stabilization policy a reconsideration i introduction in 1936 keynes s general theory explained how fiscal and monetary policy could be used to end depressions since that time no developed country has ever seen a downturn on the scale of the 1930s the general theory was not just a how to book on the avoidance of depressions it was an argument for stabilization policy itself the years since the general theory have seen a revolt against keynesian economics in a revisionist mode milton friedman argued that countercyclical policy cannot affect the average level of unemployment and output robert lucas and thomas sargent 1979 went further contending that it is not only impossible to increase average output it is also impossible to stabilize it more recently lucas 1987 2003 has argued that policies to stabilize output even if effective would yield negligible welfare gains thus stabilization policy should not be a macroeconomic priority lucas s conclusion notwithstanding stabilization policy has long been an explicit or implicit objective of monetary policy in most industrial countries even including those countries with inflation targets the volatility of output has in fact declined in most major industrial countries since the mid 1980s and monetary policy arguably deserves at least partial credit see bernanke 2004 mirroring practice monetary policy research commonly takes it as given that along with price stability stabilization policy the minimization of squared deviations of output around potential is an appropriate policy objective see for example clarida et al 1999 in this article we explore the economic rationale for stabilization as a policy goal concluding that it does in fact deserve high policy priority we survey a large body of literature that critiques the validity of key assumptions in lucas s argument we also offer suggestive evidence that stabilization policy can significantly reduce average levels of unemployment by providing stimulus to demand in circumstances where unemployment is high but underutilization of labor and capital does little to lower inflation a monetary policy that vigorously fights high unemployment should however also be complemented by a policy that equally vigorously fights inflation when it rises above a modest target level the federal reserve act thus wisely enunciated price stability and maximum employment as twin goals for monetary policy ii the case against stabilization policy macroeconomic analysis typically assumes that social welfare depends negatively on both inflation above a modest target level here assumed zero and unemployment above some minimum socially efficient level for example a standard social welfare function is the discounted sum of period losses l sub t of the form see among others barro and gordon 1983 pp 592 93 1 l sub t a u sub t 1 k u sup 2 b pi sup 2 sub t where u sub t and pi sub t are the unemployment and inflation rates in period t and u sup is the natural rate of unemployment the coefficient k is positive reflecting the desirability of unemployment below the natural rate because real economies deviate in many respects from perfect competition the natural rate of unemployment is likely to exceed the socially optimal unemployment rate for example with monopolistic competition goods are underproduced because they are priced above marginal cost so potential output is inefficiently low and equilibrium unemployment is too high standard macroeconomic analysis additionally assumes that inflation is determined by an expectations augmented accelerationist phillips curve of the form 2 pi sub t pi sup e sub t f u sub t u sup epsilon sub t where pi sup e sub t is the expected inflation rate at time t with expectations formed at t 1 and epsilon sub t captures supply shocks to the phillips curve at t

threshold effects in price transmission the case of brazilian wheat maize and soya prices recent studies into price transmission have recognized the important role played by transport and transaction costs threshold models are one approach to accommodate such costs we develop a generalized threshold error correction model to test for the presence and form of threshold behavior in price transmission that is symmetric around equilibrium we use monthly wheat maize and soya prices from the united states argentina and brazil to demonstrate this model classical estimation of these generalized models can present challenges but bayesian techniques avoid many of these problems evidence for thresholds is found in three of the five commodity price pairs investigated

distinguishing between equilibrium and integration in spatial price analysis this article introduces a new spatial price analysis methodology based on maximum likelihood estimation of a mixture distribution model incorporating price transfer cost and trade flow data this method permits differentiation between market integration and competitive market equilibrium and derivation of intuitive measures of intermarket tradability competitive market equilibrium perfect integration segmented equilibrium and segmented disequilibrium one can also use these estimates to derive semiparametric measures of time varying regime probabilities to track changing market conditions an application to trade in soybean meal among pacific rim economies demonstrates the usefulness of the method copyright 2002 oxford university press

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

substitution elasticities between ghg polluting and nonpolluting inputs in agricultural production a meta regression abstract this paper reports meta regressions of substitution elasticities between greenhouse gas ghg polluting and nonpolluting inputs in agricultural production which is the main feedstock source for biofuel in the u s we treat energy fertilizer and manure collectively as the polluting input and labor land and capital as nonpolluting inputs we estimate meta regressions for samples of morishima substitution elasticities for labor land and capital vs the polluting input much of the heterogeneity of morishima elasticities can be explained by type of primal or dual function functional form type and observational level of data input categories number of outputs type of output time period and country categories each estimated long run elasticity for the reference case which is most relevant for assessing ghg emissions through life cycle analysis is greater than 1 0 and significantly different from zero most predicted long run elasticities remain significantly different from zero at the data means these findings imply that life cycle analysis based on fixed proportion production functions could provide grossly inaccurate measures of ghg of biofuel

trade costs and deviations from the law of one price the link between relative prices across countries and trade costs requires a theoretical foundation that is absent in the literature to date empirical tests on the law of one price are based on an arbitrage equation which is of very limited relevance in understanding this link the application of a new set of arbitrage equations to the tin trade market yields results that are consistent with our theoretical expectations we find evidence in favor of the law of one price between the united states and japan however evidence of price discrimination is also found for the los angeles market

bayesian estimation and selection of nonlinear vector error correction models the case of the sugar ethanol oil nexus in brazil nonlinear adjustment toward long run price equilibrium relationships in the sugar ethanol oil nexus in brazil is examined we develop generalized bivariate error correction models that allow for cointegration between sugar ethanol and oil prices where dynamic adjustments are potentially nonlinear functions of the disequilibrium errors a range of models are estimated using bayesian monte carlo markov chain algorithms and compared using bayesian model selection methods the results suggest that the long run drivers of brazilian sugar prices are oil prices and that there are nonlinearities in the adjustment processes of sugar and ethanol prices to oil price but linear adjustment between ethanol and sugar prices

the ethiopian commodity exchange and spatial price dispersion abstract in this article we study the impact of an institutional intervention on market efficiency in ethiopia more specifically we analyze to what extent the ethiopian commodity exchange ecx in combination with regional warehouses have contributed to a reduction in price spreads between regional markets our hypothesis is that warehouses connected to the ecx reduce the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas as well as the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas by doing so the ecx has the potential to improve the market efficiency to identify the causal effect we combine retail price data with information on the gradual rollout of warehouses connected to the ecx from 2007 to 2012 our results suggest that when two markets both have access to an operating warehouse the average price spread is 0 86 1 78 etb lower than it is for markets where at least one part lacks warehouse access this is a substantial reduction considering that the average price spread over the full period is 3 33 etb the main results are robust to various econometric specifications and our analysis thus suggests that local warehouses connected to the ecx have indeed improved market efficiency

determination of the international maize price what is the growing role of brazil and ukraine this paper examines the relationships among maize prices for four countries to determine if newly emerging exporters brazil and ukraine influence the international price of maize our work focuses on each market s participation in the price discovery process rather than trying to determine a price leader we find that the united states plays the largest role in price discovery followed by argentina brazil and ukraine we also search for export thresholds and find that ukraine s contribution to price discovery rises slightly when an export threshold of 2 3 million tons is reached no export thresholds were found for brazil export thresholds for argentina were found but only have a minor impact on price relationships we also found that price relationships vary considerably across seasons of the year

measuring market integration in the presence of transaction costs a threshold vector error correction approach applied econometric analyses of market integration based on price data alone have been criticised because they neglect the role of transaction costs to meet this objection threshold vector error correction models are used threshold models can account for the effects of transaction costs in price transmission without directly relying upon information about these costs which are often unavailable it is argued that threshold models that are based on two thresholds provide results that are economically more intuitive than those obtained from one threshold models however to this point no adequate econometric test is available for threshold significance in a two threshold model such tests are only available for the one threshold model in this paper a restricted two threshold model is developed in which the significance of the thresholds can be tested this model is therefore amenable to economic interpretation and statistical inference the model is used to estimate market integration in the european pig market

pioneering price level targeting the swedish experience 1931 1937 in september 1931 sweden became the first country to make the stabilization of the domestic price level the official goal of its monetary policy actually the only country that so far has adopted such an explicit price level target starting from the issues and concepts familiar from research and policy experience of inflation targeting as contrasted to price level targeting this paper examines the evolution of the swedish price level targeting in the 1930s we bring out a number of similarities and differences between price stabilization in the 1930s and in the 1990s

irving fisher on the international transmission of booms and depressions through monetary standards the role of monetary standards in the international transmission of economic fluctuations particularly the role of the gold standard in the depression has attracted considerable recent attention for instance from choudhri and kochin 1980 hamilton 1988 temin 1989 1993 eichengreen 1992 and bernanke 1995 however this literature has overlooked a pioneering precursor irving fisher are booms and depressions transmitted internationally through monetary standards 1935 which has also been neglected in the literature on fisher i examine fisher s contribution in the context of later research on the topic and explore the place of fisher 1935 in fisher s work

lifecycle economic analysis of biofuels accounting for economic substitution in policy assessment this paper develops a lifecycle economic analysis lcea model that integrates endogenous input substitution into the standard lifecycle analysis lca of biofuel that typically assumes fixed proportions production we use the lcea model to examine impacts of a pure carbon tax and a revenue neutral tax subsidy policy on lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from cellulosic ethanol using forest residues as feedstock in washington state in a model allowing for input substitution in the cellulosic ethanol feedstock conversion and transportation process we consider energy source substitution woody biomass for coal in the cellulosic ethanol conversion plant and biodiesel for diesel in feedstock production and feedstock and ethanol transportation as well as substitution of capital and labor for energy in all stages of the lifecycle we find that ignoring endogenous input substitution by using standard lca leads to substantial underestimation of the impact of carbon tax policies on carbon emissions both tax policies can substantially reduce carbon emissions by inducing substitution among inputs the revenue neutral tax subsidy policy reduces emissions more effectively than the carbon tax policy for carbon tax rates currently in place throughout most of the world it stimulates substitution of woody biomass for coal and biodiesel for diesel at much lower tax rates when accompanied by corresponding subsidies for reduced emissions from renewable sources

estimating the degree of market integration existing tests of spatial market integration are commonly based on statistical criteria without an explicit link to an economic model of price determination this article proposes new measures of market integration defined directly in terms of a well known spatial price determination model and develops an econometric methodology for estimating these measures due to the intractability of the conditional density function of prices we use indirect inference to estimate the model parameters and market integration measures the methodology is illustrated with simulated data and is applied to soybean price data for the united states brazil and the eu copyright 2008 oxford university press

market integration and price transmission in consumer markets of developing countries abstract world prices for agricultural commodities surged in 2006 08 and then again in 2011 12 in many developing countries consumer prices for staple foods such as bread and rice mirrored these movements this paper examines whether prices in urban consumer markets within developing countries are co integrated with prices in world agricultural commodity markets using a single equation error correction model we examine the response of consumer prices for wheat rice maize and sorghum to changes in world market prices and exchange rates in urban centers of the developing world analyzing over 60 country commodity pairings we find that developing countries consumer markets are co integrated with world markets yet we also find that the transmission of changes in both world prices and real exchange rates to domestic consumer prices is not high and that the movement of domestic consumer prices to new equilibrium with world prices after a shock to the latter is relatively slow

a century of research on agricultural markets this article provides a perspective on major innovations in research on agricultural markets over the past century we review research on market structure and performance vertical coordination arrangements and institutions for producer collective action contributions to empirical modeling of agricultural price determination and marketing margins are also evaluated as are innovations in research on spatial market relationships and the role of storage finally we discuss contributions to understanding market information systems and the functioning of market based mechanisms for agri

financial factors in the great depression eginning with irving fisher 1933 and john maynard keynes 1931 b 1963 macroeconomists have argued that financial markets were important sources and propagators of decline during the great depression turning points during the depression often coincided with or were preceded by dramatic events in financial markets stock market collapse waves of bankruptcy and bank failure and contractions in the money stock but the mechanism through which financial factors contributed to the depression has been a source of controversy as has been the relative importance of financial factors in explaining the origins and persistence of the depression this essay reviews the literature on the role of financial factors in the depression and draws some lessons that have more general relevance for the study of the depression and for macroeconomics i argue that much of the recent progress that has been made in understanding some of the most important and puzzling aspects of financial real links in the depression followed a paradigm shift in economics a central neglected theoretical piece of the story for financial factors was the allocative effects of imperfections in capital markets which can imply links between disruptions in financial markets and subsequent economic activity also the increasing emphasis on learning and path dependence in economics has helped to explain why financial shocks during the 1930s were so severe and why policy makers failed to prevent the depression

agricultural market integration in india an analysis of select commodities one of the main arguments against agricultural trade liberalization in india is that the markets are not sufficiently integrated the present study makes a systematic attempt to assess the extent and degree of integration among select agricultural markets in india we have used the common factor representation of the cointegrated series called gonzalo granger g g model to assess the extent of market integration degree of market integration has been assessed using the persistence profile approach our results indicate that the commodity markets that do not face inter state or inter regional movement restrictions like gram and edible oils appear well integrated on the contrary rice market subject to the maximum inter state movement restrictions does not show integration at the national level the broad implication of the study is that the markets can play a more effective role if supplemented with more open policy initiatives

a dynamic analysis of interfuel substitution in u s industrial energy demand using data for 1960 92 to analyze interfuel substitution in the u s industrial sector a dynamic linear logit model is shown to provide superior global properties than a comparable dynamic translog model confirming earlier static results by t j considine 1989 the linear logit model provides a direct unbiased estimate of the rate of dynamic adjustment indicating a median response lag of less than two years excluding fuels used for nonenergy purposes yields larger estimates of the price elasticities for coal and oil and indicates generally greater potential for interfuel substitution than when using aggregate data

testing market integration a model of spatial price differentials for a tradable good is proposed which avoids the inferential dangers of received methods using static price correlations the proposed method also extracts more information on the causes of price differentials from the same data the method is illustrated using monthly rice price data for postindependence bangladesh including the very substantial regional price shocks during the 1974 famine impediments to market integration are indicated

convergence of european natural gas prices abstract over the period 2015 2050 the consumption of natural gas of european oecd countries is expected to grow more than the consumption of any other energy source although these countries are interconnected and in most cases share a common currency their wholesale national gas markets are highly heterogeneous we study the determinants of cross country convergence of natural gas prices for industrial consumers in fourteen european countries our empirical analysis is based on the notions of pairwise relative and convergence we show that there is evidence of pairwise price convergence and that some key characteristics of gas markets such as the existence of trading hubs and the degree of interconnection are positively associated with the existence of a convergence process this result carries over to the notion of convergence and is robust to a number of changes in the implementation of the statistical tests the analysis of relative convergence points to the existence of price growth convergence while price level convergence is not supported by the data lastly we assess the short run implications of price convergence focusing on the speed of reversion to equilibrium after a system wide shock hits the cointegrating relation

real business cycle models of the great depression a critical survey recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the great depression of the 1930s among the differing new interpretations the real business cycle rbc approach is particularly significant it represents an outstanding methodological innovation in trying to cast the great depression within an equilibrium framework this paper critically reviews the rbc interpretation of the great depression clarifying its theoretical and methodological foundations and paving the way for future assessments of its validity

market integration and uncertainty the impact of domestic and international commodity price variability on rural household income and welfare in ghana and peru abstract we estimate rural household income uncertainties and welfare changes due to commodity price and production variability in ghana and peru under different scenarios for international and domestic market shocks uncertainties significantly affect the variability of household income especially for households that are specialised in the production of few commodities wider exposure to international markets would increase the income variability for producers of commodities that are subjected to stabilisation policies in ghana but would reduce the variability that rural households in peru face in terms of welfare rural households in both countries are expected to gain if fully exposed to international markets

sudden stops and phoenix miracles in emerging markets a decade has passed since the salvos from mexico s tequila crisis of 1994 1995 echoed around the financial world since then many more crises have taken place in emerging market economies ems furthermore crises have tended to bunch together bringing to the forefront the systemic nature of these events true every new crisis has its own idiosyncratic features but useful policy lessons must be derived from robust empirical regularities this is the research strategy we have pursued in the last few years we will report on two types of regularities that strike us as highly robust across em crises a sudden stops of capital inflows and b phoenix miracles a sudden stop is a sharp fall in capital inflows relative to their past trajectory sudden stops are not a common feature in developed economies and display a large degree of temporal bunching suggesting that global capital market turmoil acts as a coordinating factor external to ems as shown in section i however balance sheet effects namely the interaction of large changes in the real exchange rate during sudden stops and liability dollarization i e foreign exchange denominated debts are key in influencing the likelihood of a sudden stop thus even though the initial shock is in principle exogenous to the economy whether or not it materializes into a sudden stop depends on domestic financial vulnerabilities on the other hand a phoenix miracle is defined as a case in which output recovers relatively quickly from a sharp collapse with virtually no recovery in credit or capital inflows and a very weak recovery in investment hence the reference to the mythical bird rising from the ashes the existence of phoenix like recoveries suggests that financial frictions play a key role in pushing economies to the abyss from which in some way or another they can crawl back to safe ground by means less than apparent to the conventional observer looking for standard fundamentals and thus may appear miraculous interestingly the great depression of the 1930s shares some of the key features of phoenix miracles in ems but shows salient differences as well that suggest nominal labor market rigidities are not crucial in explaining output collapse in ems understanding these regularities could and we believe does shed light on policies aimed at preventing crises and attenuating their effects

choosing an exchange rate system abstract the focus of academic discussions of exchange rate policy has shifted in recent years the new literature on exchange rate regime choice emphasizes considerations relating to the problems of credibility in exchange rate targeting and the connections between exchange rate regime choices and choices of monetary and fiscal policy arguments for exchange rate targeting are reviewed under most circumstances and for most countries a system of freely floating exchange rates is likely to be a better choice than attempting to peg the exchange rate

spatial equilibrium and price transmission between southern african maize markets connected by informal trade policies regulating the international grain trade in southern africa sa are motivated by uncertainty regarding private sector performance and in turn private sector performance is generally constrained by the policy environment we study spatial price transmission between sa maize markets where trade is dominated by informal product flows this provides an opportunity to study private sector market performance in a largely unregulated market environment contrary to some existing evidence on the performance of sa grain markets connected by formal trade we find that informally trading markets work quite well long run price equilibrium is consistent with competitive trade price transmission is rapid and potential trade constraints have no disruptive impact on long run relationships nevertheless we do find evidence of occasionally high transfer costs that may impede informal trade flows the conclusion is that a policy focus on encouraging informal trade and lowering informal trade costs would lead to improved market performance

evaluating the integration of contiguous discontinuous markets this paper applies the concepts of structural models of markets market integration and market discontinuity to show that discontinuous markets alter the integration characteristics of continuous markets when analyzing systems of contiguous markets some of which are discontinuous it appears that the continuous markets are less well integrated when the discontinuous markets are operating than when they are not operating

the macroeconomics of the great depression a comparative approach recently research on the causes of the great depression has shifted from a heavy emphasis on events in the united states to a broader more comparative approach that examines the interwar experiences of many countries simultaneously in this lecture i survey the current state of our knowledge about the depression from a comparative perspective on the aggregate demand side of the economy comparative analysis has greatly strengthened the empirical case for monetary shocks as a major driving force of the depression an interesting possibility suggested by this analysis is that the worldwide monetary collapse that began in 1931 may be interpreted as a jump from one nash equilibrium to another on the aggregate supply side comparative empirical studies provide support for both induced financial crisis and sticky nominal wages as mechanisms by which nominal shocks had real effects still unresolved is why nominal wages did not adjust more quickly in the face of mass unemployment this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

how is the liberalization of food markets progressing market integration and transaction costs in subsistence economies we propose a modification of baulch s parity bounds model to measure the market integration of food markets in developing countries instead of extrapolating a single observation of transaction costs we estimate transaction costs predicted transaction costs compare well with survey data of traders probabilities of market regimes computed on the basis of predicted transaction costs fluctuate significantly and do not support fixed regime probabilities over time the probability of market integration with trade decreases consistently during food shortages increasing either the probability of no trade or loss making trade or the probability of profitable but unexploited trade opportunities the data further support a negative trend in market integration with trade

interfuel substitution a meta analysis interfuel substitutability has been of longstanding interest to the energy economics and policy community however no quantitative meta analysis has yet been carried out of this literature this paper fills this gap by analyzing a broad sample of studies of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector manufacturing industry or subindustries or macro economy of a variety of developed and developing economies publication bias is controlled for by including the primary study sample size in the meta regression results for the shadow elasticities of substitution between coal oil gas and electricity for forty six primary studies show that at the level of the industrial sector there are easy substitution possibilities between all the fuel pairs with the exception of gas electricity and coal electricity substitution possibilities seem more constrained at the macro level and less constrained in sub industries estimates also vary across countries publication bias does not seem to be present but model and data specification issues very significantly affect the estimates derived by each individual study estimates from cross section regressions are generally largest fixed effects panel estimates intermediate in magnitude and time series estimates are mostly much smaller econometric research suggests that the fixed effects estimates are likely the best among the existing studies though biased downwards

multi objective regulations on transportation fuels comparing renewable fuel mandates and emission standards 2015 elsevier b v we compare two types of fuel market regulations a renewable fuel mandate and a fuel emission standard that could be employed to simultaneously achieve multiple outcomes such as reduction in fuel prices fuel imports and greenhouse gas ghg emissions we compare these two types of regulations in a global context taking into account heterogeneity in carbon content of both fossil fuels and renewable fuels we find that although neither the ethanol mandate nor the emission standard is certain to reduce emissions relative to a business as usual baseline at any given level of biofuel consumption in the policy region a mandate relative to an emission standard results in higher ghg emissions smaller expenditure on fuel imports lower price of ethanol blended gasoline and higher domestic fuel market surplus this result holds over a wide range of values of model parameters we also discuss the implications of this result to a regulation such as the us renewable fuel standard given recent developments within the us such as increase in shale and tight oil production and large increase in average vehicle fuel economy of the automotive fleet

estimating policy effects on spatial market efficiency an extension to the parity bounds model the standard parity bounds model pbm is extended to allow for dynamic shifts in regime probabilities in response to changes in marketing policy the approach allows estimation of the length of the adjustment period and a statistical test for no policy effects the extended pbm is applied to maize and wheat markets in ethiopia evidence of a dynamic adjustment path is found and grain marketing reforms are found to have improved spatial efficiency in a few markets worsened it in a few others but generally to have had little effect on the spatial efficiency of ethiopian grain markets

international aspects of the great depression and the crisis of 2007 similarities differences and lessons we focus on two international aspects of the great depression financial crises and international trade and try to discern lessons for the current economic crisis both downturns featured global banking crises which were generated by boom slump macroeconomic cycles during both crises world trade collapsed faster than world incomes and the trade decline was highly synchronized across countries during the depression income losses and rises in trade barriers explain trade s collapse owing to vertical specialization and more intense trade in durables today s trade collapse is due to uncertainty and small shocks to trade costs hitting international supply chains so far the global economy has avoided the global trade wars and banking collapses of the depression perhaps owing to improved policy even so the global economy remains susceptible to large shocks owing to financial innovation and technological

predetermined wages and prices and the impact of expansionary government policy this paper characterizes the monetary equilibria of an economy with commodity and labour contracts if government policy is not too variable there may exist an equilibrium with predetermined wages and prices in this equilibrium observed changes in the money supply to finance government purchases have persistent real effects the paper also provides theoretical support for an inverse relationship between the degree of indexation in contracts and the persistence of policy effects

biofuels and the poor global impact pathways of biofuels on agricultural markets this study seeks to assess the future impacts of biofuel production on regional agricultural and related sectors over the next decade with a specific focus on the vulnerable regions of developing nations using a modification of the gtap modeling platform to account for the global interactions of regional biofuel and food markets the analysis shows that biofuel production levels depend on the assumption about the future price of energy and the nature of the substitutability between biofuels and petroleum based transport fuels low energy prices reduce the demand for biofuels and thus require greater government support to meet the desired production targets at the other extreme when prices are high and there is scope for substituting biofuels for petroleum based fuels the volume of biofuels produced will exceed the mandates even when biofuels are being mainly produced in developed countries our results indicate that there are impact pathways that extend far beyond the borders of the us brazil and the eu prices of feedstock and non feedstock commodities rise in developing countries there is also a rise in value added from the agricultural sector a gain that is enjoyed by the owners of land and labor including unskilled hence to the extent that agriculture is a key sector in getting growth started and addressing poverty needs the emergence of biofuels can in this way at least be a positive force

why u s money does not cause u s output but does cause hong kong output abstract standard econometric tests for whether money causes output will be meaningless if monetary policy is chosen optimally to smooth fluctuations in output if u s monetary policy were chosen to smooth u s output we show that u s money will not granger cause u s output indeed as shown by rowe and yetman 2002 identifying policy makers objectives an application to the bank of canada canadian journal of economics 35 2 239 256 if there is a say 6 quarter lag in the effect of money on output then u s output will be unforecastable from any information set available to the fed lagged 6 quarters but if other countries for example hong kong have currencies that are fixed to the u s dollar hong kong monetary policy will then be chosen in washington d c with no concern for smoothing hong kong output econometric causality tests of u s money on hong kong output will then show evidence of causality we test this empirically our empirical analysis also provides a measure of the degree to which macroeconomic stabilisation is sacrificed by adopting a fixed exchange rate rather than an independent monetary policy

a flexible parametric garch model with an application to exchange rates many asset prices including exchange rates exhibit periods of stability punctuated by infrequent substantial often one sided adjustments statistically this generates empirical distributions of exchange rate changes that exhibit high peaks long tails and skewness this paper introduces a garch model with a flexible parametric error distribution based on the exponential generalized beta egb family of distributions applied to daily us dollar exchange rate data for six major currencies evidence based on a comparison of actual and predicted higher order moments and goodness of fit tests favours the garch egb2 model over more conventional garch t and egarch t model alternatives particularly for exchange rate data characterized by skewness copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

the nation in depression t he economic cataclysm of the 1930s was an international phenomenon experienced by countries in all parts of the globe countries as diverse as the united states germany chile and japan all experienced significant depressions in the 1930s thus the title of charles kindleberger s classic book the world in depression 1973 captures an important feature of the great depression these international aspects especially the importance of the gold standard in causing the downturn and transmitting depression from one country to another have been emphasized in recent years in excellent books by peter temin 1989 and barry eichengreen 1992 these books have rightly received widespread attention and have successfully changed the focus of much analysis of the great depression from the united states to the world economy while such a change from american provincialism is surely healthy and warranted adopting an international perspective on the great depression risks losing sight of the many ways in which the u s depression differed in timing and severity from depressions elsewhere more important it may obscure the many uniquely american causes of america s great depression this paper examines the ways in which the u s experience during the 1930s resembled that of other countries in some regards and fundamentally differed in other aspects i also evaluate the evidence on the causes of the great depression in the united states and the sources of the eventual recovery i suggest that the path of american output and unemployment before 1931 can be explained quite well with only domestic factors even after 1931

weather shocks and spatial market efficiency evidence from mozambique the aim of this paper is to study the association between weather shocks droughts and floods and agricultural market performance in mozambique to do so we employ a dyadic regression analysis on

market analysis methods are our enriched toolkits well suited to enlivened markets the past fifteen years have brought historic reduction of government intervention in agricultural markets in the developing world most economists and policy makers believe these reforms enliven markets previously fettered by excessive government authority nonetheless the impact of market oriented reforms on the spatial and intertemporal extent and the competitiveness of markets remains an inherently empirical question meanwhile there also have been major innovations in methods used to analyze markets and prices due largely to the rapidly emerging time series econometric literature agricultural economists toolkits have changed nearly as rapidly and dramatically as have developing economy markets but can these enriched toolkits answer the

nominal wage stickiness and aggregate supply in the great depression building on earlier work by eichengreen and sachs we use data for 22 countries to study the role of wage stickiness in propagating the great depression recent research suggests that monetary shocks transmitted internationally by the gold standard were a major cause of the depression accordingly we use money supplies and other aggregate demand shifters as instruments to identify aggregate supply relationships we find that nominal wages adjusted quite slowly to falling prices and that the resulting increases in real wages depressed output these findings leave open the question of why wages were so inertial in the face of extreme labor market conditions

empirical investigation into spatial integration without direct trade comparative analysis before and after the establishment of the ethiopian commodity exchange this paper presents a comparative analysis of the spatial price cointegration of coffee markets in ethiopia in the pre and post ethiopian commodity exchange ecx era using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl cointegration framework the study takes into consideration a market condition in which government policy restricts arbitrage coffee trade between coffee producing areas using coffee price data from 1998 2013 and applying a bounds test approach and toda yamamoto granger causality test the study finds that the establishment of ecx has strengthened regional integration rather than a national harmony between producer markets we also find evidence that since the establishment of ecx an opportunity was created for high quality coffee to dominate price formation while also allowing lower quality coffee producing areas to establish themselves the study underlines the importance of market transparency and exchange of price information between producer markets

interfuel substitution in the united states in this paper we use the locally flexible translog functional form to investigate the demand for energy and interfuel substitution in the united states and to provide a comparison of our results with most of the existing empirical energy demand literature motivated by the widespread practice of ignoring theoretical regularity we follow barnett s 2002 suggestions and estimate the model subject to theoretical regularity using methods developed by diewert and wales 1987 and ryan and wales 2000 in an attempt to produce inference consistent with neoclassical microeconomic theory moreover we use the most recent data published by the u s energy information administration eia and in addition to investigating interfuel substitution possibilities in total u s energy demand we follow serletis et al 2009 and also examine interfuel substitution possibilities in energy demand by sector moreover we test for weak separability with the objective of discovering the structure of the functional form in total energy demand as well as energy demand by sector

cointegration and spatial price transmission among wheat and wheat flour markets in afghanistan abstractthis article examines cointegration and spatial price transmission among afghan wheat and flour markets as well as their linkages with those of supplier countries and global markets unit root tests consistent momentum threshold autoregressive m tar models and vector error correction models asymmetric and symmetric are employed to achieve research objectives the results suggest that provincial wheat and flour markets may have a long run relationship with principal market of kabul afghan wheat and flour markets may also be cointegrated with their respective global kazakh and pakistani markets while provincial wheat markets might adjust to divergence from their long run equilibrium with kabul wheat market some of the provincial flour markets may not respond to deviation from their long run equilibrium with kabul flour market the speed of adjustment towards the long run afghan pakistani and afghan kazakh equilibrium may be faster for afghan flour than wheat markets the equilibrium adjustm

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

policy measures targeting a more integrated gas market impact of a merger of two trading zones on prices and arbitrage activity in france under way to a european integrated energy market policymakers need to find efficient measures aimed at increasing liquidity in local natural gas markets the paper answers the question whether a merger of gas trading zones contributes to the development of liquid trading activities through a more efficient allocation and pricing of natural gas and an increased competition between market players we analyse the effects of a policy decision to merge two gas trading zones in france on the observed degree of spatial market integration and the efficiency of the spatial arbitrage activity between the northern and southern french gas markets an extended parity bounds model confirms a positive impact of the zone merger on the market s spatial equilibrium and indicates the causes of remaining market inefficiencies the model offers a tool for the assessment of the efficiency of policy decisions in the context of policy initiatives to create an integrated and liquid natural gas market in europe

measuring the impact of road rehabilitation on spatial market efficiency in maize markets in mozambique this article analyzes the impact of road rehabilitation on the spatial market efficiency of maize markets in mozambique we estimate a modified version of the parity bounds model pbm that allows us to test the impact of road rehabilitation on spatial efficiency this article seeks to contribute to the existing literature in three ways first a unique data set where road rehabilitation episodes between market pairs are identified is developed second special care is devoted to estimation of transaction costs due to the sensitivity of the pbm model to the quality of transaction costs estimates finally as opposed to most existing literature that focuses on relatively distant markets the article focuses on spatially closed markets we find that maize markets tend to be segmented due to high transport costs following road rehabilitation inefficiency and average absolute price differentials tend to decrease and market pairs have tended to shift toward autarky regimes overall while the results point broadly toward a positive impact of road rehabilitation on spatial efficiency they are not as strong or as robust as one would like large increases in fuel prices likely offset the positive impacts of road rehabilitation on transaction costs contributing to the increase in the probability of being in an autarky regime

europe s great depression coordination failure after the first world war in this paper i survey and reinterpret the extensive literature on europe s great depression i argue that europe could not exploit its vast economic potential after 1918 because the war had not yet come to an end indeed it did not end before 1945 both domestic and international institutions suffered from a lack of reciprocal trust and commitment which can be clearly illustrated in the realm of monetary policy but affected many other areas of policy making such as energy or migration policies these institutions in turn affected expectations and thereby the extent to which for example expansionary policies could be effective

world market integration for export and food crops in developing countries a case study for mali and nicaragua using a generalized error correction model this article measures and compares market integration for export cash crops versus imported food crops for mali and nicaragua and computes transmission elasticities between changes in the goods border and domestic prices both mali and nicaragua obtain the bulk of their export revenue from a particular agricultural commodity cotton for mali and coffee for nicaragua and both import the same key staple food of rice to reap the economic gains from this trade specialization the two countries agriculture must be well integrated into world markets the two countries present an important policy contrast that affects their degree of world market integration and price transmission in mali a parastatal enterprise controls its cotton industry while nicaragua has less state direction over agriculture reflecting this difference the results show that for both its main export and import commodity nicaragua is more integrated into world markets and has higher price transmission than mali the results for nicaragua also show much higher integration and price transmission for its main agricultural export coffee than its major import rice

on the extent of the market wholesale gasoline in the northeastern united states this paper develops the classical view of the extent of markets by introducing explicitly in the analysis the concept of arbitrage costs arbitrage or transaction costs imply that market boundaries are essentially stochastic while a set of products or regions may have binding arbitrage conditions i e may be in the same market at a given point in time they may not at another thus in defining a market the probability that a set of agents or regions would h3ve binding arbitrage conditions has to be assessed this paper develops an econometric methodology to estimate the transaction costs required to arbitrage among a given set of products as well as the probability that that set of products would be bound by binding arbitrage condi tions finally the methodology is applied to wholesale gasoline in the northeastern part of the united states address for communications pablo t spiller herbert hoover memorl l bldg 9348 stanford ca 94305

keeping the keynesian faith this wide ranging discussion takes in the development of macroeconomics and the influence of ideas and events on that development the nature and causes of the great depression keynesianism lessons from the high inflation period of the 1970s the role of macroeconomic policy and the idea of the new economy

spatial integration at multiple scales rice markets in madagascar the dramatic increase in the price of rice and other commodities over the past year has generated new interest in how these markets work and how they can be improved this article uses an exceptionally rich data set to test the extent to which markets in madagascar are integrated across space at different scales of analysis and to explain some of the factors that limit spatial arbitrage and price equalization within a single country we use rice price data across four quarters of 2000 2001 along with data on transportation costs and infrastructure availability for nearly 1 400 communes in madagascar to examine the extent of market integration at three different spatial scales subregional regional and national and to determine whether non integration is due to high transfer costs or lack of competition the results indicate that markets are fairly well integrated at the subregional level and that factors such as high crime rates remoteness and lack of information are among the factors limiting competition

how integrated is the indian wheat market abstract applying the momentum threshold autoregressive m tar model due to enders and granger enders w and granger c w j 1998 unit root tests and asymmetric adjustment with an example using the term structure of interest rates journal of business and economic statistics 16 3 pp 304 311 this article examines the relationship between the various prices of wheat quoted at different market centres in four indian states we find evidence of m tar asymmetric adjustments of wheat prices indicating that price signals within states are transmitted over time in an asymmetric manner this type of price adjusting behaviour is consistent as to how price differentials may respond to poor dissemination of knowledge regarding market conditions and high transactions costs the results offer important policy implications

modelling trends in food market integration method and an application to tanzanian maize markets abstract pushed by increasing availability of price data and extensive market liberalisation efforts in many developing countries research on food market integration has evolved rapidly over the last two decades empirical methods to measure market integration diverged in two directions on the one hand there is the parity bounds model pbm using a switching regressions technique while on the other hand the use of threshold autoregressive tar models has been proposed this article provides a discussion on the two methods and argues that tar models are better able to capture the dynamics of the arbitrage process underlying interconnected markets furthermore we extend the standard tar model to include a time trend in both the threshold and the adjustment parameter using weekly maize price data on seven selected markets in tanzania we illustrate how both transaction cost and the speed of adjustment have changed during the nineties

rice market integration and food security in nepal the role of cross border trade with india coarse rice market integration between nepal and india is analyzed applying a threshold autoregressive model the price response behaviour of traders is found to be consistent with an asymmetric price adjustment mechanism indicating coarse rice prices in nepal respond to shocks originating in india the results show that adjustments to negative price deviations from long run stable equilibrium are faster than adjustments to the positive ones given a null threshold given that trade flows mainly from india to nepal nepali traders would adjust their prices upward to align with the long run equilibrium value relatively more quickly in the case of negative price deviations than if the price deviations were positive such a high speed of adjustment to negative price deviations could be detrimental to net food buyers food security status in the absence of a price stabilization mechanism however a price stabilization policy in nepal a food deficit and import dependent country would hardly have any effect on prices unless further effort is made to build up the level of national food reserves for short term food security interventions in the current context of structurally low levels of national food reserves an alternative short term policy such as foreign aid in the form of food or income transfers targeting the most vulnerable households to price increases is necessary through social safety net programmes in the long run an improvement of transportation infrastructure between market hubs other than the biratnagar trade basin in the terai nepal and india would contribute to the reduction of transaction costs and create incentives for more competition in formal cross border trade with india in times of negative shocks such as the high food price crisis in 2008 restrictive food trade policies in india will continue to undermine household food security in nepal

a model of spatial arbitrage with transport capacity constraints and endogenous transport prices this article solves a high frequency model of price arbitrage incorporating storage and trade when the amount of trade is limited by transport capacity constraints in equilibrium there is considerable variation in transport costs because transport costs rise when the demand to ship goods exceeds the capacity limit this variation is necessary to attract shipping capacity into the industry in turn prices in different locations differ by a time varying amount thus while the law of one price holds it holds because of endogenous variation in transport costs

decomposing changes in agricultural price gaps an application to russia the article develops a method for decomposing changes in agricultural price gaps defined as the difference between a commodity s domestic producer and border prices we use oecd s procedure for decomposing changes in the market price support part of producer support estimates as the starting point for our decomposition method and our method provides a basis for critiquing oecd s decomposition approach the transmission of changes in border prices world prices and the exchange rate to domestic prices is a key element in the decomposition the method is demonstrated using russian agricultural price gaps the results support the argument that for russian agriculture during the transition period the main cause of changes in price gaps has been incomplete transmission of changes in the exchange rate to domestic prices and where the weak transmission results mainly not from policy intervention but rather from deficient market conditions in particular poor market infrastructure the policy implication is that underdeveloped infrastructure has strongly limited the benefits to the russian economy from agricultural trade liberalization

dynamic translog and linear logit models a factor demand analysis of interfuel substitution in us industrial energy demand abstract we compare and contrast two popular dynamic flexible functional forms for cost functions the translog and the logit j bus econ stat 8 1990 347 353 using data on us industrial energy demand from 1960 to 1992 which has been analysed by previous studies energy econ 11 1989 89 94 appl econ 21 1989 931 945 j bus econ stat 13 1995 459 465 we show the crucial role played by different dynamic formulations of the translog in this analysis of factor demands with respect to rates of dynamic adjustment and substitution possibilities we conclude that the poor performance of the dynamic translog relative to the dynamic logit cannot be explained solely by dynamic model mis specification or the inclusion of price unresponsive non energy fuel use data our most robust empirical result is that coal and oil are substitutes

rent capture analysis of ontario s stumpage system using an enhanced parity bounds model we develop and use an enhanced parity bounds model epbm to examine the discrepancy between the stumpage price administratively determined under ontario s current stumpage pricing system and the market value of stumpage covering from june 1995 to january 2007 the results show that in the short run the stumpage prices were below or above the market values however in the long run the underpayment and overpayment will even out each other the results imply that ontario s stumpage pricing system has the ability to capture the full economic rents in the long run and the results also have other policy implications

markov switching estimation of spatial maize price transmission processes between tanzania and kenya we discuss the markov switching vector au toregressive ms var class of nonlinear time series models that can be used to analyze recurring discrete structural changes in time series hamilton s 1989 seminal markov switching ms model of the u s business cy cle triggered considerable interest in the ms approach in economics most empirical appli cations to date have focused on the business cy cle and financial markets but we see potential for ms var models in agricultural economics for example in price transmission analysis in the following we first provide an overview of the ms var framework we then present an illustrative application to maize price trans mission between tanzania and kenya the article closes with a discussion of strengths weaknesses and potential uses of the ms var approach in price transmission analysis

measuring global gasoline and diesel price and income elasticities abstract price and income elasticities of transport fuel demand have numerous applications they help forecast increases in fuel consumption as countries get richer they help develop appropriate tax policies to curtail consumption help determine how the transport fuel mix might evolve and show the price response to a fuel disruption given their usefulness it is understandable why hundreds of studies have focused on measuring such elasticities for gasoline and diesel fuel consumption in this paper i focus my attention on price and income elasticities in the existing studies to see what can be learned from them i summarize the elasticities from these historical studies i use statistical analysis to investigate whether income and price elasticities seem to be constant across countries with different incomes and prices although income and price elasticities for gasoline and diesel fuel are not found to be the same at high and low incomes and at high and low prices patterns emerge that allow me to develop suggested price and income elasticities for gasoline and diesel demand for over one hundred countries i adjust these elasticities for recent fuel mix policies and suggest an agenda of future research topics

transposing lessons between different forms of consequential greenhouse gas accounting lessons for consequential life cycle assessment project level accounting and policy level accounting abstract greenhouse gas accounting has developed in a number of semi isolated fields of practice and there appears to be considerable opportunity for transposing methodological innovations and lessons between these different fields this research paper identifies three consequential forms of greenhouse gas accounting consequential life cycle assessment project level accounting and policy level accounting these methods are described in detail and then compared in order to identify the key methodological differences and the potential lessons that can be transposed between them analysis of the substantive methodological differences suggests that consequential life cycle assessment could be enhanced by adopting the same structure used in project and policy level accounting which provides a time series of impacts aggregate level analysis and a transparent specification of the baseline and decision scenarios there is a case for conceptualising a unified form of consequential time series assessment of which project policy and product assessments would be sub types

modelling approaches for consequential life cycle assessment c lca of bioenergy critical review and proposed framework for biogas production abstract conventional life cycle inventories lcis are static models not considering any mechanism of revenue maximisation and price equilibrium under external constraints an additional demand of a given commodity irrespective of the amount can always be supplied by the average supplier under fully elastic market assumption this constitutes a recognised limitation for the application of lca to the assessment of the environmental consequences of changes applied to complex systems like agro systems in the so called consequential lci c lci the relationships between the activities and processes of a life cycle are no longer seen as essentially technical connections based on average data instead the determining socio economic mechanisms are considered via market information and eventually economic models partial or computable general equilibrium the practical implementation of c lci is however still obscure to many practitioners and the complementarities and overlaps between the different c lci modelling approaches have not been completely clarified so far this paper aims at filling this gap the first part of the paper provides a survey of a number of applications using different equilibrium models afterwards we critically review the main variables and parameters supporting the definition and implementation of the c lci modelling approaches in the last part of the paper we propose a methodology to integrate economic modelling and lca in order to perform a c lca of biogas production specifically addressing the indirect land use change iluc issue finally we describe the application of this methodology to a case study dealing with the production of biogas in luxembourg

market integration efficiency of arbitrage and imperfect competition methodology and application to u s celery this paper develops and applies a methodology to test for efficiency of interregional commodity arbitrage application of the methodology requires only time series data on prices for alternative cities regions countries or product forms yet the approach is capable of generating evidence on a number of market parameters including market integration arbitrage efficiency the magnitude of marketing margins product substitutability and competitiveness of markets estimation is based on a switching regression model with three regimes efficient arbitrage relative shortage and relative glut results from application of the model to u s celery marketing indicated significant departures from efficient arbitrage for both california and florida celery

prices during the great depression was the deflation of 1930 1932 really unanticipated this paper examines inflationary expectations in order to investigate whether the deflation of 1930 32 could have been anticipated the major conclusion is that beginning in late 1930 and possibly as early as late 1929 deflation could have been anticipated at horizons of three six months this implies in turn that short run ex ante real interest rates were very high during the initial phases of the great depression these results provide further support for the proposition that monetary contraction was the driving force behind the economic decline copyright 1992 by american economic association

structural model of agricultural markets in developing countries switching regime models including the parity bounds model are commonly used for assessing market integration although they are not well suited to multiple market contexts we develop an alternative structural model of markets that incorporates explanatory variables and generates the probability that a single market is integrated therefore making it possible to identify specific factors or regions of a country associated with low integration our application to intraprovincial rice markets in madagascar predicts that 56 of markets are integrated high crime areas are less likely to be integrated while the center of the country has a higher level of integration

monetary factors in the great depression this paper examines the role of monetary policy in the early stages of the great depression and considers the mechanism whereby this policy may have affected real activity i conclude that the depression was preceded by a dramatic shift towards a highly contractionary monetary policy the economic impact of this policy seems unlikely to have come through the conventional keynesian channels of a shortage of liquidity and high ex ante real interest rates but instead may have operated through unanticipated deflation and after 1930 through the disruption of financial intermediation as a consequence of the banking panics

testing for the lop under nonlinearity an application to four major eu pork markets this article develops an econometric procedure to test the validity of the law of one price lop under nonlinearity and to distinguish between its strong and its weak version the procedure is applied to four major eu pork markets using weekly prices from 1991 to 2008 the empirical results suggest that the markets are well integrated with deviations from the steady state price differentials corrected nonlinearly the lop is valid for all market pairs and for the pair germany spain it holds in its strong version

testing for food market integration revisited this article considers the statistical performance of four commonly used econometric tests for market integration the law of one price the ravallion model cointegration and granger causality a spatial price equilibrium spe model that is subject to both production shocks and general price inflation and mimics many of the key characteristics of integrated food markets is constructed the model is used to generate food price time series of lengths that are typical of the short sample sizes available in most developing countries for both instantaneously integrated and independent markets a series of monte carlo experiments on these artificial food price time series are performed which show that all four of the conventional tests for market integration are statistically flawed

spatial price efficiency in mozambique s post reform maize markets maize zea mays shortages and maize price instability continue to occur in mozambique in spite of policy reforms and great capacity for increased production in northern mozambique this study measured the efficiency of spatial maize price arbitrage in mozambique s post reform period spatial price inefficiency does not seem to explain why food shortages continue to occur in mozambique suggesting nonprice market constraints such as poor infrastructure and poor market institutions as more likely explanations baulch s spatial efficiency test indicated that it is not profitable to ship maize from northern surplus maize regions to southern mozambique records of interregional maize shipments show that indeed grain is not being shipped from the north to the south market liberalization may have improved spatial price efficiency but high transfer costs still limit trade and potential benefits from freeing markets under these circumstances food shortages and price instability are likely to continue

multiple regime spatial price transmission with an application to maize markets in southern africa conventional threshold models of price transmission allow for different speeds of adjustment to equilibria depending on the magnitude of price differentials between markets however these models typically assume only one underlying long run equilibrium price relationship in this article we develop a framework for allowing multiple equilibria and multiple speeds of adjustment with regime separation depending on the magnitude of trade flows between regions rather than the magnitude of price differentials applying this framework to maize price transmission between south africa and zambia shows no transmission during periods of high imports when the government was heavily involved in maize importation but stronger transmission during periods of low imports when the government was not importing copyright 2012 oxford university press

competitive devaluation and the great depression a theoretical reassessment abstract historical accounts indict the devaluations of the 1930s for worsening the great depression to assess the consistency of these arguments we develop a two country model of the gold exchange standard its analysis reveals that devaluation under a gold standard need not be beggar thy neighbor contrary to the thrust of the existing literature competitive devaluations like those of the 1930s could have hastened recovery from the great depression