economic shocks wealth and welfare the immediate effects of the asian crisis on the well being of indonesians are examined using the indonesia family life survey an on going longitudinal household survey there is tremendous diversity in the effect of the shock for some households it was devastating for others it brought new opportunities a wide array of mechanisms were adopted in response to the crisis households combined to more fully exploit benefits of scale economies in consumption labor supply increased even as real wages collapsed households reduced spending on semi durables while maintaining expenditures on foods rural households used wealth particularly gold to smooth consumption

the limits of explanation testing the internalization theory of the multinationial enterprise the paper explores the difficulties of testing the internalization approach in the modern theory of the multinational enterprise the structure of the theory is elaborated and the conclusion drawn that testing cannot occur at the most general theoretical level but that the theory requires careful restricting assumptions to be placed on it to allow rigorous testing several empirical circumstances would constitute refutation if they could be shown to hold however the use of unconventional cases or outliers does not constitute disproof more rigour is required in formulating and testing the theory but the current verdict on the theory must be not disproven

cost of living inequality during the great recession using detailed barcode level data we construct income group specific price indices for the period of 2004 to 2010 we find substantial differences across income groups arising mainly during the great recession the annual cost of living inflation of the highest quartile has been on average 0 7 percentage points lower than that of the lowest quartile of the income distribution the difference can be explained by the way consumers adjusted their shopping behavior to mitigate the crisis we find that product quality substitution a margin mostly available to richer households is the main mechanism explaining the differences in cost of living inflation our evidence suggests that not accounting for these differences during economic downturns could lead to significant biases in the calculation of inequality and poverty measures jel classifications d12 e31 e32 we thank fernando alvarez erik hurst anil kashyap robert lucas and joseph vavra for their advice and support the paper benefited from comments and suggestions by many others including bong geun choi jorge l garcia jessie handbury sara moreira roberto robatto adriaan ten kate yike wang chen yeh and seminar participants at the university of chicago iea meeting washington university graduate student conference and the midwest macro meeting contacts david argente dargente uchicago edu munseob lee munseob uchicago edu

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

a multi dimensional analysis on microeconomic factors of china s industrial energy intensity 2000 2017 abstract reducing energy intensity is the key point to solve the contradiction among economic development energy constraints and environmental pressure in china considering microeconomic factors this paper extends decomposition and attribution models and analyses the drivers of china s industrial aggregate energy intensity aei at the regional sectoral level the results show that aei decreased by 49 during 2000 2017 at the regional level most provinces presented negative contribution on regional energy intensity effect the aei decline was attributed to the drop of greatest negative effect of r d efficiency in liaoning the increase in investment intensity and r d intensity lead to an increase in aei largely owning to shandong and liaoning respectively at the sectoral level the aei decline can be mainly explained by the inhibition effect of energy intensity and r d efficiency however this negative contribution was greatly offset by the r d intensity effect the investment intensity showed a positive impact in aei increase and smelting and pressing of ferrous metals sector was the main contributor regional and sectoral investment structure effect shifted from increasing to decreasing aei over the study period based on the results targeted policy recommendations are proposed to further decrease the china s industrial aei in the 14th fyp period

the behavior of prices and inflation an empirical analysis of disaggregat price data this paper analyzes the effects of inflation on the dispersion of prices as well as other aspects of price behavior using disaggregated data on prices of foodstuffs in israel during 1978 84 we find that the effect of expected inflation on intramarket price variability is stronger than the effect of unexpected inflation we show that even in times of high inflation price quotations are not trivially short and price changes are not synchronized across firms these facts taken together confirm that there is some staggering in the setting of prices we find that the distribution of real prices is far from being uniform as many menu cost based models assume or conclude in fact as inflation increases to very high levels this distribution is not even symmetric when the annual inflation rate reaches 130 percent there are equal chances of finding real prices above or below the market average but upward deviations in the real price are further away from zero than downward ones furthermore as the annu

buying less but shopping more the use of nonmarket labor during a crisis households allocating time between market and non market uses should respond to income variations by adjusting the time devoted to shopping search and other home production activities in this paper we exploit high frequency household expenditure data to examine the use of changes in shopping intensity as a method of mitigating the effects of the 2002 argentine economic crisis although the total quantity and real value of goods purchased fell during the crisis consumers are found to be doing more shopping search this increase in shopping is shown to enable households to seek out lower prices and locate substitutes allowing a given level of expenditure to buy more goods the magnitude and prevalence of these effects suggest that this non market use of labor can be an important coping strategy for households during a recession

responding to public disclosure of corporate social irresponsibility in host countries information control and ownership control we extend the internalization literature by theorizing on how public disclosure of corporate social irresponsibility csi can damage reputation based firm specific advantages of multinational companies mncs and how foreign subsidiary governance can subsequently be used as strategic responses specifically we distinguish between two foreign subsidiary governance mechanisms information control and ownership control that the prior literature has often assumed operate in parallel and posit that they function in divergent directions in this context furthermore we explain how two host country characteristics press freedom and regulatory quality amplify the need for mncs to utilize different governance mechanisms as responses to csi disclosure

living and dying with hard pegs the rise and fall of argentina s currency board the rise and fall of argentina s currency board shows the extent to which the advantages of hard pegs have been overstated the currency board did provide nominal stability and boosted financial intermediation at the cost of endogenous financial dollarization but did not foster monetary or fiscal discipline the failure to adequately address the currency growth debt trap into which argentina fell at the end of the 1990s precipitated a run on the currency and the banks followed by the abandonment of the currency board and a sovereign debt default the crisis can be best interpreted as a bad outcome of a high stakes strategy to overcome a weak currency problem to increase the credibility of the hard peg the government raised its exit costs which deepened the crisis once exit could no longer be avoided but some alternative exit strategies would have been less destructive than the one adopted

immigration and prices this paper examines the behavior of prices following the unexpected arrival of a large number of immigrants from the former soviet union fsu to israel during 1990 i use store level price data on 915 consumer price index products to show that the increase in aggregate demand prompted by the arrival of the fsu immigration significantly reduced prices during 1990 when one controls for native population size and city and month effects a one percentage point increase in the ratio of immigrants to natives in a city decreases prices by 0 5 percentage point on average it is argued that this negative immigration effect is consistent with fsu immigrants the new consumers having higher price elasticities and lower search costs than the native population thus immigration can have a moderating effect on inflation through its direct effect on product markets and not only by increasing the supply of labor

the timing and magnitude of retail store markdowns evidence from weekends and holidays we examine daily prices of eight goods at seventeen retail stores collected in ann arbor michigan over a four month period from november 1 to february 28 we focus on weekly and seasonal price patterns and on the frequency of price markdowns or sales there were frequent markdowns in the intensive shopping period prior to christmas and a tendency for such sales to occur on weekends we interpret these findings as evidence that a significant number of markdowns are timed to occur when shopping intensity is exogenously high we complement the imperfect information based motives for sales in the literature by contributing an additional element based on the role of bulk shopping and increasing returns in the shopping technology

do the urban poor face higher food prices evidence from vietnam abstract whether there is a poverty penalty in terms of food prices is unsettled in the literature after more than four decades of study unit values from household surveys suggest that prices vary with income while outlet surveys typically find food prices varying with store type but not with neighborhood income most outlet surveys are from rich countries with just one spatially limited study from a developing country in this paper we use especially collected food price data from metropolitan areas of vietnam to test whether the urban poor face higher food prices food prices in low income neighborhoods are 1 lower on average than in other neighborhoods unit values give a different answer to the question of whether the poor face higher prices and are not suited to answer such a question

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

on high inflation and the allocation of resources abstract this paper formalizes some of the disruptive effects of inflation on the organization of markets rapid inflation induces buyers to speed up purchases which thus inhibits the selection of more adequate trading partners through search this blurs distinctions across firms of different productivities and leads to resource misallocations as inflation causes efficient and inefficient firms to be less distinguishable the incentives to engage in cost reduction are dampened and lower growth results the model could provide a rationale for the large number of bankruptcies and large turnover rates following successful inflation stabilization programs like those of israel bolivia and argentina

the multinational firm direct investment is incorporated into a simple general equilibrium model of international trade the analysis focuses on an attempt to endogenize the internalization decision it is argued that a reasonable approach assumes that arm s length contracts must be simple so that complex arrangements require internalization the model relates direct investment to the degree of underlying uncertainty and to fundamental trade determinants such as relative factor endowments the behavior of the model contrasts sharply with that of the markusen helpman model which takes internalization for granted

are firm specific advantages location specific too much of the research on the role of firm specific advantages on firms subsidiary ownership preferences has been undertaken in the context of advanced country multinationals specifically u s mncs research has found that u s firms derive ownership advantages from their size experience and technological and marketing superiority perhaps having operated in the most developed and sophisticated home market many u s firms generate unique skills that give them absolute advantages over firms in almost all foreign host locations developing country mncs do not have absolute ownership advantages similar to those of the u s firms the relevance of a particular firm specific characteristic for a developing country mnc may be contingent not only upon the home country characteristics as in the case of u s mncs but also upon host country characteristics this study investigates the subsidiary ownership preferences among korean mncs and finds that the influence of three firm specific advantages technological intensity product differentiation and capital intensity on subsidiary ownership levels is contingent upon whether the subsidiary is located in a relatively less developed or a more developed country as compared to the home country although some authors have suggested that the influence of firm specific advantages may be contingent upon the characteristics of both home and host country locations empirical investigations to this effect have been nonexistent

foreign direct investment and investment under uncertainty we show that in uncertain environments ownership and internalization advantages may be negatively rather than positively associated with fdi this reversal from extant theory occurs because ownership advantages often serve to make fdi delayable while internalization advantages often serve to make it less reversible when fdi becomes either more delayable or less reversible it is less likely to occur at a point in time our approach enriches the who where and why explanations offered by current fdi theory to incorporate the question of when

search sticky prices and inflation this paper examines equilibrium in a deflationary environment in a market with free entry where consumers search and firms set prices on individual units of the commodity prices attached to newly produced goods are continuously adjusted prices attached to previously produced goods can only be changed at a cost deflation cuts into the market power created by the need to search for the good thus consumers welfare is inverse u shaped in deflation

decoupling co2 emissions and industrial growth in china over 1993 2013 the role of investment abstract since industrial sector is a leading energy consumer and co 2 emitter in china the degree of the decoupling of co 2 emissions and industrial growth plays a critical role in realizing the energy conservation and emission reduction goals of china this is the first study to present a specific investigation on the decoupling of co 2 emissions and industrial growth in china from 1993 to 2013 using an extended logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model focusing on both energy related and process related co 2 emissions and introducing three novel investment factors i e investment scale investment share and investment efficiency we highlight and explore the remarkable role of investment in the mitigation and decoupling of co 2 emissions with industrial growth the results show that china s industrial sector experienced the weak decoupling during 1993 2013 the investment scale is the most important factor responsible for the increase in co 2 emissions and the inhibition of the decoupling the investment efficiency effect has a volatile trend and overall it plays the most significant role in reducing co 2 emissions followed by the energy intensity effect and process carbon intensity effect whereas the energy mix carbon coefficient and investment share have marginal effects among 36 industrial sub sectors the seven factors of rcmcp raw chemical materials and chemical products nmp nonmetal mineral products and spfm smelting and pressing of ferrous metals have significant effects on the decoupling thus the three sub sectors should be among the top concerns for abating co 2 emissions finally we provide policy recommendations considering both conventional and investment factors for china s industrial sector to realize emission reduction targets

how to reduce energy intensity in china s heavy industry evidence from a seemingly uncorrelated regression abstract with rapid development and large scale urbanization china s environmental and resource constraints are becoming increasingly severe compared to other industries china s heavy industry is energy intensive and emission intensive which exerts pressure on energy conservation policies in this paper by establishing a theoretical model of the impact factors of energy intensity we investigate the effects of energy prices ownership structure and industrial concentration and r d investment on the energy intensity of china s heavy industry and seemingly unrelated regression model was used in the estimation of corresponding coefficients the results show that increase in energy prices decrease in state owned enterprises and increase in industrial concentration may reduce the energy intensity of the industry also the study points to evidence that an increase in r d investment may reduce the oil intensity of heavy industry

risk and insurance in a rural credit market an empirical investigation in northern nigeria credit contracts play a direct role in pooling risk between households in northern nigeria repayments owed by borrowers depend on realizations of random shocks by both borrowers and lenders the paper develops two models of state contingent loans the first is a competitive equilibrium in perfectly enforceable contracts the second permits imperfect information and equilibrium default estimates of both models indicate that quantitatively important state contingent payments are embedded in these loan transactions but that a fully efficient risk pooling equilibrium is not achieved the research is based on a year long survey in zaria nigeria conducted by the author

policy incentives r d investment and the energy intensity of china s manufacturing sector abstract the chinese strategic plan made in china 2025 aims at improving the independent innovation capacity of the manufacturing industry it also commits to constructing green manufacturing systems through cleaner production and green technologies the chinese government provides research and development r d preferential policies to promote the realization of these aims using the two stage least square 2sls method this paper tests the impact of r d capital and its spillover on the energy intensity of the chinese manufacturing industry it also evaluates the effectiveness of r d policy in promoting r d investment at the industry level the findings show that r d capital is positively linked to the reduction of energy intensity and heterogeneity exists in the relationship between energy intensity and r d capital across industries this study finds that in general r d subsidies and tax relief do not significantly promote r d investment but r d subsidies generate a significantly positive effect on the r d intensity in the high tech industries

household production and the excess sensitivity of consumption to current income empirical research on the permanent income hypothesis pih has found that consumption growth is excessively sensitive to predictable changes in income this finding is interpreted as strong evidence against the pih we propose an explanation for apparent excess sensitivity that is based on a quantitative equilibrium model of household production in which permanent income consumers respond to shifts in sectoral wages and prices by substituting work effort and consumption across home and market sectors although the pih is true this mechanism generates apparent excess sensitivity because market consumption responds to predictable income growth

decomposition analysis of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china abstract electricity generation in china mainly depends on coal and its products which has led to the increase in co2 emissions this paper intends to analyze the current status of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china during the period 1991 2009 and apply the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi technique to find the nature of the factors influencing the changes in co2 emissions the main results as follows 1 co2 emission from electricity generation has increased from 530 96 mt in 1991 to 2393 02 mt in 2009 following an annual growth rate of 8 72 coal products is the main fuel type for thermal power generation which accounts for more than 90 co2 emissions from electricity generation 2 this paper also presents co2 emissions factor of electricity consumption which help calculate co2 emission from final electricity consumption 3 in china the economic activity effect is the most important contributor to increase co2 emissions from electricity generation but the electricity generation efficiency effect plays the dominant role in decreasing co2 emissions

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

price dispersion and inflation evidence from israel the paper considers the question whether observed price differentials reflect perceived differences in quality service agreements or location or whether information imperfections can explain this phenomenon it sets out theoretical arguments linking inflation to reductions in the information stock held by agents and thus to greater price dispersion the hypothesis is tested using monthly price data for 13 uniquely defined goods sold in israel between 1971 and 1984 price dispersion is shown to be positively related to the rate of market price inflation since inflation is an unlikely proxy for changes in perceived characteristics the findings support price dispersion theories based on optimally imperfect decision making

inflation and variety economies undergoing high inflation often experience a reduction of product variety in the marketplace existing models study how inflation affects quantity but very few have studied how inflation affects variety in a monetary model with explicit microfoundations i analyze how inflation affects variety as well as quantity i consider two pricing mechanisms bargaining and price posting with directed search i show that inflation reduces both quantity and variety under both pricing mechanisms quantitatively the model implies that the total welfare cost of 10 inflation ranges from 4 77 to 8 4 under bargaining and is 1 52 under price posting

regional heterogeneity of china s energy efficiency in new normal a meta frontier super sbm analysis abstract this study aims at investigating regional heterogeneity of china s energy efficiency in the new normal a model combining meta frontier method and super sbm is proposed which has higher discriminatory power under the group frontier the energy efficiencies of the eastern central western and northeastern china and each provinces were estimated during 2006 2016 we also discussed the technology gaps of different regions the changes in energy efficiency and the main influencing factors of energy efficiency the results show that the highest energy efficiency lied in eastern china surprisingly the technology levels of central and western china have improved rapidly furthermore as china enters a new normal period more regions showed a strong decoupling relationship between energy consumption and economic growth meanwhile the regression results indicate that both state intervention and market openness had negative impacts on energy efficiency in different study periods finally according to the local conditions of different regions several policy recommendations to promote china s regional energy efficiency improvement are proposed

the elasticity of substitution between time and market goods evidence from the great recession the elasticity of substitution between time and market goods we document a change in household shopping behavior during the great recession households purchased more on sale larger sizes and generic products increased coupon usage and shopping at discount stores we estimate that the returns to these shopping activities declined during the recession and therefore this behavior implies a significant decrease in households opportunity cost of time using the estimated cost of time and time use data we estimate a high elasticity of substitution between market expenditure and time spent on non market work we find that households smooth a sizable fraction of consumption by varying their time allocation during recessions institutional subscribers to the nber working paper series and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www nber org

using an extended lmdi model to explore techno economic drivers of energy related industrial co2 emission changes a case study for shanghai china although investment and r d activities can exert significant effects on energy related industrial co2 emissions eice related factors have not been fairly uncovered in the existing index decomposition studies this paper extends the previous logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition model by introducing three novel factors r d intensity investment intensity and r d efficiency the extended model not only considers the conventional drivers of eice but also reflects the microeconomic effects of investment and r d behaviors on eice furthermore taking shanghai as an example which is the economic center and leading co2 emitter in china we use the extended model to decompose and explain eice changes also we incorporate renewable energy sources into the proposed model to carry out an alternative decomposition analysis at shanghai s entire industrial level the results show that among conventional macroeconomic factors expanding output scale is mainly responsible for the increase in eice and industrial structure adjustment is the most significant factor in mitigating eice regardless of renewable energy sources the emission reduction effect of energy intensity focused on by the chinese government is less than the expected due to the rebound effect but the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies its mitigating effect partly resulting from the transmission from the abating effect of industrial structure adjustment the effect of energy structure is the weakest although all the three novel factors exert significant effects on eice they are more sensitive to policy interventions than conventional factors r d intensity presents an obvious mitigating effect while investment intensity and r d efficiency display an overall promotion effect with some volatility the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies the promotion effect of r d efficiency as a result of the green paradox effect finally we propose that co2 mitigation efforts should be made by considering both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors in order to achieve a desirable emission reduction effect

crises and the poor socially responsible macroeconomics this paper presents evidence on the impact of economic crisis on poverty and inequality in latin america crises not only result in higher poverty rates but also may cause irreversible damage to the human capital of the poor in light of this evidence the author concludes that crisis avoidance and a pro poor response to crisis should be a major component of a poverty reduction strategy as a result the paper analyses the role of exchange rate policy capital controls and countercyclical fiscal policy in generating or avoiding crisis responses to macroeconomic crisis are assessed by considering the effects of different policy combinations the use of safety nets and the composition of fiscal adjustment to protect the income of the poor in the face of macroeconomic adjustment the main lesson is that socially responsible macroeconomic policy can protect the poor during times of crisis and simultaneously contribute to lower chronic poverty

a multi region multi sector decomposition and attribution analysis of aggregate carbon intensity in china from 2000 to 2015 abstract index decomposition analysis ida has been used to analyze driving forces of aggregate carbon intensity aci however previous studies mostly explained changes in aci from either sectoral or regional perspective but rarely looked into driving forces of aci from both sectoral and regional perspectives under a unified and consistent framework to fill the research gap this study proposed a multi region multi sector decomposition and attribution approach to analyze driving forces of aci from both sectoral and regional perspectives the empirical results in china show that the aci declined by 33 from 2000 to 2015 from the sectoral perspective the decline can be mainly attributed to the significant energy efficiency improvement in six high energy intensive industries however the rapid growth in electricity consumption especially in chemicals and iron and steel and the expansion of iron and steel industry during 2000 2005 greatly offset the negative effect from energy efficiency from the regional perspective the aci decline can be primarily due to an extensive improvement in energy efficiency in most regions on the contrary the increasing dependency on coal particularly in shandong inner mongolia and guangdong and the increased share of carbon intensive industries in some provinces such as guangxi and sichuan markedly increased aci based on the results the effectiveness of underlying sectoral and regional level policies and measures implemented for aci reduction in china were evaluated

income smoothing and consumption smoothing one way that risk averse households protect consumption levels is to borrow and use insurance mechanisms another way common in low income economies is to diversify economic activities and make conservative production and employment choices households thus tend toward limiting exposure only to shocks that can be handled with available credit and insurance typically both types of mechanisms are studied independently but much more can be learned by studying them together first we obtain a more complete picture of risks costs and insurance possibilities second it opens the way to considering biases in standard tests of credit and insurance

why did china s energy intensity increase during 1998 2006 decomposition and policy analysis abstract despite the fact that china s energy intensity has continuously decreased during the 1980s and mostly 1990s the decreasing trend has reversed since 1998 and the past few years have witnessed rapid increase in china s energy intensity we firstly conduct an index decomposition analysis to identify the key forces behind the increase it is found that 1 the high energy demand in industrial sectors is mainly attributed to expansion of production scale especially in energy intensive industries 2 energy saving mainly comes from efficiency improvement with energy intensive sectors making the largest contribution and 3 a heavier industrial structure also contributes to the increase this study also makes the first attempt to bridge the quantitative decomposition analysis with qualitative policy analyses and fill the gap between decomposition results and policy relevance in previous work we argue that 1 energy efficiency improvement in energy intensive sectors is mainly due to the industrial policies that have been implemented in the past few years 2 low energy prices have directly contributed to high industrial energy consumption and indirectly to the heavy industrial structure we provide policy suggestions in the end

analysis of electricity consumption in china 1990 2016 using index decomposition and decoupling approach abstract electricity consumption accounts for a significant portion of final energy consumption in countries worldwide and has a close relationship with economic growth this paper explores the factors influencing electricity consumption in china during 1990 2016 using index decomposition analysis and analyses the decoupling status between economic growth and electricity consumption in addition to the influencing factors these analyses are conducted at both national and sectoral levels the results reveal that 1 the economic activity effect was the main driving force increasing total electricity consumption in china while the energy intensity effect hindered it 2 both diversity and aggregation existed at the sector level the power generation chemicals and non ferrous sectors were the top three contributors to increased electricity consumption 3 the change of electricity consumption caused by gdp growth in china showed three decoupling states during 1990 2016 expansive negative decoupling expansive coupling and weak decoupling in particular the energy intensity effect stimulated the occurrence of decoupling 4 industrial sectors played a significant role in decoupling in china while service sectoral electricity consumption showed expansive coupling with its sectoral gdp in recent years

trade liberalization and regional dynamics abstract we study the evolution of trade liberalization s effects on brazilian local labor markets regions facing larger tariff cuts experienced prolonged declines in formal sector employment and

economic exchange during hyperinflation historical evidence indicates that hyperinflations can disrupt individuals normal trading patterns and impede the orderly functioning of markets to explore these issues we construct a theoretical model of hyperinflation that focuses on individuals and their process of economic exchange in our model buyers must carry cash while shopping and some transactions take place in a decentralized setting in which buyer and seller negotiate over the terms of trade of an indivisible good since buyers face the constant threat of incoming younger hence richer customers their bargaining position is weakened by inflation allowing sellers to extract a higher real price however we show that higher inflation also reduces buyers search increasing sellers wait for customers as a result the volume of transactions concluded in the decentralized sector falls at high enough rates of inflation all agents suffer a welfare loss

homework in development economics household production and the wealth of nations we introduce home production into the neoclassical growth model and examine its consequences for development economics in particular we study the extent to which one can account for international income differences with differences in policies that distort capital accumulation in models with home production such policies not only reduce capital accumulation but also change the mix of market and nonmarket activity hence these models can generate larger differences in output than standard models for a given policy differential we also show how the welfare implications change when we incorporate home production

internalization advantage and subsidiary performance the role of business group affiliation and host country characteristics we extend internalization theory by examining the contingencies associated with market internalization and its impact on foreign subsidiary survival based on a sample of 6170 subsidiary year observations in 63 countries belonging to 292 mncs from korea during 1995 2013 we find that greater product and labor market internalization have weaker impacts on the survival of subsidiaries operating in countries with more developed institutional environments but stronger for subsidiaries of mncs affiliated with business groups the impact of business group affiliation is further dependent on host country institutional development and the diversification and size of the business group

what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate 1997 2006 abstract china is the second largest energy consumer in the world during 1997 2002 china s energy intensity declined by 33 however it rose by 10 7 over 2003 2005 and declined by 1 2 in 2006 what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate so drastically industry accounts for approximately 70 of the total energy consumption in china in this paper we decompose china s industrial energy intensity changes between 1997 and 2002 into sectoral structural effects and efficiency effects measured by sectoral energy intensities at two digit level and including the shifts of product mix in the sub sector or firm level using tornqvist and sato vartia index methods the results show that in this period efficiency effects possibly contributed to a majority of the decline while the contribution from structural effects was less during 2003 2005 the excessive expansion of high energy consuming sub sectors and the high investment ratio were foremost sources of the increasing energy intensity attributed to the government efforts the energy intensity has started to decline slightly since july 2006 in future to save more energy in addition to technical progress china should attach more importance to optimizing its sectoral structure and lowering its investment ratio

sticky prices new evidence from retail catalogs this paper presents new results on the size frequency and synchronization of price changes for twelve selected retail goods over the past 35 years three basic facts about the data are uncovered first nominal prices are typically fixed for more than one year although the time between changes is very irregular second prices change more often during periods of high overall inflation third when prices do change the sizes of the changes are widely dispersed both large and small changes occur for the same item and the sizes of these changes do not closely depend on overall inflation

explaining cross country productivity differences in retail trade many macroeconomists argue that productivity is low in developing countries because of frictions that impede the adoption of modern technologies i argue that in the retail trade sector developing countries rationally choose technologies with low measured labor productivity my theory is that the adoption of modern retail technologies is optimal only when household ownership of complementary durable goods such as cars is widespread because income is low in the developing world households own few such durables the theory implies that policies that increase measured retail productivity do not necessarily increase welfare

specification and aggregation errors in environmentally extended input output models this article considers the specification and aggregation errors that arise from estimating embodied text co 2 emissions and embodied water use with environmentally extended national input output io models instead of with an environmentally extended international io model model specification errors result from the use of domestic environmental and domestic technology coefficients to estimate emissions or resources that are embodied in international trade for text co 2 footprints unacceptably large overestimations arise from using domestic emission coefficients which are only partly canceled out by using domestic technology coefficients for water use footprints both specification errors are smaller but hardly cancel out sectoral aggregation errors occur when combining the 129 exiopol industries to 59 eu industries and 10 broad sectors the latter aggregation creates the largest errors spatial aggregation errors arise from combining 43 individual exiopol countries in four broad regions and the rest of the world substantial unacceptable errors occur again now especially in relation to water use

the study of international business a plea for a more interdisciplinary approach scholastic efforts to study and teach international business is entirely dependent on our capability to marshal and organise the necessary human and other assets so as to supply a range of end products which are acceptable to the academic community of which we are part our paymasters and the main purchasers of our products viz the business community of course the determinants of success of the practice and study of ib are interrelated and in our particular pursuit for excellence there is no unique or sure fire recipe for success but i observe that in an ever increasingly complex world of international business which is dominated by rapid and far reaching changes in technology and by environmental turbulence this is no less true of successful practitioners rarely in seeking to identify the reasons for business achievement is one able to find a single common denominator sometimes excellence is primarily based on innovatory ingenuity sometimes on the access to or control of key inputs or markets sometimes on aggressive or novel methods of advertising and marketing sometimes on super efficient capital budgeting sometimes on dynamic and imaginative entrepreneurship sometimes on the diversity of operational experiences and capabilities and sometimes on an unusual aptitude to manage human relationships but in most cases success is founded on some amalgam of these and it is the way in which these discrete though increasingly interdependent advantages are ombined with each other and with complementary assets in different countries and cultures which contemporary research suggests is the key competitive advantages of international firms call it what you will e g

input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation abstract energy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers using the environmental input output analysis framework it is well known that both sector aggregation and spatial aggregation affect the results obtained in such studies with regard to the latter past studies are often conducted at the national level irrespective of country or economy size for a large economy with the needed data studies may be conducted at different levels of spatial aggregation we examine this problem analytically by extending the work of su et al su b huang h c ang b w zhou p 2010 input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation energy economics 32 1 166 175 on sector aggregation we present a numerical example using the data of china and by dividing the country into eight regions it is found that the results are highly dependent on spatial aggregation our study shows that for a large country like china it is meaningful to look into the effect of spatial aggregation

why does consumption fall at retirement evidence from germany abstract analyzing the consumption behavior over retirement in germany this paper finds a negative correlation between income replacement and the increase in home production related activities this might reconcile the observed drop in consumption at retirement with the predictions of the standard life cycle model however since individuals with fairly stable income over retirement also increase home production this increase cannot be entirely attributed to a substitution effect

attribution of changes in divisia real energy intensity index an extension to index decomposition analysis abstract in this paper we extend the methodology of index decomposition analysis ida in energy studies by quantifying the contribution of individual attributes to the percent change of factors such as the real energy intensity index and structural change index we apply the proposed method to the real energy intensity index in the multiplicative logarithmic mean divisia index m lmdi approach a major ida technique since the m lmdi is based on geometric mean type indices and chain computation we need some appropriate method to cope with the difficulties that arise we present a numerical illustration of the proposed method using the energy consumption and real value added data of the us manufacturing industry and compare the results obtained by the fisher real energy intensity index

extended divisia index decomposition of changes in energy intensity a case of korean manufacturing industry abstract this study aims to examine the energy efficiency of the manufacturing industry of korea by using the extended divisia index decomposition of choi and ang 2012 first we applied the sato vartia index decomposition to the energy intensity of the manufacturing industry in korea second we attributed the growth rate of aggregate energy intensity to 10 sub manufacturing industries through two channels real energy intensity and structural change the result of the decomposition illustrates that the aggregate energy intensity index decreased in the period 1981 2010 the index decomposition analysis demonstrates that real energy intensity decreased by 85 85 whereas structural change increased energy intensity by 69 37 over the same period of time the negative effect of structural change is partly a result of the increasing portion of energy intensive industry in manufacturing the result reflects that industrial structure in korea can be an important aspect for improving energy efficiency

great expectations and hard times the argentine convertibility plan this paper studies the process that led to the argentine crisis the analysis concentrates on the sequence of public and private decisions together with the varying perceptions and policy incentives that motivated them in the 1990s argentina searched for a new growth trend during much of the period the behavior of agents seemed to be based on the anticipation that current and future incomes could sustain a value of domestic spending much higher than in the past in both real and dollar terms the government was motivated to reinforce those expectations for signaling and political economy reasons the monetary regime not only provided a very visible nominal anchor but also operated as a basic framework for financial contracts mostly denominated in dollars dollar contracting implicitly presumed that the dollar value of incomes would support the servicing of debts despite precautionary actions on the part of the government and the private sector over time an increasing mass of decisions and contracts came to rely on the sustainability of the real exchange rate in the late 1990s exports stopped rising and the foreign supply of credit tightened the economy contracted in the face of these constraints and the solvency of the government was called into question the financial system was vulnerable both in the event of devaluation and in the event of a large deflation cum adjustment convertibility proved to have very large exit costs as was implicit in its design and management

a note on countertrade contractual uncertainty and transaction governance in emerging economies this paper develops a conceptual framework for analyzing organizational responses to contractual uncertainty in the context of emerging economies elaborating on hennart s 1989 transaction cost rationale for countertrade we develop a typology of exchange and transaction governance pertinent to the study of emerging economies contract trust and hostage notwithstanding the traditional explanation based on foreign exchange shortage we argue that the persistence of international countertrade illustrates organizational remedies to institutional deficiency in transaction governance

multiplicative structural decomposition analysis of aggregate embodied energy and emission intensities abstract aggregate intensity indicators such as the ratio of a country s energy and emissions to its gdp are often used by researchers and policymakers to study energy and environmental performance this paper analyzes the relationship between energy or emissions and value added or gdp from a different viewpoint namely from the demand rather than the production perspective using the input output i o framework the aggregate embodied intensity aei defined as the ratio of embodied energy or emissions to embodied value added can be defined at the aggregate final demand category and sectoral levels the total aggregate intensity can be presented as a weighted sum of the aeis at the final demand category or sectoral level changes of the aei at different levels can be decomposed to identify the driving forces using multiplicative sda a study using the latest 2007 and 2012 datasets of china indicates that a its aggregate intensity of co 2 emissions was mainly determined by the aei in investment and b the emission intensity effect generally contributed the most to the aei ratio changes at different levels the proposed framework can be applied to other aggregate intensity indicators and extended to multi country region analysis

what drive the changes in china s energy consumption and intensity during 12th five year plan period abstract during the 12th five year plan period 2011 2015 the chinese government has released a series of energy conservation plans to launch and deepen the transition in the energy use particularly the dual control of the energy consumption and energy intensity was firstly emphasized this paper intends to explore the targeted and effective energy policy implications through investigating the drivers of changes in energy consumption intensity of china during the 12th five year plan period under the input output framework the embodied energy consumptions intensities by final demand category were estimated at aggregate sector level and the total energy consumption intensity was decomposed using the additive multiplicative structural decomposition analysis among the final demand categories china s energy consumption intensity was mainly contributed by the investment followed by the household consumption according to the sda results china s total energy consumption increased by 28 8 of which the energy intensity effect and the investment effect were the most retardant and accelerator respectively at the same time china s total aggregate energy intensity decreased by 16 0 of which the energy intensity effect and the household consumption effect were the most retardant and accelerator respectively in detail the key sectors with respect to the critical effects were picked out above all policy implications are discussed for achieving the energy goals during the 13th five year plan period and launching the energy revolution during the 14th five year plan period

the effect of increasing exports on industrial energy intensity in china abstract given china s heavy reliance on fuel energy and the dominance of its industrial sector in the economy improving energy efficiency remains one of the practical means for the country to decrease energy intensity and to fulfill its commitment made at the copenhagen climate change conference to achieve a 40 45 percent reduction in co 2 emission intensity by 2020 this study investigates the impact of exports on industrial energy intensity to explore the possibility of reducing energy intensity through greater exports a panel varying coefficient regression model with a dataset of china s 20 industrial sub sectors over 1999 2007 suggests that in general greater exports aggravate energy intensity of the industrial sector and that great divergences exist in the impact of exports on energy intensity across sub sectors a panel threshold model further estimates the thresholds for the major determinants of energy intensity exports input in technological innovations and foreign direct investment fdi intensity given the great differences in specific sub sector characteristics and the changing roles played by different factors across sub sectors there is no general export policy that would work for all sub sectors in reducing sub sector energy intensity instead policies and measures aiming to encourage more efficient use of energy should take into full consideration the characteristics and situations of individual sub sectors

how firms grow clustering as a dynamic model of internationalization this paper provides a methodology for identifying the dynamics of international firm expansion demonstrating systematic evidence of both toe in the water and concentrated bursts of internationalization by us multinational enterprises we use the methodology of statistical process control to analyze initial investments in host countries and develop a numerical measure of temporal clustering or bunching using this measure we identify two distinct patterns of growth whereas some firms cluster their investments over time others do not cluster their investments for firms that cluster three types of clustering strategy are identified concentrating hibernating and hybrid arguments based on internal firm architecture experience and learning are advanced to explain these findings

structural decomposition analysis of physical flows in the economy many environmental problems can be attributedto the extraction and emissions of physicalsubstances increasing our understanding of theeconomic and technological driving forcesbehind these physical flows can contribute tosolving the environmental problems related tothem the input output framework is a usefulsetting in which to integrate detailedinformation about economic structure andphysical flows in this article a specificmethod in input output analysis is reviewed namely structural decomposition analysis sda it is based on comparative static analysis which decomposes historical changes of a policyvariable into determinant effects sda has beenapplied for example to analyze the demand andtechnological driving forces of energy use co2 emissions and various other pollutantsand resources this article examines thetheoretical aspects of structuraldecomposition in particular those concerningphysical flows and environmental issues furthermore the article includes an extensivesurvey of empirical studies

driving forces of residential co2 emissions in urban and rural china an index decomposition analysis abstract there exist many differences between urban and rural china among which residential co 2 emissions arising from energy consumption is a major one in this paper we estimate and compare the energy related co 2 emissions from urban and rural residential energy consumption from 1991 to 2004 the logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition analysis is then applied to investigate the factors that may affect the changes of the co 2 emissions it is found that energy intensity and the income effects respectively contributed most to the decline and the increase of residential co 2 emissions for both urban and rural china in urban china the population effect was found to contribute to the increase of residential co 2 emissions with a rising tendency however in rural china the population effect for residential co 2 emissions kept decreasing since 1998

revisiting drivers of energy intensity in china during 1997 2007 a structural decomposition analysis the decline of china s energy intensity slowed since 2000 during 2002 2005 it actually increased reversing the long term trend therefore it is important to identify drivers of the fluctuation of energy intensity we use input output structural decomposition analysis to investigate the contributions of changes in energy mix sectoral energy efficiency production structure final demand structure and final demand category composition to china s energy intensity fluctuation during 1997 2007 we include household energy consumption in the study by closing the input output model with respect to households results show that sectoral energy efficiency improvements contribute the most to the energy intensity decline during 1997 2007 the increase in china s energy intensity during 2002 2007 is instead explained by changes in final demand composition and production structure changes in final demand composition are mainly due to increasing share of exports while changes in production structure mainly arise from the shift of chinese economy to more energy intensive industries changes in energy mix and final demand structure contribute little to china s energy intensity fluctuation from the consumption perspective growing exports of energy intensive products and increasing infrastructure demands explain the majority of energy intensity increase during 2002 2007

energy intensity and investment ownership across chinese provinces abstract the main objective of this paper is to investigate whether openness and investment ownership are key factors in explaining the diffusion of energy saving technologies in china compared with previous studies the novel aspect of this work is the use of a rich dataset at provincial level which allows the high level of regional heterogeneity to be taken into consideration the unbalanced regional growth has been translated into differences in the need for energy resources across the vast territory of china a detailed analysis of these issues may provide new insights into the energy situation in this country the analysis is also disaggregated by type of energy coal electricity and petroleum we estimate the models by panel corrected standard errors developed by beck and katz 1995 over the period 1985 2008 results obtained confirm the hypothesis that both foreign and non state investments play a leading role in the decline of energy intensity across chinese regions whereas there is no evidence of a positive contribution of state investment the findings also reveal differences in energy intensity across regions thus confirming the importance of accounting for the regional dimension when analyzing energy consumption in china

industry energy use and structural change a case study of the people s republic of china abstract this paper examines the effects of structural change and improvements in energy intensities of individual industries in aggregate industry energy intensity changes in china during 1980 88 the divisia index is used to decompose the energy intensity effect and structural effect a major finding of this analysis is that the main contribution to changed aggregate energy intensity was from the changes in energy intensities of individual industries during the period structural effects were found to contribute little to the aggregate energy intensity changes

scraped data and sticky prices i use daily prices collected from online retailers in five countries to study the impact of measurement bias on three common price stickiness statistics relative to previous results i find that o

consumption versus expenditure previous authors have documented a dramatic decline in food expenditures at the time of retirement we show that this is matched by an equally dramatic rise in time spent shopping for and preparing meals using a novel data set that collects detailed food diaries for a large cross section of u s households we show that neither the quality nor the quantity of food intake deteriorates with retirement status we also show that unemployed households experience a decline in food expenditure and food consumption commensurate with the impact of job displacement on permanent income these results highlight how direct measures of consumption distinguish between anticipated and unanticipated shocks to income whereas measures of expenditures obscure the distinction

problems and developments in the core theory of international business the established theory of international business is not without problems it is necessary to specify the key relationships between internalisation and market structure and between internalisation and competitive advantage more carefully this chapter attempts to clarify the former relationship by reference to the work of hymer and the latter by contrasting the nature of internalisation decisions with those building short run competitive advantage avenues of development of the theory include the integration of non traditional concepts and the reintegration of areas of research which have become divorced from core international business theory