money and capital abstract the effects of money anticipated inflation on capital formation is a classic issue in macroeconomics previous papers adopt reduced form approaches putting money in the utility function or imposing cash in advance but using otherwise frictionless models we follow instead a literature that tries to be explicit about the frictions making money essential this introduces new elements including a two sector structure with centralized and decentralized markets stochastic trading opportunities and bargaining these elements matter quantitatively and numerical results differ from findings in the reduced form literature the analysis also reduces a gap between microfounded monetary economics and mainstream macro

do payday loans cause bankruptcy abstractpayday loans are used by millions of americans every year despite their annualized interest rates of several hundred percent we provide new evidence on the consequences of payday borrowing and the determinants of personal bankruptcy using an administrative panel data set of loan records in a regression discontinuity design we estimate that payday loans increase personal bankruptcy rates by a factor of two we assess possible mechanisms and find the most support for a novel one payday loan access appears to induce bankruptcy filings by worsening the cash flow position of the household

reduction potentials of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector abstract rapid growth of road vehicles private vehicles in particular has resulted in continuing growth in china s oil demand and imports which has been widely accepted as a major factor effecting future oil availability and prices and a major contributor to china s ghg emission increase this paper is intended to analyze the future trends of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector and to assess the effectiveness of possible reduction measures a detailed model has been developed to derive a reliable historical trend of energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector between 2000 and 2005 and to project future trends two scenarios have been designed to describe the future strategies relating to the development of china s road transport sector the business as usual scenario is used as a baseline reference scenario in which the government is assumed to do nothing to influence the long term trends of road transport energy demand the best case scenario is considered to be the most optimized case where a series of available reduction measures such as private vehicle control fuel economy regulation promoting diesel and gas vehicles fuel tax and biofuel promotion are assumed to be implemented energy demand and ghg emissions in china s road transport sector up to 2030 are estimated in these two scenarios the total reduction potentials in the best case scenario and the relative reduction potentials of each measure have been estimated

what can we learn about financial access from u s immigrants the role of country of origin institutions and immigrant beliefs immigrants from countries with more effective institutions are more likely than other immigrants to have a relationship with a bank and to use formal financial markets more extensively the evidence that a country s institutional environment shapes beliefs and by extension the use of financial services provides support for policies that focus on institutional reforms in promoting financial access after holding wealth education and other factors constant the impact of institutional quality in the country of origin affects the financial market participation of all immigrant groups except those who have lived in the united states for more than 28 years these findings are robust to alternative measures of institutional effectiveness to controlling for additional country of origin characteristics and to various methods for addressing potential biases caused by immigrant self selection

in love with the debit card but still married to cash abstractusing shopping diary survey data we show that changing payment patterns is a challenging task even when consumers have fallen in love with a new payment instrument they find it hard to divorce from their old payment instrument we find a discrepancy between how consumers prefer to pay and how they actually pay half of the consumers who prefer the debit card to cash don t use the debit card to pay a majority of their point of sale transactions our regression results show that the habit of paying cash plays a significant role explaining the presence of a gap

payment card rewards programs and consumer payment choice abstract by using a unique data set that contains detailed information about consumer payment choice and consumers attitudes toward each payment method we estimate the effects of payment card rewards on consumer choice of payment methods our approach allows us to control for consumer heterogeneity we find the effects of rewards to be statistically significant across five retail types our policy experiments suggest that for the sub population who hold both credit and debit cards removing rewards would increase their share of paper based payment methods i e cash and checks measured in terms of in store transactions by no more than 4 percentage points

choosing how to pay the influence of foreign backgrounds abstract is having a foreign background a relevant factor in choosing between payment instruments in consumer point of sale transactions after migration we analyze this question using a unique diary survey in which both participants with a dutch and a foreign background documented their daily purchases we present several pieces of evidence suggesting that foreign backgrounds still influence the choice between payment instruments after migration to the netherlands for instance we find that first generation migrants from a number of countries that can be seen as cash oriented are more likely to use cash in the netherlands at the same time second generation migrants have similar payment habits as individuals with a dutch background this finding suggests that payment behavior is not passed on between generations but affected by host country payment habits finally we suggest that in this context special information campaigns to increase debit card usage will not have clear net social benefits

the determinants of an environmentally responsive firm an empirical approach abstract our empirical results indicate that a firm s formulation of an environmental plan is positively influenced by customer pressure shareholder pressure government regulatory pressure and neighborhood and community group pressure but negatively influenced by other lobby group pressure sources and a firm s sales to asset ratio firms which view environmental issues as important in the next 5 years are also more likely to have a plan relative to the manufacturing sector firms in the natural resource sector are more likely to formulate environmental plans while firms in the service sector are less likely to have plans our results provide insight into how firms react to environmental issues they also offer policymakers a list of determinants which can be used either as an alternative or complement to environmental regulation

bouncing out of the banking system an empirical analysis of involuntary bank account closures using a new database we document the determinants of involuntary consumer bank account closures during 2001 2005 approximately 30 million debit accounts were involuntarily closed for excessive overdrafting we focus on multiple factors to explain this phenomenon household economics and financial decision making ability social capital bank policies and the alternative financial services sector involuntary closures are more frequent in us counties with a larger fraction of single mothers lower education levels lower wealth and higher unemployment closures are higher in communities with high property crime rates and low electoral participation bank policies have an independent relation to closures with counties having more competitive banking markets and more multi market banks experiencing higher closure rates bank structure also seems to affect the speed at which banks adjust their policies to changes in household income finally using both national data and a state level shift in regulation we find evidence that access to payday lending leads to higher rates of involuntary account closure

why do people use debit cards evidence from checking accounts i introduction debit card use has grown faster than any other payment instrument in the united states a minor segment of the market used debit cards in 1998 however figure 1 shows that because of rapid growth in their use more transactions are made with debit than with credit cards the puzzle of debit s popularity is that explicit costs appear to favor credit over debit with debit money immediately comes out of the bank account whereas with credit the household is billed for purchases at the end of the month and pays within a further grace period as long as no balance is carried on the credit card the consumer pays no interest this float may be minor if evaluated at a savings account interest rate however for liquidity constrained households the opportunity cost payday loans or bank bounce protection is quite high credit cards also offer the option to convert the balance into an uncollateralized loan with zero transaction cost most credit cards offer rewards cash back airline miles gift certificates warranty on purchase charitable donations etc or a below market interest rate only 5 7 of banks offer rewards on their signature debit cards moebs services inc 2006 and some financial institutions 15 charge a fee for pin debit purchases ranging from 10 cents to 2 dollars per transaction the goal of this paper is to investigate the factors that have caused a seemingly dominated product to become a market leader consumer debit card choice has implications for monetary policy as such choices affect money demand and money transmission mechanisms with 894 billion in credit card debt at the end of 2009 and 1 4 million personal bankruptcies in 2009 americans ability to effectively manage personal finances can have a strong effect on standard of living as payment card networks exhibit network externalities market concentration and its suppressive effects on competition is of concern to antitrust regulators the extent to which these network externalities exist is dependent on the degree of substitutability of competing payment media survey evidence such as found in the studies of zinman 2009 stavins 2001 borzekowski and kiser 2008 and borzekowski kiser and ahmed 2008 offers several motivations for choosing debit over credit cost convenience merchant acceptance time at checkout purchase tracking safety being credit constrained and spending restraint zinman notes that up to 31 of households could use debit for self restraint uniquely we use household transactions level data a course of action recommended by zinman the sufficiently rich data are consistent with spending control purchase tracking merchant acceptance and pecuniary motives paying interest when revolving a credit card balance as an explanation for some households debit use figure 1 omitted much of the growth in debit card use has come at the expense of checks or cash from 1995 to 2003 electronic payments grew from 23 to 55 of all payments borzekowski and kiser 2008 find that the closest substitutes for debit are cash checks and credit in that order however the debit versus credit comparison is quite clean debit and credit equate in many dimensions considered by klee 2006 and recently available data to track debit transactions as opposed to the anonymity of cash however with atm withdrawals observable we are able to compare debit and credit to cash to speculate whether debit card use might be correlated with spending control motives we look for evidence that debit card users are paying down a credit card balance the checking account data contains credit card payments but not credit card balances while the data do not contain full information about credit card balances they do contain payments to credit cards this is enough information to show that debit users are more likely to pay the same amount in multiple months a sign that they are paying a credit card balance

whither loose change the diminishing demand for small denomination currency while payment card usage has increased dramatically the stock of outstanding currency has not declined as rapidly we analyze changes in cash demand for 13 advanced economies from 1988 to 2003 by separating cash into three denomination categories to disentangle its store of wealth and payment functions defining denominations commonly dispensed by automated teller machines atms as the medium category we show that demand for small denomination currency decreases with greater debit card usage and with greater retail market consolidation in contrast the demand for high denomination notes decreases when interest rates rise but is generally unaffected by changes in debit card usage

agency relationships in family firms theory and evidence does owner management necessarily eliminate the agency costs of ownership drawing on agency literature and on the economic theory of the household we argue that private ownership and owner management expose privately held owner managed firms to agency threats ignored by jensen s and meckling s 1976 agency model private ownership and owner management not only reduce the effectiveness of external control mechanisms they also expose firms to a self control problem created by incentives that cause owners to take actions which harm themselves as well as those around them jensen 1994 p 43 thus shareholders have incentive to invest resources in curbing both managerialand owner opportunism we extend this thesis to the domain of the family firm after developing hypotheses which describe how family dynamics and specifically altruism exacerbate agency problems experienced by these privately held owner managed firms we use data obtained from a large scale survey of family businesses to field test our hypotheses and find evidence which suggests support for our proposed theory finally we discuss the implications of our theory for research on family and other types of privately held owner managed firms

platform competition in two sided markets many if not most markets with network externalities are two sided to succeed platforms in industries such as software portals and media payment systems and the internet must get both sides of the market on board accordingly platforms devote much attention to their business model that is to how they court each side while making money overall this paper builds a model of platform competition with two sided markets it unveils the determinants of price allocation and end user surplus for different governance structures profit maximizing platforms and not for profit joint undertakings and compares the outcomes with those under an integrated monopolist and a ramsey planner jel l5 l82 l86 l96

environmentalism democracy and pollution control this paper makes two empirical contributions to the literature based on predictions generated by a lobby group model first we investigate how environmental lobby groups affect the determination of environmental policy in rich and developing countries second we explore the interaction between democratic participation and political electoral competition the empirical findings suggest that environmental lobby groups tend to positively affect the stringency of environmental policy moreover political competition tends to raise policy stringency in particular where citizens participation in the democratic process is widespread

world transport energy demand modelling methodology and elasticities abstract this paper presents the international energy agency s iea approach of modelling transport energy demand fuel demand which is not a demand per se is derived whenever possible from the economic activity in the transport sector and not estimated directly ie using one equation or simultaneous equation system in general the transport models employ a two step approach in the first step transport activity the sector s relevant energy service is estimated econometrically in the second step the transport activity projections are then combined with estimates of efficiency improvements car turnover rates and diesel gasoline penetration assumptions in order to arrive at projections of fuel demand the principal advantages of this approach are that the relevant energy services are modelled and that for model simulation efficiency improvements can be dealt with explicitly the effectiveness of economic instruments is a function of the reaction of consumers and businesses to income and price changes an in depth understanding of income and price elasticities of transport demand and transport energy demand is important in order to be able to assess the effectiveness of policies considered the paper also shows the underlying long term income and price elasticities for oecd and non oecd regions

cash burns an inventory model with a cash credit choice abstract a dynamic cash management model is analysed where agents choose whether to pay with cash or credit at every point in time in the model credit usage depends on the current stock of cash a novel result that matches recent micro evidence on households payment choices the optimality of such a decision rule is novel and cannot be obtained by models where cash credit decisions are made at the beginning of each period we discuss how to use the model to account for cross country evidence on the intensity of credit usage and for several statistics on the size and frequency of cash withdrawals the model is used to assess the household s welfare cost of phasing out cash

banking deregulation allocational consequences of relaxing entry barriers abstract we present an equilibrium analysis to predict the long run allocational consequences and risk implications of banking deregulation loan demand and deposit supply functions are derived from primitive assumptions about the preferences of individuals and banks are viewed as differentiated competitors in a spatial context we find that a relaxation of entry barriers into banking improves the welfare of borrowers and savers at the expense of bank stockholders equilibrium loan interest rates fall and equilibrium deposit interest rates rise as banking becomes more competitive despite this the equilibrium debt equity ratios of banks increase as entry barriers are relaxed we also examine the implications of capital standards and find that an increase in the minimum capital requirement benefits borrowers but hurts depositors

financial innovation and the transactions demand for cash we document cash management patterns for households that are at odds with the predictions of deterministic inventory models that abstract from precautionary motives we extend the baumol tobin cash inventory model to a dynamic environment that allows for the possibility of withdrawing cash at random times at a low cost this modification introduces a precautionary motive for holding cash and naturally captures developments in withdrawal technology such as the increasing diffusion of bank branches and atm terminals we characterize the solution of the model which qualitatively reproduces several empirical patterns we estimate the structural parameters using micro data and show that quantitatively the model captures important economic patterns the estimates are used to quantify the expenditure and interest rate elasticity of money demand the impact of financial innovation on money demand the welfare cost of inflation and the benefit of atm ownership

the real costs of credit access evidence from the payday lending market using geographic differences in the availability of payday loans i estimate the real effects of credit access among low income households payday loans are small high interest rate loans that constitute the marginal source of credit for many high risk borrowers i find no evidence that payday loans alleviate economic hardship to the contrary loan access leads to increased difficulty paying mortgage rent and utilities bills the empirical design isolates variation in loan access that is uninfluenced by lenders location decisions and state regulatory decisions two factors that might otherwise correlate with economic hardship measures further analysis of differences in loan availability over time and across income groups rules out a number of alternative explanations for the estimated effects counter to the view that improving credit access facilitates important expenditures the results suggest that for some low income households the debt service burden imposed by borrowing inhibits their ability to pay important bills copyright 2011 oxford university press

consumers use of debit cards patterns preferences and price response debit card use at the point of sale has grown dramatically in recent years in the united states and now exceeds the number of credit card transactions however many questions remain regarding patterns of debit card use consumer preferences when using debit and how consumers might respond to explicit pricing of card transactions using a new nationally representative consumer survey this paper describes the current use of debit cards by u s consumers including how demographics affect use in addition consumers stated reasons for using debit cards are used to analyze how consumers substitute between debit and other payment instruments we also examine the relationship between household financial conditions and payment choice finally we use a key variable on bank imposed transaction fees to analyze price sensitivity of card use and find a 12 decline in overall use in reaction to a mean 1 8 fee charged on certain debit card transactions we believe this represents the first microeconomic evidence in the united states on price sensitivity for a card payment at the point of sale

how effective are rewards programs in promoting payment card usage empirical evidence card issuers have mainly relied on rewards programs as their main strategy to increase usage however there is scarce evidence on the effectiveness of these programs this paper is addressing two topics which could have important managerial and public policy implications i it estimates the impact of rewards on the use of cards and ii it quantifies their economic effects in terms of the cash substitution we find that rewards may significantly modify choice for card payments their economic impact also varies significantly across types of rewards and merchant activities additionally rewards seem to be more effective for debit cards

measuring consumer expenditures with payment diaries payment diaries measure consumer expenditures by tracking authorization of payments by instrument cash check debit or credit card etc three notable results emerge from comparing the 2012 diary of consumer payment choice dcpc to other estimates of consumer expenditures 1 dcpc payments are 75 higher than consumer expenditure survey estimates 2 dcpc consumption estimates are 17 higher than comparable personal consumption expenditure estimates and 3 dcpc payments roughly equal comparably adjusted national income and product accounts personal disposable income the dcpc s relative success stems from measuring expenditures aggregated into lumpy payments shopping baskets relatively low respondent burden and effective random sampling jel e21 d12 d14

the market for electronic cash cards we develop a theoretical framework aimed to model the pricing of electronic cash cards and the market domain in which these cards will be used in an environment where charge cards and currency the legal tender are competing payment media we also investigate whether the adoption of the various payment media generates an underutilization or overutilization of the electronic cash cards relative to currency

projection of future transport energy demand of thailand the objective of this study is to project transport energy consumption in thailand for the next 20 years the study develops log linear regression models and feed forward neural network models using the as independent variables national gross domestic product population and the numbers of registered vehicles the models are based on 20 year historical data between years 1989 and 2008 and are used to project the trends in future transport energy consumption for years 2010 2030 the final log linear models include only gross domestic product since all independent variables are highly correlated it was found that the projection results of this study were in the range of 54 84 59 05 million tonnes of oil equivalent 2 5 times the 2008 consumption the projected demand is only 61 65 of that predicted in a previous study which used the leap model this major discrepancy in transport energy demand projections suggests that projects related to this key indicator should take into account alternative projections because these numbers greatly affect plans policies and budget allocation for national energy management

the demand for money financial innovation and the welfare cost of inflation an analysis with household data we use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized baumol tobin model our data set contains information on average currency deposits and other interest bearing assets the number of trips to the bank the size of withdrawals and ownership and use of atm cards we model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold interest bearing assets the interest rate and expenditure flow elasticities of the demand for currency are close to the theoretical values implied by standard inventory models however we find significant differences between individuals with an atm card and those without the estimates of the demand for currency allow us to calculate a measure of the welfare cost of inflation analogous to bailey s triangle but based on a rigorous microeconometric framework the welfare cost of inflation varies considerably within the population but never turns out to be very lar

modeling denomination structures previous work on the denomination structure of currency treats as exogenous the distribution of transactions and the denominations held by people here by way of a matching model both are endogenous in the model trades in pairwise meetings alternate in time with the opportunity to freely choose a portfolio of denominations and there is a trade off between the benefits of small denomination money for transacting and the costliness of carrying a large quantity of small denomination money for a given denomination structure a monetary steady state is shown to exist the model implies that too small denominations are abandoned

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

atm foreign fees and cash withdrawals abstract we evaluate the impact of foreign fees paid by consumers on their cash withdrawals at automatic teller machines henceforth atms these so called foreign fees are paid when consumers withdraw cash from atms which are not owned by their home bank we take advantage of a natural experiment whereby non linear foreign atm fees in one specific bank became suddenly applicable at one point in time we also use this experiment to evaluate the substitutions between foreign atm withdrawals and other home atm or desk withdrawals as well as with payments by card using panel data on accounts we first estimate average treatment effects on the treated before carrying on with the estimation of a simple structural model the latter procedure allows us to compute the counterfactual impacts of changing the schedule of foreign fees impacts are sizeable on bank profits and consumer welfare

alternative monies and the demand for media of exchange prepaid cards cash cards electronic purse smart cards these are but a few of the elements in the revolution now taking place in monetary systems around the world at that movement s heart is the emergence of a new value transfer system where alternative monies are offered to consumers through the miracle of electronics in some cases the new monies are merely a repackaging of existing media of exchange for example stored value cards that have been traditionally available for single vendors now are being offered for multiple merchant use in other cases technology and its acceptability are being cross sold as with debit cards and the expanded use of atm cards as point of sale vehicles however the banking industry is perhaps most enthusiastic about the emerging technology of smart cards chip in cards that have been making inroads in europe with the expanded capability of a memory chip alternative monies are seen to have the capability of moving to a new plateau of acceptance there are many stories in the business press about the general enthusiasm for these new forms of money for example block 1995 and cutler 1994 herald the new day of electronic money they forecast the demise of both the greenback and of commercial banks that exploit the float derived from its use according to the hyperbole from marketing reps from this side of the financial community currency and demand deposits soon will be endangered species consumer acceptance is alleged to be high and cost efficiency associated with the new technology is expected to be substantial

endogenous business cycle propagation and the persistence problem the role of labor market frictions contrasting sharply with a recent trend in dsge modeling we propose a business cycle model where frictions and shocks are chosen with parsimony the model emphasizes a few labor market frictions and shocks to monetary policy and technology the model estimated from u s quarterly postwar data accounts well for important differences in the serial correlation of the growth rates of aggregate quantities the size of aggregate fluctuations and key comovements including the correlation between hours and labor productivity despite its simplicity the model offers an answer to the persistence problem chari et al 2000 that does not rely on multiple frictions and adjustment lags or ad hoc backward looking components we conclude modern dsge models need not embed large batteries of frictions and shocks to account for the salient features of postwar business cycles

social interaction and stock market participation we propose that stock market participation is influenced by social interaction in our model any given social investor finds the market more attractive when more of his peers participate we test this theory using data from the health and retirement study and find that social households those who interact with their neighbors or attend church are substantially more likely to invest in the market than non social households controlling for wealth race education and risk tolerance moreover consistent with a peer effects story the impact of sociability is stronger in states where stock market participation rates are higher

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

long term outlook of energy use and co2 emissions from transport in central and eastern europe a forecast of transport activity energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from transportation carried out under business as usual economic assumptions is presented for the 10 countries of central and eastern europe that have acquired the status of accession countries to the european union energy demand is projected under considerations of the dynamic evolution of transport modes and their use the evolution of automotive fuel prices which are assumed to gradually converge with western european price levels within the current decade and assumptions on efficiency improvements in all transport modes according to current technological trends and european regulations the results showing transportation energy demand to double and co2 emissions to be 70 higher in 2030 compared to 2000 are compared with other published forecasts and discussed with a view to potential future energy and environmental impacts in these countries outlining major policy implications r 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

relationship between level of economic development and motorcycle and car ownerships and their impacts on fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emission in thailand abstract an increase in road vehicles secondary to economic development has strongly pushed up energy demand and adversely impact the environment by the emission of greenhouse gases and pollutants this paper aims to analyse the relationship between motorcycle and car ownerships and level of economic development in thailand in addition an overall private vehicle ownership which is a sum of both types of private vehicle ownership is also studied an understanding of these relationships due to the economic development is a key knowledge for the sustainable transport policy in the future the results of this study revealed that at the early stage of economic development of developing countries like thailand the number of motorcycles predominates over private cars economic development strongly affects the ownership of private vehicles in two ways 1 overall private vehicle ownerships increase as the income levels grow and 2 after personal income grows up to a certain level people will shift from motorcycle to car ownerships for their prestige convenience comfort and safety because of continuing economic development and population growth the expected increase in overall private vehicle ownership is projected to push up the total private vehicle stock of thailand in the year 2050 to about twice of the present level this will drive fuel demands in 2050 to about 2 4 times and the greenhouse gases ghg emission to about 2 5 times of the current levels hence policy makers in developing countries should not overlook the impacts on the consequences of increasing overall private vehicle stock in the near future the best and most appropriate policies should be given to the development of public transport as the first priority rather than the traditional one which gives highest priority to traffic mobility of private vehicles by road transport neglecting the effectiveness of passengers mobility of the public transport in addition policies to promote high efficiency vehicle technologies particularly for motorcycles should also be taken into consideration particularly for a low income country due to a high share of the motorcycles in the overall private vehicle stock

determinants of card payments abstractalthough the development of the card payment system allows for lowering the costs of money circulation and thereby leads to significant economic gains relatively small amount of research has been dedicated to the analysis of the determinants of this development therefore the aim of the article is to seek cross country determinants of retail card payments focusing on trust in the system the article concentrates on two econometric models one is constructed with the use of representative population survey data for poland the other is based on panel data from the eu countries in the years 2000 2012

low carbon society scenario analysis of transport sector of an emerging economy the aim enduse modelling approach abstract the transport sector of a country is the backbone driving the economy forward thailand s land transport sector is modelled using the aim enduse which is a recursive dynamic optimization model based on bottom up modelling principle the travel demand is divided into two major categories which are passenger travel and freight travel the objective of this paper is to analyse the mitigation possible through low carbon society lcs measures and emission tax et two scenario clusters are devised along with the bau case the lcs scenario cluster has three designed scenarios which are lcs l lcs m and lcs h the emission tax et cluster has four scenarios where the taxes of 50 100 200 and 500 usd t co2 are implemented along with this the marginal abatement costs mac of the counter measures cms and the co benefits in terms of energy security productivity and air pollutant mitigation are also assessed results show that lcs scenarios are possible of mitigating up to 1230 mt co2 cumulatively from 2010 to 2050 in terms of macs new vehicles play a pivotal role along with hybrid vehicles the average abatement cost aac assessment shows that the aac of lcs h scenario is in the order of 100 usd t co2 all the lcs and et scenarios show an enhancement in energy security and also a threefold increase in productivity there is distinct mitigation in terms of air pollutants from the transport sector as well

prices for cash and cash for prices theory and evidence on convenient pricing a transaction between a seller and a buyer incurs a payment cost the payment cost is borne by the seller depending on the payment instrument the buyer chooses cash or card card payment is more costly than cash payment so the seller prefers that the buyer pays cash in this article we study the strategy of the seller setting a convenient price which simplifies transactions and pushes the buyer to pay cash the theoretical analysis which models both the seller and the buyer in a game setting derives two propositions 1 the seller is more likely to set a more convenient price and 2 the buyer is more likely to pay cash a more convenient price the empirical analysis supports both propositions thus sellers adopt a convenience pricing strategy prices for cash and this strategy pushes buyers to pay cash cash for prices

empirical assessment of the determinants of road energy demand in greece this paper attempts to cast light on the determinants of road energy demand in greece for this purpose we used cointegration techniques and vector autoregression var analysis in order to capture short run and long run dynamics for gasoline and diesel demand respectively from the empirical analysis that covers the period 1978 2003 we find that in the long run gasoline energy demand appears to be price and income inelastic while diesel demand appears to be price inelastic and income elastic we also found that the absence of close substitutes in the road sector denotes the low level of energy switching in greece

how people pay evidence from grocery store data abstract empirical evidence based on grocery store transaction data shows that consumer payment behavior at the point of sale is important for understanding models of money demand there are statistically significant effects of transaction costs opportunity costs and product characteristics on the choice of payment instrument which then in turn affect money demand these results emphasize the overlap between the work of empirical researchers in payment choice and theoretical modelers of monetary economics and should inform both literatures

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

why do shoppers use cash evidence from shopping diary data des etudes recentes montrent que l argent comptant demeure un mode de paiement privilegie pour les transactions de faible montant malgre la prevalence d autres moyens de paiement comme les cartes de debit et de credit pour les decideurs publics il importe de savoir si les consommateurs preferent vraiment regler en especes ou plutot si les commercants restreignent l usage de ces cartes

embedding landfill diversion in economic geographical and policy settings we analyse the process of landfill diversion embedding the dynamics in a frame where economic geographical and policy variables enter the arena we aim at investigating in depth what main drivers may be responsible for such a phenomenon we exploit a rich panel dataset covering all the 103 italian provinces the case study on italy is worth being considered provided that italy is a main country in the eu thus offering important pieces of information on the evaluation of policies evidence shows that the observed decoupling between economic growth and landfilling is driven by a mix of structural factors as population density and waste management strategies if on the one hand the landfill tax is not arising as a significant driver of the phenomenon other waste management instruments are associated with high significant negative effect on landfilled waste in association to the features of the tariff system we also underline the key role played by the share of separated collection in driving down land

interest rates and prices in an inventory model of money with credit abstract using a segmented market model that includes state dependent asset market decisions along with access to credit we analyze the impact that transactions credit has on interest rates and prices the availability of credit allows agents to significantly smooth consumption reduce the movements in velocity prices become quite flexible and liquidity effects are dampened as credit costs decline in the model so does the effectiveness of monetary policy we also investigate the recessionary consequences of a shock to the cost of credit and find that the model s predictions align well with the empirical evidence

payday loan choices and consequences high cost consumer credit has proliferated in the past two decades raising regulatory scrutiny we match administrative data from a payday lender with nationally representative credit bureau files to examine the choices of payday loan applicants and assess whether payday loans help or harm borrowers we find consumers apply for payday loans when they have limited access to mainstream credit in addition the weakness of payday applicants credit histories is severe and longstanding based on regression discontinuity estimates we show that the effects of payday borrowing on credit scores and other measures of financial well being are close to zero we test the robustness of these null effects to many factors including features of the local market structure

extensive margins and the demand for money at low interest rates we argue that the relevant monetary decision for the majority of u s households is not the fraction of assets to be held in interest bearing form but whether to hold any such assets at all we call this the decision to adopt the financial technology we show that the key variable governing the adoption decision is the product of the interest rate times the total amount of assets this implies that the interest elasticity of household money demand at low interest rates can be estimated from the variation in asset holdings in a cross section of households rather than historical interest rate variations we do so with the 1989 survey of consumer finances we find that a the elasticity of money demand is very small when the interest rate is small b the probability that a household holds any amount of interest bearing assets is positively related to the level of financial assets and c the cost of adopting financial technologies is negatively related to participation in a pension program at intere

payment choice and currency use insights from two billion retail transactions abstract using three years of transactions data from a discount retailer with thousands of stores we study payment variation along three dimensions transaction size and location weekly and monthly frequencies and longer time horizons in each case we connect empirical patterns to theories of money demand and payments we show that cross sectional and time series payment patterns are consistent with a theoretical framework in which individual consumers choose between cash and non cash payments based on a threshold transaction size and we evaluate factors that may account for the variation in threshold distributions across locations and time

using cash to monitor liquidity implications for payments currency demand and withdrawal behavior this paper provides one explanation why cash is still used for transactions despite a broad diffusion of noncash payment instruments in particular we argue that a distinctive feature of cash a glance into one s pocket gives a signal of the remaining budget and past expenses provides utility to some consumers using payment survey data we show that consumers who need to keep control over their remaining liquidity and who have elevated costs of information processing conduct a larger percentage of payments using cash withdraw less often and hold larger cash balances than other consumers

inventory theoretic money demand and relative price dynamics we construct a two goods inventory theoretic money demand model and find that the model implies in a monetary contraction the decline in the prices of low cash intensity goods durables or luxuries outpaces that of high cash intensity goods nondurables or necessities using u s data we show that our model s predictions are consistent with the data

local environmental non profit organizations and the green investment strategies of family firms we add to the debate on the determinants of firms green investment strategies gis by looking at societal stakeholders and explicitly testing the role of local environmental non profit organizations enpos in gis engagement by family and non family firms we argue that enpos favor gis engagement only by family firms which due to their resource constraints risk aversion and local embeddedness are more sensitive to enpos normative pressure we also suggest that the role of enpos is especially important for family firms gis in those sectors with less stringent regulations where enpos may act as a substitute for the coercive pressure of regulation and promote firms self regulatory behaviors we test and find support for our arguments on a sample of about 2000 italian manufacturing firms over the period 2001 2003 our results are robust to the control of observable omitted variables reverse causality and to alternative model specifications

marriage markets and money a coasian theory of household formation this article integrates search based models of marriage and money we think about households as organizations the way coase thinks about firms as alternatives to markets that become more attractive when transactions costs increase in the model individuals consume market and home produced goods and home production is facilitated by marriage market frictions including taxes search and bargaining problems increase the marriage propensity the inflation tax encourages marriage because being single is cash intensive microdata confirm singles use cash more than married people we use macrodata over many countries to investigate how marriage responds to inflation taxation and other variables

explaining adoption and use of payment instruments by u s consumers this paper develops and estimates a structural model of adoption and usage of payment instruments by u s consumers we utilize a cross section from the survey of consumer payment choice a new survey of consumer behavior our empirical model combines the elements of a discrete continuous model where rst a consumer picks a product and then chooses how much to use it with a bundled choice model in which consumers can choose multiple products that may aect the utility derived from each other we consider how changes in the costs of adoption and usage may dierentially aect substitution patterns these results are particularly relevant for bank pricing of debit card services in response to the regulation of interchange fees on debit cards enacted by the durbin amendment to the dodd frank act which became eective on

an experiment on retail payments systems we study the behavioral underpinnings of adopting cash versus electronic payments in retail transactions a novel theoretical and experimental framework is developed to primarily assess the impact of sellers service fees and buyers rewards from using electronic payments buyers and sellers face a coordination problem independently choosing a payment method before trading in the experiment sellers readily adopt electronic payments but buyers do not eliminating service fees or introducing rewards significantly boosts the adoption of electronic payments hence buyers incentives play a pivotal role in the diffusion of electronic payments but monetary incentives cannot fully explain their adoption choices findings from this experiment complement empirical findings based on surveys and field data

do liquidity constraints and interest rates matter for consumer behavior evidence from credit card data this paper utilizes a unique new dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how people respond to changes in credit supply the data consist of a panel of thousands of individual credit card accounts from several different card issuers with associated credit bureau data we estimate both marginal propensities to consume mpcs out of liquidity and interest rate elasticities we also evaluate the ability of different models of consumption to rationalize our results distinguishing the permanent income hypothesis pih liquidity constraints precautionary saving and behavioral models we find that increases in credit limits generate an immediate and significant rise in debt counter to the pih the average mpc out of liquidity ddebt dlimit ranges between 10 14 the mpc is much larger for people starting near their limits consistent with binding liquidity constraints however the mpc is significant even for people starting well below their limit we show this response is consistent with buffer stock models of precautionary saving nonetheless there are other results that conventional models cannot easily explain e g why so many people are borrowing on their credit cards and simultaneously holding low yielding assets unlike most other studies we also find strong effects from changes in account specific interest rates the long run elasticity of debt to the interest rate is approximately 1 3 less than half of this elasticity represents balance shifting across cards with most reflecting net changes in total borrowing the elasticity is larger for decreases in interest rates than for increases which can explain the widespread use of temporary promotional rates the elasticity is smaller for people starting near their credit limits again consistent with liquidity constraints

does the development of environmental innovation require different resources evidence from spanish manufacturing firms in recent years environmental innovations are getting increasingly at the center both of the scientific debate and of the policy maker agenda adopting the resource based view this paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the specific role of internal external and hybrid resources in the environmental innovation development using a dataset of 4829 spanish manufacturing firms and estimating probit models it is found that internal resources have greater importance for environmental innovations moreover green innovators seem to be characterized by more intensive external relationships for hybrid resources acquisition of equipment but not of patents is more relevant finally evidence suggest the relevance of complementing the analysis of the external factors triggering environmental innovations with those of the internal resources the firm has access to in order to fully understand and support the development of environmental innovations

the welfare cost of inflation revisited the role of financial innovation and household heterogeneity notre analyse demontre que le ratio monnaie consommation augmente avec l ge des menages et decroit avec la consommation et que ce ratio a fortement augmente dans le contexte de tres bas taux d interet des dernieres annees nous elaborons un modele a generations imbriquees de la detention de monnaie pour des motifs de transaction dans lequel nous introduisons des effets d ge l utilisation de la monnaie augmente avec l ge des menages des effets de cohorte les jeunes generations font appel a des technologies financieres plus evoluees et des effets temporels les taux d interet nominaux influent sur la detention de monnaie

information reusability competition and bank asset quality this paper explains the recent decline in bank asset quality using the notion of information reusability banks are viewed as information processors they exist because of their advantage in extracting the surplus associated with the reusability of borrower specific information it is shown that a bank s incentive to screen loan applicants and hence maintain the quality of its assets depends on the surplus this screening can produce which in turn depends on information reusability two recent changes in banks operating environment are increased competitition and greater temporal volatility in borrower credit risks the former has directly reduced banks informational surplus while the latter has impaired information reusability hence screening expenditures have been reduced and the diminution of screening has lowered the quality of bank assets it is also shown that an increase in deposit insurance premia has an effect similar to that of narrowing interest spreads and therefore will result in reduced asset screening and impaired asset quality

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

effects of payment mechanism on spending behavior the role of rehearsal and immediacy of payments past expenses have been shown to influence future spending behavior by depleting available budgets however a prerequisite for this relationship is the accurate recall of past payments and the experiencing of the full aversive impact associated with them this article shows that the use of different payment mechanisms influences both these factors and hence moderates the effects of past payments on future spending specifically past payments strongly reduce purchase intention when the payment mechanism requires the consumer to write down the amount paid rehearsal and when the consumer s wealth is depleted immediately rather than with a delay immediacy two experiments show support for the proposed theoretical framework

inflation and unemployment in the long run we study the long run relation between money measured by inflation or interest rates and unemployment we first document in the data a positive relation between these variables at low frequencies we then develop a framework where unemployment and money are both modeled using microfoundations based on search and bargaining theory providing a unified theory for analyzing labor and goods markets the calibrated model shows that money can account for a sizable fraction of trends in unemployment we argue it matters qualitativelynand quantitatively whether one uses monetary theory based on search and bargaining or an alternative ad hoc specification

the welfare effect of access to credit i present a model in which credit and outside money can be used as means of payment in order to analyze how access to credit aects welfare when credit markets feature limited participation allowing more agents to use credit has an ambiguous eect on welfare because it may make consumption risk sharing more ine cient i calibrate the model using u s data on credit card transactions and show that the increase in access to credit from 1990 to the near present has had a slightly negative impact on welfare

consumers perceived risk and hold and use of payment instruments abstractconsumer decisions regarding retail payment instruments entail private and social costs due to these social costs policymakers are increasingly trying to understand the determinants of consumer payment choices as documented by the european central bank s regular publications this article contributes to this understanding by investigating the role of perceived risk based on an original survey of french consumers we measure the effects of perceived risk on the decisions to hold and use the main retail payment instruments cash card and cheque we point to the sequential dependence of the decisions to hold and use a payment instrument and study jointly both decisions the bivariate analysis based on risk factors shows that unavailability risk and time risk have the greatest transverse influence on holding and using payment instruments our results robust to controlling for consumer characteristics confirm their propensity for a quick to use and constantly available payment instrument we dis

credit cards as spending facilitating stimuli a conditioning interpretation four experiments and one study were conducted to test the hypothesis that stimuli associated with spending can elicit spending responses in all experiments credit card stimuli were either present or absent in situations in which subjects were given an opportunity to spend credit card stimuli directed spending such that the probability speed or magnitude of spending was enhanced in the presence of credit card cues a conditioning explanation was used to interpret the results

how payday credit access affects overdrafts and other outcomes despite a dozen studies the welfare effects of payday credit are still debatable we contribute new evidence to the debate by studying how payday credit access affects bank overdrafts such as returned checks bankruptcy and household complaints against lenders and debt collectors we find some evidence that chapter 13 bankruptcy rates decrease after payday credit bans but where we find that we also find that complaints against lenders and debt collectors increase the welfare implications of these offsetting movements are unclear our most robust finding is that returned check numbers and overdraft fee income at banks increase after payday credit bans bouncing a check may cost more than a payday loan so this finding suggests that payday credit access helps households avoid costlier alternatives while our findings obviously do not settle the welfare debate over payday lending we hope they resolve it to some extent it by illuminating how households rearrange their financial affairs when payday loan supply changes

green logistics and national scale economic indicators evidence from a panel of selected european countries abstract the objective of the study is to examine the impact of logistics performance indices on national scale economic indicators i e energy environment and economic health in a panel of 27 european countries over a period of 2007 2014 the results show that logistics performance index in terms of timeliness significantly increases gdp per unit of energy use health expenditures and per capita income where as logistics index in terms of infrastructure increases renewable energy source and decreases carbon emissions logistics index for customs processes significantly associated with the less energy prices while logistics index for tracking and trace consignments substantially increases fossil fuel energy consumption logistics competence index have a differential impact on environment on one hand it substantially reduce the burden of fossil fuel energy consumption while on the other hand it s significantly increases carbon emissions logistics international shipments increase fossil fuel energy in a region industry value added and fdi inflows both increases energy prices fossil fuel energy health expenditures and per capita income whereas trade openness decreases energy prices and increases carbon emissions energy efficiency and per capita income the results conclude that logistics indices significantly linked with the national scale economic indicators that provoke for the green supply chain management in the region

the failure of competition in the credit card market the bank credit card market containing 4 000 firms and lacking regulatory barriers casually appears to be a hospitable environment for the model of perfect competition nevertheless this article reports that credit card interest rates have been exceptionally sticky relative to the cost of funds moreover major credit card issuers have persistently earned from three to five times the ordinary rate of return in banking during the periods 1983 88 the failure of the competitive model appears to be partly attributable to consumers making credit card choices without taking account of the very high probability that they will pay interest on their outstanding balances copyright 1991 by american economic association

sticky prices and costly credit we develop a theory of money and credit as competing payment instruments then put it to work in applications agents use cash and credit because the former latter is subject to the inflation tax transaction costs frictions that make the choice of payment method interesting also imply equilibrium price dispersion we derive closed form solutions for money demand and show how to simultaneously account for the price change facts cash credit shares in micro data and money interest correlations in macro data the effects of inflation on welfare price dispersion and markups are discussed as are nonstationary equilibria with dynamics in the price distribution

consumer financial protection the recent financial crisis has led many to question how well businesses deliver services and how well regulatory institutions address problems in consumer financial markets this paper discusses consumer financial regulation emphasizing the full range of arguments for regulation that derive from market failure and from limited consumer rationality in financial decision making we present three case studies of mortgage markets payday lending and financing retirement consumption to illustrate the need for and limits of regulation we argue that if regulation is to be beneficial it must be tailored to specific problems and must be accompanied by research to measure the effectiveness of regulatory interventions

incentives at the counter an empirical analysis of surcharging card payments and payment behaviour in the netherlands in card payment systems no surcharge rules prohibit merchants from charging consumers extra for card payments however such rules are prohibited in the netherlands dutch retailers are allowed to surcharge consumers for debit card use this setting permits an empirical analysis of the impact of surcharging card payments on merchant acceptance and consumer payment choice based on consumer and retailer survey data our analysis shows that surcharging steers consumers away from using debit cards towards cash half of the observed difference in debit card payment shares across retailers can be explained by this surcharge effect removing debit card surcharges may induce cost savings of more than eur 50 million in the long run

shifting chinese organizational responses to evolving greening pressures organizations are facing various evolving pressures to green their practices these pressures range from obligatory forces to voluntary measures environmental pressures traditionally influenced organizations to seek reactive and internal practices the adopted environmental management em practices have evolved to be more proactive and external as the focus has shifted to supply chains this paper aims to further understand the driving mechanisms for em practices under various external pressures to meet this research goal this study extends the theory of dynamic incentives of environmental policies and institutional theory to develop environmental pressures using an empirical study of 422 chinese manufacturers covering all 31 provinces and provincial cities an exploratory factor analysis reveals four em practices factors and four pressures drivers factors results of a hierarchical regression analysis show that coercive pressures positively relate to more reactive internal em practices less coercive pressures positively relate to more proactive external and green supply chain management practices the empirical findings provide further support that voluntary regulatory measures can help motivate companies in extending their em efforts to supply chains the work also provides insights into how organizations may respond to evolving regulatory regimes dynamic incentives of environmental regulatory policy and various institutional pressures

measuring the contribution of durable goods to the welfare cost of inflation in this paper we measure the contribution of durable goods to the welfare cost of inflation in the context of an endogenous growth model with durable and nondurable goods where purchases of the latter require only a partial cash payment compared with the former unlike existing measures our proposed welfare measure is computationally efficient and relatively easy to implement we find that durability adds a significant component to the welfare costs of inflation