energy inflation and house price corrections we analyze empirically the role played by energy inflation as a determinant of downward corrections in house prices using a dataset for 18 oecd economies spanning the last four decades we identify periods of downward house price adjustment and estimate conditional logit models to measure the effect of energy inflation on the probability of these house price corrections after controlling for other relevant macroeconomic variables our results give strong evidence that increases in energy price inflation raise the probability of such corrective periods taking place this phenomenon could be explained by various channels through the adverse effects of energy prices on economic activity and income reducing the demand for housing through the particular impact on construction and operation costs and their effects on the supply and demand of housing through the reaction of monetary policy on inflation withdrawing liquidity and further reducing demand through improving attractiveness of commodity versus housing investment on asset markets or through a lagging impact of common factors on both variables such as economic growth our results contribute to the understanding of the pass through of oil price shocks to financial markets and imply that energy price inflation should serve as a leading indicator for the analysis of macro financial risks

the silent success of customs unions an earlier version of this paper is part of arevik gnutzmann mkrtchyan s thesis essays on the economics of trade agreements 2014 http hdl handle net 1814 34561

regime switching in the reactions of stock markets in saudi arabia to oil price variations the study revisits the stock oil nexus by examining the reactions of equity markets to oil price shocks at national and sectoral levels for saudi arabia in a time varying framework by employing the markov switching egarch model developed by henry 2009 journal of banking and finance 33 405 based on weekly data the findings reveal that the behaviour of all stock markets switches between an expansion regime and a recession regime with more persistence for the expansion state additionally influential international events associated with stock market drops are clearly identified in the recession regime furthermore there is evidence of asymmetric reactions of the equity index returns and the probabilities of transition from one state to another to oil price variations with heterogeneous impacts across sectors and regimes the stock markets are more sensitive to oil price decreases than to oil price increases although the evidence of relatively slight differences in some findings across weekdays the study allows investors and policymakers to understand well the interactions of stock sector markets vis a vis the world oil market in a regime switching framework in order to make the right decision as regards portfolio diversification and regulation of the stock markets

oil and gas markets in the uk evidence from a cointegrating approach the paper examines the relationship between uk wholesale gas prices and the brent oil price over the period 1996 2003 in order to investigate whether oil and gas prices decoupled during this period as orthodox gas market liberalisation theory suggests tests for unit roots and cointegration are carried out and it is discovered that a long run equilibrium relationship between uk gas and oil prices exists moreover this relationship pre dates the opening of the uk mainland europe interconnector following a recursive methodology hansen h and johansen s 1999 some tests for parameter constancy in cointegrated var models econometrics journal 2 306 333 it was found that the cointegrating relationship is present throughout the sample period however the long run solutions seem to be more volatile evidence is provided that the short run relationship is linear and impulse response functions are used to examine the effects that a shock in oil would have on gas these findings do not support the assumption that gas prices and oil prices decouple

demand for local public spending evidence from the british social attitudes survey the british social attitudes survey bsas is a uk wide survey that provides a rich source of information on individuals attitudes to a variety of topics including locally provided service in this paper we seek to model answers to questions on attitudes to local authority spending which invite the expression of a private demand for local public spending a convincing picture has emerged of locally provided public goods as imperfectly congested public goods with a price elastic and probably income inelastic demand the view that central government grants may induce voter confusion over tax prices of public services also finds support

oil price shocks economic policy uncertainty and industry stock returns in china asymmetric effects with quantile regression abstract this paper investigates the impact of crude oil shocks and china s economic policy uncertainty on stock returns at different locations on the return distributions based on monthly data from 1995 1 to 2016 3 we address this issue by employing the quantile regression technique this approach enables a more detailed investigation in different market circumstances namely bearish normal and bullish markets empirical results indicate that the effects of oil price shocks and economic policy uncertainty are asymmetric and highly related to stock market conditions moreover both the nexus of oil and economic policy uncertainty stock are changed at the onset of a crisis specially rising oil prices have greater negative effects on stock returns when stock markets are bullish extreme higher quantiles before a crisis whereas the effects are significantly positive under different market conditions after the onset of the crisis falling oil prices lower stock returns when stock markets are bullish and normal before the crisis whereas lower stock returns under different market conditions except extreme bullish after the onset of the crisis these findings might be related to the optimistic or pessimistic investor sentiments and investors might become more frightened after the crisis

spillovers from the oil sector to the housing market cycle we assess the spillovers from the oil sector to the housing market cycle using quarterly data for 20 net oil exporting and importing industrial countries and employing continuous and discrete time duration models we do not uncover a statistically significant difference in the average duration of booms and normal times in the housing markets of those net oil importers and net oil exporters similarly the degree of exposure to commodity price fluctuations does not seem to significantly affect the housing market cycle however we find that housing booms are shorter when oil prices increase than housing busts when oil prices decrease we also show that the net oil importers are more vulnerable to protracted housing slump episodes than the net oil exporters

doing good but not that well a dilemma for energy conserving homeowners abstract in this paper the issue of market capitalization of energy efficient buildings is addressed by considering single family housing in sweden and through analyzing as to what extent the market price for a house is influenced by its energy performance are swedish homeowners doing well by doing good we make use of information provided by the swedish energy performance certificates for single family homes matched with data on the corresponding transaction prices household characteristics and attributes of the neighborhood the resulting database covering about 77 000 individual observations is used to analyze the relationship between the price of a house and its energy performance by means of a hedonic model unlike most other studies the energy performance is decomposed into energy consumption and several other variables characterizing the energy system the main question addressed is if there is a price premium for energy efficient housing in sweden our results differ from earlier studies and indicate no price premium related to the energy consumption but substantial premiums for housing attributes that improve the energy efficiency a likely explanation is that prospective buyers of new homes base their expectations about future energy consumption on those attributes rather than on the energy consumption of the previous owner

free trade agreements as dynamic farsighted networks in the presence of multilateral negotiations are free trade agreements ftas necessary for or will they prevent global free trade i answer this question using a dynamic farsighted model of network formation among asymmetric countries ultimately ftas prevent global free trade when there are two larger countries and one smaller country but ftas can be necessary for global free trade when there are two smaller countries and one larger country the model provides insights into the dynamics of recent real world negotiations and recent results in the literature on the empirical determinants of trade agreements jel c71 f12 f13

a dynamic model of voter behavior and the demand for public goods among social groups in great britain abstract a dynamic model of voter behavior is discussed explaining transitions in party choice by imputed party responsibilities with respect to public and private consumption possibilities the model uses a group framework to explicitly describe voter interests it allows for an estimation of the relative preference for public goods as determined by the revealed preference mechanism of voting the model is compared to popularity functions in their general form an empirical application to great britain is presented it appears that retired individuals have the highest relative preferences for public goods followed by housewives men manual workers self employed and non manual workers

bilateralism multilateralism and the quest for global free trade abstract we develop an equilibrium theory of trade agreements in which both the degree and the nature bilateral or multilateral of trade liberalization are endogenously determined to determine whether and how bilateralism matters we also analyze a scenario where countries pursue trade liberalization on only a multilateral basis we find that when countries have asymmetric endowments or when governments value producer interests more than tariff revenue and consumer surplus there exist circumstances where global free trade is a stable equilibrium only if countries are free to pursue bilateral trade agreements by contrast under symmetry both bilateralism and multilateralism yield global free trade

analysing systemic risk and time frequency quantile dependence between crude oil prices and brics equity markets indices a new look abstract this paper examines the dependence structure and the systemic risk between the return series of oil prices and the brics equity market indices using the newly developed methods of the quantile coherency of barunik and kley 2015 and the nonparametric conditional value at risk causality ncovar and the ncovar granger causality tests ncovar gc of diks and wolski 2018 for the period 2001 2018 further the traditional tests of hiemstra and jones 1994 and diks panchenko 2005 are used for comparison purposes the new methods have given rise to findings that are substantially different from those based on the two traditional approaches from our frequency dependence analysis we find a significant long term dependence coherency between the russian brazilian and south african stock markets and oil shifts however the ncovar analysis demonstrates a robust instantaneous dependence in both directions between almost all of the brics stock markets the exception is the indian market and the oil market the ncovar gc analysis reveals a robust lagged dependence from the oil market onto the chinese stock market only these findings provide helpful insights for regulators and potential international investors

do household energy expenditures affect mortgage delinquency rates we postulate a direct role for energy prices in the 2008 financial crisis rising energy prices constrain consumer budgets and thereby raise mortgage delinquency rates this hypothesis is tested by estimating a quarterly cointegrating vector autoregressive cvar model that seeks to quantify the factors that influence the percentage of us mortgages that are 30 to 89 days past due and those that enter foreclosure results identify a long run relationship for the percentage of us mortgages that are 30 to 89 days past due that includes the interest rate on one year adjustable mortgages household expenditures on energy nominal home prices rates of home ownership and the fraction of mortgages 90 days or more past due that enter foreclosure unemployment rates have a short run effect together these variables account for much of the historical variation in the percentage of us mortgages that are 30 to 89 days past due and indicate that the post 2006 rise in this measure of mortgage delinquency is associated with falling home prices an increase in household expenditures on energy and rising unemployment

on the identification of cointegrated systems in small samples a modelling strategy with an application to uk wages and prices abstract this paper discusses the practical application of identification in cointegrated systems it will argue that in a common realistic modelling situation of a limited data set and the theory requirements of a fairly rich model the techniques proposed in the existing literature are almost impossible to implement successfully there are crucial decisions to be made over the order in which various restrictions are imposed in the move from a general unrestricted vector error correction model vecm to the fully over identified vecm we will argue that imposing exogeneity restrictions at the earliest possible stage of the model reduction process and then restricting the dynamic adjustment of the model hugely increases the power of tests of overidentifying restrictions on the long run cointegrating vectors in practice this means that a thorough use of economic theory at an early stage rather than treating a model as a pure statistical artefact can yield enormous benefits

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

rules of origin and the profitability of trade deflection abstract when a country grants preferential tariffs to another either reciprocally in a free trade agreement fta or unilaterally rules of origin roos are defined to determine whether a product is eligible for preferential treatment roos exist to avoid that exports from third countries enter through the member with the lowest tariff trade deflection however roos distort exporters sourcing decisions and burden them with red tape using a global data set we show that for 86 of all bilateral product level comparisons within ftas trade deflection is not profitable because external tariffs are rather similar and transportation costs are non negligible in the case of unilateral trade preferences extended by rich countries to poor ones that ratio is a striking 98 the pervasive and unconditional use of roos is therefore hard to rationalize

rent destruction and the political viability of free trade agreements this paper studies the political viability of free trade agreements ftas the key element of the analysis is the rent destruction that these arrangements induce by eliminating intrabloc trade barriers an fta lowers the incentives of import competing industries to lobby for higher external tariffs thereby inducing a reduction of the rents created in the lobbying process using a conventional competitive model i show that the prospect of rent destruction can critically undermine and in some cases rule out entirely the political viability of welfarereducing ftas this result contrasts sharply with findings from the earlier regionalism literature

reciprocated unilateralism in trade policy abstract using the menu auction approach to endogenous determination of tariffs and allowing additionally for lobby formation itself to be endogenous this paper analyzes the impact of unilateral trade liberalization by one country on its partner s trade policies we find that such unilateral liberalization may induce reciprocal tariff reductions by the partner country intuitively unilateral liberalization by one country has the effect of increasing the incentives for the export lobby in the partner country to form and to lobby effectively against the import competing lobby there for lower protection

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

international business cycles world region and country specific factors the paper investigates the common dynamic properties of business cycle fluctuations across countries regions and the world we employ a bayesian dynamic latent factor model to estimate common components in macroeconomic aggregates output consumption and investment in a 60 country sample covering seven regions of the world the results indicate that a common world factor is an important source of volatility for aggregates in most countries providing evidence for a world business cycle we find that region specific factors play only a minor role in explaining fluctuations in economic activity we also document similarities and differences across regions countries and aggregates jel f41 e32 c11 c32

revealed preferences for public goods applying a model of voter behavior most analyses of preferences for government supplied goods disregard the fact that in a democratic society these preferences are revealed by an individual choice the vote in this paper this is taken account of in a model explaining the dynamics in voting behavior in a multi party system the model assumes that voters may be categorized into k groups of individuals pursuing the same interests who remember how parties do in representing these interests given the level to which they are held responsible for government policy the model allows one to estimate party identification sensitiveness to economic performances time preference and relative preferences for public versus private goods all for each of the groups furthermore the model allows for an estimation of the level to which various parties are held responsible for government policies

public goods an exercise in calibration this paper considers a measure of the publicness of goods and services implicit in responses that individuals make when asked about public sector spending at the limit all consumers consume equal amounts of a public good thus any differences between an individual s self interest preferences and public interest preferences cannot be based on differential provision but only on differences in the individual s public and self interest utility functions if we rule out the latter self interest and public interest preferences for a pure public good are identical using sample survey data it is possible to calibrate the public good content of different public goods

economic efficiency v energy efficiency do model conservation standards make good sense abstract the incremental market value of higher thermal efficiency standards in new houses and the resulting energy savings are estimated using linear regression techniques based on the empirical findings a homebuyer discount rate is calculated and cost effectiveness tests are performed the findings indicate that the real estate market operates efficiently in capitalizing the value of energy savings into sale prices it appears that under current pricing mechanisms the thermal performance improvements provide net benefits to the homebuyer and to the sponsoring utility

multilateral tariff cooperation during the formation of free trade areas we consider the impact of the formation of free trade agreements on multilateral tariff cooperation we assume that countries are limited to selfenforcing multilateral arrangements that balance the gains from deviating against the costs of an ensuing trade war we find that the emergence of free trade areas will be accompanied by a temporary retreat from liberal multilateral trade policies as the initial balance supporting multilateral cooperation is upset eventually however as the full impact of the emerging free trade agreement on multilateral trade patterns is felt this initial balance tends to reemerge and liberal multilateral trade policies can be restored

housing market capitalization of thermal integrity abstract the extent to which housing markets capitalize investments in energy efficiency is important to observe the uncertainty now associated with this process can lead households to allocate resources inefficiently in the production of thermal comfort by substituting more fuel inputs for less capital from a policy perspective the end result of this is the continued construction of units in the housing stock with sub optimal levels of energy efficiency this study is a cross sectional analysis of houses constructed through the energy efficient housing demonstration program of the minnesota housing finance agency values of investments in energy efficiency are derived from a hedonic regression which includes a vector of thermal integrity factors as an independent variable

do south south preferential trade agreements undermine the prospects for multilateral free trade due to trade diversion there has been concerns expressed over the proliferation of preferential trade agreements ptas between south countries in this paper we compare welfare across the various forms of bilateral free trade agreements ftas and customs unions cus and examine their implications for the stability of multilateral free trade while north north ptas tend to yield higher welfare we fi nd certain cases where south south agreements are more likely to lead to global free trade than north north or north south agreements but other cases where multilateral cooperation over free trade is the least likely under south south agreements we also examine how the expansion of existing agreements or the combination of separate agreements affects the potential for free trade

dynamic cyclical comovements between oil prices and us gdp a wavelet perspective abstract in this paper we use wavelet analysis to investigate the cyclical comovements between crude oil prices and us gdp taking into account the decline in the volatility of us gdp growth that has occurred since the mid 1980s our main findings suggest that before 1984 q1 the crude oil prices were leading the us gdp cycle by 3 quarters and granger cause us gdp in contrast after 1984 q1 the crude oil prices were lagging the us business cycle and a reverse causality is found to run from us gdp to oil prices the multiscale granger causality tests globally corroborate theses results

managers investors and crises mutual fund strategies in emerging markets the authors address the trading strategies of mutual funds in emerging markets the data set they develop permits analyses of these strategies at the level of individual portfolios a methodologically novel feature of their analysis they disentangle the behavior of fund managers from that of investors for both managers and investors they strongly reject the null hypothesis of no momentum trading funds momentum trading is positive they systematically buy winners and sell losers contemporaneous momentum trading buying current winners and selling current losers is stronger during crises and stronger for fund investors than for fund managers lagged momentum trading buying past winners and selling past losers is stronger during noncrises and stronger for fund managers investors also engage in contagion trading selling assets from one country when asset prices fall in another these findings are based on data about mutual funds that represent only 10 percent of the market capitalization in the countries considered were it a larger share of the market finding counterparties for their trades the investors who buy when they sell and sell when they buy would be difficult and the premise that funds respond to contemporaneous returns rather than causing them would become tenuous

realized volatility transmission between crude oil and equity futures markets a multivariate har approach this paper differs from extant literature because it studies volatility co movements with a multivariate orthogonalized har model a flexible specification for the time series of realized volatility which is able to identify short mid and long term spillover effects we examine volatility transmission mechanisms using high frequency data of the stock index futures on s p 500 nikkei 225 ftse 100 and the futures on the west texas intermediate crude oil during the period from september 2002 to september 2012 considering the full sample the short term volatility of the equity futures contains information about future oil volatility incremental to the information inherent in the time series of oil volatility on the other hand weekly and monthly volatilities do not exhibit a significant spillover effect breaking the whole sample into three subsamples no significant granger causalities are observed in the pre crisis period while in the crisis time and its aftermath we document that the us and uk equity market volatilities to granger cause the oil futures volatility which itself leads the japanese market in terms of magnitude we observe an increase in the short term volatility spillover over time studying the residuals of the har transmission models within a ccc dcc garch framework reveals increasing instantaneous correlation between the energy and equity volatilities in the course of time

a theory of trade policy leadership abstract this paper constructs a two country model of bilateral trade negotiations in the presence of political uncertainty to demonstrate that unilateral trade liberalization may be an optimal policy for a large country the political uncertainty is due to producer opposition to trade agreement ratification in the foreign country unilateral liberalization by the home country has a salutary effect on negotiations because it mitigates the pain of potential ratification failure on the foreign country it also promotes foreign ratification because it effectively punishes foreign import competing producers for lobbying against an agreement these benefits are shown to outweigh up to a point the terms of trade cost that the home country must suffer when it actually liberalizes unilaterally in equilibrium therefore we see a pattern in which the home country unilaterally liberalizes for several periods until ratification in the foreign country succeeds at which point foreign country finally reciprocates we also demonstrate that contrary to the standard optimal tariff result there may be an inverse relationship between the home country s monopoly power and its optimal unilateral tariff

a wavelet analysis of mean and volatility spillovers between oil and brics stock markets this paper investigates the spillover effects of volatility and shocks between oil prices and the brics stock markets using multivariate approach and wavelet analysis at different time horizons hence we combine a multivariate arma garch model and wavelet multiresolution analysis to study this phenomenon a bivariate arma 1 1 garch 1 1 cdcc student t model was joined with modwt filter to capture a broad range of possible spillover effects in mean and variances of level prices at various time horizons generally empirical results provide strong evidence of time varying volatility in all markets under study however our proposed approach shows that oil price and stock market prices are directly affected by their own news and volatilities and indirectly affected by the volatilities of other prices and wavelet scale the results show also that mean and volatility spillover effects was decomposed into many sub spillovers on different time scales according to heterogeneous investors and market participants the practical implications of this study are critical innovative and useful for the local and international investors and also for the portfolio managers they can utilize this study to formulate the optimal oil bricks stock portfolios as well as lead to more accurate predictions of volatility spillovers patterns also in developing their hedging strategies

the role of oil prices in the forecasts of south african interest rates a bayesian approach this paper considers whether the use of real oil price data can improve upon the forecasts for the nominal interest rate in south africa we employ bayesian vector autoregressive models that make use of various measures of oil prices and compare the forecasting results of these models with those that do not make use of this data the real oil price data is also disaggregated into positive and negative components to establish whether this would improve upon the forecasting performance of the model the full dataset includes quarterly measures of output consumer prices exchange rates interest rates and oil prices where the initial in sample period extends from 1979q1 to 1997q4 we then perform recursive estimations and one to eight step ahead forecasts over the out of sample period 1998q1 to 2014q4 the results suggest that the models that include information relating to oil prices outperform the model that does not include this information when comparing their out of sample properties in addition the model with the positive component of oil price tends to perform better than other models over the short to medium horizons then lastly the model that includes both the positive and negative components of the oil price provides superior forecasts over longer horizons where the improvement is large enough to ensure that it is the best forecasting model on average hence not only do real oil prices matter when forecasting interest rates but the use of disaggregate oil price data may facilitate additional improvements

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

an empirical analysis of the relationship between oil prices and the chinese macro economy using the quarterly data from the first quarter of 1996 to the fourth quarter of 2014 this paper studies the relationship between oil prices and the chinese macro economy we find output and interest rate respond significantly to oil price shocks further analysis reveals that the positive response of output to oil price shocks is attributed to the influences of oil price shocks on exports the oil price shocks have both longer and deeper effects on the exports of state owned enterprises than on those of foreign investment enterprises moreover the response of exports to oil price shocks is symmetric finally oil prices are found to be useful for forecasting the china s exports in the periods shorter than about two years

price and volatility linkages between international reits and oil markets abstract this study analyzes price and volatility transmissions between nineteen real estate investment trusts reits and the oil markets the reits data represents a variety of countries at different stages of their development and the expanded analytical approach includes accounting for structural shifts as gradual processes as opposed to strictly abrupt processes typically assumed in the literature oil prices are found to primarily predict reits prices in mature reits markets but the feedback from reits to oil prices is weak from the perspective of volatility strong evidence of bidirectional transmission in majority of the markets is observed our results are in general robust to a shorter common sample period of the various countries this study further demonstrates the importance of accounting for gradual smooth structural shifts for price transmission analysis

should the wto require free trade agreements to eliminate internal tariffs abstract in a three country model of endogenous free trade agreements ftas we study the effects of requiring fta members to eliminate tariffs on one another as is essentially stipulated under current wto rules we explain why in the absence of such a requirement ftas members impose positive tariffs on each other even when maximizing their joint welfare we show that requiring fta members to eliminate internal tariffs induces them to lower their external tariffs such external trade liberalization by fta members undermines the prospects of global free trade since it reduces the non member s incentive to enter into trade agreements with them

on the different geographic characteristics of free trade agreements and customs unions abstract casual observation reveals a striking phenomenon of preferential trade agreements ptas while customs unions cus are only intra regional free trade agreements ftas are inter and intra regional using a farsighted dynamic model we endogenize the equilibrium path of ptas among two close countries and one far country rising transport costs mitigate the cost of discrimination faced by the far country as a cu non member and diminish the value of preferential access as a cu member thus sufficiently large transport costs imply that an fta is the only type of pta that can induce the far country s participation in pta formation unlike cu formation fta formation can induce participation because ftas provide a flexibility benefit an fta member can form further ptas with non members but a cu member must do so jointly with all existing members hence in equilibrium cus are intra regional while ftas are intra and inter regional

the size of trading blocs market power and world welfare effects abstract we construct an n country n commodity trade model to analyze the implications of bloc size for nash equilibrium tariffs and welfare the relationship between the absolute size of symmetric trading blocs and their market power is ambiguous and we illustrate how this relationship varies with model parameters in contrast sufficiently large increases in the relative size of a bloc enhance its relative market power and cause the welfare of its country members to rise above the free trade level we establish the existence of an optimal bloc size and study the dependence of optimal size on the parameters of the model

the impact of energy prices a housing market analysis abstract this paper investigates the effect of energy costs on the housing market response as the effect of energy costs has not been specifically investigated before in the literature both a linear and non linear model were investigated the choice of the appropriate model was determined using the box cox transformation technique the chosen model was then validated the results reveal that in the spokane washington area where energy costs are relatively low energy prices do not have a significant effect on market response however applying the same methodology to areas where energy costs are higher might produce different results

an economic theory of the open shop trade union there has been significant interest recently both in the empirical investigation of the determinants of trade union membership in the u k and elsewhere and in the theoretical analysis of the economic effects of the closed shop trade union however there is little rigorous microeconomic explanation of union membership which is relevant for much of the u k and similar labour markets where the open shop union is prevalent this paper attempts to overcome the free rider problem of explaining union membership in the open shop we argue that both private pecuniary gains and social influences affect the individuals union membership decisions citing evidence in support of these basic assumptions we show that stable intermediate union density is a possible equilibrium outcome in a generalised social custom model we also analyse the simultaneous determination of wages and union membership deriving a number of comparative static results in particular we find that both wages and union density depend upon inter alia the level of strike pay the net cost of union membership and the individual s sensitivity to social custom and associated solidarity effects we argue that the approach is consistent with various stylised facts concerning both wage bargaining and union membership and is able to explain a number of otherwise puzzling features of union membership

exogenous oil supply shocks how big are they and how much do they matter for the u s economy abstract the paper proposes a new measure of exogenous oil supply shocks the timing the magnitude and the sign of this measure may differ greatly from current state of the art estimates it is shown that only a small fraction of the observed oil price increases during oil crisis periods can be attributed to exogenous oil production disruptions exogenous oil supply shocks cause a sharp drop of u s real gdp growth after five quarters rather than an immediate and sustained reduction in economic growth and a spike in cpi inflation after three quarters overall exogenous oil supply shocks made remarkably little difference for the evolution of the u s economy since the 1970s although they did matter for some historical episodes

is the gatt wto s article xxiv bad the gatt wto article xxiv prevents a customs union cu from raising its common external tariff in this paper we compare cu formation with and without this article xxiv constraint we show in a multi country oligopoly model that for a given cu structure article xxiv improves world welfare by lowering trade barriers however we also show that article xxiv has a composition effect on cu formation it affects the endogenous choice of cus by encouraging more symmetric cus article xxiv causes more trade to be subject to trade barriers as a result article xxiv may be bad for world welfare 2012 elsevier b v

multilateral tariff cooperation during the formation of customs unions abstract we study the implications of customs union formation for multilateral tariff cooperation we model cooperation in multilateral trade policy as self enforcing in that it involves balancing the current gains from deviating unilaterally from an agreed upon trade policy against the future losses from forfeiting the benefits of multilateral cooperation that such a unilateral defection would imply the early stages of the process of customs union formation are shown to alter this dynamic incentive constraint in a way that leads to a temporary honeymoon for liberal multilateral trade policies we find however that the harmony between customs unions and multilateral liberalization is temporary eventually as the full impact of the emerging customs union becomes felt a less favorable balance between current and future conditions re emerges and the liberal multilateral policies of the honeymoon phase cannot be sustained

the nonexcludable publicness of primary and secondary public education abstract existing theoretical models of education as with most practical applications of public good theory suggest some form of joint public private financing empirical work has only rarely addressed these theoretical considerations employing individual level observations we model and estimate the private and social demands for public education in a community an ordered probit model with known thresholds is used to obtain unique parameter estimates the individual private and social demands are then employed to construct a measure of the publicness of education at various quantities

the impact of congestion on local public good production abstract this paper models local public goods production where allocation of the publicly provided input occurs simultaneously with production of the final service output the framework models local public goods as developed in club theory where congestion is an increasing function of population central to identification of the model is that the quantities of the input police are differentiated from the produced output safety estimation is across neighborhoods within a single city the results show there is a very low elasticity of congestion on average but safety in some neighborhoods in more congested than private goods

what should government do problems of social cost externalities and all that public choice as a field introduced the framework for a methodical economic analysis of political markets the output of these markets of course is reflected by the role that government plays that is specifically true with respect to the organization of economic activity gordon tullock has studied a myriad of aspects of this topic for more than half a century we examine his answers to the question of what should government do and how they have influenced and are still impacting the discussion on the proper role of government in the economy

tariff bindings and the dynamic formation of preferential trade agreements abstract we show that multilateral tariff binding liberalization substantially impacts the nature and extent of preferential trade agreement pta formation first it shapes the nature of forces constraining expansion of free trade agreements ftas the constraining force is a free riding incentive of fta non members under relatively high bindings but an exclusion incentive of fta members under relatively low bindings second multilateral tariff binding liberalization shapes the role played by ptas in the attainment of global free trade initially tariff binding liberalization leads to custom union cu formation in equilibrium but in a way that undermines the pursuit of global free trade however further tariff binding liberalization leads to fta formation in equilibrium and in a way that facilitates the attainment of global free trade our theoretical analysis also has implications regarding recent empirical discussions over the relative merits of ftas versus cus

oil and the economy a systematic review of the literature for ecological economists abstract this article offers a systematic review of the mainstream literature in oil economics macroeconomics international and financial economics and political economy complementing and complicating the way ecological economics understands the links between oil and the economy we look at the supply and demand factors that affect oil prices the ways oil prices affect the economy the effect of interest rates capital flows and exchange rates on oil prices and extraction and the role of geo politics in governing oil and money flows we develop an illustrative system model of the causal pathways that link oil and the economy and compare alternative explanations of the oil price shocks of the 1970s and 2000s the emphasis of ecological economics on peak oil and resource limits to growth may be relevant over the long run but is less capable of explaining precisely how oil contributes to concrete economic short run crises now

a strategic and welfare theoretic analysis of free trade areas abstract we construct a three country model to determine how the formation of free trade areas ftas affects optimal tariffs and welfare we find that at constant rest of the world row tariffs the adoption of internal free trade induces union members to reduce their external tariffs below the kemp wan j int econom 6 1976 95 97 level and causes row s terms of trade to improve and its welfare to rise when row also behaves optimally its policy response to the formation of the fta is to raise tariffs generally fta members prefer to liberalize internal trade partially and find regional integration appealing only if their collective size is sufficiently large we also demonstrate how ftas may undermine the attainment of global free trade

dynamic formation of preferential trade agreements the role of flexibility in practice free trade agreements ftas vastly outnumber customs unions cus nevertheless the literature traditionally views cus as optimal for members because cu members coordinate external tariffs i show that a dynamic fta flexibility benefit can help explain the prevalence of ftas individual fta members have the flexibility to form their own future ftas whereas cu members must jointly engage in future cu formation i show how the relative prevalence of ftas versus cus depends on the structure of market size asymmetry across countries and use these predictions to shed some light on fta versus cu formation in europe and south america formation dynamique d accords commerciaux preferentiels le role de la flexibilite en pratique les accords de libre echange ale sont plus nombreux que les unions douanieres ud neanmoins la litterature specialisee percoit traditionnellement que les ud sont optimales pour les membres parce qu ils peuvent coordonner leurs tarifs externes on montre qu une flexibilite dynamique de l ale peut aider a expliquer la prevalence des ale les membres des ale ont la flexibilite de former leurs propres ale dans l avenir alors que les membres des ud s engagent conjointement pour la formation des ud futures on montre comment la prevalence des ale versus les ud depend de la structure de l asymetrie de la taille entre les pays et on utilise ces previsions pour eclairer les choix entre la formation de ale et de ud en europe et en amerique du sud

external trade diversion exclusion incentives and the nature of preferential trade agreements in a game of endogenous trade agreements between three countries we show that while the pursuit of customs unions cus prevents global free trade from emerging as a coalition proof nash equilibrium the pursuit of free trade agreements ftas does not this result reflects the relatively flexible nature of ftas whereas each fta member can independently undertake further trade liberalization with respect to the non member cu members must do so as a group due to their common external tariff by diverting members exports away from the non member both types of trade agreements induce the non member to voluntarily lower its import tariffs

per capita public expenditures and population size a non parametric analysis using french data based on the median voter model we specify a flexible general framework of the effect of municipality size on per capita public expenditures previous literature has recognized that municipality size should have a non linear effect on the quality of public goods provision and to this end different papers have applied a range of alternative parametric specifications using a very large sample of french communes we are able to estimate the effect of municipality size semi parametrically in contrast with the parametric specifications we find evidence of the u shaped relationship between per capita public expenditures and population which is predicted by theory