credit rationing and credit view empirical evidence from an ethical bank in italy attempts have been made in the empirical literature to identify credit rationing and its determinants using balance sheet data or evidence from corporate surveys however observational equivalence identification problems and interview biases are serious problems in these studies we analyze directly the determinants of credit rationing in credit files by examining the differencebetweentheamountsdemandedbyandsuppliedtoeachborrower as shown by official bank records our findings provide microeconomic evidence that supports the credit view hypothesis by showing that the european central bank refinancing rate is significantly and positively related to partial but not total credit rationing this finding is consistent with the hypothesis that this variable affects the total volume of bank loans

the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

income redistribution in a common labor market when households are mobile among jurisdictions income redistribution by individual jurisdictions creates fiscal externalities a model of interjurisdictional migration is used to study the nature of this redistributive externality analysis of optimal redistribution and optimal corrective subsidies from higher level governments shows that benefit levels for the recipients of income transfers and tax rates on mobile taxpayers should be equalized across jurisdictions a system of jurisdictions with a common labor market can achieve welfare improvements through coordination of domestic redistributive policy or through the intervention of a higher level government copyright 1991 by american economic association

credit channel of monetary policy in japan resolving the supply versus demand puzzle the credit view is that a monetary tightening affects the real economy by shifting the supply schedule of bank credit left while bank credit typically contracts following a monetary tightening the financial contraction does not necessarily mean a shift of the supply schedule testing the credit view requires the identification of the shifts of the demand and supply schedules of credit using an original approach this study shows that the credit view is supported for japan the credit view is however composed of two different views namely the lending view and the balance sheet view while the balance sheet view implies that the cutback of lending has no impact on the real economy the lending view implies independent impacts of the cutback given the acceptance of the credit view this study further attempts to test the balance sheet view against the lending view

biophysical assessments in evaluating industrial development an experience from taiwan freshwater aquaculture abstract herman e daly noted in 1992 that maintaining the scale of the physical economy within ecological capacity is vital in pursuing sustainability leading to the use of biophysical assessments as a central concept in sustainability analysis from the perspective of ecological economics accordingly this study provides an empirical support for the key role of biophysical assessments in sustainability analysis by presenting the pictures of taiwan freshwater aquaculture from monetary and biophysical perspectives the analytical results demonstrate that freshwater aquaculture contributes to taiwan s economic prosperity from a monetary perspective but causes land subsidence from the biophysical perspective results of this study also indicate the critical role of spatial dimension in biophysical assessments

self selection of emigrants theory and evidence on stochastic dominance in observable and unobservable characteristics the roy model has more precise predictions about the self selection of migrants than previously realised the conditions shown to result in positive or negative selection in terms of expected earnings also imply a stochastic dominance relationship between the earnings distributions of migrants and non migrants we test these predictions using the danish full population administrative data we find strong evidence of positive self selection of emigrants in terms of pre emigration earnings and residual earnings the income distribution for the migrants almost stochastically dominates the distribution for the non migrants decomposing the self selection in total earnings reveals that unobserved abilities play the dominant role

interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts the effects of monetary policy existing theory and evidence on the effects of monetary policy are reviewed substantial room for disagreement among economists remains new evidence based on multivariate time series studies of several countries is presented while certain patterns in the data consistent with effective monetary policy are strikingly similar across countries others particularly the tendency of interest rate increases to predict high inflation are harder to reconcile with effective monetary policy

diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal us can we feed the animals in 2030 abstract the paper argues that current international projections of meat and feed demand may underestimate future consumption patterns for mainly two reasons demand projections are based on income extrapolation with an assumed demand elasticity and feed requirements per unit of meat are taken to be fixed instead we propose a structural specification that includes a dietary shift towards meat as per capita income increases and we account for a shift from traditional to cereal intensive feeding technologies our finding is that under the commonly assumed growth rates of per capita income world cereal feed demand will be significantly higher in the coming 30 years than is currently projected by international organizations even if we allow for price effects compared to other factors that are generally expected to affect the future world food situation the quantitative impact of the increased cereal feed demand greatly exceeds that of gmos and climate change in the coming three decades

world agricultural futures regional sustainability and ecological limits there is a wide spectrum of views on possible futures for world agriculture with a clear division between neoclassical and ecological economics approaches to the issue an incremental approach characteristic of neoclassical economics focuses on steady yield increases as a result of technological progress and increased input use in this view there are no inherent limits to growth and therefore an optimistic view tends to be taken of future production potential by contrast an analysis based on the concept of carrying capacity emphasizes environmental limits to system growth this paper reviews estimates of carrying capacity as well as trends in land use yields and environmental impacts of agriculture demand projections are made for the year 2025 based on population momentum and a slow rate of increase in per capita consumption the global system is seen to be approaching carrying capacity limits over the next 30 years with more severe stresses at a regional level and widening food deficits in developing nations strong yield growth in china south asia africa north america and europe will be necessary to avert global shortfalls but resource and environmental factors pose serious constraints in all these areas the pressure to increase yields is therefore in conflict with the requirements of long term sustainability this indicates the need for regional models of sustainable agro ecosystems which balance yield requirements with ecological constraints in addition demand side issues of population policy efficiency in consumption and distributional equity become increasingly important in a world of constrained agricultural growth

bank information monopoly and trade credit do only banks have information about small businesses according to previous studies a bank can set a higher interest rate for small firms by establishing a lending relationship since information asymmetry limits competition between banks therefore the bank can acquire monopoly rent from small firms however if small firms can use trade credit which is another financial source the bank cannot extract monopoly rent in this article we examine whether small firms can use trade credit if the bank sets a higher interest rate using panel data of small firms in japan our analysis shows that when the interest rate the bank sets is too severe or worsened for the borrower the ratio of trade payables increases and the bank loses its amount of loans this result implies that trade creditors alleviate the problems of bank information monopolies in japan

economic growth convergence and world food demand and supply in projecting global food demand to 2050 much attention has been given to rising demand due to the projected population increase from the current 7 4 billion to more than 9 billion an increasingly important source of the increase in food demand is per capita demand growth induced by rising income per person since the proportion of income spending on food decreases as incomes rise growth in global food demand will be greater if incomes grow faster in developing countries than in high income countries such a pattern of income convergence has become established in recent years making it important to assess the implications for food demand and supply using a resource based measure of food that accounts for the much higher production costs associated with dietary upgrading this paper concludes that per capita demand growth is likely to be a more important driver of food demand than population growth between now and 2050 using the middle ground international institute for applied systems analysis shared socioeconomic pathway projections to 2050 which assume continued income convergence the paper finds that the increase in food demand 102 percent would be roughly a third greater than without convergence 78 percent since the impact of convergence on the supply side is much more muted convergence puts upward pressure on world food prices partially offsetting a baseline trend toward falling world food prices to 2050

linking globalization to local land uses how eco consumers and gourmands are changing the colombian coffee landscapes market trends are becoming prominent forces shaping local landscapes the increasing demand for high quality and sus tainable coffees is driving land use decisions among colombian farmers a value chain analysis shows that farmers who sell to differen tiated markets significantly captured a larger portion of the value added and faced lower volatility than mainstream producers consequently regions apt for producing differentiated coffees experienced the greatest increase in area planted tracing the value chain reveals how land use decisions increasingly depend on the pressures and opportunities created by global markets with detectable impacts on livelihoods and landscapes

economic growth sustainable development and food consumption evidence across different income groups of countries abstract considering that high population and income growths will lead the coming decades an increase in global food demand is expected livestock products such as meat are closely related to this trend but also associated with impacts on the environment and public health from land and water depletion to greenhouse gases emissions and higher risks of non communicable diseases this trend raises doubts about the sustainability of the food industry and thus a solution is needed for the problem how to feed the world population without compromising present and future generations the literature suggests that meat consumption should be reduced for the sake of the environment and global population however without considering the effects that such reduction would have on the economy inspired by these facts this paper empirically analyses the interactions between food consumption economic growth and sustainable development measured by the index of sustainable economic welfare more specifically the paper assesses the effect that food consumption has on the economy the econometric analysis applies the autoregressive distributed lag model for 77 countries further distinguished by their income group from 1995 to 2013 the findings support that meat consumption has different impacts on economic growth and sustainable development considering different income groups however there is an evident dilemma between economic growth and sustainable development since meat consumption has contradictory effects on each thus it is crucial to understand how to promote sustainability i e reducing the environmental externalities and chronic health diseases without compromising economic growth

interdependence of the banking sector and the real sector evidence from oecd countries this article investigates the validity of the credit view hypothesis in eleven oecd organization for economic cooperation and development countries over the period 1987 qi to 2003 qiii the existence of a long run relationship between the banking sector and the real sector is supported by cointegration test results for some of the countries in the sample granger causality tests show the leading role of the banking sector in the real sector thus supporting the credit view hypothesis whereas for other countries the same tests indicate no interdependence

the ecological footprint of poverty alleviation evidence from mexico s oportunidades program abstract we study the consequences of poverty alleviation programs for environmental degradation we exploit the community level eligibility discontinuity for a conditional cash transfer program in mexico to identify the impacts of income increases on deforestation and use the program s initial randomized rollout to explore household responses we find that additional income raises consumption of land intensive goods and increases deforestation the observed production response and deforestation increase are larger in communities with poor road infrastructure this suggests that better access to markets disperses environmental harm and that the full effects of poverty alleviation on the environment can be observed only where poor infrastructure localizes them

effects of technological change in agriculture on food consumption and nutrition rice in a west african setting abstract this paper traces the effects of technological change in agriculture to production and income effects and to consumption and nutritional effects the study environment is west africa the gambia the technological change considered is various new modes of rice production versus traditional rice production main findings of this empirical analysis are the following 1 it cannot be assumed that by focusing investment on a woman s crop one helps women farmers the more a new technology increased labor productivity in rice the more there was a takeover of the rice production technology by male producers and the more the crop became a communal crop for household food security household income increased substantially 2 much of the increased income is spent on increased calorie consumption it makes no difference for the degree of change in calorie consumption levels if change in real income is in the form of cash or subsistence food 3 technological change effects mediated through income are traced to increased food consumption calories at the household level where it is found to significantly improve children s nutritional status especially in the rainy season

food in sub saharan africa trends and policy challenges for the 1990s abstract the food situation in africa can be expected to become increasingly serious as the end of the century approaches the gap between domestic supply and food needs in rapidly widening yield increasing technology becomes essential in view of land scarcity in high potential areas and sustainability problems in marginal zones the concern of governments for food self sufficiency however must not divert attention from the primary objective of household food security which is essentially a question of households real income accelerated rural growth and improved rural health and sanitation services accessible to the poor are central elements for household food security improvement

virtual land use and agricultural trade estimating environmental and socio economic impacts abstract liberalization has caused an increase in the global trade of goods and services in particular the value and physical volume of agricultural goods traded have largely increased as the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex they are rarely included in the national and international agricultural policies one reason is that there is a lack of concepts and methods for assessing the environmental and social impacts of trade policies in this paper we develop a method for quantifying and assessing the land use hidden in the export and import of agricultural goods for the case of switzerland for our analysis we focus on arable crops the first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of switzerland with countries all over the world through the import and export of land use for arable crops the second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio economic impacts of agricultural land use we applied the method to the case of wheat cultivation within switzerland and import to switzerland the major problem we were confronted with was the availability of data which had both to be reliable and available for the countries wheat is imported from the results show that the calculation of land use is credible in spite of the problems related with data availability the assessment results for each indicator are in agreement with the current situation in the respective countries in addition the aggregation seems to accurately reflect the countries agricultural polices the developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio economic impacts of an increase in wheat imports to switzerland we argue that this method could be applied for anticipating potential impacts of trade agreements still further research is required for fine tuning of the utility functions including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure for practical applications important aspects like water shortage should enlarge our limited set of indicators in addition the average impact on a country level was assessed to refine that different agricultural systems ranging from intensive to extensive to organic should be considered beyond our scope was to analyze impacts due to other life cycle stages than the agricultural production for informed decision however information on the whole life cycle of agricultural products is required

food labeling and eco friendly consumption experimental evidence from a belgian supermarket using an incentive compatible framed field experiment we investigate whether consumers food consumption is more eco friendly when the information about a product s environmental impact is more easily accessible through an online survey we identify a food label that is perceived to be the most easily accessible for assessing a product s eco friendliness among six alternatives these alternatives vary on multiple dimensions including whether a standardized score of the overall environmental impact is added this new food label is subsequently tested in an experimental food market embedded in a belgian supermarket we find that the presence of the new label that was preselected in the online survey leads to more eco friendly food consumption relative to either the label currently used in the supermarket or the label that contains the raw information of the environmental impact in our experimental food market the use of an easy to interpret but comprehensive environmental information label increases the overall eco friendliness of our subjects food consumption by about 5 3 relative to the default label used in current markets

immigrant selectivity and wages the evidence for women in an effort to extend the analysis of selectivity to female immigrants this paper examines the impact of economic conditions at the time of migration on the subsequent wages of foreign born women in the united states in addition the variables chosen to describe the migration decision have been expanded to include the effects of household status and immigration policy these results are compared to previous results for men and provide additional evidence about how the context of the migration decision affects the subsequent success of immigrants in the united states the sample for this project comes from the april 1983 current population survey and consists of married native and foreign born women between the ages of 16 and 64 excerpt

trimming the excess environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption in australia abstract tackling the overconsumption of discretionary foods foods and drinks not necessary to provide the nutrients the body needs is central to aligning human and planetary health whilst the adverse health impacts of discretionary foods are well documented the environmental and broader sustainability impacts of these products deserve more attention especially since their consumption has been increasing in recent decades particularly amongst low income groups this paper presents a quantitative case study analysis of discretionary food consumption and the associated environmental impacts for households from different income groups in australia environmentally extended input output analysis is used to estimate the full life cycle environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption on the basis of household expenditures on average discretionary foods account for a significant 35 39 33 and 35 of the overall diet related life cycle water use energy use carbon dioxide equivalent and land use respectively these significant percentages provide further support for the need to incentivise diets that are both healthier and more sustainable including divestment from discretionary food products the study highlights the challenges ahead including the need for further research on food substitutions to minimise environmental and social impacts whilst maximising nutritional quality especially amongst poorer socioeconomic groups

consumption patterns and their effects on land required for food abstract vast amounts of land are required for the production of food but the area suitable for growing crops is limited in this paper attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages varying from subsistence to affluent leading to information on land requirements for food large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements while food consumption expenditure and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time a difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing european food patterns while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat it is argued that in the near future changes in consumption patterns rather than population growth will form the most important variable for total land requirements for food trends towards the consumption of foods associated with affluent lifestyles will bring with them a need for more land lifestyle changes changes in consumer behavior on a household level can be considered as powerful options to reduce the use of natural resources such as agricultural land

tracing distant environmental impacts of agricultural products from a consumer perspective globally trade flows of agricultural products are increasing while value is typically added along the whole production chain certain environmental impacts such as land and water use biomass appropriation and soil degradation are intrinsically linked to where the primary products originate from when taking a consumer oriented approach on environmental problems bilateral trade statistics can help in providing a clearer picture about the location of impacts caused by consumption elsewhere however in today s increasingly globalized world consumer goods are often imported from countries other than where the primary product originated from for instance soybeans are transported from brazil to the netherlands where they are processed into soy oil which is shipped to austria where it is consumed utilizing bilateral trade matrices and matrix algebra we present a method that allows to clearly link consumption patterns to the origin of primary products in this the method can help to provide information about consumption related distant environmental impacts we employ the case of land and water use linked to austria s soy product consumption to demonstrate the approach s relevance finally we outline some possible applications of this method to show its potential in enhancing understanding for informed consumer based environmental decision making

economically extended mfa a material flow approach for a better understanding of food production chain abstract in the following article we introduce a method called economically extended material flow analysis ee mfa which aims at studying causal relationships between economically motivated human behaviour and resource consumption for this purpose we expand mfa with economic information this method is evaluated by applying it in a case study on resource efficiency in the food production chain ee mfa reduces the shortcomings of a technically oriented mfa by including a description of the inputs and outputs in money units without changing the system structure this benefit is shown in the status quo analysis of to nourish where data from various sources could be compiled to set up a consistent model of material energy and money flows a further value addition of the method is that it creates a basis for a multi criteria evaluation of strategies to improve resource efficiency on a regional scale one result of this multi criteria evaluation is a classification of strategies according to their influence on the materials energy and money flows

tele connecting urban food consumption to land use at multiple spatial scales a case study of beef in taiwan abstract this study takes the first step to tele connect urban food consumption to land use at multiple spatial scales by taking beef consumption of taiwan during 1990 2016 as a test case the novelty of this study is to make a quantitative effort in advancing the methodological approach in urban studies and facilitates future research in the subject area our numerical results support the hypothesis of ult associated with beef consumption and suggest that the phenomena of beef related land teleconnection are more significant in urban areas from the time dynamic perspective moreover trade liberalization extends the spatial spectrum of implied land use associated with beef consumption it allows imports towards relative land saving origins and alleviates beef related ult finally income growth plays a key role in driving up the implied land use of beef consumption at earlier stage of urban development in contrast at the later stage the increase in expenditure intensity of beef accounts for surging beef consumption in cities

do measures of monetary policy in a var make sense no in many vector autoregressions vars monetary policy shocks are identified with the least squares residuals from a regression of the federal funds rate on an assortment of variables such regressions appear to be structurally fragile and are at odds with other evidence on the nature of the u s federal reserve s reaction function furthermore the residuals from these regressions show little correlation across various vars or with funds rate shocks that are derived from forward looking financial markets my results provide a sharp critique of current monetary vars

how important is the credit channel in the transmission of monetary policy in mexico abstractthis article empirically examines the importance of the credit channel of monetary policy in mexico for the period 2004 2013 we estimate a vector autoregressive var model to analyse the effects of a monetary policy shock on real output and we also use a threshold var model to investigate asymmetric effects of contractionary and expansionary policies the empirical results suggest that a contractionary monetary policy results in a fall in the supply of loans together with an increase in the spread between the lending and deposit rate to the extent that some borrowers are dependent on bank loans for credit the reduced supply of loans amplifies the effects of monetary policy on output associated with the traditional interest rate channel our results also suggest that the importance of the credit channel is larger for contractionary shocks than for expansionary shocks

design and development of a measuring method for environmental sustainability in food production systems abstract these days sustainability is a key issue for many private companies that address their sustainable corporate performance scp the perspective is essential for their license to operate and forms the basis for business principles and practices the lack of internationally accepted reporting standards on what when and where to report makes it difficult to assess sustainability however moreover measuring tools providing information on scp are only the first step towards sustainability to prevent negative effects of operations being transferred from one company to another the second step is the development of a system based approach for all companies that contribute to an end product this paper presents the findings of a study about the use of environmental indicators for food production and proposes a measuring method for environmental sustainability in food production systems the study shows that environmental scp often focuses on events at a local level the enormous number of indicators found in the literature generates too much data that often provide no additional knowledge on the environmental sustainability of a system moreover although environmental research has addressed many aspects of sustainability it has often ignored interactions overall environmental implications of food production are therefore poorly understood the proposed measuring method uses three indicators that address global environmental issues the use of energy from both fossil and renewable sources land and water the systemic approach can calculate trade offs along supply chains that make up a production system the use of the method implies an extension of environmental scp towards the overall performance of a production system the final outcome is expressed in three performance indicators the total land energy and water requirement per kilogram of available food for companies the data generated can be used to compare trends over time to compare results with targets and to benchmark a company against others for consumers data can be used to compare the environmental effects of various foods the method is also applicable to other business sectors the study is part of a multidisciplinary project on the scientific modeling and measuring of scp involving economic social and environmental dimensions acceptance of the measuring methods developed may be a powerful contribution towards creating sustainable business practices

determinants of migration in the nordic labor market migration flows in the integrated nordic labor market are heavily dominated by finnish migration to sweden differences in migration behavior across the nordic populations are identified elasticities of migration are obtained from a logistic human capital model estimated as seemingly unrelated regressions differences in migration behavior are shown to exist but the elasticities are not systematically higher for the finns as could be expected the domination of finnish migration to sweden is instead explained by real wage differences and since these have narrowed major migration flows should not be expected in the future unless large differences in labor market performance arise excerpt