the classification and performance of alternative exchange rate systems abstract owing to dissatisfaction with the imf s de jure classification of exchange rate regimes a substantial literature has emerged presenting de facto classifications of exchange rate systems and using the latter classifications to compare performances of alternative regimes in terms of key macroeconomic variables this paper critically reviews the literature on de facto regimes in particular the paper 1 describes the main methodologies that have been used to construct de facto codings 2 surveys the empirical literature generated by de facto regime codings and 3 lays out the problems inherent in constructing de facto classifications the empirical literature is found to yield few robust findings we argue that the as yet unfulfilled objective of this literature and the major research agenda for the future in this area lies in the need of a more thorough investigation of the degree of monetary policy independence without relying exclusively on movements in exchange rates an agenda the attainment of which is made especially challenging because of the lack of comprehensive and reliable data on reserves and interest rates

to float or to fix evidence on the impact of exchange rate regimes on growth we study the relationship between exchange rate regimes and economic growth for a sample of 183 countries over the post bretton woods period using a new de facto classification of regimes based on the actual behavior of the relevant macroeconomic variables in contrast with previous studies we find that for developing countries less flexible exchange rate regimes are associated with slower growth as well as with greater output volatility for industrial countries regimes do not appear to have any significant impact on growth the results are robust to endogeneity corrections and a number of alternative specifications borrowed from the growth literature

boon or burden the effect of private sector debt on the risk of sovereign default in developing countries i introduction the past two decades witnessed a strong increase in private foreign borrowing in emerging markets and developing countries although in 1990 the private sector accounted for a mere 16 of all external loans disbursed to developing countries this share has increased to 77 in 2006 figure 1a likewise in 2006 the private sector s non publicly guaranteed debt liabilities accounted for 44 of developing countries total external debt up from a mere 5 in 1990 figure 1b 1 a key question in light of the ongoing global financial turmoil is what the boom in private sector external indebtedness will imply for sovereign risk in developing countries in this paper we empirically investigate the record of the past three decades to throw some light on this issue on theoretical grounds there are arguments both in favor and against a stabilizing effect of private sector borrowing on sovereign risk a critical view of private sector exposure is based on the notion that large scale private borrowing creates vulnerabilities that may eventually lead to a sovereign default a sudden stop may force the public sector to assume at least part of the private debt and this may eventually cause debt service difficulties for the government following this logic both public and private external debt pose a threat to sovereign creditworthiness the opposite argument that private sector borrowing does not harm government creditworthiness can be made by invoking the idea that the private sector is exposed to greater competitive pressure which raises the incentives to use the borrowed funds productively more importantly a potentially stabilizing role of private sector borrowing can also be linked to the distributional consequences of sovereign defaults agents who are reliant on foreign credit are particularly vulnerable to the disruptions that come along with sovereign default a larger share of the private sector in total external debt a proxy of the relative size and stake of agents that would be hurt by sovereign default would thus raise the political costs of default given the competing theoretical arguments the role of the private sector for sovereign creditworthiness is an empirical question a first impression of how these magnitudes may be related is provided in figure 2 which plots the institutional investor s measure of country creditworthiness iiccr against the level of external debt relative to gni figure 2a and the share of private long term external debt in countries total long term external debt figure 2b 2 not surprisingly the correlation between debt and creditworthiness is negative 0 37 by contrast the correlation between private sector share and the iiccr is positive 0 54 3 although this picture obviously does not prove a causal relationship it suggests that relative private sector exposure and perceived creditworthiness might be positively related figure 1 omitted figure 2 omitted further evidence that private and public debt are likely to have very different effects on the risk of sovereign default is provided in table 1 the entries in this table are cross country averages of various debt related variables just before the onset of 5 yr periods in which a sovereign default did or did not take place 4 the first column of table 1 shows that initial debt relative to gni is on average much higher before a default period than before a non default period conversely column 2 indicates that the average share of the private sector in total external debt is much higher before non default periods than before default periods a first look at the data thus seems to point into the direction that a higher share of private debt in total external debt is associated with higher perceived creditworthiness as reflected by the institutional investor s country credit ratings and with a lower likelihood of sovereign default

feebates rebates and gas guzzler taxes a study of incentives for increased fuel economy abstract us fuel economy standards have not been changed significantly in 20 years feebates are a market based alternative in which vehicles with fuel consumption rates above a pivot point are charged fees while vehicles below receive rebates by choice of pivot points feebate systems can be made revenue neutral feebates have been analyzed before this study re examines feebates using recent data assesses how the undervaluing of fuel economy by consumers might affect their efficacy tests sensitivity to the cost of fuel economy technology and price elasticities of vehicle demand and adds assessments of gas guzzler taxes or rebates alone a feebate rate of 500 per 0 01 gallon per mile gpm produces a 16 percent increase in fuel economy while a 1000 per 0 01 gpm results in a 29 percent increase even if consumers count only the first 3 years of fuel savings unit sales decline by about 0 5 percent but sales revenues increase because the added value of fuel economy technologies outweighs the decrease in sales in all cases the vast majority of fuel economy increase is due to adoption of fuel economy technologies rather than shifts in sales

household electricity demand revisited respond to price changes this paper develops a model for evaluating the effects of alternative tariff designs on electricity use the model concurrently addresses several interrelated difficulties posed by nonlinear pricing heterogeneity in consumer price sensitivity and consumption aggregation over appliances and time we estimate the model using extensive data for a representative sample of 1300 california households the results imply a strikingly skewed distribution of household electricity price elasticities in the population with a small fraction of households accounting for most aggregate demand response we then estimate the aggregate and distributional consequences of recent tariff structure changes recent efforts to restructure electricity markets have renewed interest in electricity demand and pricing this interest reflects a broad desire to improve the efficiency of electricity markets and policy makers concerns over the impact of price changes on consumers how new pricing mechanisms would affect households consumption and expenditures is a matter of considerable uncertainty however this uncertainty has provoked controversy and debate in the regulatory policy arena hampering market reforms using econometric methods to assess the effects of electricity price changes presents several challenges these include the nonlinear structure of tariff schedules aggregation of metered consumption behaviour over time and appliances and the interdependence of energy use with longer term household decisions over appliance ownership and dwelling characteristics the first two issues introduce complex simultaneity problems between marginal prices and consumption the third issue imposes high data requirements information on household specific appliance holdings and residence features and creates heterogeneity in consumption responses related to the characteristics of these durable goods when the researcher s objective is to develop a model for simulating the effects of prospective tariff changes ignoring these issues will provide an incomplete assessment of demand responses and potentially misleading predictions of a new tariff s consumption and revenue consequences in this paper we estimate a model of household electricity demand that can be used

reforming residential electricity tariff in china block tariffs pricing approach the chinese households that make up approximately a quarter of world households are facing a residential power tariff reform in which a rising block tariff structure will be implemented and this tariff mechanism is widely used around the world the basic principle of the structure is to assign a higher price for higher income consumers with low price elasticity of power demand to capture the non linear effects of price and income on elasticities we set up a translog demand model the empirical findings indicate that the higher income consumers are less sensitive than those with lower income to price changes we further put forward three proposals of chinese residential electricity tariffs compared to a flat tariff the reasonable block tariff structure generates more efficient allocation of cross subsidies better incentives for raising the efficiency of electricity usage and reducing emissions from power generation which also supports the living standards of low income households

clarifying the foreign aid puzzle a comparison of american japanese french and swedish aid flows this study explores the donor side of debates revolving around the proper role of foreign assistance as a foreign policy tool by empirically testing for the aid determinants of four industrial democracies france japan sweden and the united states a pooled cross sectional time series design is employed to assess the impacts of six sets of variables on aid flows to thirty six african states during the 1980s three sets of these variables humanitarian need strategic importance and economic potential are constructed using data traditionally employed in empirical foreign aid studies three additional sets of variables cultural similarity ideological stance and region are constructed from data that regional specialists consider to be important in the foreign aid equation although no two cases are alike one can nevertheless draw some tentative conclusions about the nature of the foreign aid regime of the final cold war decade of the 1980s on the basis of several cross national patterns in short the results 1 contradict rhetorical statements of northern policymakers who claim that foreign aid serves as an altruistic foreign policy tool designed to relieve humanitarian suffering 2 confirm the expected importance of strategic and ideological factors in a foreign aid regime heavily influenced by the cold war and 3 underscore the importance of economic particularly trade interests in northern aid calculations

energy saving in energy market reform the feed in tariffs option abstract the use of feed in tariffs fits is now widespread for renewable energy and under discussion for other low carbon electricity generation but not for energy efficiency there is a small literature on fits for electricity demand reduction but not energy efficiency more generally this paper considers the general application of fits on the demand side and sets out the economic arguments in the context of changing energy markets it then discusses the implications of some practical issues including the definitional problems arising from the difference between energy efficiency and demand reduction using experience from historical energy efficiency programmes it considers the public benefits payment methods and policy scope that need to be considered and how these might affect policy design it makes some provisional estimates of economically justified payments in the context of the proposed uk energy market reform it concludes that fits for energy saving might be a powerful tool for incentivising energy efficiency

economics of alliances the lessons for collective action this essay provides an up to date summary of the findings of the literature on the economics of alliances we show that the study of the economics of alliances has played a pivotal role in understanding and applying public good analysis to real world applications we establish that the manner in which alliances address burden sharing and allocative issues is related to strategic doctrines weapon technology perceived threats and membership composition past contributions are evaluated and areas needing further development are identified the theoretical and empirical knowledge gained from the study of alliances is shown to be directly applicable to a wide range of international collectives

estimates of energy subsidies in china and impact of energy subsidy reform abstract for a transitional economy such as china some energy subsidies are reasonable and sometimes even necessary for achieving social goals however with rising energy prices and environmental concerns we see conflicts emerging between energy subsidies energy demand supply fundamentals and climate change considerations energy subsidies have important implications for sustainable development through their effects on energy use efficiency and the choice of fuel source this paper applies the price gap approach to estimate china s energy subsidies results indicate that china s energy subsidies amounted to cny 356 73 billion in 2007 equivalent to 1 43 of gdp subsidies for oil products consumption are the largest followed by subsidies for the electricity and coal sectors furthermore a cge model is used to analyze the economic impacts of energy subsidy reforms our findings show that removing energy subsidies will result in a significant fall in energy demand and emissions but will have negative impacts on macroeconomic variables we conclude that offsetting policies could be adopted such that certain shares of these subsidies are reallocated to support other sustainable development measures which could lead to reducing energy intensity and favoring the environment

household energy use applying behavioural economics to understand consumer decision making and behaviour household energy conservation has emerged as a major challenge and opportunity for researchers practitioners and policymakers consumers also seem to be gaining greater awareness of the value and need for sustainable energy practices particularly amid growing public concerns over greenhouse gas emissions and climate change yet even with adequate knowledge of how to save energy and a professed desire to do so many consumers still fail to take noticeable steps towards energy efficiency and conservation there is often a sizeable discrepancy between peoples self reported knowledge values attitudes and intentions and their observable behaviour examples include the well known knowledge action gap and value action gap but neither is household energy consumption driven primarily by financial incentives and the rational pursuit of material interests in fact people sometimes respond in unexpected and undesirable ways to rewards and sanctions intended to shift consumers cost benefit calculus in favour of sustainable behaviours why is this so why is household energy consumption and conservation difficult to predict from either core values or material interests by drawing on critical insights from behavioural economics and psychology we illuminate the key cognitive biases and motivational factors that may explain why energy related behaviour so often fails to align with either the personal values or material interests of consumers understanding these psychological phenomena can make household and community responses to public policy interventions less surprising and in parallel can help us design more cost effective and mass scalable behavioural solutions to encourage renewable and sustainable energy use among consumers

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed

choosing and reneging on exchange rate regimes we use data on announced and actual exchange rate arrangements to ask which countries follow de facto regimes different from their de iure ones that is do not do what they say our results suggest that countries with poor institutional quality have difficulty in maintaining pegging and abandon it often in contrast many countries with relatively good institutions display fear of floating that is they manage more than announced perhaps to signal their differences from those countries incapable of maintaining promises of monetary stability jel f3 o1

perceived price complexity of dynamic energy tariffs an investigation of antecedents and consequences dynamic tariffs have the potential to contribute to a successful shift from conventional to renewable energies but tapping this potential in europe ultimately depends on residential consumers selecting them this study proposes and finds that consumer reactions to dynamic tariffs depend on the level of perceived price complexity that represents the cognitive effort consumers must engage in to compute the overall bill amount an online experiment conducted with a representative sample of 664 german residential energy consumers examines how salient characteristics of dynamic tariffs contribute to perceived price complexity subsequently a structural equation model sem reveals that the depth of information processing is central to understand how price complexity relates to consumers behavioral intentions the results suggest that it will be challenging to convince european consumers to select complex dynamic tariffs under the current legal framework policymakers will need to find ways to make these tariffs more attractive

recent experiences with tariffs for saving electricity in households abstract financial incentives or disincentives in the form of electricity tariffs can be used to encourage energy efficiency in this paper two simple tariffs aimed at residential consumers are reviewed progressive tariffs pts which penalise high consumption of electricity and electricity saving feed in tariffs esfits which provide incentives to reduce consumption of electricity the effectiveness of these tariffs is quantified and compared using the price elasticity for pt and an incentive elasticity for esfit the results indicate that pts are more effective in mobilising electricity saving than esfits and confirm biases in human decision making here loss aversion while further research is necessary we propose a tariff which would motivate consumers to reduce their consumption by offering both an incentive for reaching an energy saving goal and a disincentive for failing to reach this goal the flexibility of such a tariff makes it a promising solution suitable for application in countries with a comparatively high household income and liberalised retail electricity market

classifying exchange rate regimes deeds vs words abstract most of the empirical literature on exchange rate regimes uses the imf de jure classification based on the regime announced by the governments despite the recognized inconsistencies between reported and actual policies in many cases to address this problem we construct a de facto classification based on data on exchange rates and international reserves from all imf reporting countries over the period 1974 2000 which we believe provides a meaningful alternative for future empirical work on the topic the classification sheds new light on several stylized facts previously reported in the literature in particular we find that the de facto pegs have remained stable throughout the last decade although an increasing number of them shy away from an explicit commitment to a fixed regime hidden pegs we confirm the hollowing out hypothesis but show that it does not apply to countries with limited access to capital markets we also find that pure floats are associated with only relatively minor nominal exchange rate volatility and that the recent increase in the number of de jure floats goes hand in hand with an increase in the number of de facto dirty floats fear of floating

public service motivation as an argument for government provision a public service motivation psm inclines employees to provide effort out of concern for the impact of that effort on a valued social service though deemed to be important in the literature on public administration this motivation has not been formally considered by economists when a psm exists this paper establishes conditions under which government bureaucracy can better obtain psm motivated effort from employees than a standard profit maximizing firm the model also provides an efficiency rationale for low powered incentives in both bureaucracies and other organizations producing social services 2000 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

exchange rate regime durability and performance in developing versus advanced economies abstract drawing on new data and advances in exchange rate regimes classification we find that countries appear to benefit by having increasingly flexible exchange rate systems as they become richer and more financially developed for developing countries with little exposure to international capital markets pegs are notable for their durability and relatively low inflation in contrast for advanced economies floats are distinctly more durable and also appear to be associated with higher growth for emerging markets our results parallel the baxter and stockman classic exchange regime neutrality result though pegs are the least durable and expose countries to higher risk of crisis

designation and influence of household increasing block electricity tariffs in china abstract electricity is the guarantee of normal life and the electricity price is widely concerned as a developing country in the transition stage abundant policy implications are included in the electricity price in china thus whether to adjust the resident electricity price is a dilemma for the government however the current single tariff system cannot cope with the complex social and environmental problems a new price mechanism is indeed needed this paper tries to design an increasing block tariffs system with the consideration of residential income and electricity consumption the result indicates that the increasing block tariffs system with four tier structure is more reasonable for china although the increasing block tariffs will result in the increase of electricity price it is still acceptable and affordable the increasing block tariffs will greatly improve the equity and efficiency and promote the electricity saving and emissions reduction moreover the power companies will increase tariffs revenue which would use to the transmission networks investment in poor area in order to the offset the limitations of the increasing block tariffs the government should adopt some complementary measures

donor funding of multilateral aid agencies determining factors and revealed burden sharing the paper reports an empirical study of the factors affecting burden sharing among oecd s 22 dac members in bankrolling the multilateral aid agencies these are the un agencies world bank s ida and non ida programmes regional development banks european community and other multilateral agencies that include the global environmental facility and the montreal protocol on environment annual data over 1970 2000 pooled across the donor countries form the basis for the empirical estimation of each donor s share in the oda aid receipts for each multilateral agency our findings suggest the existence of reverse exploitation i e the financial burden of the agencies is disproportionally carried by the smaller donors the study also finds that

distinguished lecture on economics in government exchange rate regimes is the bipolar view correct the choice of appropriate exchange rate regime which for economies with access to international capital markets increasingly means a move away from the middle ground of pegged but adjustable fixed exchange rates towards the two corner regimes of either flexible exchange rates or a fixed exchange rate supported if necessary by a commitment to give up altogether an independent monetary policy lawrence h summers 2000 p 8

estimation of urban residential electricity demand in china using household survey data abstract this paper uses annual urban household survey data of sichuan province from 2007 to 2009 to estimate the income and price elasticities of residential electricity demand along with the effects of lifestyle related variables the empirical results show that in the urban area of sichuan province the residential electricity demand is price and income inelastic with price and income elasticities ranging from 0 35 to 0 50 and from 0 14 to 0 33 respectively such lifestyle related variables as demographic variables dwelling size and holdings of home appliances are also important determinants of residential electricity demand especially the latter these results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests the research findings imply that urban residential electricity demand continues to increase with the growth of income the empirical results have important policy implications for the multistep electricity price which been adopted in some cities and is expected to be promoted nationwide through the installation of energy efficient home appliances

business cycles and the exchange rate system some international evidence this paper investigates the differences in time series behavior of key economic aggregates under alternative exchange rate systems we use a postwar sample of 49 countries to compare the behavior of output consumption trade flows government consumption spending and real exchange rates under alternative exchange rate systems pegged floating and cooperative systems such as the ems we then examine evidence from two particular episodes involving canada and ireland of changes in the exchange rate system aside from greater variability of real exchange rates under flexible than under pegged nominal exchange rate systems we find little evidence of systematic differences in the behavior of macroeconomic aggregates or international trade flows under alternative exchange rate systems these results are of interest because a large class of theoretical models implies that the nominal exchange rate system has important effects on a number of macroeconomic quantities

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

designing global collective action in population and hiv aids programs 1983 2002 has anything changed the 1994 international conference of population and development icpd in cairo established goals for the expansion of assistance in matters of reproductive health and hiv aids this global effort marked a structural break in principle from the past but did it also change funding behavior panel data on expenditures of oecd donors for three types of aid agencies multilateral non governmental agencies and bilateral aid for the years 1983 2002 do not reveal an unambiguous improvement in donor behavior funding choices for multilateral organizations and ngos have become more interdependent but burden sharing remained stable and generosity dropped substantially after 1994

one for all the impact of different types of energy feedback and goal setting on individuals motivation to conserve electricity abstract we investigate how different types of energy feedback combined with goal setting impact on consumers motivation to conserve electricity using an online survey we test the influence of energy feedback in physical units kwh monetary values eur and environmental values avoided co2 emissions we asked participants to set themselves either a high low or no energy conservation goal in addition we assess the respondents value types hedonic egoistic altruistic and biospheric to test predictions derived from goal framing theory in general individuals scoring high on biospheric values were more motivated to conserve electricity and their motivation did not increase in response to setting an energy conservation goal individuals with egoistic values seem less willing to reduce their electricity consumption unless in the monetary feedback or high goal conditions a high conservation goal was only found to be effective in combination with monetary feedback it increased the motivation to save electricity by 6 7 percentage points in comparison to the low goal condition and 6 6 percentage points in comparison to the control condition

estimation of japanese price elasticities of residential electricity demand 1990 2007 abstract this paper estimates elasticities of japanese residential price electricity from 1990 to 2007 the first difference generalized method of moment estimator is employed to avoid dynamic panel bias which is not considered in most previous studies the results show that while short run elasticities are similar to those in previous studies long run elasticities are significantly lower in our study we also find that the price elasticity of japanese residential electricity consumption is notably affected by income inequality and severe weather based on these results we provide some insights to tailor environmental taxation so as to effectively attain the kyoto protocol

words deeds and outcomes a survey on the growth effects of exchange rate regimes abstract recent studies on the growth effects of exchange rate regimes offer a wide range of different sometimes contradictory results in this paper we systematically compare three prominent contributions in this field using a common data set a common specification and common estimation methods we argue that the contradictory findings can be explained by the fact that these studies use regime classifications which reflect fundamentally different aspects of exchange rate policy