biofuels what a biopact between north and south could achieve abstract with very few exceptions such as the recent remarks by international energy agency iea head claude mandil commentators on the world s energy issues have yet to recognize the enormous contribution that biofuels producers from the south could make to solving the world s greenhouse gas emission problems and problems to do with the peaking of oil supplies once the equation between biofuels and high cost land intensive cultivation in the north is broken and a quite different scenario involving production in the south is adopted then the possibilities are dramatically changed the argument of this paper is that a transition to substitution of 20 percent of oecd gasoline needs by 2020 could be met from the south by creating the equivalent of 18 brazils over the course of the next decade such an enormous transition will not occur by itself or through the operation of market forces alone it needs an institutional framework one that guarantees for the countries of the north regular supplies of biofuels produced in a responsible manner and guarantees for the countries of the south open markets for the biofuels produced the oecd is in the best position to bring about such an arrangement through taking the initiative of offering developing countries a biopact between north and south thereby creating for the first time a global market for biofuels the launch of an international biofuels forum under the auspices of the un in early 2007 is a step towards the creation of such an international framework where north south issues on biofuels may be fruitfully addressed

towards a sustainably certifiable futures contract for biofuels abstract how are biofuels to be certified as produced in a sustainable and responsible fashion in the global debate over this issue one party to the proceedings seems rarely to be mentioned namely the commodities exchanges through which a global biofuels market is being created in this contribution i propose a solution to the problem of sustainability certification through a biofuels futures contract equipped with proof of origin documentation the proposal does not call for any radical break with current practice extending existing certification procedures with a requirement for the vendor to provide documentation probably in barcoded form of the history of the biofuel offered for sale including plantation and biorefinery where the biofuel was produced and subsequent blendings it may have undergone the proposal is thus compatible with the blending practices of large global traders whose activities are the source of the difficulties of other approaches to certification it is argued that if such a sustainable futures contract for bioethanol in the first instance were to be introduced then it would likely trade at a premium and become the primary vehicle for north south trade in biofuels

liberalising the movement of natural persons a lost decade liberalisation of international trade in services through the movement of natural persons mode 4 remains one of the least negotiated issues of trade policy among the 144 members of the world trade organisation economists believe that there is a basic convergence of economic interest between the developed and the developing world for liberalising mode 4 yet the multilateral trading system has not facilitated greater worker mobility between the labour surplus and labour scarce countries is there any economic logic as to why cross border movements of workers have not followed the pattern predicted by international trade theory or are there strong socio political barriers that have come in the way of liberalising mode 4 these are some of the questions the paper attempts to answer the paper shows that the economic arguments against the free movement of natural persons are based on the narrow perspective of the welfare of domestic workers while ignoring the benefit it brings to the economy as a whole further non economic arguments miss the point that the movement of workers under mode 4 of gats is temporary in nature and so unlikely to have any lasting social and cultural spillovers the paper gives specific illustrations from the recent past where temporary import of workers from labour surplus countries has enabled both developed and developing countries sustain their economic growth it concludes by arguing that the environment for renegotiating wto commitments under this important sector of international trade in services is better than ever before even though the current world economic slowdown may delay actual negotiations for a while copyright 2004 blackwell publishing ltd

environmental drag evidence from norway abstract economic growth affects the environment negatively a polluted environment and other environmental constraints reduce economic output and the well being of consumers the cost to society of environmental constraints may be called the environmental drag the traditional economic analysis of growth neglects the environmental drag while this paper attempts to measure it empirically we employ a dynamic general equilibrium model of the norwegian economy extended to include some important environmental linkages which feed back to the productivity of labor and capital from damages to health materials and nature the environment also directly affects the consumers well being using this model we are able to estimate the environmental drag measured as reduced welfare from consumption and environmental services we present macroeconomic effects in terms of reduced production and consumption and calculate the overall welfare effects we find that the environmental constraints incorporated in the model probably have a modest effect on production over the next century the direct welfare loss from a degraded environmental quality however is significant a lower rate of technological growth and a lower discount rate both increase the drag

a theory of interregional tax competition a general equilibrium model is constructed to study tax competition where local governments compete for capital by holding down property tax rates and public expenditure levels an exact definition of tax competition is provided and both the existence and nonexistence of tax competition are shown to be theoretically possible it is argued however that tax competition must occur under empirically reasonable conditions inefficiency in public production is also explicitly modeled the amount of capital used to produce a given level of public service output is shown to be greater than that which is required to minimize costs evaluated at the prices facing private firms

competition in regional environmental policies when plant locations are endogenous abstract a two region model is presented in which an imperfectly competitive firm produces a good with increasing returns at the plant level production of the good causes local pollution the firm decides whether to maintain plants in both regions serve both regions from a single plant or shut down if the disutility of pollution is high enough the two regions will compete by increasing their environmental taxes standards until the polluting firm is driven from the market alternatively if the disutility from pollution is not as great the regions will usually compete by undercutting each other s pollution tax rates

international trade agreements and international migration despite large potential economic gains bilateral and multilateral negotiations focusing on liberalisation of migration have not shared the high profile of international trade negotiations and agreements migration and trade have been traditionally viewed rather separately and the relevance of the many and complex interdependencies has been given remarkably little attention in the literature to date in this article we focus on the two way interaction between international migration and agreements designed to enhance cross border trade and investment liberalisation of international trade in services and in the movement of people potentially offers much greater economic gains than liberalisation of remaining barriers to goods trade however progress within multilateral frameworks is fraught with difficulty the world trade organization s general agreement on trade in services gats has yielded little real progress so far and negotiations within more flexible unilateral and bilateral frameworks are likely to be more successful in liberalising the movement of labour we discuss a range of specific examples focusing particularly on the interesting case of new zealand we find that trade agreements are increasingly including agreements on migration though typically favouring temporary migration and involving numerically modest quotas we conclude that migration regulatory frameworks are likely to be further and more strongly linked to trade and investment agreements in the future particularly given changing economic and demographic forces the primary focus of migration policies may nonetheless remain different from that of trade policies while further migration liberalisation is likely to be through bilateral and regional agreements it will be important to try to lock in the gains of such agreements while simultaneously working to consolidating these in a way that will help to facilitate future multilateral agreement

rehabilitation decisions in rental housing an empirical analysis abstract housing policy makers show increased interest in encouraging rehabilitation of the existing housing stock but little is known about what factors influence the decision to invest particularly in rental housing making policy design difficult this paper presents an empirical analysis of individual landlords housing rehabilitation decisions in one housing market the analysis tests hypotheses about the impacts of detailed neighborhood structure and site characteristics on each owner s investment activity findings support the general hypothesis that economic returns to investment have a major effect on rehabilitation decisions identify some other important circumstances and suggest which among many specific policy levers should be effective

risk futures pricing and the organization of production in commodity markets this paper examines equilibrium in a spot and futures market with both primary producers growers and intermediate producers processors for a commodity that is subject to output shocks processors tend to hedge long in contrast with hick s theory of futures hedging nevertheless if transaction costs are low the two stage production process brings about a downward futures price bias consistent with hick s pricing prediction but if costs of trading futures are high growers tend to be differentially driven from the futures market reversing the direction of the bias futures trading may also affect the organization of industry when demand is inelastic futures trading can serve as a substitute for vertical integration as a means of diversifying risk because the risk positions of growers are complementary with those of processors

the determination of spot and futures prices with storable commodities this paper analyzes the effects of futures trading in a market for a storable commodity in which producers and speculators are assumed to be risk averse and specifications of the aggregate supply and inventory demand functions are derived from explicit optimization a critical aspect is how the parameters of these functions change with the introduction of the future market as it is through these induced parameter changes that the futures market exerts its influence on the spot price the effects of the futures market on both the long run average spot price and its variance are analyzed while we are unable to draw any definitive conclusions on this issue we find that in all cases considered the futures market stabilizes the spot price as well as lowering its long run mean for many years now the question of the effects of futures trading on the stability of spot prices has been extensively debated this topic has been discussed at various levels for example farmers and agricultural interest groups have claimed that futures trading destabilizes spot prices thereby imposing welfare losses on the economy in the united states congress has decided that futures trading can cause price destabilization and has subjected futures trading to the regulation of the commodity futures trading commission at a more analytical level economists have been investigating the issue both empirically and more recently theoretically as well

the incidence of classified property taxes in a three sector model with an imperfectly mobile population abstract this paper analyzes the incidence of a classified property tax imposing different effective tax rates on residential commercial and industrial property as compared to a uniform property tax taxing capital and land in all sectors at the same rate our model includes three sectors commercial industrial and residential and three factors of production land labor and capital capital is assumed to be perfectly mobile but we consider varying degrees of labor mobility allowing the possibility that part of a classified property tax may be shifted to workers through lower wages

eco dumping capital mobility and international trade a small open economy s optimal environmental policy is studied in a model with international capital mobility and local pollution the country produces traded as well as non traded goods is it in the country s interest to engage in ecological dumping by choosing generous pollution allowances for the traded good sector the answer depends decisively on the policy regime in use dumping is not optimal if the country ensures that the implicit rent on pollution is completely appropriated within the country however if the implicit factor reward on pollution leaves the country because it accrues to foreign owners of mobile capital the local welfare maximizing government tends to discriminate against the traded good sector the opposite of ecological dumping

the local distribution of endowments matters modelling tax competition with heterogeneous local residents this study expands on the tax competition literature by incorporating the heterogeneity of resource endowments into the tax competition framework it theoretically elaborates that the local distribution of resource endowments affects both the level of tax rate and the degree of spatial dependence in tax competition and empirically confirms the theory using the data for 60 urban municipalities in the seoul metropolitan area sma korea in the years 2004 2006 a spatial panel model for tax cut confirms the presence of tax competition in the sma and the effects on tax cut of the resource endowment distribution another regression model for local indicators of spatial dependence uncovers the fact that the spatial dependence in tax cut is also determined by the local endowment distribution

the price for biofuels sustainability abstract the production and usage of biofuels has increased worldwide seeking goals of energy security low carbon energy and rural development as biofuels trade increased the european union introduced sustainability regulations in an attempt to reduce the risks associated with biofuels producers were then confronted with costs of sustainability certification in order to access the eu market hopes were that sustainably produced biofuels would be rewarded with higher prices in the eu based on a review of recent literature interviews with traders and price data from platts this paper explores whether sustainability premiums emerged and if so did they represent an attracting feature in the market for sustainable biofuels this article finds that premiums for ethanol and biodiesel evolved differently between 2011 and 2012 but have been in general very small or inexistent with certified fuels becoming the new norm in the market for different reasons there has been an apparent convergence between biofuel policies in the eu and the us as market operators perceive a long term trend for full certification in the biofuels market producers in developing countries are likely to face additional challenges in terms of finance and capacity to cope with the sustainability requirements

optimal fiscal policy for a state or local government abstract state and local government services are enjoyed by and taxes borne by two groups residents and non residents this paper addresses the question if state and local governments maximize their residents welfare and cannot distinguish between individual residents and non residents but know the aggregate characteristics of the two groups what set of taxes subsidies and public goods should they choose some of the results obtained are i even when all commodities are taxable and equity is ignored the existence of non resident consumption makes uniform taxation non optimal ii in some cases whether a commodity should be taxed or subsidized is independent of its own price elasticity iii central cities may be subsidized by suburban residents and iv the ability of state and local governments to redistribute is inversely proportional to the openness of the economy

interjurisdictional capital mobility fiscal externality and a corrective subsidy abstract recent studies emphasize that local property taxation may result in inefficiently small amounts of local public spending this paper shows that the inefficiency can be traced to a fiscal externality when one jurisdiction increases its taxes it causes a flow of capital to other jurisdictions that increases their tax revenues the inefficiency can be corrected with a subsidy that internalizes the externality key empirical parameters determining the magnitude of the externality are identified illustrative calculations indicate that subsidy rates on the order of 40 might be required to achieve efficiency

the economic impact of medical migration an overview of the literature this paper provides an overview of the evidence and applied literature on medical migration the economic impacts of medical migration have been little researched causing a polarisation in the debate between its critics and its proponents the paucity of quantitative studies may be explained by the lack of comprehensive and consistent data investments in statistical resources on medical migration are therefore a major priority the available evidence suggests that particularly english speaking countries in sub saharan african countries and the caribbean with relatively few health workers and a high disease burden suffer most from the medical brain drain however the exodus of health workers is not the main cause of the health status crisis but rather a symptom of deeper underlying problems which often extend beyond the health sector towards the broader economic and political environment in such situations medical brain drain does pose challenges for human resource management and health service delivery the only effective and long term sustainable policy is one that addresses the underlying push and pull factors reforms have to be country led but may be supported via temporary migration schemes remittances enhancement of diaspora networks and financial aid for which a strong moral case exists

property value maximization and public sector efficiency abstract this paper analyses the efficiency implications of property value maximization communities are open so that utilities are parametric to housing producers and the local government each local government chooses its public good output to maximize aggregate property value in the community ignoring feedback effects on the composition of the housing stock it is shown that this type of government behavior generates an equilibrium in which all communities are internally pareto efficient

tax competition uniform assessment and the benefit principle abstract in previous discussions it has been argued that tax competition between local governments results in a tax burden on business that is less than the cost of public services for business and in suboptimal levels of public expenditures for residents however this conclusion has never been substantiated by a full theoretical treatment here a theoretical model of tax competition is developed between metropolitan areas with labor perfectly immobile and two local public goods one for residents and one for business for plausible parameter values numerical solutions of the optimality conditions are computed by means of a nonlinear programming algorithm

revealed preferences for property taxes an empirical study of perceived tax incidence voting in an election over removal of a homestead exemption is examined to determine different groups perceptions of the incidence of the property tax homeowners in two categories appear to evaluate accurately the effects on them of the homestead exemption renters with higher cost rental contracts are more likely to believe they are significantly affected by the change in the property tax structure these results demonstrate the ability of local governments to discriminate in tax share price across groups of voters copyright 1992 by mit press

state mandates and interest group lobbying abstract we apply becker s 1983 model of political interest groups to state mandates on public expenditures and revenues of local governments we outline conditions under which interest groups increase localities output levels above the efficient level but political pressure at the state level will reduce spending toward the efficient level an implication of our model is that political lobbying at the local level occurs only because of its indirect effects on state mandated outcomes because the state ultimately decides the government service level interest groups payoffs to lobbying at the state level generally will exceed those at the local level

taxation and the tiebout model the differential effects of head taxes taxes on land rents and property taxes on the theory of state and local public finance is the seminal paper by charles tiebout 1956 tiebout constructed a multijurisdictional model in which independent local governments offer a wide variety of expenditure and tax policies and perfectly mobile consumers reveal their preferences for local public goods through their choice of residential community he argued that under such circumstances local public service provision would be efficient the tiebout model has formed the basis of a vast number of subsequent articles in the state and local public finance literature and has also been very influential in urban and regional economics the efficiency properties of various tiebout type models of local public good provision have been examined and the role of politics in these models has been debated at length in this literature of more direct relevance to this paper however is the fact that although tiebout had little to say directly about taxation simply assuming the existence of head taxes subsequent analyses have used adaptations of this model to examine the effects of local head taxes land taxes and property taxes it is the literature on the efficiency and distributional effects of alternative local taxes that is the subject of this survey 1

efficiency and distributional implications of global restrictions on labour mobility calculations and policy implications abstract in this paper a procedure for calculating the annual efficiency gains from various alternative changes in existing global immigration restrictions is presented along with an evaluation of impacts of wage rate changes on non migrating labour a simple methodology uses data on u s dollar gnp capita across countries to infer differences in the marginal productivity of labour both between countries and across major world trading areas two key assumptions used are that the worldwide labour supply is fixed and full employment occurs in all regions differences occuring in labour s marginal product across regions are assumed to arise because of barriers to inward mobility of labour in high wage countries when these are removed labour reallocates and efficiency gains occur while the calculations are based on contentious assumptions a striking feature is the size of the annual worldwide gains in some cases annual gains can easily exceed existing worldwide gnp generated in the presence of labour mobility restrictions while all gains do not accrue to ldc s the size of the gains nonetheless suggests that this issue may be much more important to these countries than other issues raised thus far in the north south debate the losses to labour already employed in high wage countries dramatize the incentives for labour unions in the developed world to oppose liberalization

can remittances compensate for manpower outflows the case of philippine physicians abstract this paper addresses questions about the desirability of skilled migration which generates remittance flows focusing on filipino physicians the paper explores under what conditions remittances from filipino doctors practicing overseas might be sizeable enough to compensate the nation for the losses associated with doctor emigration while data limitations and questions about the correct social welfare function preclude definitive empirical results the analysis does indicate in the philippine case that it may pay to train doctors for export

the economic costs to international labor restrictions revisiting the empirical discussion summary in a 1984 article hamilton and whalley calculated the annual efficiency gains from free international migration we update that study to compare developments over time with the aim of producing more reasonable and politically relevant scenarios our results suggest that the estimated gains from the liberalization of global immigration controls have increased substantially indeed we find that even a small liberalization of international migration restrictions can still yield substantial gains in particular we estimate that a 10 increase in international migration corresponds to an efficiency gain of about us 774 billion 1998 dollars

technology and hedging behavior a proof of hicks conjecture technical conditions give the entrepreneur a much freer hand about the acquisition of inputs which are largely needed to start a new process than about the completion of outputs whose process of production in the ordinary business sense may be already begun if forward markets consisted entirely of hedgers there would always be a tendency for a planned weakness on the demand side a smaller proportion of planned purchases than of planned sales would be covered by forward contracts 1946 p 137

optimal managerial contracts and equilibrium security prices recent developments in economic theory have focused attention on efficient methods for providing incentives within a corporation especially to top management jensen meckling 12 have examined some implications of incentive or agency problems for corporate finance in this paper we combine a simple model of security market equilibrium with that of an optimal managerial incentive contract using results of harris raviv 8 and holmstrom 9 we provide a rationale for including security prices in the managerial incentive contracts of publicly held firms in this model we also show that non systematic diversifiable risks will be considered in the capital budgeting decisions of a managerial firm operated in the interests of its stockholders this is in contrast to the implication of the arbitrage pricing theory a similar result follows from the capital asset pricing model which abstracts from incentive problems and suggests that only systematic risks ought to be considered the optimal contract model of the corporation takes the following view of the firm since decision makers within a firm are not sole owners of the business but employed agents the decisions which they make depend on the incentives which the organization provides these incentives are embodied explicitly in employment contracts and implicitly through the threat of dismissal or effect on reputation the contract whether explicit or not describes the decision maker s anticipation of the consequences to him conditional on various observable outcomes these outcomes are used to provide information useful in determining whether he did his job properly in the simplest optimal contract scenario there is a single principal and a single agent whose decision concerns the level of effort he expends the level of effort affects the level of output of the firm but not unambiguously because the output is also governed by other stochastic elements as a result some information about the agent s level of effort can be inferred

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

assessing the macroeconomic impact of a healthcare problem the application of computable general equilibrium analysis to antimicrobial resistance there is a positive relationship between the health of a nation and its economic prosperity however in evaluating health care economists typically concentrate on the economic impact only to the health care sector which may mis specify the social costs and benefits of a disease or intervention this paper demonstrates the value of using a macroeconomic approach to modelling a major health problem using the context of antimicrobial resistance and the application of the computable general equilibrium technique this approach is described in detail and its added value demonstrated in the case of amr

tax competition with two types of capital abstract we examine a tax competition model in which two types of mobile capital are taxed to fund local public goods when taxing land is not feasible we derive optimal tax rules and we find it is possible for localities to subsidize one type of capital

property tax classification and welfare in urban areas a general equilibrium computational approach abstract this paper examines some of the structural and welfare effects of a change from a tax system in an urban area that classifies property by use for tax assessment to one that does not discriminate in its treatment of property a long run general equilibrium model of intraurban spatial location is developed due to analytical intractability the tax policy changes are simulated by use of a fixed point algorithm the model is stylized to the boston metropolitan area to the extent possible general equilibrium versions of compensating and equivalent variations in income are used as measures of welfare change the qualitative welfare results obtained from sensitivity analysis are fairly robust in a substantial majority of the cases considered there is a welfare gain in moving from the particular tax classification structure posited to a system in which all property is taxed at the same effective rate

liberalising temporary movement of natural persons an agenda for the development round we discuss liberalising the temporary mobility of workers under mode 4 of the gats particularly the movement of medium and low skilled service providers between developing and developed countries such mobility potentially offers huge returns a flow equivalent to three per cent of developed countries skilled and unskilled work forces would generate an estimated increase in world welfare of over us 150 billion shared fairly equally between developing and developed countries the larger part of this emanates from the less skilled essentially because losing higher skilled workers cuts output in developing countries severely the mass migration of less skilled workers raises fears in developed countries for cultural identity problems of assimilation and the drain on the public purse these fears are hardly relevant to temporary movement however the biggest economic concern from temporary mobility is its competitive challenge to local less skilled workers but as populations age and the average levels of training and education rise developed countries will face an increasing scarcity of less skilled labour temporary mobility thus actually offers a strong communality of interest between developing and developed countries the remainder of the paper looks at the gats provisions on mode 4 and the commitments that have been made under it the paper reviews several official proposals for the doha talks including the very detailed one from india and considers several countries existing schemes for the temporary movement of foreign workers many countries have long had bilateral foreign worker programmes and some regional agreements provide for liberal and flexible movement these show what is feasible and how concerns can be overcome we caution that to be useful any wto agreement must increase mobility not just bureaucratise it the paper concludes with some modest and practical proposals we suggest inter alia that licensing firms to arrange the movement of labour is the most promising short term approach to increasing temporary mobility

the long term impact of health on economic growth in latin america abstract growth regressions adapted as granger type causality tests give strong evidence of 30 year causality from health to income in 18 latin american countries the health indicator is probability of survival by age and gender groups for 1950 90 a permanent increment of between 0 8 and 1 5 annual income is associated with typical adult and surprisingly old age health improvements the channels of causation from health to income are diverse and need to be identified in microeconomic studies that should however include a wide variety long term phenomena to account for the economic effects of health

health nutrition and economic development the relationship between health and economic development is explored focusing on nutrition based health indicators the spotlight is placed on the inter related feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity on one hand and the influence of income on health status on the other disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature we evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results there is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity there is also evidence that at least among the very poor additional income is spent on improved nutrition there are two issues that have received little attention although we argue they are likely to be very important first measurement of health is discussed in detail evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages the same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health specifically calorie intake the key role of non linearities in these relationships is highlighted and we demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form authors

optimal property taxation in the presence of interregional capital mobility abstract a single region s optimal property tax policy is examined in a model with interregional capital mobility in this model property taxation is used to finance local public expenditures different tax rates may be imposed on property used to produce goods which are traded between regions and property used to produce nontraded goods e g residential property the key determinants of the difference between the optimal tax rates are identified and it is argued that there exists a bias towards relatively low tax rates on property used to produce traded goods the role of labor mobility is also investigated

the effect of health on economic growth a production function approach abstract we estimate a production function model of aggregate economic growth including two variables that microeconomists have identified as fundamental components of human capital work experience and health our main result is that good health has a positive sizable and statistically significant effect on aggregate output even when we control for experience of the workforce we argue that the life expectancy effect in growth regressions appears to be a real labor productivity effect and is not the result of life expectancy acting as a proxy for worker experience

theory and estimation in the economics of housing demand the main purpose of this paper is to review recent theoretical and empirical developments in the economics of housing demand in particular we ask what is known concerning the permanent income elasticity of housing demand vis a vis the current or measured income elasticity what is known concerning price elasticities what is the appropriate functional form for housing demand equations what is the role of demographic variables what is known concerning dynamic aspects of housing demand what appear to be the major sources of bias in existing estimates of demand equations

corporate income taxation of multinationals in a general equilibrium model abstract this paper contributes to the discussion on separate accounting versus formula apportionment in the corporate income taxation of multinational enterprises the innovation is that we consider a general equilibrium tax competition model with an endogenous interest rate in contrast to previous studies we show that tax rates are inefficiently low not only under separate accounting but also under formula apportionment moreover we identify a wide range of empirically relevant cases where formula apportionment is superior to separate accounting independent of the magnitude of the concealment cost of profit shifting the reason for the change in results is that one country s tax rate affects other countries additionally via changes in the interest rate

the economic effects of state and local business incentives dies they have proliferated to the point that a 652 page overview of and state by state guide to business incentives was recently published national association of state development agencies et al 1983 a major area of this controversy concerns the effects of local subsidies on local and national economic welfare 2 moes 1961 1962a and 1962b buchanan and moes 1960 laird and rinehart 1967 and 1972 and gray 1964 argued that situations exist where local subsidies can increase both local and national economic welfare but goffman 1962 and thompson 1962 argued that local subsidies are unlikely to increase local economic welfare and are likely to decrease national economic welfare to address this issue a series

governance of the emerging bio energy markets despite its promising prospects a growing global bio energy market may have sustainability risks as well governing this market with respect to installing safeguards to ensure sustainable biomass production might reduce these risks therefore proposals for governance systems for bio energy are discussed in this article the proposals are based on comparative case study research on the governance of comparable commodities by assessing the governance system of global coffee trade fair trade coffee the global and the eu sugar market and forest stewardship council fsc wood strong and weak points of governance systems for commodities are discerned fsc is selected as the best performing case study and serves as the proposal s basis fsc s weaknesses are minimized by among others using the lessons learned from the other case studies this results in a system consisting of two pillars a bio energy labelling organization blo and a united nations agreement on bio energy unab although consulted experts in the research process are critical about this system they do suggest several conditions a governance system for bio energy should meet in order to be effective such as a facilitative government professional monitoring and using progressive certification combined with price premiums these conditions have been taken into account in the final proposal

how carbon credits could drive the emergence of renewable energies the shift to renewable energy options and low carbon technologies in response to the concerns over energy security and climate change is proceeding more slowly than many would like the usual argument against rapid deployment of new technologies is the costs imposed on the economy commonly interpreted in terms of upfront costs to be borne or involving large cash transfers to fund for example efforts to preserve rainforests in this contribution i argue that such a perspective provides a continuing barrier to taking effective action whereas a perspective based on creation and use of carbon credits provides a means of avoiding the shock of abrupt industrial change carbon credits granted for bona fide carbon load reductions could be created through private initiative for example by merchant banks to constitute a market that will complement regulatory based initiatives such as national emissions trading systems this is not a novel idea indeed it is the way that capitalism has funded every major change including the industrial revolution through the creation of credit the emergence of a global carbon credit economy is likely to precede a global regulatory system governing climate change and will doubtless help to stimulate the emergence of such a global system

modeling the effects of health on economic growth abstract this paper investigates the effects of health indicators such as adult survival rates asr on gdp growth rates at 5 year intervals in several countries panel data were analyzed on gdp series based on purchasing power adjustments and on exchange rates first we developed a framework for modeling the inter relationships between gdp growth rates and explanatory variables by re examining the life expectancy income relationship second models for growth rates were estimated taking into account the interaction between asr and lagged gdp level issues of endogeneity and reverse causality were addressed lastly we computed confidence intervals for the effect of asr on growth rate and applied a test for parameter stability the results showed positive effects of asr on gdp growth rates in low income countries

the determinants and effects of health expenditure in developed countries previous studies of international differences in health spending have been restricted to the use of relatively small samples of cross sectional data our objective here is to re examine the results of previous work using a sample of 560 pooled time series and cross section observations results confirm the importance of gdp as a determinant of health spending with an estimated income elasticity at or around unity but also suggest that oecd countries should not be regarded as a single homogeneous group the importance of some non income variables is also confirmed although the direct effect of these factors appears to be small

the relation between forward prices and futures prices abstract this paper consolidates the results of some recent work on the relation between forward prices and futures prices it develops a number of propositions characterizing the two prices these propositions contain several testable implications about the difference between forward and futures prices many of the propositions show that equilibrium forward and futures prices are equal to the values of particular assets even though they are not in themselves asset prices the paper then illustrates these results in the context of two valuation models and discusses the effects of taxes and other institutional factors

trade capital mobility and tax competition this paper examines a system of governments national state or local that finance public expenditures with taxes on mobile capital e g a property tax unlike previous research on tax competition explicit consideration is given to the general equilibrium determination of the prices at which goods are traded between regions the analysis identifies inefficiencies in government behavior that are not apparent in models in which the terms of trade are exogenously given capital taxation is shown to create an inefficient distribution of public good outputs across regions accompanied by an inefficient pattern of trade a model is presented in which the chosen levels of public good outputs differ across regions containing identical residents and production possibilities there is a wasteful diversity of public good supplies

property taxation nash equilibrium and market power abstract differences in tax policy arise from differences in the number of jurisdictions in a metropolitan area following wildasin 4 and bucovetsky 2 the tax rates in the jurisdictions are determined in a nash game in the tax rate the tax rate and public service level as well as the welfare of residents increase as the number of jurisdictions in the metropolis decreases

the empirical analysis of fiscal illusion this paper examines the empirical analysis of the five main hypotheses subsumed under the generic term fiscal illusion after placing these hypotheses within a common theoretical framework the paper attempts to evaluate empirical research into the revenue complexity hypothesis the revenue elasticity hypothesis the flypaper effect renter illusion and debt illusion