money capital and real liquidity effects with habit formation the money in utility model is reconsidered in the presence of endogenous labour and habits with standard assumptions about preferences and a policy rule that sets the nominal interest rate by adjusting the growth rate of money the model exhibits superneutrality in the steady state nevertheless habits give rise to real liquidity effects in the short run after an increase in the nominal interest rate employment falls resulting in a fall in capital accumulation and in the short and long term real interest rates the adjustment of the capital stock is non monotonic employment and the short and long term real interest rates may also adjust non monotonically jel classification e22 e52 e58 monnaie capital et effets reels de liquidite quand il y a formation d habitudes on re examine le role de la monnaie dans un modele d utilite quand travail et formation d habitudes sont endogenes dans le cadre des postulats usuels a propos des preferences et d une regle de politique qui definit le taux d interet en ajustant le rythme de croissance de la monnaie le modele fait preuve de super neutralite en regime permanent neanmoins les habitudes entrainent des effets reels de liquiditea court terme apres un accroissement dans le taux d interet nominal l emploi chute ce qui entraine un ralentissement dans l accumulation du capital et une chute des taux d interet reels a court et a long terme l ajustement dans le stock de capital n est pas monotone l emploi et les taux d interet reels a court et a long terme peuvent aussi ne pas s ajuster de facon monotone

biofuel investment in tanzania omissions in implementation abstract increasing demand for biofuels as a component of climate change mitigation energy security and a fossil fuel alternative attracts investors to developing countries like tanzania ample unused land is critical for first generation biofuels production and an important feature to attract foreign direct investments that can contribute towards agricultural modernization and poverty reduction initiatives despite the economic justifications the existing institutional and infrastructural capacities dictate the impacts of biofuels market penetrations furthermore exogenous factors like global recessionary pressure depressed oil prices below the level at which biofuel production were profitable in 2007 making tanzania s competitiveness and potential benefits questionable this paper investigates the extent that first generation jatropha based biofuels industry development in tanzania observed during fieldwork in kisarawe and bahi may fulfill policy objectives this paper argues that without strong regulatory frameworks for land investment management and rural development biofuel industrialization could further exacerbate poverty and food insecurity in tanzania the paper concludes with policy recommendations for first generation biofuel development while keeping in mind implications of second generation production since the topic is broad and multifaceted a multidisciplinary approach is used that includes political institutional and agricultural economics to analyze and conceptualize biofuel industry development and food security

implications of ethnic diversity ethnically differentiated societies are often regarded as dysfunctional with poor economic performance and a high risk of violent civil conflict the author distinguishes between dominance in which one group constitutes a majority and fractionalization in which there are many small groups in terms of overall economic performance the research shows that both theoretically and empirically fractionalization is normally unproblematic in democracies although it can be damaging in dictatorships in terms of the risk of civil war the author shows that both theoretically and empirically fractionalization actually makes societies safer while dominance increases the risk of conflict a policy implication is that fractionalized societies are viable and secession should be discouraged

the demand for money in developing countries assessing the role of financial innovation traditional specifications of money demand have commonly been plagued by persistent overprediction implausible parameter estimates and highly autocorrelated errors the authors argue that some of these problems stem from the failure to account for the impact of financial innovation they estimate money demand for ten developing countries using various proxies for financial innovations they also assess the relative importance of this variable finding financial innovation can be better modeled as a stochastic random walk trend rather than a deterministic time trend financial innovation plays an important role in determining fluctuations of the demand for money the importance of this role increases with the rate of inflation

group loyalty and the taste for redistribution interpersonal preferences preferences that depend on the characteristics of others are typically hard to infer from observable individual behavior as an alternative approach this paper uses survey data to investigate interpersonal preferences i show that self reported attitudes toward welfare spending are determined not only by financial self interest but also by interpersonal preferences these interpersonal preferences are characterized by a negative exposure effect individuals decrease their support for welfare as the welfare recipiency rate in their community rises and racial group loyalty individuals increase their support for welfare spending as the share of local recipients from their own racial group rises these findings help to explain why levels of welfare benefits are relatively low in racially heterogeneous states

transforming the energy sector the evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology this paper analyses the development and diffusion of technologies that utilize renewable energy sources in germany sweden and the netherlands the analysis enlarges the life cycle model of industry evolution to one where the focus is on the formation and evolution of new technological systems particular focus is on explaining success and failures in shifting from a formative phase into one characterized by positive feedbacks a set of challenges is identified for policy makers attempting to influence the process of transforming the energy sector

the taylor principle fights back part ii abstract the existing literature holds that the taylor principle often leads to indeterminacy in new keynesian models that allow for capital accumulation and limited asset market participation this conclusion is special however to the case of continuous full employment when the assumption of perfect wage flexibility is relaxed very slightly so that the labor market clears quickly but not instantaneously determinacy is the norm the threat of indeterminacy is limited to a tiny irrelevant corner of the parameter space where the elasticity of labor supply is unusually high and real wage adjustment is unbelievably fast everywhere else the taylor principle guarantees a unique rational expectations equilibrium the dramatic difference in results reflects the sensitivity of the monetary transmission mechanism to the speed of adjustment in the labor market

economic growth in a cross section of cities abstract we examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth between 1960 and 1990 income and population growth move together and both types of growth are 1 positively related to initial schooling 2 negatively related to initial unemployment and 3 negatively related to the initial share of employment in manufacturing racial composition and segregation are uncorrelated with urban growth across all cities but in cities with large nonwhite communities segregation is positively correlated with population growth government expenditures except for sanitation are uncorrelated with growth government debt is positively correlated with later growth

generalized q models for investment the authors extend the q theory of investment to allow for adjustment costs for labor under the additional assumption that the firm is a monopolistic competitor in the output market the issue of nonconstant returns to scale is also discussed the authors show that the standard q model is a special case of a more general model involving testable parameter restrictions estimates for the u s manufacturing sector suggest that the departure from the assumption of perfect competition and lack of adjustment costs for labor receive empirical support in the data copyright 1991 by mit press

adjustment costs durables and aggregate consumption abstract previous tests of the permanent income hypothesis pih have focused on either non durables or durables expenditures in isolation this paper studies consumer purchases of non durables and durables as the outcome of a single optimization problem it is shown that with non separability in utility the presence of adjustment costs of changing durables stocks may affect the time series properties of both components of expenditure an econometric test of the pih based on the model developed in the paper is both more efficient and less prone to bias than those in some previous studies however this test confirms earlier rejections of the pih in aggregate quarterly data

what do we learn about consumer demand patterns from micro data the aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand to do this we utilize a time series of repeated cross sections covering some 4 000 households in each of 15 years employing a number of different aggregation procedures we conclude that aggregate data alone are unlikely to produce reliable estimates of structural price and income coefficients however once certain aggregation factors as well as trend and seasonal components are included an aggregate model is not necessarily outperformed across all demand equations in terms of forecasting ability jel d12 c52 c31 the purpose of this paper is to develop a complete consumer demand system based on a time series of individual household data and to use it to measure the biases introduced into the study of consumer de mand behavior when aggregate data are used in place of the appropriate microeco nomic data we assess the suitability of ag gregate data through the impact on income and price elasticities and by evaluating the ability of both micro and aggregate based models to forecast aggregate consumer de mand the biases introduced by the use of aggregate data depend upon the way that household characteristics interact with in come and price effects and on departures of demand systems from linearity we explore the structure of microeconomic demand sys tems and the role of household characteris tics in the behavior of consumer demand both for the light this may shed on the pattern of future demands and for the im plications this behavior has for issues of aggregation consumer demand patterns typically found in micro data sets vary considerably across households with different household characteristics and with different levels of income we model this variability by making intercept and slope parameters in the budget share equations of our demand sys tem depend on household characteristics and by allowing for nonlinear total log expenditure terms in fact in theory consistent demand systems it is total ex penditure rather than disposable income that is allocated across goods we find that this general framework leads to a well specified data coherent demand system which is a quadratic extension of the popu lar almost ideal model of angus s deaton and john muellbauer 1980 the micro level estimates are shown to be sensitive to the treatment of endogeneity of total expen diture and to the specification of interaction terms with household characteristics in ad dition this specification is also shown to possess many attractive features for the evaluation of aggregate models

cities and cultures we investigate whether cultural diversity across us cities measured as the variety of native languages spoken by city residents is associated with any effect on their productivity diversity of cultures may imply diversity of production skills of abilities and of occupations that enhances the productive performance of a city on the other hand transaction costs and frictions across groups may hurt productivity similarly diversity in available goods and services can increase utility but distaste for or hostility to different cultural groups may decrease it using census data from 1970 to 1990 we find that wages and employment density of us born workers were systematically higher ceteris paribus in cities with richer linguistic diversity these positive correlations reveal a net positive effect of diversity on productivity that survives robustness checks and instrumental variable estimation this effect is found to be stronger for highly educated workers and for white workers we also show that better assimilated non native speakers i e those who speak english well and have been in the us for more than five years are most beneficial to the productivity of us born workers

habit formation in consumption and its implications for monetary policy models this paper explores a monetary policy model with habit formation for consumers in which consumers utility depends in part on current consumption relative to past consumption the empirical tests developed in the paper show that one can reject the hypothesis of no habit formation with tremendous condence largely because the habit formation model captures the gradual hump shaped response of real spending to various shocks the paper then embeds the habit consumption specication in a monetary policy model and nds that the responses of both spending and inflation to monetary policy actions are signicantly improved by this modication jel d12 e52 e43

racial diversity and macroeconomic productivity across us states and cities sparber c racial diversity and macroeconomic productivity across us states and cities regional studies racial diversity in the usa continues to rise past analyses have argued that diversity can have both positive and negative consequences the overall macroeconomic effects of diversity within the usa require further examination this paper exploits variation across us regions from 1980 to 2000 to determine whether racial heterogeneity creates gains or losses for states and cities fixed effects analysis indicates that diversity enhances the productivity of cities evidence at the state level is more ambiguous as significant results only appear in random effects specifications sparber c la diversite ethnique et la productivite macroeconomique a travers les etats et les grandes villes aux e u regional studies aux etats unis la diversite ethnique est toujours a la hausse des etudes anterieures ont cherche a affirmer que les consequences de la diversite ethnique peuvent s averer a la fois positives

responding to structural industry changes a technological evolution perspective we argue that the search for a dynamic theory of strategy and for a link between the product market and resource based views may be incomplete without an exploration of the evolution of the technology that underlies products and heterogeneous firm capability as technology evolves so do industry characteristics products and critical success factors firms without the right capabilities are forced to exit thus an industry s structure attractiveness and the kinds of capabilities that it needs to succeed may vary over time suggesting different strategies for each phase

regional convergence evidence from a new state by state capital stock series this paper seeks to reconcile the growth empirics technique of mankiw romer and weil 1992 with the empirical results of barro and sala i martin 1991 through the development of a new database covering the 1977 96 period we create state by state capital stock and gross investment estimates by apportioning the national capital stock among the states using these estimates along with gross state product and employment data we find evidence that the solow growth model explains state wide growth during this period we consistently find a rate of convergence of around 2 our results as a consequence suggest that the empirical results of barro and sala i martin are driven by the neoclassical growth process of solow

explaining saving investment correlations national saving and investment rates are highly positively correlated in virtually all countries this is puzzling as it apparently implies a low degree of international capital mobility this paper shows that the observed positive correlation between national saving and investment rates arises naturally within a quantitatively restricted equilibrium model with perfect mobility of financial and physical capital the model is consistent with the fact that saving investment correlations are larger for larger countries but are still substantial for small countries further the model is consistent with the finding that current account deficits tend to be associated with investment booms copyright 1993 by american economic association

the price consumption puzzle of currency pegs abstract a defining stylized fact associated with exchange rate based stabilization programs is that their initial phase is characterized by several years of continuous expansion in private consumption and a gradual appreciation of the real exchange rate this paper shows that a large class of standard optimizing models is unable to account for this empirical regularity in particular models in this class predict that a gradual appreciation of the real exchange rate must necessarily be accompanied by a declining path of consumption the paper suggests several possible solutions to this problem and develops one in detail namely the relaxation of the assumption of time separability in preferences specifically it shows that under habit formation currency pegs induce a positive comovement between consumption and the real exchange rate the paper also establishes that habit formation provides an explanation for why in failed currency pegs a contraction in aggregate demand sets in before the collapse of the program

the real plan stabilization and destabilization abstract the paper analyzes brazil s real plan an exchange rate based stabilization program implemented in 1994 which mixed a spectacular price stabilization with some serious macroeconomic destabilization the paper focuses on two of these imbalances the consumption boom and the financial destabilization showing that the former represented nothing but the reverse side of a collapsed investment boom which in turn led to the financial banking crisis we hold that these instabilities were produced by a policy arrangement in which monetary and fiscal policies alone had to compensate for a largely appreciated almost fixed exchange rate anchor

the emerging liquid biofuel market in argentina implications for domestic demand and international trade while the world s transport energy matrix is still strongly linked to limited and heavily polluting fossil fuels new markets are appearing for the production and use of alternative transport fuels such as liquid biofuels due to an interconnected global economy such markets today are developing on a global scale with actors looking to meet local as well as potential international demand the aim of this paper is to describe and evaluate the emergence of markets for liquid biofuels in argentina it reveals that biodiesel production for international supply is likely to emerge in the short run up to 2010 giving the opportunity to be switched back to local supply in the medium run post 2010 it also suggests that a bioethanol market demand and supply does not seem to be likely in the short run and it is highly uncertain in the medium run as the most influential actors oppose its development on the other hand the current constellations of the biodiesel market appear to leave many uncertainties regarding its sustainability especially in regard to a limited role of small and medium sized enterprises and a suitable and diversified biodiesel feedstock currently the focus lies solely on very large scale production of biodiesel derived from soybean oil for the export market

long term evolutionary change in organizational populations theory models and empirical findings in industrial demography organizational ecology is a theoretical perspective on organizations that attempts to explain long term social evolution especially the rise and fall of organizational populations this artist review the most sustained demographic research program of the perspective one based on the density dependent model of legitimation and competition it discusses the theoretical model and evidence from industrial demography that has been offered in its support as well as criticisms that have been registered unresolved research problems of the program are identified and three major models in progress attempting to address these open questions are discussed and compared copyright 1997 by oxford university press

the political economy of biodiesel in an era of low oil prices abstract global biodiesel production grew by 23 per annum between 2005 and 2015 leading to a seven fold expansion of the sector in a single decade rapid development in the biodiesel sector corresponded to high crude oil prices but since mid 2014 oil prices have fallen dramatically this paper assesses the economic and policy factors that underpinned the expansion of biodiesel and examines the near term prospects for biodiesel growth under conditions of low fossil fuel prices we show that the dramatic increase in biodiesel output would not have occurred without strong policy directives subsidies and trade policies designed to support agricultural interests rural economic development energy security and climate targets given the important role of policy and the political context within each country that shapes policy objectives instruments and priorities case studies of major biodiesel producing countries are presented as a key element of our analysis although the narrative of biodiesel policies in most countries conveys win win outcomes across multiple objectives the case studies show that support of particular constituents such as farm lobbies or energy interests often dominates policy action and generates large social costs looking out to 2020 the paper highlights risks to the biodiesel industry associated with ongoing regulatory and market uncertainties

resurrecting the weak credibility hypothesis in models of exchange rate based stabilization abstract we analyze how weak credibility affects the volatility of consumption spending in a model of exchange rate based stabilization that allows for both durable and nondurable goods the inclusion of durables greatly improves the explanatory power of the weak credibility hypothesis the hypothesis can account for the main qualitative properties of the boom bust cycle provided the elasticity of durables expenditure with respect to tobin s q is greater than the intertemporal elasticity of substitution moreover the quantitative effects are very large in numerical simulations based on conservative assumptions about the expenditure share of durables 20 and wealth effects none aggregate consumption increases 17 22 and the real exchange rate appreciates 24 26 when the crawl decreases from 100 to zero for 3 years in variants of the model that incorporate supply effects the consumption boom is equally strong but appreciation of the real exchange rate rises to 30 40

exchange rate based stabilization in latin america abstract this paper examines the use of the exchange rate as a nominal anchor for achieving price stability in latin america it will explore the impact of exchange rate anchoring on the real sector by analyzing five stabilization programs the paper will identify conditions that make exchange rate based stabilization successful and those that lead to its failure it will also demonstrate that while the income effect can be instrumental in describing consumption booms associated with exchange rate based stabilizations the popular view based on the credibility hypothesis fails to explain key events associated with such programs

cultural diversity and economic growth evidence from the us during the age of mass migration we exploit the large inflow of immigrants to the us during the 1870 1920 period to examine the effects that within county changes in the cultural composition of the us population had on output growth we construct measures of fractionalization and polarization to distinguish between the different effects of cultural diversity our main finding is that increases in cultural fractionalization significantly increased output while increases in cultural polarization significantly decreased output we address the issue of identifying the causal effects of cultural diversity by using the supply push component of immigrant inflows as an instrumental variable

impacts of biodiesel on the brazilian fuel market this paper investigates market effects of the brazilian biodiesel law which made the use of biodiesel blended with petroleum diesel mandatory in brazil the study estimates the demand curve for diesel fuel biodiesel and petroleum diesel and the industry supply curve of biodiesel these two pieces of information have been used in a static analysis to draw scenarios with different biodiesel mandates the results show that the current proportion of biodiesel in the diesel mixture 5 increases consumers price by 1 7 and decreases the consumption by 1 5 compared to the scenario without biodiesel also an increase in the biodiesel percentage to 10 would raise the price by 3 5 and reduce the consumption by 3 2012 elsevier b v

the demand for money in brazil what happened in the 1980s abstract some of cardoso s 1983 money demand specifications are used here the estimates are based on quarterly data for the period 1966 1985 it is shown that due to financial innovation the money demand function shifted downwards in the 1980 s also a comparison is made between the actual demand for money and that predicted by the model during the period in which the economic reforms of the cruzado plan were in force

simulation for assessing the liberalization of biofuels abstract global biofuel consumption has been growing in recent years as different countries worldwide have been exploring alternatives and complements to gasoline and diesel fuel for transport this is due to a hike in oil prices and their increasing volatility as well as both a high dependence of the transport sector on oil and also because arguably the supply chain of biofuels emits less co2 than that of fossil fuels biofuels have been available around the world for a while with the aid of some government support brazil pioneered this renewable solution for transport from the early 1930s as the country had little access to local fuels while oil and other alternatives became more expensive biofuels are currently widely considered as part of the solution to affordable fuels for transport this paper makes use of a system dynamics model to analyse the current leading policies aiming at increasing the penetration of biofuels in this context and given multiple uncertainties that include technology evolution and fuel prices scenario analysis has been considered for the examination of different extreme though plausible futures simulations under extreme scenarios helped in assessing the possibility of removing incentives that is leaving decisions to an open market and a partial reduction of subsidies this paper concludes that for the case of colombia the potential of biofuels seems promising

exchange rate based stabilizations under real frictions the role of endogenous labor supply abstract this paper studies exchange rate based stabilization programs in the context of a model of a small open economy where labor supply is endogenous agents derive utility from both consumption and leisure in environments where consumption is subject to a cash in advance constraint a cut in the rate of devaluation lowers the nominal interest rate and hence alters the optimal mix of consumption and leisure the paper shows that in the presence of adjustment costs of investment a perfectly credible cut in the devaluation rate causes simultaneously a consumption and output boom a cumulative current deficit a sustained real appreciation of the domestic currency and an increase in labor supply over time it is also shown that an imperfectly credible stabilization program in this environment would have effects similar to the perfectly credible program but generate richer dynamics such as an initial boom in output followed by a recession which begins prior to the end of the program the model has clear welfare implications in that permanent reductions in inflation are unambiguously welfare enhancing

racial diversity and aggregate productivity in u s industries 1980 2000 author affiliation chad sparber department of economics colgate university 13 oak drive hamilton ny 13346 usa csparber mail colgate edu acknowledgment i would like to acknowledge the guidance and advice from the faculty and graduate students of the university of california davis i especially thank giovanni peri hilary w hoynes alan m taylor florence bouvet and ahmed s rahman three anonymous referees rukmani gounder margriet caswell and the attendees of the western economics association international conference in san francisco provided helpful comments and suggestions as did takao kato robert w turner and faculty members of colgate university and san diego state university a fellowship from the university of california office of the president provided support for this research 1 introductionthe united states grew increasingly diverse between 1980 and 2000 as whites declined from 83 to 73 of the labor force many states are reconsidering their affirmative action policies while the federal government reevaluates immigration and citizenship statutes unfortunately we do not yet fully understand the aggregate effects of diversity international empirical analyses often argue that racial or ethnic heterogeneity hinders macroeconomic growth and development by fostering conflict corruption political instability and competitive rent seeking many top u s business executives reject these views however and claim that individuals from varied backgrounds bring unique approaches to problem solving and complement each other in production several academic analyses echo these sentiments this paper adds to the debate on the costs and benefits of diversity by building upon the traditional economic growth and development framework to measure racial diversity s net effect on productivity within sectors of the united states my methodology advances the existing literature by addressing two limitations of prior studies first although cross country evidence for the costs of diversity is clear the united states may be especially effective in managing diversity this paper determines whether the u s experience differs from international accounts second typical international growth analyses measure aggregate outcomes for countries but fail to address differences in marginal effects that could exist across sectors of the economy i depart from this strategy by analyzing industrial performance across u s states to begin i measure racial diversity by using decennial census data from the integrated public use microdata series ipums 1 to construct fractionalization indices for state industry cells between 1980 and 2000 i then employ two stage weighted least squares regressions with fixed effects to estimate diversity s industry specific influence on average wages paid to workers a proxy for labor productivity in the absence of observed output per worker measures unqualified statements regarding the costs and merits of diversity are unwarranted as racial heterogeneity increases productivity within most but not all u s industries these results are robust to methodologies controlling for individual level heterogeneity state specific trends industry specific trends and supply factors prior academic research anecdotes from political events and the sector specific coefficients in this paper provide intuition about the industrial characteristics that determine whether diversity leads to economic gains or losses i use the u s department of labor s o net consortium data2 to show that industries heavily reliant upon creative decision making problem solving and customer service benefit from diversity in contrast sectors characterized by high levels of group work or teamwork experience losses which suggests that heterogeneity encumbers common action the results therefore reconcile competing literatures by recognizing both the costs and the benefits of diversity

deja vu all over again the mexican crisis and the stabilization of uruguay in the 1970s abstract comparing the 1978 1982 uruguayan stabilization with the 1990 1994 mexican experience reveals that exchange rate based stabilization tends to increase the economy s vulnerability to unexpected shocks an exchange rate rule with full capital mobility can only succeed if compatible financial policies are strictly adhered to even when severe negative shocks take place and if reliance on persistent capital inflows is not essential this requires monetary restraint even under serious recessionary conditions and tight fiscal policies to moderate interest rates the epilogues of both experiences demonstrate that abandoning the exchange rate rule in the wake of a shock even if inevitable makes future stabilization more difficult

nominal interest rates consumption booms and lack of credibility a quantitative examination abstract exchange rate based stabilization programs in chronic inflation countries have often been accompanied by an initial expansion of private consumption followed by a contraction this consumption cycle has been attributed to lack of credibility in the sense that the public views the reduction in the devaluation rate as temporary this paper assesses the quantitative relevance of the temporariness hypothesis by comparing the predictions of a simple model to the actual figures for seven major programs the paper concludes that nominal interest rates must fall substantially for the temporariness hypothesis to account for an important fraction of the observed consumption booms

fiscal shocks and their consequences this paper investigates the response of hours worked and real wages to fiscal policy shocks in the post world war ii us we identify these shocks with exogenous changes in military purchases and argue that they lead to a persistent increase in government purchases and tax rates on capital and labor income and a persistent rise in aggregate hours worked as well as declines in real wages the shocks are also associated with short lived rises in aggregate investment and small movements in private consumption we describe and implement a methodology for assessing whether standard neoclassical models can account for the consequences of a fiscal policy shock simple versions of the neoclassical model can account for the qualitative effects of a fiscal shock once we allow for habit formation and investment adjustment costs the model can also account reasonably well for the quantitative effects of a fiscal shock

international bioenergy trade a review of past developments in the liquid biofuel market policies aimed to promote biofuels locally had tremendous effects on global market developments across the past decade this article develops insights into the interaction of these policies and market forces via a comprehensive collection and analysis of international production and trade data it shows that world biofuel production and trade has grown exponentially from below 30 pj in 2000 to 572 pj in 2009 for biodiesel from 340 pj in 2000 to over 1540 pj in 2009 for fuel ethanol the eu has dominated world biodiesel whereas the us and brazil have led fuel ethanol production world net biofuel trade reached 120 130 pj in 2009 and was directed towards the most lucrative markets for biodiesel this has been the eu whose imports rose to 92 pj in 2008 and remained at 70 pj in 2009 regarding fuel ethanol both the us and the eu have been prime destinations for competitively priced exports the vast majority of which originated in brazil international biofuel trade is both supply and demand driven the demand side was shaped by support policies which generally increased the domestic market value of biofuels trade developed wherever these policies prices were not accompanied by respective measures it is found that import duties largely influenced trade volumes whereas trade routes were mainly driven by tariff preferences trade regimes appear to have been designed and adapted unilaterally along national interests causing market disruptions trade inefficiencies and disputes to avoid these it is important to explicitly consider international trade implications of national trade policies a prerequisite is to improve the understanding of the underlying complex and interwoven links within the market the current lack of adequate homogeneous international reporting of biofuel production and trade statistics could be bridged via internationally standardized custom clarifications trade factor interrelations also need to be investigated further

inflation stabilisation and the consumption of durable goods exchange rate based stabilisations in chronic inflation countries have often been characterised by an initial consumption boom which is most evident in the behaviour of durable goods followed by a later contraction this paper provides an explanation for such a boom recession cycle based on the timing of purchases of durable goods the initial fall in inflation results in a wealth effect which induces many consumers to bring forward their purchases of durable goods thus generating an aggregate consumption boom since most consumers replenish their stock of durable goods at the beginning of the programme a later slowdown follows

when shakeout doesn t occur the evolution of the turboprop engine industry abstract a careful case study of the history of the turboprop engine industry 1948 1997 is offered as an example of non shakeout pattern the persistence of high concentration is not associated with the exit of smaller manufacturers but instead a stable coexistence of generalist and specialist strategies emerges in sharp contrast to the pattern observed in the otherwise similar jet engine industry this paper identifies the relevant variables of a more general theory of industry life cycle by taking into account the lack of creation of significant increasing returns in r d manufacturing or marketing all of which are commonly found in industries that produce systemic products

sell or not sell biodiesel local competition and government measures the introduction of biofuels is one of the objectives of the european union for this reason measures to promote the production and consumption of this product have been implemented such as tax exemptions fixing a minimum amount of mixture or the introduction of public transport that consume biofuels in this paper we test different factors that can affect the introduction of biodiesel in the spanish gasoline market these factors are mainly the level of local competition technical difficulties and local government action empirical evidence shows that a higher level of competition more buses that consume biodiesel and a lower adjustment costs increase significantly the probability of sell biodiesel at service stations these results show how the promotion of competition and public procurement of vehicles can improve the commercialization of biofuels

returns to investment in education a global update the author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates some key patterns among the three main levels of education primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education which is regressive social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country s per capita income overall the returns to female education are higher than those to male education but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track since unit cost of vocational education is much higher and the returns for those who work in the private competitive sector of the economy are higher than in the public noncompetitive sector and the returns in the self employment unregulated sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence the undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways the causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments some have been attempted the author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling the conclusions reinforce earlier patterns they confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries they also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical vocational tract and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital that is they decline as investment is expanded