the causes of preference reversal observed preference reversal cannot be adequately explained by violations of independence the reduction axiom or transitivity the primary cause of preference reversal is the failure of procedure invariance especially the overpricing of low probability high payoff bets this result violates regret theory and generalized nonindependent utility models preference reversal and a new reversal involving time preferences are explained by scale compatibility which implies that payoffs are weighted more heavily in pricing than in choice copyright 1990 by american economic association

the role of net foreign assets in a new keynesian small open economy model abstract this paper develops a small open economy sticky price model that determines a unique stable long run asset position for households as function of their incentive to anticipate or postpone consumption and labor effort across periods this is accomplished by adopting an overlapping generations structure in which new households with no assets enter the economy in each period the same characteristics of household behavior that determine long run assets are also important determinants of the model s responses to shocks stabilizing producer prices results in a milder recession following a drop in world demand than stabilizing consumer prices because it prevents the markup in the pricing of goods from increasing in addition given an initial foreign debt allowing consumer prices to rise causes a decrease in the ex post real interest rate on impact lowering the interest burden of the initial debt the differences across policy rules generated by the initial asset position are robust to changes in the latter as long as these are brought about by changes in parameter values that do not alter the fundamental characteristics of household and firm behavior that are also the key determinants of long run assets

a neoclassical model of the balance of payments this paper analyses the transitory and long run effects of devaluation and tariffs as well as the effects of alterations in the domestic money supply and the terms of trade for a small country on fixed exchange rates these issues are investigated in a self contained dynamic optimization model of the sort popularized by brock 1974 1975 familiar results in the trade literature are thereby explicated for the nonspecialist who is nonetheless familiar with brock s work there are some new results regarding the role played by income and substitution effects in determining the consequences of terms of trade shifts this paper introduces a perfect foresight optimizing model of the monetary approach to the balance of payments for a small country on fixed exchange rates the model is then used to analyse the effects on the balance of payments of devaluation of a tariff and of changes in the terms of trade the effects of devaluation tariffs and changes in the terms of trade have been analysed previously within the framework of nonoptimizing models dornbusch 1973 1980 and anderson and takayama 1977 have studied the effect of devaluation mussa 1974 1976 anderson and takayama 1978 1981 and batra and ramachandran 1980 have studied the effect of tariffs and rodriguez 1976 batra and ramachandran 1980 and anderson and takayama 1981 have studied the effect of changes in the terms of trade optimizing models in which real balances appear as an argument in the utility function are increasingly popular in international economics the general approach was inspired by sidrauski 1967 and brock 1974 1975 recent contributions to the trade literature using this framework include dornbusch and mussa 1975 calvo 1980 1981 liviatan 1981 and obstfeld 1981 a 1981 b 1982 the purpose of this paper is to translate the conventional small country fixed exchange rate model into this framework the results are generally congruent with those in the nonoptimizing literature which suggests that the money in the utility function approach works well here compared to the nonoptimizing literature the real advance is that price adjustment and price expectations are endogenous and rational among the benefits are that one need not postulate the ad hoc price adjustment mechanism used by anderson and takayama nor the backward looking and hence irrational permanent income formulation used by rodriguez furthermore there has been controversy over the balance of payments effects of a shift in the terms of trade while the model s predictions on this issue are theoretically ambiguous the model shows that the answer depends crucially on the magnitude of income effects this clarifies the conditions required for a terms of trade shift to improve or worsen the balance of payments

exchange rate policies and endogenous time preference a dynamic analysis of a small open economy abstract the effects of exchange rate policies are examined for a small open economy with endogenous rate of time preference using optimizing framework and introducing money into the utility function it is shown that a depreciation of the domestic currency generates a surplus in the current account it also leads to an increase in consumption and a decrease in the holdings of real balances in the long run

have coffee producers benefited from the new domestic cherry market evidence using panel data from rwanda the article assesses the effects of the new domestic cherry market on coffee growing households in rwanda using panel data findings from combined first differenced with instrumental variable specification and other estimation methods provide evidence that farmers who sell to the cherry market do not increase their expenditures compared to farmers selling to the traditional parchment market the different time lags in terms of when farmers started selling to the new cherry market may explain the lack of statistically significant differences across the two groups it is possible that farmers will adjust their expenditure patterns in subsequent periods after year over year market trends become more apparent to them

the effect of utility time varying pricing and load control strategies on residential summer peak electricity use a review abstract peak demand for electricity in north america is expected to grow challenging electrical utilities to supply this demand in a cost effective reliable manner therefore there is growing interest in strategies to reduce peak demand by eliminating electricity use or shifting it to non peak times this strategy is commonly called demand response in households common strategies are time varying pricing which charge more for energy use on peak or direct load control which allows utilities to curtail certain loads during high demand periods we reviewed recent north american studies of these strategies the data suggest that the most effective strategy is a critical peak price cpp program with enabling technology to automatically curtail loads on event days there is little evidence that this causes substantial hardship for occupants particularly if they have input into which loads are controlled and how and have an override option in such cases a peak load reduction of at least 30 is a reasonable expectation it might be possible to attain such load reductions without enabling technology by focusing on household types more likely to respond and providing them with excellent support a simple time of use tou program can only expect to realise on peak reductions of 5

information disclosure policies evidence from the electricity industry i introduction developed nations environmental policies have evolved substantially in the past several decades early pollution control programs involved command and control approaches policies then frequently included pollution charges tradable permits and other market based instruments most recently a third wave of environmental policy has emerged that emphasizes information provision as an integral part of the risk mitigation strategy here government regulation is replaced or augmented by publicly provided information presumed to assist more cost effective private market and legal forces common examples include the toxics release inventory lead paint disclosures drinking water quality notices and eco labels the empirical effects of such programs however remain largely undetermined this paper examines the impact of a prominent mandatory disclosure program on the fuel mix percentages of large electric utility corporations the prominence of mandatory information policies is not restricted to environmental arenas for example developed countries equity markets generally require firm level financial information provision in many countries agricultural goods require country of origin and other health labels domestic colleges and universities are required by law to inform current and prospective students of crime statistics equity data and performance metrics even significant medical errors must now be disclosed to the community there are several potential advantages of information provision policies and theory suggests that disclosure programs may effectively achieve their goals healy and palepu 2001 provided a survey of the evidence in capital markets brouhle and khanna 2007 demonstrated that information provision can improve product quality in the environmental area kennedy laplante and maxwell 1994 arora and gangopadhyay 1995 maxwell lyon and hackett 2000 kirchhoff 2000 and khanna 2001 showed that the provision of information about pollution may correct a market failure improve performance and enhance welfare despite the literature s theoretical findings the empirical effects of disclosure programs remain inconclusive early studies of securities regulation found mixed results see stigler 1964 robbins and werner 1964 and benston 1973 a more recent literature suggested that disclosure programs in financial markets can achieve their desired effects la porta and lopez de silanes 2006 and greenstone oyer and vissing jorensen 2006 found that both market size and market returns were positively influenced by mandatory disclosure programs in product quality settings chipty and witte 1998 established that resource and referral agencies significantly influenced childcare prices but had no impact on the quality of care in contrast jin and leslie 2003 found that mandatory hygiene grade cards positively affected restaurant quality and health outcomes studies of environmental performance yielded similarly mixed results desvousges smith and rink 1992 found that information based programs influenced attitudes favorable to radon testing but testing itself only increased when mass media dissemination was coupled with community based implementation programs konar and cohen 1997 and khanna quimio and bojilova 1998 found that stock movements associated with toxics release inventory tri announcements led to increased abatement and reduced emissions however bui 2005 found that the declines in emissions after tri reporting events may have been attributable to regulation rather than investor pressure bennear and olmstead 2006 found that drinking water quality notices lowered violations for some systems but not others this paper is the first empirical economic study of the impacts of mandatory information provision in the electric utility industry the disclosure programs considered here differ significantly from the tri information programs examined previously

the dollarization of a small economy within a utility maximizing framework we study the effects of replacing the national currency with the dollar in a small open economy the impact effect is a drop in the levels of liquidity and wealth the economy reaccumulates real balances by reducing consumption and showing a trade surplus the welfare implications of the program depend on the social rate of time preference and the inflation rate differential we show that the u s can improve both its own welfare and that of the small country s by bribing it into switching currencies we study how these results change with the introduction of capital mobility

preference reversals and the independence axiom of all of the paradoxical patterns of behavior reported in laboratory experiments one of the most perplexing for decision theorists is the preference reversal phenomenon a subject in a preference reversal experiment is typically given a choice between a lottery with a high probability of winning a modest amount of money a p bet and a lottery with a low probability of winning a large amount of money a bet the lowest amount of money for which the subject would willingly sell either of these lotteries is also elicited the most common reversal is for a subject to choose the p bet over the bet but to put a higher selling price on the bet preference reversals were first reported by harold lindman 1971 and sarah lichtenstein and paul slovic 1971 in discussing the psychologists discovery of such reversals david grether and charles plott remark the inconsistency is deeper than mere lack of transitivity or even stochastic transitivity it suggests that no optimization principles of any sort lie behind even the simplest of human choices 1979 p 623 this paper offers a simple alternative explanation of documented preference reversals an explanation that does not require the abandonment of the transitivity assumption

economic theory of choice and the preference reversal phenomenon a reexamination in a recent issue of this review david grether and charles plott 1979 hereinafter referred to as g p presented a series of experiments that show that individual decisions are made in a manner inconsistent with standard preference theory this inconsistency can be illustrated by the following example individuals under suitable laboratory conditions first have a choice between a lottery with a high probability of winning a small sum of money the p bet probability bet and a lottery with a high stake but low probability of winning the m bet money bet after indicating a preference for one of the lotteries in the pair the same subjects are then asked to place a monetary value on each of the individual lotteries grether and plott found that a large number of participants stated a preference for the p bet in the first round but placed a higher value on the other lottery the m bet in the second round this behavior a preference reversal is inconsistent with the traditional statements of preference theory

selling at the farmgate or traveling to market using detailed survey data from uganda this article examines whether coffee producers sell to itinerant traders or directly to markets where they can get a higher price but must incur a transport cost we find that selling to the market is more likely when the quantity sold is large and the market is close by wealthy farmers are less likely to sell to the market possibly because the shadow value of their time is higher but if they have a large quantity of coffee for sale they are more likely to sell it to the market they are also more likely to travel to a distant market these findings are consistent with their better ability to pay for public transportation we find no evidence that the decision to sell at the farmgate is driven by a self control motive

the short run and long run effects of behavioral interventions experimental evidence from energy conservation we document three remarkable features of the opower program in which social comparison based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide first initial reports cause high frequency action and backsliding but these cycles attenuate over time second if reports are discontinued after two years effects are relatively persistent decaying at 10 20 percent per year third consumers are slow to habituate they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years we show that the previous conservative assumptions about post intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design jel d12 d83 l94 q41

contingent valuation a practical alternative when prices aren t available a person may be willing to make an economic tradeoff to assure that a wilderness area or scenic resource is protected even if neither that person nor perhaps anyone else will actually visit this area this tradeoff is commonly labeled passive use value contingent valuation studies ask questions that help to reveal the monetary tradeoff each person would make concerning the value of goods or services such surveys are a practical alternative approach for eliciting the value of public goods including those with passive use considerations first i discuss the exxon valdez oil spill of march 1989 focusing on why it is important to measure monetary tradeoffs for goods where passive use considerations loom large although discussions of contingent valuation often focus on whether the method is sufficiently reliable for use in assessing natural resource damages in lawsuits it is important to remember that most estimates from contingent valuation studies are used in benefit cost assessments not natural resource damage assessments those working on benefit cost analysis have long recognized that goods and impacts that cannot be quantified are valued implicitly by giving them a limitless value when government regulations preclude certain activities or giving them a value of zero by leaving certain consequences out of the analysis contingent valuation offers a practical alternative for reducing the use of either of these extreme choices i put forward an affirmative case for contingent valuation and address a number of the concerns that have arisen

how will energy demand develop in the developing world most of the medium run growth in energy demand is forecast to come from the developing world which consumed more total units of energy than the developed world in 2007 we argue that the main driver of the growth is likely to be increased incomes among the poor and near poor we document that as households come out of poverty and join the middle class they acquire appliances such as refrigerators and vehicles for the first time these new goods require energy to use and energy to manufacture the current forecasts for energy demand in the developing world may be understated because they do not accurately capture the dramatic increase in demand associated with poverty reduction

the effectiveness of exchange rate changes this article addresses the question of whether exchange rates are a useful policy instrument the very question will raise tempers the suggestion that the real exchange rate is a policy variable is firmly rejected by any student in the new classical tradi tion and even by a broader group who are reluctant to declare a broad policy role for the nominal quantity of money or the nominal exchange rate either can of course be manipulated but whether there is scope to change in this manner the real quantity of money or the real exchange rate is quite another matter

long term building energy demand for india disaggregating end use energy services in an integrated assessment modeling framework with increasing population income and urbanization meeting the energy service demands for the building sector will be a huge challenge for indian energy policy although there is broad consensus that the indian building sector will grow and evolve over the coming century there is little understanding of the potential nature of this evolution over the longer term the present study uses a technologically detailed service based building energy model nested in the long term global integrated assessment framework gcam to produce scenarios of the evolution of the indian buildings sector up through the end of the century the results support the idea that as india evolves toward developed country per capita income levels its building sector will largely evolve to resemble those of the currently developed countries heavy reliance on electricity both for increasing cooling loads and a range of emerging appliance and other plug loads albeit with unique characteristics based on its climate conditions cooling dominating heating and even more so with climate change on fuel preferences that may linger from the present for example a preference for gas for cooking and vestiges of its development path including remnants of rural poor that use substantial quantities of traditional biomass

information as regulation the effect of community right to know laws on toxic emissions abstract there is growing academic and policy level interest in the use of information as quasi regulatory mechanisms such as toxic release inventory tri and green labels mandatory disclosure requirements have been touted as market based incentives that may affect firm behavior we provide new evidence on the effectiveness of disclosure requirements by examining firm behavior in response to disclosures of tri emissions we find that firms with the largest stock price decline on the day this information became public subsequently reduced emissions more than their industry peers this is consistent with the view that financial markets may provide strong incentives for firms to change their environmental behavior

real asset returns inflation and activity in a small open cash in advance economy abstract the effects of inflation are worked out for a small open economy with cash in advance cia constraints on bond purchases if all transactions are subject to cia constraints an increase in the inflation rate will reduce savings bringing about a current account deficit while the capital stock will be unaffected if investment is not subject to cia constraints an increase in the inflation rate will encourage investment and reduce savings bringing about a current account deficit numerical evaluation of the model gives rise to falls in real interest rates that are in line with recent empirical findings

crawling peg inflation hedges and exchange rate dynamics this paper stresses the effects of currency substitution and speculation on inflation hedges on the relative price of home goods in the two sector general equilibrium portfolio balance model examining the overshooting hypothesis of exchange rates in association with the overshooting phenomenon of price of inflation hedges it has shown that exchange rate undershooting is plausible with the significant overshooting of the price of inflation hedges when domestic residents hold only domestic money and inflation hedges however the impact of currency substitution is strong enough to lead to exchange rate overshooting if the domestic residents have access to foreign currency

on the outcome of inconsistent programs under exchange rate and monetary rules abstract this paper studies the case of inconsistent programs of monetary policy that is programs incompatible in the long run with a given budget deficit so that at some point in the future there is an eventual crisis and demise of the program all of which is from the outset anticipated by the public the context is one of a small open economy with perfect foresight in which two sets of possibilities are analyzed i a monetary or an exchange rule for the conduct of monetary policy and ii presence or absence of capital mobility it is found that while the choice of the rule is unimportant restrictions on capital mobility determine a very different response for the case of either rule concerning side effects of the program on non monetary variables and on the post crisis level of country indebtedness

cash crop choice and income dynamics in rural areas evidence for post crisis indonesia in this article we investigate the factors affecting levels and growth of incomes in rural indonesia following the crisis of 1997 1998 in particular we investigate the relative roles of nonfarm incomes and productivity improvements achieved via changes in crops versus improvements on the same crops on income dynamics framing the article in the context of an optimal labor allocation model relying on unique household panel data from central sulawesi and using advanced panel econometric methods we find that local innovations related to the adoption and intensification of new cash crop varieties more specifically the shift from coffee to cocoa production can explain a substantial part of the observed post crisis developments causal estimates of the effect of growing cocoa suggest that households were on average able to achieve about 14 higher income levels during the post crisis period compared to the planting of other crops most notably coffee also our results demonstrate the importance of engagement in nonfarm activities for household income growth comparative analyses using a nationally representative survey suggest that similar processes are at play in other parts of indonesia

the capital inflows problem revisited a stylized model of southern cone disinflation in the late 1970s countries in latin america s southern cone initiated attempts to lower domestic inflation rates through the progressive reduction of a preannounced rate of exchange rate devaluation the stabilization programs gave rise to massive capital inflows real exchange rate appreciation and current account deficits this paper develops a stylized intertemporal framework in which the effects of a credible preannounced disinflation scheme can be studied it is shown that even when agents have perfect foresight and markets clear continuously the capital inflows phenomenon and the associated real appreciation may result while unanticipated permanent inflation changes are neutral in the paper anticipated inflation is neutral only in exceptional circumstances a preannounced disinflation operates by altering the path of an expenditure based real domestic interest rate that depends on expected changes in the prices of liquidity services and nontradable consumption goods

monetary policy in a small open economy with durable goods and differing cash in advance constraints abstract we consider the effects of inflation in a small open economy when expenditures on non durables are more heavily financed with money than expenditures on durables the distinctions between non durables and durables and asymmetric cash in advance constraints give rise to important dynamics

dynamics of the exchange rate in anticipation of pegging abstract this paper studies an economy in which agents expect the current floating rate regime to be interrupted on a specific future date by a transitional fixed rate policy when the new peg is not revealed in advance the path of the floating rate in anticipation of pegging is determined by the interaction between what agents perceive to be the objectives and the constraints of the central bank the paper highlights the role of the pegging date the duration of the fixed rate interval the quantity of reserves available to the authorities and the nature of policies expected after pegging is terminated

balance of payments dynamics and exchange rate management abstract this paper studies the dynamics of the balance of payments in response to policy disturbances under the assumption that the central bank devalues the country s currency over time at a constant pre announced rate depending on the magnitudes of the parameters of the model i find that a given disturbance may result in qualitatively different short run behavior of the balance of payments accounts in each case however the adjustment process will lead the economy to a stable long run equilibrium provided the government finances its spending according to a certain set of rules

monetary rewards and decision cost in experimental economics a survey of thirty one experimental studies which report data on the comparative effects of monetary rewards and opportunity cost shows 1 several studies in which increased rewards shift the central tendency of the data toward the predictions of rational models 2 in virtually all cases rewards reduce the variance of the data around the predicted outcome this is consistent with a model in which rewards are balanced against decision cost in agent behavior and explicates the argument that when rational models fail it can be attributed to low opportunity cost of deviations from the rational prediction

towards understanding the role of price in residential electricity choices evidence from a natural experiment abstract we examine a choice setting in which residential electricity consumers may respond to non financial incentives in addition to prices using data from a natural field experiment that exposed some households to a change in their electricity rates we find that households reduced electricity usage in response to a contemporaneous decrease in electricity prices this provides clear evidence that other factors potentially encompassing non monetary and dynamic considerations can influence consumer choice and even dominate the static price response in some cases a comprehensive understanding of household behavior in energy markets is essential for the effective implementation of market based energy and environmental policies the documentation of our result and others like it is a necessary step in achieving such an understanding

agricultural tradables and economic recovery in uganda the limitations of structural adjustment in practice abstract uganda s economic reform program has been widely regarded as a success story for structural adjustment nevertheless a large trade deficit persists shored up by inflows of aid and private remittances the poor performance of the agricultural tradables sector is presented as the key explanation for this trade imbalance two main reasons for this poor performance are found to be the failure to liberalize producer prices quickly and the failure to overcome early institutional resistance to reforms of marketing arrangements uganda s recovery is therefore much less impressive than it appears and the sustainability of the now heavily aid dependent economy must remain in serious doubt

knowledge is less power experimental evidence from residential energy use abstract imperfect information about product attributes inhibits efficiency in many choice settings but can be overcome by providing simple low cost information we use a randomized control trial to test the effect of high frequency information about residential electricity usage on the price elasticity of demand informed households are three standard deviations more responsive to temporary price increases an effect that is not attributable to price salience conservation extends beyond pricing events in the short and medium run providing evidence of habit formation and implying that the intervention leads to greenhouse gas abatement survey evidence suggests that information facilitates learning jel d12 d83 l11 l94 q41 q54

does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower co2 emissions a cross country analysis despite the relationship between urbanization energy use and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to differences in development stages or income levels most previous studies have implicitly assumed that the impact of urbanization is homogenous for all countries this assumption can be questionable as there are many characteristic differences among countries of different levels of affluence this paper investigates empirically the effects of urbanization on energy use and co2 emissions with consideration of the different development stages using the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model and a balanced panel dataset of 99 countries over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that the impact of urbanization on energy use and emissions varies across the stages of development surprisingly urbanization decreases energy use in the low income group while it increases energy use in the middle and high income groups the impact of urbanization on emissions is positive for all the income groups but it is more pronounced in the middle income group than in the other income groups these novel findings not only help advance the existing literature but also can be of special interest to policy makers and urban planners

uniform commercial policy illegal trade and the real exchange rates a theoretical analysis countries on fixed exchange rates sometimes use uniform tariff cum subsidy utcs schemes as a way of achieving a real depreciation without disturbing the nominal exchange rate a potential drawback of this policy in relation to an across the board devaluation is that a utcs scheme provides incentives for illegal trade using an optimizing model with currency convertibility and illegal trade the author finds that welfare is lower under a utcs scheme than under a corresponding across the board devaluation and that in some cases the real exchange rate actually appreciates in response to an increase in the utcs rate

what does the show case show evidence of and lessons from adjustment in uganda abstract uganda is often seen as an african show case for the beneficial effects of structural adjustment high growth rates have been combined with a high degree of ownership of the reforms at the same time critics have pointed to continued aid dependence and limited growth of the important agricultural export sector the contribution of this paper to this debate is three fold first ownership has not always been exemplary and is still fragile in some respects second although aid has indeed been important for bringing about high growth aid dependence has diminished over time third there have been real supply responses from the agricultural export sector

model projections for household energy use in india energy use in developing countries is heterogeneous across households present day global energy models are mostly too aggregate to account for this heterogeneity here a bottom up model for residential energy use that starts from key dynamic concepts on energy use in developing countries is presented and applied to india energy use and fuel choice is determined for five end use functions cooking water heating space heating lighting and appliances and for five different income quintiles in rural and urban areas the paper specifically explores the consequences of different assumptions for income distribution and rural electrification on residential sector energy use and co2 emissions finding that results are clearly sensitive to variations in these parameters as a result of population and economic growth total indian residential energy use is expected to increase by around 65 75 in 2050 compared to 2005 but residential carbon emissions may increase by up to 9 10 times the 2005 level while a more equal income distribution and rural electrification enhance the transition to commercial fuels and reduce poverty there is a trade off in terms of higher co2 emissions via increased electricity use

the impact of coffee price changes on rural households in uganda employing household survey data covering the periods 1992 1993 1995 1996 and 1999 2000 this article shows for the case of uganda that a coffee market liberalization followed by a price boom was associated with substantial reductions in poverty which could even be sustained when prices went down again coffee is not planted by the richest farmers and the gains from higher coffee prices accrued to poorer and richer coffee farmers alike nor were poorer farmers hurt disproportionately when prices fell in addition we find strong spillovers from coffee production to other agriculture which tends to favor the poor and to nonagricultural activities these multiplier effects are concentrated in coffee regions in an economic environment characterized by a booming agricultural sector coffee farmers were able to accommodate the negative price shock in particular through agricultural diversification general agricultural growth also cushioned possible negative multiplier effects in coffee regions overall the case of coffee in uganda thus lends support to the view that agricultural trade liberalization is beneficial for the poor

currency trade and capital flows in general equilibrium this paper studies currency trade and capital flows in a one good general equilibrium exchange model with utility maximizing individuals the effects of both monetary and endowment shocks are examined it is shown that both can cause trade and capital flows the model is a two country version of the twostate optimizing model used recently by leroy 1984a 1984b to study the effects of monetary and endowment shocks in a closed economy each country issues its own currency real and nominal bonds and equity shares each receives an endowment of a perishable consumption good the demand for money is generated by entering real balances into the utility function as in dornbusch and mussa 1975 calvo 1981 liviatan 1981 obstfeld 1981a 1981b 1982 razin 1981 stockman 1983 and michener 1984 each country holds both currencies an assumption made only by liviatan both monetary growth and endowments of the consumption

an experimental test for risk aversion abstract this paper evaluates an experimental method to measure attitudes to risk in individual subjects the method is applied to study the degree of risk aversion of 46 subjects the results lead us to reject a working hypothesis of risk neutrality for such experimental subjects

monetary policy under dual exchange rates abstract this paper finds that the introduction of dual exchange rates gives the monetary authority greater independence from external constraints than it would otherwise enjoy the monetary authority is able to influence the level of aggregate demand in the short run and to sterilize the effects of temporary foreign disturbances in addition the paper finds that dual rates insulate the domestic economy fully from foreign interest rate changes but do not provide insulation from speculative disturbances

capital mobility and devaluation in an optimizing model with rational expectations this paper examines the effects of ex change rate policies when individuals maximize lifetime utility on the basis of rational expectations about the future the economy studied is one in which the authorities allow free mobility of capital under a crawling peg exchange rate regime many industrializing economies have adopted a crawling peg as a means of reconciling disparate inflation rates at home and abroad and some recent efforts to use the rate of crawl as an instrument of anti inflation policy have attracted considerable interest see carlos diaz alejandro tools similar to those employed here have been applied by guillermo calvo forthcoming to study this type of exchange rate management under conditions of capital immobility this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the dynamics of behavior change evidence from energy conservation abstract little is known about the effect of message framing on conservation behavior over time in a randomized controlled trial with residential households we use advanced metering and information technologies to test how different messages about household energy use impact the dynamics of conservation behavior down to the appliance level our results based on 374 million panel observations of kilowatt hour kwh electricity consumption for 118 households over 9 months show that differences in behavioral responses due to message framing become more significant over time we find that a health based frame in which households consider the human health effects of their marginal electricity use induced persistent energy savings behavior of 8 10 over 100 days whereas a more traditional cost savings frame drove sharp attenuation of treatment effects after 2 weeks with no significant savings versus control after 7 weeks we discuss implications for the design of effective information campaigns to engage households in conservation behavior

information strategies for energy conservation a field experiment in india abstract little is known about the effectiveness of information strategies on energy conservation in developing countries in this study we conduct a field experiment in an apartment complex in india to test how information about electricity usage impacts the electricity consumption of urban middle class households our results based on fifteen minute electricity readings over an academic year show that non monetary messages that framed electricity consumption in terms of environmental and health impacts were more effective than messages emphasizing the monetary savings of reducing electricity consumption households in the environmental health group accessed the online energy monitoring dashboard more frequently and reduced their electricity usage by 18 4 relative to the control group households in the monetary group did not significantly alter their usage these results about revealed preferences are contrasted with stated preferences disclosed in a survey of urban indians who describe money not health as the main motivation for energy conservation our findings have important implications for the development non monetary strategies for energy conservation in developing countries

examining risk preferences under high monetary incentives experimental evidence from the people s republic of china several experimental sessions were conducted to elicit certainty equivalents for a sequence of lotteries involving real monetary outcomes the opportunity to conduct sessions in the people s republic of china afforded the ability to offer very large monetary incentives relative to subjects living costs in the highest payoff condition subjects earned three times their normal monthly revenue in the course of a two hour experiment results indicate a statistically significant impact of the level of monetary incentives on revealed risk preferences however even under extreme monetary incentives subjects demanded amounts well in excess of expected value for low probability gain prospects copyright 1992 by american economic association

more laboratory evidence on the disparity between willingness to pay and compensation demanded abstract recent experimental work showing a disparity between willingness to pay for and compensation demanded to give up lottery tickets is contrary to economists ideas about rationality presented here are the results of experiments in which subjects participate in second price auctions to indicate willingness to pay and compensation demanded for lottery tickets that have fixed odds of winning or losing money when the auction institution used has truthful revelation of preferences as the dominant strategy and that strategy is announced to subjects the difference between the measures of value decreases significantly the within subject comparison design provides a more discriminating measure of behavior than between subject comparison designs used previously

saving power to conserve your reputation the effectiveness of private versus public information environmental damage is often an unseen byproduct of other activities disclosing environmental impact privately to consumers can reduce the costs and or increase the moral benefits of conservation behaviors while publicly disclosing such information can provide an additional motivation for conservation cultivating a green reputation in a unique field experiment in the residence halls at the university of california los angeles we test the efficacy of detailed private and public information on electricity conservation private information was given through real time appliance level feedback and social norms over usage and public information was given through a publicly visible conservation rating our analysis is based on 7 120 daily observations about energy use from heating and cooling lights and plug load for 66 rooms collected over an academic year our results suggest that while private information alone was ineffective public information combined with private information motivated a 20 percent reduction in electricity consumption achieved through lower use of heating and cooling public information was particularly effective for above median energy users

on the employment investment and current account effects of inflation abstract the effects of inflation targets are examined for a small open economy with cash in advance constraints an increase in the inflation rate by increasing the price of consumption relative to leisure reduces consumption and labor supply the fall in labor reduces the marginal productivity of capital and a fall in investment the country runs a current account surplus despite the fall in output the dynamics of the model for permanent and temporary policy changes are fully worked out with the aid of a diagrammatic apparatus quantitative analysis of the model reveals substantial impact and steady state effects

willingness to pay and compensation demanded experimental evidence of an unexpected disparity in measures of value aside from possible income effects measures of the maximum amounts people will pay to avoid a loss and the minimum compensation necessary for them to accept it are generally assumed to be equivalent unexpectedly wide variations between these sums however have been noted in survey responses to hypothetical options this paper reports the results of a series of experiments that confronted people with actual money payments and cash compensations the results indicate that the compensation measure of value seems to exceed significantly the willingness to pay measure which would appear to call into some question various rules of entitlement damage assessments and interpretations of indifference curves

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables

energy efficiency in india assessing the policy regimes and their impacts in the recent years india has emerged as one of the fast growing economies of the world necessitating equally rapid increase in modern energy consumption with an imminent global climate change threat india will have difficulties in continuing with this rising energy use levels towards achieving high economic growth it will have to follow an energy efficient pathway in attaining this goal in this context an attempt is made to present india s achievements on the energy efficiency front by tracing the evolution of policies and their impacts the results indicate that india has made substantial progress in improving energy efficiency which is evident from the reductions achieved in energy intensities of gdp to the tune of 88 during 1980 2007 similar reductions have been observed both with respect to overall indian economy and the major sectors of the economy in terms of energy intensity of gdp india occupies a relatively high position of nine among the top 30 energy consuming countries of the world c 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

non mandatory approaches to environmental protection the approach to environmental protection has been evolving from a regulation driven adversarial government push approach to a more proactive approach involving voluntary and often business led initiatives to self regulate their environmental performance this has been accompanied by increasing provision of environmental information about firms and products to enlist market forces and communities in creating a demand for corporate environmental self regulation by signaling their preferences for environmentally friendly firms this paper provides an overview of the non mandatory approaches being used for environmental protection and surveys the existing theoretical literature analyzing the economic efficiency of such approaches relative to mandatory approaches it also discusses empirical findings on the factors motivating self regulation by firms and its implications for their economic and environmental performance it examines the existing evidence on the extent to which information disclosure is effective in generating pressures from investors and communities on firms to improve their environmental performance