a respecified tax adjusted fisher relation how much will a 1 increase in expected inflation increase nominal interest rates irving fisher s famous equation implies that nominal interest rates will rise in proportion to an increase in expected inflation darby and feldstein correcting the fisher equation for taxation predict a nominal interest rate increase of 1 1 t where t is the marginal tax rate i e if t 3 then a 1 increase in expected inflation should cause a 1 4 rise in interest rates empirical evidence however suggests that the rise in interest rates is much smaller than the darby feldstein prediction estimates are around 9 varying mostly between 5 and 1 15 which is much closer to fisher s original prediction it is important to know the size of the interest rate response to inflation expectations in a world in which inflation and interest rates are volatile and in which tax laws are designed to influence savings and investment through interest rates in this paper we attempt to close the gap between theorized and estimated effects of inflation by incorporating into the fisher equation two important aspects of the u s tax code historic cost depreciation and the lower tax rate on capital gains our model shows that the effect of expected inflation on interest rates is dampened by the lower benefits from depreciation deductions arid the capital gains tax our corrected fisher equation predicts a 1 12 nominal interest rate increase rather than the 1 4 increase implied by the darby feldstein model the our model closes about 56 of the gap between theory and empirical evidence the remainder could be closed by additional refinements in the model or better empirical modeling

attitudes toward risk and compliance in emission permit markets we investigate the effects of uncertainty and concomitant risk aversion as they impact the incentive structure and subsequent operation of an emissions permit market modeled after the u s s02 market our theoretical results suggest that uncertainty dulls incentives to achieve cost savings through permit trading and inhibits efficient allocation of abatement efforts by firms we test hypotheses in an experimental laboratory setting and find that the irreversibility of investment in abatement technology may present countervailing incentives for potential sellers of permits resulting in a wait and see attitude toward adoption of efficient levels of abatement technology

the effect of fiscal policy on the short run relation between nominal interest rates and inflation this paper presents a simple empirical model of the relation between the inflation rate and the nominal interest rate we show that previous results found in the literature may be attributed to specification error and that there are natural explanations for the observed signs of previous fisher equation estimates our results show that fiscal policy shocks may generate short run negative correlations between changes in inflation and changes in the nominal interest rates these results illustrate the difficulty in discussing the relation between inflation and nominal interest rates without conditioning the analysis with specific assumptions on the course of the economy

sulfur dioxide so2 emissions and government spending on environmental protection in china evidence from spatial econometric analysis abstract this study pays attention to a rarely discussed but important issue regarding the influence of the government s environmental protection expenditure on sulfur dioxide so2 emissions in china under consideration of the potentially spatial dependence of so2 emissions a panel dataset of 30 provinces from 2008 to 2013 is utilized to estimate the panel spatial durbin models the main findings of this study are that so2 emissions can be effectively reduced by government spending on environmental protection and that the relationship between so2 emissions and gross regional product grp per capita in china is cubic polynomial n shaped in addition as direct investment from foreign countries toward china increases so2 emissions will be reduced the trade factor also plays an important and negative role in so2 emissions provinces with higher shares of secondary industries to total grp will have more so2 emissions the investment completed in the treatment of industrial pollution in the private sector can effectively reduce so2 emissions and a higher population density causes a reduction in so2 emissions the coefficient of spatial autocorrelation is statistically positive confirming a positive spatial correlation also meaning a spatial competition of so2 emissions among provinces in china all these conclusions are consistent with those in previous works and with our expectations and remain the same while a two stage procedure is applied to cope with the potential endogeneity problem of grp with the exception of the effect of population density

the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money publisher summary this chapter discusses the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money in january 1969 issue of the review of economic studies karl borch and martin feldstein separately criticized the widely used mean variance analysis of portfolio selection borch contended that any system of upward sloping mean standard deviation e s indifference curves can be shown to be inconsistent with the basic axiom of choice under uncertainty he pointed out that one can always pick any two points on an upward sloping indifference curve to represent two bernoulli distributions with probability 1 p of gaining the same amount x in both the cases and probability p of gaining y1 in the case of one distribution and y2 in the case of the second distribution with y2 y1 if the second distribution represents the point to the northeast of the other point then by the dominance axiom the second distribution must be preferred to the first which contradicts the basic meaning of indifference curves feldstein by using a log utility function and a lognormal distribution for investment outcome showed that e s indifference curves for a risk averter need not be convex downwards though upward sloping they would change from convex to concave once the standard deviation of the outcome exceeds the mean multiplied by on the face of it this seems to suggest that risk aversion might decrease as risk is increased beyond a certain extent

the vanishing liquidity effect of money on interest analysis and implications for policy this paper seeks to re examine the effects of money on interest rates the earlier literature on this topic determined fairly well the pattern of response of interest rates to changes in money growth the notable studies of cagan 1972 cagan and gandolfi 1969 and gibson 1970 served to establish the professions stylized pattern as presented in section i section ii presents new evidence on the subject and finds that the old empirical generalizations no longer hold specifically the results suggest that the initial liquidity effect of faster money growth is likely to be offset within the month following the monetary policy change sections iii and iv investigate the reasons for the changing pattern of monetary effects on interest rates and discuss the policy implications of the new pattern

the effects of inflation on real interest rates one of the most obvious facts of recent monetary history is that high inflation is associated with high nominal interest rates this association has been interpreted by many as supporting a superneutrality hypothesis that an increase in inflation will not affect real interest rates in the long run however the bulk of the evidence contradicts superneutrality beginning with irving fisher 1896 1930 most empirical investigations have found that fully anticipated inflation has less than a unit effect on nominal interest rates and thus reduces real interest rates even in the longest of runs this has been shown under the assumption that expectations are formed rationally douglas pearce 1979 that they take the form of an arbitrary distributed lag on past inflation rates fisher 1930 william gibson 1970 or that they are accurately represented by the livingstone expectations data pearce kajal lahiri 1976 lawrence summers 1983 attempted to measure the long run effect without an explicit theory of expectations regressing long swings in various nominal interest rates against long swings in inflation over various subintervals from 1860 to 1979 he found coefficients consistently less than unity for the post world war ii era as a whole the coefficients were in the range of 0 5 to 0 75 with standard deviations of 0 08 to 0 33 a few studies have found coefficients close to unity william yohe and denis karnosky 1969 martin feldstein and otto eckstein 1970 gibson 1972 lucas but as several authors have observed thomas sargent 1976 robert shiller 1980 john wood 1981 summers these findings are limited to a particular period of u s history approximately 1953 71 furthermore even a unitcoefficient would contradict superneutrality of the after tax real interest rate which would require a coefficient substantially greater than unity even taking into account the other inflation distortions in the tax system summers calculated that the coefficient ought to lie in the range of 1 3 to 1 5 far higher than observed these empirical findings pose a challenge to traditional monetary theory much of which implies that superneutrality should hold at least approximately for example the model of miguel sidrauski 1967 implies that the real interest rate should equal the marginal product of capital which in the long run should equal the representative household s marginal rate of time preference if this rate of time preference is a constant then in particular it will be independent of the rate of inflation if it is positively related to the household s wealth or utility then inflation can reduce the marginal product of capital somewhat through what are commonly called mundell tobin effects that is higher inflation can reduce the demand for real balances which reduces real wealth which lowers the rate of time preference and leads to further capital accumulation 2 but this real balance effect on saving is commonly recognized to be too small to make department of economics social science centre university of western ontario london canada n6a 5c2 we are grateful to charles adams norman cameron john chilton jacob frenkel david laidler ben mccallum baldev raj brad reid jack weldon john whalley ron winrck and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions and comments on earlier drafts all errors are attributable to transaction costs robert lucas 1980 finds empirical support for the hypothesis which he calls one of the central implications of the quantity theory of money it has also been adopted by a wide range of more eclectic economists as evidenced by its endorsement in two of the most popular macroeconomics textbooks rudiger dornbusch and stanley fischer 1981 pp 454 58 robert j gordon 1978 pp 289 91 2these implications of variable time preference can be drawn almost immediately from the work of hirofumi uzawa 1968 a graphical analysis is presented by david laidler 1969b who focuses on the logically equivalent question of the effects of paying interest on money

the effects of different taxes on risky and risk free investment and on the cost of capital this paper analyzes the major factors which determine the effects of taxation on the value of risky assets and on the cost of capital and shows how the magnitudes and even the signs of these effects depend on the values assumed for a few key parameters in the model using plausible values for these parameters it is shown that the results obtained are frequently counter intuitive

interest rates and the subjective probability distribution of inflation forecasts the interst rate effects of the first four moments of the subjective probability distribution of inflation forecasts from the asa nber survey are examined over the period 1968 4 1985 4 using tre asury bill yields as the nominal rate variable in the context of a re duced form fisher equation the authors find that inflation uncertain ty as measured by the average variance of the probability distributi ons of inflation forecasts to be insignificant however the average skewness and kurtosis variables which result from these probability distributions do significantly affect interest rates they interpret these effects as accounting for the level of risk or uncertainty abou t future inflation copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

does government expenditure affect environmental quality empirical evidence using chinese city level data abstract with rapid economic development the chinese government expenditures at various levels have increased sufficiently at the same time the environmental pollution in china has deteriorated significantly in this study the city level panel data of 106 chinese cities over the 2002 2014 period are utilized to investigate the impacts of government expenditure on the emissions of three typical pollutants specifically the total effects are divided into two types direct effects through which government expenditure affects pollution directly and indirect effects which refer to the indirect influences of government expenditure on environmental pollution through its impacts on gdp per capita to control for potential endogeneity and introduce dynamics the generalized method of moments gmm method is utilized the estimation results indicate that the total effects of government expenditure on these three pollutants are very different for sulfur dioxide so 2 soot and chemical oxygen demand cod the total effects are decreasing inverted u and u shaped respectively furthermore the indirect effects dominate the direct effects

fair pricing of redd based emission offsets under risk preferences and benefit sharing we consider a risk aware forest owner and electricity producer evaluating the reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation redd based offsets with a benefit sharing mechanism under uncertain co2co2 prices for a range of co2co2 prices and respective risks perceived by the forest owner seller and electricity producer buyer we apply a model of fair indifference pricing parties risk preferences are reflected by exponential utility functions the potentially contracted amounts of redd offsets are analyzed under various risk preferences and for different benefit sharing opportunities our results show that a risk averse attitude considerably increases the contracted offset amounts compared to risk neutral case and therefore creates a higher potential for redd implementation we demonstrate possible situations when parties could agree on a certain range of redd contracts e g smaller amounts of redd offsets are traded for higher prices and larger amounts for lower prices although contracting a moderate amount at a moderate price is impossible the suggested benefit sharing mechanism can help increase contracted offset amounts our modeling results highlight two ways to promote higher redd participation i strengthening the carbon price signal to reveal risk averse behavior of energy producers and ii implementing the mechanism of benefit risk sharing between the redd consumer and supplier

real interest rates anticipated inflation and unanticipated money a multi country study a bstractin this paper we examine real interest rate behavior in canada west germany the united states and the united kingdom using a model that yields a semi reduced form equation linking the real interest rate to monetary growth shocks anticipated inflation and expected inflation variance the estimator used in our analysis accommodates regressors from other regressions ensuring that accurate inferences are obtained in all countries we find that increases in anticipated inflation initially dampen real interest rates in addition a significant and negative relationship between unanticipated money shocks and real interest across all countries is discovered inflation variance typically exhibits little explanatory power

price volatility and risk exposure on market based environmental policy instruments abstract we explore the efficacy of price and quantity controls as environmental policy instruments in a stochastic setting in which agents are risk averse we demonstrate that the assumption of risk aversion may improve the performance of a tax relative to that of a system of tradable quotas and that restricting quota trade may enhance efficiency even though risk aversion in itself limits volumes of trade the government may be able to improve the performance of a tradable quota system by judicious choice of distribution and amount of initial quotas and by trading pro actively in the quota market

a note on the variability of real interest rates business cycles and the livingston data in the context of a structural model of interest rate determination we show how the separate impacts of business cycles on the nominal rate through their effects on the ex ante real rate and inflation forecast errors can be consistently estimated ours is a generalization of tanzi s 1980 model and demonstrates that over 1952 1980 the livingston data has significantly underestimated the underlying price expectations by nearly 25

joint risk preference technology estimation with a primal system applied studies of the firm in a risky environment have concentrated either on the firm s technology or on its risk preferences these models result in generally inconsistent and inefficient parameter estimates a primal model is proposed which allows a firm s preferences and technology to be estimated jointly in the presence of risk the model is applied to iowa corn production and estimated technology parameters are compared with those from other approaches modest risk aversion leads to inelastic even backbending per acre supplies and input demands yield heteroskedasticity in inputs leads to supply heteroskedasticity in prices especially for risk neutral firms

the effect of government expenditure on the environment an empirical investigation abstract this paper examines the impact of government spending on the environment using a panel of 77 countries for the time period 1980 2000 we estimate both the direct and indirect effects of government spending on pollution the indirect effect in particular operates through the impact of government spending on income and the subsequent effect of the income level on pollution to take into account the dynamic nature and the potential endogeneity in the relationships examined appropriate econometric methods are used for so2 government spending is estimated to have a negative direct impact on per capita emissions while the direct effect is insignificant on co2 pollution the indirect effect on so2 is negative for low income levels and becomes positive as income increases while it remains negative for co2 for the most part of the sample range the resultant total effects follow the patterns of the indirect effects which dominate their respective direct ones for each pollutant policy implications from the results vary depending on the income level of the considered countries

fuel mix diversification incentives in liberalized electricity markets a mean variance portfolio theory approach monte carlo simulations of gas coal and nuclear plant investment returns are used as inputs of a mean variance portfolio optimization to identify optimal base load generation portfolios for large electricity generators in liberalized electricity markets we study the impact of fuel electricity and co2 price risks and their degree of correlation on optimal plant portfolios high degrees of correlation between gas and electricity prices as observed in most european markets reduce gas plant risks and make portfolios dominated by gas plant more attractive long term power purchase contracts and or a lower cost of capital can rebalance optimal portfolios towards more diversified portfolios with larger shares of nuclear and coal plants

international evidence on the long run impact of inflation in this paper i use a structural vector autoregression framework to analyze the effects of a permanent change in inflation on the long run real interest rate and real output level in 14 industrialized countries long run monetary superneutrality is rejected for all 14 countries using annual data the results indicate that a permanent increase in inflation lowers the long run real interest rate in each country a permanent increase in inflation also increases the long run real output level in a number of countries long run monetary superneutrality is also rejected for four out of the five countries examined using quarterly data under long run monetary superneutrality lrsn a per

is there convergence in per capita so2 emissions in china an empirical study using city level panel data abstract as china s economy has grown rapidly in recent years china s environmental pollution has become increasingly significant among all the traditional pollutants sulfur dioxide has been monitored by the chinese government since the 1990s in this study china s city level panel data between 2002 and 2012 are utilized to investigate the existence of convergence in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across chinese cities the conventional estimation methods for convergence suffer from an endogeneity problem and therefore produce biased results to address the endogeneity problem and allow for dynamics dynamic panel data estimators are utilized and the static estimation results are conducted as a robustness check in addition the influential factors for convergence are examined the empirical results indicate that in the chosen sample period there were absolute and conditional convergences in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across cities within the whole nation as well as in the eastern western and central regions of china because per capita gross domestic product and the ratio of secondary industry to gross domestic product are both positively related with per capita sulfur dioxide emissions higher income per capita and greater importance of the secondary industry would cause the convergence speed to be lower therefore the most straightforward policy implication for the empirical results is that the policies for controlling sulfur dioxide emissions should be regionally differentiated for cities with high sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the regulation could be tight as the emissions would decrease faster because convergence exists however for cities with low sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the target for reducing emissions should not be excessively aggressive

evaluating the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation in china a three stage data envelopment analysis approach abstract environmental regulation is of great concern to international academics and policy makers previous studies often regarded environmental regulation as an influencing factor when calculating eco efficiency or energy efficiency more attention should be given to the efficiency of environmental regulation especially in industrial field according to exiting studies industrial environmental regulation efficiency iere may be influenced by external environmental factors to explore the influence and obtain an actual efficiency this paper calculated iere in china by using the panel data of 30 regions from 2011 to 2015 the 12th five year plan period through the three stage data envelopment analysis approach firstly the undesirable slacks based model method was used to calculate the original iere secondly the economic base industrial structure urbanization level and education level were taken as external environmental variables and the effect of external environmental factors and stochastic disturbance were excluded thirdly the actual iere can be calculated after adjusting input values the results showed that china s iere was underestimated due to the impact from external environmental factors moreover the iere was more influenced by pure technical efficiency than scale efficiency the iere of each region varied thus targeted policies should be formulated according to local conditions this research provided a new analytical method for calculating environmental regulation efficiency the method can be applied either in other countries or in other sectors

corruption income and the environment an empirical analysis abstract in response to the recent growth of a largely theoretical body of literature analysing the linkages between corruption and pollution this paper subjects the corruption pollution relationship to a detailed empirical examination a distinction is drawn between the direct impact of corruption on pollution and the indirect impact which operates through corruption s impact on per capita income and the resultant impact of income on pollution using data for 94 countries covering the period 1987 2000 both direct and indirect impacts of corruption on air pollution emissions are estimated for both sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide corruption is estimated to have a positive direct impact on per capita emissions indirect effects are found to be negative and larger in absolute value than direct effects for the majority of the sample income range as a result the total effect of corruption on emissions is negative for all but the highest income countries in the sample

more flexible use of survey data on expectations in macroeconomic models a flexible procedure is proposed whereby both the random and systematic errors in measurement of survey data on inflation expectations can be appropriately handled when these surveys are used in the estimation of macroeconomic models during the period 1952 1980 livingston s two expectations series and the src series systematically underestimated inflation expectations by nearly 25 the asa nber survey however does not exhibit such underestimation thus the use of the livingston or src data as an unbiased measure of the true expectations of inflation would result in overestimation of the fisher effect and the ex ante real interest rate

government borrowing and tax adjusted real and nominal interest rates the purpose of this paper is to test for the effect of federal government budget deficits on one year tax adjusted nominal and real interest rates in an is lm as model the results suggest that the specification of the dependent variable is a crucial issue in the debate over the linkage between deficits and interest rates the evidence shows a positive and significant effect of various measures of the federal government deficit and debt on the real tax adjusted treasury bill rate in both the levels and the first differenced equations but not on the nominal tax adjusted rate the positive and significant deficit debt coefficients are also confirmed when the first differenced equation is estimated by instrumental variables and when the equation is estimated over various time periods thus there is robust evidence of a positive linkage between federal government borrowing and the tax adjusted real but not nominal interest rates

choice under uncertainty problems solved and unsolved ffifteen years ago the theory of choice under uncertainty could be considered one of the success stories of economic analysis it rested on solid axiomatic foundations it had seen important breakthroughs in the analytics of risk risk aversion and their applications to economic issues and it stood ready to provide the theoretical underpinnings for the newly emerging information revolution in economics 1 today choice under uncertainty is a field in flux the standard theory is being challenged on several grounds from both within and outside economics the nature of these challenges and of our profession s responses to them is the topic of this paper

expected inflation and interest rates reply vito tanzi s comment on my earlier study 1982 is based upon his belief that the mundell effect alone could not likely account for the ex ante negative real rates observed in his simulations his suggestion is that perhaps a mundell effect together with a fiscal illusion provides the best explanation p 502 nowhere did i argue that the mundell effect was all encompassing the nominal interest rate is determined by many factors besides expected inflation x my reducedform nominal interest rate equation includes inflation uncertainty the current and lagged money stock and the lagged price level as well as expected inflation as arguments thus at any point in time the nominal rate will shift with a movement in any of these variables one way of looking at this is that holding s constant i will vary with the other predetermined variables so that the real rate changes since tanzi and previous researchers have used partial equilibrium analysis to highlight the relation between 1t and i we tend to forget that the level of the real rate depends upon all the predetermined variables of the system to concentrate on the partial derivative of i with respect to sr we must take as given some initial i holding constant the other factors influencing i tanzi s simulations set the real rate of interest r initially equal to 03 then by assuming different values for di d7r and v he generates implied values for the after tax real interest rate r since the after tax real rate turns negative at quite low rates of 7r tanzi concludes that fiscal illusion is present as interest rates did not adjust for the effect of taxes p 502 the simple fact that the after tax real rate turns negative need imply nothing regarding whether or not investors are cognizant of taxes there is nothing inherently unusual about negative real rates of interest in the short run during inflationary periods clearly if money can be costlessly stored the nominal rate of interest cannot be negative but this in no way rules out negative real rates in a world of incomplete markets there may be inflationary periods when a negative real rate of interest is the best that optimizing agents can earn if there was a suitable asset available that guaranteed a zero return we would not expect to observe ex ante negative real rates benjamin friedman 1980 emphasizes the limited nature of portfolio substitution possibilities by arguing that if holding goods was a feasible portfolio alternative then the expected rate of inflation could be viewed as simply the return from holding such real assets in such a case higher expected inflation would reduce the lenders supply of loans directly via portfolio substitutions from loans bonds to real goods the problem with this scenario as stated by friedman is in practice however the available opportunities for such portfolio substitutions involving consumption or other real commodities are usually extremely limited purchasing the consumer price index basket of goods is not a feasible portfolio alternative p 34 the lack of such a real asset allows market instruments to offer a negative yield of course with no inflation and costless storage one could hold money so that we don t expect to observe negative rates in noninflationary periods frederic mishkin provides corroborating evidence in this area as he finds the real rate whether adjusted or unadjusted for taxes is negatively correlated with inflation 1981 p 191 emphasis added and the real interest rate appears to have been positive in the 1950s and 1960s but has since turned negative in the midand late 1970s p 192 regarding tanzi s simulations i do not believe that they correctly assess the path of the real rate following an exogenous change in inflationary expectations nw a major theme of my earlier paper was the emphasis arizona state university i thank don schlagenhauf john schroeter and richard l smith for helpful discussions

nonstructural risk attitude estimation this paper presents an econometric approach to risk attitude estimation that does not require joint estimation of the structure of the firm s technology and input decision rules the nonstructural approach replaces optimal input choice with the assumption that farmers optimally manage their portfolios of productive activities by thus shifting the focus from the detailed production decisions of the farm manager to the net returns of the whole farm operation the modeling problem is simplified the nonstructural approach is used to estimate risk attitudes in three indian villages the results are compared to previous experimental and econometric estimates from the same villages

fossil fuel flexibility in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors this paper analyzes short run interfuel substitution in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors on fossil fuel choice the problems are studied within a restricted translog cost share model the paper concludes that interfuel substitution in existing power plants is substantial especially that between oil and gas this is consistent with the notion that short run fuel substitution takes place in dual or multi fired plants by switching load between different single fired plants and by some conversions of power plants to be able to burn alternate fuels the empirical investigation also indicates that the system load factor is a notable determinant of fossil fuel choices in west europe and the paper ends with an assessment of the fuel consequences of some load management schemes in the region

economic behavior under uncertainty a joint analysis of risk preferences and technology a method is developed to estimate jointly risk preferences and technology under general conditions the approach is illustrated in an application to the analysis of u s corn soybean acreage decisions over time the results provide useful information on the nature of farmers risk preferences and on the influence of price risk and production risk on acreage allocation and farmers welfare copyright 1996 by mit press

health benefits of tunneling through the chinese environmental kuznets curve ekc abstract in this paper we first add to what is a growing literature on the existence and nature of the environmental kuznets curve ekc model for developing countries by testing for the existence of an ekc for china using a panel data set of city specific annual ambient levels of so2 pollution we find some support for both the typical inverted u shaped relationship and an n shaped cubic configuration more significantly we then explore the possibility of china s tunneling through the ekc by using newer cleaner technologies and thereby avoiding some of the environmental degradation that had often accompanied economic growth specifically we estimate and economically value the health benefits realizable to chinese cities from successful efforts to tunnel under the ekc over the next generation

expectations surprises and treasury bill rates 1960 82 changes in six month bill rates over semiannual periods in the 1960s and 1970s are successfully related to expected changes and to surprises the latter include unanticipated changes in expected inflation in the growth of industrial production and base money and in inflation uncertainty estimation of the basic equation through the middle of 1983 does not suggest any change in structure moreover the equation explains 60 percent of the extraordinarily high level of real rates since late 1980 largely owing to an excess of unexpected net increases in anticipated inflation over actual increases our estimates provide some support for the expectations theory there appears to be information content in six month forward rates while this content is swamped by the impact of surprises in equations explaining rate changes in terms of forward rates alone the content is clear when proxies for the surprises are included in the equations the height and volatility of interest rates in the early 1980s spectacularly exceeded that of the past half century various researchers have attributed this to the sharp increase and decline in inflation the special characteristics of recent monetary the monetarist experiment and fiscal the structural deficit policies and mysterious or unidentified forces see clarida and friedman 1982 and makin and tanzi 1983 the present paper estimates the relationship between the six month treasury bill rate and its determinants in the 1960s and 1970s the purpose is to test various hypotheses regarding interest rate determination and to determine whether this relationship was altered markedly in the early 1980s the short term bill rate is chosen for investigation for two reasons first the yield on a short term instrument is independent of longer term expectations regarding inflation output growth and fiscal and monetary policies longerterm yields should depend heavily on such variables while reasonably accurate measures of expectations over say a six month horizon can probably be deduced are in fact available from survey data longer term expectations are both more uncertain and vary more widely across market participants second analysis of a short term bill rate allows an easy test of the expectations theory of interest rates recent studies by shiller campbell and schoenholtz 1983 and by mankiw and summers 1983 suggest that observed interest rate movements are unrelated to expected changes in rates extracted from the term structure of short term rates calling into question the validity of the expectations theory but see fama 1983 for an alternative view the six month bill rate is analyzed because it meshes best with the livingston survey data

gospel or disaster an empirical study on the environmental influences of domestic investment in china abstract since the beginning of china s reform and opening up in late 1970s the contradiction between environmental quality and economic development has become increasingly acute as the main driving force of development china s fixed asset investment fai has grown rapidly in the meanwhile china s energy consumption surged and the environmental pressures mounted the surge in fai may have great influences on the environmental quality on the one hand the rapid increase in fai facilitated the development of the secondary industry especially energy and pollution intensive industries which brought about significant amount of energy related pollution on the other hand growing investment on environmental investment is expected to slow environmental deterioration moreover the environmental quality and domestic investment may have potential spatial correlations in this paper after fully accounting for the spatial dependence the relationship between domestic investment and environmental quality in china is quantitatively investigated using co2 and so2 as two representative pollutants the estimation results indicate that the spatial dependence indeed exists and total effects of fai on pollutant emissions are positive however there is no evidence that environmental protection investment had expected effects to effectively curb pollutant emissions in china

optimal fuel mix in chp plants under a stochastic permit price risk neutrality versus risk aversion abstract this paper studies the optimal fuel mix of a chp producer under emission permit price risk the producer s multi fuel plant uses two co2 intensive fuels and one clean fuel using a mean variance framework we develop three models the models are divided into spot models risk neutral and risk averse cases and a forward model risk averse case we derive the effects of price risk on optimal fuel use an increase in price risk can in fact increase the use of co2 intensive fuel in the spot model in the forward model the production and financial decisions are separate we also evaluate the risk bearing behavior of seven finnish chp producers we found that risk neutrality describes behavior better than risk aversion