the 1985 86 oil price collapse and afterwards what does game theory add this paper focuses on the strategies used by opec to generate cartel profits over the period 1983 90 the evidence supports the hypothesis that opec adopted a swing producer strategy from 1983 to 1985 but when saudi arabia s profits fell below the level of coumot profits in the summer of 1985 it abandoned the role of swing producer driving prices to the cournot level subsequently saudi arabia appears to have adopted a tit for tat strategy designed to punish excessive cheating by other opec members based on these findings the strengths and limitations of game theory are assessed

co2 emissions from china s power sector at the provincial level consumption versus production perspectives abstract the chinese electricity sector plays an important role in domestic co2 mitigation efforts due to its large contribution to overall emissions however primary energy resources used for electricity generation are not evenly distributed across the country such a supply and demand mismatch in reality results in large parts of electricity to be transferred from economically less developed provinces in the west to economic growth centres in the east a literature review shows that the emissions embodied in electricity transfer within china have not been explicitly studied although in fact they cause a shift of environmental pollution away from economically well off provinces to resource rich and less developed provinces therefore it is critical for policy makers to address this issue under such a circumstance a bottom up model is developed to calculate direct co2 emissions embodied in electricity export and import between chinese provinces it helps quantifying emissions from the power sector associated with both production and consumption perspectives and sheds lights on the environmental impact of regional supply and demand mismatch in china results show that the difference between consumption and production based co2 emissions from electricity sector in some provinces were higher than the total co2 emissions from electricity sector in netherlands in the case of beijing or as high as the total co2 emission from france s electricity sector in the case of guangdong based upon chinese realities policy implications and suggestions are made such as how to set up appropriate emission reduction targets for electricity sector at provincial level and the inclusion of consumption emissions in designing china s cap and trade mechanism the methodology and findings may be useful for investigation of embodied emissions throughout various regions of the world

the equilibrium effect of fundamentals on house prices and rents abstract using a dynamic equilibrium model of housing tenure choice with fully specified markets for homeownership and rental properties and endogenous house prices and rents this paper studies the effect of fundamentals on equilibrium house prices and rents lower interest rates relaxed lending standards and higher incomes are shown to account for approximately one half of the increase in the u s house price rent ratio between 1995 and 2006 and to generate the pattern of rapidly growing house prices sluggish rents increasing homeownership and rising household indebtedness observed in the data

a model of the crude oil market in which market conduct varies this paper describes a model which first identifies in an estimatable manner parameters which describe the conduct each decision maker in an oligopoly expects from it s rivals and then allows them to vary in a systematic fashion across rivals and over time the model is applied to ten producing countries in the crude oil market 1966i to 1981iii a fully dynamic demand system is estimated together with equations describing price choice and variations in conduct and the null hypothesis of constant conduct is rejected against the more general alternative proposed here copyright 1987 by royal economic society

global trading versus linking architectures for international emissions trading abstract international emissions trading is widely seen as an indispensable policy pillar of climate change mitigation stern n 2007 the economics of climate change the stern review cambridge university press new york this article analyzes five different types of trading architectures classified into two top down unfccc driven and three bottom up driven by individual countries or regions approaches the two types of approaches are characterized by a trade off between environmental effectiveness and political feasibility respectively whereas their relative cost effectiveness depends on implementation details bottom up architectures constitute imperfect substitutes for top down architectures in terms of environmental effectiveness and thus remain mere fallback options however especially the formal linking architecture can act as complement in terms of cost effectiveness

the political economy of resource driven growth abstract in recent decades resource poor countries have out performed resource abundant ones a stylised facts model of competitive industrialisation describes the long run development of a resource poor country with a political state that is developmental only minor change is required to adapt the model to trace the development trajectory of a resource abundant country with a similar political state however most resource abundant countries engender a political state that is factional or predatory and distorts the economy in the pursuit of rents a staple trap model describes the development trajectory under these conditions the model predicts a growth collapse from which recovery is protracted especially for small economies that lack a niche trade link with a large economy

china and the relationship between the oil price and the dollar abstract we study cointegration and causality between the real price of oil and the real price of the dollar over the 1974 2004 period our results suggest that a 10 rise in the oil price coincides with a 4 3 appreciation of the dollar in the long run and that the causality runs from oil to the dollar through the development of a theoretical model we then investigate possible reasons why this relationship could be reversed in the future due to the emergence of china as a major player on both the oil and the foreign exchange markets

the response of real exchange rates to various economic shocks substantial fluctuations in real exchange rates i e deviations from purchasing power parity ppp which closely mirror movements in nominal rates have been one of the most notable international economic events since the breakdown of the bretton woods system dornbusch s disequilibrium theory 9 which presumes different speeds of adjustment in assets and goods markets offers an explanation for temporary deviations from ppp only models assuming ppp as a long run relationship have not been successful in interpreting the movements of the real exchange rates although studies conducted for countries experiencing high or hyper inflation provide evidence favoring ppp 42 30 29 the empirical evidence on ppp for industrialized low inflation countries is not generally favorable 1 this is consistent with the view that ppp may hold better in high inflation countries where the disturbances to their economies are mostly monetary in origin 31 123 24 but ppp may not hold well when the real disturbances which change equilibrium relative prices dominate statistical evidence indicates that the real exchange rates of many countries are likely to be nonstationary or have long memory that is changes in the real values of many currencies tend to persist for very long period of time this persistence implies that fluctuations in the real exchange rates are largely due to long lasting effect of real disturbances after revealing that ppp does not hold as a long run concept for several exchange rates flynn and boucher 12 121 suggest that one possible explanation is that there are time varying real factors that are omitted from the ppp relationship there are several well established reasons why the real exchange rates may change in response to real disturbances in the first place permanent exogenous shocks to the tradable sector of the economy call for changes in competitiveness for instance a rise in the real price of oil will worsen the balance of trade position of a net oil importing country and therefore call for a real depreciation of the currency of the country in order to improve its competitive position 32 second when countries are growing at different rates productivity bias will typically result in

a developing asia emission trading scheme asia ets abstract this paper provides a model assessment of the role of developing asia in the context of climate change policies we diagnose the potential response of asian economies to the imposition of various climate policies showing that if we were to equally price carbon across the world roughly half of the abatement would occur in developing asia we show that such autarkic measures would be consistent with the policy targets put forward by the major economies forum but would not necessarily be equitable we thus propose a fragmented cap and trade scheme with a specific regional market for developing asia the asian emission trading scheme asia ets we assess the role of the asia ets on the macro economy and international transfers vis a vis the standard case of global trading our results indicate that creating two large trading markets would result in small global efficiency losses while at the same time generating more reasonable regional incentives and transfers

oil prices and the rise and fall of the us real exchange rate abstract questions of the relative importance of real vs monetary shocks in explaining exchange rate movements still have no widely accepted answer despite their importance both for the research agenda and for policy questions we examine this issue using a variety of empirical techniques for the us effective exchange rate we find that a stable link exists between oil price shocks and the us real effective exchange rate over the post bretton woods period the results suggest that oil prices may have been the dominant source of persistent real exchange rate shocks and that energy prices may have important implications for future work on exchange rate behavior

oil price shocks and real gdp growth empirical evidence for some oecd countries this study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries multivariate var analysis is carried out using both linear and non linear models the latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature namely the asymmetric scaled and net specifications evidence of a non linear impact of oil prices on real gdp is found in particular oil price increases are found to have an impact on gdp growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases among oil importing countries oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but japan moreover the effect of oil shocks on gdp growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample with the uk being negatively affected by an oil price increase and norway benefiting from it

us shocks and global exchange rate configurations many academics and observers emphasize that a sharp us dollar depreciation is inevitable for returning the burgeoning us current account deficit to more sustainable levels how may such a us dollar adjustment occur and what may it imply for global exchange rate configurations the paper focuses on the role of us specific economic shocks in the adjustment process and finds that such us shocks have historically exerted a remarkably heterogeneous effect across currencies it shows that this heterogeneity is not only due to policy choices of inflexible exchange rate regimes or to monetary policy but to an important extent is explained by market forces in particular the degree of financial integration foremost in portfolio investment though not by trade this helps explain why it has been in particular the euro and its predecessor currencies as well as other european currencies that have contributed the bulk to the adjustment of the us dollar effective exchange rate over the past 25 years while other flexible currencies have been much less responsive to us shocks the results suggest that currency flexibility is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for achieving a more balanced contribution across currencies to an adjustment of global exchange rate configurations exchange rates are responsive to foreign shocks only to the extent that market mechanisms are in place that make this transmission work which requires in particular that countries have well developed financial markets and are financially integrated these findings have implications for an unwinding of global imbalances and for monetary policy choices and financial market policies in emerging market economies marcel fratzscher

one money one market the effect of common currencies on trade currency unions their dramatic effect on international trade a gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade the panel data bilateral observations for five years during 1970 90 covering 186 countries includes 300 observations in which both countries use the same currency i find a large positive effect of a currency union on international trade and a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility even after controlling for a host of features including the endogenous nature of the exchange rate regime these effects statistically significant imply that two countries sharing the same currency trade three times as much as they would with different currencies currency unions like the european emu may thus lead to a large increase in international trade with all that that entails andrew rose

on the size distribution of macroeconomic disasters confidence interval of 2 to 4 the results are robust to uncertainty about the values of the disaster probability and the equity premium and can accommodate seemingly paradoxical situations in which the equity premium may appear to be infinite

aggregate and welfare effects of redistribution of wealth under inflation and price level targeting abstract an unanticipated rise in the price level redistributes wealth from lenders to borrowers its size depends on the monetary policy regime as inflation targeting it and price level targeting pt have different implications for the price level path following price level movements the effects of an unexpected 1 price level increase are measured and assessed under both regimes overall the redistribution of wealth and the implied aggregate and welfare effects are larger under it than they are under pt the youngest the poorest and the government gain at the expense of the rest of the population and when the government gain is given to households as lump sum transfers the effects on gdp are negative and long lasting

on the welfare cost of rare housing disasters abstract this paper examines the welfare cost of rare housing disasters characterized by large drops in house prices i construct an olg general equilibrium model with recursive preferences and housing disaster shocks the likelihood and magnitude of housing disasters are inferred from historical housing market experiences in the oecd the model shows that despite the rarity of housing disasters canadian households would willingly give up 6 percent of their non housing consumption each year to eliminate the housing disaster risk the welfare evaluation of this risk however varies considerably across age groups the risk translates into a welfare loss of as much as 16 percent of annual non housing consumption for the old but a welfare gain of 2 percent for the young this asymmetry stems from the fact that compared to the old younger households suffer less from house price declines in disaster periods due to smaller holdings of housing assets and benefit from lower house prices in normal periods due to the negative price effect of disaster risk

energy supply security and geopolitics a european perspective the security of energy supply to the eu is examined in the context of two storylines markets and institutions exemplifies an economically and politically integrated multilateral world with effective institutions and markets regions and empires involves a world broken up in rival political and economic blocks competing for resources and markets via political economic and military power it is shown that these storylines have a significant impact on the development of the energy market on the way in which energy supply may be secured and on the effect and applicability of the several types of instruments available the current eu is geared towards enlargement and a deepening of economic integration based on the tenets of the post 1945 multilateral world system the present world tends towards regions and empires and suggests that the eu may have to reorient its energy security policy energy policy must become an integral part of eu external trade and foreign relations and security policy the eu should develop its own strategy actively investing in dialogues with producer countries in the persian gulf and africa and with russia sustainable prosperity and governance in these regions will support eu energy security

market power and hot air in international emissions trading the impacts of us withdrawal from the kyoto protocol ten years after the initial climate change convention from rio in 1992 the industrialized world is finally likely to ratify the kyoto protocol which will impose legally binding greenhouse gas emission reductions on the developed world however the kyoto protocol will enter into force without the usa which withdrew under president bush in march 2001 accounting for hot air and market power of the former soviet union on emission permit markets it is shown that us withdrawal has important consequences on environmental effectiveness compliance costs and excess costs of market power under the kyoto protocol non compliance of the usa implies a dramatic decrease in environmental effectiveness as well as compliance costs of oecd countries whereas the former soviet union and transitional economies in eastern europe suffer from a huge decline in permit sales revenues excess costs of market power in permit trade increase in relative terms but decline substantially in absolute terms due to us withdrawal pol

are oil shocks inflationary asymmetric and nonlinear specifications versus changes in regime this paper identifies a structural break in core u s inflation phillips curves such that oil prices contributed substantially before 1981 but since that time pass through has been negligible this characterization is robust to a variety of re specifications and fits the data better than asymmetric and nonlinear oil price alternatives evidence does not support the hypotheses that declining energy intensity or deregulation of energy producing and consuming industries played an important role monetary policy did not itself become less accommodative of oil shocks but may have helped create a regime where inflation is less sensitive to price shocks more generally

house prices borrowing constraints and monetary policy in the business cycle i develop a general equilibrium model with sticky prices credit constraints nominal loans and asset prices changes in asset prices modify agents borrowing capacity through collateral value changes in nominal prices affect real repayments through debt deflation monetary policy shocks move asset and nominal prices in the same direction and are amplified and propagated over time the financial accelerator is not constant across shocks nominal debt stabilises supply shocks making the economy less volatile when the central bank controls the interest rate i discuss the role of equity debt indexation and household and firm leverage in the propagation mechanism finally i find that monetary policy should not target asset prices as a means of reducing output and inflation volatility

carbon pricing and system linking lessons from the new zealand emissions trading scheme abstract textbook theory of linking carbon systems suggests linking reduces marginal abatement costs contrasting theoretical work and policy analyses suggests that linking or at least unfettered linking may not always be beneficial the new zealand emissions trading scheme nz ets is unique in that until 2013 it allowed unlimited use of kyoto allowances nz ets thus provides an ideal context to explore the effect of linking and linking restrictions on carbon pricing of small systems using data on importation and exportation of allowances we provide the first empirical analysis of the determinants of allowance prices in the early phase of the nz ets our results indicate that imports of offsets rather than fundamentals have been the major price determinant moreover the pricing of new zealand units nzus can be placed into three distinct periods delineated by two structural breaks in the first period the system is largely autarkic in the second period as international offset prices drop below the nzu price the system becomes a price taker in the final period following policy interventions the system regains some independence the case of the nz ets shows that small trading systems need to impose or have the option to impose quantitative import restriction so as to reap the benefits lower abatement cost but not the drawbacks importation of distortions and market integrity issues of linking

international emissions trading with endogenous allowance choices abstract this paper compares endogenous choices of tradable and non tradable emission allowances by non cooperative countries i find that the cost savings of trading do not necessarily lead to less pollution in particular environmentally more concerned countries usually choose less allowances if these are tradable but this may be offset by the choice of more allowances on the side of environmentally less concerned countries moreover if the establishment of a trading system requires the unanimous approval of all countries there may be no agreement on trading even if it were to lead to less pollution overall conversely a trading system may find unanimous approval even if it induces more pollution

managing the evolution of multilateralism author s downs george w rocke david barsoom peter n abstract in the past five years a relatively extensive literature has emerged that explores the demand for multilateral cooperation that is those factors that motivate states to develop or resist developing formal institutions that operate to increase interstate economic military or environmental cooperation 1 these factors include the transaction costs associated with ad hoc and multiple bilateral arrangements increased interstate trade the diffusion of liberal trade theory information about the costs of environmental degradation and trends in elite ideology to date however our understanding of the supply side of multilateralism the standards that are set for admission the order and speed with which candidate states are admitted and the impact of expansion on cooperation and future evolution has been relatively undeveloped 2 partly as a result theorists have had little to say about how multilateral institutions are likely to evolve or what the policy consequences of their expansion will be 3 supply side issues are important because multilateral organizations usually do not spring forth full blown they grow instead of forming an inclusive agreement that is one that covers nearly all of the states that its designers eventually hope to include many multilateral organizations start out with substantially smaller memberships and generally expand over time we argue that among the many possible explanations for the choice of this design strategy there is a rational choice argument

income and wealth heterogeneity in the macroeconomy how do movements in the distribution of income and wealth affect the macroeconomy we analyze this question using a calibrated version of the stochastic growth model with partially uninsurable idiosyncratic risk and movements in aggregate productivity our main finding is that in the stationary stochastic equilibrium the behavior of the macroeconomic aggregates can be almost perfectly described using only the mean of the wealth distribution this result is robust to substantial changes in both parameter values and model specification our benchmark model whose only difference from the representative agent framework is the existence of uninsurable idiosyncratic risk displays far less cross sectional dispersion and skewness in wealth than u s data however an extension that relies on a small amount of heterogeneity in thrift does succeed in replicating the key features of the wealth data furthermore this extension features aggregate time series that depart significantly from permanent income behavior

review of taiwan s climate policy after copenhagen abstract the copenhagen accord in 2009 initiated new opportunities for international cooperation in reducing greenhouse gas ghg emissions the purpose of this study was to review taiwan s current climate policy and in response to the copenhagen accord to deliberate this policy in the light of new strategic thinking the study proposes a two stage approach with a dividing line in 2020 in the first stage from now until 2020 strategy should be based on cost constraints with a suggested reduction cost below 60 t co 2 and implementation of domestic ghg emissions trading scheme and reduction strategies in the second stage from 2020 and beyond action by taiwan should accord with international cooperative actions to link its domestic emissions trading scheme with the international carbon market

opec behavior a test of alternative hypotheses since interpretations of past and future oil price patterns depends on the model chosen the author tests and compares alternative theories of opec as a first step in validating the choice on any one model the results show that among opec countries the partial market sharing cartel model is the only model not rejected by at least some of the 11 members and gives the best explanation of production in comparison with 11 non opec countries the competitive model could not be rejected for 10 of the 11 non opec producers this raises the question of why if opec is a cartel friedman s predictions have not come true and introduces new questions for future research 19 references 3 tables

rare disasters asset prices and welfare costs a representative consumer model with epstein zin weil preferences and i i d shocks including rare disasters accords with observed equity premia and risk free rates if the coefficient of relative risk aversion equals 3 4 if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution exceeds one an increase in uncertainty lowers the price dividend ratio for equity and a rise in the expected growth rate raises this ratio calibrations indicate that society would willingly reduce gdp by around 20 percent each year to eliminate rare disasters the welfare cost from usual economic fluctuations is much smaller though still important corresponding to lowering gdp by about 1 5 percent each year

how could emissions trading benefit developing countries abstract this paper aims to show how an emissions trading system could work if some participating entities are allocated an emissions budget or non binding target this will allow them to sell allowances if their actual emissions are less than their budget but will not obligate them to buy allowances if their emissions exceed their budget different rules aiming at ensuring the environmental integrity of such a system are considered parties to the framework convention on climate change may wish to consider building a regime where developing countries are allocated emissions budgets on some provisions of the kyoto protocol and in full respect with the principles of the convention in any case such system would be complementary to the clean development mechanism the potential benefits would be to provide non annex i developing countries with substantial capital inflows and stimulate their economic growth to allow annex i industrialised countries achieving their kyoto commitments at the lowest possible cost and to achieve global participation towards the objective of the convention while reducing the risk of creating tropical hot air by giving some developing countries more allowances than they need under a business as usual scenario

exchange rate indicators and optimal currency baskets a macroeconomic analysis with application to developing countries this paper presents a framework for deriving and estimating an optimally weighted exchange rate index within a general equilibrium model the main contribution is a dual one at a theoretical level the paper yields the unambiguous result that the kalman filter technique and turnovsky optimization control technique for deriving optimal weights are equivalent at an empirical level the paper illustrates how the theoretical optimal weights can be translated into empirical weights and estimated within a simple general equilibrium model optimally weighted exchange rate indices are constructed for a group of asian developing countries using a vector autoregressiori model in which the weights are designed to minimize the forecast variance of a target variable real output the properties of the weighted indices are examined and their potential usefulness for exchange rate policy both as economic indicators and as currency baskets is discussed

exchange rates and traded goods prices abstract this paper presents a partial equilibrium model of the determination of domestic and export prices by a monopolistic competitive firm the model stresses the role of exchange rate uncertainty and expectations the most important result of the analysis is that the stochastic properties of deviations from the law of one price are crucially affected by the currency of denomination of export prices using data on domestic and dollar export prices of japanese goods i find that deviations from the law of one price are due to exchange rate surprises but also to price staggering and ex ante price discrimination

unilateral regulation of bilateral trade in greenhouse gas emission permits this paper considers the coordination of domestic markets for tradable emission permits where countries determine their own emission reduction targets using a two country model linking such schemes is beneficial to both countries but may cause the exporting country to decrease its emission reduction target and export more permits this in turn would not only reduce the costs for both countries as less emissions have to be reduced but it also lowers the environmental benefits of the importing country one price instrument tariff and two quantity instruments discount quota to prevent the exporting country from issuing more permits are examined each instrument restricts trade and alters the terms of trade for the two countries the importing country and regulator prefers an import tariff and an import quota to a carbon discount if the exporting country releases additional permits the importing country should not try to keep total emissions constant as that would be ineffective and maybe even counterproductive instead the importing country should aim to keep the total import constant this would impose costs on the exporting country that are independent of the policy instrument an import quota would be the cheapest option for the importing country an import quota would also stress the idea of supplementary of the flexible mechanism as it increases the share of emissions reduced domestically compliance and liability issues constrain the market further however both the importing and the exporting country would prefer that the permit seller is liable in case of non compliance as sellers liability would less constrain the market

revisiting the case for intensity targets better incentives and less uncertainty for developing countries abstract in the debate on post kyoto global climate policy intensity targets which set a maximum amount of emissions per gdp figure as prominent alternative to kyoto style absolute emission targets especially for developing countries this paper re examines the case for intensity targets by critically assessing several of its properties namely i reduction of cost uncertainty ii reduction of hot air iii compatibility with international emissions trading iv incentive to decouple carbon emissions and economic output decarbonization and v use as a substitute for banking borrowing relying on simple analytical models it is shown that the effect on cost uncertainty is ambiguous and depends on parameter values and that the same holds for the risk of hot air that the intensity target distorts international emissions trading that despite potential asymmetries in the choice of abatement technology between absolute and intensity target the incentive for a lasting transformation of the energy system is not necessarily stronger under the latter and finally that only a well working intensity target could substitute banking borrowing to some extent but also vice versa overall the results suggest that due to the increased complexity and the potentially only modest benefits of an intensity target absolute targets remain a robust choice for a cautious policy maker

the mirage of exchange rate regimes for emerging market countries this paper argues that much of the debate on choosing an exchange rate regime misses the boat it begins by discussing the standard theory of choice between exchange rate regimes and then explores the weaknesses in this theory especially when it is applied to emerging market economies it then discusses a range of institutional traits that might predispose a country to favor either fixed or floating rates and then turns to the converse question of whether the choice of exchange rate regime may favor the development of certain desirable institutional traits the conclusion from the analysis is that the choice of exchange rate regime is likely to be of second order importance to the development of good fiscal financial and monetary institutions in producing macroeconomic success in emerging market countries this suggests that less attention should be focused on the general question whether a floating or a fixed exchange rate is preferable and more on these deeper institutional arrangements a focus on institutional reforms rather than on the exchange rate regime may encourage emerging market countries to be healthier and less prone to the crises that we have seen in recent years

oil prices and economic activity an asymmetric cointegration approach the aim of this paper is to study the long term relationship between oil prices and economic activity proxied by gdp to account for asymmetries existing in the links between the two variables we propose an approach based on asymmetric cointegration our empirical analysis concerns the u s economy but also the g7 europe and euro area economies results indicate that while standard cointegration is rejected there is evidence for asymmetric cointegration between oil prices and gdp

opec and other commodity cartels a comparison abstract the economic literature provides specific characteristics for cartels although the theory of international cartels is not well developed in the literature and every cartel is unique some of these characteristics exist in each cartel this study investigates the existence of these characteristics in six known commodity cartels including opec in addition it compares the oil companies cartel the seven sisters to opec and summarizes the findings of opec econometric models developed in the literature in the last 25 years and concludes that the results do not support cartel or competitive models for opec although other cartels are more successful than opec many books and articles in economics use opec as a cartel example neither statistical tests nor theory support the popular use of opec as a cartel example indeed this article concludes that opec is composed of saudi arabia the dominant world producer plus several distinct sub groups and that separate models are required to explain the behavior of each assigning the power of some opec members to opec has caused confusion about its behavior recent opec success is attributed to political natural and technical capacity limitations in the oil fields that prevented countries from cheating on their quota in other words opec adherence to the quota except for saudi arabia is anything but voluntary

designing eu us atlantic monetary relations exchange rate variability and labour markets the variability of the euro seems to have a statistically significant and economically small but non negligible impact on labour markets in euroland unemployment tends to increase and employment growth tends to fall whenever the effective exchange rate of the euro or the bilateral euro dollar exchange rate becomes more variable in the us a similar effect seems to be operating but it is statistically less strong especially concerning employment growth which seems largely insulated from exchange rate variability these results fit the general observation that us labour markets are more flexible and that the euro area is considerably more open than the us exports of goods and services amount to close to 18 per cent of euroland gdp versus only about 11 per cent for the us

integration of the global carbon markets abstract this paper analyzes the market architecture and common factors of emission reduction instruments in europe and north america spot and futures prices across exchanges in europe are cointegrated but the futures curve beyond the calendar year evolves independently despite narrower spreads political uncertainties about the clean development mechanism have kept eua and cer prices from converging rggi allowances share a common trend with eua and the european markets adjust to the u s price trend a 0 10 shock to rggi prices leads to a one month 0 64 cumulative increase in eua prices the introduction of cap and trade legislation in the u s has broken a cointegrating relationship in voluntary prices voluntary instruments that are convertible into mandatory allowances imply less than a 20 probability of price convergence between the u s and europe by 2013

free trade and global warming a trade theory view of the kyoto protocol this paper demonstrates how three important results in environmental economics true under mild conditions in closed economies are false or need serious amendment in a world with international trade in goods since the three results we highlight have framed much of the ongoing discussion and research on the kyoto protocol our viewpoint from trade theory suggests a re examination may be in order specifically we demonstrate that in an open trading world but not in a closed economy setting 1 unilateral emission reductions by the rich north can create self interested emission reductions by the unconstrained poor south 2 simple rules for allocating emission reductions across countries such as uniform reductions may well be efficient even if international trade in emission permits is not allowed and 3 when international emission permit trade does occur it may make both participants in the trade worse off and increase global emissions

advancing the design of a dynamic petro dollar currency basket this study offers organization of petroleum exporting countries opec member nations a crude oil pricing currency basket based on currency liquidity in contrast with prior emphasis on opec trading patterns motivating the search for an alternative us dollar pricing of crude oil is the significant and inverse relationship r 0 82 p 0 01 between the us dollar major currencies index and crude oil price over the period january 1999 march 2009 a dynamically weighted petro dollar currency basket is proposed based on the five currency claims us dollar euro british pound japanese yen and swiss franc and their varying proportions of foreign exchange reserves held by central banks the major currencies us dollar index is compared against the proposed petro dollar index to reveal an average us 8 1 billion annual gain in favor of the petro dollar currency basket offering opec members a revenue stream of diversified and highly liquid currencies to transition away from complete dependence on the us dollar crude oil pricing the proposed petro dollar crude oil pricing schema offers opec a crude oil price dynamically denominated in currencies reflecting the global use and importance of crude oil this paper concludes with implementation issues facing a move toward the dynamically weighted petro dollar crude oil pricing schema