the multiple contexts of bretton woods this paper examines why so much debate about the structure of the international economy revolves around a conference held at bretton woods in july 1944 which was not immediately conspicuously successful there was a unique confluence of contemporary contexts in terms of trade policy stabilization policy and policies with regard to capital movements that meant that prevailing ideas especially the ideas of john maynard keynes and the interests of the united states coincided it was fundamentally a victory of the united states but dressed up as benign multilateralism a similarly unique combination of circumstances surrounded european efforts in the 1970s and was later to create through the european monetary system a scaled down version of bretton woods the myth of bretton woods was created by a powerful retrospective interpretation or retrospective context that lent a golden halo to the whole exercise in that sense our interpretation of a very specific historical event is inseparably intertwined with views of what happened after as well as before that event copyright 2013 oxford university press

international macroeconomic policy coordination an overview this article which serves as an introduction to the oxford review of economic policy s issue on macroeconomic policy coordination global imbalances and global growth charts the evolution of international macroeconomic policy coordination from the end of the second world war until the present day the arrangements laid out at the bretton woods conference in 1944 provide an intellectual framework with which to assess the evolving need for and feasibility of international coordination across three historical periods the fixed but adjustable exchange rate arrangements of the bretton woods system the subsequent flexible exchanges period of the non system which led into the great moderation and finally the period since the global financial crisis of 2008 increased economic integration particularly through the capital account combined with asymmetries in exchange rate regimes between china and the us have shown that reliance on the automatic adjustment mechanisms of the non system are no longer feasible so that a return to policy cooperation is necessary in order to rebalance the world economy and reduce the adverse spill over impacts that uncoordinated rebalancing would entail the article explores the nature of this coordination and provides a context for other contributions to the issue analysing positive and normative aspects of macroeconomic policy coordination from a global perspective and from the prospective of key global players including china and the european union copyright 2013 oxford university press

positively sloping marginal revenue ces utility and subsistence requirements the possibility that marginal revenue may possess a positive slope has long been recognized as important in her classic the economics of imperfect competition joan robinson 14 accorded considerable significance to the possibility and investigated it at length despite robinson s insights upward sloping marginal revenue functions remained largely a curiosity widely regarded as an overly stringent perversity unlikely to occur in reality considerable doubt was cast on this view when in 1980 a a walters 20 reported the presence of positively sloping marginal revenue in the pricing policies of the port of singapore the case for upward sloping marginal revenue was furthered by formby layson and smith s 8 straightforward demonstration that upward sloping marginal revenue schedules are very easily produced and can never be ruled out because simple parallel shifts in strictly convex demand and or rotations always transform demand schedules with downward sloping marginal revenue into ones with positively sloping schedules this strongly suggests that no theoretically reasonable restrictions can be placed on the behavior of marginal revenue because to do so would rule out such simple transformations as parallel shifts or rotations in demand such restrictions would be too stringent to be acceptable upward sloping marginal revenue has found important application in such diverse topics as catastrophe theory 3 third degree price discrimination 13 dual equilibria and monopolistic competition 11 specific taxes and quality 2 and international trade 7 2 the significance of non monotonic marginal revenue functions is further underscored by the fact that the presence of upward sloping marginal revenue significantly affects the sign of comparative static results for example see 18 260 15 16 2 a shortcoming of previous analyses lies in the fact that they draw conclusions from consideration of slope level and curvature of the demand schedule alone the behavior of marginal revenue derived directly from the more fundamental basis of utility theory has not been examined this paper takes up this question employing wold s theorem to analyze marginal revenue

is there a threat effect of labour market programmes a study of almp in the danish ui system this article focuses on unemployed individuals reaction to compulsory labour market programmes prior to participation in denmark after having received ui benefits for a given period of time continued benefits are made conditional on participation in a labour market programme i estimate individuals reaction to compulsory programmes using legislative changes in the duration of benefits period as identification i find that compulsory programmes do indeed motivate individuals to find employment prior to participation the effect is large and is even comparable in size to the effect of benefits exhaustion found in studies of american ui systems

cartels and antitrust the role of fines in deterring violations at the margin the potential benefits of effective antitrust action include both increased economic efficiency through the expansion of output and improved equity through the redistribution of income from monopolies to consumers a large and growing literature is devoted to empirically testing and documenting the economic consequences of antitrust casebringing activity a second empirical literature is focused on the role which economic variables play in the determination of casebringing activity by the united states department of justice 2 what separates these two bodies of literature are the behavioral linkages between anti

economic welfare price and profit the deterrent effect of alternative antitrust regimes this paper critically examines the deterrent effect of price fixing statutes under alternative antitrust regimes a regime is defined by the litigation strategy which the antitrust agency employs in detecting cartels and in determining whether prosecution is warranted and by the basis upon which courts estimate damages the results of the analysis suggest that antitrust policy may actually induce cartels to further restrict output increasing welfare loss above the level imposed by an unthreatened perfect monopoly litigation strategy and damages should be founded upon consideration of welfare loss measures to avoid this possibility

the law of demand positive sloping marginal revenue and multiple profit equilibria this paper demonstrates that the conditions for a positively sloping marginal revenue curve are much less stringent than is generally recognized simple transformations of any well behaved convex demand function can easily result in a demand for which marginal revenue is positively sloping for this reason positively sloping marginal revenue functions must be considered whenever convex demand functions are analyzed the existence of positively sloping marginal revenue makes multiple profit equilibria for the firm a very real possibility

the deterrent effect of antitrust enforcement in this paper we formulate and test a model of collusive pricing in the presence of antitrust enforcement we show that a cartel s optimal price is likely to be neither the competitive price nor the price that the cartel would set in the absence of antitrust enforcement but rather an intermediate price that depends on the levels of antitrust enforcement efforts and penalties our empirical results reveal that increasing antitrust enforcement in the presence of a credible threat of large damage awards has the deterrent effect of reducing mark ups in the bread industry

experimental evidence on the effects of early meetings and activation we analyze the effects of four randomized social experiments involving early and intensive active labour market policy conducted in denmark in 2008 the experiments entailed different combinations of early and intensive treatment in terms of meetings and active labour market programmes we find that frequent meetings between newly unemployed workers and case workers can increase employment rates over the next two years by up to 10 weeks the effects continue to grow over the whole 4 year horizon studied for men we find evidence of a threat effect of having to participate in early active labour market programmes while no such effect is found for women we conduct a cost benefit analysis of each ofthe four experiments and find that meetings yield the largest net benefits

is the threat of reemployment services more effective than the services themselves evidence from random assignment in the ui system we examine the effect of the worker profiling and reemployment services system this program profiles unemployment insurance ui claimants to determine their probability of benefit exhaustion and then provides mandatory employment and training services to claimants with high predicted probabilities using a unique experimental design we estimate that the program reduces mean weeks of ui benefit receipt by about 2 2 weeks reduces mean ui benefits received by about 143 ana increases subsequent earnings by over 1 050 most of the effect results from a sharp increase in early ui exits in the treatment group relative to the control group jel j650

the threat effect of active labor market programs a systematic review this paper is a systematic review of the threat effect of active labor market programs for unemployed individuals the threat effect is the induced change in the hazard rate of leaving unemployment prior to program participation studies included in the review all estimated a threat effect with the participants in all cases being unemployed individuals in receipt of benefit of some kind during their tenure of unemployment eight of these studies have been included in a meta analysis the meta analysis which has been carried out using a random effects model to account for heterogeneity indicated a hazard ratio of 1 25 for the pooled estimate we conclude that active labor market programs constitute a statistically significant threat effect although it is modest

the spike at benefit exhaustion leaving the unemployment system or starting a new job in this paper we review the literature on the spike in unemployment exit rates around benefit exhaustion and present new evidence based on administrative data for a large sample of job losers in austria we find that the way unemployment spells are measured has a large effect on the magnitude of the spike at exhaustion both in existing studies and in our austrian data spikes are typically much smaller when spell length is defined by the time to next job than when it is defined by the time spent on the unemployment system in austria the exit rate from registered unemployment rises by over 200 at the expiration of benefits while the hazard rate of re employment rises by only 20 the difference between the two measures arises because many individuals leave the unemployment register immediately after their benefits expire without returning to work the modest spike in re employment rates implies that most job seekers do not wait until their ui benefits are exhausted to return to work fewer than 1 of jobless spells have an ending date that is manipulated to coincide with the expiration of ui benefits this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

are there pre programme effects of active placement efforts evidence from a social experiment this note estimates pre programme effects of active placement programmes estimation is based on a social experiment conducted in three swedish counties in 2004 i find that placement programmes could substantially increase transitions both to jobs and other exits before programme start

unemployment duration and the restart effect some experimental evidence in this paper we analyse the effect of ihe restart programme in the united kingdom this programme consisis of an interview of tbe long term unemployed to counsel them on effective job search failure to attend the interview carries the threat of the cessation of unemployment benefits the results using experimental data indicate that the programme has a significant effect of reducing unemployment duration estimation of an independent competing risks model distinguishing between exits from unemployment to a job a training placement or to signing off unemployment benefit shows that the channels through which restart works differs according to exit type

sick of being unemployed interactions between unemployment and sickness insurance this paper examines the incentive effects of interactions between unemployment insurance ui and sickness insurance si two important components of sweden s social insurance system the main topic is how the sickness report rate among the unemployed is affected by i the limit of 300 workdays for ui benefits and ii the difference in maximum compensation between ui and si benefits results obtained by duration analysis suggest that sick reports increase as the ui benefit expiration date approaches there is also evidence of an incentive effect on the sick report rate because si offers higher compensation than ui

dual equilibria and discontinuous response in monopolistic competition with two classes of consumers the possibility of a convex industry demand function s leading to two local profit maxima for a monopolist supplier is found to extend to a model of monopolistic competition where two classes of consumers are distinguished by their relative demand for the industry s products a long run free entry industry equilibrium is defined and discontinuous responses to changes in parameters are analyzed some applications are given and the existence of dual equilibria is shown to be a possibility

the economic future of europe after three years of near stagnation the mood in europe is definitely gloomy many doubt that the european model has a future in this paper i argue that things are not so bad and there is room for optimism over the last thirty years productivity growth has been much faster in europe than in the united states productivity levels are roughly similar today in the european union and in the united states the main difference is that europe has used some of the increase in productivity to increase leisure rather than income while the united states has done the opposite still not everything is well unemployment is still high and europe suffers from inefficient regulation here also however there is more action than often perceived and a wide ranging reform process is taking place this process is driven by reforms in financial and product markets reforms in those markets are in turn putting pressure for reform in the labor market reform in the labor market is slowly taking place but not without political tensions these tensions dominate the news but they are a symptom of change not a reflection of immobility

taxation and the output and welfare of third degree price discrimination the literature on third degree price discrimination dates back to the work by pigou 14 and joan robinson 15 over half a century ago the subsequent works on the output effect can be seen in edwards 3 silberberg 19 battalio and ekelund 1 greenhut and ohta 7 finn 4 smith and formby 20 formby et al 6 and shih mai and liu 18 the welfare effect by yamey 26 was expanded and generalized by schmalensee 16 varian 24 and schwartz 17 in addition nahata ostaszewski and sahoo 12 demonstrate a sufficient condition for price changes that guarantees a welfare increase with the twice differentiable and monotonically decreasing demand functions previous work on third degree price discrimination has not addressed the issue of taxation governments often levy excise taxes on firm s sales under conditions of third degree price discrimination such taxes can have depending upon the form of the tax quite different output and welfare effects this paper investigates the joint effects of third degree price discrimination and excise taxation in several different ways first in a fashion analogous to suits and musgrave s analysis of simple non discriminating monopoly 22 we consider the effects of ad valorem and unit specific excise taxes at a constant level of output but in a third degree price discrimination environment second in a similar manner we compare cost and demand ad valorem taxes and the so called musgravian transformation 11 27 under discriminatory conditions finally we compare the output and welfare effects of a specific cost ad valorem and demand ad valorem excise tax that generate the same level of revenues in a third degree price discrimination environment

a world economy restored expert consensus and the anglo american postwar settlement although british and u s officials held markedly different views during the initial negotiations for a postwar economic order they were able to reach watershed trade and monetary agreements that set the terms for the reestablishment of an open world economy how does one explain this anglo american settlement reached at bretton woods in 1944 structural explanations based on underlying configurations of power and interests are helpful but leave important issues unresolved given the range of postwar economic orders that were possible and potentially consistent with underlying structures and also given the divergent and conflicting views both within and between the two governments why did the economic order take the particular shape it took this article argues that agreement was fostered by a community of british and american economists and policy specialists who embraced a set of policy ideas inspired by keynesianism and who played a critical role in defining government conceptions of postwar interests shaping the negotiating agenda for example shifting the focus of negotiations from trade issues which were highly contentious to monetary issues about which there was an emerging middle ground created by keynesian ideas and building coalitions in support of the postwar settlement