the policy preferences of the us federal reserve in this paper we model and explain us macroeconomic outcomes subject to the discipline that monetary policy is set optimally exploiting the restrictions that come from optimal policymaking we estimate the parameters in the federal reserve s policy objective function together with the parameters in its optimization constraints for the period following volcker s appointment as chairman we estimate the implicit inflation target to be around 1 4 and show that policymakers assigned a significant weight to interest rate smoothing we show that the estimated optimal policy provides a good description of us data for the 1980s and 1990s

granger causality and policy effectiveness it is generally recognized that if a set of monetary and fiscal policy variables granger cause1 real economic variables this does not imply that alternative deterministic rules for determining the values of these policy instruments will alter the joint density function of the real variables 2 it has however also been asserted that letting x denote a suitably restricted vector of real economic aggregates g a list of monetary and fiscal policy variables and e the mathematical expectation operator

looking for hysteresis in coal consumption in the us abstract this paper estimates an unobserved components model to explore coal consumption in the usa we ask whether coal consumption exhibits hysteresis defined as a dynamic structure in which the cyclical component of coal consumption has permanent effects on the natural component in contrast to previous analysis we provide evidence in favor of hysteresis in coal consumption by using the nonlinear framework proposed recently by perez alonso and di sanzo 13 in which threshold type nonlinearities are introduced by allowing past cyclical consumption to have a different impact on the natural component depending on the regime the article discusses implications of the findings for energy conservation policies

revisited are shocks to energy consumption permanent or temporary new evidence from a panel suradf approach abstract this paper explores whether the hypothesis of energy consumption stationarity is supported in different regions the stationarity properties indicate that the impact of a reduction in energy consumption or a realignment policy is only temporary and over time the series will revert back to the trend path this paper first applies the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller panel suradf test developed by breuer et al breuer j b mcnown r wallace m s 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 3 482 493 which allows us to account for possible cross sectional effects and to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root the main conclusion is that the stationarity of energy consumption will be affected by the differences among the five regions made up of 84 countries during the period 1971 2003 similar conclusions are reached when we analyze country groups based on levels of development moreover the results reveal that conventional panel unit root tests can lead to misleading inferences which are biased towards stationarity even if only one series in the panel is strongly stationary lastly some policy implications emerge from our results

structural breaks and petroleum consumption in us states are shocks transitory or permanent abstract this short communication extends the literature on the stationarity of energy consumption to the case of us petroleum consumption at the state level from 1960 to 2007 the results of lee and strazicich 2003 and narayan and popp forthcoming unit root tests with endogenously determined structural breaks in the intercept and slope of the trend function reveal break dates that correspond to the two opec oil shocks of the 1970s along with the double dip recession of 1980 1982 the null hypothesis of a unit root in petroleum consumption is rejected for a majority of states these results highlight the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity in the behavior of petroleum consumption across states in the formulation of energy conservation and demand management policies

persistence in natural gas consumption in the us an unobserved component model abstract this article re examines the persistence in natural gas consumption using an alternative methodology in particular we report estimates of an unobserved components model in which hysteresis exists if cyclical and natural gas consumptions do not evolve independently in addition this framework is also extended by using the nonlinear approach in which nonlinearities are introduced by allowing past cyclical component to have a different impact on the natural component depending on the regime in a linear framework our results seem to indicate that hysteresis does not exist however when non linearity is taken into account we provide evidence in favor of hysteresis in natural gas consumption when the variations in natural gas consumption are above the threshold value we also selectively survey the empirical literature that examines the long term properties of energy series in order to put our contribution in perspective

are fluctuations in coal consumption per capita temporary evidence from developed and developing economies abstract this paper investigates the unit root properties of coal consumption per capita for the 47 developed and developing countries for 1965 2010 period to examine the stationary properties of coal consumption per capita lagrange multiplier lm unit root test with one break and two breaks crash model has been utilized according to empirical results the coal consumption is stationary in almost all the countries analyzed thus if the coal consumption is mean or trend reverting then it follows that the series will return to its mean value or trend path and it might be possible to forecast future movements in the coal consumption based on past behaviors of the series for the policy makers it is not necessary to pay attention to coal consumption excepting for indian and italian however for the researchers it is important to take into account the stationarity property of coal consumption and also structural breaks should be modeled in their future studies

are shocks to disaggregated energy consumption in malaysia permanent or temporary evidence from lm unit root tests with structural breaks abstract the objective of this paper is to examine whether energy consumption in malaysia disaggregated by sector and type is stationary or contains a unit root to realize our objective we apply the lagrange multiplier lm family of unit root tests with up to two structural breaks depending on the decision rule for selecting between results in the no break one break and two break cases we find that energy consumption is stationary for between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of the disaggregated energy series and between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of sectors implications for the malaysian government s attempts to reduce fossil fuel consumption are discussed

are fluctuations in energy consumption transitory or permanent evidence from a fourier lm unit root test abstract in this study we employ a recently introduced unit root test with a fourier function that is capable of capturing the unknown nature of structural breaks to reexamine the stationarity properties of energy consumption per capita of 109 countries over the period 1960 2011 the results of the fourier lagrange multiplier unit root test show that the energy consumption per capita for algeria australia benin bolivia canada costa rica denmark egypt greece guatemala hong kong ireland jordan korea democratic republic mexico myanmar the netherlands new zealand oman paraguay qatar singapore tanzania the united states and vietnam is stationary indicating that energy demand management policies will not be effective on energy consumption in the long term in addition to this since the energy consumption in these countries does not contain a unit root future movements in energy consumption can be predicted by employing historical behaviors

nominal price rigidity money supply endogeneity and business cycles abstract this paper investigates the ability of nominal price rigidity to explain the co movement of inflation with the cyclical component of output observed in the post war u s data a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed with the introduction of monopolistic competition and nominal price rigidity in a standard real business cycle model allowing for an endogenous money supply rule it is then demonstrated that sticky price models can explain the observed associations between movements in inflation and output much better than flexible price models this result depends little on whether money supply is assumed to be endogenous or not

are oil shocks permanent or temporary panel data evidence from crude oil and ngl production in 60 countries this paper examines the unit root properties of crude oil production for 60 countries employing a range of panel data unit root tests for the period 1971 to 2003 the study first employs a number of panel data tests that do not accommodate structural breaks and then proceeds to apply the lagrange multiplier lm panel unit root test with one structural break the results of the panel data tests without a structural break are inconclusive with at best mixed support for joint stationarity the findings from the lm panel unit root test with a structural break however are conclusive suggesting that for a world panel and smaller regional based panels crude oil and ngl production are jointly stationary

flexible inflation forecast targeting evidence from canada we test whether the bank of canada pursues a flexible inflation forecast target one that weights output growth as well as inflation for the period 1996 2007 we find evidence that the bank did effectively pursue such a target over the forecast horizon of 12 to 18 months we find the relative weight that the bank gives to output growth in its target to be positive and statistically significant within the range of 0 2 to 0 4 resume la poursuite de cibles de prevision d inflation flexibles resultats pour le canada on met au test la proposition a savoir si la banque du canada poursuit une cible flexible de prevision d inflation une cible qui tient compte de la croissance du produit tout autant que l inflation pour la periode 1996 2007 les resultats montrent que la banque a poursuivi une cible sur un horizon de prevision de 12 a 18 mois on montre que la ponderation relative que la banque donne a la croissance du produit dans son ciblage est positive et statistiquement significative dans l eventail entre 0 2 et 0 4

monetary policy inertia more a fiction than a fact abstract empirical estimates of monetary policy reaction functions feature a very high estimated degree of monetary policy inertia this evidence is very hard of reconcile with the alternative evidence of low predictability of monetary policy rates in this paper we examine the potential relevance of the problem of weak instruments to correctly identify the degree of monetary policy inertia in forward looking monetary policy reaction function of the type originally proposed by taylor 1993 discretion versus policy rules in practice canergie rochester conference series on public policy 39 195 214 after appropriately diagnosing and taking care of the weak instruments problem we find an estimated degree of policy inertia which is significantly lower than the common value in the empirical literature on monetary policy rules

is per capita electricity consumption stationary time series evidence from oecd countries this study examines the stationary properties of per capita electricity consumption in which the endogenously determined break points are incorporated in 23 high income oecd countries by using annual data over 1960 2005 period we utilize lagrange multiplier lm unit root test that endogenously determines structural breaks in level and or trend we find that 21 country series reject the unit root null hypothesis at the 5 significance level except for 2 country series thus our empirical findings provide significant evidence that per capita electricity consumption is stationary in almost all countries considered in the study the stationarity of per capita electricity consumption indicates that it should be possible for the series to forecast future movements in the energy consumption based on the past behaviors of the series important policy implications emerge from our empirical results of the unit root test with multiple structural breaks

u s disaggregated renewable energy consumption persistence and long memory behavior abstract this study examines the degree of time persistence in u s disaggregated renewable energy consumption hydropower geothermal solar wind wood waste and biofuels using innovative fractional integration and autoregressive models with monthly data for the period 1994 2 to 2011 10 the results indicate that in the case of hydropower solar wind waste and biofuels the estimates of fractional integration are higher than 0 5 but less than 1 0 implying nonstationary but mean reverting behavior in the case of geothermal and waste the estimates of fractional integration are around 0 5 and in the boundary case between stationarity and nonstationarity for wood the estimate of fractional integration is significantly smaller than 0 5 and thus showing stationary behavior with long memory behavior furthermore the study incorporates the presence of breaks in the data with the absence of breaks in hydropower geothermal solar wind wood and biofuels but a single break in the case of waste due to the inclusion of non renewable waste from non biogenic sources through 2000 the results reveal that u s disaggregated renewable energy consumption measures are better explained in terms of a long memory model that incorporates persistence components and seasonality

inflation targeting as a monetary policy rule the purpose of the paper is to survey and discuss in ation targeting in the context of monetary policy rules the paper provides a general conceptual discussion of monetary policy rules attempts to clarify the essential characteristics of in ation targeting compares in ation targeting to other monetary policy rules and draws some conclusions for the monetary policy of the european system of central banks jel classi cation e42 e52

evidence of long memory behavior in u s renewable energy consumption this study examines the degrees of time persistence in u s total renewable energy consumption using innovative fractional integration and autoregressive models with monthly data from 1981 1 to 2010 10 the results indicate that renewable energy consumption is better explained in terms of a long memory model that incorporates persistence components and seasonality the degree of integration is above 0 5 but significantly below 1 0 suggesting nonstationarity with mean reverting behavior the presence of long memory behavior persistence in renewable energy consumption suggests that random shocks may very well move renewable energy consumption from pre determined target levels for a period of time

inflation forecast targeting implementing and monitoring inflation targets abstract inflation targeting is shown to imply inflation forecast targeting the central bank s inflation forecast becomes an explicit intermediate target inflation forecast targeting simplifies both implementation and monitoring of monetary policy the weight on output stabilization determines how quickly the inflation forecast is adjusted towards the inflation target money growth or exchange rate targeting is generally inferior than inflation targeting and leads to higher inflation variability commitment to target rules may be better than commitment to instrument rules

a new approach to energy consumption per capita stationarity evidence from oecd countries abstract applying a new panel stationary test procedure to data from 32 oecd countries from 1971 to 2013 this study examines the time series properties of per capita energy consumption the results indicate that energy consumption per capita follows a mean reverting process for 16 oecd countries whereas for the remaining 16 oecd countries a mean reverting process is not the case besides energy consumption per capita exhibits some sharp and smooth structural shifts breaks in its mean and or trend levels and the endogenously identified break dates correspond to specific macroeconomic events such as oil crises gulf war asian and global financial crises these results also have important policy implications for the 16 oecd countries that have stationary energy consumption per capita series government policies intended to stabilize energy demand will have no long lasting effects and therefore governments should not adopt unnecessary policy targets for energy demand level however for the remaining 16 oecd countries such policies will have long lasting effects

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

what does the bundesbank target abstract although its primary ultimate objective is price stability the bundesbank has drawn a distinction between its money focused strategy and the inflation targeting approach recently adopted by a number of central banks we show that holding constant the current forecast of inflation german monetary policy responds very little to changes in forecasted money growth we conclude that the bundesbank is much better described as an inflation targeter than as a money targeter an additional contribution of the paper is to apply the structural var methods of b bernanke and i mihov measuring monetary policy working paper no 5145 national bureau of economic research cambridge ma june 1995 to determine the optimal indicator of german monetary policy we find that the lombard rate has historically been a good policy indicator although the use of the call rate as an indicator cannot be statistically rejected

are fluctuations in electricity consumption per capita transitory evidence from developed and developing economies abstract this paper investigates the unit root properties of electricity consumption per capita of 67 developed and developing countries for the period 1971 2010 to examine the stationary properties of electricity consumption per capita we have adopted lee and strazicich 2003 2004 test of unit root that allows us to test for at most two endogenous breaks and uses the lagrange multiplier lm test statistics results show that 65 country series reject the unit root null hypothesis except for 2 country series thus our empirical findings provide significant evidence that electricity consumption per capita is stationary in almost all countries considered the stationarity of electricity consumption per capita indicates that it should be possible for the series to forecast future movements in the energy consumption based on the past behaviors of the series

pitfalls of forward looking monetary policy a distinctive feature of the procedures recently adopted by inflation targeting central banks is their forward looking character forecasts of the economy s future evolution conditional upon alternative policies play a central role in the banks deliberations to an extent that the procedures adopted are sometimes characterized as forecast targeting this emphasis upon the future consequences of policy is unsurprising in an approach that tries to maintain as transparent as possible a relation between the banks9 decisions and the ultimate goals of monetary policy after all current decisions can still affect the future but not the past nonetheless common descriptions of how inflation targeting is or should be practiced go too far in proposing purely forward looking procedures i shall argue instead that an optimal framework for the conduct of monetary policy must generally be history dependent in ways

is energy consumption per capita broken stationary new evidence from regional based panels abstract for the first time a new panel unit root testing procedure developed by 51 carrion i silvestre et al 2005 breaking the panels an application to gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 is applied to re investigate the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for 7 regional panel sets covering the 1971 2002 period with structural breaks and cross sectional correlations introduced into the model it becomes clear that all regional based panels of energy consumption per capita are stationary the structural breakpoints identify the likely causes of major changes in energy consumption in the past the findings underscore the importance of accounting for exogenous shocks to a series and offer several important implications for policy makers and energy economists

sharp breaks or smooth shifts an investigation of the evolution of primary commodity prices this paper explores the behavior of real commodity prices over a 50 year period attention is given to how the shifting means for various commodity prices have changed with a special emphasis on behavior since the mid 2000s to identify structural changes in commodity prices we estimate shifting mean autoregressions by using the bai and perron 1998 procedure for determining structural breaks low frequency fourier functions and a procedure that specifies shifts to be smooth logistic functions of time we find that the pattern in the timing of shifts is suggestive of the causal factors underlying the recent boom

an empirical assessment of the factor supplier pressure group hypothesis the main purpose of this paper has been to empirically assess tullock s factor supplier pressure group hypothesis theory predicted that public employees would be most able to use their political power to expand public spending levels at the local level of government therefore in contrast to the two previous attempts to test this hypothesis the empirical tests focused on the growth oflocal public spending the test results lead to the conclusion that the political power of public employee groups is an important determinant of the growth of local public spending although the extent of their influence is as yet unknown general control personnel and sanitation workers were found to be exceptionally successful at influencing budgetary growth in terms of the former group these results lead me to suspect that the results of bennett and johnson s 1980 research on federal government growth apply to the local public sector as well that is while there may be debate over how much local public spending has increased as a percentage of net national product its composition has changed in that proportionally more resources are being used for the purposes of administrative rule making as is the case with federal governmental regulation increased regulation of the local public economy is sure to have substantial allocative and distributive effects which form an agenda for future research

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

canadian inflation targeting this paper examines the intellectual environment in canada that led to the adoption of inflation targets starting in 1991 reviews some of the canadian contributions to the vast literature on inflation targeting and presents evidence in support of the view that the implementation of inflation targeting in canada has been particularly successful when compared with the experiences of other inflation targeting countries and the us

modeling inflation dynamics a critical review of recent research in recent years a broad academic consensus has arisen around the use of rational expectations sticky price models to capture inflation dynamics these models are seen as providing an empirically reasonable characterization of observed inflation behavior once suitable measures of the output gap are chosen and moreover are perceived to be robust to the lucas critique in a way that earlier econometric models of inflation are not we review the principal conclusions of this literature concerning 1 the ability of these models to fit the data 2 the importance of rational forward looking expectations in price setting and 3 the appropriate measure of inflationary pressures we argue that existing rational expectations sticky price models fail to provide a useful empirical description of the inflation process especially relative to traditional econometric phillips curves of the sort commonly employed for policy analysis

the market for laws an economic analysis of legislation considerable insight into the workings of government has been gained in recent years by analyzing political behavior in the same way that economists analyze market behavior such analysis has led to at least two actually several distinguishable but often overlapping developments one might be labeled the interest group theory of government 1 4 10 11 12 16 while the second could be referred to as the economic theory of legislatures 4 5 10 15 18 the purpose of the following presentation is to combine these two theoretical developments and treat the legislative process as a market for laws then by simultaneously considering interest group characteristics and legislative production costs hypotheses concerning both the level of interest group pressure and the magnitude of legislative output are examined in particular the primary issues to be addressed are 1 what determines the number of interest groups formed in a state and 2 what impact does the number of interest groups have on the level of legislative output in the process the developing economic approach to government is extended in two directions first this study contains what appears to be the first direct empirical examination of the question of what factors lead to or limit aggregate interest group demands for legislation and second the level of interest group pressure and the constraints on or costs of legislative decision making are considered to simultaneously determine the aggregate output of the legislative process virtually all previous studies of interest group legislation examine the impact of specific interests on specific legislation 2 the following presentation is divided into five sections in addition to this introduction in order to explore the issues suggested above section ii characterizes the political process as a market in order to justify the theoretical hypotheses to be tested section iii details the theoretical

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

a re examination of stationarity of energy consumption evidence from new unit root tests abstract in this paper we re examine the stochastic behaviour of per capita total primary energy consumption across 178 countries around the world for this purpose in addition to conventional unit root tests we apply newly developed tests that allow for nonlinear adjustments and structural breaks in the data generating process the results of the unit root tests show that allowing for structural breaks and nonlinearity result in more frequent rejection of the null hypothesis of unit root suggesting that most of the series under consideration follow a stationary process these findings imply that both energy economists and policy makers must be careful and take account of possible nonlinearities and structural breaks in their analyses of energy consumption in addition the results imply that government interventions into the energy markets in most countries have no effect in the long run although the short run effects of the interventions depend on the size and the direction of interventions

the taylor rule and optimal monetary policy where it denotes the fed s operating target for the federal funds rate pt is the inflation rate measured by the gdp deflator yt is the log of real gdp and y t is the log of potential output identified empirically with a linear trend the rule has since been subject to considerable attention both as an account of actual policy in the united states and elsewhere and as a prescription for desirable policy taylor argues for the rule s normative significance both on the basis of simulations and on the ground that it describes u s policy in a period in which monetary policy is widely judged to have been unusually successful taylor 1999 suggesting that the rule is worth adopting as a principle of behavior here i wish to consider to what extent this prescription resembles the sort of policy that economic theory would recommend i consider the question in the context of a simple but widely used optimizing model of the monetary transmission mechanism which allows one to reach clear conclusions about economic welfare the model is highly stylized but incorporates important features of more realistic models and allows me to make several points that are of more general validity out of concern for the robustness of the conclusions reached the analysis here addresses only broad qualitative features of the taylor rule and attempts to identify features of a desirable policy rule that are likely to hold under a variety of model specifications

bureaucracy publicness and local government expenditures revisited comment the empirical literature on the publicness of local government services has observed no significant degree of publicness it is difficult to reconcile these findings with wyckoff s conclusion that bureaucrats prefer pure public goods wyckoff s solution is to suggest that bureaucracy has little effect on operating non capital expenditure decisions this solution however conflicts with the empirical findings of numerous local expenditure and wage studies based on bureau supply models but there is no need to consider this evidence because we have shown that wyckoff s cost assumptions imply that a median voter regime will also operate at a maximum attainable degree of publicness hence we must either reject wyckoff s assumptions or conclude that the nature of the services demanded from local government is such that the maximum attainable degree of publicness is close to no publicness at all in any case wyckoff s conclusions are not supported within the context of his own assumptions

how many times again will we examine the energy income nexus using a limited range of traditional econometric tools during the last three decades following closely the developments in econometric theory energy and environmental economists have empirically examined the energy income nexus for different countries and time periods however today in spite of the growing interest in this area the state of knowledge is still controversial and unsettled this viewpoint paper attempts to highlight some of the issues related to the existing literature on the long run relationship and causality between energy consumption and economic growth in particular it discusses how it is difficult to make policy recommendations on the basis of inconsistent and conflicting results in the published literature on the subject in order to do so the paper first illustrates the increasing trend in the number of studies published in this area providing also a brief comparison of the conventional methods used to estimate the energy income nexus it then deals with new directions and different viewpoints on the same issue

identification weak instruments and statistical inference in econometrics we discuss statistical inference problems associated with identification and testability in econometrics we consider inference in non parametric models and weakly identified structural models weak instruments we point out that many ill defined statistical problems such as non testable hypotheses occur in these areas and are typically associated with asymptotic approximations in non parametric models such problems include testing moments and inference under heteroscedasticity or serial dependence of unknown form for weakly identified structural models difficulties are typically associated with improper pivots and we review recent developments aimed at proposing more reliable procedures including alternative proposed statistics bounds projection split sampling conditioning monte carlo tests jel classification c1 c12 c14 c15 c3 c5 identification instruments faibles et inference statistique en econometrie nous analysons les problemes d inference associes a l identification et a la testabilite en econometrie nous considerons l inference dans les modeles non parametriques et les modeles structurels faiblement identifies instruments faibles nous remarquons que beaucoup de problemes mal poses tels que des hypotheses non testables apparaissent dans ces domaines et que ceux ci sont typiquement associes a l emploi d approximations asymptotiques dans les modeles non parametriques de tels problemes incluent les tests sur les moments et l inference sous heteroscedasticite ou dependance serielle de forme non specifiee dans les modeles structurels faiblement identifies ces difficultes sont habituellement associees a l emploi de fonctions pivotales impropres et nous presentons un survol des methodes recentes ayant pour objectif d obtenir des procedures plus fiables ce qui comprend les differentes statistiques proposees l emploi de bornes la subdivision d echantillon les techniques de projection le conditionnement et les tests de monte carlo

are shocks to energy consumption permanent or temporary evidence from 182 countries this article applies univariate and panel data unit root tests to annual panel data for 182 countries over the period 1979 2000 to examine the stationarity properties of per capita energy consumption the univariate unit root test can only reject the unit root null for 56 countries or 31 of the sample at the 10 level or better however univariate unit root tests have low power with short spans of data and therefore failure to reject the unit root null should be treated with caution when we apply the panel data unit root test we find overwhelming evidence that energy consumption is stationary we discuss the policy implications of these findings and offer suggestions for future research

are shocks to natural gas consumption temporary or permanent evidence from a panel of u s states abstract this short communication examines whether or not u s natural gas consumption follows a stationary process unlike previous research that has focused on regional country or industrial sector based panel studies this study undertakes a sub national investigation of natural gas consumption for the 50 u s states levin et al 2002 im et al 2003 maddala and wu 1999 and hadri 2000 panel unit root and stationarity tests reveal that natural gas consumption is integrated of order one however once allowance is made for endogenously determined structural breaks the carrion i silvestre et al 2005 im et al 2005 and westerlund 2005 panel unit root and stationarity tests indicate that natural gas consumption is integrated of order zero discussion of the structural breaks is briefly surveyed in relation to the natural gas industry s response to legislative actions

term structure evidence on interest rate smoothing and monetary policy inertia abstract numerous studies have used quarterly data to estimate monetary policy rules or reaction functions that appear to exhibit a very slow partial adjustment of the policy interest rate the conventional wisdom asserts that this gradual adjustment reflects a policy inertia or interest rate smoothing behavior by central banks however such quarterly monetary policy inertia would imply a large amount of forecastable variation in interest rates at horizons of more than 3 months which is contradicted by evidence from the term structure of interest rates the illusion of monetary policy inertia evident in the estimated policy rules likely reflects the persistent shocks that central banks face

are fluctuations in energy consumption per capita transitory evidence from a panel of pacific island countries this study applies the panel stationarity test developed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 breaking the panels an application to gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 to examine the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for a panel of 13 pacific island countries over the period 1980 2005 this test has the advantage that it allows for multiple structural breaks at unknown dates that can differ across countries and can account for all forms of cross sectional correlation between countries the conclusion from the study is that energy consumption per capita in approximately 60 of countries is stationary and that energy consumption per capita for the panel as a whole is stationary the study offers several suggestions for modelling energy consumption and policy making in the pacific islands

in search of the motives behind us fiscal macroeconomic policy in this paper optimal control tehniques are applieed to estimate the motives behind us fiscal macroeconomic policy starting from a range of possible objesctives and given the perception of policy makers about the environment in which they operate the priorities of policy makers are estimated on the basis of their past actions our statistical approach allows for testing the empirical relevance of alternative hypotheses with respect to the objectives of governments demoeratic and republican administrations are found to aim at different targets some support is also found to political business cycle theories the views expressed here are not necessarily those of the ductch central bank

is canada an optimal currency area an inflation targeting perspective we propose a method based on the currency union model of gali and monacelli 2008 to determine whether a region within an existing currency area belongs in the currency union the method involves assessing the predictability of regional inflation rates at medium term horizons we apply the method to the canadian provinces and find that for all but alberta there is little evidence of costs in terms of inflation arising from national monetary policy for alberta the evidence suggests that they are not as well served by the inflation targeting framework and that a more flexible policy environment might improve inflation outcomes

what is wrong with taylor rules using judgment in monetary policy through targeting rules it is argued that inflation targeting is best understood as a commitment to a targeting rule rather than an instrument rule e ither ageneral targeting rule explicit objectives for monetary policy or a specific targeting rule a criterion for the forecasts of the target variables to be fulfilled essentially the equality of the marginal rates of transformation and substitution between the target variables targeting rules allow the use of judgment and extramodel information are more robust and easier to verify than optimal instrument rules and they can nevertheless bring the economy close to the socially optimal equilibrium

making monetary policy objectives and rules what is it that monetary policy makers do and how do they do it the simple answer is that a central banker moves interest rates in order to maintain steady real growth and stable prices in this essay i examine the issues that arise in framing the problem faced by monetary policy makers i begin with a discussion of how over the past decade or so central banks have been made more independent and more accountable the result has been the virtual elimination of the inflation bias problem that is caused by political interference in the monetary policy process and better overall macroeconomic performance the essay proceeds with an example of a formal version of the policymakers problem describing their objectives and the information they need to formulate a policy rule i conclude with a discussion of a simple versus complex policy rules the impact of uncertainty on policy making and how central bankers use formal modelling in making their day to day decisions copyright 2000 by oxford university press

identifying a policymaker s target an application to the bank of canada we develop a new way to test hypotheses about policymakers targets and imple ment that test for canadian monetary policy for example if the bank of canada is targeting a 2 per cent inflation rate and if the bank s instrument takes eight quarters to affect inflation then deviations of inflation from 2 per cent should be uncorrelated with the bank s informa tion set lagged eight quarters we show that there was a major change in the bank s objec tives near the time when formal inflation targets were announced and that the bank has indeed been targeting inflation since then jel code e52 e61

macroeconomic stability and the preferences of the fed a formal analysis 1961 98 the rate of inflation in the u s has declined from an average of 4 5 in the period 1960 79 to an average of 3 6 in 1980 98 between those two periods the standard deviations of inflation and the output gap have also declined these facts can be attributed to the interaction of three possible factors a shift in central bank preferences a reduction in the variability of aggregate supply shocks and a more efficient conduct of monetary policy in this paper we identify the relative roles of these factors our framework is based on the estimation of a small structural macro model for the u s economy jointly with the first order conditions which solve the intertemporal optimization problem faced by the fed overall our results indicate that the policy preferences of the fed and in particular the implicit inflation target have changed drastically with the advent of the volcker greenspan era in addition we find that the variance of supply shocks has been lower and monetary policy has been conducted more efficiently during this period

monetary policy under model and data parameter uncertainty abstract empirical taylor rules are much less aggressive than those derived from optimization based models this paper analyzes whether accounting for uncertainty across competing models and or real time data considerations can explain this discrepancy it considers a central bank that chooses a taylor rule in a framework that allows for an aversion to the second order risk associated with facing multiple models and measurement error configurations the paper finds that if the central bank cares strongly enough about stabilizing the output gap this aversion leads to significant declines in the coefficients of the taylor rule even if the central bank s loss function assigns little weight to reducing interest rate variability furthermore a small degree of aversion can generate an optimal rule that matches the empirical taylor rule