government policy with time inconsistent voters behavioral economics presents a paternalistic rationale for benevolent government intervention this paper presents a model of public debt where voters have self control problems and attempt to commit using illiquid assets in equilibrium government accumulates debt to respond to individuals desire to undo their commitments which leads individuals to rebalance their portfolio in turn feeding into a demand for further debt accumulation as a consequence i large and distortionary government debt accumulation occurs and ii banning illiquid assets could improve individuals welfare these results offer a new rationale for balanced budget rules in constitutions to restrain governments responses to voters self control problems

term limits and pork barrel politics abstract we develop a dynamic model of democratic politics in which both potential office holders and the electorate have heterogeneous ideologies voters have incomplete information about candidate ideologies so they must use information from previous positions taken in office to make informed re election decisions we characterize the effects of term limits on the evolution over time of the ideological positions taken by office holders and derive the implications for voter choice and welfare contributions of our paper include we detail how pork provision by more senior incumbents interacts with term limits to affect electoral outcomes pork provision transfers of resources from districts with junior legislators to districts with more senior legislators induces voters to be more forgiving of extreme location by incumbents especially incumbents in small or poor districts pork provision can explain why re election probabilities in congress exceed those for governors term limits reduce voter welfare when all that matters are the ideological positions taken by the office holder term limits may be advantageous when senior incumbents can extract benefits for their constituencies at the expense of districts with more junior representatives large or rich districts especially value term limits when there is substantial pork provision we characterize the welfare of all voters not just the median voter

environmental and economic effects of the copenhagen pledges and more ambitious emission reduction targets abstract a multi region multi sector dynamic computable general equilibrium model is applied to explore the economic and welfare effects of the pledges submitted by developed countries annex i countries and major developing non annex i countries for 2020 under the copenhagen accord in addition to analyzing scenarios reflecting the upper and lower bounds of the copenhagen pledges one additional policy scenario where annex i countries as a group reduce co 2 emissions by 30 in 2020 compared to 1990 levels and where major non annex i countries reduce co 2 emissions 15 below baseline is also analyzed economic effects are measured as changes in gdp compared to baseline and welfare effects are measured via the equivalent variation assuming that countries with emission targets may trade certificates average reductions in gdp for countries with targets range between 0 1 and 0 7 in 2020 for the policy scenarios while the gdp losses are larger for major non annex i countries with emission targets compared to annex i countries this is not the case for the changes in welfare with the exception of mexico the welfare losses for the major non annex i regions as a percentage of projected gdp in 2020 are lower than for the large annex i countries

the effect of regime shifts on the long run relationships for swedish money demand when the possibility of an unknown structural break is allowed and it is taken into account we find a significant long run relationship between swedish money demand and its determinants that is not found when no break is considered the estimated elasticities show that money demand is more responsive to its determinants in the period after the break than before possible underlying reasons for the occurrence of this break and its implications are explained

correlation neglect voting behavior and information aggregation in this paper we analyse elections when voters underestimate the correlation between their information sources correlation neglect we find that this cognitive bias can improve political outcomes we show that the extreme beliefs which result from correlation neglect induce some voters to base their vote on information rather than on political preferences we characterise conditions on the distribution of preferences under which this induces higher vote shares for the optimal policies and better information aggregation

wind power development in sweden global policies and local obstacles abstract recently the swedish government adopted a national planning goal of a yearly wind power generation of 10 twh by 2015 implying a substantial increase from the current 0 6 twh level in this paper we provide an economic assessment of the potential for future wind power investments in sweden in close conjunction with an analysis of the legal attitudinal and policy related uncertainties that face a wind mill investor it is shown that the economics of swedish wind power is negatively affected by a the lack of policy stability b public criticism at the local level and in particular c the legal provisions governing the assessment of the environmental impacts of wind mills and the planning procedures for mill location while national and global energy policies as well as the general public point out wind power as particularly environmentally friendly most of the objections to its expansion at the local level tend to have environmental origins the interests of those who object to wind mill installations gain strong legal protection and the municipal territorial planning monopoly in sweden implies that it is hard to make national energy policy goals heard at the local implementation stage compared to its competitors wind power is the technology that tends to have the most to loose from the risk and uncertainties created by this investment environment the paper identifies and discusses a number of ways in which the national policy interests could be strengthened at the local level we discuss the role of citizen participation as well as solutions within the realms of the legal system moreover since the diffusion of wind power encounters the most strident legal and attitudinal obstacles where it interferes with competing land uses a move offshore appears to be an efficient strategy from the perspective of a wind mill investor a stronger political commitment to wind power expansion in legal provisions as well as in the form of long run stability in policy instrument implementation will probably be necessary to attain the 2015 policy goal

secondary forests as temporary carbon sinks the economic impact of accounting methods on reforestation projects in the tropics abstract tropical forestry is often not competitive with agricultural land uses such as pasture for cattle ranching additional revenues from carbon sequestration generated by the clean development mechanism cdm of the kyoto protocol can change this situation in three different zones of north western ecuador minimum compensation payments for carbon sequestration were determined which would make reforestation a feasible land use alternative based on our findings that these minimum prices depend on the net benefit of the respective land use alternatives and on the accounting regimes for cdm sink projects we applied the accounting rules for temporary and long term certified emission reductions cer to two reforestation projects forest plantation and natural regrowth of secondary forest a comparison of these alternatives showed that secondary forest is an attractive alternative under both accounting regimes because of its low establishment costs and relative early timber revenues after identifying the zone most suitable for carbon sink projects we calculated net benefits of land use changes in the event that certain prices for emission reductions were actually paid we found that secondary forest becomes economically attractive if the price of permanent credits is above 4 5 tco 2 whereas forest plantations require permanent cer prices of 7 0 tco 2 in both cases the results are within the price margins forecasted by various institutions for the first commitment period of the kyoto protocol the presented methodology is meant to support the decision making process on the supply side of a future cer market opportunity costs of land use changes have to be analyzed carefully before deciding in favor of long binding forestry projects assigning temporary credits to naturally regrown secondary forests could although excluded from cdm during the first commitment period combine the advantages of a flexible accounting regime with the positive economic and ecological effects of this competitive land use

is voter competence good for voters information rationality and democratic performance a long research tradition in behavioral political science evaluates the performance of democracy by examining voter competence this literature got its start arguing that voters lack of information undermines a defense of democracy rooted in electoral accountability a more recent literature deepens the debate with some authors claiming that voters eectively use cues to substitute for information about candidates and policies and other authors claiming that voters are insuciently rational to do so we argue that regardless of its conclusions about voter competence this literature s singleminded focus on voter behavior is misguided we use a sequence of formal models to show that traditional intuitions are incomplete because they ignore the eect that changes in voter behavior have on the equilibrium behavior of politicians when this strategic interaction is taken into account increases in voter information or voter rationality sometimes make democratic performance better and sometimes makes democratic performance worse one simply cannot assess the implications of voter characteristics for democratic performance without also studying how those characteristics aect the

media bias and influence evidence from newspaper endorsements this paper investigates the relationship between media bias and the inuence of the media on voting in the context of newspaper endorsements werst develop a simple econometric model in which voters choose candidates under uncertainty and rely on endorsements from better informed sources newspapers are potentially biased in favor of one of the candidates and voters thus rationally ac count for the credibility of any endorsements our primary empiricalnding is that endorsements are inuential in the sense that voters are more likely to support the recommended candidate after publication of the endorsement the degree of this inuence however depends upon the credibility of the endorsement in this way endorsements for the democratic candidate from left leaning news papers are less inuential than are endorsements from neutral or right leaning or newspapers and likewise for endorsements for the republican thesendings suggest that voters do rely on the media for information during campaigns but that the extent of this reliance depends upon the degree and direction of any bias

money income prices and interest rates including data from the 1980s sharply weakens the postwar time series evidence indicating significant relationships between money however defined and nominal income or between money and either real income or prices separately focusing on data from 1970 onward destroys this evidence altogether evidence indicating cointegration of real income and real money balances with due allowance for the effect of interest rates also deteriorates when the sample extends through the 1980s a positive finding is that the spread between the commercial paper rate and the treasury bill rate consistently contains highly significant information about future movements in real income copyright 1992 by american economic association

analyzing the kyoto protocol under the marrakesh accords economic efficiency and environmental effectiveness abstract this article evaluates the environmental effectiveness and economic implications of the kyoto protocol kp after the bonn agreement and the marrakesh accords we will break it down into several components that correspond with major steps in the international process pre cop 6 version of the kp with unrestricted international emissions trading but without sinks withdrawal of the usa and decisions on sinks in bonn and marrakesh the marrakesh accords bring annex i emissions in 2010 without the usa at 0 5 under base year levels this corresponds to nearly 2 above the 1990 levels the us withdrawal has by far the greatest impact in reducing the environmental effectiveness of the kp whereas the impact of the decision on sinks is comparatively small the us withdrawal also substantially reduces the permit demand and permit prices will drop dramatically hot air becomes increasingly dominant and may threaten the viability of the kyoto mechanisms km especially in lower baseline business as usual bau scenarios therefore banking of hot air is of absolute importance to improve the environmental effectiveness of the protocol at moderately higher costs while enhancing the development of a viable emission trading market a strategy of curtailing and banking permit supply is also in the interest of the dominant seller russia

the robustness of the causal and economic relationship between construction flows and economic growth evidence from western europe our main objective is to analyse whether we have a problem of parameter heterogeneity across countries and over time in the estimation of the relationship between infrastructure investments and eco

substituting the end for the whole why voters respond primarily to the election year economy according to numerous studies the election year economy influences presidential election results far more than cumulative growth throughout the term here we describe a series of surveys and experiments that point to an intriguing explanation for this pattern that runs contrary to standard political science explanations but one that accords with a large psychological literature voters we find actually intend to judge presidents on cumulative growth however since that characteristic is not readily available to them voters inadvertently substitute election year performance because it is more easily accessible this end heuristic explanation for voters election year emphasis reflects a general tendency for people to simplify retrospective assessments by substituting conditions at the end for the whole the end heuristic explanation also suggests a remedy a way to align voters actions with their intentions providing people with the attribute they are seeking cumulative growth eliminates the election year emphasis

exploring the bargaining space within international climate negotiations based on political economic and environmental considerations abstract this study provides a conceptual framework for exploring the bargaining space within international climate negotiations based on important economic political and environmental considerations based on it we analyse combinations of the proposed emission reduction ranges for annex i countries as a group 25 40 below 1990 levels and non annex i as a group 15 30 below baseline by 2020 to limit global warming to 2 c we use results of the fair model with costs estimates based on two energy system models we conclude that the range of targets that comply with a set of criteria for economic political and environmental considerations is smaller than that by environmental considerations alone more specifically we find that according to our criteria a 30 annex i reduction target below 1990 levels combined with a 20 non annex i reduction target below baseline emission levels i e 20 to 30 above 2005 levels is the only combination of targets fulfilling all our criteria for both energy system models otherwise reaching the 2 c target becomes less likely technically infeasible or non annex i abatement costs are likely to exceed those of annex i a result which we consider less plausible from a political viewpoint in our conceptual framework

eu climate policy up to 2020 an economic impact assessment in its fight against climate change the eu is committed to reducing its overall greenhouse gas emissions to at least 20 below 1990 levels by 2020 to meet this commitment the eu builds on segmented market regulation with an eu wide cap and trade system for emissions from energy intensive installations ets sectors and additional measures by each eu member state covering emission sources outside the cap and trade system the non ets sector furthermore the eu has launched additional policy measures such as renewable energy subsidies in order to promote compliance with the climate policy target basic economic reasoning suggests that emission market segmentation and overlapping regulation can create substantial excess costs if we focus only on the climate policy target in this paper we evaluate the economic impacts of eu climate policy based on numerical simulations with a computable general equilibrium model of international trade and energy use our results highlight the importance of initial market distortions and imperfections as well as alternative baseline projections for the appropriate assessment of eu compliance cost

production functions for climate policy modeling an empirical analysis abstract quantitative models for climate policy modeling differ in the production structure used and in the sizes of the elasticities of substitution the empirical foundation for both is generally lacking this paper estimates the parameters of 2 level ces production functions with capital labour and energy as inputs and is the first to systematically compare all nesting structures using industry level data from 12 oecd countries we find that the nesting structure where capital and labour are combined first fits the data best but for most countries and industries we cannot reject that all three inputs can be put into one single nest these two nesting structures are used by most climate models however while several climate policy models use a cobb douglas function for part of the production function we reject elasticities equal to one in favour of considerably smaller values finally we find evidence for factor specific technological change with lower elasticities and with factor specific technological change some climate policy models may find a bigger effect of endogenous technological change on mitigating the costs of climate policy

the impact of chinese carbon emission trading scheme ets on low carbon energy lce investment china is planning to introduce emission trading scheme ets to decrease co2 emission as low carbon energy lce will play a pivotal role in reducing co2 emissions our paper is to assess the extent and the conditions under which a carbon ets can deliver lce investment in china we chose wind technology as a case study and a real option based model was built to explore the impact of a number of variables and design features on investment decisions e g carbon and electricity price carbon market risk carbon price floor and ceiling and on grid ratio we compute critical values of these variables and features and explore trade offs among them according to our work a carbon ets has a significant effect on wind power plant investment although it cannot support investment in wind power on its own carbon price stabilization mechanisms such as carbon price floor can significantly improve the effect of carbon ets but the critical floor to support investment is still much higher than the carbon price in china pilot etss our results show that other policy measures will be needed to promote low carbon energy development in china

reference dependent risk attitudes we use koszegi and rabin s 2006 model of reference dependent utility and an extension of it that applies to decisions with delayed consequences to study preferences over monetary risk because our theory equates the reference point with recent probabilistic beliefs about outcomes it predicts specific ways in which the environment influences attitudes toward modest scale risk it replicates classical prospect theory including the prediction of distaste for insuring losses when exposure to risk is a surprise but implies first order risk aversion when a risk and the possibility of insuring it are anticipated a prior expectation to take on risk decreases aversion to both the anticipated and additional risk for large scale risk the model allows for standard consumption utility to dominate reference dependent gain loss utility generating nearly identical risk aversion across situations

the impact of international forces on the chinese wind power industry abstract the chinese wind power industry has achieved remarkable growth in the last two decades the total installed capacity of wind power in china has now surpassed that of the united states thereby making it the country with the largest installed wind power capacity in the world the independent and innovative capability of chinese wind turbine manufacturers has undergone continuous improvement and has now reached the point where the country has the capability to produce large scale wind turbines although the chinese domestic policy incentive has played a significant role in the rapid development of the chinese wind power industry the contribution made by external international forces should not be overlooked this research aims to establish a comprehensive model reflecting the international forces that impact on the chinese wind power industry this model consists of three subsystems i e 1 the international cooperation subsystem 2 the clean development mechanism cdm subsystem and 3 the import export subsystem using the model as part of the research the findings suggest that for the international cooperation subsystem joint research and development rd however its effect in terms of the diffusion of technical information and technical capability is weak similarly the degree of dependence of chinese wind turbine manufacturing on imports is weakening as domestic wind turbine manufacturers actively explore overseas markets this comprehensive model helps both international and domestic wind power investors to understand the impact of international forces on the chinese wind power industry resulting in better investment decisions and the consequential minimization of risk

is the endowment effect an expectations effect a hallmark result within behavioral economics is that individuals choices are affected by current endowments a recent theory due to k szegi and rabin 2006 quarterly journal of economics 121 1133 1165 explains such endowment effect with a model of expectations based reference dependent preferences departing from past work we conduct complementary experiments to disentangle expectations verified probabilistic beliefs held by subjects from other features of endowment such as assignment to a good hence allowing us to compare the effect of expectations with that of other variations while mere assignment can affect choices we do not find a large role in the effect for k szegi rabin expectations

the demand for m1 in the u s a 1960 1988 estimated u s m1 demand functions appear unstable regularly breaking down over 1960 1988 e g missing money great velocity decline m1 explosion we propose a money demand function whose arguments include inflation real income long term bond yield and risk t bill interest rates and learning curve weighted yields on newly introduced instruments in m1 and non transactions m2 the model is estimated in dynamic error correction form it is constant and with an equation standard error of 0 4 variance dominates most previous models estimating alternative specifications explains earlier breakdowns showing the model s distinctive features to be important in accounting for the data

stochastic trends and economic fluctuations are business cycles mainly the result of permanent shocks to productivity this paper uses a long run restriction implied by a large class of real business cycle models identifying permanent productivity shocks as shocks to the common stochastic trend in output consumption and investment to provide new evidence on this question econometric tests indicate that this common stochastic trend cointegration implication is consistent with postwar u s data however in systems with nominal variables the estimates of this common stochastic trend indicate that permanent productivity shocks typically explain less than half of the business cycle variability in output consumption and investment copyright 1991 by american economic association

the case for responsible parties electoral platform convergence is perceived unfavorably by both the popular press and many academic scholars arguably to paraphrase it does not provide enough choice between candidates this article provides a formal account of the perceived negative effects of platform convergence we show that when parties do not know voters preferences precisely all voters ex ante prefer some platform divergence to convergence at the ex ante median after characterizing the unique symmetric equilibrium of competition between responsible policy motivated parties we conclude that all voters ex ante prefer responsible parties to opportunistic purely office motivated ones when parties are sufficiently ideologically polarized that platforms diverge but not so polarized that they diverge excessively however greater polarization increases the scope for office benefits as an instrument for institutional design we calculate the socially optimal level of platform divergence and show that office benefits can be used to achieve this first best outcome if parties are sufficiently ideologically polarized

china s wind power industry policy support technological achievements and emerging challenges abstract since 2005 the chinese wind power technology industry has developed rapidly with china becoming the largest installer of wind power capacity in the world in 2010 this paper reviews the policy system implemented in china to support the wind power industry centered on china s 2005 renewable energy law it examines the industry s achievements over the past two decades including the development of wind power technology and equipment the utilization of china s wind power resources and the cost reductions achieved it then explores the obstacles affecting the ongoing sustainability of the chinese wind industry including regulatory barriers grid integration challenges and challenges to continued technological innovation it recommends that integration challenges be addressed through policy reforms establishing interconnection standards and creating predictability with forecasting and storage that market signals be established with long term development goals and pricing reforms and that industry limitations be addressed with targeted r d improved wind resource assessment and transparency domestic and international collaborations and the cultivation of a skilled workforce

on error correction models specification interpretation estimation abstract error correction models ecms have proved a popular organising principle in applied econometrics despite the lack of consensus as to exactly what constitutes their defining characteristic and the rather limited role that has been given to economic theory by their proponents this paper uses a historical survey of the evolution of ecms to explain the alternative specifications and interpretations and proceeds to examine their implications for estimation the various approaches are illustrated for wage equations by application to uk labour market data 1855 1987 we demonstrate that error correction models impose strong and testable non linear restrictions on dynamic econometric equations and that they do not obviate the need for modelling the process of expectations formation with the exception of a few special cases both the non linear restrictions and the modelling of expectations have been ignored by those who have treated ecms as merely reparameterisations of dynamic linear regression models or vector autoregressions

the effects of additive outliers on tests for unit roots and cointegration this article discusses the properties of the univariate dickey fuller test and the johansen test for the cointegrating rank when there exist additive outlying observations in the time series we provide analytical as well as numerical evidence that additive outliers may produce spurious stationary hence the dickey fuller test will reject a unit root too frequently and the johansen test will indicate too many cointegrating vectors the results easily generalize to models with temporary change outliers through an empirical example we discuss how additive and temporary change outliers can be detected in practice and we show how dummy variables can be used to remove the influence of such extreme observations

long run income and interest elasticities of money demand in the united states econometric techniques designed to accommodate nonstationary data are used to reexamine the stability of interest and income elasticities of money demand in the united states estimates based on postwar monthly data reveal a stable relationship between m1 velocity and various measures of interest rates that proxy the opportunity cost of holding money balances tests for the existence of cointegration and methods used to estimate the income and interest elasticities are based on procedures prescribed by soren johansen 1988 corresponding error correction estimates offer insight as to the dynamics of the process that maintains the equilibrium relation between velocity and interest rates copyright 1991 by mit press

assessment of copenhagen pledges with long term implications abstract this study first evaluates the pledges under the copenhagen accord using the dne21 model our estimates for the 2020 pledges fall collectively within the range of 46 700 49 100 mt co 2 eq our study also finds the efforts arising from the current 2020 pledges have wide ranging implications in terms of mitigation costs and types of actions based on this analysis we seek to place the copenhagen pledges in a long term context putting focus on costs and feasibility we set up a carbon prices convergence scenario assuming that all countries start from the copenhagen commitments and gradually undertake their own individual efforts in accordance with the convergence of carbon prices toward a uniform price in 2050 despite soaring carbon prices in most countries total costs as share of gdp show modest increase ranging mostly between 0 and 0 4 we also find that there does not seem to be much difference in the degree of burden between developed and major developing countries under this scenario since the challenge of climate change will require significant reductions in ghg emissions in the coming decades we need to make long lasting efforts getting on the right track toward the ultimate goal of stabilizing ghgs

barriers and opportunities of using the clean development mechanism to advance renewable energy development in china studying the barriers and opportunities of using clean development mechanism cdm to advance renewable energy deployment in china has a practical significance to achieve its ambitious renewable energy plan which affects the global efforts to curb carbon emission this paper analyses the role of cdm in promoting renewable energy development in china by reviewing the cdm activities especially renewable energy cdm activities in china there are three barriers to utilizing cdm for renewable energy deployment namely the dilemma of additionality lower proportional certified emission reduction credit revenues on the investment and the lack of incentive for technology transfer whereas the opportunities of using cdm in promoting renewable energy development include the international carbon market redirection to renewable energy chinese renewable energy boom driven by a series of effective energy policies and additional finance from cdm supporting chinese renewable energy development based on the study on the barriers and opportunities the article considers that cdm is an indispensable incentive and a viable choice to promote renewable energy deployment in china crown copyright c 2010 published by elsevier ltd all rights reserved

competence and ideology we develop a dynamic repeated election model in which citizen candidates are distinguished by both their ideology and valence voters observe an incumbent s valence and policy choices but only know the challenger s party our model provides a rich set of novel results in contrast to existing predictions from static models we prove that dynamic considerations make higher valence incumbents more likely to compromise and win re election even though they compromise to more extreme policies consequently we find that the correlation between valence and extremist policies rises with office holder seniority this result may help explain previous empirical findings despite this result we establish that the whole electorate gains from improvements in the distribution of valences in contrast fixing average valence the greater dispersion in valence associated with a high valence political elite always benefits the median voter but can harm a majority of voters when voters are sufficiently risk averse we then consider interest groups igs or activists who search for candidates with better skills we derive a complete theoretical explanation for the intuitive conjectures that policies are more extreme when igs and activists have more extreme ideologies and that such extremism reduces the welfare of all voters

wind farm investment risks under uncertain cdm benefit in china abstract china has set an ambitious target to increase its wind power capacity by 35 gw from 2007 to 2020 the country s hunger for clean power provides great opportunities for wind energy investors however risks from china s uncertain electricity market regulation and an uncertain energy policy framework mainly due to uncertain clean development mechanism cdm benefits prevent foreign investors from investing in china s wind energy the objectives of this paper are to 1 quantify wind energy investment risk premiums in an uncertain international energy policy context and 2 evaluate the impact of uncertain cdm benefits on the net present values of wind power projects with four scenarios this study simulates possible prices of certified emissions reductions cers from wind power projects project net present values npvs have been calculated the project risk premiums are drawn from different and uncertain cer prices our key findings show that uncertain cdm benefits will significantly affect the project npvs this paper concludes that the chinese government needs revising its tariff incentives most likely by introducing fixed feed in tariffs fits and re examining its cdm granting policy and its wind project tax rates to facilitate wind power development and enable china to achieve its wind energy target

time varying parameter error correction models the demand for money in venezuela 1983 i 1994 iv the possibility of using time varying parameter models in the context of error correction models is studied empirically as an application a money demand relationship m1 for venezuela is estimated from 1983 to 1994 within a cointegrated var framework first the stochastic properties of the series are analysed studying each corresponding order of integration second the existence of a long run stable relation between the variables involved has been investigated and then the cointegration relation and the short run adjustment mechanism estimated as both relations are identified in the context of constant parameters a stability analysis is performed finally the technique of kalman filtering is used to estimate a model that permits the short run parameters to vary while the parameters of the long run relation are kept constant

economic policies and demand for money evidence from canada this study identifies canadian fiscal and monetary policy regime changes that could influence the services of money it is argued that if these policy regime changes were not incorporated in the estimation of demand for real balances the resulting estimate would be biased and unstable using canadian monthly data for the january 1975 to june 2001 period the paper estimates a standard demand for money m1 function with and without these policy regime changes it was found the demand for money in canada is stable over the short and long run periods when these policy regime changes are incorporated and the estimated coefficients have correct signs

short run money demand abstract the conventional wisdom holds that the short run demand for money is unstable this paper challenges the conventional view by finding a stable demand for m1 in u s data from 1959 through 1993 the approach follows previous work in interpreting long run money demand as a cointegrating relation and it uses goldfeld s partial adjustment model to interpret short run dynamics the key innovation is the choice of the interest rate in the money demand function most previous work uses a short term market rate but this paper uses the average return on near monies the savings accounts and money market mutual funds that are close substitutes for m1 this choice helps rationalize the behavior of money demand in particular the increase in the volatility of velocity after 1980 is explained by increased volatility in the returns on near monies

the reincarnation of keynesian economics this paper discusses the reemergence of keynesian economics during the past decade it highlights the substantial differences between new keynesian economics and the convictions of early keynesians in particular it points out that new keynesians have adopted many views that were once considered monetarist or classical it concludes that the term keynesian may have outlived its usefulness this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

incentive design under loss aversion compensation schemes often reward success b ut do not penalize failure fixed salaries with stock options or bonuses have this feature yet the standard principal agent model implies that pay is normally monotonically increasing in performance this paper shows that under loss aversion there will be intervals over which pay is insensitive to performance with the use of carrots but not sticks is frequently optimal especially when risk aversion is low and reference income is e ndogenous a further benefit of capping losses for example through options is to discourage reckless behavior by executives seeking to resurrect their fortunes jel f3 f4

marginal abatement costs of co2 emission reductions geographical flexibility and concrete ceilings an assessment using the poles model abstract the kyoto protocol envisage the setting up of flexibility mechanisms allowing annex b countries to fulfil their commitments to reducing greenhouse gases with respect for the principle of economic efficiency the current negotiations relate in particular to the possibility of setting up a system of tradable emissions permits for annex b countries and also of introducing ceilings to trade this paper analyses the stakes and economic potential of adopting this instrument both for those countries that made commitments in kyoto and for developing countries it is based on a formal approach that allows for a consistent framework of analysis the emission permit market is in fact simulated on the basis of a reference scenario and of marginal abatement cost curves and estimated by the poles model after analysing these marginal abatement cost curves and comparing them with those produced by other models we explore two different configurations for a competitive market a market limited to the annex b countries and a world market the results produced by the model show that widening the market to include developing countries is more effective than the annex b market solution it reduces the cost of implementing kyoto for oecd countries and at the same time allows the countries of the south to benefit from selling the permits this research also shows that introducing restrictions on exchanges for annex b countries could have a counter productive redistribution effect with the ethical argument that underlies that particular measure

economic and environmental impacts of the kyoto protocol in 2003 the kyoto protocol which imposes legally binding greenhouse gas emission constraints on industrialized countries is likely to enter into force the protocol has been celebrated as a milestone in climate protection but standard economic theory casts doubt that it will go beyond symbolic policy in this paper we show that the final concretion of the kyoto protocol is consistent with the theoretical prediction kyoto more or less boils down to business as usual without significant compliance costs to ratifying parties jel classification d58 q43 q58 consequences economiques et environnementales du protocole de kyoto en 2003 le protocole de kyoto qui impose aux pays industrialises l obligation de reduire leurs emissions de gaz a effet de serre entrera probablement en vigueur si le protocole a ete accueilli comme un grand pas en avant dans le combat pour proteger l environnement la theorie economique jette un regard sceptique sur la portee reelle d un tel accord et le considere comme un geste symbolique dans ce memoire on montre que la concretisation finale de l accord de kyoto s arrime aux predictions theoriques kyoto n est rien de plus que business as usual et n impliquera pas de couts significatifs pour les parties qui ont signe le protocole

negative voters electoral competition with loss aversion this paper studies how voter loss aversion affects electoral competition in a downsian setting assuming that the voters reference point is the status quo we show that loss aversion has a number of effects first for some values of the status quo there is policy rigidity both parties choose platforms equal to the status quo regardless of other parameters second there is a moderation effect when there is policy rigidity the equilibrium policy outcome is closer to the moderate voters ideal point than in the absence of loss aversion in a dynamic extension of the model we consider how parties strategically manipulate the status quo to their advantage and we find that this increases policy rigidity finally we show that with loss aversion incumbents adjust less than challengers to changes in voter preferences the underlying force is that the status quo works to the advantage of the incumbent this prediction of asymmetric adjustment is new and we test it using elections to us state legislatures the results are as predicted incumbent parties respond less to shocks in the preferences of the median voter

the costs of compliance a cge assessment of canada s policy options under the kyoto protocol canada has committed itself under the kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012 on average by six per cent from the base 1990 level as of 2009 however canada s greenhouse gas emissions are far above its 1990 level which calls for stringent short term policy measures if canada is to meet its legally binding commitment this paper uses a multi region multi commodity static general equilibrium model to quantify the economic impacts of alternative compliance strategies for canada in the context of climate policies undertaken by other kyoto parties the numerical results confirm fears by canadian policymakers of substantial economic adjustment costs should canada fulfill its kyoto commitments solely through domestic action however a rigorous use of the project based cdm on top of international emissions trading could allow canada to live up to its international climate policy commitment at politically much more tolerable costs

revisiting the us money demand function an application of the lagrange multiplier structural break unit root test and the bounds test for a long run relationship in this article we examine the issue of a levels relationship and stability of the us money demand function over the period 1959 01 to 2004 02 we use the lagrange multiplier structural break unit root test and the bounds testing approach to a long run relationship in levels of the variables namely real money demand nominal interest rate and real income we find greater evidence for a long run relationship in levels and stability of the us money demand function when we use m2 as a proxy for money demand however we find little evidence for a long run relationship between m1 and m2 with their determinants for the recent period spanning the last decade or so

energy system impacts and policy implications of the european intended nationally determined contribution and low carbon pathway to 2050 in march 2015 the european union eu submitted to the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc the intended nationally determined contribution indc in view of the paris conference of parties cop21 the binding target of lowering domestic greenhouse gases emissions by at least 40 by 2030 compared to 1990 levels coupled with long term decarbonisation goals will have profound energy system macroeconomic and policy implications eu targets are qualitatively discussed and quantitatively assessed with the simulation of a reference and an alternative decarbonisation scenario to 2050 simulations are carried out with the technology rich primes energy system model and the gem e3 computable general equilibrium model restructuring of the eu energy system induces changes in the energy mix and production with small effects on the eu gdp 0 4 in 2030 and 1 in 2050 compared to the reference scenario energy efficiency improvements increasing penetration of renewables fuel switching towards natural gas and technical progress in process related to emissions abatement are identified as essential options to the eu indc implementation the electrification of final energy demand particularly transport electrification complemented with decarbonised power supply is found to play a critical role in the successful transition towards a low carbon economy by 2050

border adjustment for european emissions trading competitiveness and carbon leakage unilateral or sub global policies to combat climate change are potentially sensitive to free riding and carbon leakage one way of dealing with carbon leakage and competitiveness is the imposition of border adjustment measures for competing imports for example in the form of the obligation to importers of goods to purchase and surrender emissions allowances to the authorities when importing in this paper we explore some implications of border adjustment measures in the eu ets for sectors that might be subject to carbon leakage we examine the implications of two variants of these measures on the competitiveness of these sectors and on the global environment with the help of a multi sector multi region computable general equilibrium cge model of the global economy our calculations suggest that border adjustment might reduce the sectoral rate of leakage of the iron and steel industry rather forcefully but that the reduction would be less for the mineral products sector including cement the reduction of the overall or macro rate of leakage would be modest so from an environmental point of view border tax adjustments would not be a very effective policy measure but might mainly be justified by considerations of sectoral competitiveness

context dependent voting and political ambiguity abstract in recent decades psychologists have shown that the standard model of individual choice is often violated one regularly observed violation is that choices are influenced by the decision context to incorporate these effects into politics we introduce a theory of context dependent voting and apply it to the puzzle of why candidates are so frequently ambiguous in their policy pronouncements we show that context dependent voters develop a taste for ambiguity even when they evaluate distances quadratically and exhibit traditional risk aversion turning to aggregate effects we incorporate context dependent voting into a model of electoral competition and show that strategic candidates respond in equilibrium to context dependent voters by offering ambiguous platforms thereby affecting the policy outcome

overconfidence in political behavior this paper studies theoretically and empirically the role of overconfidence in political behavior our model of overconfidence in beliefs predicts that overconfidence leads to ideological extremeness increased voter turnout and stronger partisan identification the model also makes nuanced predictions about the patterns of ideology in society these predictions are tested using unique data that measure the overconfidence and standard political characteristics of a nationwide sample of over 3 000 adults our numerous predictions find strong support in these data in particular we document that overconfidence is a substantively and statistically important predictor of ideological extremeness voter turnout and partisan identification jel c83 d03 d72 d83

estimated substitution elasticities of a nested ces production function approach for germany this paper demonstrates an econometric estimation of substitution elasticities of a nested constant elasticity of substitution production function ces between capital energy and labour for the west german industry in the last few years ces production functions have become more important in economic modelling especially for applied general equilibrium models where ces production functions are an important building stone in the literature different results of estimated elasticities can be found this paper investigates three different approaches for nested ces production functions and their estimated substitution elasticities capital energy and labour are estimated as substitutes for the west german industry in the long run

a stable demand for money despite financial crisis the case of venezuela the demand for broad money in venezuela is investigated over a period of financial crisis and substantial exchange rate fluctuations the analysis shows that there exist a long run relationship between real money real income inflation the exchange rate and an interest rate differential that remains stable over major policy changes and large shocks the long run properties emphasize that both inflation and exchange rate depreciations have negative effects on real money demand whereas a higher interest rate differential has positive effects the long run relationship is finally embedded in a dynamic equilibrium correction model with constant parameters these results have implications for a policy maker in particular they emphasize that with a high degree of currency substitution in venezuela monetary aggregates will be very sensitive to changes in the economic environment

why has us policy uncertainty risen since 1960 we consider two classes of explanations for the rise in policy related economic uncertainty in the united states since 1960 the first stresses growth in government spending taxes and regulation a second stresses increased political polarization and its implications for the policymaking process and policy choices

the stability of long run money demand in five industrial countries abstract this study provides strong evidence for the stability of long run demand functions for narrowly defined money m1 in five industrial countries u s japan canada u k and west germany using post war quarterly data evidence of stability is examined using two different estimation techniques and through a formal test of parameter constancy designed specifically for cointegrating vectors in the majority of these countries the key to stability is the imposition of a unitary long run income elasticity that is rarely rejected by the data

impacts and implications of implementing voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in major countries and korea abstract this study analyses the pledges submitted by korea and other major parties to the unfccc secretariat as part of the copenhagen accord using the global cge model the analysis shows that the greenhouse gas ghg emissions of the developed countries decrease by up to 14 0 by 2020 compared to the 1990 level these results show the need to raise the targets amongst developed countries in order to reach to the reduction levels 25 40 recommended by the ipcc to meet 450 ppm co2 eq on the other hand the full implementation of those pledges of annex i and non annex i countries was found to contribute to the decrease of the global ghg emissions by about 15 9 compared to business as usual bau such results imply the need for developed countries to step up their reduction targets as well as for developing ones to participate comprehensively and to reduce ghg emissions at a considerable level in order to enhance the environmental effectiveness of the post kyoto framework hereafter meanwhile it is analyzed that the implementation of voluntary target among major countries would reduce the global real gdp by 1 2 and in the case of korea the real gdp was projected to diminish by 1 5

a quantitative minimax regret approach to climate change does discounting still matter abstract using cost benefit analysis to determine an optimal climate mitigation target is criticised especially because i it fails to sufficiently take into account low probability high impact events and ii results strongly depend on the discount rate used one of the alternative suggestions to inform policymakers about the right mitigation target that does take the risks associated with low probability high impact events explicitly into account is the minimax regret criterion we apply the minimax regret criterion quantitatively using an integrated assessment model with extreme values for climate sensitivity damage estimates and mitigation costs the goal is to analyse whether such a method leads to different results compared to standard cost benefit analysis and whether the results are still sensitive to the discount rate used we find that the minimax regret approach leads to more stringent and robust climate targets for relatively low discount rates and if both a high climate sensitivity and high damage estimates are assumed if one of these assumptions does not hold the difference between the minimax regret approach and standard cost benefit analysis is much smaller therefore we conclude that the discount rate used can still be of vital importance even when applying a minimax regret approach

planning siting and the local acceptance of wind power some lessons from the french case abstract after some years of trifling development under a system of public tenders 1995 2000 french politicians progressively changed the national policy framework for feed in tariffs december 2000 and wind power development zones july 2005 the new policy framework has triggered a beginning of takeoff in wind power capacity the paper examines french wind power development in the light of two key dimensions and concepts related to wind power policy planning and siting part 1 we particularly focus on the recent french legislative debate which led to the adoption of the new policy framework part 2 the french case shows that the recourse to planning tools was not tailor made for siting issues but resulted from a political fight over the decentralization of energy policy the policy outcome which we call flexible decentralized planning is both interesting and ambiguous it is interesting in that it develops interfaces between planning tools and siting institutions it is ambiguous in that it is potentially very hierarchical the final decision power is left in state planners hands making it unpredictable the extent to which room will genuinely be provided for siting processes to take place

modelling money demand for a panel of eight transitional economies in this article we estimate money demand functions for a panel of eight transitional economies using quarterly data for the period 1995 01 1995 to 2005 03 we find that real m1 and real m2 and their determinants namely real income and short term domestic interest rate are cointegrated both for individual countries as well as for the panel long run elasticities suggest that consistent with theory real income positively and nominal interest rate negatively impact real money demand our test for panel granger causality suggests short run bidirectional causality between m1 and m2 and their determinants finally our tests for stability of the money demand functions reveal more cases of unstable money demand functions when m2 is used as a proxy for money demand

transaction costs institutional rigidities and the size of the clean development mechanism transaction costs and institutional rigidities will reduce the attractiveness of the kyoto protocol flexibility mechanisms compared to domestic greenhouse gas abatement options the clean development mechanism cdm in particular is likely to entail considerable costs of baseline development project registration verification and certification the activities implemented jointly pilot phase and the prototype carbon fund programme give indications about these costs there is evidence that projects with high implementation costs have high transaction costs as well moreover cdm projects have to be approved by host country institutions and so far only a small share of host countries has been able to set up these institutions several of the larger host countries intend to only approve projects if the market price is above a certain threshold some governments will also levy fees to finance costs of approval bodies we assess these issues using a quantitative model of the kyoto protocol permit market we conclude that while changes in demand from annex b countries remain the crucial factor the size of the cdm will depend to a significant degree on transaction costs and institutional barriers in host countries

sensitivity of modeling results to technological and regional details the case of italy s carbon mitigation policy model differences in technological and geographical scales are common but their contributions to uncertainties have not been systematically quantified in the climate policy literature this paper carries out a systematic assessment on the sensitivity of computable general equilibrium models to technological and geographical scales in evaluating the economic impacts of carbon mitigation policies in particular we examine the impacts of sub national details and technological details of power generation on the estimate of carbon price and economic cost taking italy as an example we find that the estimation for carbon price and the economic cost of a de carbonization pathway by means of a model with technological and regional details can be lower than a model without such details by up to 40 additionally the effect of representing regional details appears to be far more important than the effect of representing the details of electricity technology in both the estimated carbon prices and the estimated economic impacts our results for italy highlight the importance of modeling uncertainties of these two key assumptions which should be appropriately acknowledged when applying cge models for policy impact assessment our conclusions can be generalized to different countries and policy scenarios not in terms of absolute numbers but in terms of economic explanations in particular intra national trade and the sub national sectoral technological specialization are important variables for understanding the economic dynamics behind these outcomes

spatial models of political competition under plurality rule a survey of some explanations of the number of candidates and the positions they take this paper surveys work that uses spatial models of political competition to explain the number of candidates and the positions that they take in plurality rule elections

monetary shocks in the g 6 countries is there a puzzle les auteurs cherchent a clarifier la dynamique du mecanisme de transmission de la politique monetaire l identification des chocs de politique monetaire est au coeur de ce genre d analyse divers chercheurs ont reussi recemment a isoler de tels chocs en imposant des restrictions de suridentification a des modeles vectoriels autoregressifs var

electoral competition with rationally inattentive voters how do voters allocate costly attention to alternative political issues and how does selective ignorance of voters interact with policy design by politicians we address these questions by developing a model of electoral competition with rationally inattentive voters rational inattention amplies the eects of preference intensity because voters pay more attention where stakes are higher the model has many potential applications and those that we discuss in more detail imply that extremist voters are more attentive and inuential public goods are under provided divisive issues receive more attention and less transparent candidates choose more extreme policies endogenous attention can also lead to multiple equilibria explaining how poor voters in developing countries can be politically empowered by welfare programs

loss aversion in politics we study how loss aversion affects the political equilibrium in a simple majority voting model first we show a status quo bias which leads to path dependence second loss aversion implies a moderating effect on the most extreme voters third in a dynamic setting the effect of loss aversion diminishes with the length of the planning horizon of voters however in the presence of a projection bias majorities are partially unable to understand how fast they will adapt to a new policy this makes changes less likely and induces time inconsistency policy changes are timid at the beginning while in later periods they are made progressively more radical fourth in a stochastic environment loss aversion yields a significant distaste for risk but also a smaller attachment to the status quo the application of these results to a model of redistribution leads to empirically plausible implications

assessment of european union transition scenarios with a special focus on the issue of carbon leakage this paper uses the model gemini e3 to simulate and assess the transition scenario to 2020 framed by the european union in its energy climate directive and it raises several issues in this connection after a brief description of the model the paper presents the results of the scenarios mainly the values of the major indicators of carbon price both in the ets and in non ets sectors and the welfare cost of the eu policy under the various configurations considered while it is independent of the scenario in the ets sector in the non ets sector the value of carbon is very sensitive to the provisions of the directive and in particular the option of resorting to the flexibility mechanisms the welfare cost also varies significantly according to scenarios and its value for the entire eu is more than double in the scenario closest to the directive as compared to the least cost one the paper also addresses the very sensitive issue of carbon leakage and argues in favor of a new concept of net leakage the analysis shows that while carbon leakage may affect some specific sectors at the aggregate level it does not represent a real concern with a magnitude of at most a few percent of ghg abatement by annex b countries

dynamic responsiveness in the u s senate id evelop a theory of dynamic responsiveness that suggests that parties that win elections choose candidates who are more extreme and parties that lose elections choose candidates who are more moderate moreover the size of past victories matters close elections yield little change but landslides yield large rc hanges in the candidates offered by both parties i test this theory by analyzing the relationship between republican vote share in u s senate elections and the ideology of candidates offered in the subsequent election the results show that republican democratic victories in past elections yield candidates wh oa re more less conservative in subsequent elections and the effect is proportional to the margin of victory this suggests that parties or candidates pay attention to past election returns one major implication is that parties may remain polarized in spite of their responsiveness to the median voter

a cross country evaluation of environmental performance is there a convergence divergence pattern in technology gaps abstract a balanced panel of 103 countries for the period 1995 2011 is introduced into a metafrontier framework to gain insight into the idiosyncratic performance of countries in two distinct groups developed annex i countries and developing non annex i countries we measure efficiency using a generalized directional distance function model suitable for dealing with anthropogenic emissions the measurement of efficiency and technology gaps takes into account the group specific heterogeneity moreover we examine the convergence divergence hypothesis for the technology gaps defined for each period our findings reveal significant patterns between the groups and among countries

lessons on monetary policy from the 1980s t he half decade running from mid 1982 to mid 1987 was a pretty good era for u s monetary policy as these things go a sharp easing of policy beginning some time around midyear 1982 helped set in motion a recovery from the most severe business downturn the united states had experienced since the 1930s a downturn that tight monetary policy earlier on had deliberately brought about in order to slow the alarming acceleration of prices the recovery that ensued developed into a sustained expansion that continued without interruption through the end of 1987 thereby setting a new record for the longest recorded business expansion in u s peacetime experience a fiscal policy based on unprecedentedly large and continually growing structural budget deficits was a major factor underlying this record length expansion but at least monetary policy did not stand in the way just as importantly the severe 1981 82 recession served its intended purpose of substantially restoring price stability and even after five years of expansion inflation remained modest by recent historical standards at least as judged by these outcomes for the standard objectives of macroeconomic policy u s monetary policy was a distinct success during these years economists hoping to say something useful about monetary policy have had a tougher time the quantitative relationships connecting income and price movements to the growth of familiar monetary aggregates including especially the m1 measure of the money stock that had been the chief focus of monetary policy during 1979 82 utterly fell apart during this period moreover the collapse of these long standing

reference dependent consumption plans we develop a rational dynamic model in which people are loss averse over changes in beliefs about present and future consumption because changes in wealth are news about future consumption preferences over money are reference dependent if news resonates more when about imminent consump tion than when about future consumption a decision maker might to generate pleasant surprises overconsume early relative to the optimal committed plan increase immediate consumption following surprise wealth increases and delay decreasing consumption following surprise losses since higher wealth mitigates the effect of bad news people exhibit an unambiguous first order precautionary savings motive

dealing with surplus emissions in the climate negotiations after copenhagen what are the options for compromise abstract this paper analyses the environmental and financial consequences of various strategies of dealing with surplus emission allowances in the aftermath of the copenhagen accord this topic remains relevant in particular with respect to the russian negotiation position as this country is the largest holder of surplus emissions it is concluded that not addressing the surplus problem is not a feasible negotiation option as the sheer size of the surpluses would jeopardise the environmental integrity of any future agreement cancelling surpluses against russia s will though viable is not desirable as it might well lead to this country opting out of this climate treaty three options for compromise have been selected and analysed here 1 stricter targets for annex i countries 2 strategic reserve for russia 3 institutionalising optimal banking it is concluded that whereas option 1 is environmentally the best in the present political context it is probably less feasible the other two options although environmentally suboptimal seem politically more favourable our analysis suggests that maximal revenues for surplus holding countries arise by releasing only a limited amount of surplus credits to the market the institutionalisation of this effect could be a key lever to a politically feasible agreement on surplus emissions

loss aversion under prospect theory a parameter free measurement agrowing body of qualitative evidence shows that loss aversion a phenomenon formalized in prospect theory can explain a variety of field and experimental data quantifications of loss aversion are however hindered by the absence of a general preference based method to elicit the utility for gains and losses simultaneously this paper proposes such a method and uses it to measure loss aversion in an experimental study without making any parametric assumptions thus it is the first to obtain a parameter free elicitation of prospect theory s utility function on the whole domain our method also provides an efficient way to elicit utility midpoints which are important in axiomatizations of utility several definitions of loss aversion have been put forward in the literature according to most definitions we find strong evidence of loss aversion at both the aggregate and the individual level the degree of loss aversion varies with the definition used which underlines the need for a commonly accepted definition of loss aversion