external shocks adjustment policies and investment in a developing economy illustrations from a forward looking cge model of the philippines abstract the rapid increase in investment and external debt of middle income countries like the philippines during the 1970s was perfectly rational given existing policies however these countries could have done better with an appropriate mix of adjustment policies using a dynamic general equilibrium framework the paper examines the sensitivity of investment and growth to external shocks and adjustment policies it highlights the intertemporal trade offs of tariff reform a policy often recommended in the 1980s emphasizing the need for complementary measures to ease macro imbalances and short term dislocations of the protected sector

assessing the global poverty effects of antimicrobial resistance abstract as a result of antimicrobial resistance amr economies will experience an increase in mortality reduced productivity for labor and the livestock sector and increased health care costs this paper assesses the potential global poverty impacts of amr using a unique macro micro framework to estimate poverty effects of amr price wage and employment results from a dynamic multi country multi sector computable general equilibrium cge model are used in a microsimulation model that integrates household surveys from 104 countries the analysis in this paper advances other studies of amr in two ways 1 it links macro results to a microsimulation model to provide insight on poverty impacts for the world economy and countries of different income levels and 2 it uses a global multi sector model rather than an aggregate global model to generate macroeconomic results with structural details for capturing the economy wide impact within countries and the spread across countries via trade flows relative to a world without amr the progression of antimicrobial resistance is expected to make it more difficult to eliminate extreme poverty potentially adding 24 1 million people to become extremely poor of whom 18 7 million live in low income countries the expected losses during 2015 50 may sum to 85 trillion in gross domestic product and 23 trillion in global exports in present value by 2050 the global gross domestic product could deviate negatively by 3 8 percent from the baseline in the worst case scenario considered because it is a global public bad the optimal policy response will require global cooperation the poverty outcomes induced by amr in all country groups will deteriorate with short sighted isolationist policies moreover assistance from high income countries to improve the economic resiliency of lower income countries will also benefit the higher income countries and world economy in general

on the transmission of world agricultural prices two questions are asked about the relationship between domestic prices and world prices of agricultural commodities are variations in world prices transmitted to domestic prices domestic prices are regressed on world prices in various forms taking into account the possible effects of exchange rates and inflation the empirical analysis is based on data from the food and agriculture organization of the united nations for 58 countries from 1968 78 and for the countries of the european community from 1961 85 the results show that most of the variations in world prices are transmitted and that they constitute the dominant component in the variations of domestic prices

pro competitive effects of trade reform results from a cge model of cameroon abstract how likely is trade liberalization to produce efficiency gains in the presence of imperfect competition scale economies and higher than average wages in the modern sectors all common features in developing economies these features create a potential conflict to the extent that traditional notions of comparative advantage lead us to expect that the modern sectors will be squeezed with liberalization in this paper we investigate this issue by using an applied general equilibrium model calibrated to cameroonian data under perfect competition we find that the welfare effect is a wash since the beneficial consequence of expanded imports is offset by the reduction in employment in the modern high wage sectors under imperfect competition by contrast trade liberalization produces welfare gains of the order of 1 to 2 percent of income the key is the pro competitive effect of liberalization domestic firms in the modern sectors now perceive themselves as facing a higher elasticity of demand which spurs them to increase production

a theory of trading volume a theory of trading volume is developed based on assumptions that market agents frequently revise their demand prices and randomly encounter potential trading partners the model describes two distinct ways informational events affect trading volume one is consistent with conjectures made by empirical researchers that investor disagreement leads to increased trading but the observation of abnormal trading volume does not necessarily imply disagreement and volume can increase even if investors interpret the information identically if they also have had divergent prior expectations simulation tests support the model and are used to contrast the random pairing environment with costless market clearing volume is lower in the costly market and volume increases caused by an informational event persist after the event period this is consistent with existing empirical evidence and suggests that markets do not immediately clear all orders or that investors have demands to recontract

level slope curvature of the sovereign yield curve and fiscal behaviour abstract we study fiscal behaviour and the sovereign yield curve in the us and germany we obtain the latent factors level slope and curvature with the kalman filter and use them in a var with macro fiscal and financial stress variables in the us fiscal shocks generate an immediate response of the short end of the yield curve associated with monetary policy lasting 6 8 quarters followed by a response of the whole yield curve lasting 3 years with an implied elasticity of long term yields of 80 for the government debt shock and 48 for the budget balance shock in germany fiscal shocks have entailed no significant reactions of the yield curve shape and no response of the monetary policy interest rate notably after 1999 only in the case of debt shocks there is a short lived decrease in the medium end of the yield curve in the following 2nd and 3rd quarters

dutch disease effect of oil rents on agriculture value added in middle east and north african mena countries abstract this paper investigates the effect of oil rents on agriculture value added in oil producing middle east and north african mena countries annual data from 1970 to 2011 panel cointegration tests by pedroni 1999 long ran panel causality tests by canning and pedroni 2008 and two step system gmm by blundell and bond 1998 are used in this study we find a negative relationship between oil rents and agriculture value added in the long run with a rather slow rate of short run adjustment of agriculture value added back to equilibrium after a boom in oil rents these results indicate that an oil sector boom is associated with a contraction in the agriculture sectors of the countries in the panel in the long run this is probably attributable to a resource movement effect from other economic sectors to the booming oil sector in these countries this serves as evidence of a dutch disease effect of an oil sector boom on agriculture in the mena countries in this study

impact of switching production to bioenergy crops the switchgrass example this paper reports the results from simulations that evaluate the general equilibrium effects of substituting switchgrass a biomass for crude oil in usa petroleum production the new production process is less efficient and usa gdp declines slightly as switchgrass production expands usa agriculture contracts and the world price of cereals increases the world price of crude oil falls as usa import demand declines the net effect of the price and income changes is a general decline in economic welfare moreover the declines in welfare are proportionately greater for developing countries who produce small quantities of agricultural commodities whose prices increase

no arbitrage taylor rules with switching regimes we study the time varying nature of u s monetary policies summarized by the taylor rule based on a continuous time regime switching term structure model in this model the spot rate follows the taylor rule and government bonds at different maturities are priced by no arbitrage we allow the coefficients of the taylor rule and the dynamics of inflation and output gap to be regime dependent and estimate the model using government bond yields we find that the fed is proactive in controlling inflation in one regime and accommodative for growth in another moreover proactive monetary policies are associated with more stable inflation and output gap and therefore could have contributed to the great moderation our analysis also highlights the importance of switching regimes for term structure modeling without the regimes inflation and output can explain less than 50 of the variations of bond yields with the regimes the two variables can explain more than 80 of the variations of bond yields

the contribution of the mining sector to sustainability in developing countries abstract does the mining sector contribute to or detract from the achievement of sustainable development in developing countries sustainability is defined as development that will give future generations opportunities equal to or greater than those of the present generation treating gross income per capita as an imperfect proxy of these opportunities a test is made to investigate whether increases in mining gdp have led to long run increases in gnp per capita despite the exhaustibility of mineral deposits this is a more encompassing criterion than the conventional hartwick criterion which establishes necessary conditions for the achievement of a related definition of sustainability a vector autoregression model var is estimated for each of 19 non opec developing countries with large mining sectors using the impulse response functions the long run multiplier of mining income on gnp is calculated the sustainability criterion developed in the paper requires the multiplier to exceed a minimum value this test is carried out under alternative assumptions regarding future mining income

macroeconomics financial variables and computable general equilibrium models abstract this paper surveys micro macro computable general equilibrium cge models that incorporate asset markets and product and factor markets recent models are designed to analyze the impact on economic performance and the distribution of income in developing economies of structural adjustment and stabilization programs implemented in response to macro shocks these financial cge models add a loanable funds market incorporating a variety of assets to a cge model that already incorporates flow equilibria in product and factor markets these financial models start from tradefocused cge models and also draw on earlier work with micro and macrostructuralist models in specifying the interactions between financial variables and the real side of the economy the paper also compares these models to dynamic macro models both short run adaptive models with lagged adjustment mechanisms and longer run forward looking models the paper discusses the theoretical problems such models face in reconciling micro focused cge models with macro models incorporating dynamic behavior

commercial policy and the domestic carrying trade in this paper the authors examine the economic consequences of existing u s restrictions on trade in domestic water transportation cabotage services they briefly trace the history of u s policy on cabotage the authors also use an applied general equilibrium model of the united states to analyze the effects of the jones act on welfare and on production trade and employment in important upstream and downstream sectors the economic effects of u s maritime policies rank them with u s trade policies like the mfa the automobile and steel quotas of the mid 1980s and agricultural import restraints coauthors are hugh m arce kenneth a reinert and joseph e flynn

risk aversion intertemporal substitution and the term structure of interest rates an equilibrium model of the term structure of interest rates is derived from a representative agent framework with recursive utility preferences a key ingredient is a time varying subjective discount factor which is linked to the short term rate of interest the proposed model incorporates a vector autoregression description of macroeconomic dynamics and links them to those of the term structure so that nominal bond yields are affine functions of observable state variables the model is estimated and compared to both a restricted expected utility version of the model and a reduced form no arbitrage model we find that all three models can fit the term structure equally well but that only the unrestricted non expected utility model can empirically account for the tent shaped pattern and magnitude of coefficients from predictive regressions of excess bond returns on forward rates documented by cochrane and piazzesi 2005 bond risk premia american economic review 95 138 160 the unrestricted equilibrium model fits the term structure and captures the important features of bond risk premiums with economically plausible values for the structural preference parameters

oil depletion and development in cameroon a critical appraisal of the permanent income hypothesis this paper focuses on medium term policy options in the economic context of natural resource depletion in particular a novel approach for analyzing the impact of the permanent income hypothesis pih with a dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium cge model is employed the model is benchmarked in an oil producing country with declining production namely cameroon the results show that the pih renders public finances less vulnerable during the post oil transition however adopting the pih is not associated with substantial improvements in growth and household welfare in cameroon therefore the pih cannot be the only basis for better management of oil revenues in the country

the margin of safety and turning points in house prices observations from three developed markets using quarterly data from 1960 united kingdom 1963 united states and 1977 japan through the second quarter q2 of 2010 all three markets the authors examined long run mean reverting relationships between house prices and inflation disposable income gdp and rents at the end of q2 2010 u s prices were below their mean reverting levels and at the lower end of their historical range equivalent u k and japanese prices were at or slightly above their mean reverting levels

learning to love the dutch disease evidence from the mineral economies abstract recent literature proposes that a booming minerals sector may not only lead to dutch disease effects it may also be a development curse mineral economy case studies have tentatively confirmed this recourse curse thesis this paper examines the long run economic and development performance of a more general grouping of mineral based economies and finds little corroborating evidence

dutch disease government policy and import demand in nigeria the effects of sectoral changes and government policies on import demand in nigeria are examined in the context of the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s a two equation model is estimated to determine real import demand and the real exchange rate the results show that import demand increased significantly in response to the boom induced squeeze on the agricultural sector furthermore by inducing and sustaining real exchange rate overvaluation expansionary government policies contributed to higher import demand even after the collapse in oil prices

analyzing interest rate risk stochastic volatility in the term structure of government bond yields abstract we propose a nelson siegel type interest rate term structure model where the underlying yield factors follow autoregressive processes with stochastic volatility the factor volatilities parsimoniously capture risk inherent to the term structure and are associated with the time varying uncertainty of the yield curve s level slope and curvature estimating the model based on us government bond yields applying markov chain monte carlo techniques we find that the factor volatilities follow highly persistent processes we show that yield factors and factor volatilities are closely related to macroeconomic state variables as well as the conditional variances thereof

monk mortgages in a new keynesian model abstract there has been much interest recently in the role of household long term mortgage debt in the transmission of monetary policy this paper offers a tractable framework that integrates the long term debt channel with the standard new keynesian channel providing a tool for monetary policy analysis that reflects the recent debates in the literature as there is a nontrivial role in the model for both short and long term debt it provides a laboratory to investigate the effects of monetary policy operating not only through its current short term actions but also through expected persistent changes in its stance

the dutch disease in a developing country oil reserves in cameroon abstract noting that most of the literature on the dutch disease refers to developed countries this paper looks at the impact of an oil boom on a developing country when certain features of developing countries particularly the imperfect substitutability between domestic and imported goods are incorporated one of the standard dutch disease results can be reversed not all the traded goods sectors will contract a simulation with a computable general equilibrium model of cameroon reveals that the agricultural sector is most likely to be hurt whereas some of the manufacturing sectors will benefit this suggests possible areas for government intervention should it be warranted and may explain the differential performance between the agricultural and industrial sectors of oil exporting countries in the post 1973 period

global models applied to agricultural and trade policies a review and assessment the continuing process of global integration bears implications for farmers and related supplying and processing industries in all parts of the world but also for the rest of the world economy an assessment of agricultural and trade policy impacts is bound to be complex and is often supported by quantitative modeling analysis this article provides an assessment of the present state of applied modelling in the area of trade and agricultural policies we provide in this paper a comparative assessment of alternative modelling approaches considering a total of 16 partial equilibrium and general equilibrium models the assessment includes theoretical modelling foundations datasets employed and institutional aspects such as model maintenance and dissemination of results a typology of models is provided by structuring the assessment along a clear set of evaluation criteria

how foolish are internet investors we offer the first systematic evidence that stock recommendations published on the internet move prices and trading volumes we found that buy announcements for small cap growth stocks published in the nightly performance recap of the motley fool s rule breaker portfolio engender statistically significant abnormal returns the effects were generally larger than those following secondhand buy recommendations published in the print media or after a stock purchase recommendation on the television program wall treet week our finding of unusual trading volume also provides evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the motley fool buy announcements are closely followed and acted on by internet investors

mining fool s gold we discuss the popular motley fool s foolish four portfolio as a case study in data mining we document the performance of the foolish four portfolio and use it to illustrate the mistaken inferences that can plague any investment research project we describe the warning signs of data mining and discuss the antidotes to it out of sample tests and the adjustment of returns for risk transaction costs and taxes finally we document that the foolish four and dow 10 trading rules have become popular enough to influence selected stock prices at the turn of the year

asian growth and trade poles india china and east and southeast asia summary using a global general equilibrium trade model this study analyzes the impact on developing countries of 1 the dramatic expansion of trade by india china and an integrated east and southeast e se asia trade bloc and 2 productivity growth in the region china is an integral member of the e se asia bloc with strong links through value chains and trade in intermediate inputs while india is not a part of any trade bloc the analyses consider the importance of their different degrees of integration into regional and global economies focusing on potential complementarities and competition with other developing countries

budget rules and resource booms and busts a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium analysis this paper develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyze and derive simple budget rules in the face of volatile public revenue from natural resources in a low income country like niger the simulation results suggest three policy lessons or rules of thumb when a resource price change is positive and temporary the best strategy is to save the revenue windfall in a sovereign fund and use the interest income from the fund to raise citizens consumptionover time this strategy is preferred to investing in public capital domestically even when private investment benefits from an enhanced public capital stock domestic investment raises the prices of domestic goods leaving less money for government to transfer to households public investment is not 100 percent effective in raising output in the presence of a negative temporary resource price change however the best strategy is to cut public investment this strategy dominates other methods such as trimming government transfers to households which reduces consumption directly or borrowing which incurs an interest premium as debt rises in the presence of persistent positive and negative shocks the best strategy is a mix of public investment and saving abroad in a balanced regime that provides a natural insurance against both types of price shocks the combination of interest income from the sovereign fund transfers tohouseholds and output growth brought about by public investment provides the best protective mechanism to smooth consumption over time in response to changing resource prices

effects of macroeconomic policies on sectoral prices the effect of macroeconomic policies on the relative prices of internationally traded and domestic goods has been the subject of extensive study analysis of the way in which these policies then affect prices at the sectoral level is complicated by the beterogeneity of sectoral production even the prices of single products usually are determined by both domestic and traded components we present a framework which first traces the influence of macropolicy on the relative prices of exports imports and home goods it then accounts for each sector s degree of tradability which is based on the importance of trade in sectoral income and the influence of macroeconomic policy on sectoral prices to illustrate the use of this approach it is applied to a simulation of trade liberalization in argentina our results suggest that economywide policies had substantial negative effects on both the real exchange rate and the incentives to agricultural exports in an open economy the prices of tradable products are determined by world prices nominal exchange rates and taxes the prices of products which are not tradable are determined by domestic supply and demand which are themselves influenced by the actions and policies of the government some very important economic decisions depend on the price of tradables relative to that of nontradables the real exchange rate we examine here the way in which broader government policies affect the real exchange rate and through it prices at the sectoral level

product differentiation and the treatment of foreign trade in computable general equilibrium models of small economies this paper examines the treatment of exports and imports and external closure rules adopted in recent single country computable general equilibrium models of small economies the paper presents a simple one sector analytic model which captures the major features of the multi sector counterpart used in applied models the paper derives graphical and algebraic solutions to the model and shows that unlike some earlier external closures this one gives rise to a well behaved price taking economy the model is also useful to illustrate the role of elasticities in popular trade theoretic models that include traded and non traded goods

external disturbances domestic policy responses and debt accumulation in nigeria abstract this paper provides a case study of the link between external shocks domestic policy responses and external debt accumulation in nigeria the indonesian experience during 1970 1989 is provided as a contrast for policy comparison a significant part of the increase in external debt in the two countries corresponds to financing of capital flight after 1981 current account deficits assumed greater importance in the accumulation of external debt the growth in external debt was caused in part by adverse external conditions the results of this study show that the nigerian debt crisis was exacerbated by inappropriate policy responses indonesia avoided a crisis by applying prudent real exchange rate management and fiscal restraint

when will housing recover an interesting perspective on recent trends in the u s housing market is gained by noting how housing prices correspond to per capita income a traditional measure of affordability the ratio of housing prices to per capita income is high but close to historical norms in many regional markets however notable exceptions do exist in california housing prices recently reached levels relative to per capita income far above historical norms a significant pricing correction has begun in that market similarly housing prices are correcting sharply in arizona florida and nevada investors need to be mindful of the potential for housing market related losses and the potential for contagion among asset classes see comments and response on this article

assessing the impacts of china s environmental tax using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model abstract since 2018 china has put into practice the new environmental protection tax law which levies taxes on non greenhouse pollutants with stringent standards to fully study the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of this policy this paper establishes a dynamic country level compute general equilibrium cge model with the electricity sector disaggregated into 5 technologies and 19 major taxable pollutants included five scenarios are developed including the baseline scenario bau the low environmental tax scenario lowet the high environmental tax scenario highet the low environmental tax and low carbon tax scenario lowetc and the high environmental tax and high carbon tax scenario highetc the simulation results show that the environmental tax could help reduce emissions of most kinds of pollutants but bring negative effects on the gross domestic product gdp compared to the bau scenario the gdp loss by 2030 would be 0 10 0 21 0 32 and 0 67 in the lowet highet lowetc and highetc scenarios the emission of sulphur dioxide so2 will decrease by 3 55 7 15 6 70 and 13 01 and the emission of carbon dioxide co2 will be reduced by 2 21 4 62 8 91 and 16 77 the result also shows that the heavy polluted sectors and energy intensive sectors will suffer higher output loss while the clean energy sectors and service sector will experience an increase in the output in the policy scenarios

bilateral free trade agreements and customs unions the impact of the eu republic of south africa free trade agreement on botswana the eu has indicated that after 2008 its trade relationships with developing countries will be dominated by the development of preferential trade agreements although not a consequence of the cotonou agreement the free trade agreement between the eu and the republic of south africa eu rsa fta is clearly one of the first fruits of this approach to trade relationships however there is no evidence that the design of the eu rsa fta incorporated a comprehensive general equilibrium evaluation of the agreement for either the signatories or the other southern african nations the analyses reported here indicate that while the eu rsa fta may substantially benefit the signatories there are appreciable negative impacts for other states especially the rsa s immediate neighbours moreover the reluctance of the eu to fully liberalise trade in food and agriculture commodities results in a major reduction in the benefits for the rsa without ameliorating substantively the adverse implications for other nations

the relative inefficiency of quotas the cheese case the nonequivalence of tariffs and quotas under a wide variety of circumstances is well established in economic theory this study considers heterogeneity as a source of nonequivalence and demonstrates its practical importance where restriction is inevitable the bias of economists in favor of price instruments is not thoroughly grounded this study should help provide a foundation the point of departure from the equivalence model is differentiation of products

price and monetary convergence in currency unions the franc and rand zones abstract theory suggests that a currency union will impose significant macroeconomic disciplines on its members the law of one price for example should lead to convergence of price levels at least for what may be regarded as tradeable goods likewise arbitrage would imply convergence of interest rates this paper looks at the two main surviving currency unions the franc and rand zones in africa to see whether and to what extent these generally accepted propositions find confirmation in the data each of the african currency unions has a dominant or core member france in the case of the franc zone and the republic of south africa rsa in the case of the rand zone our focus is on the small members in the periphery and for them there is the additional presumption that inflation and interest rates will be imported from the core despite some rather wide short run divergences and although convergence is slow we find that in the long run consumer price inflation is largely determined in the core the limited evidence available suggests that uncontrolled interest rates also converge to core country levels jel f31

how much is a tulip worth the kind of passion to possess tulip bulbs that gripped holland some 350 years ago may be alive and well today among certain u s equity investors

dutch disease economics and oil syndrome an empirical study abstract this paper integrates the existing dutch disease models of an oil boom into a reduced form three sector model and estimates it for five developing oil exporting countries having significant agricultural and manufacturing sectors time series annual data for the period 1966 1986 are used for algeria ecuador indonesia nigeria and venezuela their output composition is altered by an increase in their oil revenues the spending effect and in the world price of manufactured goods relative to agricultural products the world price effect both effects expand the manufacturing sectors of these countries and contract their agricultural sectors the spending effect expands their nontraded sectors whereas the world price effect may expand or contract them the opposite results are implied for the oil collapse of the 1980s

the guardian state and its economic development model abstractthis article outlines the core features of a particular resource led development model the oil rich guardian state its key distinguishing feature from other resource rich economies consists in its strong economic welfare objective function which in line with its exceptional oil wealth renders its population amongst the wealthiest nations in the world however the guardian state also illustrates some of the negative externalities associated with resource wealth namely the policy dilemma of directing seemingly abundant financial resources into the economy the state faces a high propensity for waste and for the systemic dilution of market incentives thereby rendering sustained and self generating economic growth more difficult than in less resource rich economies

inflation employment and the dutch disease in oil exporting countries a short run disequilibrium analysis the author uses nontraded goods and labor shortages in the gulf countries the decline of the traded goods sector in oil producers dutch disease and the absence of employment benefits of higher oil revenues in latin american oil producers higher oil revenues can be likened to a transfer putting pressure on non oil traded nt goods prices and drawing resources out of the t sector the slope of the wage indexation line determines whether classical unemployment or repressed inflation results various policy measures are analyzed 3 references 8 figures

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

core and crust consumer prices and the term structure of interest rates we propose a model for nominal and real term structures of interest rates that includes dynamics for the three main components of total inflation core food and energy these dynamics combine together to produce a measure of expected total inflation that investors use to price nominal treasuries this framework captures different frequencies in inflation fluctuations shocks to core are more persistent and less volatile than shocks to food and especially energy the crust we find that a common structure of latent factors determines and predicts the term structure of yields and inflation our model outperforms popular benchmarks e g arma var and random walk specifications and it is at par with the survey of professional forecasters in forecasting inflation moreover we estimate real rates that agree with inflationindexed bond yields after adjusting for the liquidity premium in these bonds finally inflation and real rate risk premia show a declining pattern consistent with the changing nature of inflation and real rate risks

applying a macro finance yield curve to uk quantitative easing we estimate a macro finance yield curve model for both the nominal and real forward curve for the uk from 1993 to 2008 our model is able to accommodate a number of key macroeconomic variables and allows us to estimate the instantaneous response of the yield curve and so gauge the impact of quantitative easing on forward rates we find that 10 year nominal interest rates on average are lower by 46 basis points which can largely be explained by three main channels portfolio balance liquidity premium and signalling but there is no sizeable impact on real interest rates

assessing alternative options for allocating oil revenue in iran abstract the present paper focuses on medium term effects of alternative windfall management strategies for a resource abundant country where the resource revenues are expected to last over a prolonged period in particular the trade off between spending and saving is analyzed within the framework of a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model the model is further validated against historical data available for 2001 2010 the total factor productivity is calculated endogenously in the model based on a function that reflects the changes in factor productivity the results suggest that saving oil revenues whether in an oil fund or through physical investment in domestic sectors leads to a higher economic growth however physical investment is superior in the short to medium term based on the resultant gdp while creating an oil fund might be more beneficial in the post oil era

a macro finance model of the term structure monetary policy and the economy this paper develops and estimates a macro finance model that combines a canonical affine no arbitrage finance specification of the term structure with standard macroeconomic aggregate relationships for output and inflation from this new empirical formulation we obtain several interesting results 1 the latent term structure factors from finance no arbitrage models appear to have important macroeconomic and monetary policy underpinnings 2 there is no evidence of monetary policy inertia or a slow partial adjustment of the policy interest rate by the federal reserve and 3 both forward looking and backward looking elements play important roles in macroeconomic dynamics

oil price shocks and policy responses in the post reform chinese economy this study analyses the impact of the 1986 oil price shock on china and the policy options for accommodating the shock a computable general equilibrium model is used to capture the complex interactions in the chinese economy in response to the shock interpreted in the theoretical framework of the booming sector model the results of the model provide insights on both the real and monetary effects of the shock and suggest that a combination of policy instruments such as a cut in real absorption depreciation of the official exchange rate and tight monetary control are required to facilitate adjustment

term structure surprises the predictive content of curvature level and slope summary this paper analyzes the predictive content of the term structure components level slope and curvature within a dynamic factor model of macroeconomic and interest rate data surprise changes of the three components are identified using sign restrictions and their macroeconomic underpinnings are studied via impulse response analysis the curvature factor is found to carry predictive information both about the future evolution of the yield curve and the macroeconomy in particular unexpected increases of the curvature factor precede a flattening of the yield curve and announce a significant decline of output more than 1 year ahead copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

the canadian macroeconomy and the yield curve an equilibrium based approach les auteurs elaborent et estiment un modele d equilibre general de la structure des taux d interet canadiens dans lequel la dynamique des principales variables macroeconomiques est representee sous une forme vectorielle autoregressive et reliee a celle de la structure des taux

seasonal rural labor markets and their relevance to policy analyses in developing countries abstract seasonality is a salient feature of rural livelihoods and particularly within agriculture the demand for labor varies with the seasons and weather in low income countries agriculture employs almost two thirds of the labor force and incomes from labor are a major determinant of welfare therefore an appropriate model representation of rural labor markets is critical when analyzing agricultural and food policies economy wide models are commonly used for ex ante policy analysis but have so far ignored the influence of seasonality implicitly assuming separability of seasonal labor demand and supply this study relaxes that assumption using a computable general equilibrium cge model calibrated to the bhutanese economy as an illustrative case using model setups with and without seasonal labor markets a cereal export ban of india is simulated leading to higher import prices for bhutan results demonstrate that neglecting the influence of seasons on rural labor markets systematically biases model results assuming homogeneity of labor units i e allowing substitution across seasons understates the impacts of policy changes on rural wage rates distorts households labor leisure trade off decisions and overstates agricultural supply response given the widespread use of economy wide models the results are important for understanding the implications of domestic and global policy changes for agriculture and welfare in developing economies

adjustment and income distribution in an agricultural economy a general equilibrium analysis of cameroon abstract to distinguish policy packages that have favorable characteristics for both structural adjustment and income distribution this paper uses static and dynamically optimizing simulations of a computable general equilibrium cge model based on detailed country and household data from cameroon model results indicate that public spending to reduce transport and marketing costs are beneficial for the poor and for economic growth even at the expense of competing public investments

on some properties of a trade closure widely used in numerical modelling abstract armington trade models with price taking behaviour and cet and ces functions may have perverse offer curves and nash equilibria in tariff games may not exist in the two country case

the dartboard column second hand information and price pressure this study analyzes the effect of second hand information on the behavior of security prices and volume using analysts recommendations published in the monthly dartboard column of the wall street journal for the two days following the publication of the recommendations average positive abnormal returns of 4 percent nearly twice the level of abnormal returns documented in previous research on analyst recommendations and average volume double normal volume levels on the two days following publication of the recommendations are documented the positive abnormal return on announcement is partially reversed within 25 trading days the authors conclude that the positive abnormal return on announcement of the recommendations is a result of naive buying pressure as well as the information content of the analysts recommendations

evaluation of the incentive structure a survey and application to cameroon abstract this article uses a simple general equilibrium framework to evaluate the incentive structure of a country pursuing a mixed import substitution export promotion strategy it illustrates how features of general equilibrium analysis can be incorporated into the traditional balassa corden effective protection framework which is supplemented by the evaluation of the incidence of protection on firms importing and exporting households consumers and taxpayers and the government its application to a less developed country ldc cameroon shows that the burden of tariff protection is shifted 25 in the short run and 64 in the long run on to the unprotected sectors especially exports as a result average nominal protection 58 8 is much higher than protection actually provided to the protected sectors the welfare effect of protection is ambiguous households viewed only as final consumers lose when they are viewed as taxpayers protection may become beneficial in the long run taking substitution possibilities into account when measuring protection has an impact on the ranking of firms according to their nominal and effective protection

modeling bond yields in finance and macroeconomics from a macroeconomic perspective the short term interest rate is a policy instrument under the direct control of the central bank from a finance perspective long rates are risk adjusted averages of expected future short rates thus as illustrated by much recent research a joint macro finance modeling strategy will provide the most comprehensive understanding of the term structure of interest rates we discuss various questions that arise in this research and we also present a new examination of the relationship between two prominent dynamic latent factor models in this literature the nelson siegel and affine no arbitrage term structure models

canonical term structure models with observable factors and the dynamics of bond risk premia we derive a canonical representation for the no arbitrage discrete time term structure models with both observable and unobservable state variables popularized by ang and piazzesi 2003 we conduct a specification analysis based on this canonical representation and we analyze how alternative parameterizations affect estimated risk premia impulse response functions and variance decompositions we find a trade off between the need to obtain parsimonious parameterizations and the ability of the models to match observed patterns of variation in risk premia we also find that more richly parameterized models uncover a greater influence of macroeconomic fundamentals on the long end of the yield curve

export supply capacity and relative prices in the neoclassical approach to specifying an export supply equation relative prices and capacity are assumed to play a crucial role in domestic firms decisions to supply exports in the keynesian approach the willingness of domestic firms to supply foreign markets is considered to be largely a function of domestic demand pressure keynesian analyses do not allow for the impact of relative prices this paper blends the two approaches in a model in which a firm is assumed to choose first the level of productive capacity and then one period later to determine production and allocation between foreign and domestic markets on the basis of realized prices demand conditions and installed capacity the conclusion both prices and capacity are significant determinants of export supply

agricultural incentives in developing countries measuring the effect of sectoral and economywide policies the impact of sector specific direct and economywide indirect policies on agricultural incentives for 18 developing countries for the period 1975 84 are estimated the direct effect is measured by the proportional difference between the producer price and the border price adjusting for distribution storage transport and other marketing costs the indirect effect has two components 1 the impact of the unsustainable portion of the current account deficit and of industrial protection policies on the real exchange rate and thus on the price of agricultural commodities relative to nonagricultural nontradables and 2 the impact of industrial protection policies on the relative price of agricultural commodities to that of nonagricultural tradable goods the authors found that a in almost all cases the direct effect is equivalent to a tax on exportable goods and to a subsidy for importables b the indirect effect also taxes agriculture and dominates the direct effect and c the direct policies for both importables and exportables stabilize domestic producer prices

terms of trade shocks and structural adjustment in a small open economy abstract a three sector three factor general equilibrium model of dutch disease is developed providing yet another explanation for the expansion of the manufacturing sector in most of the oil exporting countries and the concurrent decline in their agricultural sectors in the 1970s the sectoral structure of the oil exporting small open economy is altered by an increase in its national income the spending effect and in the world price of manufactured goods relative to agricultural products the world price effect while both effects undermine the agricultural sector the world price effect may offset the negative impact of the spending effect on the manufacturing sector resulting in its expansion the short run analysis is of the standard jones specific factors model in the long run the capital rental and the price of the non traded good are determined by world prices and the transfer argument for the dutch disease real appreciation the rise in the relative price of the non traded good due to higher income completely disappears also demand effects alter non traded and manufacturing output but have no impact on the agricultural sector the world price effect is the sole cause of the decline in the agricultural sector in the long run

quantifying the impact of services liberalization in a developing country the authors consider how service liberalization differs from goods liberalization in terms of welfare the level and composition of output and factor prices within a developing economy in this case tunisia despite recent movements toward liberalization tunisian service sectors remain largely closed to foreign participation and are provided at high cost relative to many developing nations the authors develop a computable general equilibrium cge model of the tunisian economy with multiple products and services and three trading partners they model goods liberalization as the unilateral removal of product tariffs restraints on services trade involve both restrictions on cross border supply mode 1 in the gats and on foreign ownership through foreign direct investment mode 3 in the gats the former are modeled as tariff equivalent price wedges while the latter are comprised of both monopoly rent distortions arising from imperfect competition among domestic producers and inefficiency costs arising from a failure of domestic service providers to adopt least cost practices they find that goods trade liberalization yields a gain in aggregate welfare and reorients production toward sectors of benchmark comparative advantage however a reduction of services barriers in a way that permits greater competition through foreign direct investment generates larger welfare gains service liberalization also requires lower adjustment costs measured in terms of sectoral movement of workers than does goods trade liberalization and it tends to increase economic activity in all sectors and raise the real returns to both capital and labor the overall welfare gains of comprehensive service liberalization amount to more than 5 percent of initial consumption the bulk of these gains come from opening markets for finance business services and telecommunications because these are key inputs into all sectors of the economy their liberalization cuts costs and drives larger efficiency gains overall the results point to the potential importance of deregulating services provision for economic development

external shocks purchasing power parity and the equilibrium real exchange rate two approaches are commonly used to determine the equilibrium real exchange rate in a country after external shocks purchasing power parity ppp calculations and the salter swan tradables nontradables model there are theoretical and empirical problems with both approaches and tensions between them in this article the authors resolve these theoretical and empirical difficulties by presenting a model which is a generalization of the salter swan model and which incorporates imperfect substitutes for both imports and exports within the framework of this model the definition of the real exchange rate is consistent both with that of the ppp approach and with that of the salter swan model suitably extended the model however is capable of capturing a richer set of phenomena including terms of trade shocks and changes in foreign capital inflows it also provides a practical way to estimate changes in the equilibrium real exchange rate requiring little more information than is required to do ppp calculations the results are consistent with those of multisector computable general equilibrum models which generalize the trade specification of the small model

the yield curve and the macro economy across time and frequencies this paper assesses the relation between the yield curve and the main macroeconomic variables in the u s between early 1960s and 2009 across time and frequencies using wavelet analyses the shape of the yield curve is modelled by latent factors corresponding to its level slope and curvature estimated by maximum likelihood with the kalman filter the macroeconomic variables measure economic activity unemployment inflation and the fed funds rate the cross wavelet tools employed coherency and phase difference the set of variables and the length of the sample allow for a thorough appraisal of the timevariation and structural breaks in the direction intensity synchronization and periodicity of the relation between the yield curve and the macro economy our evidence establishes a number of new stylized facts on the yield curve macro relation and sheds light on several results found in the literature which could not have been achieved with analyses conducted strictly in the time domain as most of the literature or purely in the frequency domain

bond yields and the federal reserve bond yields respond to policy decisions by the federal reserve and vice versa to learn about these responses i model a high frequency policy rule based on yield curve information and an arbitrage free bond market in continuous time the fed s target is a pure jump process jump intensities depend on the state of the economy and the meeting calendar of the federal open market committee the model has closed form solutions for yields as functions of a few state variables introducing monetary policy helps to match the whole yield curve because the target is an observable state variable that pins down its short end and introduces important seasonalities around fomc meetings the volatility of yields is snake shaped which the model explains with policy inertia the policy rule crucially depends on the two year yield and describes fed policy better than taylor rules

adjustment with a fixed exchange rate cameroon cote d ivoire and senegal as members of the cfa franc zone cameroom cote d ivoire and senegal cannot use the nominal exchange rate as a tool of macroeconomic adjustment this article considers these countries responses to the commodity and oil price shocks of the 1970s in light of this and other institutional constraints using a two sector model it shows that there exist instruments that in principle permit the real exchange rate depreciation necessary for adjusting to macroeconomic imbalances the authors interpret the very different adjustment experiences of the three countries despite their common economic structure and institutional setting in terms of different uses of these instruments alternative assumptions about the labour market leave the qualitative nature of the results unaltered statistical analysis of data from the three countries confirms the model s linking of the current account and real exchange rate with the instruments of adjustment

examining the bond premium puzzle with a dsge model the basic inability of standard theoretical models to generate a sufficiently large and variable nominal bond risk premium has been termed the bond premium puzzle we show that the term premium on long term bonds in the canonical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model used in macroeconomics is far too small and stable relative to the data we find that introducing long memory habits in consumption as well as labor market frictions can help fit the term premium but only by seriously distorting the dsge model s ability to fit other macroeconomic variables such as the real wage therefore the bond premium puzzle remains

term structure modelling with observable state variables abstract this paper proposes and implements a parsimonious three factor model of the term structure whose dynamics is driven uniquely by observable state variables this approach allows comparing alternative views on the way state variables macroeconomic variables in particular influence the yield curve dynamics avoids curse of dimensionality problems and provides more reliable inference by using both the cross sectional and the time series dimension of the data i simulate the small sample properties of the procedure and conduct in and out of sample studies using a comprehensive set of us data i show that even a parsimonious model where the level slope and curvature factors of the term structure are driven by respectively inflation monetary policy and economic activity consistently outperforms the latent variable benchmark model in an out of sample study

external sector closing rules in applied general equilibrium models abstract this paper examines formulations of external sector behavior adopted in some of the recent applied general equilibrium models in many cases these models are constructed for single economies and the model builder attempts to use a convenient external sector specification to close the model issues and difficulties with export demand and import supply functions for foreigners which satisfy trade balance and the modeling of small economy price taking behavior are explored

measuring exchange rate misalignment inflation differentials and domestic relative prices abstract empirical studies of exchange rate misalignment generally use crosscountry differences in overall inflation as proxy measures for a country s real exchange rate rer this paper shows that using such differential inflation proxies introduces two systematic biases in model results understatement of rer movements and a spurious trend towards depreciation these biases can be corrected only with disaggregated data on domestic relative prices of tradable and nontradable products using a standard model with disaggregated data for zimbabwe it is found that proxy based results understate misalignment by almost 25 and exaggerate depreciation by 4 per year

global models of trade in agriculture and related environmental modelling a review and assessment the continuing process of global integration bears implications for farmers and related supplying and processing industries in all parts of the world but also for the rest of the world economy an assessment of agricultural and trade policy impacts is bound to be complex and is often supported by quantitative modeling analysis this article provides an assessment of the present state of applied modelling in the area of trade and agricultural policies we provide in this paper a comparative assessment of alternative modelling approaches considering a total of 16 partial equilibrium and general equilibrium models the assessment includes theoretical modelling foundations datasets employed and institutional aspects such as model maintenance and dissemination of results a typology of models is provided by structuring the assessment along a clear set of evaluation criteria

energy and depletable resources economics and policy 1973 1998 abstract this paper reviews the impact of the literature in depletable resources and energy economics over the period 1973 1998 particularly the initial period of publication of the journal of environmental economics and management 1974 1998 a discussion of prominent policy issues in this arena is provided along with an indication of what academic economics papers have contributed to that debate this is followed by a citation analysis of contributions in the fields of energy and exhaustible resource economics for each of these two fields a list of the top papers in each five year period from 1974 to 1998 is presented along with a list of the top journals in each decade based on average citations per article the top ten cited articles in the fields in the journal of environmental economics and management are also presented

nominal term structure and term premia evidence from chile abstractthe downwards trend exhibited in chile s nominal term structure since 2003 has been a common pattern shared by other developed and developing economies to understand the behaviour of the nominal yield curve in chile we rely on an affine dynamic term structure model which allows the term structure to decompose into the expected short term interest rate related to the monetary policy expectation and the term premium we show that most of the fall of long term interest rates as well as its dynamics are related to the term premium rather than the expected short term interest rate moreover we find evidence that term premium is driven primarily by the us term premium and domestic nominal uncertainty derived from expected inflation

accounting for a shift in term structure behavior with no arbitrage and macro finance models this paper examines a shift in the dynamics of the term structure of interest rates in the u s during the mid 1980s we document this shift using standard interest rate regressions and using dynamic a ne no arbitrage models estimated for the pre and post shift subsamples the term structure shift largely appears to be the result of changes in the pricing of risk associated with a level factor using a macro nance model we suggest a link between this shift in term structure behavior and changes in the dynamics and risk pricing of the federal reserve s in ation target as perceived by investors

an empirical investigation of the impact of antitakeover amendments on common stock prices abstract antitakeover amendments are amendments to a corporation s charter that impede the ability of an outsider to gain control of the firm a number of individuals and institutions have onjected to such amendments on the grounds that they are not in the best interests of the shareholders of the firms that adopt them this paper employs event time methodology to investigate the impact of antitakeover amendments on the common stock prices of firms that adopt them the results indicate that the announcement of such amendments is associated with a positive revaluation of stock price contrary to the concerns of their critics we conclude that antitakeover amendments are proposed by managers who seek to increase the value of the firm and are approved by stockholders who share that objective

aid and the supply side public investment export performance and dutch disease in low income countries contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of aid often concentrate on short run dutch disease effects ignoring the possible supply side impact of aid financed public expenditure in the simple model of aid and public expenditure presented here public infrastructure generates an inter temporal productivity spillover which may exhibit a sector specific bias the model also provides for a learning by doing externality through which total factor productivity in the tradable sector is an increasing function of past export volumes an extended computable version of this model is used to simulate the effect of a step increase in net aid flows the simulations show that beyond the short run when conventional demand side dutch disease effects are present the relationship between enhanced aid flows and real exchange rates output growth and welfare is less straightforward than simple models of aid suggest public infrastructure investment that generates a productivity bias in favor of non tradable production delivers the largest aggregate return to aid but at the cost of deterioration in the income distribution income gains accrue predominantly to skilled and unskilled urban households leaving the rural poor relatively worse off under plausible parameterizations of the model the rural poor may also be worse off in absolute terms