b countries through changes in technology abstract continued questions surrounding the efficacy and enforceability of the kyoto protocol make it worthwhile to examine alternative cost effective approaches to climate policy this paper examines the feasibility of an approach that does avoid the problem of targets and timetables and concentrates on solving the most obvious gap in the kyoto protocol how to change the future trajectory of emissions from the non annex b eastern european and former soviet union countries the paper begins by estimating how large a near term reduction in emissions could be achieved if these countries were moved to levels of carbon intensity of annex b countries this static calculation shows that such an improvement in china india eastern europe and russia would provide annual emission reductions two to three times as large as those to which the annex b countries would be committed under the kyoto protocol in 2010 the paper also extends a dynamic model of economic growth with embodied technology improvement based on swan swan t w 1956 economic growth and capital accumulation economic record 32 2 334 361 and solow solow r m 1960 investment and technology progress stanford symposium of mathematical methods in the social sciences eds kenneth j arrow samuel karlin and patrick suppes stanford university press the key feature of this model is the new investment increases total factor productivity by embodying new technology and it can be adapted to include the assumption that new investment also embodies technology with lower carbon emissions the model reveals that even though new investment in non annex b countries has far lower emissions per unit of output than the existing capital stock new investment still does not embody the level of technology observed in annex b countries the model estimates that the potential for reducing emissions through changing technology in developing countries over the next 15 years is similar in magnitude to the reductions in emissions that would be achieved if all annex b countries were to achieve their kyoto protocol emission caps

modeling the nexus between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth the effects of economic growth on the environment have received increased attention as global warming and other environmental problems become more serious many empirical studies explain the nexus between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth with such models as the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory however the assumptions of these models have never received strict verification with a large available data set and therefore may not be appropriate to describe the relationship in this study the nexus is modeled for 67 countries from 1971 to 2010 using a novel symbolic regression method from the experimental results several conclusions as follows could be reached firstly there is no universal model fitting every country and symbolic regression could discover a set of reasonable models for a specific country or region secondly four models including the inverted n shaped m shaped inverted u shaped and monotonically increasing are frequently found without domain experts intervention in these countries whereas the m shaped model has received little attention in previous studies but exhibits promising performance thirdly the relationship is diversified due to the difference of regions and economic development where developed countries generally follow the inverted n shaped and m shaped models to explain the relationship whereas developing countries are more likely to refer to the inverted n shaped inverted u shaped and monotonically increasing models finally several policy suggestions are presented

ex ante price offers in matching games non steady states a matching problem is considered in which sellers can publicly commit to a trading price that differs from the price at which buyers expect to trade elsewhere in the market when demand and supply are nearly equal the equilibrium ex ante price offer lies below the price associated with the nash bargaining split this relationship reverses when the level of excess demand is large sellers always have an incentive to make ex ante offers when prices elsewhere are determined by nash bargaining this can be interpreted to mean that nash bargaining is an unstable pricing institution copyright 1991 by the econometric society

international tourism and export instability export diversification has been suggested as a strategy for decreasing the level of export earnings instability which is experienced by many developing countries in recent years the international tourism sector has made an increasingly important contribution to the economies of many low income countries this article examines whether diversification into the non traditional tourism sector has succeeded in decreasing the instability of export earnings it was found that although tourism has the advantage of high growth rates and is a major source of foreign currency receipts earnings from international tourism did not bring about a significant decrease in the instability of export earnings of most of the developing and industrialised countries considered furthermore a net increase in the instability of earnings from tourism and merchandise exports occurred in a number of countries and may be a particular problem in small open developing economies

evidence of the clean development mechanism impact on the chinese electric power system s low carbon transition the extension of the kyoto protocol till 2020 has left uncertainty dominating the future of climate change negotiations meanwhile on going debate on the variety of measures introduced by the protocol demonstrate that there is no consensus among academics and policy makers on the efficacy of those measures by focusing on a specific but extensive case study which encompasses the whole contribution of the clean development mechanism cdm to the chinese electricity production sector this paper aims to reflect upon the effectiveness of that mechanism during its originally planned lifetime which was to be the end of 2012 the paper contributes to the international debate by offering a new evidence based perspective on the efficacy of the cdm in a strategic sector of the most relevant non annex i country the obtained empirical results can serve as evaluation instruments for both academics and policy makers involved in the elaboration of a new protocol and its related mechanisms while at the same time offering a stimulus for further analyses sharing similar objectives the results reveal a new perspective on the chinese electricity system s low carbon transition while prompting debate over the original efficacy of the cdm

combining volatility and smoothing forecasts of uk demand for international tourism abstract univariate volatility models are applied to uk tourism demand to the country s most popular international destinations volatility is a concept borrowed from finance the fact that significant volatility models are found for ten of the twelve destinations examined shows that the volatility concept has relevance to tourism demand volatility models are able to quantify the impacts of positive and negative shocks on tourism demand the impacts of negative shocks vary in magnitude and duration according to the destination involved and the nature of the shock the forecasting capability of these models has never been assessed in the tourism field they are shown to generate highly accurate forecasts but become optimal when combined with forecasts obtained from exponential smoothing models two methods of combining individual forecasts are considered bias in individual volatility and smoothing models and in combinations of them is examined

tourism as a factor in development cooperation abstract where there is little or no industrial or agricultural base and no exploitable resource tourism may make a significant contribution to the economy of a developing country the eec provides aid to developing countries in three areas the southern mediterranean asia and latin america and africa the caribbean and the pacific the commission has produced guidelines for drawing up proposals and a typical example is presented in this article the eec also supplies high quality expertise to help define policy options and strategic plans and carry out agreed programmes long term success is more likely for specialized high income projects