monetary policy and investment dynamics in interdependent economies a dynamic two country model is used to determine the adjustment pat hs of prices interest rates exchange rates and capital flows aftera change i n monetary policy the principal controlling factor is thereaction of investmen t to capital goods prices tobin s q monetaryexpansion in one country produces deflationary pressure abroad there is an instant decline in the world interest rate followed by a gradual rise exchange rates may overshoot or undershoot their steady state level the same applies to capital flows but there is no correspondence between the paths of exchange rates and capital flows copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

interdependence issue importance and the 2009 russia ukraine gas conflict the primary aim of this paper is to explain the 2009 russia ukraine gas conflict in particular it attempts to identify the causal mechanisms between their interdependence in the gas sphere and the gas conflict the paper first shows that existing theories in the study of international relations have limitations in accounting for that conflict therefore a theoretical framework drawing insights from armstrong s model on dependence political compliance and crescenzi s exit model is proposed to explain it relying on this framework this paper demonstrates that the 2009 russia ukraine gas conflict took place through two critical causal mechanisms in the contexts of the 2008 global financial crisis and ukraine s anti russian policy russia and ukraine both considered issues involved in the gas trade such as debts prices transit tariffs and ukraine s pipeline system to be very important therefore when russia issued demands with economic threats ukraine refused to comply

the random walk hypothesis of the exchange rate abstract we show that the exchange rate can follow a random walk without assuming risk neutrality we are thus able to derive a random walk hypothesis for the exchange rate which is associated with a risk premium that may differ from zero

russia s natural gas policy toward northeast asia rationales objectives and institutions the article examines the institutional dimensions of russia s gas policy toward northeast asia nea1 during the liberal economic reforms of the 1990s development of natural gas deposits in the russian far east was made possible under the scheme of production sharing agreements psa however new psas were banned in russia even before the advent of state capitalism in the early 2000s this was to a large extent the result of strong anti psa lobbying led by the domestic energy business elite consequently russia s gas policy in the east began evolving from being project specific toward being region specific contemporary russian gas policy toward nea relies upon domestic national and regional and external institutions in 2009 following the completion of a liquefied natural gas lng plant in sakhalin russia entered nea gas markets transformations in the international gas markets facilitated the establishment of a two pattern gas export policy in russia in 2013 under this policy russia s eu oriented pipeline gas export remains monopolised by gazprom while asia oriented lng export is partially liberalised russia has not been experiencing institutional discrepancy in nea gas markets however as the markets evolve toward greater coordination a rational option for russia is to genuinely liberalise its gas policy

stochastic saddlepoint systems stabilization policy and the stock market abstract we examine the effects of introducing stochastic shocks into a linear rational expectations model with saddlepoint dynamics generated by a forward looking asset price we derive the fundamental differential equation governing the path of the asset price as a function of the sluggish variable the equation does not admit closed form solutions in general but we provide a complete qualitative characterization of the solution paths which are symmetric about equilibrium these are the relevant solutions to consider in the presence of symmetric boundary conditions we present an application of the analysis to fiscal stabilization policy where public expenditures are only adjusted when gnp moves outside a threshold around a target level the impact of such a policy on the level of the stock market is considered and it is shown how the market will anticipate such state contingent policy changes whether the expectations are stabilizing or not is shown to depend on whether the stock market is positively or negatively correlated with gnp

short term and long term interest rates in a monetary model of a small open economy abstract this paper analyzes the effects of both anticipated and unanticipated monetary and fiscal disturbances on the dynamic behavior of a monetary model of a small open economy it focuses on the adjustment of the short term and long term interest rates and the divergence of their transitional paths particularly in anticipation of these disturbances the analysis demonstrates how anticipation of a future policy change can generate perverse short run behavior the essential reason for the divergence between the short and long rates is that the latter is dominated by long term expectations while the former is primarily determined by current influences

the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on international conflict across levels of analysis this study develops a social network analytic approach to conceptualize and measure interdependence across levels of analysis this framework contains several innovations first it integrates sensitivity interdependence the effects of changes in one state on other states with vulnerability interdependence the opportunity costs of breaking a relationship second it measures interdependence at different levels of analysis and across multiple relationships third it integrates multiple dimensions of interdependence into a single measure i derive hypotheses from the realist and liberal paradigms regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on monadic dyadic and systemic conflict these hypotheses are tested via data on alliances military capability and trade the findings provide robust support to the expectations of the liberal paradigm regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on conflict on the other hand the expectations of the realist paradigm are not supported i discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of this approach

oil and natural gas in russia s eastern energy strategy dream or reality the article analyses russia s eastern energy strategy in the sectors of oil and natural gas presenting its main aspects and examining it from the security perspective against the backdrop of official russian documents

foreign interest rate disturbance financial flows and physical capital accumulation in a small open economy this paper focuses on the interaction of financial capital movements and accumulation of physical capital in a small open economy faced with a foreign interest disturbance it is shown that endogenizing physical capital has important implications for the exchange rate dynamics not captured by models which assume a fixed capital stock an increase in the foreign interest rate leads to decumulation of physical capital reduces the full employment level of output increases foreign debt and depreciates the currency appropriate monetary and fiscal policies could counteract the effects on domestic wealth and the reduction in the stock of capital

effects of anticipated central bank actions on tobin s q share prices and exchange rate in a small open economy abstract qualitative features of response patterns of domestic share price the exchange rate and tobin s q are analyzed to compare the effects of three types of anticipated central bank policies in a small open economy exchange of domestic money with domestic shares exchange of domestic money with foreign bonds and exchange of domestic shares with foreign bonds all of equal values in domestic currency tobin s q adjusts monotonically to a new equilibrium in response to all three anticipated actions aside from the initial discontinuous changes when anticipated actions are first announced under a set of plausible assumptions on the model parameters the exchange rate and the share price are shown to respond non monotonically to the announced exchange of domestic money with foreign bonds if the announcement is made sufficiently far in advance the paper also demonstrates that the exchange of domestic shares with foreign bonds is most effective in moving the terms of trade the paper establishes conditions for nonmonotone response patterns in terms of real rate of return to the domestic shares after distinguishing overshooting response pattern from another non monotone pattern called misadjusting in this paper where the initial response of a variable to a shock is a movement away from equilibrium these response patterns are characterized in terms of two parameters and their relative sizes with respect to the implementation lags of announced actions

performance pay competitiveness and the gender wage gap evidence from the united states we show that women in the nlsy79 and nlsy97 are less likely than men to receive competitive compensation the portion of the gender wage gap explained by compensation schemes is small in the nlsy79 but somewhat larger in the nlsy97

the gender gap in early career wage growth in the uk the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but ten years after labour market entry there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points this article explores the reason for this gender gap in early career wage growth considering three main hypotheses human capital job shopping and psychological theories human capital factors can explain about 11 log points job shopping about 1 5 log points and the psychological theories up to 4 5 log points depending on the specification but a substantial unexplained gap remains women who have continuous full time employment have had no children and express no desire to have them earn about 8 log points less than equivalent men after 10 years in the labour market

monitoring for worker quality much nonmanagerial work is routine with all workers having similar output most of the time however failure to address occasional challenges can be very costly and consequently easily detected while challenges handled well pass unnoticed we analyze job assignment and worker monitoring for such guardian jobs if monitoring costs are positive but small monitoring is nonmonotonic in the firm s belief about the probability that a worker is good the model explains several empirical regularities regarding nonmanagerial internal labor markets low use of performance pay seniority pay rare demotions wage ceilings within grade and wage jumps at promotion

do women react differently to incentives evidence from experimental data and payroll records abstract we consider the response to incentives as an explanation for observed productivity differences within a firm that paid its workers piece rates we provide a framework within which the observed productivity differences can be decomposed into two parts one due to differences in ability and the other due to differences in the response to incentives we apply this decomposition to male and female workers from a tree planting firm in british columbia canada our evidence both experimental and nonexperimental suggests that there was no difference in the reaction to incentives between male and female planters the productivity differential male planters enjoyed arose because of differences in ability interpreted as strength in our application

racial earnings differentials and performance pay this paper presents an information model in which workers receiving output based pay experience less racial earnings discrimination than those receiving time rates and supervisory evaluations tests using the national longitudinal survey of youth reveal no racial wage differential among male workers paid output based pay while confirming a significant differential among those paid time rates in addition the racial wage differential among those receiving bonus pay usually based on supervisory evaluations tends to be larger than for those not receiving such bonuses while both racial earnings differences and payment methods have generated enormous literatures the two subjects rarely interact this paper argues that the observed racial earnings gap should be narrower among those receiving output based pay such as piece rates and commissions when discriminating in earnings the intensity of racial preferences must be greater when an owner or manager confronts a standardized measure of productivity than when effort is subjectively evaluated and those evaluations are used to set earnings more important use of a standardized measure of productivity makes the practice of discrimination more transparent and this improved information increases the probability of detection the increased probability of detection raises the expected cost of racial discrimination and should be associated with a reduction in its extent our empirical estimates confirm that output based pay is associated with reduced racial earnings discrimination

money demand and the effects of fiscal policies this paper reexamines the choice of the scale variable in the money demand function a variety of evidence suggests that consumer spending is a better scale variable than gnp changing the money demand specification along these lines can profoundly affect the standard keynesian analysis of a tax cut copyright 1986 by ohio state university press

the stock market and exchange rate dynamics abstract this paper articulates a model of the open economy in which as in tobin 1978 the price of shares in the stock market subtitutes for the real interest rate in the determination of aggregate demand the stock market reduces the impact of monetary policy on the real exchange rate indeed if the link between stock prices and aggregate demand is important enough the impact of monetary policy on the real exchange rate can be reversed in contrast with standard dynamic mundell flemming models anticipated fiscal policy can be expansionary rather than contradictionary as in for example burgstaller 1983 blanchard 1984 and branson et al 1985

do women shy away from competition do men compete too much we examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme although there are no gender differences in performance men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance while 73 percent of the men select the tournament only 35 percent of the women make this choice this gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role instead the tournament entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition the result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it

the gender wage gap and the role of reservation wages new evidence for unemployed workers this paper examines the importance of differences in reservation wages for the gender wage gap based on two waves of rich survey data for a sample of newly unemployed individuals in germany we perform a decomposition analysis including measures for reservation wages detailed information on education socio demographics labor market history as well as personality traits in order to address the potential endogeneity of reservation wages we exploit a generated instrumental variable strategy that relies on heteroscedasticity of the error terms our findings indicate that the gender wage gap becomes small and statistically insignificant once we control for reservation wages moreover we perform a subgroup analysis that provides valuable insights about the importance of potentially unobserved characteristics that affect reservation wages and realized wages simultaneously reasons for differences in reservation wages could arise from productivity differences the fact that women anticipate discrimination and different unobserved traits or preferences

deconstructing the energy weapon russia s threat to europe as case study abstract as the likelihood increases that russia will dominate the european union s eu energy supply questions have emerged as to whether russia would use the energy weapon to influence eu member policies and extract political concessions countervailing voices argue that russia would be restricted by interdependence and market forces as of yet no one has analyzed the assumptions underlying the energy weapon thesis moreover many scholars examining eu russian energy relations rely on non russian data this article seeks to fill several informational and theoretical gaps by including russian sources and first hand data and by systematically analyzing the conditions that must obtain before an energy supplier can successfully convert its energy resources into political power the resulting model can be utilized to analyze the capacity of a supplier to use the energy weapon whether it be russia iran venezuela or any other energy heavyweight and to assess whether the deployment was successful five purported cases of russian manipulation are analyzed in this article and the findings indicate that more often than not russia failed to achieve political concessions looking to the future the plausibility of russia using the energy weapon to exploit europe s dependence particularly on gas is also examined

gender effects in the credence goods market an experimental study abstract in this paper we offer further explanation for differences in earnings across genders we investigate difference in preferences in payment systems for credence goods we find that women were no less likely to select variable rate payment schemes as compensation for providing credence goods than men however overall earnings remained higher for men than for women disaggregating behavior by type of payment and gender reveals that women who chose fee for service provided significantly fewer units of services paid for than men who chose fee for service this difference accounts for the lower overall earnings for women in our experiments

the price stability oriented monetary policy of the ecb an assessment the definition of price stability adopted by the ecb has recently been criticized in the literature particularly for being unable to fully anchor inflation expectations and creating a deflation risk in the paper empirical evidence is provided against these claims despite the unfavourable macroeconomic conditions for the euro area since 2001 monetary policy management has lead to the setting of the policy rate at levels compatible with trend inflation the long run inflation forecast in the range 1 3 and therefore without affecting negatively the inflation outlook

accumulation and growth in a two country model a simulation approach abstract this paper analyzes saving and capital accumulation in a two good growth model of two market economies in which economic agents optimize with perfect foresight the goal is to present a model in which short run dynamics and the steady state are soundly integrated we stress the importance of asset markets as the linkage that transmits disturbances both internationally and intertemporally while many components of the model described below can be found in the literature on optimal consumption investment and international growth models we provide a consistent synthesis our framework permits the analysis of structural adjustment in the global economy and the dynamic effects of a wide range of public policies

a sticky floors model of promotion pay and gender abstract according to raw data from the british household panel survey full time women are more likely than men to be promoted controlling for observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity we find that women are promoted at roughly the same rate as men but may receive smaller wage increases consequent upon promotion to help explain these phenomena we construct a new sticky floors model of pay and promotion in our model women are just as likely as men to be promoted but find themselves stuck at the bottom of the wage scale for the new grade

opportunities and risks in turkmenistan s quest for diversification of its gas export routes abstract this paper applies two hypotheses regarding weak state foreign policy to analyze the opportunities and risks in turkmenistan s quest to diversify its gas export routes especially since 2006 the first hypothesis related to opportunities is that competition among major powers over the allegiance of weak states strengthens their bargaining power the second hypothesis related to risks is that the diversification policies of weak states in times of decreasing competition among great powers incur the danger of simply replacing an old master with a new one i argue that while the first hypothesis is useful in explaining the opportunities of turkmenistan s diversification policies especially before early 2009 the second hypothesis is helpful in accounting for the risks of these policies after early 2009 in other words competition among four major powers russia china the eu and india over turkmenistan s gas pipeline system before early 2009 strengthened the country s bargaining power in contrast turkmenistan s diversification policies in times of fading competition after early 2009 have left it increasingly exposed to the potential risk of replacing its old master russia with a new one china

job mobility and earnings over the life cycle previous studies have shown that in the short run quits generally lead to wage increases on the next job and layoffs to no increase or to a wage cut the author of this study argues however that the prospect of a job change for any reason creates a disincentive for a worker to invest in training that is specific to the current job and therefore those who change jobs frequently may earn less over their life cycle than those who other things equal seldom change jobs an analysis of data from the national longitudinal survey of mature men supports that expectation showing that for white males job separations usually lead to wage gains in the short run but nonmobile workers tend to achieve significantly higher wages over the long run

gender interactions within hierarchies evidence from the political arena this paper studies gender interactions within hierarchical organizations using a large data set on the duration of italian municipal governments elected between 1993 and 2003 a municipal government can be viewed as a hierarchy whose stability over time depends on the degree of cooperation between and within ranks we find that in municipalities headed by female mayors the probability of early termination of the legislature is higher this result persists and becomes stronger when we control for municipality fixed effects as well as for non random sorting of women into municipalities using regression discontinuity in gender mixed electoral races decided by a narrow margin the likelihood that a female mayor survives until the end of her term is lowest when the council is entirely male and in regions with less favourable attitudes towards working women this evidence is suggestive that group dynamics are an important factor in driving the gender difference other interpretations receive less support in the data our results may provide an alternative explanation for the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions

understanding the gender pay gap what s competition got to do with it a number of researchers have argued that men and women have different attitudes toward and behavioral responses to competition that is women are more likely to opt out of jobs in which performance pay is the norm and to under perform in some competitive situations laboratory experiments suggest that these gender differences are rather large to check these hypotheses and findings against differences in the field the authors use performance pay as an indicator of competition in the workplace and compare the gender gap not only in incidence of performance pay but also in earnings and work effort under these contracts they find that although women are less likely than men to work under performance pay contracts the gender gap is small furthermore the effect of performance pay on earnings is modest and does not differ markedly by gender consequently the authors argue the ability of these competition hypotheses to explain the gender pay gap seems very limited

investing in the peace economic interdependence and international conflict research appears to substantiate the liberal conviction that trade fosters global peace still existing understanding of linkages between cone ict and international economics is limited in at least two ways first cross border economic relationships are far broader than just trade global capital markets dwarf the exchange of goods and services and states engage in varying degrees of monetary policy coordination second the manner in which economics is said to inhibit cone ict behavior is implausible in light of new analytical insights about the causes of war we discuss and then demonstrate formally how interdependence can ine uence states recourse to military violence the risk of disrupting economic linkages particularly access to capital may occasionally deter minor contests between interdependent states but such opportunity costs will typically fail to preclude militarized disputes instead interdependence offers nonmilitarized avenues for communicating resolve through costly signaling our quantitative results show that capital interdependence contributes to peace independent of the effects of trade democracy interest and other variables students of world politics have long argued that peace is a positive externality of global commerce theorists like montesquieu and kant and practitioners like woodrow wilson asserted that economic relations between states pacify political interaction mounting evidence in recent years appears to substantiate these claims multiple studies many identie ed with the democratic peace link interstate trade with reductions in militarized disputes or wars 1 while we concur with the evolving

financial variables and real activity in canada in this paper we utilize canadian and u s data to investigate the relationship between financial market variables canadian and u s and canadian output growth using a non parametric technique the financial variables examined are those that are often associated with future output growth namely stock prices interest rates interest rate spreads and monetary aggregates our results show that as the number of autocovariances that are assigned a non zero weight increases the feedback from selected canadian or u s financial variables to future canadian output growth increases in particular we find that stock prices as well as yield spreads and monetary aggregates are useful predictors of output growth this is in line with earlier parametric studies in the literature that find these variables to be good predictors of economic activity variables financieres et niveau d activite reelle au canada ce memoire utilise des donnees canadiennes et americaines pour analyser la relation entre les variables des marches financiers au canada et aux e u et la croissance du produit canadien a l aide d une technique non parametrique les variables financieres analysees sont celles qui sont generalement associees a la croissance du produit national dans l avenir i e le prix des actions les taux d interet les ecarts entre taux d interets et les agregats monetaires les resultats montrent que a proportion que le nombre des auto covariances auquel on assigne une valence zero s accroit les effets d echos variables financieres sur la croissance future du produit canadien s accroissent en particulier il appert que les prix des actions les ecarts entre taux d interets et les agregats monetaires sont des predicteurs utiles de la croissance du produit voila qui confirme les resultats d etudes parametriques

gender differences in examination behavior a unique examination strategy in first year microeconomics courses is used to test for gender differences in examination behavior students have the possibility of attaining a seminar bonus on the final exam for near perfect seminar attendance and are given two voluntary initial quizzes during the semester at the final exam the scores received on initial quizzes can either be accepted as is or students can attempt to improve their marks by answering similar quiz questions on the exam results suggest that female students are more likely to take initial quizzes and receive a seminar bonus but are less likely to re take quiz questions on the final exam these results suggest higher risk aversion less overconfidence and more self discipline or less procrastination among female students relative to male students our estimated behavioral differences may have important implications in terms of final grades on the course jel i21 j16 a12 a14

output the stock market and interest rates this paper develops a simple model of the determination of output the stock market and the term structure of interest rates the model is an extension of the is lm model and borrows from it the assumption that output is determined by aggregate demand and that the price level can only adjust over time to its equilibrium value however whereas the is lm emphasizes the interaction between the interest rate and output this model emphasizes the interaction between asset values and output asset values rather than the interest rate are the main determinants of aggregate demand and output current and anticipated output and income are in turn the main determinants of asset values it is this interaction that the model intends to capture its goal is to characterize the joint response of asset values and output to changes in the environment such as changes or announcement of changes in monetary and fiscal policy as the above brief description makes clear anticipations are central to the story the assumption made in this paper will be one of rational expectations the paper is organized as follows section i describes the model and sections ii iv characterize the behavior of the economy under the extreme but convenient assumption that prices are fixed forever sections v and vi extend the analysis to the case where prices adjust over time to their equilibrium value

macroeconomic and stock market interactions with endogenous aggregate sentiment dynamics abstract this paper studies the implications of heterogeneous capital gain expectations on output and asset prices we consider a disequilibrium macroeconomic model where agents expectations on future capital gains affect aggregate demand agents beliefs take two forms fundamentalist and chartist and the relative weight of the two types of agents is endogenously determined we show that there are two sources of instability arising from the interaction of the financial with the real part of the economy and from the heterogeneous opinion dynamics two main conclusions are derived on the one hand perhaps surprisingly the non linearity embedded in the opinion dynamics far from the steady state can play a stabilizing role by preventing the economy from moving towards an explosive path on the other hand however real financial interactions and sentiment dynamics do amplify exogenous shocks and tend to generate persistent fluctuations and the associated welfare losses we consider alternative policies to mitigate these effects

a fresh look at fiscal multipliers one size fits it all evidence from the mediterranean area following the adoption of important fiscal stimuli to fight the recent crisis a large literature estimated fiscal multipliers focusing on an area particularly appealing given its diversity and the diversity of the response of countries that compose it to the current crisis namely the mediterranean area we unveil major disparities regarding the significance sign and size of fiscal multipliers depending mainly on the economic characteristics the type of multiplier the time span and the type of fiscal stimulus evidence of such important heterogeneities highlights the need for better cooperation among countries particularly regarding the design of fiscal policy failing to do so might divert public resources to ineffective fiscal policies in some countries or on the contrary deprive other countries of potentially high benefits of appropriate fiscal policies including a reliable tool for exiting the current crisis

performance pay and wage inequality an increasing fraction of jobs in the u s labor market explicitly pay workers for their performance using bonus pay commissions or piece rate contracts using data from the panel study of income dynamics we show that compensation in performance pay jobs is more closely tied to both observed and unobserved productive characteristics of workers than compensation in non performance pay jobs we also find that the return to these productive characteristics increased faster over time in performance pay than in non performance pay jobs we show that this finding is consistent with the view that underlying changes in returns to skill due for instance to technological change induce more firms to offer performance pay contracts and result in more wage inequality among workers who are paid for performance thus performance pay provides a channel through which underlying changes in returns to skill get translated into higher wage inequality we conclude that this channel accounts for 21 of the growth in the variance of male wages between the late 1970s and the early 1990s and for most of the increase in wage inequality above the eightieth percentile over the same period

longitudinal analyses of the effects of trade unions but union members are different from nonmembers in unobserved ways biasing your estimates y ou should make a selectivity bias correction simultaneously determine union status and economic outcomes develop an unobservables model use longitudinal data archetypical comment on virtually any study of the economic effects of umomsm or suitably modified on any other empirical subject

fiscal policy shocks and stock prices in the united states this paper uses a range of structural vars to show that the response of us stock prices to fiscal shocks changed in 1980 over the period 1955 1980 an expansionary spending or revenue shock was associated with modestly higher stock prices after 1980 along with a decline in the fiscal multiplier the response of stock prices to the same shock became negative and larger in magnitude we use an estimated dsge model to show that this change is consistent with a switch from an economy characterised by active fiscal policy and passive monetary policy to one where fiscal policy was passive and the central bank acted aggressively in response to inflationary shocks

is russia building too many pipelines explaining russia s oil and gas export strategy abstract the article examines russia s entire oil and gas export network and reveals that there is a considerable surplus pipeline capacity which is likely to endure in the future it brings to attention surplus capacity as a concept that could enrich discussions on what drivers russia s energy policy abroad and how moscow enhances its energy security the article provides three explanations on russia s surplus capacity for oil and gas exports first russia s institutional setting has been conducive for a surge in new pipelines as economic considerations have played a less significant role second russia s energy pivot to asia has already contributed to a widening surplus capacity in westbound oil pipelines and it is likely to have a similar impact on gas once it starts flowing to china third russia s energy security concerns namely about minimising transit risks have played a key role in its active pipeline diplomacy and new pipeline ventures the implications of russia s surplus capacity can be significant for oil the room for manoeuvring is wide enough to allow russia abandon an entire route of its choice for gas moscow is likely to enhance its bargaining position with ukraine while gazprom acquires more flexibility to deliver gas abroad

monetary policy uncertainty and the market reaction to macroeconomic news abstract we examine whether monetary policy uncertainty influences the reaction of the equity treasury security foreign exchange and crude oil markets as well as medium term interest rates to u s macroeconomic announcements using intraday futures data we show that in the presence of higher policy uncertainty the response to macroeconomic news weakens in the stock and crude oil markets and strengthens in the treasury interest rate and foreign exchange markets in times of elevated monetary policy uncertainty macroeconomic announcements impact the financial and crude oil markets to a large extent through expectations of future monetary policy

economic structure and international security the limits of the liberal case the theory that a liberal international economic structure is associated positively and a mercantilist structure negatively with international security is widespread but the case in favor of liberalism and the case against mercantilism are both one sided and the whole attempt to link economic structure to international security anyway overestimates the influence that economic structure has on the use of force political and military factors provide explanations more convincing than economic ones for the propensity of states to resort to or refrain from the use of force liberal and mercantilist structures each have both positive and negative impacts on the use of force but these impacts become important only when they are complemented by noneconomic factors governing the use of force hence security grounds cannot be used convincingly either as a reason for maintaining the current liberal system or as a reason for opposing a shift toward a more mercantilist structure of international economic relations

do high performance work practices exacerbate or mitigate the gender pay gap the impact of performance oriented work practices on the gender pay gap has been the subject of considerable conjecture but little empirical investigation using the 2004 and 2011 british workplace employment relations surveys the analysis finds that whilst average earnings are significantly higher for men and women across private sector workplaces that have introduced so called high performance work practices the presence of such practices is not associated with a narrowing of the gender pay gap and if anything tends to exacerbate the differential in earnings between men and women data from the 2004 survey suggest that women are more likely to work in high performance workplaces but this is not the case for 2011 there is no evidence that gender segregation is significantly less in high performance workplaces than in workplaces taking a more traditional route policy makers and employing organisations therefore need to be careful in reconciling their performance and equality strategies in particular they need to examine whether the former are truly gender neutral this requires additional measures possibly the introduction of human resource audits in the public and private sectors

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se

between russia as producer and ukraine as a transit country eu dilemma of interdependence and energy security abstract between 2014 and 2015 the eu started a new energy policy in order to address among other issues the problematic character of energy interdependence with russia and thus improve its energy security the aim of this article is to determine how this policy considered interdependence with russia in the light of diversification alternatives energy security is seen through short term and long term dimensions which can be equated to the concepts of vulnerability and sensitivity interdependence as the article shows the alternative of lng is limited by production and consumption patterns in both europe and other world markets it also shows that maintaining interdependence with russia and reducing the role of transit countries such as ukraine would yield benefits both in vulnerability and sensitivity interdependence however while the eu has strongly based its rhetoric on the promise of lng it has ignored alternatives that would maintain interdependence with russia eventually the eu s energy strategy has acknowledged the limitations of lng even though it has not changed its stance towards russia in that respect it seems fair to conclude the eu has not rigorously analysed the transit dimension in its interdependence with russia and the implications for its energy security

backward and forward solutions for economies with rational expectations in models where anticipations of future endogenous variables influence current behavior there exists an infinity of solutions under the assumption of rational expectations this problem has been dealt with in the study of macro economic models by the implicit or explicit use of one of three additional requirements optimality consistency with alleged economic behavior or conformity of the endogenous variables to an imposed stationarity condition these requirements have coincided in existing models leading to the choice of a unique solution a forward solution the purpose of this paper is to review the problem characterize the solutions and examine whether these requirements are acceptable section i presents a simple model and derives the set of solutions the model makes no claim to generality but has the major advantage that the issues are easily understood in this simple case section ii discusses the requirement of consistency with economic behavior section iii discusses the requirement of stationarity and section iv provides some conclusions