booms busts and babies health we study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby s conception and parental characteristics parental behaviors and babies health babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight fewer congenital malformations and lower post neonatal mortality these health improvements are attributable both to selection changes in the type of mothers that conceive during recessions and to improvements in health behavior during recessions black mothers tend to be higher socio economic status as measured by education and marital status in times of high unemployment whereas white mothers are less educated

the demand for energy cross country evidence using the florida model abstract income and own price elasticities of demand for energy for 51 countries in 1980 are presented based on pooled estimates from an 11 good demand system estimated with the florida model results indicate income elasticities of demand for energy are significantly larger than unitary for all countries and own price elasticities of demand for energy range between 0 8 and 1 0

elasticities ratios and energy modelling abstract this paper shows certain pitfalls in calculating elasticities and ratios by studying some commonly used econometric models of energy it is then argued that income elasticity could be considered stable both in the short run and in the long run lastly we have derived a formula which clearly relates the income elasticity to the energy income ratio the difference of elasticities among the developing and developed countries can be explained directly from the formula

energy consumption financial development and economic growth in india new evidence from a nonlinear and asymmetric analysis this paper investigates the asymmetric relationship between energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating financial development capital and labour into a production function covering the indian economy from 1960q1 2015q4 the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach is applied to examine the asymmetric cointegration between the variables an asymmetric causality test is also employed to examine the causal association between the considered variables the results indicate cointegration between the variables in the presence of asymmetries the asymmetric causality results show that only negative shocks in energy consumption have impacts on economic growth in the same vein only negative shocks in financial development have impacts on economic growth by contrast symmetrically capital formation causes economic growth finally over the study period a neutral effect exists between the labour force and economic growth in india the implications of these results for growth policies in india are also discussed

markets for electricity in europe competition in the electricity industry requires properly functioning wholesale markets this paper discusses the better established electricity markets of europe in the nordic countries england and wales and spain the different market designs can all produce efficient outcomes if not hindered by market power long term contracts provide some defence against market power and give price stability to promote investment competition in electricity retailing may discourage retailers from signing long term contracts in future

the relationship between energy demand and real gdp growth rate the role of price asymmetries and spatial externalities within 34 countries across the globe abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between energy demand and real gross domestic product gdp growth and to investigate the role of regional externalities on per capita final energy consumption fec in 34 countries during the period from 2005 to 2013 the paper utilizes a dynamic panel generalized method of moments dpggm approach and spatial econometric techniques in order to analyse the effect of real gdp growth rate on fec through an error correction model ecm and to examine clustered patterns of energy consumption the results show that a the demand is elastic both in the industrial and the household services sectors b electricity and natural gas are demand substitutes c the relationship between real gdp growth rate and per capita energy consumption exhibits an inverted u shape for all the sample countries under scrutiny 34 countries eurozone and eu28 but not for all the employed sectors of the economy d price electricity and gas and gdp growth asymmetries are supported from the employed parametric tests and e distance does not affect per capita fec but economic neighbours have a strong positive effect

energy gdp relationship and capital intensity in ldcs abstract this study provides an updated estimate of the gdp elasticity of energy consumption for ldcs it uses a production function approach in determining this elasticity energy consumption is explained in terms of economic activity capital intensity and structure of economy the elasticity is found to be less than unitary this suggests that the earlier estimates for ldcs were biased

stock watson dynamic ols dols and error correction modelling approaches to estimating long and short run elasticities in a demand function new evidence and methodological implications from an application to the demand for coal in mainland china in this paper robust elasticity estimates of coal demand for china are derived using annual data 1953 92 in so doing we illustrate the use of a powerful yet practically convenient and recently developed modelling procedure devised by stock and watson known as dynamic ols dols who provide evidence based on monte carlo simulations of this estimator being superior in small samples compared to a number of alternative estimators as well as being able not only to accommodate higher orders of integration but also to account for possible simultaneity within regressors of a potential demand system furthermore cointegration and error correction methods are employed to derive short run price and income elasticities estimated results are quite robust not only in terms of statistical prowess but also in terms of economic intuition and indicate that over the long run both price and income elasticities are close to unity while short run price and income elasticities are less in absolute value than their long run counterparts there seems to be some divergence in short run parameters from a subsample analysis overall results seem to imply that for china coal consumption should remain relatively constant as future modernization strategies for economic development are pursued in addition the study has clear methodological implications for estimating the long and short run elasticities in a demand function in general and in a wide variety of fields in future applied research

quantitative restrictions and indian imports abstract many governments in ldcs tend 3o rely heavily on import control for achieving adjustments in the balance of payments the empirical analysis of imports of these countries has failed to address the issue of quantitative restrictions satisfactorily in this paper a set of disaggregated import demand equations are specified which attempt to capture the government s decision regarding quota restrictions the model postulates that the overall level of imports is determined by expected foreign exchange availability while the composition of imports once the level has been decided is based on political and economic priorities and on relative prices

social interaction effects in disability pension participation evidence from plant downsizing we estimate the magnitude of social interaction effects in disability pension participation among older workers in norway the problem of omitted variable bias is addressed using the exposure of an individual s neighbors to plant downsizing events as an instrument for the disability entry rate among the individual s previously employed neighbors our instrumental variable iv estimates suggest that an increase of one percentage point in the participation rate of previously employed neighbors increased the subsequent four year entry rate of older workers by about 0 4 percentage points numerous robustness and specification tests appear to support the validity of the identifying assumption in our iv strategy

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

economic conditions and alcohol problems this study investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and two alcohol related outcomes liquor consumption and highway vehicle fatalities fixed effect models are estimated for the 48 contiguous states over the 1975 1988 time period alcohol consumption and traffic deaths vary procyclically with a major portion of the effect of economic downturns attributed to reductions in incomes rather than employment the intake of hard liquor is the most sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy there is no evidence however that fluctuations in economic conditions have a disproportionate impact on the drunk driving of young adults

on energy coefficients and ratios abstract this paper examines the methodological issues of the debates surrounding the problem of measuring energy consumption and the use of the concept of energy coefficients it also investigates the brookes hypothesis of a development effect on energy consumption the results suggest that when energy consumption is appropriately measured the energy coefficients are very consistent and fall steadily from high values tending asymptotically to one

modeling and forecasting energy consumption in china implications for chinese energy demand and imports in 2020 the chinese economy is in a stage of energy transition from low efficiency solid fuels to oil gas and electric power from agriculture to urbanization and industrialization from heavy industry to lighter and high tech industry from low motorization to rapid growth of the motor vehicle population experts fear that continued rapid economic growth in china will translate into a massive need to expand imports of oil coal and gas we build an econometric model of the chinese energy economy based on the energy balance we use that model to forecast chinese energy consumption and imports to 2020 the study suggests that china will indeed require rapidly growing imports of oil coal and gas this growth is not so sensitive to the rate of economic growth as to increases in motorization it can be offset but probably only in small part by increasing domestic energy production or by improvements in the efficiency of use particularly in the production of electric power

estimating energy and oil demand functions a study of thirteen developing countries abstract in this paper we attempt to identify some of the factors that have determined the level and pattern of energy demand in developing countries during the 1970s and early 1980s aggregate oil and energy demanding functions are constructed for a selection of oil importing countries and oil exporting countries the results show a strong link between income and aggregate energy demand conversely the price elasticity of energy demand is low both in the short run and the long run oil demand behaviour is more complex oil products can be rationed or domestic energy production can affect oil demand nonetheless the income elasticity remains close to one in most countries and is well above one for some

does drinking really decrease in bad times this paper investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and drinking using individual level data from 1987 to 1999 interview years of the behavioral risk factor surveillance system brfss we confirm the procyclical variation in overall drinking identified in previous research using aggregate sales data and show that this largely results from changes in consumption by existing drinkers rather than movements into or out of drinking moreover the decrease occurring during bad economic times is concentrated among heavy consumers with light drinking actually rising we also find no evidence that the decline in overall alcohol use masks a rise for persons becoming unemployed during contractions these results suggest that any stress induced increases in drinking during bad economic times are more than offset by declines resulting from changes in economic factors such as lower incomes

electricity and markets over the last fifteen years an increasing number of electricity industries have replaced vertical integration with markets as the main method of organising production electrical energy is traded in many european and us markets while the us also has markets for generating capacity us generators can reduce the cost of complying with environmental regulations by trading emissions of sulphur dioxide while europe has just started a carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme this article discusses the way in which these markets put economic principles into practice in particular it shows that several different market designs can provide theoretically equivalent incentives for generators to build capacity and that emissions trading may have unexpected impacts upon electricity prices

a note on economic conditions and alcohol problems this paper reexamines the effect of the business cycle on alcohol consumption using u s state level analysis introduced by rhum ruhm c j 1995 economic conditions and alcohol problems journal of health economics 14 583 603 using an extended panel this analysis finds that ruhm s estimates are biased and inconsistent due to the problem of non stationarity in alcohol consumption and state economic condition time series corrected estimation using logarithmic first differences confirms ruhm s original finding of pro cyclical alcohol consumption but these results unlike ruhm s are robust to sample period

incentives to invest in liberalised electricity industries in the north and south differences in the need for suitable institutional arrangements the issue of investment is all too often underplayed in deregulation reforms focused on market rules and de integration measures this presentation criticises first the optimistic approach of the theory of investment incentives through market signals when it is applied to deregulated electricity industries the greater part of the investment in base load and peak equipment should be made profitable by income from very high prices during peak and extreme peak periods that raises a problem of political acceptability the problem is then addressed in the context of the mature electricity industries in the north given the maturity of markets there a number of modifications to the pure market model could be envisaged to strengthen incentives to invest but none of them is perfect the main way is to focus on adaptation of market rules on the supply of power at peaks and extreme peaks by considering capacity adequacy as a public good with three solutions capacity payment reserve obligations centralised procurement by auctioning for peak capacity observation of reforms suggests also the validity of some other solutions based on a limitation of the competition by allowing long term contracts and vertical integration between production and supply finally the question is extended to the specific problem of developing countries characterised by irregular growth it is argued that reforms must be designed in view of the importance of the need for investment through long term coordination and reduction of investment risks indeed experiences of latin american liberalised industries show that they have to include a number of competition based imperfections and to allow ongoing exercise of market power in order to allow prices to rise above competition prices the single buyer model or some variants of it appear to be good alternatives if one wishes to avoid the twists and turns of the competition paradigm the difficulty with this model arises from the institutional conditions necessary to make it efficient and not overcostly c 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the energy gdp relationship in developing countries empirical evidence and stability tests abstract the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to gdp is an important element in projecting energy needs in economic development this study uses cross section and pooled cross section time series data to find that the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to gdp in developing countries is in the neighbourhood of 1 35 and significantly above one over the period covered 1970 to 1976 the relationships appear to have remained stable there are significant differences between areas of the world but the differences in the elasticities between different continents are not large

who suffers during recessions in this paper we examine how business cycles affect labor market outcomes in the united states we conduct a detailed analysis of how cycles affect outcomes differentially across persons of differing age education race and gender and we compare the cyclical sensitivity during the great recession to that in the early 1980s recession we present raw tabulations and estimate a state panel data model that leverages variation across u s states in the timing and severity of business cycles we find that the impacts of the great recession are not uniform across demographic groups and have been felt most strongly for men black and hispanic workers youth and low education workers these dramatic differences in the cyclicality across demographic groups are remarkably stable across three decades of time and throughout recessionary periods and expansionary periods for the 2007 recession these differences are largely explained by differences in exposure to cycles across industry occupation employment

modelling the energy output ratio abstract the elasticity of energy use with respect to national output has been estimated by various methods with sometimes seemingly contradictory results this study attempts to reconcile these various estimates by modelling the energy output ratio and deriving the corresponding cross section and time series elasticities from this model

mortality and the business cycle evidence from individual and aggregated data there has been much interest recently in the relationship between economic conditions and mortality with some studies showing that mortality is pro cyclical while others find the opposite some suggest that the aggregation level of analysis e g individual vs regional matters we use both individual and aggregated data on a sample of 20 64 year old swedish men from 1993 to 2007 our results show that the association between the business cycle and mortality does not depend on the level of analysis the sign and magnitude of the parameter estimates are similar at the individual level and the aggregate county level both showing pro cyclical mortality

parental job loss and children s school performance using norwegian register data we estimate how children s school performance is affected by their parents exposure to plant closure our estimates suggest that paternal job loss has a negative effect on children s school performance in contrast maternal job loss is associated with a non significant increase in school performance importantly the negative effect of paternal job loss appears largely unrelated to its effect on father s income father s employment status a shift in maternal time towards employment marital dissolution and residential relocation a disparate effect of job loss across fathers and mothers is however consistent with recent empirical studies documenting that the mental distress experienced by displaced workers is generally more severe for men than women

liquidity economic activity and mortality abstract we document a within month mortality cycle where deaths decline before the first day of the month and spike after the first this cycle is present across a wide variety of causes and demographic groups a similar cycle exists for a range of economic activities suggesting the mortality cycle may be due to short term variation in levels of economic activity we provide evidence that the within month activity cycle is generated by liquidity our results suggest a causal pathway whereby liquidity problems reduce activity which in turn reduces mortality these relationships may help explain the procyclical nature of mortality

an exploratory stochastic framework to analyse the relationship between macro oil price shocks and economic development abstract the paper investigates the impact of the oil price shocks of 1973 and 1978 on the economies of industrial and developing countries empirical results reveal that the severity of the impact of macro price oil shocks has been quite different on the two groups of countries the regression results based on the new exploratory model corroborate clearly that the low income group sustained a drastic blow compared to the high income group countries moreover within the group of developing nations the severity of impact varies according to their dependency on the use of energy sources development levels and the degree of aggregate capital intensity

why are recessions good for your health a series of influential papers by christopher j ruhm 2000 2003 2005 2008 documents that recessions are good for your health or more specifically that state level mortality rates are strongly procyclical the magnitude of the correlation is economically meaningful a typical estimate from the literature suggests that a 1 percentage point increase in a state s unemployment rate is associated with a 0 54 percent reduction in that state s mortality rates if this reflects a causal relationship that is also valid at the national level then a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate would translate based on 2004 mortality rates into about 12 000 fewer deaths per year these findings are frequently interpreted as resulting from the rising opportunity cost of time that accompanies better labor market opportunities and some empirical support exists for this interpretation for example ruhm 2000 shows that obesity and smoking also exhibit a procyclical pattern the economy and health

does job loss shorten life this paper examines the impact of job loss on overall and cause specific mortality using linked employer employee data we identified the workers displaced due to all establishment closures in sweden in 1987 and 1988 hence we have extended the case study approach which has dominated the plant closure literature the overall mortality risk among men increased by 44 percent during the first four years following job loss while there was no impact on either female overall mortality or in the longer run for both sexes however there was an about twofold short run increase in suicides and alcohol related mortality

competition in the electricity industry in england and wales when the electricity industry was privatized the government made structural changes to encourage competition in generation and in supply to consumers the conventional power stations were only divided between two compa nies however and we show that duopolistic competition in an unregulated spot market might imply undesirably high prices most sales are hedged in the contract market which makes the spot market more competitive and a realistic threat of entry could also force generators to keep their prices down in the event a large amount of entry took place supported by the regional electricity companies franchise monopoly over smaller consumers that monopoly ends in 1998 so that further entry might become very difficult while competition between firms already in the generation market is still limited vertical integration between the major generators and regional electricity companies might make entry even harder and should be blocked until the industry is more competitive

losing heart the effect of job displacement on health job reallocation is considered a key characteristic of well functioning labor markets as more productive firms grow and less productive ones contract or close despite its potential benefits for t

economic fluctuations and health outcome a panel analysis of asia pacific countries the purpose of this study is to assess the effects of economic fluctuations on health outcome by using data obtained from eight asia pacific countries over the period 1976 to 2003 and a fixed effects model to conduct the regression analysis the results of this study indicate that unemployment rate is negatively and significantly correlated with total mortality and mortality rates from cardiovascular diseases motor vehicle accidents and infant mortality these findings are consistent with the view that health may improve during economic downturns in addition suicide is found to move countercyclically with economic fluctuations socioeconomic factors such as age and gender also play important roles in affecting the mortality rates the results also show that unemployment has a stronger immediate and contemporaneous rather than a sustained effect on mortality rates finally this study concludes that the effects of economic fluctuations on health outcome tend to lead to erroneous conclusions if the fi

congestion management rules and trading strategies in the spanish electricity market abstract this paper analyses the economic incentives embodied in the rules governing the resolution of transmission constraints in the spanish wholesale electricity market and the way these incentives may have influenced on the trading behaviour of both the generators and the demand side the evidence obtained is consistent with them responding to these incentives in particular buyers would respond to the way congestion costs are billed to them by abandoning the daily market in favour of the intraday market as far as possible additionally some strategic generators may have been prompted the system operator to require them to inject electricity into the system to solve network congestions finally these results may contribute to shed light on what should be expected of the reform in the aforementioned rules

oil exports real exchange rate appreciation and demand for imports in nigeria the recession in the oil market since 1981 has drastically reduced the foreign exchange earnings of nigeria as a result the country has faced a severe problem of adjustment to reduced export earnings at a time when payments on its 20 billion external debt have increased in designing a policy to restore balance of payments equilibrium nigeria like many other less developed countries in its position faces two important questions first to what extent the rate of growth of the economy would have to be lowered in order to bring equilibrium to the balance of payments and second to what extent real devaluation is likely to help in the process since nigeria faces a given price for its exports 95 of which is oil and production of oil does not use many domestic resources export revenues in terms of foreign currency are in effect exogenous and therefore the weight of adjustment must fall on imports the search for answers to the above questions thus leads directly to the investigation of the size of income and price elasticities of demand for imports this article presents estimates of an import demand function for nigeria based on annual data for 1963 82 the main finding of the article is that demand for imports is elastic with respect to price but inelastic with respect to income this implies that contrary to expectations the phenomenal rise in nigerian imports in the 1970s may have been a result of real appreciation rather than increase in oil revenues between 1972 and 1981 nigerian imports in constant dollars increased by a factor of five an average annual increase of 33 but during the same period non oil gdp in constant prices increased by only 5 7 per year and gross domestic income gdy total gdp adjusted for improvements in the terms of trade increased by 8 7 per year as a result the ratio of imports to gdy increased from 6 in 1972 to 18 in 1981 in contrast the decline in

pro cyclical mortality across socioeconomic groups and health status abstract using variation across geographic regions a number of studies from the u s and other developed countries have found more deaths in economic upturns and less deaths in economic downturns we use data from regions in norway for 1977 2008 and find the same pro cyclical patterns using individual level register data for the identical population we find that disadvantaged socioeconomic groups are not hit harder by pro cyclical mortality than advantaged groups we also find that other indicators of deteriorated health than death like becoming disabled are pro cyclical overall our analysis suggests that pro cyclical mortality is rather related to deaths of people already in deteriorated health than to people of low socioeconomic status

local labor market fluctuations and health is there a connection and for whom we examine the relationship between local labor market conditions and several measures of health and health behaviors for a sample of working aged men living in the 58 largest metropolitan areas in the united states we find evidence of procyclical relationships for weight related health and mental health for men with low ex ante employment probabilities separate estimates suggest worsening labor market conditions lead to weight gains and reduced mental health among african american men and lower mental health among less educated males among our findings those related to mental health are most pronounced

measuring environmental policy stringency approaches validity and impact on environmental innovation and energy efficiency abstract solid tests of the impact of environmental and energy policy on important economic outcomes such as innovation productivity competitiveness and energy and carbon efficiency are impaired by the lack of appropriate empirical proxies for the commitment to and stringency of environmental policy we contribute to the literature by 1 computing different indicators of environmental policy stringency 2 testing to what extent they convey similar insights through a statistical comparison exercise and 3 showing the implications of using one or the other indicator in two illustrative empirical applications focused on environmental innovation and energy efficiency we conclude by highlighting the implications of our analysis for empirical research focusing on the evaluation of policy impacts and highlight fruitful future research avenues