anticipated monetary policy in canada some new evidence abstract in this note i examine the policy ineffectiveness proposition for canada using monthly income data due to milbourne et al 1988 i find that anticipated monetary policy altered the evolution of real output in canada recent work by ambler and phaneuf 1988 can be used to attribute this result to a purely new keynesian model of the business cycle although this inference is found to be fragile with respect to the choice of the level of significance used in the hypothesis tests

efficiency and equalization payments in a federal system of government a synthesis and extensions of recent results this paper investigates the rationale for a system of equalization transfers in a federal system of government the existing sources of inefficiency of resource allocation in economies with more than one level of government are synthesized in the framework of a simple decentralized multiprovince model with mobile factors of production the sources of inefficiency arise first because migrants respond at the margin to incorrect signals owing to the phenomena of rent sharing and fiscal exterality and second because of global rather than local inefficiencies the model is then extended to consider the role of the federal government in providing intergovernmental transfers in the face of such inefficiencies in addition to synthesizing the sources of inefficiency in federal models the equity arguments for equalization are briefly recounted efficacite et paiements de perequation dans un systeme federal de gouvernement synthese et extensions de certains resultats recents ce memoire examine la logique qui soustend un systeme de paiements de perequation dans un systeme fdderal de gouverement les auteurs utilisent un modele simple d un systeme multi provincial decentralise avec des facteurs de production mobiles pour definir les sources d inefficacite dans l allocation des ressources dans les dconomies qui possedent plus d un niveau de gouvernement ces inefficacites proviennent de ce que d abord ceux qui se deplacent le font en reponse a la marge a des signaux incorrects engendres par le partage de la rente sur la base de la residence et par les phenomenes d exteralites fiscales elles sont aussi le resultat d inefficacites globales plutot que locales dans le cadre de ce modele les auteurs analysent le role du gouvernement federal effectuant des transferts inter gouverementaux pour corriger ces inefficacites en plus de presenter une synthese des sources d inefficacite dans les regimes federaux les auteurs font un bref rappel en passant a l ensemble des arguments fondes sur l equite qu on utilise pour rationaliser les paiements de perequation this paper is a linear combination of two papers presented at the may 1982 meetings of the canadian economics association in halifax entitled the case for equalization payments by the authors and recent developments in the theory of regional economic policy in canada by boadway the authors are grateful for comments by the discussants jim johnson and baxter macdonald and by jack mintz brian scarfe gerard belanger david sewell tom courchene and the referees we are especially heavily indebted to dan usher for many stimulating comments and suggestions while the work was in progress some of the above persons will undoubtedly disagree with the emphasis we have chosen to put on various aspects of the analysis for policy purposes support for some of this work has been provided by the economic council of canada and is gratefully acknowledged canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xv no 4 november novembre 1982 printed in canada imprimd au canada 0008 4085 82 0000 0613 01 50 1982 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 127 on wed 12 oct 2016 04 27 47 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms 614 robin boadway and frank flatters

an econometric investigation of the monetary neutrality and rationality propositions from an international perspective t he combination of the natural rate of unemployment and the rational expectations hypotheses in macroeconomic models results in the now well known conclusion that anticipated short run monetary stabilization policies do not influence real economic variables this policy ineffectiveness proposition has been named the macro rational expectations mre hypothesis by modigliani 1977 as a result the implicit policy prescription is that a price level stabilization policy should be pursued the empirical validity of this conclusion is perhaps the central issue in modern stabilization theory barro 1977 1978 1981 barro and rush 1980 and leiderman 1980 have presented empirical evidence for the united states supporting this proposition however a number of recent studies have claimed that previous empirical results which support the finding that anticipated policy is neutral are flawed corrections of these problems often result in conflicting conclusions see small 1979 gordon 1979 and mishkin 1982 given the important implications of the mre hypothesis it is curious that almost all formal testing has been focused upon the united states while barro has suggested that a cross country study would be useful as far as we know only darby 1980 attempts to test whether anticipated changes in monetary policy are neutral across countries unfortunately his results suffer from problems caused by using generated regressors in addition he makes no attempt to test the individual implications of the mre hypothesis which encompasses the propositions that expectations are rational lad anticipated monetary policy does not matter in this paper we employ the methodology developed by mishkin to test the mre hypothesis in six countries canada germany italy japan the united kingdom and the united states the paper is divided into three major sections and a conclusion section ii briefly reviews mishkin s testing method in section iii the procedure employed to specify the money growth equation is discussed and these equations specified section iv presents and discusses the results of applying the method introduced in section ii in the conclusion the major findings are restated possible limitations discussed and extensions suggested

on the co movement between coffee and cocoa prices in international markets in this article we study the movement between cocoa and coffee prices two close substitute commodities using the ardl approach developed by pesaran et al 2001 we found that the two prices are cointegrated the long run elasticity of coffee price with respect to the cocoa one is estimated at 0 88 also using the lag augmented var approach of toda and yamamoto 1995 which is valid whatever the order of integration of the data the cocoa price is found to granger cause the coffee price and not vice versa this finding suggests that models aiming at forecasting coffee prices should incorporate cocoa prices as well

do external grants to district governments discourage own revenue generation a look at local public finance dynamics in ghana summary using rich panel data on all of ghana s districts local public finances over 11 years this paper investigates the way that intergovernmental and other transfers to local governments affect local governments incentives to collect internally generated revenues and funds igf we find that despite an incentive scheme built into one of the major intergovernmental grants the flow of all grants taken together discourages rather than encourages igf this is reflected both in the depressing effect of transfers on igf levels as well as on igf growth

testing liquidity constraints in 10 asian developing countries an error correction model approach an error correction model is used to estimate the fraction of consumers who are liquidity constrained in 10 asian developing countries our estimates of the fraction of consumers who are liquidity constrained range between 0 25 and 0 98 we further investigate whether financial liberalization has resulted in the reduction of liquidity constraints in these countries however the results find support for this only in the cases of south korea sri lanka and taiwan

the globalization of organic agro food networks summary this article analyzes the booming world trade in organic agro foods such as tropical products counterseasonal fresh produce and processed foods research focuses on expanding south north networks linking major us and european markets with major production regions particularly in latin america employing a commodity network approach i analyze organic production distribution and consumption patterns and the roles of social political and economic actors in consolidating international trade organic certification proves central to network governance shaping product specifications production parameters and enterprise participation my analysis identifies key contradictions between mainstream agro industrial and alternative movement conventions in global organic networks 2004 published by elsevier ltd

modelling the link between commodity prices and exchange rates the tale of daily data this paper examines daily data on exchange rates and the prices of three commodities traded on the winnipeg commodity exchange the temporal patterns of commodity prices and exchange rates are shown to be similar daily data are significantly non normal with garch models capturing the processes generating the data commodity prices and exchange rates are examined for cointegration using recent tests proposed by johansen and juselius 1990 currency depreciation is shown to granger cause commodity price inflation this information might be useful to central bankers concerned with reducing general price inflation through targeting commodity price inflation it also suggests that macro events have important effects on commodity markets in canada

industry self regulation without sanctions the chemical industry s responsible care program industry self regulation the voluntary association of firms to control their collective action has been proposed as a complement to government regulation proponents argue that the establishment of

is strike behavior cyclical we examine cyclicality of strike frequency and incidence using canadian data on strikes and contracts total strike frequency exhibits significant procyclicality to which within contract strikes contribute appreciably evidence is weaker for procyclical behavior of contract expiry strikes both in total and disaggregated by issue strike incidence is also procyclical particularly in manufacturing though the procyclicality here is confined to strikes over nonwage issues these results mirror those obtained by analyzing the frequency of strikes in the contract data industry specific cyclical variables positively affect strike incidence in manufacturing but region specific variables have no effect

estimating shocks and impulse response functions this paper examines the issue of how to identify the shocks in a cointegrated var when the following assumptions are made the variables can be classified as endogenous or exogenous there are as many cointegrating relations as endogenous variables the cointegrating vectors are identified and they contain at least one exogenous variable it is shown that with these assumptions it is possible to identify the shocks without the use of further restrictions on the covariance matrix of the disturbances or the short run dynamics if the long run parameters are known the whole model can be estimated by ols the analysis is extended to allow the var to have both stationary and non stationary variables an illustration of the method is provided using the traditional benchmark var model involving us data on output prices interest rates and money a liquidity effect is not found using this var methodology

a dynamic analysis of japanese energy policies their impact on fuel switching and conservation abstract in 1973 the japanese economy was highly dependent on imported oil after the 1973 oil price shock vigorous policy action was undertaken by the japanese government in an attempt to reduce japan s energy consumption and in particular its dependence on imported oil this study attempts to determine how flexibly the japanese economy has responded to the dramatic changes in relative and absolute fuel prices which occurred since 1973 and to what extent government energy policies may have reinforced or undermined market signals and facilitated fuel switching and conservation to analyse the price and income elasticities of energy component demand a dynamic approach to energy demand modelling is employed the study reveals that japanese energy users have responded quite flexibly to the two major oil price rises in the 1970s the probable impact of energy policies on this response is however somewhat problematic

can ecolabeling schemes preserve the environment a three stage game of production technology signal and price competition is developed to study the impact of eco labeling in a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation the production technology and the subsequent pollution level are non observable by consumers the only way to inform consumers about the environmental quality of the product is to stick an ecolabel on it however a polluting firm may also usurp the ecolabel by incurring a certain cost by assuming that consumers are altruistic and willing to pay for environmental quality we show that ecolabels can reduce the pollution level finally and importantly under restrictive conditions on labeling cost ecolabeling can constitute to some extent an environmentally effective and economically efficient policy however ecolabeling cannot alone internalize the whole negative externality until the optimum point

optimal fiscal policy for a state or local government abstract state and local government services are enjoyed by and taxes borne by two groups residents and non residents this paper addresses the question if state and local governments maximize their residents welfare and cannot distinguish between individual residents and non residents but know the aggregate characteristics of the two groups what set of taxes subsidies and public goods should they choose some of the results obtained are i even when all commodities are taxable and equity is ignored the existence of non resident consumption makes uniform taxation non optimal ii in some cases whether a commodity should be taxed or subsidized is independent of its own price elasticity iii central cities may be subsidized by suburban residents and iv the ability of state and local governments to redistribute is inversely proportional to the openness of the economy

the welfare effects of intergovernmental grants in an economy with independent jurisdictions abstract a general equilibrium model is presented of an economy where mobile and immobile households engage in decentralized market behavior and where immobile households control the expenditure and tax policy of each local government subject to a local budget constraint it is shown how central government grant policy which is a formula with lump sum matching and population elements affects the general equilibrium of the system determined through market and local political decisions the welfare effects of grants are discussed with particular emphasis on distortions that may arise at lower levels of decision making that grants may be useful in partially or completely correcting

how do firms comply with international sustainability standards processes and consequences of adopting the global reporting initiative this paper addresses the issue of the influence of global governance institutions particularly international sustainability standards on a firm s intra organizational practices more precisely we provide an exploratory empirical view of the impact of the global reporting initiative gri on a multinational corporation s corporate social responsibility csr management practices we investigate standard compliance by comparing the stated intention of the use of the gri with its actual use and the consequent effects within the firm based on an in depth case study our findings illustrate the processes and consequences of the translation of the gri within the organization we show that substantive standard adoption can lead to unintended consequences on csr management practices specifically it can influence the management structure and csr committee function the choice of csr activities the relationships between subsidiaries the temporal dimension of csr management and the interpretation of csr performance we also highlight the need to look at the relationship dynamics or lack of between standards finally we illustrate and discuss the role of reporting and its influence on management in order to better understand the internal issues arising from compliance with standards

interjurisdictional capital mobility fiscal externality and a corrective subsidy abstract recent studies emphasize that local property taxation may result in inefficiently small amounts of local public spending this paper shows that the inefficiency can be traced to a fiscal externality when one jurisdiction increases its taxes it causes a flow of capital to other jurisdictions that increases their tax revenues the inefficiency can be corrected with a subsidy that internalizes the externality key empirical parameters determining the magnitude of the externality are identified illustrative calculations indicate that subsidy rates on the order of 40 might be required to achieve efficiency

modelling natural resource scarcity using the error correction approach an error correction framework is used to test the long run hypothesis that prices of natural resources commodities in the united states exhibit scarcity properties from the late nineteenth century to 1988 in the sense that real resource commodity prices have been increasing or following a u shaped pattern introduced by m e slade 1982 the model is formulated to test the validity of the deflation procedure itself along with the scarcity properties results indicate that the model works well as a description of the long term behavior of resources prices and supports the u shaped version of the scarcity hypothesis in a majority of cases an error correction framework is used to test the long run hypothesis that prices of natural resources commodities in the u s exhibit scarcity properties from the late nineteenth century to 1988 in the sense that real resource commodity prices have been increasing or following a u shaped pattern slade 1982 the model is formulated to test the validity of the deflation procedure itself along with the scarcity properties results indicate that the model works well as a description of the long term behaviour of resources prices and supports the u shaped version of the scarcity hypothesis in a majority of cases

when one size does not fit all a problem of fit rather than failure for voluntary management standards voluntary management standards for social and environmental performance ideally help to define and improve firms related capabilities these standards however have largely failed to improve such performance as intended over emphasis on institutional factors leading to adoption of these standards has neglected the role of firms existing capabilities external pressures can drive firms to adopt standards more than their technical capacity to employ them this can lead to problems of fit between institutional requirements and a firm s existing capabilities we describe a conceptual model that considers the impact of an interaction between a firm s institutional requirements and its existing capabilities on standards failure we suggest solutions that align institutional requirements to appropriate governance forms as a means to improve standards success we contribute to theory by describing the role of firms internal capabilities to the success of voluntary management standards and the reliability of self regulation generally

symmetric or asymmetric price adjustments in the oil market an empirical analysis of the relations between international and domestic prices in the federal republic of germany 1972 89 abstract this paper investigates how german consumer and wholesale prices for gasoline and light heating oil react to changes in the corresponding rotterdam prices monthly data from 1972 to 1989 are employed and the subperiods of the 1970s 1972 to 1979 and 1980s 1980 1989 are distinguished error correction models are estimated to seperate long run equilibrium relations and short run adjustment processes for the 1980s we find rapid symmetric and full adjustment of the german prices to the rotterdam prices whereas during the 1970s we find some asymmetries and at least for gasoline the adjustment processes took considerably more time

does anticipated monetary policy matter another look recent work by mishkin 1982a 1982b and gordon 1982 tests the lucas sargent wallace henceforth lsw policy ineffectiveness proposition with econometric methods this work generally finds support for the alternative proposition that there is some short term influence of anticipated demand policy or anticipated money growth on output as mccallum 1982 has pointed out one difficulty with these studies is they presume movements in output and employment are best represented as stationary fluctuations around deterministic trends in constrast to evidence given by nelson and plosser 1982 which suggests these variables are nonstationary processes that have no tendency to return to a deterministic path if these series are nonstationary processes then the distribution theory implicit in the hypothesis tests of the gordon and mishkin studies does not apply and their results are open to question also as mccallum 1982 p 4 points out the methods of overcoming the observational equivalence difficulty sargent 1976 are not entirely satisfying in these studies in effect gordon and mishkin are forced to make some untested restrictions in order to distinguish the anticipated from the unanticipated components

an inverse demand analysis with introduction of quality effects an application to spanish consumption of fruit and vegetables this article analyzes consumer preference for fruit and vegetables when by using time series with socioeconomic characteristics of households there can be seemingly unobserved quality effects which are increased by aggregation the changes in spanish demand for fresh and processed fruit and vegetables over the period 1987 2000 are discussed following previous tests and analyses quantities are taken as predetermined and prices as matching the offer conditions thus quality effects based on the nutritional and or health value of the product are estimated from the error terms associated with the functions of the unit values quality variables are introduced as taste shifters in the inverse demand system laitinen theil model the results show the positive effects of quality differences on the normalized price for the group of products through own quality flexibilities and the negative effects between fresh and processed products through cross quality flexibilities

the demand for energy in greek manufacturing abstract this paper considers an econometric approach to measuring substitutability of three types of energy i e crude oil electricity and diesel with capital and labour in the manufacturing sector of greek industry during the period 1970 1990 a general dynamic framework is developed under the assumption that the structure of the production process is weakly separable in capital labour and energy aggregates the translog total cost function is used to represent the production technology the main advantages of the proposed dynamic structure are that it is both disaggregated in energy components and consistent with the neo classical theory of production

a reconsideration of sims evidence concerning monetarism abstract in var systems such as those of sims 1980 monetary policy surprises may be more accurately represented by interest rate than money stock innovations especially if the monetary authority uses an interest rate instrument

the adoption of voluntary environmental management programs in mexico first movers as institutional entrepreneurs this article analyzes the adoption of voluntary environmental management programs by firms operating in mexico mexican firms can obtain national certification clean industry and or international certification iso 14001 based on institutional entrepreneurship theory we posit that the role played by first movers as institutional entrepreneurs is crucial if these programs are to become established with sufficient strength and appeal this understanding is especially important in an environment where more than one program can be adopted we tested several hypotheses on the behaviors of 1328 facilities operating in mexico half of which 664 had certified environmental management programs of the 664 certified facilities 217 were classified as early adopters three variables predicted the likelihood of a facility being an early adopter 1 connected to international market 2 in the maquila sector and 3 linked to an industry association that offers free resources

declining discount rates and the fisher effect inflated past discounted future uncertain and persistent real interest rates underpin one argument for using a declining term structure of social discount rates in the expected net present value enpv framework despite being controversial this approach has influenced both the inter agency working group on cost benefit analysis and the uk government s guidelines on discounting we first clarify the theoretical basis of the enpv approach then rather than following previous work which used a single series of u s treasury bond returns we treat nominal interest rates and inflation as co integrated series and estimate the empirical term structure of discount rates via the fisher effect this nests previous empirical models and is more flexible it also addresses an irregularity in previous work which used data on nominal interest rates until 1950 and real interest rates thereafter as we show the real and nominal data have very different time series properties this paper therefore provides a robustness check on previous discounting advice and updated methodological guidance at a time when governments around the world are reviewing their guidelines on social discounting the policy implications are discussed in the context of the social cost of carbon nuclear decommissioning and public health

asymmetric information and agenda control the bases of monopoly power in public spending abstract a pervasive empirical finding widely known as the flypaper effect is that lump sum intergovernmental grants generate considerably greater public spending by the recipient jurisdiction than would be predicted by equivalent shifts in personal income in that jurisdiction moreover such observations are inconsistent with standard median voter models of the political process we posit a model in which it is in the interest of suppliers of a collectively provided good not to generate full information to voters about outside aid the empirical results are consistent with flypaper and suggest that voters are very poorly informed about outside grants

a survey of some recent econometric methods this survey is written mainly for the applied economist though we hope that the specialist econometrician will find something of interest too our aim has been to try to bring the applied worker as up to date as possible and in the process to improve the quality of applied work by providing access to the latest ideas in econometrics we have tried to describe and explain in a relatively non technical way the main developments that have taken place in the last ten years partly for reasons of space the survey is by no means exhaustive but it does cover a wide range of topics in both time series and cross section analysis among the subjects covered are the followoing the nature of data including integrated and fractionally integrated data four estimation methods maximum likelihood method of moments m estimators and non parametric estimation inference with stationary and integrated regressors a comparison of various model evaluation principles the formulation of models including dynamic specification cointegration and conditional expectations in mean and variance copyright 1989 by royal economic society

optimal hedge ratios at the winnipeg commodity exchange multivariate garch models are employed to estimate time varying hedge ratios for three commodities traded on the winnipeg commodity exchange garch hedge ratios are shown to be superior to those based on the traditional regression approach to calculating the optimal hedge les ratios optimaux de comptant par rapport aux contrats a terme a la bourse de denrees de winnipeg l auteur emploie des modeles multivaries de type garch pour calibrer les ratios optimaux de comptant par rapport aux contrats a terme pour trois denrees transigees a la bourse des denrees de winnipeg ces ratios s averent superieurs a ceux qu on obtient par les methodes de regression traditionnelles

on interest rate innovations and anticipated monetary policy abstract in this note i investigate whether anticipated money matters by following mccallum s 1983 suggestion that nominal interest rates be included in a var system estimated on data spanned by a policy of interest rate targeting the evidence is in favour of gordon s 1982 natural rate hypothesis gradual price adjustent model of policy ineffectiveness ambler and phaneuf 1988 have shown the results can be interpreted as evidence in favour of contract based models of the business cycle

regional interest rate pass through in italy this paper estimates the pass through and speed of adjustment of italian regional interest rates to changes in the money market rate for the period 1998q1 2009q4 our main findings suggest that the markup for the lending rates that banks charge are generally higher in the south than in the north moreover our results indicate that the pass through tends to be longer in southern regions we find little evidence supporting the hypothesis of asymmetric adjustment in the lending rates but detect some evidence supporting upward rigidity in the regional deposit rates

macroeconomic adjustment and private manufacturing investment in turkey a time series analysis despite the drastic switch to market based policies and outward orientation in turkey during the 1980s private investment in manufacturing industry has still not revived after seventeen years of structural adjustment this paper examines the main determinants of private investment in the manufacturing sector and the impacts of structural adjustment particularly financial liberalisation as an integral part of the reform on it the results show that liberalisation policies in financial markets appear to have positive effects by reducing the stringency of quantity constraints on investment while the high interest rates resulting from financial liberalisation had no significant impact on investment macroeconomic instability proxied by the variability of the inflation rate seems to have discouraged investment in manufacturing

determinants of the expected real long term interest rates in the g7 countries the paper investigates which factors determine the expected real long term interest rates of the g7 countries as a whole within a single equation error correction model inflationary expectations are generated using the low frequency component of inflation provided by the hodrick prescott filter a comparison of the calculated expected inflation rates with those resulting from index linked and conventional uk bonds suggests this approach to be appropriate expected real long term interest rates turn out to be influenced positively by real short term interest rates capacity utilization and structural public borrowing

real business cycle analysis a needed revolution in macroeconometrics the contention of this paper is that real business cycle rbc analysis has highlighted fundamental flaws in the underlying macroeconomic theory and econometric methodology of traditional macroeconometric model building but by stating its message crudely and proposing an inferior statistical procedure has failed to receive the recognition it deserves properly understood the lessons to be learned from rbc analysis combined with the new approach of bringing evidence to bear proposed here would amount to a revolution in macroeconometric methodology the outcome of this revolution would be a macroeconometrics better based on macroeconomic theory and a macroeconomics more consistent with the evidence the main failing of most macroeconometric models is in not taking macroeconomic theory seriously enough with the result that little or nothing is learned about key parameter values a fault no amount of econometric sophistication will compensate for consequently macroeconometrics has had surprisingly little influence on macroeconomic theory or macroeconomics teaching and even the main users of macroeconometric models business government the monetary authorities and other national and international bodies are reluctant to employ them for anything other than short term forecasting the popular view of rbc analysis is that it is about whether technology shocks are the predominant cause of aggregate output fluctuations and whether calibration rather than standard econometric methods should be used to analyse this question although this may be a reasonable description of the initial work of kydland and prescott i982 and prescott i 986 subsequent developments make it outdated and obscure its fundamental insights in fact rbc theory is part of a research programme which can be traced back to ramsey and is associated in modern times with lucas in which the aim is to bring out the general equilibrium inter temporal characteristics of macroeconomics before turning to the more difficult issues of disequilibrium in large part the stimuli for adopting the ramsey approach were the now well known criticisms of macroeconometric models made by lucas i976 who argued that macroeconomics should be built on the same theoretical foundations as microeconomics in addition to the weak theoretical foundations of these models lucas objected to the way in which the econometric methods used lent themselves to ambiguous interpretations a good example of this is the difficulty of deciding what meaning to give to observed dynamics the new

currency devaluation aggregate output and the long run an empirical study abstract this paper estimates the effect of currency devaluation on the aggregate output level in six asian countries using a unique methodology developed by wickens et al 1988 economic journal 189 205 the estimated results suggest that devaluation in general is neutral in the long run in some cases it even can have a contractionary effect

car ownership and use in britain a comparison of the empirical results of alternative cointegration estimation methods and forecasts this paper addresses two problems faced by many forecasters in the transport sector namely how to use a relatively small sample to forecast car ownership over a long period of time and avoid the difficulties caused by spurious or nonsense regressions five alternative estimation methods are used to test for cointegrating relationships between per capita car ownership and use and real per capita personable disposable income real motoring costs and real bus fares these are the engle granger two stage the phillips hansen fully modified the wickens breusch one stage the autoregressive distributed lag and the johansen maximum likelihood methods the corresponding error correction models are estimated and a comparison made between the derived short and long run demand elasticities for car ownership and use the ex post forecasting performance of the error correction models together with an arima model specification is evaluated using a number of performance criteria the long range time series fore

an analysis of the disaggregated manufacturing exports of the asian nies to eec usa and japan this paper examines the export performance of the four asian newly industrialized economics nies by modelling their bilateral export flows to three main oecd blocks the usa japan and the european community our estimated export demand models reveal interesting asymmetries between these three areas of destination which do not emerge from previous aggregate empirical studies of nie export performance

interest rate innovations and the business cycle abstract recent evidence from vector autoregressions points towards the importance of interest rate innovations in explaining output variations we show that this evidence supports an interpretation of business cycles based on nominal contractual rigidities rather than cotinuous market clearing

tests of exchange market efficiency fragile evidence from cointegration tests abstract several recent papers have employed engle and granger 1987 cointegration tests to determine whether or not markets are efficient we use a new test for cointegration due to johansen 1988 to examine market efficiency with respect to the us dollar exchange rates for canadian japanese and west german currencies the fragile nature of the test indications suggests that cointegration methodologies cannot be relied upon to provide reliable evidence on market efficiency

theory and estimation in the economics of housing demand the main purpose of this paper is to review recent theoretical and empirical developments in the economics of housing demand in particular we ask what is known concerning the permanent income elasticity of housing demand vis a vis the current or measured income elasticity what is known concerning price elasticities what is the appropriate functional form for housing demand equations what is the role of demographic variables what is known concerning dynamic aspects of housing demand what appear to be the major sources of bias in existing estimates of demand equations

determinants of agriculture s relative decline thailand during economic development agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output a number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature but their relative historical significance has not been clear this paper develops an econometric methodology to analyze this issue and applies it to time series data for thailand the study investigates the importance of relative commodity prices factor endowments and technical progress as explanations for changing sectoral gdp shares of agriculture manufacturing and services it is concluded that the movement in thailand s aggregate factor endowment relative to labor was the most important determinant of agriculture s relative decline

pollution reduction preferences of u s environmental managers applying ajzen s theory of planned behavior we modified ajzen s theory of planned behavior to analyze the behavioral preferences of environmental managers we used structural equation analysis to link the source reduction preferences of 295

an optimal taxation approach to fiscal federalism in a federal system of government each unit of government decides independently how much of each type of public good to provide and what types of taxes and which tax rates to use in funding the public goods in this paper we explore what types of problems can arise from this decentralized form of decision making in particular we describe systematically the types of externalities that one unit of government can create for nonresidents through both its public goods decisions and its taxation decisions the paper also explores briefly what the central government might do to lessen the costs of decentralized decision making

the welfare effects of intergovernmental grants in an economy with distortionary local taxes a simple general equilibrium analysis this paper examines the welfare impact of intergovernmental transfers when recipient governments use distortionary taxes both lump sum and matching grants are investigated a distortionary factor depending on local demand and supply elasticities and the local tax rate on the taxed commodity determines the real income change to a jurisdiction per dollar transferred matching grants are dominated by lump sum grants when these can be set optimally for each recipient if grant policy must be uniform positive or negative matching rates are desired if equity adjusted distortionary factors are positively negatively correlated with local public service levels

in the market but not of it fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification as market based social change summary this paper discusses two well known market based social change initiatives fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification which harness market forces to pursue social and environmental objectives a serious challenge for both is to operate in the conventional market without undermining their original objectives a global commodity chain analysis approach is combined with insights from economic sociology embeddedness theory to explore the social cultural and organizational factors shaping the initiatives governance structures both initiatives are seen to move along opposite organizational trajectories but face similar pressures from conventional market logics practices and dominant actors a preliminary framework is proposed for comparative assessment focusing on distribution of benefits how conventional market institutions may be questioned and how internal governance manages diverse stakeholder interests and influence

tax decentralization and local government size this paper investigates the relationship between fiscal federalism and the sizes of local governments while many empirical studies emphasized that grants encourage the growth of local public spending and local taxes constrain it they are more silent regarding the effects of different types of tax autonomy the paper addresses this issue by arguing that tax decentralization as organized on tax bases used only by local governments tax separation rather than on tax base sharing would restrain local public expenditures using an unbalanced panel of oecd countries the key finding is that only property taxes mostly based on a tax separation scheme seem to favor smaller local governments thus while tax decentralization is a necessary condition for limiting the growth of local governments it does not appear sufficient as tax separation schemes among government levels would in fact be required

cointegration and dynamic time series models abstract this paper provides a survey of some of the recent developments in the field of econometric modelling with cointegrated time series in particular we describe the testing and estimation procedures which have become increasingly popular in the recent applied literature in addition to the two stage procedure proposed by engle and granger we consider extensions to the modelling of dynamic models with cointegrated variables such as the estimation of models with multiple cointegration vectors simultaneous systems models with seasonally integrated and cointegrated variables furthermore we illustrate the practical application of the techniques describes in the paper by means of a tutorial data set

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

the demand for the components of broad money error correction and generalized asset adjustment sytems the distinction between bank and non bank deposits have been blurred over the last decade and this has led to changes in the demand for various types of monetary aggregates thus money demand studies which focus only on one monetary aggregate like m3 currency plus bank deposits without allowing for the altered nature of asset substitutions may lead to wrong inferences about the cause of the growth of the money this paper is concerned with the interactions between the components of broad money currency bank and non bank deposits in the long and short run the long run asset demand equations are specified to encompass the transaction and portfolio motives for demanding money while the short run asset adjustment equations are derived from an underlying dynamic cost minimizing model the short run asset adjustment model is of the error correction form and under certain assumptions is shown to nest the generalized adjustment form the model is applied to the case of australia using both quarterly and

price inertia and policy ineffectiveness in the united states 1890 1980 this paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the lucas sargent wallace lsw policy ineffectiveness proposition which compares the lsw hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run but only gradually in the short run to nominal aggregate demand disturbances the empirical equations estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890 exhibit uniformly high responses of real output and low responses of price changes to anticipated changes in nominal gnp the paper compares and tests three alternative methods of introducing persistence effects into the lsw framework

convergence versus divergence of csr in developing countries an embedded multi layered institutional lens this paper capitalizes on an institutional perspective to analyze corporate social responsibility csr orientations in the lebanese context specifically the paper compiles a new theoretical framework drawing on a multi level model of institutional flows by scott institutions and organizations ideas and interests 2008 and the explicit implicit csr model by matten and moon acad manag rev 33 2 404 424 2008 this new theoretical framework is then used to explore the csr convergence versus divergence question in a developing country context the findings highlight the usefulness of the compiled multi layered institutional framework and the varied nuances and profound insights it offers in analyzing csr in context they also suggest that a cosmetic level of global convergence in explicit csr may materialize in light of mimetic isomorphic pressures but that the path dependence hypothesis is indeed salient in light of national history trajectories and socio politico configurations the findings correspond most closely to patterns of csr crossvergence combining elements of both convergence and divergence and reflecting in complex hybridized csr expressions the findings and their implications are presented and assessed

the contribution of environmental and social standards towards ensuring legitimacy in supply chain governance increasingly companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility csr in supply chains this is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders yet a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies using them as a legitimacy front this strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long term trust in these instruments of csr meaning that all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies therefore this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company s aim but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards this research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research comparing four different social and environmental standards revealing weaknesses and strengths it exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data