stacking low carbon policies on the renewable fuels standard economic and greenhouse gas implications this paper examines the economic and ghg implications of stacking a low carbon fuel standard lcfs with and without a carbon price policy on the renewable fuel standard rfs we compare the performance of various policy combinations for food and fuel prices fuel mix and fuel consumption we also analyze the economic costs and benefits of alternative policy combinations and their distributional effects for consumers and producers in the transportation and agricultural sector in the us using a dynamic multi market partial equilibrium model of the transportation and agricultural sectors we find that combining the rfs with an lcfs policy leads to a reduction in first generation biofuels and an increase in second generation biofuels compared to the rfs alone this policy combination also achieves greater reduction in ghg emissions even after considering offsetting market mediated effects imposition of a carbon price with the rfs and lcfs policy primarily induces fuel conservation and achieves larger ghg emissions reduction compared to the other policy scenarios all these policy combinations lead to higher net economic benefits for the transportation and agricultural sectors relative to the no policy baseline because they improve the terms of trade for us

income generating effects of biofuel policies a meta analysis of the cge literature abstract while the production of biofuels has expanded in recent years findings in the literature on its impact on economic growth and development remain contradictory this paper presents a meta analysis of computable general equilibrium cge studies published between 2006 and 2017 on the effect of biofuel production on economic development worldwide using 30 cge studies we found that biofuel supportive policies generated significant impacts on gdp and household incomes cge studies included in our database reported an average 0 25 percentage point increase in gdp and a 0 49 percentage point increase in household incomes we also found that results were driven by several key features of the cge studies included in our database we investigated features such as biofuel type geographic area and characteristics of the cge models employed we found that biofuel expansion has heterogeneous effects in developed versus emerging countries simulations on longer time periods and in multi country studies led to results that indicate higher impacts of biofuel expansion on gdp growth and household incomes moreover simulations with an increase in agricultural productivity indicate positive welfare impact gains unlike simulations with land expansion lastly we found that biodiesel development leads to higher welfare impact gains than that of bioethanol

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

welfare impacts of alternative biofuel and energy policies an open economy equilibrium model is derived to investigate the effects of energy policy on the u s economy with emphasis on corn based ethanol a second best policy of a fuel tax and ethanol subsidy is found to approximate fairly closely the welfare gains associated with the first best policy of an optimal carbon tax and tariffs on traded goods the largest economic gains to the u s economy from these energy policies arise from their impact on u s terms of trade particularly in the oil market conditional on the current fuel tax an optimal ethanol mandate is superior to an optimal ethanol subsidy copyright 2011 oxford university press

thailand s low carbon scenario 2050 the aim cge analyses of co2 mitigation measures climate change and co2 mitigation have become increasingly important environmental issues recently thailand has proposed policies on ghg mitigation such as thailand s nationally appropriate mitigation action nama which aims at ghg mitigation in the energy sector this study used the computable general equilibrium cge model called aim cge model to analyse ghg mitigation measures under emission trading and carbon capture and storage ccs technology in thailand results show that the international free emission trading policy can drive more ghg reduction by decreasing energy supply and demand and increasing prices of emissions the ccs technologies would balance emission reduction but they would reduce energy efficiency improvement and renewable energy utilization in the energy security aspect the policy options in this study would improve energy security energy import dependency and co benefits of ghg mitigation in forms of improving local air quality results are also helpful to ghg mitigation policy in developing countries

native internal migration and the labor market impact of immigration this paper presents a theoretical and empirical study of how immigration influences the joint determination of the wage structure and internal migration behavior for native born workers in local labor markets using data from the 1960 2000 decennial censuses the study shows that immigration is associated with lower in migration rates higher out migration rates and a decline in the growth rate of the native workforce the native migration response attenuates the measured impact of immigration on wages in a local labor market by 40 to 60 per cent depending on whether the labor market is defined at the state or metropolitan area level

a gravity model of immigration this paper develops a gravity model of immigration tests of the model using panel data for 16 oecd countries for 1991 2000 confirm the model s high explanatory power and examples illustrate its usefulness for testing other hypothesized determinants of immigration

regulation and distrust in a cross section of countries government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with social capital we document this correlation and present a model explaining it in the model distrust creates public demand for regulation while regulation in turn discourages social capital accumulation leading to multiple equilibria a key implication of the model is that individuals in low trust countries want more government intervention even though the government is corrupt we test this and other implications of the model using country and individual level data on social capital and beliefs about government s role as well as on changes in beliefs and in trust during the transition from socialism

decompositions of corn price effects implications for feed grain demand and livestock supply this article examines how corn prices affect the demand for feed grains and the supply of livestock outputs the differential approach to the theory of the multiproduct firm is employed to examine ex ante decisions about feed grain demand and livestock supply the estimation results suggest that livestock producers have little flexibility in adjusting the demand for corn in response to an increase in corn prices the substitutable relationship between corn and distillers grains contributes to alleviating pressures on feed costs in response to high corn prices in addition the estimation results highlight that the composition of livestock supply can be altered by changes in livestock prices on the basis of the estimated elasticities the decompositions of profit maximizing input demand are conducted to examine the effects of changes in corn prices on feed grain demand and livestock supply the decomposition results reveal that an increase in corn prices reduces corn demand but raises the demand for distillers grains mainly due to the substitution effects of corn price changes the decomposition results also show that an increase in the price of corn reduces cattle supply but raises the supply of chicken and pork due to the output relationships in supply

credit booms and lending standards evidence from the subprime mortgage market this paper links the u s subprime mortgage crisis to demand side factors that contributed to the rapid expansion of the u s mortgage market we show that denial rates were relatively lower in areas that experienced faster credit demand growth and that lenders in these high growth areas attached less weight to applicants loan to income ratios the results are robust to controlling for supply side factors including house price appreciation mortgage securitization and other economic fundamentals and to several robustness tests controlling for endogeneity the results are consistent with the notion that a relaxation of lending standards triggered by an increased demand for loans contributed to the boom and the ensuing crisis together with other supply side explanations these findings shed new light on the relationship between credit booms and financial instability

income maximization and the selection and sorting of international migrants abstract two prominent features of international labor movements are that the more educated are more likely to emigrate positive selection and more educated migrants are more likely to settle in destination countries with high rewards to skill positive sorting using data on emigrant stocks by schooling level and source country in oecd destinations we find that a simple model of income maximization can account for both phenomena results on selection show that migrants for a source destination pair are more educated relative to non migrants the larger is the absolute skill related difference in earnings between the destination country and the source results on sorting indicate that the relative stock of more educated migrants in a destination is increasing in the absolute earnings difference between high and low skilled workers we use our framework to compare alternative specifications of international migration estimate the magnitude of migration costs by source destination pair and assess the contribution of wage differences to how migrants sort themselves across destination countries

u s farm policy and the volatility of commodity prices and farm revenues a dynamic three commodity rational expectations storage model is used to compare the impact of the federal agricultural improvement and reform fair act of 1996 with a free market policy and with pre fair policies results suggest that fair did not lead to significant increases in long run price volatility or revenue volatility the main impact of pre fair relative to the free market regime was to substitute government storage for private storage in a way that did little to support prices or to stabilize farm incomes results also indicate that u s grain market volatility in 1995 2000 was due to fundamental market forces and not to fair copyright 2002 oxford university press

defining unemployment in developing countries evidence from trinidad and tobago the international labour organisation ilo argues for relaxing the standard definition of unemployment in developing countries by eliminating the requirement that a person be actively searching for a job we examine whether such an extension of the standard definition is appropriate in the case of trinidad and tobago t t specifically we use the trinidad and tobago labour force survey to examine whether active job search is important in determining the labour market transitions of the non employed our results indicate that in trinidad and tobago males who under the standard criteria would be considered out of the labour force because they report willingness to work but are not currently searching for a job are appropriately classified as unemployed further evidence suggests that this may be because job search may not be as meaningful in rural as it is in urban areas c 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the employment effects of credit market disruptions firm level evidence from the 2008 9 financial crisis this article investigates the effect of bank lending frictions on employment outcomes i construct a new data set that combines information on banking relationships and employment at 2 000 nonfinancial firms during the 2008 9 crisis the article first verifies empirically the importance of banking relationships which imply a cost to borrowers who switch lenders i then use the dispersion in lender health following the lehman crisis as a source of exogenous variation in the availability of credit to borrowers i find that credit matters firms that had precrisis relationships with less healthy lenders had a lower likelihood of obtaining a loan following the lehman bankruptcy paid a higher interest rate if they did borrow and reduced employment by more compared to precrisis clients of healthier lenders consistent with frictions deriving from asymmetric information the effects vary by firm type lender health has an economically and statistically significant effect on employment at small and medium firms but the data cannot reject the hypothesis of no effect at the largest or most transparent firms abstracting from general equilibrium effects i find that the withdrawal of credit accounts for between one third and one half of the employment decline at small and medium firms in the sample in the year

a cost benefit analysis of the eu 20 20 2020 package the european commission did not publish a cost benefit analysis for its 2020 climate package this paper fills that gap comparing the marginal costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction the uncertainty about the marginal costs of climate change is large and skewed and estimates partly reflect ethical choices e g the discount rate the 2010 carbon price in the eu emissions trading system can readily be justified by a cost benefit analysis emission reduction is not expensive provided that policy is well designed a condition not met by planned eu policy it is probably twice as expensive as needed costing one in ten years of economic growth the eu targets for 2020 are unlikely to meet the benefit cost test for a standard discount rate 3 pure rate of time preference the benefit cost ratio is rather poor 1 30 so that benefits need to be very much higher or costs very much lower than typically assumed to justify the 2020 targets only a very low discount rate 0 prtp would justify the 20 emission reduction target for 2020

contract pricing in consumer credit markets we analyze subprime consumer lending and the role played by down payment requirements in screening high risk borrowers and limiting defaults to do this we develop an empirical model of the demand for financed purchases that incorporates both adverse selection and repayment incentives we estimate the model using detailed transaction level data on subprime auto loans we show how different elements of loan contracts affect the quality of the borrower pool and subsequent loan performance we also evaluate the returns to credit scoring that allows sellers to customize financing terms to individual applicants our approach shows how standard econometric tools for analyzing demand and supply under imperfect competition extend to settings in which firms care about the identity of their customers and their postpurchase behavior

the eu 20 20 2020 targets an overview of the emf22 assessment three computable general equilibrium models are used to estimate the economic implications of a stylized version of eu climate policy if implemented at the lowest possible cost the 20 emissions reduction would lead to a welfare loss of 0 5 2 0 by 2020 second best policies increase costs a policy with two carbon prices one for the ets one for the non ets could increase costs by up to 50 a policy with 28 carbon prices one for the ets one each for each member state could increase costs by another 40 the renewables standard could raise the costs of emissions reduction by 90 overall the inefficiencies in policy lead to a cost that is 100 125 too high the models differ greatly in the detail of their results the ets non ets split may have a negligible impact on welfare while the renewables standard may even improve welfare the models agree however that the distortions introduced by total eu package imply a substantial welfare loss over and above the costs needed to meet the climate target the marginal total and excess costs reported here are notably higher than those in the impact assessment of the european commission

a meta analytic assessment of the effect of immigration on wages in our increasingly interconnected and open world international migration is becoming an important socio economic phenomenon for many countries since the early 1980s many studies have been undertaken of the impact of immigration on host labour markets borjas 2003 noted that the estimated effect of immigration on the wage of native workers varies widely from study to study and sometimes even within the same study in addition these effects cluster around zero such a small effect is a rather surprising outcome given that in a closed competitive labour market an increase in labour supply may be expected to exert a downward pressure on wages we revisit this issue by applying meta analytic techniques to a set of eighteen papers which altogether generated 348 estimates of the percentage change in the wage of a native worker with respect to a one percentage point increase in the ratio of immigrants over native workers while many studies in our database employ us data estimates are also obtained from germany the netherlands france norway austria israel and australia our analysis shows that results vary across countries and are inter alia related to the type of modelling approach technical issues such as publication bias and quality of the estimates are addressed as well

long term crop productivity response and its interaction with cereal markets and energy prices abstract crop yields are endogenous as long as economic agents adjust to permanent changes in expected prices the literature however does not offer a definitive value of how much yield would change in response to sustained price changes to fill the gap we use available scientific findings and data to estimate yield elasticities that enable agricultural commodity and food policy analysis using a world market model with short to long run yield response we show the impacts of sustained energy price shocks on global cereal supply and demand the results highlight substantial differences in quantity and price effects depending on the yield elasticities these results demonstrate the need to recognize yield response when assessing impacts of energy prices or biofuel production on food uses or more generally on food security in the face of income and population growth evolving dietary patterns climate change implications or other long run pressures

the impacts of biofuel targets on land use change and food supply a global cge assessment this study analyzes the long term impacts of large scale expansion of biofuels on land use change food supply and prices and the overall economy in various countries or regions using a global computable general equilibrium model augmented by a land use module and detailed representation of biofuel sectors the study finds that an expansion of global biofuel production to meet currently articulated or even higher national targets in various countries for biofuel use would reduce gross domestic product at the global level however the gross domestic product impacts are mixed across countries or regions the expansion of biofuels would cause significant land re allocation with notable decreases in forest and pasture lands in a few countries the results also suggest that the expansion of biofuels would cause a reduction in food supply although the magnitude of the impact on food supply at the global level is not as large as perceived earlier it would be significant in developing countries like india and those in sub saharan africa agricultural commodities such as sugar corn and oil seeds which serve as the main biofuel feedstocks would experience significant increases in their prices in 2020 compared with the prices at baseline due to the expansion of biofuels to meet the existing targets

networks in the modern economy mexican migrants in the u s labor market this paper attempts to identify job networks among mexican migrants in the u s labor market the empirical analysis uses data on migration patterns and labor market outcomes based on a sample of individuals belonging to multiple origin communities in mexico over a long period of time each community s network is measured by the proportion of the sampled individuals who are located at the destination the united states in any year we verify that the same individual is more likely to be employed and to hold a higher paying nonagricultural job when his network is exogenously larger by including individual fixed effects in the employment and occupation regressions and by using rainfall in the origin community as an instrument for the size of the network at the destination

the effect of internal migration on local labor markets american cities during the great depression the great depression offers a unique laboratory to investigate the causal impact of migration on local labor markets we use variation in the generosity of new deal programs and extreme weather events to instrument for migrant flows to and from u s cities in migration had little effect on the hourly earnings of existing residents instead in migration prompted some residents to move away and others to lose weeks of work or access to relief jobs for every 10 arrivals we estimate that 1 9 residents moved out 2 1 were prevented from finding a relief job and 1 9 shifted from full time to part time work

how does petroleum price and corn yield volatility affect ethanol markets with and without an ethanol use mandate the recent increase in ethanol use in the us strengthens and changes the nature of links between agricultural and energy markets here we explore the interaction of market volatility and the scope for policy to affect this interaction with a focus on how corn yields and petroleum prices affect ethanol prices mandates associated with new us energy legislation may intervene in these links in the medium term future we simulate stochastically a structural model that represents these markets and that includes mandates in order to assess how shocks to corn or oil markets can affect ethanol price and use we estimate that the mandate makes ethanol producer prices more sensitive to corn yields and less sensitive to changes in petroleum prices overall we note a discontinuity in these links that is caused by the mandate ethanol use can exceed the mandate if petroleum prices and corn yields are high enough but the mandate limits downside adjustments in ethanol use to low petroleum prices or corn yields

are remittances insurance evidence from rainfall shocks in the philippines several facts motivate this study first life in developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as crop and income loss due to natural disasters weather insect infestations and fire and civil conflict second international migration and remittance flows are substantial and growing between 1965 and 2000 individuals living outside their country of birth grew from 2 2 to 2 9 percent of the world population totaling 175 million people in 2000 the remittances that these migrants send to their countries of origin are an important but poorly understood type of international financial flow this article examines a mechanism for coping with shocks ex post on which previous micro level studies have not focused remittances from family members overseas at the international level it is commonly posited that remittance flows from overseas buffer economic shocks in migrants home countries but there have been relatively few empirical tests of this claim with micro level household data related research on the role of domestic migration in pooling risk within extended families includes lucas and stark 1985 rosenzweig and stark 1989 and paulson 2000

wage effects of labour migration with international capital mobility wage effects of immigration are investigated in a setting with international capital mobility which eliminates two thirds of the native wage effects of immigration without international capital mobility overall gains from migration in the immigration region are only a small fraction of total losses to native workers but with perfect international capital adjustment overall gains are larger than total losses to native workers two alternative tax policies to eliminate the negative wage effects of immigration on low skilled native workers are evaluated

land use and economic effects of alternative biofuel policies in brazil and the united states being the two largest ethanol producers in the world biofuel policies in brazil and the united states affect both their domestic markets and the global food and biofuel economy in this article we develop a price endogenous mathematical programming model to simulate and analyze the impacts of biofuel mandates and trade distortions on land use agricultural commodity and transportation fuel markets and global environment we find that an 80 increase in total biofuel production from its 103 billion liter baseline level to the mandated 183 billion liter level in 2022 can be achieved with less than 2 increase in total cropland use in both countries in the united states this would occur with cellulosic biofuels meeting nearly half of the biofuels consumed and produced largely on cropland pasture and corn ethanol meeting the rest of the mandate and resulting in a 2 increase in corn price in brazil the expansion in sugarcane production would be achieved by reducing land under pasture and a marginal increase in intensification of livestock production in the aggregate biofuel policies increase economic surplus in both countries by 1 and redistribute the benefits from agricultural consumers to agricultural producers and the fuel sector finally we also find that full implementation of the mandates in north america china and the european union would reduce the global life cycle global greenhouse gas emissions by about 5

abolishing biofuel policies possible impacts on agricultural price levels price variability and global food security abstract in this paper we assess the impact of abolishing biofuel policies mandates tax credits import and export tariffs on agricultural price levels and price variability as well as some aspects related to global food security for the analysis we employ a recursive dynamic agricultural multi commodity model within a stochastic framework results of the 10 years forward looking scenario indicate that the removal of biofuel policies would have a significant effect on price variability of biofuels but only a marginal impact on the variability of agricultural commodity prices without biofuel policies global biofuel demand would decrease by 25 for ethanol and 32 for biodiesel moreover prices would only moderately decrease for ethanol feedstock commodities like wheat and coarse grains while prices for biodiesel feedstock commodities specifically vegetable oils would be more affected due to competing uses of crop production such as feed and industrial use abolishing biofuel policies would not necessarily lead to an increase in global food security as food use increases would remain low for most crops and regions

the impact of the 1962 repatriates from algeria on the french labor market this paper uses census data to examine the impact on the french labor market of the 900 000 people repatriated from algeria in 1962 repatriates settled in regions culturally and climatically simil

is meta analysis a noah s ark for non market valuation this paper describes meta analytical methods as they have been applied to non market valuation research these studies have been used to review and synthesize literature and more recently in benefit transfer this second use imposes a higher standard on the consistency in economic concepts being summarized and in the resources included in a meta analysis to meet this need the paper proposes and illustrates a structural framework using a generalized method of moments estimator to estimate the parameters of a preference function with the benefits estimates usually encountered in meta analytic summaries

a macroeconomic model with a financial sector this paper studies a macroeconomic model in which financial experts borrow from less productive agents we pursue four sets of results i the economy is prone to instability and occasionally enters volatile episodes as volatility spikes agents precautionary motive increases depressing prices even further log linear approximations fail to capture these non linear effects that can cause economies to be significantly depressed for long periods of time ii endogenous risk during volatile episodes increases asset price correlations iii financial experts impose a negative externality on each other and on the labor sector by not maintaining adequate capital cushion and funding structure iv while risk sharing within the financial sector through securitization and derivatives contracts reduces many inefficiencies it can also amlify systemic risks

procyclical leverage and value at risk the availability of credit varies over the business cycle through shifts in the leverage of financial intermediaries empirically we find that intermediary leverage is negatively aligned with the banks value at risk var motivated by the evidence we explore a contracting model that captures the observed features under general conditions on the outcome distribution given by extreme value theory evt intermediaries maintain a constant probability of default to shifts in the outcome distribution implying substantial deleveraging during downturns for some parameter values we can solve the model explicitly thereby endogenizing the var threshold probability from the contracting problem

the regional economic impacts of biofuels a review of multisectoral modelling techniques and evaluation of applications allan g j the regional economic impacts of biofuels a review of multisectoral modelling techniques and evaluation of applications regional studies the regional economic impact of biofuel production depends upon a number of interrelated factors the specific biofuels feedstock and production technology employed the sector s embeddedness in the rest of the economy through its demand for local resources and the extent to which new activity is created these issues can be analysed using multisectoral economic models some studies use input output io and social accounting matrix sam modelling frameworks whilst a nascent computable general equilibrium cge literature has begun to examine the regional impact of biofuel development this paper reviews compares and evaluates these approaches for modelling the regional economic impacts of biofuels

development a study of the indian manufacturing industry if infrastructure tends to generate spillover externalities as has been the assumption in much of the development literature one may reasonably look for evidence of such indirect effects in the accounts of manufacturing industries empirical support for this assumption has so far been ambiguous this analysis of indian data however reveals substantial externality effects from the states infrastructure to manufacturing productivity the analysis separates the direct effects of roads and electricity as mediated by the infrastructure services purchased by manufacturing industries along with other intermediate inputs from the indirect effects as measured by the impact of infrastructure capacity on the solow productivity residual in the 20 years from 1972 to 1992 growth of road and electricity generating capacity seems to have accounted for nearly half the growth of the productivity residual of india s registered manufacturing

migration and economic mobility in tanzania evidence from a tracking survey this study explores the extent to which migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in tanzania using longitudinal data on individuals the authors estimate the impact of migration on consumption growth between 1991 and 2004 the analysis addresses concerns about heterogeneity and unobservable factors correlated with both income changes and the decision to migrate the findings show that migration adds 36 percentage points to consumption growth during a period of considerable growth in consumption these results are robust to numerous tests and alternative specifications unpacking the findings the analysis finds that moving out of agriculture is correlated with much higher growth than staying in agriculture although growth is always higher in any sector if one physically moves economic mobility is strongly linked to geographic mobility the puzzle is why more people do not move if returns to geographic mobility are high the evidence is consistent with models in which exit barriers are set by home communities through social and family norms that prevent migration of certain categories of people

the benefits of relationship lending in a cross country context a meta analysis relationship lending may create benefits for borrowers by reducing information asymmetries however empirical evidence is mixed we conduct a meta analysis to summarize and explain the heterogeneity in the results in the literature using hand collected information from 101 studies in the united states europe asia and latin america from 1970 to 2010 we find that strong relationships are generally beneficial for borrowers but lending outcomes differ across the relationships dimensions long lasting exclusive and synergy creating bank relationships are associated with higher credit volume and lower loan rates these benefits are more likely in the united states and in countries where bank competition is high they are not related to the importance of small and medium sized enterprises in an economy suggesting that prevalence of relationship lending does not necessarily come along with borrower benefits our inferences are robust when we control for observed systematic heterogeneity in the original

consumption smoothing migration and marriage evidence from rural india a significant proportion of migration in low income countries particularly in rural areas is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage we seek to explain these mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among indian households in particular we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant dispersed yet kinship related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks analysis of longitudinal south indian village data lends support to the hypothesis marriage cum migration contributes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food consumption farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in longer distance marriage cum migration the hypothesized and observed marriage cum migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains

do banks lend less in uncertain times we study the development of bank lending in the usa after four large jumps in uncertainty using an event study approach we find that more liquid banks slow down and lend less after a surge in uncertainty lending by smaller banks is also less responsive to increases in uncertainty which points to an increased importance of bank customer relationships for capitalization we find mixed evidence these heterogeneities across banks suggest that declines in bank lending following increases in uncertainty result at least partly from a reduced supply of bank loans

considering macroeconomic indicators in the food before fuel nexus abstract a structural vector autoregression svar model along with a direct acyclic graph is employed to decompose how supply demand structural shocks affect food and fuel markets the results support the hypothesis that fundamental market forces of demand and supply are the main drivers of food price volatility increased biofuel production may cause short run food price increases but not long run price shifts decentralized freely operating markets will mitigate the persistence of any price shocks and restore prices to their long run trends the main policy implications are that oil gasoline and ethanol market shocks do not spillover into grain prices which indicates no long run food before fuel issue in the short run grain prices can spike due to market shocks so programs designed to blunt these price spikes may be warranted

caveat emptor cross country data on education and the labor force abstract cross country data on education and the labor force frequently are used to describe important dimensions of development and to estimate models of economic growth and growth determinants the impact of education and related phenomena this investigation finds 1 there are serious intertemporal and inter country comparability problems with these data that may importantly affect inferences about labor force size trends and productivity and schooling investments and impact 2 data gaps are systematically related to levels of development and literacy and 3 conclusions about the determinants or consequences of development based on constructed data that have been made available to fill data gaps can be seriously misleading

implications of biofuels mandates for the global livestock industry a computable general equilibrium analysis the rapid growth of biofuels production particularly in the united states the eu and brazil has had important implications for the global livestock industry both by raising the cost of feed grains and oilseeds and by forcing onto the market a large supply of biofuel by products most of which end up in livestock feed rations this article investigates the impact of an expanding biofuels industry on the mix and location of global livestock production surprisingly we find that growth in the u s and eu biofuels industries results in larger absolute reductions in livestock production overseas than in those regions due to the international transmission of grains prices which is offset locally by the lower cost of by products we also find that nonruminant production is cut more than ruminant livestock because it is less able to use biofuel by products in its feed rations implementing biofuel mandates increases cropland area a large portion of which is estimated to come from reduced grazing lands the biofuel producing regions are expected to reduce their coarse grains exports and increase imports of oilseeds and vegetable oils while they increase their exports of processed feed materials in sum biofuel mandates have important consequences for livestock as well as crops with net effects influenced by the important role of by products in substituting for feedstuffs

comparison of fixed versus variable biofuels incentives we evaluated several variants of a variable biofuel subsidy and compared them with the fixed subsidy and renewable fuel standard using two different modeling approaches first we used a partial equilibrium model encompassing crude oil gasoline ethanol corn and ethanol by products second we used a stochastic simulation model of a prototypical ethanol plant from the partial equilibrium analysis it appears the variable subsidy provides a safety net for ethanol producers when oil prices are low yet it does not put undue pressure on corn prices when oil prices are high at high oil prices the level of ethanol production is driven by market forces from the plant level stochastic analysis essentially the same conclusions are reached as with the fixed subsidy the variable subsidy can increase the net present value npv sufficiently to encourage investment but with lower risk for the producer lower probability of a loss from the investment and often lower expected cost to government finally in the us the ethanol industry is up against a blending limit called the blend wall if the blending wall remains in place and no way around it is found it does not matter much what other policy options are used

long term impacts of droughts on labour markets in developing countries evidence from brazil abstract climate shocks have well documented impacts on the short term welfare of rural households in developing countries we investigate the impact of droughts on brazilian labour markets we find long term rural wage losses beyond the immediate impact of the drought with affected workers taking five years to catch up with their peers findings are robust to model specification the severity of the losses varies with the dependence on agricultural income supporting the notion of diversifying portfolio strategies in rural areas to reduce climate related income risk

the economic effects of the eu biofuel target in this paper we use the cge model dart to assess the economic impacts and optimality of different aspects of the eu climate package a special focus is placed on the 10 biofuel target in the eu in particular we analyze the development in the biofuel sectors the effects on agricultural production and prices and finally overall welfare implications one of the main findings is that the eu emission targets alone lead to only minor increases in biofuel production additional subsidies are necessary to reach the 10 biofuel target this in turn increases european agricultural prices by up to 7 compared to a cost effective scenario in which the eu 20 emission reduction target is reached additional welfare losses occur due to separated carbon markets and the renewable quotas the biofuel target has relatively small negative or even positive welfare effects in some scenarios

do energy prices stimulate food price volatility examining volatility transmission between us oil ethanol and corn markets this paper examines volatility transmission in oil ethanol and corn prices in the united states between 1997 and 2011 we follow a multivariate garch approach to evaluate the level of interdependence and the dynamics of volatility across these markets preliminary results indicate a higher interaction between ethanol and corn markets in recent years particularly after 2006 we only observe however significant volatility spillovers from corn to ethanol prices but not the converse we also do not find major cross volatility effects from oil to corn markets the results do not provide evidence of volatility in energy markets stimulating price volatility in grain markets

the role of federal renewable fuel standards and market structure on the growth of the cellulosic biofuel sector abstract this article examines the effect of the renewable fuel standards and market power on the growth of the cellulosic biofuel sector we develop a sectoral model to show how changes in the regulations governing cellulosic fuel production affect the equilibrium quantity of cellulosic ethanol based on model calibration for washington state we find that existing low cost waivers purchased by obligated parties in lieu of cellulosic fuel production negate the effectiveness of the renewable fuel standard to induce the production and consumption of cellulosic biofuels however raising waiver price slightly relative to the status quo significantly increases the equilibrium quantity of cellulosic ethanol the high cost of cellulosic ethanol production is often cited as the cause of the lack of cellulosic ethanol production which is used to justify low waiver prices our policy message is the converse the low current waiver price significantly contributes to the cellulosic ethanol market stagnation in the context of the current biofuel policy

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

an ethanol blend wall shift is prone to increase petroleum gasoline demand abstract in 2010 the u s environmental protection agency announced a waiver allowing an increase in the fuel ethanol blend limit the blend wall from 10 e10 to 15 e15 justifications for the waiver are reduced vehicle fuel prices and less consumption of petroleum gasoline leading to greater energy security empirical investigations of this waiver using monte carlo simulations reveal an anomaly where a relaxation of this blend wall elicits a demand response under a wide range of elasticities this demand response can actually increase the consumption of petroleum gasoline and thus lead to greater energy insecurity the economics supporting this result and associated policy implications are developed and discussed

implementing a biofuel economy in the eu lessons from the sustoil project and future perspectives for next generation biofuels abstract the aim of this article is to illustrate main economic and environmental ghg emission reductions effects of implementing a biofuel economy and to discuss the potential of establishing advanced biofuels in the european union the study is based on the recently completed eu fp7 sustoil research project the main question addressed is the eu policy objective of achieving 20 ghg emission reductions using 20 of renewables by the year 2020 to contribute to the achievement of this policy we run and execute through a computable general equilibrium model a simulation experiment of implementing a bio based economy using biorefineries in the production process main results suggest that a biorefineries working from oil seeds and their by products will lead to a large increase in the amount of this crop grown particularly in eastern europe b this increase will be accompanied by a decrease in sectoral gdp in several other areas c oil and electricity prices will generally fall in across the eu with a particularly notable trend in eastern europe and d a reduction in carbon emissions is achieved but this will be insufficient to meet the eu 20 target this latter result would suggest to speed the technological process towards the use of next generation biofuels in the eu furthermore these results advocate for a leading role expected to play by eastern eu countries over the next years the expected increase in the cultivation of energy crops could conflict with the availability of land for food crops the potential for establishing next generation biofuels in the eu with adequate support policies would be essential for guaranteeing energy and food security in the long run

bank lending in uncertain times abstract we study the impact of economic uncertainty on credit supply using monthly data on more than two million corporate loan applications received by italian banks between 2004 and 2012 we find that an increase in aggregate uncertainty has two effects it lowers the likelihood that firms applications will be successful and it prolongs the time firms have to wait for their loans to be disbursed this financial acceleration mechanism varies in the cross section affecting mainly banks with low capital buffers and firms that are geographically distant from the bank to which they apply

a brief review of some problems in using national accounts data in level of output comparisons and growth studies abstract after an initial burst of enthusiasm for establishing their national accounts 30 or 40 years ago some countries have made continuous improvements while others have done little to maintain even their initial system presently most developing countries make their basic estimate of gdp from the production side and most do not have adequate surveys to permit a consistency check of their production and expenditure side estimates the base surveys for expenditures and production are typically over ten years old and the lags in basic surveys for constructing constant price estimates are frequently longer a number of countries estimate their growth from a weighted average of volume indexes and make no attempt at direct deflation many of those that do deflate their current expenditure estimates do so at a very aggregate level users of national accounts should be aware of the varying quality of the estimates across countries and hopefully continual questioning of the numbers will help to encourage improvement

measuring the labor market impacts of hurricane katrina migration evidence from houston texas hurricane katrina made landfall on the us gulf coast as a category three storm on the morning of august 29 2005 with winds reach ing speeds of 130 miles per hour and storm surges as high as 27 feet katrina caused unprec edented damage along the coasts of alabama mississippi and louisiana unofficial estimates suggest that 100 000 to 150 000 evacuees moved to the houston texas metropolitan area repre senting a 3 to 4 percent increase in the population adrian campo flores 2005 some anecdotal evidence suggests that many evacuees expect to stay in the houston metro area indefinitely 2 katrina disproportionately affected minorities and the disadvantaged thomas gabe et al 2005 find that the evacuees who were most acutely affected by the storm were significantly more likely to be black poor and unemployed and were significantly less educated compared to other evacuees and compared to the nation on average in this paper i examine the effect of the migration of katrina evacuees on the houston metropolitan area labor market using current population survey cps data from september 2000 to august 2006 to quantify the effect of hurricane katrina migration i compare wages and employment before and after the storm among nonevacuees residing in houston or native houstonians and in other metro areas that were not directly or indirectly affected by the storm in addition i allow the effects to vary by gender education and race and ethnicity the existing studies of the effect of immigra tion on the labor market outcomes among native born workers provide a good point of comparison for this analysis see rachel m friedberg and jennifer hunt 1995 and david card 2005 for reviews of this literature in a study similar to this one adriana kugler and mutlu yuksel 2006 find negative employment effects among low educated native workers and positive wage effects among highly educated workers in the us border states after hurricane mitch struck central america in october 1998 more gener ally there are numerous studies that examine the impact of an unexpected increase in the local labor supply due to immigration including papers by card 1990 hunt 1995 william carrington and pedro de lima 1996 and friedberg 2001 collectively these studies find small and insig nificant effects of immigration on local labor market outcomes for native workers other studies estimate the effect of immi gration on local labor markets using varia tion across receiving areas and across time in the immigrant share of the labor force and these studies produce conflicting results card 2001 2005 finds that local labor market out comes for unskilled natives are only marginally affected by immigration while george j borjas 2006 shows that the wage effect of immigra tion increases when the labor market is defined at the national level instead of at the local level since workers are more likely to migrate between localities than between countries in response to increased labor market competition due to immigration however gianmarco i p ottaviano and giovanni perri 2006 argue that by ignoring capital mobility and by assuming that immigrant and native workers are perfect substitutes in the labor market borjas overstates the size of the effect industrial relations section firestone library prince ton university princeton nj 08544 e mail mfifer princeton edu i am grateful to henry f rber elizabeth fussell alan krueger michael rothschild jesse rothstein and cecilia rouse for their guidance and leandro carvalho jason deparle matthew ericson jane fortson and participants at the princeton university graduate labor lunch and public finance working group and at the tulane university disaster and migration conference for helpful comments and suggestions i am responsible for the contents and for all remaining errors 1 jason de parle katrina s tide carries many to hope ful shores new york times april 23 2006 2 susan saulny putting down new roots on more solid ground new york times september 7 2005 simon romero shelters grow empty as apartments open up new york times september 8 2005

the impact of 1970s repatriates from africa on the portuguese labor market this paper examines the labor market effect of the retornados who immigrated to portugal from angola and mozambique in the mid 1970s following portugal s loss of its african colonies the retornados increased the portuguese labor force by roughly 10 in just three years two analyses suggest contrasting conclusions first comparisons of portugal with spain and france indicate that any adverse effect of the retornados was quantitatively swamped by the europe wide downturn in labor market conditions in the 1970s second comparisons between districts within portugal indicate that the retornados may have had a strong adverse effect on portuguese wages suggesting that immigration may be considerably more harmful than previous case studies have concluded the authors however regard the results of the within portugal analysis as less reliable than those of the comparison across countries

integrating bioenergy into computable general equilibrium models a survey in the past years biofuels have received increased attention since they were believed to contribute to rural development energy security and to fight global warming it became clear though that bioenergy cannot be evaluated independently of the rest of the economy and that national and international feedback effects are important computable general equilibrium cge models have been widely employed in order to study the effects of international climate policies the main characteristic of these models is their encompassing scope global models cover the whole world economy disaggregated into regions and countries as well as diverse sectors of economic activity such a modelling framework unveils direct and indirect feedback effects of certain policies or shocks across sectors and countries cge models are thus well suited for the study of bioenergy biofuel policies one can currently find various approaches in the literature of incorporating bioenergy into a cge framework this paper gives an overview of existing approaches critically assesses their respective power and discusses the advantages of cge models compared to partial equilibrium models grouping different approaches into categories and highlighting their advantages and disadvantages is important for giving a structure to this rather recent and rapidly growing research area and to provide a guidepost for future work

impacts of ethanol policy on corn prices a review and meta analysis of recent evidence abstract the literature on the impacts of biofuels on agricultural commodity prices is characterized by contradictory findings we review studies published between 2007 and 2014 that estimate the effects of u s corn ethanol policy on corn prices and find estimates ranging from nil to over 80 such divergent results make it difficult to assess the merits of alternative biofuel policies to bring more clarity to the issue and facilitate comparisons across studies we assemble a database of over 150 medium to long run estimates of the effect of corn ethanol production on corn prices from 29 published studies we first normalize corn price impacts by the change in corn ethanol volume to control for the large differences in ethanol quantities across scenarios we then conduct a meta analysis to identify the factors that drive the remaining variation in corn price impacts across studies in addition to ethanol volumes we find that modeling framework projection year inclusion of ethanol co products and biofuel production from other feedstocks explain much of the differences in price effects the results indicate that a one billion gallon expansion of the us corn ethanol mandate in the year 2015 would lead to a three to four percent increase in corn prices with smaller price changes projected in future years

is the new immigration really so bad this article reviews the recent evidence on us immigration focusing on two key questions 1 does immigration reduce the labour market opportunities of less skilled natives 2 have immigrants who arrived after the 1965 immigration reform act been successfully assimilated overall evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant on the question of assimilation the success of the us born children of immigrants is a key yardstick by this metric post 1965 immigrants are doing reasonably well even children of the least educated immigrant origin groups have closed most of the education gap with the children of natives

identifying supply and demand elasticities of agricultural commodities implications for the us ethanol mandate we present a new framework to identify supply elasticities of storable commodities where past shocks are used as exogenous price shifters in the agricultural context past yield shocks change inventory levels and futures prices of agricultural commodities we use our estimated elasticities to evaluate the impact of the 2009 renewable fuel standard on commodity prices quantities and food consumers surplus for the four basic staples corn rice soybeans and wheat prices increase 20 per cent if one third of commodities used to produce ethanol are recycled as feedstock with a positively skewed 95 percent confidence interval that ranges from 14 to 35 per cent jel q11 q16 q42 q48

food vs fuel the effect of biofuel policies the rise in food commodity prices since 2004 which reached record highs in 2008 has coincided with the tripling of corn ethanol production from 15 billion liters bl to 50 bl over the 2004 2010 period this has spurred the food vs fuel debate and raised questions about the extent to which biofuels have contributed to the increase in food crop prices estimates of the impact of observed levels of biofuel production differ widely across studies and lie between 20 and 60 hochman et al 2011 biofuel production in the united states us has surged as a result of government policies like the renewable fuel standard rfs volumetric ethanol excise tax credit veetc for blenders of ethanol and tariffs that restrict the imports of sugarcane ethanol the rfs authorized by the energy independence and security act eisa of 2007 has set ambitious targets of increasing biofuel production sixfold to 136 bl by 2022 with over 60 of it to be met by advanced biofuels produced using non corn starch based feedstocks a 0 12 liter veetc is provided to blenders of ethanol to reduce their costs of meeting the rfs while a tariff of 0 14 liter and an ad valorem tariff of 2 5 were enacted to prevent transfer of the tax credit to ethanol producers in brazil the current veetc and import tariff expired in 2011 with increasing federal debt and concerns about the impact of these policies on food and feed prices political support for the

regional characteristics and the location of foreign firms within poland this article investigates the location determinants of firms with foreign capital participation within poland using the regional data set from 1993 to 1998 it is found that the concentration of foreign economic activity is positively related to industry and service agglomeration and the road network and negatively to the unemployment rate traditional regional characteristics such as gdp wage rate and education often regarded as important location determinants are not robust with respect to the specification of the estimating equation the special economic zone variable is not found to be statistically significant in any specification estimated geographic location dummies confirm that foreign firms prefer central and south western regions over eastern parts of poland having controlled for their characteristics

bank capital and uncertainty abstract financial frictions in raising external finance can induce banks to self insure against future shocks through holding more bank capital as uncertainty about future losses increases the above reasoning implies that they would choose to increase their capital position this paper tests this hypothesis in a dataset with u s commercial banks by exploiting a cross sectional variation in uncertainty to explain the distribution of bank capital ratios i find statistically significant and robust evidence in support of a self insurance mechanism a counterfactual experiment suggests that a decline in uncertainty to its lowest level generates an average reduction in bank capital ratios of up to 2 percentage points furthermore uncertainty explains on average about half of banks regulatory capital buffers

the impact of biofuel growth on agriculture why is the range of estimates so wide the rapid expansion of biofuel production has generated considerable interest within the body of empirical economic literature that has sought to understand the impact of biofuel growth on the global food economy while the consensus within the literature is that biofuel emergence is likely to have some effect on future world agricultural market there is a considerable range in the estimated size of the impact despite the importance of this topic to policy makers there has been no study that has tried to reconcile the differences among various outlook studies this paper undertakes an in depth review of some key outlook studies which quantify the impacts of biofuels on agricultural commodities and which are based on either general equilibrium ge or partial equilibrium pe modeling approaches we attempt to reconcile the systematic differences in the estimated impacts of biofuel production growth on the prospective prices and production of three major feedstock commodities maize sugar cane and oilseeds across these studies despite the fact that all models predict positive impacts on prices and production there are large differences among the studies our findings point to a number of key assumptions and structural differences that seem to jointly drive the variations we observe across these studies the differences among the pe models are mainly due to differences in the design of scenarios the presence or absence of biofuel trade and the structural way in which agricultural and energy market linkages are modeled the differences among the ge models are likely to be driven by model assumptions on agricultural land supply the inclusion of the byproducts and assumptions on crude oil prices and the elasticity of substitution between petroleum and biofuels

investment in cellulosic biofuel refineries do waivable biofuel mandates matter we develop a conceptual model to study the impact of mandate policies on stimulating investment in cellulosic biofuel refineries in a two period framework we compare the first period investment level fil under three scenarios laissez faire non waivable mandate nwm policy and waivable mandate wm policy results show that when plant level marginal costs are increasing then both nwm policy and wm policy may stimulate fil the wm policy has a smaller impact than does the nwm policy when the plant level marginal costs are constants however wm policy does not increase fil but does increase the expected profit of more efficient investors copyright 2012 oxford university press

the labor market impact of immigration a quasi experiment exploiting immigrant location rules in germany with the fall of the berlin wall ethnic germans living in eastern europe and the former soviet union were given the opportunity to migrate to germany within 15 years 2 8 million individuals had done so upon arrival these immigrants were exogenously allocated to different regions to ensure an even distribution across the country their inflow can therefore be seen as a quasi experiment of immigration i analyze the effect of these inflows on skill specific employment rates and wages the results indicate a displacement effect of 3 1 unemployed workers for every 10 immigrants that find a job but no effect on relative wages

rural infrastructure transactions costs and market participation in kenya abstract we develop a conceptual framework for quantifying fixed transactions costs facing semisubsistence households using household survey data from a sample of 324 kenyan maize farmers we jointly estimate household supply and demand schedules and transactions costs econometric results indicate that on average the ad valorem tax equivalent of fixed transactions costs for households in our sample is 15 additional analysis indicates that economic isolation is positively associated with the size of transactions costs to the best of our knowledge ours are the first empirical estimates of the magnitude of fixed transactions costs for agricultural households in developing countries

looking towards policies supporting biofuels and technological change evidence from france abstract the increasing constraints on crude oil resources contribute to the emergence of liquid biofuels as an alternative for road transport fuels the european union eu parliament called for a 7 limit on crop based biofuels by 2030 and proposed increasing the incorporation target for advanced biofuels within the proposals under discussion in relation to the post 2020 eu renewable energy directive red ii by 2021 2030 the main objective of this work is to assess the economic impacts of the eu parliament s decision concerning first generation biofuels we also determine the conditions under which advanced biofuels could become available by examining the evolution of oil prices and public subsidies we employ a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model calibrated on the french economy advanced biofuels are modelled as latent technology and we include biofuel by products our simulations provide guidelines for public decision makers to design alternative fiscal policies to support biofuels in a context of regulatory uncertainty

the impact of mass migration on the israeli labor market mass migration from the former soviet union increased the israeli population by 12 in the first half of the 1990s this exodus was precipitated by the lifting of emigration restrictions in an unstable ussr and by the open immigration policy of israel toward soviet jews who faced more restrictive entry policies elsewhere i use this natural experiment to study the impact of immigration on the labor market outcomes of native israelis ols yields significant reductions in wages and small reductions in employment however ols is biased if the distribution of immigrants across occupations in israel was not exogenous to relative wage and employment conditions i instrument for the entry of russians into an occupation in israel using information on their former occupations in the ussr there is a significant positive correlation between the former presence of the immigrants in an occupation in the ussr and their presence in that occupation in israel but the previous occupational choices of russians abroad were independent of israeli wage and employment growth subsequent to their migration iv estimates indicate that immigration did not have an adverse impact on native israeli labor market outcomes

income taxes and price variability in storable commodity markets progressive income taxes lead to distortions in economic decisions made across tax years this is particularly important when income is volatile as in the case of agriculture progressive taxes therefore can fundamentally change economic behavior over time this study explores how progressive income taxes influence storage decisions and the markets for storable commodities under a progressive tax system commodity storage tends to be lower in the aggregate and as a consequence price volatility increases these distortions could be eliminated by introducing a flat rate tax or by changing the tax reporting system for farmers

labor market consequences of internal migration in turkey abstractduring the past 30 years turkey has undergone profound economic and social transformations including fundamental shifts from a state oriented economy to a market oriented economy large scale modernization investments in telecommunication and transportation services and low intensity ongoing armed conflict concentrated in the country s southeastern region for such a period using the 1990 and 2000 turkish censuses i evaluated the labor market consequences of internal migration that might have been sparked by such significant economic and social changes overall the results suggest that provinces with a higher share of recent migrants may observe decreases in their native population s labor market opportunities while this adverse impact of the recent migrant inflows remains robust it exhibits heterogeneity with respect to the skill level of natives as well as for the labor market outcomes of different native and migrant groups

woody biomass processing potential economic impacts on rural regions abstract this paper estimates the economic and environmental impacts of introducing woody biomass processing wbp into a rural area in central appalachia wbp is among the most promising additions to energy generation portfolios for reducing import dependency while at the same time providing economic opportunity to stimulate regional economies especially in rural regions where economic development options are often limited we use an input output framework to assess wbp under three different pathways fast pyrolysis ethanol and coal biomass to liquids we find that the proposed wbp will increase regional output by 0 5 1 3 of gross regional product it will increase income by 17 32 to 51 31 million dollars each year and regional employment by 218 1 1127 8 jobs depending on the chosen pathway of these impacts the direct portions are 63 77 of the total impact depending on the chosen pathway the economic analysis and the results from the accompanying environmental assessment show that only the ethanol pathway has both economic and environmental benefits we conclude that because long run economic development strategies in rural regions are limited and negative impacts do not alter dramatically the regional environmental profile regional policymakers should include wbp among their development portfolio options

farm acreage shocks and crop prices an svar approach to understanding the impacts of biofuels the last 10 years have seen tremendous expansion in biofuels production particularly in corn ethanol in the united states at the same time that commodity prices e g corn have experienced significant spikes while supporters claim that biofuels are renewable and carbon friendly concerns have been raised about their impacts on land use and food prices this paper analyzes how us crop prices have responded to shocks in acreage supply these shocks can be thought of as a shock to the residual supply of corn for food using a structural vector auto regression framework we examine shocks to a crop s own acreage and to total cropland this allows us to estimate the effect of dedicating cropland or non crop farmlands to biofuels feedstock production a negative shock in own acreage leads to an increase in price for soybeans and corn our calculations show that increased corn ethanol production during the boom production year 2006 2007 explains approximately 27 of the experienced corn price rise

are biofuels the culprit opec food and fuel the food commodity price boom of 2003 2008 was the most notable in the past several decades having a substantial impact on global economic activity it affected developing nations by impacting real output the balance of payments government budgetary positions and most important the well being of the very poor high commodity prices also affected developed countries by transmitting business cycle disturbances and creating inflationary pressures several recent studies tried to identify and quantify the factors that caused the food commodity price boom of 2003 2008 see for instance isabel vansteenkiste 2009 these studies suggest that one key factor is growth in demand which since the 1980s has outpaced growth in supply other studies argued that biofuel is the culprit since it increases demand for staple crops see for instance donald mitchell 2008 all these studies however assumed competitive markets and did not consider the impact of biofuel on energy costs to farmers moreover they ignored the organization of petroleum exporting countries opec these studies leave us perplexed regarding the true impact of biofuel on food commodity prices was it or was it not an important contributor to the recent food commodity boom we believe that to answer this question the interactions between energy and food must be modeled and opec introduced and the impact of biofuels compared with other factors that are argued by the literature to be important this paper aims to analyze the multiple contributions of energy and biofuels to the increase are biofuels the culprit opec food and fuel

the impact of biofuels on commodity food prices assessment of findings for years agriculture has provided most of the fuel for vehicular transportation concerns about availability of fuels balance of trade and climate change led to the introduction of biofuel programs in the united states brazil europeanunion eu andothercountries the impacts of these programs and the relationship between the food and fuel markets have become major topics of economic research this paper summarizes the main findings of alternative lines of research on the relationship between the food and fuel markets and identifies gaps and quandaries that warrant further research this is not meant to be a complete survey and it emphasizes several of our studies within the broader literature the paper distinguishes between two bodies of literature one on the relationship between food and fuel prices and another on the impact of the introduction of biofuel on commodity food prices while biofuel prices do not seem to affect food commodity prices we explain why the introduction of biofuel does moreover biofuelshavenotbeenthemostdominant contributor to the recent food price inflation and different biofuels have different impacts

fluctuations in uncertainty this review article tries to answer four questions i what are the stylized facts about uncertainty over time ii why does uncertainty vary iii do fluctuations in uncertainty matter and iv did higher uncertainty worsen the great recession of 2007 2009 on the first question both macro and micro uncertainty appears to rise sharply in recessions on the second question the types of exogenous shocks like wars financial panics and oil price jumps that cause recessions appear to directly increase uncertainty and uncertainty also appears to endogenously rise further during recessions on the third question the evidence suggests uncertainty is damaging for short run investment and hiring but there is some evidence it may stimulate longer run innovation finally in terms of the great recession the large jump in uncertainty in 2008 potentially accounted for about one third of the drop in gdp

the effect of weather induced internal migration on local labor markets evidence from uganda relying on census data collected in 2002 and historical weather data for uganda this paper estimates the impact of weather induced internal migration on the probability for non migrants living in the destination regions to be employed consistent with the prediction of a simple theoretical model the results reveal a larger negative impact than the one documented for developed countries they further show that this negative impact is significantly stronger in ugandan regions with lower road density and therefore less conducive to capital mobility a 10 percentage points increase in the net in migration rate in these areas decreases the probability of being employed of non migrants by more than 10 percentage points

labour market responses to immigration evidence from internal migration driven by weather shocks we study the labour market impact of internal migration in indonesia by instrumenting migrant flows with rainfall shocks at the origin area estimates reveal that a one percentage point increase in the share of migrants decreases income by 0 97 and reduces employment by 0 24 percentage points these effects are different across sectors employment reductions are concentrated in the formal sector while income reduction occurs in the informal sector negative consequences are most pronounced for low skilled natives even though migrants are systematically highly skilled we suggest that the two sector nature of the labour market may explain this pattern

lending on hold regulatory uncertainty and bank lending standards abstract the 2011 2013 rule making process for the regulation of qualified mortgages was correlated with a reduction in mortgage lending in this paper we document this correlation at the bank level using a novel measure of banks perception of regulatory uncertainty we offer suggestive evidence that banks that perceived higher regulatory uncertainty or that were more adverse to it reduced lending more severely other channels that might explain banks lending behavior investment securitization putbacks by government sponsored enterprises and general economic uncertainty are also considered

the hazards of small firms in southern africa small enterprises are a ubiquitous feature of the economies of many developing countries this study is the first to examine the duration of their survival using economic theory and modern econometric techniques using data sets from surveys conducted in four southern african countries i estimate a proportional hazards model describing the closure rates of a sample of approximately 21 000 firms there is an inverse relationship between enterprise growth rates and the closure hazard the sector where it operates influences the hazard as does its location in some countries female headed firms are at a survival disadvantage compared to their male counterparts

policy shocks and market based regulations evidence from the renewable fuel standard the renewable fuel standard mandates large increases in u s biofuel consumption and is implemented using tradable compliance credits known as rins in early 2013 rin prices soared causing the regulator to propose reducing future mandates we estimate empirically the effect of three policy shocks that reduced the expected mandates in 2013 we find that the largest of these shocks decreased the value of the fuel industry s 2013 compliance obligation by 7 billion we then study the effects of the shocks on commodity markets and the market value of publicly traded biofuel firms results show that the burden of the mandate reductions fell primarily on advanced biofuel firms and commodity markets of the marginal compliance biofuel we argue that the policy shocks reduced the incentive to invest in the technologies required to meet the future objectives of the rfs and discuss alternative policy designs to address the problems that arose in 2013

ethanol mandates and drought insights from a stochastic equilibrium model of the u s corn market the outlook for u s corn markets is inextricably linked to what happens to the u s ethanol industry which depends in turn on the level of government subsidies and mandates we develop a stochastic partial equilibrium model to simulate outcomes for the corn market for the 2008 09 marketing year to gain insight into these linkages the model includes five stochastic variables that are major contributors to corn price volatility planted acreage corn yield export demand gasoline prices and capacity of the ethanol industry our results indicate that integration of gasoline and corn markets has increased corn price volatility and that the passage of the expanded ethanol mandates in the energy independence and security act eisa has had modest effects on corn prices model results indicate an expected average marketing year price of 4 97 per bushel and a price volatility of 17 5 without the 10 billion gallon eisa mandate but with maintenance of the 0 51 per gallon tax credit imposition of the mandate increases the expected price by 7 1 and price volatility by 12 1 the effects of the mandate are modest as ethanol production would average 9 5 billion gallons without the mandate because of high gasoline prices the mandate is binding with a probability of 37 8 which indicates that an additional tax or subsidy will be needed to ensure that the mandate is met high corn prices caused by drought can cause the mandate to bind fixing 2008 corn yields at extreme drought levels increases expected corn prices to 6 59 per bushel without a mandate and to 7 99 per bushel with the eisa mandate an average additional subsidy of 0 73 per gallon of ethanol would be needed to ensure that the mandate is met in this drought scenario elimination of the current blenders tax credit would result in the mandate not being met in all cases on average a subsidy of 0 41 per gallon would ensure that ethanol production is at least 10 billion gallons in the 2008 09 marketing year