the internal market and hospital efficiency a stochastic distance function approach the uk internal market was one of the first european attempts to introduce a competitive mechanism in the provision of hospital services the assumption was that competition would have led hospitals to increase efficiency in the use of their resources the aim of this paper is to analyse the effectiveness of this kind of reform by measuring the changes in technical efficiency of a panel of 52 acute scottish hospitals observed from 1991 92 to 1996 97 the time period covers the whole duration of the internal market and the sample contains a different mix of both trusts and non trusts where the former embed the proper working of the reform the selected model is a stochastic output distance function that includes an interaction dummy variable to allow for parameters to change over time the results show a structural break after which hospitals change not only the way in which they provide their services but also the kind of services they provide favouring the quicker treatment of patients on a day basis

the energy transition of the transition economies an empirical analysis the aggregate manufacturing energy intensity of 28 countries in eastern europe and central asia had declined by 35 percent during 1998 2008 this study reveals strong evidence of convergence less efficient countries improved more rapidly and the cross country variance in energy productivity narrowed over time an index decomposition analysis indicates that energy intensities declined largely because of more efficient energy use rather than shifts from energy intensive to less intensive manufacturing activities income growth and energy price increases were the main drivers of the convergence they dominated the impact of trade which led to specialization in energy intensive industries

is there an inflation productivity trade off some evidence from the manufacturing sector in greece this paper examines the effect of inflation on total factor productivity growth tfp using time series data for every two digit greek manufacturing industries in order to do the above a translog flexible cost function is estimated and used to decompose tfp growth into scale economies inflation and technical change the advantage of estimating a very general and flexible cost function is that it allows us for the first time to examine empirically a large number of significant relationships between tfp growth and economies of scale inflation and technical change the main conclusion drawn from this analysis is that inflation reduces tfp growth in a way which is sizeable furthermore using standard causality test the direction of causality between inflation and tfp growth was tested at the manufacturing level

energy consumption and economic growth new insights into the cointegration relationship abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp including energy prices for 25 oecd countries from 1981 to 2007 the distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long run relationship indeed cointegration between the common components of the underlying variables indicates that international developments dominate the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp furthermore the results suggest that energy consumption is price inelastic causality tests indicate the presence of a bi directional causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

inflation and social consensus in the seventies it is widely believed that the two oil price shocks of the i 970s played a major role in the increase in inflation in industrial countries while this hypothesis is consistent with the timing of changes in inflation at the global level it seems to break down when applied to individual countries cross sectionally for example over the period i973 9 switzerland had an average inflation rate of 4 7 while in neighbouring italy inflation averaged i5 6 over the same period furthermore inflation in the pre opec period i97i 2 was actually higher in switzerland than in italy it seems that a supply shock explanation of inflation in the seventies also requires an explanation of why different countries responded so differently to a similar set of shocks at the world level the purpose of this paper is to offer such an explanation and to test the hypothesis with a cross sectional equation accounting for differences in average inflation rates over the period i973 9 in eighteen oecd countries this time period includes the year of the first opec shock i 973 and the following six years up to the time of the second opec shock the hypothesis to be tested is set in the framework of a model similar to that of brunner et al i 980 the key features of the brunner model are that the adjustment of real wage expectations is subject to lags and that labour supply is positively related to the difference between the perceived real wage and the expected or target real wage given these two assumptions a negative supply shock gives rise to a period of stagflation whose intensity will be greater the slower is the speed of adjustment of real wage expectations the model of this paper extends the brunner model in three ways first across countries the speed of adjustment of real wage expectations or targets is assumed to depend positively on the degree of social consensus as proxied negatively by an indicator of average long run strike activity second the model allows for the possibility of inflation inertia or systematically incorrect inflation expectations as well as a sluggish adjustment of real wage expectations third the model incorporates the hypothesis that money supply growth will vary across countries according to variations in inflationary pressures as perceived by governments the first section of the paper provides a discussion of the rationale for the key proposition regarding strikes and social consensus as well as a brief discussion of the role of wage bargaining institutions section ii develops a theoretical model which yields a reduced form cross sectional equation relating the average i 973 9

does market based electricity price affect china s energy efficiency abstract china is in a critical period of market oriented reform and energy transition as a crucial means to regulate supply and demand under the market oriented mechanism the electricity price can promote the development of energy efficiency by optimizing resource allocation with the gradual increase in electricity consumption the influence of its price on energy consumption is also gradually enhanced therefore this paper evaluated the process of electricity price marketization and conducted a spatial temporal comparative analysis of the effect of electricity price on energy efficiency by controlling economic policy and other price factors the results show that 1 the marketization degree of china s electricity price has improved with steady steps 2 market oriented electricity price has a stable positive correlation with energy efficiency in both the short and long term 3 marketization improves the promotion effect of electricity price on energy efficiency and the influence of electricity price is more significant in the eastern region with a high degree of marketization and the subsequent stage 4 the impact of market oriented electricity price on energy efficiency is asymmetric the impulse response under positive and negative shock is opposite and under the positive shock the response time is longer and the degree is greater

a literature survey on energy growth nexus abstract this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of energy consumption economic growth and electricity consumption economic growth causality nexus the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of energy electricity in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of energy on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies a general observation from these studies is that the literature produced conflicting results and there is no consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of causality between energy consumption electricity consumption and economic growth as a policy implication to avoid from conflicting and unreliable results the authors may use the autoregressive distributed lags bounds test two regime threshold co integration models panel data approach and multivariate models including new variables such as real gross fixed capital formation labor force carbon dioxide emissions population exchange rates interest rates etc thus the authors should focus more on the new approaches and perspectives rather than by employing usual methods based on a set of common variables for different countries and different intervals of time

health system effects on cost efficiency in the oecd countries this paper investigates the effects of different health systems on cost efficiency in inpatient health care among the oecd countries the results indicate that public contract systems are more efficient and that public integrated systems are less efficient than public reimbursement systems

why u s wage and employment behavior differs from that in britain and japan if a poll were to be conducted among american academic economists to select the most mystifying economic phenomenon of our time surely the sticky nominal wage rate would emerge at or near the top of the list the slow and partial response of the nominal wage rate to changes in aggregate nominal spending has been a central postulate of macroeconomic theory for the past 45 years from keynes general theory down to the standard postwar textbook keynesian paradigm to the more modern fixed wage price models of robert barro and herschel grossman i976 and edmond malinvaud i977 unwilling passively to accept nominal wage rigidity as an unexplained assumption many labour market theorists have followed the lead of costas azariadis i975 and martin baily i974 in building models to explain rigid wages and layoff unemployment as the rational outcome of a profit maximising calculus as i pointed out in an early critique of the azariadis baily model i976a their assumptions cannot explain cycles in employment but rather why workers would want fixed incomes i e a fixed wage rate and fixed employment soon thereafter barro i977 went one step further and argued that contract theory is a facade which cannot explain why workers would choose a rigid wage and variable employment in preference to the classical equilibrium quantity of employment that equates the marginal product of labour with the marginal value of time now an examination of the evidence has led me to the realisation that rigid wages cannot provide the underpinnings for a universally valid theory of the business cycle simply because wages are not universally rigid i document below with postwar quarterly data that the share of fluctuations in the manufacturing wage bill taking the form of nominal wage changes as compared to changes in hours worked is five to ten times greater in britain and japan than in

manufacturing energy use in oecd countries decomposition of long term trends abstract in this paper we examine manufacturing energy use in 13 oecd countries over the period 1971 1995 we describe changes in aggregate energy intensity using the adaptive weighting divisia decomposition method we contrast the development in the periods after the oil price shocks of 1973 and 1979 with the period of relatively stable energy prices after the oil price crash of 1986 the results show that manufacturing output grew in most countries pushing up energy use the share of electricity increased in almost every sector while there was a clear trend away from oil and coal towards natural gas changes in the structure of output drove up energy use between 1973 and 1994 in some countries and down in others changes in energy intensities had a profound and downward effect on manufacturing energy use in all countries however contrasting the period after oil prices fell in 1986 with earlier years we see that for most countries the rate of energy intensity decline slowed slightly but did not reverse with falling prices in a few countries efficiency improvements continued to have a strong effect this suggests that even without higher prices improvements of energy efficiency seems to take place

energy price shocks and productivity growth in us and uk manufacturing because sustained changes in the trend of productivity growth are so very important for people s long run economic welfare the dramatic productivity growth slowdown of the 1970 s and early 1980 s has been the focus of much analysis and discussion for some observers it was much more than coincidence that the oil price shocks of 1973 74 accompanied the sharp slowdowns in traditionally measured productivity growth not only in the united states and the united kingdom but throughout the industrialised world however establishing quantifying and explaining sig nificant linkages between energy price shocks and productivity growth has proved to be most difficult traditional and time honoured relationships involving productivity growth have all seemed incapable of explaining this slowdown for example edward denison author of several widely cited productivity studies has concluded that energy had essentially no role in explaining the productivity growth slowdown and that moreover what happened is to be blunt a mystery 1979 p 4

productivity in the united states trends and cycles productivity growth in the us has taken a sharp downturn in recent years two experts provide a new body of comparative data on productivity since 1948 by major sector and industry the book analyzes 20 industries to highlight trends and fluctuations in productivity and to provide a better context for the discussion of policy options the authors set forth the causes of productivity advances based on growth accounting for the business economy as a whole they detail interindustry regressions with particular reference to the productivity slowdown since 1966 they look at both the traditional measure of productivity labor output per hour and the more recently developed measure of total factor productivity which takes into account capital as well as labor inputs the quarterly and annual data are used to relate changes to other basic variables such as factor prices unit costs and product prices an appendix presents data for 35 industries 42 references 8 figures 30 tables

exploring the relationship between energy use and economic growth with bivariate models new evidence from g 7 countries abstract there is a rapidly growing literature on the interaction between energy use and economic development with many analysts drawing policy conclusions on the basis of granger causality tests that involve only an energy and an economic variable this paper attempts to demonstrate empirically that such studies although useful for certain applications may be of limited use for policy purposes after outlining theoretical and methodological issues associated with such approaches i apply bivariate energy economy causality tests for canada france germany italy japan the united kingdom and the united states using aggregate and sectoral data and three different modern econometric methods the results which are often contradictory or economically implausible illustrate explicitly that one should be cautious when drawing policy implications with the aid of bivariate causality tests on small samples i therefore underline the importance of utilizing as large sample sizes as possible and using multivariate models which are closer to economic theory accommodate several mechanisms and causality channels and provide a better representation of real world interactions between energy use and economic growth

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

measuring hospital efficiency with frontier cost functions this paper uses a stochastic frontier multiproduct cost function to derive hospital specific measures of inefficiency the cost function includes direct measures of illness severity output quality and patient outcomes to reduce the likelihood that the inefficiency estimates are capturing unmeasured differences in hospital outputs models are estimated using data from the aha annual survey medicare hospital cost reports and medpar we explicitly test the assumption of output endogeneity and reject it in this application we conclude that inefficiency accounts for 13 6 percent of total hospital costs this estimate is robust with respect to model specification and approaches to pooling data across distinct groups of hospitals

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

airline dynamic efficiency measures with a dynamic ram with unified natural managerial disposability abstract in this paper we propose a dynamic range adjusted measure with unified natural managerial disposability to evaluate the dynamic efficiency of 29 airlines during 2009 2015 in a dynamic period the new model can judge automatically whether the airline should be under natural disposability or managerial disposability in the premise of optimizing the overall efficiency we get some findings 1 scandinavian has the highest overall efficiency among these 29 airlines while norwegian s overall efficiency is the least 2 improving undesirable outputs is not the most urgent work of these airlines 3 in order to optimize the overall efficiency most airlines should be under managerial disposability 4 most airlines efficiencies have no obvious fluctuation in this period

does energy efficiency promote economic growth evidence from a multicountry and multisectoral panel dataset abstract we examine the causal relationship between energy efficiency and economic growth based on panel data for 56 high and middle income economies from 1978 to 2012 using a panel vector autoregression approach we find evidence of a long run granger causality from economic growth to lower energy intensity for all economies we also find evidence of long run bidirectional causality between lower energy intensity and higher economic growth for middle income economies this finding suggests that beyond climate benefits middle income economies may also earn an extra growth dividend from energy efficiency measures

energy economic growth and causality in developing countries a case study of tanzania and nigeria the debate about the precise role of energy in economic development remains contentious existing empirical studies have produced varying results some have argued the complementarity between energy and other factors of production and others have indicated that energy can be substituted for other factors of production commonly these studies have focused primarily on the developed countries one explanation being that supply constraints and price rigidities render any study on factor substitutions in developing countries meaningless however the functional relationship between energy consumption and income in developing countries is constantly investigated with the use of regression techniques while such techniques are useful in empirical analysis no mechanism exists for indicating causal directions between variables this limits the scope for policy analysis and prescription the need to identify causal direction between energy consumption and income growth in developing countries is overwhelming apart from providing further insights into the role of energy in economic development it provides policy analysts with a clearer understanding of the likely impact of energy supply constraints on economic growth this article examines the causal directions between energy consumption and economic growth proxied by gdp and gnp for nigeria and tanzania the results show a simultaneous causal relationship between energy and economic growth for both countries the implication being that unless energy supply constraints are eased economic growth and development will remain elusive to these countries given similar economic characteristics and profiling the same energy scenario for other developing countries our finding supports the view that energy plays a key role in economic development

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

factors shaping aggregate energy intensity trend for industry energy intensity versus product mix understanding the mechanisms of change of energy consumption in industry has attracted much attention since the 1973 world oil crisis a popular line of research has been to decompose changes in the aggregate energy intensity of industry to give the relative impacts arising from energy intensity change and product mix change using a decomposition technique many empirical studies covering a large number of countries have been reported the main objective of this paper is to put together the empirical results reported in these studies in a coherent framework and identify possible systematic features of particular interest are the basic trends in this line of research the relative importance of energy intensity change and product mix change possible variations over time and between country groups in the energy impacts of these changes and inconsistencies in findings among studies an overview of the decomposition technique including its strengths weaknesses and role in industrial energy consumption studies is also presented

economic growth energy intensity and the energy mix abstract this paper explores how changes in energy intensity and the switch to renewables can boost economic growth to do so we implement a dynamic panel data approach on a sample of 134 countries over the period 1960 to 2010 we incorporate a set of control variables related to human and physical capital socio economic conditions policies and institutions which have been widely used in the literature on economic growth given the current state of technology improving energy intensity is growth enhancing at the worldwide level moreover conditional to energy intensity moving from fossil fuels to frontier renewables wind solar wave or geothermic is also positively correlated with growth our results are robust to the specification of the dynamic panel with respect to alternative approaches pooled ols within group or system gmm and to alternative specifications accounting for heterogeneity across countries a set of institutional factors and other technical aspects

estimating the linkage between energy efficiency and productivity abstract many analyses have referred to industrial productivity benefits associated with energy efficiency that are at least as great or larger than the energy benefits if plants with higher energy intensity also tend to have lower productivity then energy policy needs to consider this this study examines this issue for two segments of the glass industry using plant level data from the census bureau productivity is defined by the difference in best practice production efficiency as measured by data envelopment analysis dea this study uses regression analysis to estimate how differences in plant level electricity and fossil fuel intensity i e energy use per unit of production are attributable to differences in plant level productivity and other economic variables like energy prices and cumulative production in every case productivity differences between plants are statistically significant in explaining differences in plant energy intensity the coefficient that links productivity to energy efficiency yields a less than proportional impact for only one industry and fuel type for others the relationship is implies that a 1 increase in productivity increase energy efficiency by more than 1 this effect is statistically significant for flat glass but not container glass the estimates of the price and learning by doing coefficients seem reasonable but without imposing the assumption that all plants in the industry are equally productive this lends further credence to a significant relationship between productivity and energy efficiency

comparing french and us hospital technologies a directional input distance function approach french and us hospital technologies are compared using directional input distance functions the aggregation properties of the directional distance function allow comparison of hospital industry level performance as well as standard firm level performance with regard to productive efficiency in addition the underlying constituents of efficiency in the short run congestion and technical inefficiency and in the long run scale inefficiency are analysed by decomposing the overall measure by virtue of using the directional distance function it is also possible to obtain an estimate of a lower bound on allocative inefficiency it is found that french and us hospitals use quite different technologies long run scale inefficiencies cause most of the french hospitals inefficiency while short run technical inefficiency is the main source of overall productive inefficiency in the us hospitals

understanding the energy gdp elasticity a sectoral approach abstract this paper uses per capita data for 132 countries over 1960 2010 to estimate elasticities of sectoral energy use with respect to national gross domestic product gdp we estimate models in both levels and growth rates and use our estimates to sectorally decompose the aggregate energy gdp elasticity our estimates show that residential energy use is very inelastic to gdp if primary solid biofuels are counted in energy use tallies especially at low income levels residential use of electricity is more tightly linked to gdp as is energy use by the transportation industrial and services sectors agriculture typically accounts for a small share of energy use and has a modest energy gdp elasticity the aggregate energy gdp elasticity tends to be higher for countries at higher income levels in large part because traditional use of primary solid biofuels is less important gasoline prices winter temperature population and land area are among other factors influencing sectoral energy use

an econometric analysis of health care expenditure a cross section study of the oecd countries this paper is an empirical examination of the determinants of aggregate health care expenditure the paper presents a systematic analysis of relationships across 19 oecd countries showing the effects of aggregate income institutional and socio demographic factors on health care expenditure the results indicate that institutional factors of the health systems in addition to per capita gross domestic product gdp contribute significantly to the explanation of the health care expenditure variation between countries for example the way physicians in outpatient care are paid and the mixture of public private funding and inpatient outpatient care

structural change and convergence of energy intensity across oecd countries 1970 2005 abstract this paper uses new and unique data derived from a consistent framework of national accounts to compute and evaluate energy intensity developments across 18 oecd countries and 50 sectors over the period 1970 2005 we find that across countries energy intensity levels tend to decrease in most manufacturing sectors in the service sector energy intensity decreases at a relatively slow rate with diverse trends across sub sectors a decomposition analysis reveals that changes in the sectoral composition of the economy explain a considerable and increasing part of aggregate energy intensity dynamics a convergence analysis reveals that only after 1995 cross country variation in aggregate energy intensity levels clearly tends to decrease driven by a strong and robust trend break in manufacturing and enhanced convergence in services moreover we find evidence for the hypothesis that across sectors lagging countries are catching up with leading countries with rates of convergence that are on average higher in services than in manufacturing aggregate convergence patterns are almost exclusively caused by convergence of within sector energy intensity levels and not by convergence of the sectoral composition of economies

towards an explanation of the productivity slowdown an acceleration deceleration hypothesis after two and a half decades of prosperous post war development western industrialised countries recently experienced a slowdown of economic growth and productivity advance together with an increase in the rates of inflation and unemployment in trying to explain this malaise we are looking at a diagnosis that could help us to identify early indicators of a future turnaround or some policy variables which deserve to be included in a therapeutic programme although we shall focus on what can be measured complying with the standards of the guild we shall not refrain from considering complex relationships which can be grasped only intuitively even if they include phenomena which lie beyond the limits of official statistics 2 the outcome may be soft economics but we find some consolation in the dictum that it is better to be vaguely right than to be precisely wrong

wage gaps factor shares and real wages the relationships which link real wages capital intensity and factor shares are tested as a prelude to tests of the relationship between wage rigidities and labour market institutions evidence from seven countries indicates that the evolution of factor shares is well explained by changes in capital intensity which is itself well explained by product wages and technical progress a key implication is that changes in full employment capital labour ratios have been the dominant reason for the longer run decline of profit shares in europe and japan relative to the united states it follows that changes in cyclically adjusted factor shares provide little or no information regarding the gap between the actual real wage and its full employment value

the determinants and effects of health expenditure in developed countries previous studies of international differences in health spending have been restricted to the use of relatively small samples of cross sectional data our objective here is to re examine the results of previous work using a sample of 560 pooled time series and cross section observations results confirm the importance of gdp as a determinant of health spending with an estimated income elasticity at or around unity but also suggest that oecd countries should not be regarded as a single homogeneous group the importance of some non income variables is also confirmed although the direct effect of these factors appears to be small

productivity and cost gaps in manufacturing industries in u s japan and germany abstract the objective of this paper is to measure and explain the development of differences in productivity for five manufacturing industries of the u s japan and germany changes in total factor productivities and differences in technologies and the sources of those changes will be analyzed we extend the framework developed by jorgenson and nishimizu 1978 to the dual cost approach to reflect the efficiency aspect of productivity gaps in terms of cost disadvantages we employ translog cost functions for a description of productivity and cost efficiency gaps and for an econometric analysis of sources of catching up processes