does product market competition increase strike activity evidence from the uk although many studies have examined the effect of labour market characteristics macroeconomic fluctuations and workplace level factors on strike activity much less is known about industry level determinants of industrial conflict and in particular the role of product market competition i examine the effect of competition on strike activity using evidence from a natural experiment of policy reform the introduction of cartel legislation in the uk in the late 1950s my econometric analysis which takes advantage of the fact that different industries were affected to varying degrees by cartel policy establishes that both the number of strikes and the number of working days lost as a result of strikes increased significantly when competition intensified after the abolition of cartels i propose an interpretation of these results with reference to theoretical models of bargaining with asymmetric information

strikes and political activism of trade unions theory and application to bangladesh the behavior of bangladeshi trade unions is characterized bypolitical activism and momentous strikes called hartalsthere have played a crucial part in most political changes inthis country we offer a theoretical framework for discussingthis fact and we test empirically its main prediction bybringing out the political cycle that characterizes theoccurrence of strikes in bangladesh

cliometrics and time series econometrics some theory and applications the paper discusses a range of modern time series methods that have become popular in the past 20 years and considers their usefulness for cliometrics research both in theory and via a range of applications issues such as spurious regression unit roots cointegration persistence causality structural time series methods including time varying parameter models are introduced as are the estimation and testing implications that they involve applications include a discussion of the timing and potential causes of the british industrial revolution income convergence and the long run behaviour of english real wages 1264 1913 finally some new and potentially useful developments are discussed including the mildly explosive processes graphical modelling and long memory

cyclical fluctuations in strike activity using a set of data on contracts and strikes for the period 1970 81 the author distinguishes among the roles of aggregate business conditions labor market conditions and product market conditions in the determination of strike incidence and duration strike incidence is found to be highest in industries that are depressed relative to the rest of the economy but in regions with low unemployment this finding is consistent with the theory that the cost of a strike to a firm increases with the demand for its product and the cost of a strike to the union increases with unemployment another finding however is that strikes are longest in industries that are booming relative to the rest of the economy

accounting for asymmetric price responses and underlying energy demand trends in oecd industrial energy demand abstract this paper explores the way technical progress and improvements in energy efficiency are captured when modelling oecd industrial energy demand the industrial sectors of the developed world involve a number of different practices and processes utilising a range of different technologies consequently given the derived demand nature of energy it is vital when modelling industrial energy demand that the impact of technical progress is appropriately captured however the energy economics literature does not give a clear guide on how this can be achieved one strand suggests that technical progress is endogenous via asymmetric price responses whereas another strand suggests that it is exogenous more recently it has been suggested that potentially there is a role for both endogenous technical progress and exogenous technical progress and consequently the general model should be specified accordingly this paper therefore attempts to model oecd industrial energy demand using annual time series data over the period 1962 2010 for 15 oecd countries using the structural time series model framework the general specifications allow for both asymmetric price responses for technical progress to impact endogenously and an underlying energy demand trend for technical progress and other factors to impact exogenously but in a non linear way the results show that almost all of the preferred models for oecd industrial energy demand incorporate both a stochastic underlying energy demand trend and asymmetric price responses this gives estimated long run income elasticities in the range of 0 34 to 0 96 estimated long run price maximum elasticities in the range of 0 06 to 1 22 estimated long run price recovery elasticities in the range of 0 00 to 0 27 and estimated long run price cut elasticities in the range of 0 00 to 0 18 furthermore the analysis suggests that when modelling industrial energy demand there is a place for endogenous technical progress and an exogenous underlying energy demand trend consequently it is argued that any modelling strategy should start by including both and only imposed restrictions if accepted by the data

strike incidence and the business cycle in ireland strike incidence equations are estimated for manufacturing strikes in ireland from 1960 to 1989 using both poisson and negative binomial regression models a number of alternative business cycle measures are specified the pro cyclicity of strikes is confirmed in all cases and is invariant to the measurement of the cyclical component the numerical size of the cyclical effect on strike activity is however quite small

does fact finding promote settlement theory and a test nonbinding recommendations such as provided by fact finders are shown to significantly increase voluntary settlements in bargaining theoretically it is unclear whether recommendations will increase settlement rates a recommendation may reduce outcome uncertainty thereby chilling bargaining and increasing dispute rates on the other hand a recommendation may give the parties a focal point around which an agreement is made which of these effects dominates is a question that we consider using theory and data from controlled bargaining experiments the data show the dominance of a focal point effect for suggestions highlighting their potential role in improving dispute settlement procedures

empirical test of a separating equilibrium in national football league contract negotiations i empirically test for a separating equilibrium in the bargaining contract of national football league nfl contract negotiations the separating equilibrium predicts that a player who delays contractual agreement signs a more lucrative contract and has positive private information on his ability level at the time of contract negotiations these predictions are tested using data on 1 873 players selected in the 1986 through 1991 nfl drafts the empirical results support the implications of the separating equilibrium

bargaining and strikes strikes are generally regarded as an important economic phenomenon and yet good theoretical explanations of them are hard to come by the difficulty is to understand why rational parties should resort to a wasteful mechanism as a way of distributing the gains from trade why could not both parties be made better off by moving to the final distribution of surplus immediately or if it is uncertain to its certainty equivalent and sharing the benefits from increased production

early marketing matters a time varying parameter approach to persistence modeling are persistent marketing effects most likely to appear right after the introduction of a product the authors give an affirmative answer to this question by developing a model that explicitly reports how persistent and transient marketing effects evolve over time the proposed model provides managers with a valuable tool to evaluate their allocation of marketing expenditures over time an application of the model to many pharmaceutical products estimated through exact initial kalman filtering indicates that both persistent and transient effects occur predominantly immediately after a brand s introduction subsequently the size of the effects declines the authors theoretically and empirically compare their methodology with methodology based on unit root testing and demonstrate that the need for unit root tests creates difficulties in applying conventional persistence modeling the authors recommend that marketing models should either accommodate persistent effects that change over time or be applied to mature brands or limited time windows only

modelling industrial energy demand in saudi arabia abstract between 1986 and 2016 industrial energy consumption in saudi arabia increased by tenfold making it one of the largest end use sectors in the kingdom despite its importance there appear to be no published econometric studies on aggregate industrial energy demand in saudi arabia we model aggregate industrial energy demand in saudi arabia using harvey s 1989 structural time series model showing that it is both price and income inelastic with estimated long run elasticities of 0 34 and 0 60 respectively the estimated underlying energy demand trend suggests improvements in energy efficiency starting from 2010 applying decomposition analysis to the estimated econometric equation highlights the prominent roles of the activity effect the growth in industrial value added and the structure effect the shift towards energy intensive production in driving industrial energy demand growth moreover the decomposition shows how exogenous factors such as energy efficiency helped mitigate some of that growth delivering cumulative savings of 6 8 million tonnes of oil equivalent mtoe between 2010 and 2016 saudi arabia implemented a broad energy price reform program in 2016 which raised electricity fuel and water prices for households and industry the decomposition results reveal that holding all else constant higher industrial energy prices in 2016 reduced the sector s energy consumption by 6 9 a decrease of around 3 0 mtoe saudi policymakers could therefore build on the current policy of energy price reform and energy efficiency standards to mitigate the rate of growth of industrial energy consumption increase economic efficiency and maintain industrial sector competitiveness

wage bargaining with time varying threats we study wage bargaining in which the union is uncertain about the firm s willingness to pay and threat payoffs vary over time strike payoffs change as replacement workers are hired as strikers find temporary jobs and as inventories or strike funds run out we find that bargaining outcomes are substantially altered if threat payoffs vary if dispute costs increase in the long run then dispute durations are longer settlement rates are lower and wages decline more slowly during the short run and may even increase the settlement wage is largely determined from the long run threat rather than the short run threat

is strike behavior cyclical we examine cyclicality of strike frequency and incidence using canadian data on strikes and contracts total strike frequency exhibits significant procyclicality to which within contract strikes contribute appreciably evidence is weaker for procyclical behavior of contract expiry strikes both in total and disaggregated by issue strike incidence is also procyclical particularly in manufacturing though the procyclicality here is confined to strikes over nonwage issues these results mirror those obtained by analyzing the frequency of strikes in the contract data industry specific cyclical variables positively affect strike incidence in manufacturing but region specific variables have no effect

seasonality in dynamic regression models this paper examines the implications of treating seasonality as an unobserved component which changes slowly over time this approach simplifies the specification of dynamic relationships by separating non seasonal from seasonal factors we illustrate this approach using the consumption model of davidson et al 1978 and estimate a stable error correction model between consumption income and prices over the period 1958 92 more generally we argue that autoregressive models are unlikely to successfully model slowly changing seasonality and may confound seasonal effects with the dynamic responses of prime interest our approach can be used in a wide range of cases and we show that there is little loss in efficiency even if seasonality is deterministic

an empirical study of the adverse selection model of strikes problems with existing empirical studies of the asymmetric information theory of strikes are 1 industry level data are used as proxies for firm level variables 2 studies using firm level data potentially suffer from simultaneity bias and 3 one of the key predictions of the theory is not tested the present paper addresses these issues while estimating a probit model of strike incidence using data comprising 2 459 contracts from canadian industry for 1964 85 that are merged with firm specific data under a number of alternative specifications results support the main predictions of the asymmetric information theory of strikes

small sample bias and adjustment costs the response of most stock variables e g capital housing consumer durables and prices to exogenous impulses involves a dynamic or short run reaction and a target or long run reaction the difference between these two is typically attributed to some form of adjustment cost in this paper i argue that the small sample problems of cointegrating procedures used to estimate the long run component are particularly severe when adjustment costs are important more precisely elasticity estimates will tend to be biased downward i illustrate the empirical relevance of this by showing that the target elasticity of capital with respect to its cost is severely downward biased when estimated with conventional ols cointegration procedures once this is corrected the elasticity of the u s capital output ratio to the cost of capital is found to be large and close to minus one copyright 1994 by mit press

the empirical relations between employers striker replacement strategies and strike duration this analysis of general accounting office survey data on strikes in 1985 and 1989 shows that employers permanent replacement of striking workers was associated with longer strikes than would otherwise have occurred furthermore the authors find that simply announcing the intent to replace strikers was also associated with longer strikes finally when employers permanently replaced strikers the probability of settlement fell approximately 30 these findings are consistent with models focusing on the joint costs of a strike and on private information in the bargaining process t o the firm that seeks to operate during a strike a major obstacle is securing a work force to do the work normally performed by members of the striking bargaining unit of the four possible strategies for securing such a work force reassigning struck work to non bargaining unit employees utilizing members of the bargaining unit who return to work during the strike hiring temporary replacement employees and hiring permanent replacement employees the strategy of hiring permanent replacements for strikers has become the most controversial before the passage of new deal labor legislation u s employers regularly exercised their common law right to replace striking workers the wagner act of 1935 protected employees right to strike but did not explicitly grant employers the right to replace strikers the supreme court however upheld the legality of permanently replacing strikers in its 1938 decision nlrb v mackay radio

electricity demand analysis using cointegration and arima modelling a case study of turkey in the early 2000s the republic of turkey has initiated an ambitious reform program in her electricity market which requires privatization liberalization as well as a radical restructuring the most controversial reason behind or justification for recent reforms has been the rapid electricity demand growth that is to say the whole reform process has been a part of the endeavors to avoid the so called energy crisis using cointegration analysis and autoregressive integrated moving average arima modelling the present article focuses on this issue by both providing an electricity demand estimation and forecast and comparing the results with official projections the study concludes first that consumers respond to price and income changes is quite limited and therefore there is a need for economic regulation in turkish electricity market and second that the current official electricity demand projections highly overestimate the electricity demand which may endanger the development of both a coherent energy policy in general and a healthy electricity market in particular

strike incidence in british manufacturing in the 1980s in british manufacturing during the 1980s about one in forty wage settlements involved a strike using data provided by the confederation of british industry the authors analyze the incidence of

revisiting long run relations in power markets with high res penetration abstract electricity generation from renewable energy resources res has become increasingly significant to reach eu and emissions reduction targets at the same time one of the main eu policy goals has been the creation of a common internal energy market for europe in this paper we focus on these two issues previously studied separately considering their possible interactions we first analyze the long run relationship between day ahead electricity prices and fuel prices natural gas and coal looking at two samples of years characterized by low and high res penetration then we explore the integration of eu markets we show that the electricity fuel nexus found over 2006 2008 changed dramatically over 2010 2014 for the majority of countries considered in particular the long run dependence of electricity from gas and coal prices is much lower in recent years furthermore our results confirm that the considered eu countries are becoming less integrated as res e increases our findings suggest that nationally implemented policies to support renewables are successful in increasing res penetration but they have lessened the linkage among eu markets then making integration more difficult to obtain

estimating the long run user cost elasticity abstract the user cost elasticity is a parameter of central importance in economics if the supply curve for capital is upward sloping as is more likely in a large economy like the u s and shocks to demand are important as they are likely to be over the business cycle estimates of the user cost elasticity that rely on high frequency movements in the variables will tend to be biased applying cointegration techniques to a small open economy yields an estimate of the long run user cost elasticity that is about 75 larger in absolute value than the best existing estimate

the development of the neoclassical tradition in labor economics this essay on labor economics examines neoclassical theory s rise to ascendancy following the second world war with a secondary focus on the relative decline but continued influence of institutionalist economic theory the authors describe the evolution of institutional and neoclassical theory from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries examine some early intellectual debates between the two camps briefly describe the work of neoclassical labor economics pioneers and look at major developments over the past 30 years they argue that neoclassical economists increasing intellectual breadth and influence in public policy have led them to pay closer attention to issues that have long been of concern to institutionalists and neoinstitutionalists

wage bargaining inventories and union legislation this paper analyses a strategic bargaining game where the firm may or may not be able to sell out of its inventory of finished goods during a strike firms and the union are both risk neutral and have the same discount rate it is shown that the wage equilibrium corresponds to the axiomatic nash bargaining solution where the threatpoints are the agents payoffs should bargaining continue indefinitely we use the 1980 and 1982 employment acts to test this theory interpreting that legislation change as changing the firm s threatpoint but not its bargaining power this allows us to identify the value of the firm s threatpoint post 1982 formal tests support the theory also consistent with the theory it is found that union wages decrease with inventories after 1982 but not before and that the union wage gap is smaller after 1982 wage bargaining as described in the strategic bargaining literature is a peaceful affair if there is no agreement workers simply withdraw their labour for one period and there is a consequent one period loss of production for the firm but strikes tend to generate a lot of conflict in the u k in the 1970s striking unions would form picket lines across the factory gates their aim was not only to prevent strikebreakers going to work but also to stop lorries delivering goods conversely firms often with the help of the police would try to get the lorries across those lines the employment acts of 1980 and 1982 stopped this struggle stopping lorries crossing picket lines had always been illegal but this new legislation gave firms power to have picket lines immediately lifted should striking workers act illegally the courts would immediately sequester the union s assets if its members refused to comply with the law using the strategic bargaining approach this paper considers the equilibrium effect of this change in legislation on union wage formation using wage and inventory data from a panel of firms across this time period this paper also formally tests that theory there have been two main approaches to bargaining theory the strategic bargaining

equilibrium consumption and precautionary savings in a stochastically growing economy abstract the derivation of a closed form solution for consumption based on the constant elasticity utility function in the presence of stochastic labor income has proved to be intractable this paper derives a closed form equilibrium relationship between consumption and wealth one that holds along a balanced growth path in a stochastic romer endogenous growth model by employing more general recursive preferences we can disentangle the coefficient of relative risk aversion from the intertemporal elasticity of substitution the effects of key structural parameters on equilibrium consumption and its tradeoff with leisure are analyzed a significant aspect of our analysis concerns the extent to which current risk in the economy is shared between labor and capital this plays an important role in determining the impact of risk on the economy in general and on consumption in particular formal analysis is supplemented with extensive numerical simulations

an alternative explanation of india s growth transition a demand side hypothesis this paper formalises the balance of payments constrained bpc growth model in a two regime framework to re examine india s growth transition in 1980 from a demand side perspective as an alternative to the supply oriented approaches of previous studies the results provide strong evidence of a demand led growth transition although the government led expenditure strategy of the 1980s fulfilled the role of moving the indian economy out of its slow growing demand regime 1952 79 into a faster growing one it could not sustain demand growth at the natural rate due to a balance of payments constraint consistent with the prediction of the bpc growth model faster export growth in the post 1990 liberalisation period sustained demand growth at its maximum rate by allowing expenditure including government spending to grow at a fast rate the analysis further suggests that india s export surge in the post 1990 liberalisation period has a significant demand side explanation rather than an exclusively supply side interpretation

the impact of collective bargaining legislation on disputes in the u s public sector no legislation may be the worst legislation this article estimates the impact of collective bargaining legislation on disputes during labor negotiations in the u s public sector we use a large national sample of u s state and local government contracts to compare the incidence and intensity of disputes by similar workers under different forms of collective bargaining legislation the breadth of our data allows us to examine the impact of five different forms of legislation our principal finding is that dispute costs are highest in jurisdictions that provide no explicit framework for bargaining or dispute resolution strikes are as frequent and as long when they are illegal and employers are not required to bargain with employees as when they are legal but employers are required to bargain arbitration is most frequently used when formal institutions for arbitration have been provided

does oilrig activity react to oil price changes an empirical investigation in this paper we analyze how oilrig activity in different non opec regions is affected by the crude oil price we estimate relationships between oilrig activity and crude oil prices using dynamic regression models augmented with latent components capturing trend and seasonality the results generally show a positive relationship between oilrig activity and the crude oil price but the strength of the relationship differs across regions overall there seems to be a clear relationship between the oil industry structure in the region and the oilrig activity s reaction to price changes on average the long run price elasticity for oilrig activity in non opec countries is around unity

modelling residential electricity demand in the gcc countries abstract this paper aims at understanding the drivers of residential electricity demand in the gulf cooperation council countries by applying the structural time series model in addition to the economic variables of gdp and real electricity prices the model accounts for population weather and a stochastic underlying energy demand trend as a proxy for efficiency and human behaviour the resulting income and price elasticities are informative for policy makers given the paucity of previous estimates for a region with particular political structures and economies subject to large shocks in particular the estimates allow for a sound assessment of the impact of energy related policies suggesting that if policy makers in the region wish to curtail future residential electricity consumption they would need to improve the efficiency of appliances and increase energy using awareness of consumers possibly by education and marketing campaigns moreover even if prices were raised the impact on curbing residential electricity growth in the region is likely to be very small given the low estimated price elasticities unless that is prices were raised so high that expenditure on electricity becomes such a large proportion of income that the price elasticities increase in absolute terms

examining the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors in energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria policy implications abstract this paper examines the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors such as consumers preferences lifestyles and values which have hitherto been ignored in energy demand and co2 emissions modelling for nigeria we use a structural time series model to estimate various energy demand and co2 intensity models that take account of the aforementioned factors we adopt preferred models from these estimates to analyse how energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria might evolve by generating three different future scenarios to 2025 we find energy efficiency and non economic factors to influence energy demand and co2 emissions the long run income and price elasticities obtained differ significantly from those in existing studies that have ignored these salient factors in a business as usual scenario the results indicate that energy demand will continue to grow consequently present policies do not sufficiently mitigate aggregate co2 emissions in nigeria the lesson for policy makers is that the extant policies introduced to restrain co2 emissions from a production perspective have to be combined with new policies that influence consumers lifestyles and behaviours develop energy efficient technologies and apply low tariffs on imported energy efficient appliances to drive down co2 emissions from a consumption perspective

cointegration factor shares and production function parameters abstract this note evaluates the usefulness of cointegration relations for estimating production function parameters as pioneered by caballero 1994 while using long run variation to estimate production function parameters is a desirable estimation strategy this note demonstrates that the cointegration model will not be informative for estimating substitution parameters

concession stands how mining investments incite protest in africa foreign investment in africa s mineral resources has increased dramatically this paper addresses three questions raised by this trend do commercial mining investments increase the likelihood of social or armed conflict if so when are these disputes most prevalent and finally what mechanisms help explain these conflicts i show first that mining has contrasting effects on social and armed conflict while the probability of protests or riots increases roughly doubling after mining starts there is no increase in rebel activity second i show that the probability of social conflict rises with plausibly exogenous increases in world commodity prices finally i compile additional geo spatial and survey data to explore potential mechanisms including reporting bias environmental harm in migration inequality and governance finding little evidence consistent with these accounts i develop an explanation related to incomplete information a common cause of conflict in industrial and international relations this mechanism rationalizes why mining induces protest why these conflicts are exacerbated by rising prices and why transparency dampens the relationship between prices and protest

multidimensional separating equilibria and moral hazard an empirical study of national football league contract negotiations this paper empirically tests for a multidimensional separating equilibrium in contract negotiations and tests for evidence of the moral hazard inherent in many contracts using contract and performance data on players drafted into the national football league from 1986 through 1991 we find evidence that players use delay to agreement and incentive clauses to reveal their private information during contract negotiations in addition our empirical tests of the moral hazard issue indicate that a player s effort level is influenced by the structure of his contract

economic factors and traffic crashes in new zealand the aim of this study was to examine the changes in the trend and seasonal patterns of fatal crashes in new zealand in relation to changes in economic conditions between 1970 and 1994 the harvey harvey and durbin journal of the royal statistical society 149 3 187 227 1986 structural time series model stsm an unobserved components class of model was used to estimate the quarterly number of fatal traffic crashes independent variables included distance travelled the unemployment rate uer real gross domestic product per capita rgdp the proportion of motorcycles the proportion of young males in the population alcohol consumption per capita the open road speed limit and dummy variables for the 1973 and 1979 oil crises and seatbelt wearing laws distance travelled rgdp uer and alcohol consumption per capita were significant factors in explaining the short run dynamics of fatal crashes with the effect of rgdp greater than uer increases in either rgdp or uer were related with decreas

historical limits on neoclassical strike theories evidence from french coal mining 1890 1935 this study analyzes the determinants of strikes in french coal mining over the period 1890 1935 the results indicate that factors emphasized by traditional bargaining power models were more important determinants of strikes in that setting than was economic variability this finding supports the hypothesis that neoclassical theories of strikes hicksian theories that strikes are a function of the parties lack of information about the economic environment in which bargaining takes place are inappropriate in some historical and political contexts specifically the authors argue that the many settings where as in the case considered strikes are politically motivated firms have simple economic structures and collective bargaining is poorly institutionalized should provide evidence discontinuing neoclassical predictions

energy price reform in saudi arabia modeling the economic and environmental impacts and understanding the demand response abstract saudi arabia has regulated domestic energy prices for decades setting them below international market levels energy subsidies in saudi arabia are generally implicit because they lead to foregone revenues for the government low energy prices also encourage rapid energy demand growth and wasteful consumption while limiting incentives to invest in energy efficiency saudi arabia recently started to reform energy prices leading to large increases in gasoline and residential electricity prices in 2018 to measure the economic and environmental impacts of energy price reform we econometrically model gasoline and residential electricity demand using harvey s 1990 structural time series model our estimated equations reveal that gasoline demand and residential electricity demand in saudi arabia are strongly price and income inelastic despite the major reforms that were recently implemented our welfare analysis also shows that the energy price reforms in 2018 in gasoline and residential electricity respectively delivered welfare gains of 8 8 and 3 8 billion sar annually 2 3 and 1 0 billion us additionally our decomposition analysis reveals that these energy price reforms were the largest contributors to the observed decreases in gasoline and residential electricity consumption in 2018

dynamic bargaining with action dependent valuations abstract an infinite horizon dynamic bargaining model is presented in which actions affect the expected future value of the buyer seller match because actions directly affect the future surplus to be bargained over the model is unlike other models that tie the dynamic process to nature alone focusing on a subset of weak markov equilibria several results come about that are not found in static bargaining models using similar bargaining protocols in particular optimal price demands can be lower higher than the buyer s lowest highest possible valuation and several empirical features concerning wage settlements and strike incidence from labor union contract negotiations can be explained

quantifying the impact of exogenous non economic factors on uk transport oil demand abstract this paper attempts to quantify the impact of exogenous non economic factors on uk transport oil demand in addition to income price and fuel efficiency by estimating the demand relationship for oil transport for 1960 2007 using the structural time series model from this the relative impact on uk transport oil demand from income price and efficiency are quantified moreover the relative impact of the non economic factors is also quantified based on the premise that the estimated stochastic trend represents behavioural responses to changes in socio economic factors and changes in lifestyles and attitudes the estimated elasticities for income price and efficiency are 0 6 0 1 and 0 3 respectively and it is shown that for efficiency and price the overall contribution is relatively small whereas the contribution from income and non economic factors is relatively large this has important implications for policy makers keen to reduce transport oil consumption and associated emissions but not willing to reduce the trend rate of economic growth taxes and improved efficiency only have a limited impact hence a major thrust of policy should perhaps be on educating and informing consumers to persuade them to change their lifestyle and attitudes and thus reduce their consumption through the non economic instruments route

the relationship between uncertainty the contract zone and efficiency in a bargaining experiment research on bargaining suggests that the efficiency of bargaining is related to the size of the surplus to be divided and to uncertainty about the opponent we conducted a bargaining experiment which manipulated both of these factors we find that the presence of uncertainty decreases bargaining efficiency while the effect of contract zone size depends on whether there is uncertainty or certainty

the causality between energy consumption and economic growth in turkey abstract this paper applies the causality test to examine the causal relationship between primary energy consumption ec and real gross national product gnp for turkey during 1970 2006 we employ unit root tests the augmented dickey fuller adf and the philips perron pp johansen cointegration test and pair wise granger causality test to examine relation between ec and gnp our empirical results indicate that the two series are found to be non stationary however first differences of these series lead to stationarity further the results indicate that ec and gnp are cointegrated and there is bidirectional causality running from ec to gnp and vice versa this means that an increase in ec directly affects economic growth and that economic growth also stimulates further ec this bidirectional causality relationship between ec and gnp determined for turkey at 1970 2006 period is in accordance with the ones in literature reported for similar countries consequently we conclude that energy is a limiting factor to economic growth in turkey and hence shocks to energy supply will have a negative impact on economic growth

modelling and forecasting turkish residential electricity demand abstract this research investigates the relationship between turkish residential electricity consumption household total final consumption expenditure and residential electricity prices by applying the structural time series model to annual data over the period from 1960 to 2008 household total final consumption expenditure real energy prices and an underlying energy demand trend are found to be important drivers of turkish residential electricity demand with the estimated short run and the long run total final consumption expenditure elasticities being 0 38 and 1 57 respectively and the estimated short run and long run price elasticities being 0 09 and 0 38 respectively moreover the estimated underlying energy demand trend which as far as is known has not been investigated before for the turkish residential sector should be of some benefit to turkish decision makers in terms of energy planning it provides information about the impact of past policies the influence of technical progress the impacts of changes in consumer behaviour and the effects of changes in economic structure furthermore based on the estimated equation and different forecast assumptions it is predicted that turkish residential electricity demand will be somewhere between 48 and 80 twh by 2020 compared to 40 twh in 2008

accounting for technical progress in aggregate energy demand abstract researchers have not reached a consensus on how to account for technical progress when modeling aggregate energy demand some include a time trend in a dynamic model while others omit the trend in a model that disallows for long run income effects we show that the latter approach can be directly tested as a nested case of the former so that model selection need not be made a priori solely on theoretical grounds using annual data over 1960 1990 we find that long run income effects are not significant however including a time trend improves the model s fit while rendering much more credible long run price elasticities

diagnostic checking of unobserved components time series models diagnostic checking of the specification of time series models is normally carried out using the innovations that is the one step ahead prediction errors in an unobserved components model other sets of residuals are available these auxiliary residuals are estimators of the disturbances associated with the unobserved components they can often yield information that is less apparent from the innovations but they suffer from the disadvantage that they are serially correlated even in a correctly specified model with known parameters this article shows how the properties of the auxiliary residuals may be obtained how they are related to each other and to the innovations and how they can be used to construct test statistics applications are presented showing how residuals can be used to detect and distinguish between outliers and structural change

underlying trends and seasonality in uk energy demand a sectoral analysis this paper demonstrates the importance for energy demand modelling of allowing for trends and seasonal effects that are stochastic in form inherent underlying trends may be non linear and reflect not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction using quarterly unadjusted data for various sectors in the uk it is shown that unless energy demand models are formulated so as to allow for stochastic trends and seasonals estimates of price and income elasticities could be seriously biased

strategic bargaining models and interpretation of strike data attrition screening and signalling models of strategic bargaining are characterized in terms of their predictions about the incidence mean duration and settlement rates of strikes and the terms of wage settlements these predictions are compared with the general features observed in empirical studies of strikes in canada and the united states conclusions are drawn about the types of models capable of generating these features and about the conformity of the models to the evidence methods are described for computing the numerical examples used to illustrate the models

an empirical test of an asymmetric information model of strikes recent developments in the theory of strategic bargaining demonstrate how informational asymmetries can lead to prolonged and costly bargaining these models can be applied to contract negotiations yielding an economic theory of strikes to date however few empirical tests of these models have been carried out in this paper a set of predictions concerning the incidence and unconditional duration of strikes is derived from a simple bargaining model in which the union is uncertain about the firm s future profitability these predictions are then tested on a micro data set of major u s contract negotiations that took place from 1973 to 1977

industrial electricity demand for turkey a structural time series analysis abstract this research investigates the relationship between turkish industrial electricity consumption industrial value added and electricity prices in order to forecast future turkish industrial electricity demand to achieve this an industrial electricity demand function for turkey is estimated by applying the structural time series technique to annual data over the period 1960 to 2008 in addition to identifying the size and significance of the price and industrial value added output elasticities this technique also uncovers the electricity underlying energy demand trend uedt for the turkish industrial sector and is as far as is known the first attempt to do this the results suggest that output and real electricity prices and a uedt all have an important role to play in driving turkish industrial electricity demand consequently they should all be incorporated when modelling turkish industrial electricity demand and the estimated uedt should arguably be considered in future energy policy decisions concerning the turkish electricity industry the output and price elasticities are estimated to be 0 15 and 0 16 respectively with an increasing but at a decreasing rate uedt and based on the estimated equation and different forecast assumptions it is predicted that turkish industrial electricity demand will be somewhere between 97 and 148 twh by 2020

the determinants of u s labor disputes we present a bargaining model of union contract negotiations in which the union decides between two threats the union can strike or it can continue to work under the expired contract the model makes predictions about the level of dispute activity and the form disputes take strike incidence increases as the strike threat becomes more attractive because of low unemployment or a real wage drop we test these predictions by estimating logistic models of dispute incidence and dispute composition for negotiations from 1970 to 1989 we find support for the model s key predictions but these associations are weaker after 1981

energy consumption and economic activity in industrialized countries the dynamic aggregate time series relationship abstract most econometric studies suggest that the income elasticity of demand for energy is approximately unity for the developed market economies it is shown that over the period 1950 1978 the long run income elasticity is substantially higher than unity in terms of a ces energy demand function this result reflects the application of a generalized dynamic estimation methodology where serial correlation is regarded as a diagnostic guide to distributed lag fitting price elasticities are also estimated but these are in line with conventional estimates

strikes and wages a test of an asymmetric information model this paper describes a simple model of labor disputes based on the hypothesis that unions use strikes to infer the profitability of the firm the model posits the existence of a negatively sloped resistance curve between wages and strike duration in addition it offer a series of predictions relating wage and strike outcomes to changes in the expected profitability of the firm and changes in the alternative opportunities of striking workers these implications are tested using data on wage outcomes strike probabilities and strike durations for a large sample of collective bargaining agreements

the effect of wage bargains on the stock market value of the firm the author estimates the change in the value of common stock resulting from an unexpected change in collectively bargained labor costs using bargaining unit wage data and nyse stock returns he estimates a dollar for dollar trade off between these variables this result is consistent with stock valuations based on present value maximizing managerial decisions that is the results are consistent with hotelling s lemma the author also finds support for the hypothesis that collective bargains maximize the sum of shareholder and union member wealth that is the results are consistent with strong efficiency in the contracting environment copyright 1989 by american economic association

the effect of labour relations legislation on strike incidence the impact on strike incidence of nine labour relations policy variables representing legislation in eleven canadian jurisdictions is estimated using logit analysis of 3 347 individual collective agreements mandatory strike votes compulsory dues check off and compulsory conciliation boards are associated with significantly lower strike probabilities prohibition of replacement workers and employer initiated strike votes are associated with significantly higher strike probabilities no significant association was found between strike incidence and the length of cooling off period following conciliation and negotiated or automatic reopeners policy impacts are interpreted in a framework emphasizing the influence of asymmetric inforrnation and joint costs on strikes

energy consumption and gdp in turkey is there a co integration relationship energy consumption and gdp are expected to grow by 5 9 and 7 annually until 2025 in turkey this paper tries to unfold the linkage between energy consumption and gdp by undertaking a co integration analysis for turkey with annual data over the period 1970 2003 the analysis shows that energy consumption and gdp are co integrated this means that there is a possibly bi directional causality relationship between the two we establish that there is a unidirectional causality running from gdp to energy consumption indicating that energy saving would not harm economic growth in turkey in addition we find that energy consumption keeps on growing as long as the economy grows in turkey

learning in sequential wage negotiations theory and evidence when union firm pairs bargain sequentially and when unobserved components of firms abilities to pay are subject to correlated shocks unions that bargain later in a sequence can acquire valuable information by observing previous bargaining outcomes in their industry we derive the implications of this kind of learning in an asymmetric information model of wage negotiations and argue that the most robust implication is a lower incidence of strikes among followers than leaders in wage negotiations considerable empirical support for this implication is found in a long panel of canadian contract negotiations

the effects of public policy on strike duration hazard function estimates are utilized to analyze the effect of numerous public policy variables on strike duration based on 7 546 strikes in canada between 1967 and 1985 we find that only the mandatory strike vote substantially reduced conditional duration however the policy variables generally had a more favorable effect on reducing strike incidence so that on net they tended to reduce unconditional duration incidence times conditional duration specifically reduced unconditional duration was associated with the existence of conciliation and the requirement of a mandatory strike vote but the prohibition on replacement workers had a perverse effect