government purchases and real interest rates this paper examines the dynamic impact of government purchases in a simple general equilibrium model with both durable and nondurable consumer goods as well as productive capital the model generates perhaps surprising results in particular increases in government purchases are shown to cause reductions in real interest rates the model thus provides a possible explanation for the observed behavior of real interest rates around wars copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

contractual responses to the common pool prorationing of crude oil production this paper examines bargaining among firms to mitigate rent dissipation following the major oil discoveries of 1926 35 because of high bargaining costs firms chose prorationing instead of consolidation and unitization and success varied the analysis also shows that prorationing took the form it did because concession such as per well quotas were required to draw in small operations and the quotas led to predictable responses regarding rent dissipation prorationing despite its costs controlled total field production and costs conserved natural reservoir energies and lengthened field life when private agreements failed the parties successfully appealed for state enforcement since similar heterogeneities influnce regulations elsewhere in the economy detailed analysis of bargaining among firms is essential for insight into the emergence of various institutional forms 33 references 3 tables

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

green innovation value chain analysis of pv solar power abstract governments around the world have employed a variety of generous subsidies to help promote and develop clean energy technologies in the hope that they will widely replace dirtier carbon based power sources unfortunately these subsidies have not prevented numerous green technology bankruptcies including the infamous 2011 closure of the california based solar panel producer solyndra and these failures have cost taxpayers and private investors billions in lost capital the green innovation value chain givc provides a possible framework for determining the diffusion prospects of green technologies through environmental and financial comparisons to conventional alternatives across the separate chain links comprised of manufacturers distributors customers government and the environment the givc framework is used here to analyze the photovoltaic solar power chain where financial deficits are found in each link that will need to be reduced or eliminated through technology advancements subsidies or changes in market conditions in order to provide the conditions necessary for the technology to achieve mass market acceptance and positive financial returns

dissipation of contestable rents by small numbers of contenders the theory of rent seeking with its origins in the observations of gordon tullock 1967 or to use jagdish bhagwati s 1982 proposed term the theory of directly unproductive profit seeking activities is concerned with the potentially adverse effects on resource allocation of incentives to cap ture and defend artificially contrived rents and transfers the scope for so cial loss proposed by the theory derives from the relation between the value of a contestable prize and the value of the resources attracted into the con test to determine the beneficiary of the prize underlying this social loss is a specification of how rational behavior by optimizing agents links the value of the prize sought to the resources expended it has been traditional to assume competitive behavior in describing the activities of lobbying and influence seeking then if some further condi tions are satisfied l the total value of the resources expended precisely equals the value of the prize sought so dissipation is complete 2 conse quently the social cost associated with contestability of a rent can be in ferred from the value of the rent itself and the detailed and hard to come by information on individual outlays made in the course of the contest be comes unnecessary by basing their analyses on competitive dissipation contributors to the rent seeking literature see the review by robert tollison 1982 have been able to presume that the observed value of a contested rent is an exact measure of the associated social cost of monopoly power or regu lation similarly in the trade theoretic literature where the rights contested are to quota premia or revenues from trade taxes krueger 1974 bhagwati

output effects of government purchases the theoretical analysis focuses on the distinction between temporary and permanent movements in government purchases under plausible conditions the temporary case involves an output response that is positive less than one to one with the change in government purchases and larger than that generated by an equal sized but permanent shift in purchase the equilibrium real rate of return rise in the temporary case but changes little in the permanent one defense purchases are divided empirically into permanent and temporary components by considering the role of temporary wars no temporary shifts in nondefense purchases were isolated empirical results verify an expansionary output effect for temporary purchases that exceeds that of permanent purchases the results for some other expectational hypotheses are found to be generally supportive of the theory

fostering sustainability through sourcing from small businesses public sector perspectives this article examines the opportunities for fostering sustainable development through public sector sourcing from small and medium sized enterprises smes buying from small businesses can make such contributions in a variety of forms ranging from a contribution to local economic development through providing innovative green products and services particularly in the food sector to helping the public sector organisation to better align its operations with its community sourcing from small businesses also has implications for the governance of sourcing processes and can benefit from a partnership approach barriers to public sector sourcing from small businesses are discussed and suggestions made on how these can be overcome

temporary and permanent government spending in an open economy some evidence for the united kingdom abstract this paper investigates the effects of government spending changes on a small open economy in an intertemporal substitution framework if agents internalize the government s budget constraint temporary and permanent spending have different implications for wealth and consequently different effects on output and the balance of trade estimation of these effects isolates the different channels through which government spending can influence economic activity main findings for the united kingdom are that government spending i crowds out private spending ii is directly productive and iii when rising permanently leads to a negative wealth effect which induces a large rise in work effort

rent seeking in natural resource quota allocations this paper examines the incentives for rent seeking in the allocation of natural resource quotas to competing user groups by political bodies the political body has discretion in making the allocation and competing user groups rent seek to influence the allocation we investigate ways in which the governmental body can affect the behavior of the players by setting the ground rules for the competition a political body can affect an allocatively pareto efficient outcome by choosing an appropriate default pre rent seeking policy surprisingly an allocatively efficient default policy is unlikely to minimize social costs however winner take all default policies are likely to maximize not minimize rent seeking a competitive post allocation market reduces rent seeking but is not either itself or in combination with an efficient default policy capable of minimizing social costs however forcing winners in political redistributions to fully compensate losers both lowers the rent seeking levels relative to a potential compensation criterion and when used together with an efficient default policy is capable of obtaining the first best solution of an allocatively efficient allocation with zero rent seeking

supply shocks and the interest rate supply shocks and the interest rate i introduction a new approach to business cycles that stresses intertemporal substitution possibilities and market clearing equilibria has recently gained prominence key models that use this new classical framework include those of lucas 1972 barro 1976 1981b 1987a 1987g kydland and prescott 1980 1982 long and plosser 1983 and king and plosser 1984 although these models share the basic similarity of intertemporal maximization and market clearing they differ about which factors cause business cycle fluctuations however most of them admit a role for supply shocks such as opec oil price shocks and agricultural harvest failures most of the empirical work using the market clearing approach concentrates on quantities such as real gnp and ignores the key price variable of the intertemporal substitutional approach the real interest rate exceptions are the papers by benjamin and kochin 1984 and barro 1987a who use eighteenth and nineteenth century data to examine the effect of government spending on the nominal interest rate this paper extends previous work by studying not only the effects of government spending on the interest rate but also the effects of supply shocks on the interest rate the classic supply shock agricultural harvests is used indeed to the best of our knowledge this is the first paper to investigate how agricultural supply shocks affect the interest rate and as such it provides additional evidence about the factors that influence interest rates although the theory behind this work is cast in the framework of the equilibrium approach keynesian models also concur with the theoretical prediction that supply shocks raise the real interest rate thus this empirical investigation of the impact of harvests on the interest rate will command attention from keynesian as well as new classical macroeconomists section ii reviewers the theory used to motivate the work the third section discusses the data the fourth section presents the empirical results while the last section contains conclusions ii theory the equilibrium approach to macroeconomics emphasizes the role played by intertemporal optimization consumers maximize their intertemporal utility functions while firms maximize their profits as a result an intertemporal relative price the ex ante real interest rate emerges as a crucial variable consider the effect on the ex ante real interest rate from a temporary adverse supply shock such as a harvest failure in an agricultural closed economy consumers faced with a temporary shortfall in income and trying to smooth their consumption generally try to borrow in order to maintain their usual level of consumption thus the ex ante real interest rate increases much the same argument applies to government spending a temporary increase in government spending reduces the resources currently available to the private sector then as in the case of a temporary supply shock the increased demand for borrowing to smooth the reduction in disposable income leads to a higher interest rate an open economy is different when faced with a temporary reduction in resources from either an adverse supply shock or a temporary increase in government spending the private sector in an open economy is able to borrow from abroad by running a balance of trade deficit if the country in question is a small part of the world economy the increased borrowing does not affect the world ex ante real interest rate so the effect on the country s ex ante real interest rate is nil returning to the case of a closed economy supply shocks and changes in government spending affect the ex ante real interest rate only if they are temporary if they were permanent consumers would not have the same incentive to borrow so the interest rate would tend to be constant

collective rent dissipation the theory of rent seeking was initiated by tullock 1967 1980 followed by krueger 1974 and posner 1975 and more recently extended in various directions by allard 1988 appelbaum and katz 1986a b c gradstein and nitzan 1989 hillman and katz 1984 1987 hillman and samet 1987 hillman and riley 1989 katz et al 1990 long and vousden 1987 ursprung 1990 and varian 1989 the purpose of this paper is to extend this theory by introducing the possibility of collective group rent seeking with voluntary individual decisions regarding their extent of participation in the collective rent seeking efforts

dynamic rent seeking abstract a dynamic model of the political process is presented under conditions of uncertainty as in an earlier model by becker several interest groups vie for political influence exerted in the form of taxes and subsidies some results of the static single interest group theory of rent seeking are given slightly modified interpretations among other things it is shown that a group s rent seeking activity is negatively related to the rate of growth of national income to the group s relative position in the income distribution and to measures of how deserving it is the importance of voting is modelled explicitly it is also found that policies tend to be adopted which minimize the deadweight welfare losses from rent seeking

waste management policies for industrial symbiosis development case studies in european countries industrial symbiosis is emerged as a self organizing business strategy among firms that are willing to cooperate to improve their economic and environmental performance the adoption of such cooperative strategies relates to increasing costs of waste management most of which are driven by policy and legislative requirements development of is depends on an enabling context of social informational technological economical and political factors the power to influence this context varies among the agents involved such as the government businesses or coordinating entities governmental intervention as manifested through policies could influence a wider range of factors and we believe this is an area which is under researched this paper aims to critically appraise the waste policy interventions from supra national to sub national levels of government a case study methodology has been applied to four european countries i e denmark the uk portugal and switzerland in which is emerged or is being fostered the findings suggest that there are commonalities in policy instruments that may have led to an is enabling context the paper concludes with lessons learnt and recommendations on shaping the policy context for is development

policy analysis on recycling fund management for e waste in taiwan under uncertainty abstract this study aims to find an efficient and fair policy on using a recycling fund in an uncertain environment after over a decade s experience on e waste management the current policy of taiwan s recycling fund management board rfmb is reviewed in search of a better policy rfbm s environmental goal is to maximize the recycling rate with an uncertain fund the study evaluates the fund on two models yearly balance and multi period and illustrates the concept of two fund settings offset yearly and earmarked we generate four scenarios covering the estimated fund incomes in future years using waste printers as an example in the analysis the results herein show that the multi period model provides more benefits than the yearly balance model for any situation under the four scenarios and that the earmarked setting has an edge over the offset yearly setting in the above situations we recommend that rfmb switch its fund setting into an earmarked fund and use the multi period model as it can obtain more option values against uncertainties in the long run the finding on how to manage a recycling fund offers reference value for other countries adopting such a subsidy system for extended producer responsibility

towards a national circular economy indicator system in china an evaluation and critical analysis abstract it is widely acknowledged that china s economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of its natural capital and environment in order to deal with this problem the circular economy ce has been chosen as a national policy for sustainable development national laws and regulations have been enacted to facilitate the implementation of ce and national ce demonstration projects have been initiated such that national benchmarking activities could be completed china is the first country to release nationally focused ce indicators so that objective and credible information on the status of ce implementation can be recognized these ce indicators are valuable metrics for policy and decision makers and can help achieve ce goals and outcomes this unique indicator system has not been communicated to international communities this paper aims to more broadly introduce this unique national ce indicator system china s ce efforts are first detailed with various provisions of the national indicator system a critical analysis of such an indicator system is presented we show that certain benefits can be gained but substantive revision is also needed due to the lack of a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators which should include social business indicators urban industrial symbiosis absolute material energy reduction and prevention oriented indicators concerns related to barriers on implementation are also presented in this paper the knowledge gained from chinese efforts on ce indicators are valuable to both developed and developing nations seeking to implement sustainable development measures within their regulatory policies

tests of rationality neutrality and market efficiency a monte carlo analysis of alternative test statistics abstract this paper examines the small sample properties of three testing strategies used to analyze the rationality monetary neutrality and market efficiency hypotheses we focus on the original two step barro test of the mre hypothesis formed entirely from ols results a test that employs the correct variance covariance formulae for these two step estimates and mishkin s fimle testing framework each test is examined under likely model respecifications the findings highlight the extensive bias incurred by drawing inferences from simple unadjusted two step estimates and reveal the relative power of all tests in identifying alternatives to the null hypotheses

causes of u s farm commodity programs this paper i s an attempt to explain variations by commodity in producer protection afforded by farm price support programs since the1930s particularly emphasized are theideas that these programs are essentially income redistributional measures and that given political forces the programs are attempts to redistribute efficiently variables associated with the cost to producers of generating political pressure and the social cost deadweight losses of redistribution are both found to be empirically important copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

economic impacts of the california one variety cotton law the california one variety cotton law is an important example of technological regulation in this case intended to serve as a de facto quality control and to mitigate externalities in production that can arise from the mixing of cottonseed at the gin this paper describes and interprets the economic history of the law presents a theoretical model of its economic effects and provides quantitative estimates of the impacts on output prices and economic welfare following a partial deregulation under a 1978 amendment to the law the analysis shows that large social costs have arisen from concentrating control over the genetic base for california cotton production in the hands of a single government cotton breeder and restricting production to the use of a single selection of a single variety some of these costs have been eliminated by the partial deregulation in 1978 to permit private breeders to compete in the provision of genetic material but production is still restricted to the acala variety of cot

uncovering industrial symbiosis potentials in a small island developing state the case study of mauritius small island developing states sids face a serious issue of sustainability as far as waste management within the industrial sector is concerned this paper makes an attempt at addressing the eventual practice of industrial ecology in sids with mauritius as a case study three major polluting industries namely the slaughterhouse edible oil refinery and the scrap metal recycling plant have been considered with a particular focus on the recycling of electric arc furnace slag as concrete aggregates along with the potential areas of applications for the different waste materials this research has also addressed the benefits barriers and factors for implementing industrial symbiosis projects within sids the most striking benefits are the preservation of the fauna and flora of the island and reduced dependency on developed countries for the importation of raw materials while the absence of a landfill disposal fee for non hazardous wastes and lack of awareness of industrial symbiosis projects have been identified as the main barriers to overcome these barriers a shift from manufacture consume dispose to manufacture consume recycle manufacture is recommended this study concludes that if a sustainable island is anticipated in the future a combination of recycling options along with all necessary factors such as technology funding from international organisations regulatory framework and involvement of stakeholders general public and non governmental organisations is required ultimately this would result in the establishment of networks among source and sink industries thus being in harmony with the environment

a generalized model of rent seeking behavior in this paper i present a formal analysis of rent seeking games in which the players valuations for the prize are represented as vectors the players in this game are risk neutral and may not be indifferent to who wins the contestable rent if it is someone else both tullock s original rent seeking model and the public goods rent seeking model by katz et al turn out to be special cases of this more general model

government spending interest rates prices and budget deficits in the united kingdom 1701 1918 abstract the british data from the early 1700s through wwi provide an unmatched opportunity for studying temporary changes in government purchases temporary increases which appeared mainly as wartime spending raised long term interest rates but significantly increased the growth rates of money and prices only during suspensions of the gold standard 1797 1821 and 1914 1918 temporary changes in military spending accounted for the bulk of budget deficits over the sample of more than 200 years i found only two major non war deficits one associated with compensation payments to slaveowners in 1835 1936 and the other with a dispute over the income tax in 1909 1910 interest rates did not react much to these exogenous deficits

on perfect rent dissipation if economists are united on anything it is the proposition that monopoly prices reduce economic welfare by preventing the realization of the maximum gains from trade in any market the extent of such distortions to efficiency are often called harberger costs after arnold harberger s 1954 provocative attempt to measure the extent of these losses in the u s economy more recent analysis has revealed that when monopoly power is achieved via regulation at least part of the monopoly rents so gained will not be simple transfers from consumers to producers but will be dissipated by producers rent seeking activity since such activity employs real resources there are additional costs to monopolization beyond the harberger costs as emphasized by gordon tullock 1967 and richard posner 1975 indeed posner and others have argued that if competition for the monopoly rents is perfect all of the expected rents from regulation will be converted to welfare losses while franklin fisher s 1985 comment has qualified this conclusion somewhat the upshot of the debate is that the rent seeking or tullock costs may greatly exceed the harberger costs 1 another recent strand of the analysis concerns the time pattern over which monopoly returns are dissipated by competition to gain and hold the monopoly right robert mccormick et al 1984 emphasize that to the extent such expenditures are sunk they are forever lost and not recoverable by deregulation while conceding the point martin cherkes et al 1986 argue that most rentseeking expenditures are recurring not sunk and therefore large gains from deregulation remain the purpose of this essay is to point out that recurring or sunk even the largest specification of the harberger and tullock costs of regulatory monopolization may fall far short of the actual welfare costs this is because the analysis concentrates on the rent seeking tullock costs and largely ignores the parallel rent defending2 tullock costs a proper assessment of such rent defending tullock costs might more than double the maximum welfare costs of regulation suggested by posner

environmental performance of waste handlers abstract despite numerous studies that propose environmental performance ep indicators for manufacturing firms little attention is given to measuring the ep of individual companies in the waste management sector wm sector existing literature on the wm sector relies on aggregate city and municipal data this study makes use of a disclosure regulation in the european union to construct an ep measure that can be used to compare the environmental impact of waste handlers across time and within the sector the ep indicator introduced in this study measures the plan of a waste handler to reduce undesirable output such as emission and waste disposal by relying on the recovery and recycling of wastes based on a sample of european waste handlers we find that one third of waste handlers in europe have zero recovery rate while only 16 rely exclusively on recovery and recycling of harmful wastes in addition the study builds on existing theories to explain differences in the ep of waste handlers in europe among several factors identified by the literature we find that waste handlers in europe are most affected by supra national regulations national policies and spatial factors in that order policy makers can draw lessons from the findings of this study to improve existing disclosure regulations

are rents fully dissipated students of rent seeking have erred in focusing their attention exclusively on the analysis of competitions for exogenously specified transfers when redistributive policies are treated as endogenous choices it is clear that there are both incentives and opportunities for policymakers to design them in ways that prevent the wasteful dissipation of a large proportion of the intended transfers an analytical framework that treats policy design in this way is capable of explaining a variety of common attributes of redistributive policies that are apparent anomalies under the traditional approach to rent seeking furthermore we predict and find supporting evidence that authoritarian regimes tend to be associated with higher ratios of government revenue to total income than do democracies we attribute this tendency to the substantially greater potential for dissipative competition for revenues under democracy than under dictatorship finally available estimates of lobbying expenditures and rents transferred under the recent federal crude oil controls contradict the hypothesis that rents are fully or almost fully disspated through political competition

efficient redistribution through commodity markets efficiency in redistribution is measured in terms of deadweight loss generated per dollar of economic surplus transferred between consumers and producers of a commodity by means of market intervention the implications of supply and demand elasticities for efficiency in redistribution are examined with special attention to the comparison of production control and deficiency payment programs the results may be used to aid in the evaluation of commodity programs and as a basis for consideration of the hypothesis that observed policies are efficient given the political power of interest groups

integrating cleaner production into sustainability strategies an introduction to this special volume abstract this special volume of the journal of cleaner production is built primarily upon articles submitted for the 4th international workshop advances in cleaner production held in sao paulo brazil in 2013 the 54 articles underscore the urgent need for changing from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones they provide many new approaches to help industries governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns the authors focus on defining and solving problems with special emphasis upon sustainability strategies raw material replacement renewable energy technological developments product and policy changes the central roles of improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions are explored with an emphasis upon stakeholder empowerment in promoting implementation of new cleaner technologies within companies industrial sectors supply chains and countries some authors improved assessment tools for environmental accounting at the biospheric scale some authors underscored the need for cooperation among governments industrial sectors and companies to accelerate the integration of cleaner production into policies and practice multiple examples of successful integration of cp in national and local policy structures exemplified how focused work in key industrial sectors is delivering multiplier benefits within and among companies and in the community at large the authors documented numerous benefits of holistic integration of local regional national and global efforts to accelerate the transition to sustainable development and societal well being

rent seeking for pure public goods in this paper we present a formal analysis of rent seeking for public goods by two or more groups with different numbers of individuals we begin by considering equally wealthy groups under risk neutrality a case which constitutes our basic model several surprising and interesting results emerge from the analysis of this basic case the problem is then extended to deal with a groups with different wealth levels and b risk aversion this last extension brings about a further crop of interesting and useful results

price support acreage controls and efficient redistribution this study is concerned with the combination of target price and acreage controls as the two major mechanisms of farm policy acreage controls are shown to enhance the efficiency of redistribution under a target price program more specifically this study demonstrates that if the traditional cobb douglas production function is assumed acreage controls do not enhance the efficiency of target price programs in the process of redistributing income to the farm sector the study proves that if the elasticity of substitution between land and all other inputs is less than one then the income redistributional costs are likely to be reduced moreover by using an empirical estimate of the elasticity of substitution and farm data for the time period 1984 88 this study demonstrates that acreage control programs have drastically reduced the deadweight losses associated with income redistribution flowing from target price programs these results lend strong support to the public choice notion that politicians favo

municipal solid waste recycling market and the european 2020 horizon strategy a regional efficiency analysis in spain abstract this paper focuses on the analysis of the efficiency of spanish regions in the development of the recycling market in their respective territories through the use of a novel data envelopment analysis method with multiple outputs the efficiency analysis takes into account the mandatory goals of reducing mixed collected municipal solid waste and the augmentation of selective collection of recyclable materials as set by the european union and the spanish legal framework this issue is highly relevant since neither of these two management goals may be achieved without the recycling market and its associated industry having been previously developed to a sufficient level results confirm that catalonia navarre and madrid function as benchmark regions to be emulated by the remaining inefficient regions the necessary regional investments and output projections to reach an efficient development of the recycling sector are also estimated additionally it is found that per capita income and population density significantly explain differences in regional efficiencies finally taking efficient regions as benchmarks to learn from some policy recommendations are offered

case study evidence that direct regulation remains the main driver of industrial pollution avoidance and may benefit operational efficiency abstract environmental regulation is required to reduce industrial pollution to levels that are socially acceptable and economically efficient but there is debate over the most efficient form of such regulation typically a limited range of environmental and economic parameters are accounted for in the econometric studies that inform that debate this paper integrates evidence from two separate studies to assess a broad range of parameters related to the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation questionnaire responses from 25 italian manufacturers of building chemicals and 28 irish pharmaceutical manufacturers provided evidence on the environmental effectiveness and operational impacts of different regulatory instruments combined with extensive emissions data from irish pharmaceutical manufacturers survey results enabled a quantitative estimation of pollution avoidance specifically attributable to direct regulation the monetised social benefit of avoided pollution was found to be equal to direct compliance costs chemical manufacturers in italy and ireland stated that direct regulation is a more important driver of industrial environmental performance than economic or voluntary regulation and their responses indicated that direct compliance costs may be countered somewhat by stimulated operational improvements it was concluded that direct regulation is an effective approach for multi pollutant control in an industrial context and that the efficiency of such regulation may be underestimated in studies that do not consider the full range of pollutants and operational effects

long run equilibrium and total expenditures in rent seeking the lure of excess profits or rents associated with monopoly power gives rise to expenditures to obtain these rents competitive rent seeking behavior is recognized as a factor which must be included among the wastes associated with monopoly power tullock 1967 posner 1975 1 the expenditures are aimed at transferring wealth rather than its creation and the use of resources to obtain this transfer is a loss to society how important rent seeking is as a part of the total monopolistic waste hinges on the size of the total expenditures induced by a given level of excess profits

unexpected money and unemployment 1920 to 1983 in a series of papers barro 1977 1978 barro and rush 1980 vittorio and tanner 1983 bellante morrell and zardkoohi 1982 and others have tested the rational expectations hypothesis that only unexpected changes in the money supply affect real variables mishkin 1982 merrick 1983 sheehey 1984 small 1979 and others have criticized this work for various reasons none of the cnticisms however has addressed the question of possible endogeneity of the money supply m1 used moreover most of this literature uses only data from after world war ii this paper builds on the previous literature in several directions first it differs from most other work by following blejar and fernandez 1980 and rush 1985 in using the base money supply as the monetary aggregate this controls for the possible endogeneity of the m1 money supply typically used by other researchers moreover it allows the sample period to be extended through 1983 without worrying how the recently changing definitions of m1 affect any results next a longer sample period roughly from 1920 to 1983 is used this time span is interesting for a couple of reasons it allows an assessment of the role played by

unexpected monetary disturbances during the gold standard era abstract this empirical paper uses the barro methodology of estimating unexpected monetary shocks to determine the effect these shocks had on real output in the u s during the gold standard era between 1880 and 1913 it also investigates whether changes in a measure of financial intermediation had real effects the results indicate that neither expected nor unexpected money shocks affected output changes in financial intermediation however were significantly correlated with output this result lends support to theories which stress the endogeneity of broad measures of the money supply

government spending interest rates and capital accumulation in a two sector model this paper investigates dynamic impacts of a temporary fiscal expansion in a two sector growth model if the expansion falls on consumption investment commodities capital accumulation can be either promoted or reduced and the short term interest rate unambigu ously rises if the expansion falls on consumption commodities capital accumulation is crowded out and the short term interest rate declines during the period of the fiscal expan sion it is also shown that fiscal spending on the consumption commodity can move the short and long term interest rates in opposite directions jel classification e43 e62 041

industrial symbiosis the case for market coordination abstract despite the fact that all successful documented cases of industrial symbiosis to this day have been self organizing some authors and development officials have suggested that increased public planning might deliver better results in this respect than spontaneously evolved market coordination this paper takes an historical approach to suggest that comprehensive planning is unlikely to live up to the expectations of its proponents the essay is structured as follows the first section provides short case studies of industrial symbiosis in highly different economic and institutional settings the essentially free market regime of victorian england and communist hungary 1948 1989 the available evidence suggests that market coordination proved much more favorable to the emergence of industrial symbiosis despite the elaboration of a comprehensive policy to that effect in hungary insights derived from the so called austrian critique of central planning are then used to explain this paradox the analysis presented suggests that the hungarian planners failure was not so much the result of the bad implementation of sound policies but the logical outcome of a top down approach s shortcomings policy implications for the public planning of industrial symbiosis in a mixed economy are then derived and the case for self organization is found more compelling the creation of more innovative institutions that will force firms to internalize their externalities while leaving them the necessary freedom to innovate is viewed as an urgently needed and promising path towards increased sustainable reuse of industrial by products

the history and current applications of the circular economy concept abstract the challenges of balancing industrial development environmental and human health and economic growth in china and elsewhere in the world are drivers for recent resource use and low carbon development strategies that include the application of the circular economy ce concept a central theme of the ce concept is the valuation of materials within a closed looped system with the aim to allow for natural resource use while reducing pollution or avoiding resource constraints and sustaining economic growth the objectives of this study are 1 to review the history of the ce concept to provide a context for 2 a critical examination of how it is applied currently thematic categories are used to organize the literature review results including policy instruments and approaches value chains material flows and products and technology organizational and social innovation the literature review illustrates the variability in ce project success and failure over time and by region ce successes key challenges and research gaps are identified the literature review results provide useful information for researchers as well as multi stakeholder groups who seek to define the ce concept in practical terms and to consider potential challenges and opportunities it presents when implemented

a case study of industrial symbiosis development using a middle out approach abstract industrial symbiosis is emerged as a collective multi industrial approach to improve economic and environmental performance through the use of wastes by products as substitutes for raw materials the development of is initiatives depends on the context in which they occur characterised in terms of social economic political spatial and temporal embeddedness as a consequence the context can be influenced to become more supportive of is through a continuous interactive process combining top down governmental directives and bottom up spontaneous business initiatives a strategy to develop and enhance this process is explored in this paper and described by the authors as a middle out approach policies and policy instruments introduced by governmental agencies provide objectives and incentives to businesses the middle out approach induces the development of a strategy to create positive feedback loops among agents e g government industries that may guide their actions into setting the conditions to support is emergence this paper provides a case study that discusses a regional development of is in portugal that highlights critical factors for success in implementing is and shows that the middle out approach can also be understood as an extension and combination of previous research on context factors and planned spontaneous approaches to is development

moving beyond the patchwork a review of strategies to promote consistency for extended producer responsibility policy in the u s abstract product oriented environmental policy with an emphasis on extended producer responsibility epr frequently referred to as product stewardship in the u s is being applied in the united states for an increasingly broad scope of products including waste electronics and household hazardous wastes such as paint and mercury containing lamps however due to the lack of a unified federal response these efforts are driven by state level policies and regulations this state led approach is frequently characterized as resulting in a patchwork of disparate regulations historically two strategies are often suggested as offering a remedy for this situation 1 federal legislation and 2 model state legislation however another policy strategy has emerged in the u s that of an overall epr policy framework which creates a clear process for selecting and designating products and articulates the roles and responsibilities for the various players along the product chain this article provides an analysis of the experiences and prospects for each of the three strategies to serve as a policy vehicle for greater consistency of epr regulations throughout the u s in part motivated by global extended producer responsibility policy approaches particularly in the canadian provinces efforts are now underway to investigate a similar comprehensive regulatory approach to be implemented by individual states in the u s the article examines the framework model that is envisioned in the u s and outlines the recommend components of this policy concept finally the article provides a comparison with other jurisdictions most notably british columbia which has implemented a broad extended producer responsibility policy

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

the cost of rent seeking evidence from cellular telephone license lotteries the inventors of the theory of rent seeking used an analogy with competitive markets to conclude that all monopoly rents would be dissipated in the competition to obtain the property rights to them 23 29 subsequent theorists showed that this conclusion is quite sensitive to assumptions about foresight risk aversion conjectures and bias 15 21 30 since little quantitative information about actual rent seeking competitions is available the theory has developed in an empirical vacuum in this paper we attempt to fill that vacuum with an estimate of rent seeking expenditure by applicants in the federal communications commission s fcc cellular telephone license lotteries held between 1986 and 1989 we go on to compare expenditures with estimates of the value of the licenses at stake these lotteries constitute a unique natural experiment any u s citizen was eligible to enter each geographic lottery once and only once for an expense which we calculate as modest the lotteries were widely publicized and heavily entered there were over 320 000 applications one per market filed for 643 cellular licenses and third party application preparers entered the market rapidly because licenses were awarded sequentially prospective participants in later lotteries could find out that expected net returns from earlier lotteries were positive because of undersubscription the value of the prize was known because sales of previously awarded licenses had begun to take place before later lotteries were held and market analysts were using such sale prices to value licenses not yet awarded the later lotteries seem almost optimally contrived to maximize the dissipation of rents yet comparing the resources invested in entry the price of a fully prepared application with the rents available the market value of cellular telephone licenses shows that dissipation was far short of complete

contracting problems and regulation the case of the fishery the inefficiencies of common property fisheries are of continuing concern to economists the early work by scott gordon 1954 and anthony scott 1955 outlined the problem and later studies by james crutchfield and giulio pontecorvo 1969 and frederick bell 1972 provided empirical estimates of the losses that result those studies were followed by the dynamic models of colin clark 1976 and james quirk and vernon smith 1970 of optimal harvest rates and the use of corrective taxes or quotas to achieve them but in spite of a large and growing literature and the persuasiveness of the outlined efficiency criteria most fisheries retain common property aspects with overcapitalization and excessive labor input why those conditions persist and the failure of the regulatory response to them are the issues addressed in this paper we examine a number of fisheries but focus on the texas shrimp industry which is one of the nation s most valuable fisheries for a single species and which shares the common property characteristics observed elsewhere it is considered overcapitalized and catch per unit of effort is falling 2 examination of the fishery reveals the many margins along which rent dissipation occurs and the nature of the regulations necessary for controlling fishing effort to avoid those losses the regulatory environment in texas is complicated by conflict within the fishery between inshore and offshore fishermen the latter assert that bay shrimping reduces the number of shrimp that successfully migrate to the gulf the inshore fishery is highlighted by another issue the recent resettlement of some 30 45 000 vietnamese refugees including many fishermen along the texas coast marine advisory service paul starr their entry has been met by hostility and violence from existing shrimpers who recognize that they are in an environment characterized by the absence of property rights bay shrimpers have lobbied the texas legislature for broad limits on new entrants yet ironically the sale of additional boats by individual shrimpers to the vietnamese has facilitated entry of the refugees into the fishery regulations in the texas shrimp and other fisheries are incomplete leaving many options for rent dissipation uncontrolled because of high contracting costs among fishermen and political factors that mold government actions contracting costs are high among heterogeneous fishermen who vary principally with regard to fishing skill 3 montana state university and texas a m university respectively we benefitted from comments by terry anderson raymond c battalio gardner brown oscar burt micha gisser wade griffin john r moroney anthony d scott peter temin and participants in workshops at texas a m university and the university of washington research assistance was provided by scott barnhart and phil mizzi funding was provided by sea grant texas a m university throughout this paper we use the terms common property and open access interchangeably here the terms describe a situation where no property rights group or individual exist s for the resource 2catch per unit of effort in the inshore texas gulf and federal gulf waters is presented for 1963 77 by w l griffin c g tydlacka and w e grant they show catch per unit of effort generally falling in inshore and offshore waters while catch per unit of effort fluctuates from year to year it falls from approximately 360 kg shrimp per unit of effort to 220 kg from 1963 to 1977 the common property nature of the fishery is reflected in the following statistics since 1975 the number of vessels has grown by 23 percent nelson swartz for fish houses the record of entry is similar between 1970 a d 1977 the number of firms grew from 259 to 287 though during that period many left the industry as others entered the number of fish houses was calculated from license data supplied by the texas parks and wildlife department the record of entry by fish houses suggests that monopsony as discussed by colin clark and gordon munro is absent in the fishery 3there may be minor differences in labor leisure choices and capital but our statistical evidence and discussions with fishermen indicate that catch variations are largely due to skill government regulations in the texas bays restrict capital and our empirical evidence shows boats to be relatively homogeneous

interest group competition over policy outcomes dynamics strategic behavior and social costs this paper analyzes a two period model of interestgroup competition between two groups to affect thepolicy outcome the paper characterizes the subgameperfect equilibrium and considers the welfareimplications of the model the subgame perfectequilibrium to this game is allocatively efficient ifand only if the initial equilibrium is allocativelyefficient and interest groups are equally adept atproducing political pressure when rent seeking isconstitutionally protected the notion of rent seekingconstrained efficiency is defined as the cooperativesolution to the rent seeking game it is shown that arent seeking constrained efficient equilibrium isattainable by forcing winners in political competitionto fully compensate losers

how the brazilian government can use public policies to induce recycling and still save money abstract public policies can leverage the recycling of materials however there is no clear guidance on how to use such policies and still spare public funds to fill this gap a multiple case study was undertaken in brazil eleven companies that can produce new products using the waste generated by their customers were investigated the findings contribute by suggesting how governments can economically use taxes sanctions incentives and other public instruments to induce recycling tax exemptions are not required when the waste recycled reduces the manufacturer s costs or generates revenue for customers who produce it and or for the scrap dealers who collect it sanctions or penalties imposed on the manufacturer s customers can increase the recycling efforts of such manufacturers when the recycling is technically feasible but not economically attractive sanctions are ineffective when wastes have a good market value or are widespread over millions of generation points for such cases the public policies should focus on community awareness campaigns and attention on waste pickers incentives for the technological development can be provided to wastes that present a good market value but do not have an economical recycling technology available granting resources to universities and technological institutes will help spread the solution to sme companies by better understanding how to apply public instruments the governments will be able to save funds on tax exemptions better define sanctions focus its community awareness campaigns focus its waste pickers support and better allocate funds to support the development of new recycling technologies

tracking environmental innovations and policy regulations in japan case studies on dioxin emissions and electric home appliances recycling taking dioxin emissions from incineration and the recycling of home electric appliances in japan as two case studies this paper aims to clarify the impact of environmental policy on technological innovation for our case studies relevant japanese patent data were gathered and analyzed for the period 1990 2008 to demonstrate that environmental regulations induce technology innovation we conducted statistical analysis to compare the number of patents related to each regulation between the period under regulation and period outside the regulation the results show that after the regulations were introduced new technological developments occurred for most technological types and the total number of related patent applications was larger even when controlling for other exogenous and endogenous factors such as business cycles and expenditures in research and development r d we finally argue that while a possible weakness in these types of direct regulations is the lack of incentives for further innovations they can still induce innovation if they are flexible and with specific targets

factors influencing willingness to accept different waste management policies empirical evidence from the european union abstract improving waste management strategies with more collaborative participation and responsibility of different public and private agents is a matter of increasing concern for academia and policy makers based on data from 28 european countries the present study unlike other previous studies analyzing the influence of individual drivers for waste generation or recycling evaluates different options for waste management government based fair consumer and producer responsibility for this the influence of individual and socio demographic characteristics age gender education level and occupational status contextual variables rural or urban country of origin and the environmental awareness of 23 976 individuals are considered being a woman being well educated having a good job and living in a rural or small town increase the probability of being a fair consumer while men and people living in a large town are more willing to entrust this responsibility to firms the government based solution is only chosen by low educated people finally individuals with the highest environmental awareness and effort prefer to pay while those who are less environmentally conscious prefer government action the findings show that factors explaining individual acceptance of these different waste management policies wmp are essential for implementing proactive and preventive approaches to enhance responsibility and involvement of all stakeholder groups consumers firms and institutions

real business cycles in this paper we demonstrate how certain very ordinary economic principles lead maximizing individuals to choose consumption production plans that display many of the characteristics commonly associated with business cycles our explanation is entirely consistent with i rational expectations ii complete current information iii stable preferences iv no technological change v no long lived commodities vi no frictions or adjustment costs vii no government viii no money and ix no serial dependence in the stochastic elements of the environment we also provide a completely worked out example of the type of artificial economy we have in mind the time series properties of the example exhibit some major features of observed business cycles although this type of model may not be capable of explaining all of the regularities in actual business cycles we believe that it provides a useful well defined benchmark for assessing the relative importance of factors e g monetary disturbances

the dynamics of lobbying a differential game this paper presents a dynamic model on lobbying the interactions between two competing lobbies who attempt to influence regulations and legislation are modelled as a differential game we consider for this game first a time consistent and then a subgame perfect equilibrium in linear markov strategies the subgame perfect equilibrium lowers considerably lobbying activity and expenses this provides a partial explanation of the puzzle that rent seeking expenses are often small compared with the prize sought

does the financing of extended producer responsibility influence economic growth abstract the question of how the financing of extended producer responsibility epr affects the overall performance of the economy is important as products covered by epr comprise an increasing part of the economy in this paper an overlapping generations olg model with endogenous growth is applied to the case and a comparison between two financing schemes an insurance solution and a pay as you go payg solution is made with respect to the effect on the level of production the growth rate the impact of a productivity shock and the risk exposure it is found that in the case of a funded solution both the level of production and the growth rate in production is higher than in the payg case and the short run effect of productivity shock is bigger the policy indication is clear epr should be attached to a financing scheme if welfare is to be maximised