the impact of the german feed in tariff scheme on innovation evidence based on patent filings in renewable energy technologies abstract over the last two decades feed in tariffs have pushed the massive expansion of electricity from renewable energy sources in germany between 1991 and 1999 feed in tariffs were prescribed through the electricity feed in law the so called stromeinspeisungsgesetz seg at relatively moderate rates from 2000 onwards the seg was replaced by the renewable energy sources act the so called erneuerbare energien gesetz eeg with much higher subsidy rates the rise in subsidies to renewable power generation under the eeg came along with a substantial increase in electricity prices provoking an intense public debate on the benefits of renewable energy promotion in our regression analysis we assess one popular justification for feed in tariffs the demand side effect of induced innovation we find that the innovation impact of the german feed in tariff scheme over the last two decades supports the positive innovation hypothesis however the inducement effect of the feed in tariff scheme under the eeg is not significantly different from that of the seg given the drastic cost of the eeg we caution against the appraisal of the eeg feed in tariff scheme solely on the grounds of its impact on technological innovation

does environmental policy stringency foster innovation and productivity in oecd countries abstract in this paper we test the weak and strong versions of the porter hypothesis using data from 14 oecd countries over the period 1990 2011 our analysis makes two contributions to the literature on the topic first we use a newly released environmental policy stringency index eps provided by the oecd as an indicator for the stringency of environmental regulations which addresses the multi dimensionality of environmental regulations second as a suitable method to deal with asymmetric distributions of the dependent variables we use a panel quantile regression model which allow us to test whether or not the hypothesis holds for all quantiles of the distribution of the corresponding dependent variable the findings indicate that in the short term a more strict environmental policy is associated with an increase in the number of patent applications and in total factor productivity tfp for the highest quantiles of the distribution of patents and for all quantiles of tfp respectively moreover environmental stringency has a positive effect on research and development expenditures rd only in the lower quantiles 10 25 in the long term the eps is affecting rd patents and tfp in all quantiles and hence more stringent environmental regulations promote cleaner production processes that could help improving energy efficiency

regional migration in britain an analysis of gross flows using nhs central register data the authors extend the use of a hiring function model whereby job seekers are matched with vacancies to the analysis of regional migration in britain annual data from the national health service central register for 1975 1989 are used to show that unemployment and vacancy rates distance and an index of similarities across regions in industry based employment composition help determine migration flows across regions the hiring function approach offers a consistent way of modelling gross and net flows and helps explain both the high level of gross relative to net flows and the tendency for migration to fall in a recession even when unemployment differentials widen excerpt

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

technical change external economies and the porter hypothesis abstract michael porter introduces the idea that environmental regulations may benefit affected firms this paper derives results consistent with porter s hypothesis by employing a general equilibrium framework with a large number of agents external economies of scale in production and discrete changes in technology the model shows that endogenous technical change makes porter s hypothesis feasible however a policy that produces results consistent with porter s hypothesis is not necessarily optimal

the empirical content of the roy model this paper clarifies and extends the classical roy model of self selection and earnings inequality the original roy model based on the assumption that log skills are normally distributed is shown to imply that pursuit of comparative advantage in a free market reduces earnings inequality compared to the earnings distribution that would result if workers were randomly assigned to sectors aggregate log earnings are right skewed even if one sectoral distribution is left skewed most major implications of the log normal roy model survive if differences in skills are log concave however few implications of the model survive if skills are generated from more general distributions we consider the identifiability of the roy model from data on earnings distributions the normal theory version is identifiable without regressors or exclusion restrictions sectoral distributions can be identified knowing only the aggregate earnings distribution for general skill distributions the model is not identified and has no empirical content with sufficient price variation the model can be identified from multimarket data cross sectional variation in regressors can substitute for price variation in restoring empirical content to the roy model

the long term consequences of resource based specialisation using geological variation in oil abundance in the southern us i examine the long term effects of resource based specialisation through economic channels in 1890 oil abundant counties were similar to other nearby counties but after oil was discovered they began to specialise in its production from 1940 90 oil abundance increased local employment per square kilometre especially in mining but also in manufacturing oil abundant counties had higher population growth higher per capita income and better infrastructure 2010 the author s the economic journal 2010 royal economic society

strategic responses to automobile emissions control a game theoretic analysis abstract this paper examines the dynamics of standard setting regulation under technological uncertainty and asymmetric information about technological capability a two period model which allows fully strategic action is developed and applied to the regulation of automobile emissions a situation in which standards have been used to force innovation it is found that the initial level of r d activity caused by regulation increases with the intrinsic technical capability of industry this result done not depend on marginal productivities of research that favor high capability types and implies that a poor capability industry will not attempt to compensate for its inability to innovate with increased research activity it is also found that the regulator s ability to induce investment is greater when r d is likely to be unsuccessful

property taxation and the economy after the barker review this paper analyses the roles of property and land values in the uk economy and considers property tax reform with the objectives of improving macro economic stability resource allocation economic inequality and the environment with uk house prices at all time peaks relative to incomes concerns about affordability and the distributional consequences have increased the barker review for the uk treasury of new housing supply reported in 2004 and recommended extensive reforms of the land use planning system as well as various other reforms including new development taxes this paper argues that these taxes are unwise compared to the property tax reforms proposed here

housing market heterogeneity in a monetary union this paper studies the implications of cross country housing market heterogeneity in a monetary union for both shock transmission and welfare i develop a two country new keynesian general equilibrium model with housing and collateral constraints to explore this issue the conventional wisdom is that welfare would be higher in a monetary union if mortgage markets were homogeneous this paper shows instead that welfare is higher only when homogenization does not result in higher aggregate volatility because of financial accelerator effects or does not redistribute too much wealth from borrowers to savers

environmental regulation and competitiveness empirical evidence on the porter hypothesis from european manufacturing sectors abstract this paper investigates the weak and strong versions of porter hypothesis ph focusing on the manufacturing sectors of 17 european countries between 1997 and 2009 the hypothesis that well crafted and well enforced regulation would benefit both the environment and the firm was originally proposed by porter 1991 and porter and van der linde 1995 to date the literature has analyzed the impact of environmental regulation on innovation and on productivity mostly in separate analyses and focusing on the usa the few existing contributions on europe study the effect of environmental regulation either on green innovation or on performance indicators such as exports we instead look at overall innovation and productivity impacts first focusing on overall innovative activity allows us to account for potential opportunity costs of induced innovations second productivity impacts are arguably the most relevant indicators for the strong ph as a proxy of environmental policy stringency we use pollution abatement and control expenditures pace one of the few sectoral level indicators available we remedy upon its main drawback namely potential endogeneity by adopting an instrumental variable estimation approach we find evidence of a positive impact of environmental regulation on the output of innovation activity as proxied by patents thus providing support in favor of the weak ph this result is in line with most of the literature on the other front we find no evidence in favor of the strong ph as productivity appears to be unaffected by the degree of pollution control and abatement efforts

enforcing time inconsistent regulation i introduction passage of legislation is merely the beginning of the regulatory task the successful translation of policy from legislative debate into regulation is not guaranteed implementation may be especially problematic for regulations that are time inconsistent regulations have the potential for time inconsistency if the government cannot credibly commit itself to enforcement of the original legislation at every relevant point in time consider a law that sets a regulatory standard to be enforced several years in the future the regulation s implementation may take the following course for any given enforcement period first firms are expected to engage in long term investment to move towards meeting the standard second after that investment has been completed an enforcement agency reviews and has the opportunity to modify the standards shortly before the date at which they are to be enforced finally after the agency s review firms make short term investment to meet the standard this process may be repeated for subsequent enforcement periods this sequence of events presents inherent problems for the enforceability of a regulation during the long term investment stage regulated firms know that the relevant administrative agency may be unable to credibly bind itself to future actions given this firms may believe that the agency s enforcement posture depends on their own actions firms may therefore be able to act strategically to induce the regulatory agency to lower the relevant standard before its enforcement date facing such incentives firms may not undertake the desired long term investments upon review the enforcement agency could find that requiring firms to make short term investments to meet the standard may involve substantial social costs facing such costs the agency may grant regulatory relief and relax the standard in these circumstances society s welfare may be greater if firms engaged in the necessary long term investment to meet the standard prior to the enforcement date in order to force firms to make the necessary long term investment however the enforcement agency may need to threaten to punish firms by enforcing the original standard even if firms long term investments are below optimal levels the need to threaten this punishment places the agency in a difficult position if firms do not undertake the desired long term investments it may be in the agency s and society s interests to relax the initial standard to avoid the potentially higher costs associated with short term investments firms will understand this and thus make no ex ante investment towards meeting the standard the regulation is therefore time inconsistent and unenforceable in the case of automobile fuel economy regulations for example congress in 1975 set standards for model years 1978 and afterwards but provided the executive branch in the form of the national highway traffic safety administration nhtsa with discretion to modify the standard for model years after 1984 automobile manufacturers then undertook long term product investment that may have been initiated in order to meet the standards for model years 1985 1986 and 1989 however firms were able to gain regulatory relief from nhtsa at the start of the relevant model years if relief had not been granted there would have been insufficient time for further product innovation and firms would have had to meet the standard by eliminating less fuel efficient vehicles from their fleets a strategy that would have been costly not only to themselves but to their employees and customers as well see kleit 1990 and greene 1991 on the other hand in the 1970s the congress passed laws to be enforced by the environmental protection agency that required automobile companies to invest millions of dollars in pollution control devices while automobile firms achieved some delay in the implementation of the law the devices ultimately were installed

money income prices and interest rates including data from the 1980s sharply weakens the postwar time series evidence indicating significant relationships between money however defined and nominal income or between money and either real income or prices separately focusing on data from 1970 onward destroys this evidence altogether evidence indicating cointegration of real income and real money balances with due allowance for the effect of interest rates also deteriorates when the sample extends through the 1980s a positive finding is that the spread between the commercial paper rate and the treasury bill rate consistently contains highly significant information about future movements in real income copyright 1992 by american economic association

firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control reply abstract the process of technological change in pollution control is broken into three basic steps innovation diffusion and optimal agency response firm incentives to promote these steps are then examined under five regulatory regimes direct controls emission subsidies emission taxes free marketable permits and auctioned marketable permits on a relative basis emission taxes and auctioned permits provide the highest firm incentives to promote technological change at times free permits generate lower incentives direct controls which are common regulatory tools usually provide the lowest relative firm incentives to promote technological change

housing finance and monetary policy we document three facts concerning how the structure of housing finance affects the monetary transmission mechanism first the characteristics of residential mortgage markets differ markedly across industrialized countries second the impact of monetary policy shocks to residential investment and house prices is significantly stronger in those countries with larger flexibility development of mortgage markets third the transmission to consumption is stronger only in those countries where mortgage equity release is common and mortgage contracts are predominantly of the variable rate type we then build a two sector dsge model with financial constraints to rationalize those facts

the role of policy instruments in the innovation and diffusion of environmentally friendlier technologies popular claims versus case study experiences abstract moving towards sustainability will require that new environmentally friendlier technologies are developed and widely adopted policy instruments that promote eco efficiency are therefore necessary some claims frequently made in the literature on the relationship between policy instruments and technological development are examined the claims concern regulations environmental taxation and funding of research and development the claims are explored on the basis of empirical evidence from two sectors the pulp and paper industry and the marine engine industry little support was found for some of the claims in some cases even contradictory findings and for some claims the findings differed between the sectors and even within a sector depending on the issue

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

booms and busts in the uk housing market the often volatile behaviour of uk house prices between 1957 and 1994 is analysed in an annual econometric model theory suggests that financial liberalisation of mortgage markets in the 1980s should have led to notable shifts in house price behaviour the evidence supports the predictions of theory suggesting shifts took place in wealth effects as in the consumption function and that real interest rates and income expectations became more important the presence of transactions costs suggests important nonlinearities in house price dynamics the paper also contains an explicit econometric treatment of expectations demography supply spillovers from the rented sector and of composition biases in the official house price index

the era of incremental change in the technology innovation life cycle an analysis of the automotive emission control industry abstract according to the life cycle model of technological evolution after the emergence of a dominant design technological product industries undergo an era of incremental change this era of incremental change is not well understood in the existing literature although the period is typically characterized in terms of stability and minimal innovation we find that the era of incremental change can be actually quite dynamic through our research into the period of time following the emergence of a dominant design in automotive emission control systems we find that the overall product innovation in the industry did not decline immediately following the dominant design and increased throughout the era of incremental change further we find that firms maintain their attention on the same core components that they innovated upon before the dominant design but that these components make up less of the overall proportion of total innovation throughout the era of incremental change finally we found that the concentration of innovating firms in the industry increases immediately following the dominant design and this concentration decreases over time throughout the era of incremental change findings imply a pattern of contraction and expansion in the era of incremental change that extends previous work on the technological product life cycles and helps to characterize the era of incremental change in a novel way

asymmetries in housing and financial market institutions and emu despite convergence pressures differences in housing and financial market institutions across the 15 member states of the european union are still enormous this paper argues that they have profound effects on the responsiveness of output and inflation in the different countries to changes in short term interest rates as well as to asset market shocks of external origin the economic reasoning behind this claim is set out and the institutional differences are described the paper assesses the sometimes conflicting empirical evidence on this issue barriers to convergence and implications for labour market flexibility are discussed the uk ireland finland and sweden tend to cluster at one extreme of the relevant institutional characteristics the paper concludes with a set of proposals for institutional reforms which would significantly reduce the tensions within emu and the potential for instability in these economies entailed by emu membership

environmental policy incentives to adopt advanced abatement technology abstract we investigate incentives through environmental policy instruments to adopt advanced abatement technology first we study the case where the regulator makes long term commitments to policy levels and does not anticipate arrival of new technology we show that taxes provide stronger incentives than permits auctioned and free permits offer identical incentives and standards may give stronger incentives than permits second we investigate scenarios where the regulator anticipates new technologies we show that with taxes and permits the regulator can induce first best outcomes if he moves after firms have invested whereas this does not always hold if he moves first

quality leadership when regulatory standards are forthcoming in many markets governments set minimum quality standards while some sellers compete on the basis of quality by exceeding them such quality leadership strategies often win public acclaim especially when they involve environmental attributes using a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation we show that if the high quality firm can commit to a quality level before regulations are promulgated it induces the regulator to weaken standards and welfare falls our results raise doubts about the social benefits of corporate self regulation and highlight the dangers of lengthy delays between legislative mandates for new regulations and their implementation

does technological innovation really reduce marginal abatement costs some theory algebraic evidence and policy implications the existing literature models innovation in pollution control as a reduction in marginal abatement costs we show that this assumption is inappropriate for production process innovations such as fuel switching algebraically we examine the effects of different innovation types on marginal abatement cost curves showing that some desirable innovations increase marginal abatement costs empirically we estimate marginal abatement costs for sulfur dioxide by measuring the output distance function for electric power in korea regression results confirm that production process innovations did raise marginal abatement costs in this case one policy implication economic instruments do not always provide stronger innovation incentives than command and control policies

innovation in israel 1968 1997 a comparative analysis using patent data abstract the israeli high tech sector is widely regarded as a hotbed of cutting edge technologies and as the growth engine of the israeli economy in the 1990s and beyond in this paper we present a close up portrait of innovation in israel for the past 30 years with the aid of highly detailed patent data we use for that purpose all israeli patents taken in the us over 7000 as well as us patents and patents from other countries for comparative purposes the time path of israeli patenting reveals big jumps in the mid 1980s and then again in the early 1990s reflecting underlying shocks in policy and in the availability of relevant inputs israeli ranks high in terms of patents per capita compared to the g7 the asian tigers and a group of countries with similar gdp per capita finland is strikingly similar taiwan s patenting has grown extremely fast and is now on par with israel south korea is rapidly closing the gap the technological composition of israeli innovations reflects quite well worldwide technological trends except that computers and communications the fastest growing field in the us has grown even faster in israel the weak side resides in the composition of israeli assignees the actual owners of the intellectual property rights just 35 of israeli patents were assigned to israeli corporations a much lower percentage than in most other countries relatively large shares went to foreign assignees to universities and the government and to private inventors on the other hand israeli patents are of good quality in terms of citations received and getting better over time us patents command on average more citations but not in computers and communications or in biotechnology and israeli patents are significantly better than those of the reference group of countries

instrument choice when regulators and firms bargain abstract we compare outcomes with an emissions tax and an emissions standard when a firm and regulator engage in cooperative bargaining over the stringency of the regulation bargaining is motivated by giving the firm a choice of abatement technologies if the firm s preferred technology differs from the regulator s the first best outcome is not an equilibrium of the traditional noncooperative game in which the regulator is a stackelberg leader the regulator may therefore choose to offer the firm a more lenient regulation if it agrees to switch technologies we find that the resulting bargaining outcomes differ for a tax and a standard even though information is symmetric and we identify conditions under which each instrument yields lower social costs

ten new propositions in uk housing macroeconomics an overview of the first years of the century in the mid 1990s meen set out a series of propositions concerning the relationship between housing and the macro economy during the 1980s and early 1990s this paper provides 10 further propositio

technology trade and growth a unified framework abstract our recent work examines the links among innovation technology trade and growth one strand focuses on research activity technology diffusion and growth the other examines technology and trade in this paper we exploit the common treatment of technology in these two strands to provide a parsimonious model of innovation growth and trade we examine the effect of lower geographic barriers to trade on research and the effects of scale and research productivity on relative incomes

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

monetary economic myth and econometric reality few of the main macro economic forecasting systems can produce sensible forecasts without the tender loving care of their proprietors many econometric equations in com mon use show significant deterioration in the accuracy with which they characterise data as time passes and many economists are sceptical about empirical evidence feeling it lacks credibility monetary relationships have the dubious distinction of being among the leaders in this field as witnessed by the very large mispredictions of m1 models in the usa over what is now known as the missing money period 1973 76 as well as during the recent great velocity decline 1979 82 in the uk models of m1 and m3 demand experienced large structural breaks following the competition and credit control regu lation changes and the move to floating exchange rates perhaps it is no surprise that goodhart s law should have been formulated with respect to money demand equations

saving and capital market imperfections the italian experience italy s saving rate is high by international standards even when differences in growth are taken into account we argue that credit and insurance market imperfections provide a plausible explanation for the high italian saving rate we also reject the potential roles of the public sector informal financial arrangements bequests and the slope of the earnings profile as alternative explanations of the evidence

do asymmetries matter for european monetary policy in this paper we analyze the impact of economic and institutional ecb decision rules asymmetries on the effectiveness of monetary policy in euroland we consider a model where asymmetric shocks and divergent propagation of shocks in output and inflation are potential causes of tensions within the ecb concerning the conduct of common monetary interest rate policy welfare implications of the alternative decision procedures are discussed

the role of the structural transformation in aggregate productivity we investigate the role of sectoral differences in labor productivity in explaining the process of structural transformation the secular reallocation of labor across sectors and the time path of aggregate productivity across countries using a simple model of the structural transformation that is calibrated to the growth experience of the united states we measure sectoral labor productivity differences across countries productivity differences between rich and poor countries are large in agriculture and services and smaller in manufacturing moreover over time productivity gaps have been substantially reduced in agriculture and industry but not nearly as much in services in the model these sectoral productivity patterns generate implications that are broadly consistent with the cross country evidence on the structural transformation aggregate productivity paths and relative prices we show that productivity catch up in industry explains about 50 percent of the gains in aggregate productivity across countries while low relative productivity in services and the lack of catch up explains all the experiences of slowdown stagnation and decline observed across countries

the monetary transmission mechanism an empirical framework this paper provides an overview of the monetary transmission mechanism describing the impact of changes in monetary policy on real gdp changes in financial market prices including long term interest rates and exchange rates are the main vehicle for the transmission of policy the framework incorporates rational expectations and policy rules it is empirical and appears to fit the facts well

what percentage of innovations are patented empirical estimates for european firms abstract a 1993 survey on the innovative activities of europe s largest industrial firms obtained useable results on patenting activities for 604 respondents the data are used to calculate the sales weighted propensity rates for 19 industries the propensity rates equal the percentage of innovations for which a patent application is made the propensity rates for product innovations average 35 9 varying between 8 1 in textiles and 79 2 in pharmaceuticals the average for process innovations is 24 8 varying from 8 1 in textiles to 46 8 for precision instruments only four sectors have patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations combined that exceed 50 pharmaceuticals chemicals machinery and precision instruments regression results that control for the effect of industry sector show that patent propensity rates increase with firm size and are higher among firms that find patents to be an important method for preventing competitors from copying both product and process innovations the effect of secrecy is not so straightforward firms that find secrecy to be an important protection method for product innovations are less likely to patent as expected but secrecy has little effect on the propensity to patent process innovations the r d intensity of the firm has no effect on patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations the sector of activity has a strong influence on product patent propensities but very little effect on process patent propensities after controlling for the effect of other factors

promoting clean energy technology entrepreneurship the role of external context abstract this study examines how political social and economic factors influence clean energy technology entrepreneurship cete government policies supporting clean energy technology development and the development of markets for clean energy create opportunities for cete however the extent to which such opportunities lead to the emergence of new clean energy businesses depends on a favorable external context promoting cete this study employs a novel dataset combining indicators of the policy and social context of cete with information on clean energy technology startup firms in the usa to provide empirical evidence that technological and market conditions supporting clean energy induce more extensive cete under contexts where local attention to clean energy issues and successful firms commercializing clean energy technologies are more prominent by establishing that cete is contingent upon a supportive local environment as well as technology and market opportunities the study holds relevance for policy makers and clean energy technology firms

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

anglo german differences in housing market dynamics over the last 30 years there have been large differences in the cyclical behaviour of owner occupied housing markets in britain and germany the u k experienced massive booms in the early 1970s and in the mid to late 198os seen in house price income ratio germany experienced significant fluctuations also see fig 1 a remarkable feature of the 1980s has been that the german house price income ratio has moved like the mirror image of the british first falling sharply and rising at the end of the decade just as the british market turned down the cyclical pattern of land price to income ratios reveals similar contrasts but volatility was higher in the u k see fig 2 this paper interprets econometric models of house prices in britain and germany to throw light on housing market dynamics among the various factors which might help account for the different experiences are economic growth demography inflation real interest rates structural differences in the

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

do europeans view their homes as castles homeownership and poverty perception throughout europe the paper investigates the notion that homeownership affects poverty perception this is investigated by utilising a logit model to analyse various characteristics of homeowners in 11 different european nations overall the analysis fails to reject the notion that homeowners throughout europe are less likely to perceive themselves as living in poverty but no evidence is found that homeownership is more valued in nations with high owner occupancy rates however support is found for the notion that homeownership is used as a form of security in countries that experience greater income inequality

financial market imperfections and home ownership a comparative study abstract we explore the determinants of the distribution of owner occupancy rates across age groups using a collection of microeconomic data on 14 oecd countries in most the survey is repeated over time this allows us to construct an international dataset merging data on 39 national household surveys with aggregate data on down payment ratios we find strong evidence that the availability of mortgage finance as measured by down payment ratios affects the distribution of owner occupancy rates across age groups especially at the young end the results are consistent with previous theoretical models and have important implications for the debate on the relation between saving and growth

incentives for advanced pollution abatement technology at the industry level an evaluation of policy alternatives abstract in this research we evaluate the incentive effects of five environmental policy instruments to promote the development and adoption of advanced pollution abatement technology in a heterogenous industry from most to least incentive the policy instruments can be rank ordered as follows i auctioned permits ii emissions taxes and subsidies iii issued marketable permits iv performance standards including performance standards in this list necessitates the assumption that they are differentiated between heterogeneous firms before the technology adoption in a way which replicates the initial emissions control distribution of the efficient incentive based instruments with the starting point normalized in this fashion the instrument rankings are invariant with respect to the size of firms the size of the industry or the industry s abatement cost structure

pollution controlling innovation in oligopolistic industries some comparisons between patent races and research joint ventures abstract much of the literature on pollution control innovation has focused on normative comparisons of exogenous regulatory policies in light of the incentives they induce on firms r d efforts in contrast in the positive analysis below both r d incentives and regulatory policy arise endogenously as functions of market structure and external cost differentials incentives for pollution controlling innovation are found to arise from within the industry in a patent race setting when innovation gives the race winner s a cost advantage over the other industry members this cost advantage is shown to come about when innovating firms successfully use their influence to raise their rivals costs by bringing about a policy change forcing industry members to internalize pollution externalities in contrast an industry wide research joint venture rjv has incentive to collusively prevent development of innovation unless environmental activists are sufficiently strong this latter result is illustrated by the case u s vs automobile manufacturers association where the justice department found evidence that the big three used an rjv to slow the introduction of pollution control innovation

environmental regulation and environmental productivity the case of china abstract constrained by the dual mission of supporting industrial growth and reducing emissions china s traditional emission reduction oriented environmental policies unavoidably face a dilemma this study adopts the gml index to calculate china s industrial productivity by considering environmental factors in addition based on the assumption of industry heterogeneity the author examines the non linear relationship between china s environmental regulation and environmental productivity and calculated the optimal regulation environment for industries according to this study when impact of undesirable outputs pollutant emissions is considered environmental regulation and environmental productivity are positively correlated which to some degree validates the porter hypothesis at present environmental regulation has significant positive effects on clean production industries but shows a lag effect on pollution intensive industries the degree of environmental regulation and environmental productivity show an inverted u shaped relation and display three thresholds it should be noted however that the relationship between regulation and productivity may vary across industries these findings have clear policy implications rather than continually increasing the level of environmental regulation the government should establish standards for individual industries that emphasize flexibility

innovation in pollution control comparisons of the various institutional arrangements for controlling pollutant emissions from individual sources effluent fees effluent control subsidies marketable permits and direct command and control regulation have usually focused on their static efficiency properties and institutional feasibility e g dales 1968 zerbe 1970 baumol and oates 1975 kneese and schultze 1975 marin 1978 mills and white 1978 spence and weitzman 1978 russell 1979 a relatively neglected area has been the study of how each arrangement influences innovation in pollution control a few studies e g kneese and schultze 1975 marin 1978 mills and white 1978 russell 1979 have casually claimed that the control methods that rely on economic incentives provide superior incentives for innovation but there have been few systematic studies of the question this paper provides a simple model of pollution control innovation by a profitmaximizing polluter who is subject to the various control methods the consequences of the methods will be explored in three major contexts first we assume that the polluter and the innovation is a small enough part of the overall pollution problem so that none of the important marginal conditions are changed by the innovation second we assume that the polluter and the innovation are important enough so that marginal conditions are changed by the innovations but that the governmental authority determining pollution control incentives or levels fails to make the appropriate adjustments third we again assume that the innovation causes marginal conditions to change but in this case the governmental authority makes the appropriate adjustments we use the term ratcheting to describe this last phenomenon in all cases we assume that the innovating polluter correctly predicts the reactions of the governmental authority and bases his innovation decisions on that prediction a profit maximizing entrepreneur would normally be expected to adopt any innovation that promised gains present discounted value to him in excess of initial

supply driven mortgage choice variable mortgage contracts dominate the uk mortgage market the dominance of the variable rate mortgage contracts has important consequences for the transmission mechanism of monetary policy decisions and systemic risks this raises an obvious concern that a mortgage market such as that in the uk where the major proportion of mortgage debt is either at a variable or fixed for less than two years rate is vulnerable to alterations in the interest rate regime theoretically mortgage choice is determined by demand and supply factors so far most of the existing literature has focused on the demand side perspective and what is limited is consideration of supply side factors in empirical investigation on mortgage choice decisions this paper uniquely explores whether supply side factors may partially explain observed ex post mortgage type decisions empirical results detect that lenders profit motives and mortgage funding pricing issues may have assisted in preferences toward variable rate contracts sec

linking induced technological change and environmental regulation evidence from patenting in the u s auto industry a b s t r a c t this article uses a carefully screened patent database in automobile emission control technologies and a detailed regulatory action analysis to examine firms innovation in response to u s technology forcing auto emissions standards enacted between 1970 and 1998 the study finds that under the performance based technology forcing pbtf auto emissions regulations both automakers and compo nent suppliers innovated and introduced more advanced emission control technologies for automobile applications the study also shows that stringent pbtf regulation temporarily induced domestic u s firms to become more innovative than foreign firms that operated in the local u s market during the early phase of the regulatory regime findings of this research strongly imply that government intervention in the form of technology forcing regulation can drive firms to invest in technological innovation

examining the role of policy design and policy interaction in eu automotive emissions performance gaps in the wake of the 2015 dieselgate scandal the us and european governments publicly confronted automakers about their behaviour which raised concerns about the integrity of the current emissions legislation regimes in this article i argue that flexibilities within the eu s emissions legislative framework afforded automakers the opportunity to legally sidestep strict performance standards laid out in the law and resulted in a significant performance gap in real world driving emissions this article provides a timely examination of eu emission legislation policy design and policy interaction within the european union with the aim of explaining why the eu policy framework failed to regulate the regional automotive industry current research is mostly concerned with the typology and effectiveness of individual environmental policy instruments be it regulatory or economic incentives that aim to influence industry behaviour this article approaches the current eu policy regime in a more holistic manner and focuses on the exploitation of weaknesses in the regulatory framework by private firms which has received little academic attention in the innovation and transition literature a major contribution of this article therefore is a body of primary qualitative interview data from industry elites concerning relevant emissions policies

political foundations of the resource curse in this paper we argue that the political incentives that resource endowments generate are the key to understanding whether or not they are a curse we show 1 politicians tend to over extract natural resources relative to the efficient extraction path because they discount the future too much and 2 resource booms improve the efficiency of the extraction path however 3 resource booms by raising the value of being in power and by providing politicians with more resources which they can use to influence the outcome of elections increase resource misallocation in the rest of the economy 4 the overall impact of resource booms on the economy depends critically on institutions since these determine the extent to which political incentives map into policy outcomes countries with institutions that promote accountability and state competence will tend to benefit from resource booms since these institutions ameliorate the perverse political incentives that such booms create countries without such institutions however may suffer from a resource curse

windfalls structural transformation and specialization abstract macro cross country data and micro us county data indicate that resource rich regions have small but relatively productive manufacturing sectors and large but relatively unproductive non manufacturing sectors we suggest a process of specialization to explain these facts windfall revenue induces labor to move from the traded manufacturing to the non traded non manufacturing sector a self selection of workers takes place only those most skilled in manufacturing sector work remain in manufacturing workers that move to non manufacturing however will be less skilled at non manufacturing sector work than those who were already employed there resource induced structural transformation thus results in higher productivity in manufacturing and lower productivity in non manufacturing we construct and calibrate a two sector open economy model of self selection and show that exogenous cross country variation in natural resource endowments is large enough to explain the direction and magnitude of sectoral employment and productivity differences between resource rich and resource poor regions the model implies that low aggregate productivity found in some resource rich countries is not caused by a resource induced decline of a relatively productive manufacturing sector rather the higher manufacturing productivity in those countries is a consequence of manufacturing s smaller size

determinants of environmental innovation in us manufacturing industries abstract this paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental innovation we employ panel data models to study how environmental innovation by us manufacturing industries responded to changes in pollution abatement expenditures and regulatory enforcement during the period 1983 through 1992 we find that 1 environmental innovation as measured by the number of successful environmental patent applications granted to the industry responded to increases in pollution abatement expenditures however 2 increased monitoring and enforcement activities related to existing regulations did not provide any additional incentive to innovate we also find some empirical evidence that environmental innovation is more likely to occur in industries that are internationally competitive

the strategic use of innovation to influence regulatory standards this paper investigates the welfare consequences of strategic behavior by firms to affect the amount of environmental regulation they face environmental regulation often attempts to force an industry to develop cleaner technology but the regulator may have no means to commit to a specific standard this lack of regulatory commitment induces firms to choose innovation strategically it is well known that firms have incentives to suppress innovation to induce the regulator to ratchet down the standard and this strategic behavior lowers welfare this paper explores a countervailing incentive in oligopoly settings firms have heightened incentives to innovate so as to increase regulation and raise rivals costs in equilibrium the incentive to raise rivals cost can mitigate the welfare loss arising from no regulatory commitment also a regulator who is unable to commit ex ante to the stringency of a regulatory standard can induce more clean technology than a regulator with a commitment mechanism

environmental protection innovation and price setting behavior in spanish manufacturing firms abstract in this paper we analyze the effects of environmental protection regulation on process and product innovation decisions and their impact on price setting behavior in spanish manufacturing firms throughout 2009 2014 to this end we estimate several discrete choice probit models using firm level data our results show a positive relationship between the existence of environmental regulations environmental expenditures as a proxy and innovation however the magnitude of the effects and their significance depend on the type of innovation and the size of the firms environmental regulation positively impacts process innovation only in large firms 200 workers while it positively impacts product innovation exclusively in small firms up to 200 workers taking into account innovation activities we additionally explore the behavior of product prices we obtain that process innovation increases the probability of reducing prices for both small and large firms while product innovation only raises the likelihood of increasing prices for the former finally we look into the determinants of investment in environmental protection and find a positive impact of environmental regulation

demand pull and technology push public support for eco innovation the case of the biofuels sector the purpose of this paper is to explore the differentiated impact of demand pull and technology push policies in shaping technological patterns in the biofuels sector the empirical analysis is based on a novel and original database biopat containing patents in the field of biofuels selected using appropriate keywords and classified according to the technological content of the invention our results generally show that technological capabilities and environmental regulation spur innovative activities in the biofuels sector both demand pull and technology push factors are found to be important drivers of innovation in the biofuels sector however technology exploitation activities in first generation technologies are found to be mainly driven by quantity and price based demand pull policies on the contrary the pace of technology exploration efforts in advanced generation biofuels is shown to react positively to price based demand pull incentives but also to technology push policy the clear diversity in the impact of different public support instruments provides new insights which fuel discussion on the optimal policy mix debate and offers new elements for the design of future policy strategies

returns to investment in education a global update the author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates some key patterns among the three main levels of education primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education which is regressive social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country s per capita income overall the returns to female education are higher than those to male education but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track since unit cost of vocational education is much higher and the returns for those who work in the private competitive sector of the economy are higher than in the public noncompetitive sector and the returns in the self employment unregulated sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence the undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways the causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments some have been attempted the author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling the conclusions reinforce earlier patterns they confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries they also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical vocational tract and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital that is they decline as investment is expanded