a fundamental law relating stock and end of life flow in cyclic manufacturing abstract cyclic manufacturing cm emerges as a sine qua non for sustainability consumer product stocks of today are the end of life flows eolf of tomorrow in circular economy enacted legislation fosters reuse recycle of eol consumer products of chemicals raw materials and hazardous products and components batteries brake fluids printed circuit boards cellular phones computers but when is tomorrow and how much of the stock will appear as eolf efficient cm operations depend on cognizance of eolf and accumulating stock the pool from which eolf emanates consumer uncertainty personal income economic cycles advent of technology social and health reasons stricter eco standards and random early product losses during use render eolf and product stock uncertain and unobservable conventional identification methods based on regression sequential least squares or actuary science methods presuming specific residual life distributions may not provide reliable estimates under uncertainty and non stationarities an appealingly simple constitutive law is revealed relating the mean stock and eolf in terms of stock mean age and eolf mean age which are scaled readily and reliably monitored variables even from relatively small decentralized samples valid under random lifetime early losses the law encompasses any eol exit distribution enabling stock and eolf identification data consolidation and assessment being a linear algebraic expression between stock and eolf the law reduces computational burden and evades presumption of any survival or exit probability distribution or cognizance of early loss history or ex post fitting of stochastic parameters the results may prove useful in planning sizing eol facilities and recycling operations and in environmental policy or compliance assessment

in the aftermath of the energy crisis new zealand s energy policy in the 1970s and 1980s abstract the past decade of energy policy in new zealand is analysed with respect to the country s dependence on imported oil energy conservation programmes and the use of renewable energy resources in all cases the country has failed to meet the objectives continually set forth in energy policy documents the recent corporatization strategy of the government with respect to energy planning and management makes the possibility of achieving integrated energy planning quite dubious even recent studies calling for resilient energy plans have only added ambiguity to this situation it is only through a coordinated and centralized strategy that these deficiencies can be overcome which is quite the opposite of the present policy focus

energy efficiency vs economic efficiency new zealand electricity sector reform in the context of the national energy policy objective abstract in this article i review the diverse commentaries on new zealand s ongoing electricity sector reform process within the context of the government s energy policy objective in doing so my purpose is to highlight the interactions between the concepts of energy efficiency and economic efficiency in particular i ask how do the various commentators on reform define these concepts what indicators do they use to measure them and what level of each do they prescribe as appropriate my main objective is not to decide whether any commentator is right or wrong rather i seek to identify the distinct world views or paradigms underlying the commentaries with respect to both energy efficiency and economic efficiency i conclude that economic efficiency is consistent with a supply side paradigm valuing economic growth whereas those who value energy efficiency over economic efficiency subscribe to a demand side paradigm recognising the limits to growth such a paradigm derives from the ethic of sustainability i close by posing the as yet unanswered question are these paradigms mutually exclusive

models of currency crises with self fulfilling features the discomfort a government suffers from speculation against its currency determines the strategic incentives of speculators and the scope for multiple currency market equilibria after describing an illustrative model in which high unemployment may cause an exchange rate crisis with self fulfilling features the paper reviews some other self reinforcing mechanisms recent econometric evidence seems consistent with the practical importance of these mechanisms

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

power privatization and the uk coal industry abstract this article considers the impact of power privatization on the uk coal industry it notes the key importance of fuel costs in determining the profit levels of private generators and concludes that privatization will result in a premature closure of uk coal capacity which would otherwise be competitive with imported coal after 1990 it suggests that the basis of power privatization is essentially irrational and ideological

the privatization programme and the consumer interest abstract the uk government s privatization programme has sought to free the managers of the industries from interference in the day to day running of their businesses three related assumptions seem to underly the extension of this approach to the utility industries first that the products of utility industries should as far as possible be treated as a commodity like any other second that the overriding purpose of public policy towards the utilities is to promote efficiency not equity for example third that managerially independent shareholder owned industries will be more efficient than regulated centrally planned industries consumer organizations are sceptical about these assumptions

foreign portfolio investors before and during a crisis different categories of foreign portfolio investors in korea have differences as well as similarities in their trading behavior before and during the currency crisis first non resident institutional investors are always positive feedback traders whereas resident investors were negative feedback contrarian traders before the crisis but switch to be positive feedback traders during the crisis second individual investors herd significantly more than institutional investors non resident institutional as well individual investors herd significantly more than their resident counterparts third differences in the western and korean news coverage are correlated with differences in net selling by non resident investors relative to resident investors

on crises contagion and confusion abstract since the tequila crisis of 1994 1995 the asian flu of 1997 and the russian virus of 1998 economists have been busy producing research on the subject of contagion yet few studies have examined empirically through which channels the disturbances are transmitted if there are indeed fundamental reasons for the spillovers we observe we attempt to fill this gap by analyzing how both trade links and the largely ignored financial sector links influence the pattern of fundamentals based contagion we examine the role of international bank lending the potential for cross market hedging and bilateral and third party trade in the propagation of crises

instability and volatility of capital flows to developing countries despite the recent recovery in capital flows towards developing countries some of their characteristics have generated serious problems as these flows are increasingly concentrated in a small group of emerging markets most developing countries have been facing a severe scarcity of external resources while for the minority endowed with some measure of access to international financial markets volatility and sustainability remain the key issues financial liberalisation has helped to create new channels for resource transfers from the developed world but it has also generated conditions wherein such transfers can easily be reversed with serious consequences in terms of instability the present study depicts discusses and analyses some of the issues related to capital movements between developed and developing countries section 2 is an overview of the recent controversies on external financial liberalisation section 2 is an surveys the post 1970 developments in capital inflows to developing countries their main components and their contribution to development finance section 4 examines the instability and volatility of total inflows and their components using two different statistical measures section 5 concentrates on a particular type of capital movement i e short term arbitrage seeking capital flows to emerging market economies this analysis requires specific conceptualisation definition and data generation from balance of payments statistics in section 6 a similar analysis of volatility and instability of short term inflows and outflows to emerging market economies is undertaken the penultimate section 7 discusses the policy implications of the foregoing analysis and is followed by a summary and conclusions

equity and bond flows to latin america and asia the role of global and country factors abstract this paper investigates the factors motivating the large capital flows to a number of developing countries in recent years we use monthly us capital flows to nine latin american and nine asian countries to analyze the behavior of bond and equity flows employing a panel data approach we find that although global factors the drop in us interest rates and the slowdown in us industrial production are important in explaining capital inflows country specific developments are at least as important especially for asia we also find that equity flows are more sensitive than bond flows to global factors but that bond flows are generally more sensitive to a country s credit rating and secondary market debt price

anatomy of a future energy crisis restructuring and the energy sector in new zealand abstract up until the mid 1980s new zealand had been characterized by an economy that was heavily protected extensively regulated and in which production was subsidized to a considerable extent in 1984 the government embarked upon a programme of extensive public sector and economic restructuring described by some as being among the most wide reaching and radical in new zealand s history for the energy sector the restructuring has meant a move away from an administrative infrastructure of the 1970s and 1980s that was strongly centralized and government led to one that is based much more on market forces energy development production and delivery have been corporatized and privatized the energy sector has been largely deregulated and government has disavowed itself of responsibility for energy resource management and policy the primary motivation that underlies all of the reform is economic efficiency concerns are widely held however for the implications that follow from this restructuring of the energy sector for the efficient management of energy resources security of supply long term management of the sector and for the maintenance of environmental quality it is possible that greater economic efficiencies might be achieved although this is by no means certain but it would seem that specific characteristics of the restructuring will militate strongly against the achievement of other objectives in the sector recommendations for amendment refer to the need to strike a sensible balance between market forces and government involvement

hot money accounting labels and the permanence of capital flows to developing countries an empirical investigation using maximum likelihood kalman filtering techniques and non parametric variance ratio statistics we gauge the relative importance of permanent and temporary components of capital flows to latin american and asian developing countries over the period 1988 1997 for the broad categories of flows in the capital account equity flows ef bond flows bf official flows of commercial bank credit bc and foreign direct investment fdi we find relatively low permanent components in ef bf and of while commercial bc flows appear to contain quite large permanent components and fdi flows are almost entirely permanent these results have a natural interpretation and clear policy implications

rational contagion and the globalization of securities markets this paper argues that globalization may promote contagion by weakening incentives for gathering costly information and by strengthening incentives for imitating arbitrary market portfolios in the presence of short selling constraints the gain of gathering information at a fixed cost may diminish as markets grow moreover if a portfolio manager s marginal cost for yielding below market returns exceeds the marginal gain for above market returns there is a range of optimal portfolios in which all investors imitate arbitrary market portfolios and this range widens as the market grows numerical simulations suggest that these frictions can have significant implications for capital flows in emerging markets

market failure and energy policy a rationale for selective conservation abstract appropriate activities for the government in the energy sector of the us economy are suggested on the basis of market failures in this sector alleged market failures are explored and specifically targeted remedies proposed where indicated the resulting government policies can be characterized as selectively conservationist designed to induce lower levels of use of particular fuels sometimes in particular industries

u s banks crises and bailouts from mexico to ltcm this paper investigates the impact on bank stock prices of emerging market currency crises and bailouts the stock market distinguishes between banks with exposure to a crisis country and other banks in general banks with exposures to a crisis country are affected adversely by currency events and positively by bailouts other banks are mostly unaffected by events in countries experiencing a crisis the paper uses the impact of the ltcm crisis on bank stock prices to put the emerging market events in perspective the ltcm crisis had no significant contagion effects in the banking sector either but banks that participated in the ltcm rescue experienced negative stock returns when the rescue was announced this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

real time identification of mean retention time and end of life rate in cyclic manufacturing used in predicting demand and new orders for shelf stock replacement and in inventory planning the mean retention time mrt of consumer products is long established as a key production and marketing parameter higher mrts are also associated with enhanced sustainability favoring longer production consumption cycles waste prevention and resource preservation the mrt or the corresponding product stock level and the end of life eol outflow to be collected for disassembly and recycling are useful for planning efficient cyclic operations determination of stock and eol level for cyclic products is challenging however due to random stock losses and to the volatile and distributed nature of returns and eol exit actuary science methods presume specific residual life distributions usually fitted ex post which may become inaccurate when applied to real production consumption cycles anchored on a recent constitutive law in cyclic manufacturing a method is presented for real time mrt and eol identification the law related mean stock and eol levels under random losses and random distributed eol exit via a simple equation without involving residual life or eol distributions or early loss history one degree of freedom still remained for both stock and eol are random and unobservable the work herein ties the remaining degree of freedom it enables sequential identification of stock and eol level using reliable and readily acquired data in a key equation obtained for the production consumption cycle adapting to varying early loss consumer take back and discard volatility it may be useful in proactive policy sizing of disassembly and recycle lines and return inventory control towards cleaner production consumption cycles

enhancing energy price stability through consistent and balanced energy technology r d abstract despite the significant decline in energy prices and the large budget deficit the us government must maintain a well balanced energy technology development programme ranging from basic science through to the demonstration of technical feasibility and technology transfer having technology in technical readiness before an energy price shock will moderate economic problems due to the price shock and thereby promote economic stability based on evolving knowledge about the relationships among energy prices technology commercialization and recessions and depressions development of efficient energy technologies must be far better managed by government and the private sector during both normal economic growth and energy crisis

portfolio capital flows hot or cold a distinction is often made between short term and long term capital flows the former are deemed unstable hot money and the latter are deemed stable cold money using time series analysis of balance of payments data for five industrial and five developing countries we find that in most cases the labels short term and long term do not provide any information about the time series properties of the flow in particular long term flows are often as volatile as short term flows and the time it takes for an unexpected shock to a flow to die out is similar across flows long term flows are also at least as unpredictable as short term flows and knowledge of the type of flow does not improve the ability to forecast the aggregate capital account copyright 1995 by oxford university press

pitfalls in testing for explosive bubbles in asset prices a number of studies e g robert j shiller 1981 olivier j blanchard and mark watson 1982 kenneth d west 1988 have argued that dividend and stock price data are not consistent with the market fundamentals hypothesis in which prices are given by the present discounted values of expected dividends these results have often been construed as evidence for the existence of bubbles or fads related arguments have been made with respect to gold bonds and foreign exchange a major problem with such arguments e g james hamilton and charles whiteman 1985 is that apparent evidence for bubbles can be reinterpreted in terms of market fundamentals that are unobserved by the researcher behzad t diba and herschel i grossman 1984 1988b and hamilton and whiteman 1985 have recommended the alternative strategy of testing for rational bubbles by investigating the stationarity properties of asset prices and observable fundamentals 1 in essence the argument for equities is that if stock prices are not more explosive than dividends then it can be concluded that rational bubbles are not present since they would generate an explosive component to stock prices 2 using unit root tests autocorrelation patterns and cointegration tests to implement this procedure diba and grossman 1988b p 529 state that the analysis supports the conclusion that stock prices do not contain explosive rational bubbles this paper shows that the above battery of tests is in fact unable to detect an important class of rational bubbles the point is demonstrated by constructing rational bubbles that appear to be stationary when unitroot tests are applied even though they are explosive in the relevant sense simulations show that when such bubbles are present stock prices will not appear to be more explosive than dividends on the basis of these tests even though the bubbles are substantial in magnitude and volatility the presence of rational bubbles in actual stock prices thus remains an open question

a model of crises in emerging markets this paper presents a perfect foresight model of speculative attacks on emerging markets credit constrained governments are assumed to have two objectives to accumulate liquid assets in order to self insure against shocks to national consumption and to insure poorly regulated domestic financial markets this policy regime generates endogenous fiscal deficits defined to include the growth of contingent liabilities the model sets out a sequence of yield differentials consistent with capital inflows followed by anticipated speculative attacks the model suggests that a common shock generated capital inflows to emerging markets in asia and latin america after 1989

cyclic manufacturing necessary and sufficient conditions and minimum rate policy for environmental enhancement under growth uncertainty abstract economic development and rising consumption increase pressure on the environment sustainable production and consumption face the challenge of mitigating impacts under uncertainty in economic growth trade raw material availability and prices variable consumer behavior and technological innovation necessary and sufficient conditions and a minimum rate policy for environmental enhancement under uncertainty are presented they take into account variability in sales consumption in net product and material trade and in manufacturing technology and associated impacts three main criteria are considered k1 reduced final wastes k2 reduced extraction of virgin raw materials k3 reduced impacts from manufacturing the conditions are expressed in terms of the cycle rate which is the generalization of the recycle rate and of readily monitored product flows e g overall sales key advantages of the method are discussed a simplicity and flexibility to simulate different growth conditions b a readily determined standardized rate policy leading to reduced impacts in k1 k2 and k3 it is quantitatively established that for lower wastes uncertainty in growth compels increase of the cycle rate larger than a threshold related to sales for lower virgin material extraction the threshold includes net product material trade as well reduction of manufacturing impacts requires intensification of cleaner processes with adequately lower marginal impacts in periods of economic austerity the policy may be relaxed enhancement is achieved via lower rate targets it is concluded that cleaner production becomes all the more important as reuse recycle flows increase and that such innovation may avert environmental degradation from manufacturing even under significant growth

capital flows to developing countries long and short term determinants this article focuses on the determinants of the large portfolio flows from the united states to latin american and asian countries during 1988 92 cointegration techniques reveal that both domestic and global factors explain bond and equity flows to developing countries and represent significant long run determinants of portfolio flows the article also investigates the dynamics of portfolio flows by estimating seemingly unrelated error correction models global and country specific factors are equally important in determining the long run movements in equity flows for both asian and latin american countries while global factors are much more important than domestic factors in explaining the dynamics of bond flows u s interest rates are a particularly important determinant of the short run dynamics of portfolio especially bond flows to developing countries copyright 1997 by oxford university press

collapsing exchange rate regimes some linear examples abstract we construct a pair of linear examples to study the collapse time of a fixed exchange rate regime the first example is a perfect foresight continuous time model which allows calculation of the exact collapse time and the tracking of reserves the second example is a discrete time stochastic model which yields an endogenous probability distribution over the collapse time and produces a forward discount of the exchange rate

the falsification of four popular hypotheses about the asian crisis various claims have been made about the causes of the asian crisis and its spread here we use data on the behaviour of capital flows during the crisis to test the strong forms of four such hypotheses that portfolio investors and hedge funds played a dominant role in initiating and or spreading the crisis that moral hazard kept efficient markets from predicting the crisis and finally the common lender hypothesis of kaminsky and reinhart in the process we also test implications of the calvo mendoza model of rational investor ignorance all are falsified as monocausal explanations for example portfolio investments that could not have been subject to substantial moral hazard continued to flow into asia until very shortly before the crisis likewise banks were a much larger source of capital outflows during the crisis than were portfolio investors while falsified in their strongest forms several of these hypotheses in less strong forms should play a role in a more nuanced analysis it is necessary to move past simple single factor approaches in order to produce a more complete synthetic explanation of this episode

privatization of the esi broadening the debate abstract the debate over the privatization of electricity in the uk has been conducted across too narrow a terrain being primarily concerned with regulation for optimality in the context of static if uncertain conditions of supply and demand insufficient account has been taken of dynamic agencies in formulating and bringing about progressive industrial change something of great importance in the light of their weakness in the uk context consequently a number of deficiencies in the uk esi have been neglected in the debate over privatization and are not liable to be rectified by it in practice

moral hazard asset price bubbles capital flows and the east asian crisis the first tests we examine the view that the recent east asian crisis was precipitated by bursting asset price bubbles which had been fuelled by strong capital inflows that were largely the result of a moral hazard problem in financial intermediation and was exacerbated by a vicious cycle of asset price deflation and incipient and actual capital flight we find evidence of stock market bubbles in all east asian economies examined although not in australia we examine various categories of capital flows to these countries and find in particular relatively high reversible components in portfolio flows to east asian economies