disentangling demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market how to check sign restrictions in structural vars given the growing dissatisfaction with exclusion and long run restrictions in structural vector autoregressive analysis sign restrictions are becoming increasingly popular so far there are no techniques for validating the shocks identied via such restrictions although in an ideal setting the sign restrictions specify shocks of interest sign restrictions may be invali dated by measurement errors data adjustments or omitted variables we model changes in the volatility of the shocks via a markov switching ms mechanism and use this devise to give the data a chance to object to sign restrictions the approach is illustrated by considering a small model for the market of crude oil

earnings effects of labor organizations in 1890 analyzing data from extensive surveys of u s nonfarm families in 1889 90 predominantly families from eastern states the authors of this paper show that workers affiliated with labor organizations had earnings that were 22 percent higher than the earnings of other workers an effect comparable in magnitude to estimates for modern unions wage differentials varied considerably across the eight industries studied and across skill levels within each industry

from the classical economists to empiricists a review of the terms of trade controversy contrary to the classical position the works of prebisch and singer in the middle of the last century launched the controversial hypothesis of a long term decline in the terms of trade of primary products vis a vis manufactured goods and a corresponding decline in the terms of trade of developing countries vis a vis advanced ones the present study traces the origin and evolution of the hypothesis and reviews the related statistical debate it also reviews the theoretical support for the prebisch singer hypothesis it is an exercise in the history of economic thought to trace how the controversies surrounding the terms of trade have evolved over time specifically noting that with the development of the field of econometrics the central thesis of the argument got lost somewhere in the realm of hi tech statistical debates

risk aversion and the earnings of us immigrants and natives the literature on the earnings of natives and immigrants has heretofore ignored differences in compensating wages for job risks it is possible that the risk involved in migration may indicate a greater willingness on the part of immigrants to accept riskier jobs than natives alternatively immigrants may attempt to protect their migration investment by choosing occupations with less risk indicating a higher degree of risk aversion this paper examines differences in risk aversion between us immigrants and natives and corresponding differentials in wage premiums for job risk our analysis suggests that on average immigrants are exposed to 21 less risk than natives but receive a 25 higher risk premium the higher degree of risk aversion of immigrants and their lower exposure to risk and thus lower earnings explains 5 of the higher observed earnings of natives we also find that earlier immigrant cohorts pre 1970 are employed in riskier jobs than are recent cohorts but the difference accounts fo

testing the prebish singer hypothesis using second generation panel data stationarity tests with a break abstract in this paper we test the prebish singer ps hypothesis which states that real commodity prices decline in the long run using two recent powerful panel data stationarity tests accounting for cross sectional dependence and a structural break we find that the hypothesis cannot be rejected for most commodities other than oil

taxes and bank capital structure this paper shows that a reduction in tax discrimination between debt and equity funding leads to better capitalized financial institutions the paper exploits exogenous variation in the tax treatment of debt and equity created by the introduction of a tax shield for equity the results demonstrate that a more equal treatment of debt and equity increases bank capital ratios driven by an increase in common equity the change also leads to a significant reduction in risk taking for ex ante low capitalized banks overall the findings suggest that tax shields could be a valuable and innovative policy tool for bank regulators

on the prevalence of trends in primary commodity prices abstract this paper applies new time series procedures to examine the prebisch singer hypothesis of a secular deterioration in relative primary commodity prices specifically we allow for up to two structural breaks in 24 price series covering the 1900 98 period for the majority of commodities it is shown that the trend is not well represented by a single downward slope but instead by a shifting trend that often changes sign over the sample period unlike some recent work that has also allowed for structural breaks these results provide much less support for the prebisch singer hypothesis

rewards to academia the remuneration of vice chancellors and principals this paper models the financial remuneration to vice chancellors and principals at uk higher education institutions after describing the alternative theoretical underpinnings for the determination of pay an earnings function is estimated utilizing institutional and personal characteristics the model suggests only a partial linkage of managerial and performance related indicators to remuneration levels this suggests substantial scope for reorientation of rewards towards such indicators rather than relying on an efficiency wage this would appear particularly appropriate given the present and continued disclosure of this information together with the increased focus on performance indicators relating to teaching and research within the uk higher education sector

primary commodity prices co movements common factors and fundamentals the behavior of commodities is critical for developing and developed countries alike this paper contributes to the empirical evidence on the co movement and determinants of commodity prices using nonstationary panel methods we document a statistically significant degree of co movement due to a common factor within a factor augmented var approach real interest rate and uncertainty as postulated by a simple asset pricing model are both found to be negatively related to this common factor this evidence is robust to the inclusion of demand and supply shocks which both positively impact on the co movement of commodity prices

the commodity terms of trade unit roots and nonlinear alternatives a smooth transition approach market price dynamics for north american oriented strand board markets are examined specifically the role of transactions costs are examined vis a vis the law of one price weekly data for the january 3rd 1995 through april 14th 2006 period are used in the analysis nonlinearities induced by unobservable transactions costs are modeled by estimating smooth transition autoregressions stars results indicate that nonlinearity is an important feature of these markets and that the parity relationships implied by economic theory are generally supported by the star models implications for the efficiency of spatial market linkages are examined by estimating generalized impulse response functions

high yield bond and energy markets abstract high yield bonds hold a particularly unique space in the debt market from many aspects literature suggests these assets to behave more like stocks than bonds given the significant similarities between the high yield bond and stock markets it is expected for these markets to be similarly affected by certain outside factors some shocks including the ones from energy markets are known to impact the entire stock market and not just related company shares since high yield bond portfolios include some amount of energy company debt the recent volatility in energy prices has been particularly concerning to market participants however the question of whether price and volatility shocks only impact energy company bonds or the entire high yield bond market as they do with the stock market still remains unanswered this study attempts to address that question by exploring the dynamic relationships between the high yield bond and energy markets price transmission tests which account for gradual structural shifts suggest oil and ethanol markets significantly impacting the high yield bond market furthermore volatility tests find uni directional volatility transmitting from energy markets to the high yield bond market

unit roots flexible trends and the prebisch singer hypothesis abstract this paper studies the dynamic properties of relative commodity prices especially the prebisch singer hypothesis on their secular decline using a new family of unit root tests based on the fourier approximation to the data s underlying trend the approximation controls for low frequency variations such as structural breaks or the long swings induced by hypothesized super cycles in the data regarding the extant literature we find considerably more evidence against nonstationarity in relative commodity prices and very limited support for the prebisch singer hypothesis

testing for trends in the terms of trade between primary commodities and manufactured goods abstract this paper joins the statistical debate on the terms of trade between primary commodities and manufactured goods by contributing to the methodological discussion and presenting new evidence using data series covering almost the whole of the 20th century using statistical tests that take into account breaks in the series it is found that over the 20th century the relative prices of primary commodities dropped to nearly one third of their level at the beginning of the century in two installments when random shocks led to structural breaks and not in a gradual way as implied by either a deterministic or stochastic trend possible reasons for the structural breaks and their policy implications are discussed

towards a new trade policy between the usa and middle east countries estimating trade resistance and export potential at the time of the conclusion of free trade areas ftas between the usa and middle east and north african mena countries there is a lack of literature concerning the measurement of the current us export position with regards to these countries and the us export potential in this area from recent developments of gravity models this paper derives an estimable equation which includes various trade resistance variables notably border effects multilateral resistance as well as specific bilateral effects the model is tested in order to scrutinise the impact of these variables on us exports to mena countries as well as the us export potential in this area to that end a selection of panel data specifications is proposed mainly hausman and taylor models as well as arellano and bond dynamic models results unambiguously indicate that as compared to the other oecd countries the usa suffers from a substantial trade integration deficit with mena countries this is reflected by the strongly negative values of the us mena bilateral fixed effects as well as the high bilateral border effects in addition the estimated actual potential us export ratio to these countries is only 0 76 therefore implementing an fta between the usa and mena countries may allow the former to progressively improve its export position in this area this would also help mena countries diversify their supplying sources

do corporations sell houses for less a test of housing market efficiency this paper examines the popular notion that houses sold by corporations as a part of the employee relocation process sell at a discount we argue that such discounts conradict the notion of an efficient market in which indentical houses have the same expected sales price we test for corporate individual owned house price homogeneity using data from a metropolitan area in the us the evidence supports our single price hypothesis corporate houses do not sell for less than they would if sold by individuals

segmented trends and non stationary time series since the influential work of charles r nelson and charles plosser 1982 many empirical studies have concluded that macroeconomic time series are difference stationary this paper proposes the segmented trend model as an alternative in which the series is the sum of a nonstationary trend and a stationary cycle and where the trend shows infrequent shifts the paper proposes tests between the difference stationary and segmented trends models and applies these to the data of nelson and plosser in general the results indicate that prices are difference stationary but quantities follow segmented trend processes copyright 1989 by royal economic society

wage discrimination occupational segregation and visible minorities in canada the earnings gap between each of whites asians and blacks is decomposed into the effects on earnings of productivity related characteristics wage discrimination and occupational segregation unlike previous canadian studies this paper analyses the relative economic position of both immigrant and native born visible minorities and explicitly incorporates the effect of discrimination in occupational attainment on the earnings gap the results indicate that policies aimed at increasing the ethnic representation across occupational categories would be effective only for black men anti discrimination legislation aimed at decreasing the earnings gap between visible minority and white women should have a dual focus they should aim at reducing the inter occupational wage discrimination they should provide training programs to extend the career ladders confronting ethnic minority women

trends and contagion in wti and brent crude oil spot and futures markets the role of opec in the last decade abstract this article examines the interconnectedness of wti and brent prices on different resolutions of price movements firstly within a multivariate bekk framework we identify high but volatile correlations with recurring highs around 0 8 and multiple periods of decoupling opec meetings increase the correlation in the short run secondly linear l1 trends reveal that long term movements of wti and brent are driven by the same dynamics confirming the one great pool hypothesis opec meetings have only little impact on long term price trends thirdly we find leading effects of wti over brent by short term trends of several days especially in a negative direction these trends have an asymmetrical effect on volatility negative trends cause a stronger increase than positive trends these findings are of interest to policy makers as well as hedging strategies of crude oil portfolios and provide insight into long term movements of crude prices

a reexamination of trends in primary commodity prices this paper conducts a reexamination of the prebisch singer hypothesis by employing the unit root test proposed by lee and strazicich 2003 and lee and strazicich 2004 that allow for up to two structural breaks given the higher power of these tests compared to the zivot and andrews 1992 and lumsdaine and papell 1997 tests rejection of the null can be considered as genuine evidence of stationarity the main findings of this paper are that eleven out of twenty four commodity prices are found to be difference stationary implying that shocks to these commodities tend to be permanent in nature the remaining thirteen prices are found to exhibit trend stationary behavior with either one or two structural breaks most of the commodities that do not exhibit difference stationary behavior seem to contain no significant trends there are fewer cases in relation to past studies of commodities that display negative trends thereby weakening the case for the prebisch singer hypothesis

immigrant earnings growth selection bias or real progress we use longitudinal tax data linked to immigrant landing records to study the effect of selective attrition on the estimated earnings assimilation of immigrants to canada contrary to findings in the existing international literature we show that the immigrant native earnings gap closes at the same pace in longitudinal and cross sectional data low earning immigrants are likely to leave the cross sectional samples over time but the same is true for the native born our study suggests that immigrants to canada have labour market participation dynamics similar to those of the native born

the changing labor market position of canadian immigrants this paper uses pooled 1971 1981 and 1986 canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which 1 the earnings of canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable canadian born individuals and 2 immigrants earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the canadian born variations in the labour market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analysed the results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the canadian labour market than earlier ones an apparent consequence of recent changes in canadian immigration policy labour market discrimination against visible minorities and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s summary in fre excerpt

labour productivity in the british and south wales coal industry 1874 1914 naked to the waist hot and grimy with labour they squatted on their heels for a few minutes and talked seeing each other dimly by the light of the safety lamps while the black coal rose jutting around them and the props of wood stood like little pillars in the low black very dark temple the day passed pleasantly enough there was an ease a go asyou please about the day underground a delightful camaraderie of men shut off alone from the rest of the world in a dangerous place and a variety of labour holing loading timbering and a glamour of mystery and adventure in the atmosphere d h lawrence 1955 the above quote from d h lawrence while perhaps over emphasizing glamour and adventure illustrates one important aspect of colliery work the intensity of a collier s effort was primarily self imposed it was the work intensity combined with other factors that determined labour productivity in the coal mines a number of articles have addressed the problem of labour productivity in coalmining during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries two of the most important being a j taylor s 1961 examination of productivity and technological change in britain and r h walters 1975 analysis of the same topic for south wales 1 in addition there is a rich and growing literature on the broader problem of the existence of a climacteric a downward shift in the performance of the british economy in the late nineteenth century often attributed to the failure of british entrepreneurs as represented by their seeming unwillingness to adopt the best available techniques of production 2 the purpose of this paper is to specify and estimate an empirical model of labour productivity in coalmining as well as to provide some suggestive evidence regarding the performance of entrepreneurs in this major industry 3 we believe our results provide added insight into the determination of labour productivity during this period lending support to those who argue that the failure of british entrepreneurs has yet to be proved while providing mixed evidence regarding conclusions drawn by economic historians

canadian economics research on immigration through the lens of theories of justice we assess the current state of knowledge in the economics of immigration and consider how economic theories of knowledge can be used to further the goal of developing a just immigration policy in the process we highlight the contributions of economists working in canada and canadian economists internationally in furthering our understanding of this important research area we identify research gaps such as the need for more research on the underlying causes of the poor returns to foreign work experience for immigrants from non traditional source countries and the effect of immigrants on stimulating innovation more research is also needed on the implications of temporary foreign worker tfw programs and the growing importance of employers in immigrant selection systems la recherche canadienne en economie de l immigration a travers la lentille des theories de la justice on jauge l etat present des connaissances en economie de l immigration et on examine comment les theories economiques de la connaissance peuvent etre utiles dans la poursuite d un objectif qui serait de mettre en place une politique d immigration juste dans ce processus on souligne les contributions des economistes travaillant au canada a notre comprehension de ce chantier de recherche on identifie certaines zones d ombre comme la recherche pour comprendre les causes sous jacentes aux pauvres rendements de l experience de travail des immigrants en provenance des pays qui ne sont pas des sources d immigration traditionnelles et celle pour comprendre les effets des immigrants sur la stimulation de l innovation il faudra aussi davantage de recherches sur les implications des programmes pour attirer et accueillir les travailleurs etrangers temporairement et sur l importance croissante des employeurs dans les systemes de selection d immigrants

immigrant earnings differentials and birth year effects for men in canada post war 1972 this paper investigates immigrant earnings differentials for males in canada and how these earnings have changed over time leading up to 1972 with workers year of birth the paper uses the 1973 job mobility survey which contains a direct measure of work experience reported independent of age thus using age as a birth year index it is found that cross sectional earnings differentials of immigrant men have widened since the later 1960s relative to those of native born workers summary in fre excerpt

quantifying the speculative component in the real price of oil the role of global oil inventories abstract one of the central questions of policy interest in recent years has been how many dollars of the inflation adjusted price of oil must be attributed to speculative demand for oil stocks at each point in time we develop statistical tools that allow us to address this question and we use these tools to explore how the use of two alternative proxies for global crude oil inventories affects the empirical evidence for speculation notwithstanding some differences overall these inventory proxies yield similar results while there is evidence of speculative demand raising the price in mid 2008 by between 5 and 14 dollars depending on the inventory specification there is no evidence of speculative demand pressures between early 2003 and early 2008 as a result current policy efforts aimed at tightening the regulation of oil derivatives markets cannot be expected to lower the real price of oil in the physical market we also provide evidence that the libyan crisis in 2011 shifted expectations in oil markets resulting in a price increase of between 3 and 13 dollars depending on the inventory specification with regard to tensions with iran in 2012 the implied price premium ranges from 0 to 9 dollars

the earnings of canadian immigrant and native born males this paper examines the economic attainment of canadian immigrants although foreign born males initially earn less than the native born their earnings rise more rapidly with canadian labour market experience and after 14years their earnings equal and exceed those of the native population it is also shown that the use of mincer s identity leads to biased results when estimating the earnings of the immigrant population

the prebisch singer hypothesis four centuries of evidence we employ a unique data set and new time series techniques to reexamine the existence of trends in relative primary commodity prices the data set comprises 25 commodities and provides a new historical perspective spanning the seventeenth to the twenty first centuries new tests for the trend function robust to the order of integration of the series are applied to the data results show that eleven price series present a significant and downward trend over all or some fraction of the sample period in the very long run a secular deteriorating trend is a relevant phenomenon for a significant proportion of primary commodities 2010 the president and fellows of harvard college and the massachusetts institute of technology

paying for mitigation a multiple country study a contingent valuation study conducted in china sweden and the united states was used to investigate citizens willingness to pay wtp for reducing co2 emissions we find that a majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase the share of americans that believes these statements is smaller and a relatively larger share of americans also believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change sweden has the highest wtp while china has the lowest jel q51 q54

second round effects after oil price shocks evidence for the euro area and germany abstract we investigate second round effects caused by oil price shocks calculating wage responses net of those movements that are induced through cpi changes results show no strong evidence for second round effects in the euro area and even less so in germany

when quality signals talk evidence from the turin hotel industry abstract this study analyzes the relationship between quality signals and price setting through the application of hedonic price functions the model proposals also include variables relating to land use policies and tourism development strategies a simultaneous equation model endogenously estimates quality signals this method is appropriate for analyzing emerging urban destinations as characterized by the presence of an expanding hotel industry the results are based on a dataset of 145 hotels in turin italy the empirical findings reveal that reputation based quality signals help explain tariff levels price proposals also include a premium for quality assured hotels defining some limits of the current hotel classification system the empirical evidence has significant marketing implications for the hospitality industry s competitiveness since the results clarify the impact of quality signals on price level

cross country differences in the effects of oil shocks abstract we compare the macroeconomic consequences of several types of oil shocks across a set of industrialized countries that are structurally very diverse with respect to the role of oil and other forms of energy in the economy the results crucially depend on the underlying source of the oil price shift when a rise in oil prices is caused by increased global economic activity or a rise in oil specific demand almost all countries experience respectively a temporary increase and transitory decline of real gdp the role of oil and other forms of energy cannot explain the differences in the effects of both shocks across countries in contrast this role is very important to explain asymmetries in the effects of exogenous oil supply shocks whereas net oil and energy importing countries typically face a permanent fall in economic activity the impact is insignificant or even positive in net energy exporting countries in addition countries that improved their net energy position the most over time became less vulnerable to oil supply shocks relative to other countries

the impacts of nonferrous metal price shocks on the macroeconomy in china from the perspective of resource security abstract in recent years the price of international nonferrous metals has undergone drastic fluctuations which could exert significant shock effects on macroeconomic variables based on the perspective of resource security this paper reveals the relationship between the nonferrous metal price shocks and china s macroeconomic variables by establishing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model embedded with nonferrous metal consumption and means of production blocks the model is based on the optimal decision making behaviours of three departments that satisfy multiple constraints to realize optimal policy making furthermore the structural vector autoregression svar method is applied to verify the shock effects of nonferrous metal price and obtain more robust results the bayesian results show that there is consistency among nonferrous metal price shocks consumer reference shocks wage bonus shocks technical shocks and price adjusted shocks the impulse response function results indicate that the stimulation of an international nonferrous metal price increase would have significant positive impacts on the macroeconomic variables of investment money supply consumption and total output but negative effects on labour demand in addition the impulse responses of wage levels and the rate of inflation to nonferrous metal price shocks present obvious lagging effects

global economic activity indexes revisited abstract this study contributes to the debate about two measures of global real economic activity real shipping costs and world industrial production we show that once both measures are transformed in the same way both can predict commodity prices moreover we demonstrate that real shipping costs lead world industrial production

estimating the competitive storage model with trending commodity prices we present a method to estimate jointly the parameters of a standard commodity storage model and the parameters characterizing the trend in commodity prices this procedure allows the influence of a possible trend to be removed without restricting the model specification and allows model and trend selection based on statistical criteria the trend is modeled deterministically using linear or cubic spline functions of time the results show that storage models with trend are always preferred to models without trend they yield more plausible estimates of the structural parameters with storage costs and demand elasticities that are more consistent with the literature they imply occasional stockouts whereas without trend the estimated models predict no stockouts over the sample period for most commodities moreover accounting for a trend in the estimation imply price moments closer to those observed in commodity prices our results support the empirical relevance of the speculative storage model and show that storage model estimations should not neglect the possibility of long run price trends

effectiveness of rca institutions to limit local externalities using foreclosure data to test covenant effectiveness residential community associations rcas are said to be an efficient institutional agreement to limit local spillovers while several studies have identified a positive marginal effect of rca rules none have explicitly measured the effectiveness of these institutions to limit local externalities this study measures this effectiveness by estimating how the direct and spillover price impacts caused by foreclosure differ by rca status using a spatial hedonic model that controls for selection bias using propensity score methods and coarsened exact matching we find that foreclosed rca properties experience smaller direct foreclosure discounts and produce smaller spill over effects than their non rca counterparts

look who s talking the impacts of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones on agricultural prices abstract using data from the philippines we study the impact of mobile phones on the prices agricultural producers receive for their cash crop we first look at the impact on price of mobile phone ownership at the household level because this masks a considerable amount of heterogeneity we then look at the impact on price of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones we find that whether the household owns a mobile phone has no impact on price but whether a farmer or spouse owns a mobile phone is associated with a 5 to 8 per cent increase in price

an analysis of the earnings and employment of asian american men this paper analyzes the earnings and employment of chinese japanese filipino and white men born in the united states the chinese and japanese have higher levels of schooling and earnings than white men and the japanese work more weeks ceteris paribus there are no substantive group differences in these variables or in returns from schooling the filipinos have a lower level of schooling earnings employment and returns from schooling it is therefore not appropriate to view asian americans as a single disadvantaged minority group further the success of the chinese and japanese challenges conventional wisdom regarding the consequences of racial discrimination

limits to growth redux a system dynamics model for assessing energy and climate change constraints to global growth abstract this study investigates the notion of limits to socioeconomic growth with a specific focus on the role of climate change and the declining quality of fossil fuel reserves a new system dynamics model has been created the world energy model wem is based on the world3 model the limits to growth meadows et al 2004 with climate change and energy production replacing generic pollution and resources factors wem also tracks global population food production and industrial output out to the year 2100 this paper presents a series of wem s projections each of which represent broad sweeps of what the future may bring all scenarios project that global industrial output will continue growing until 2100 scenarios based on current energy trends lead to a 50 increase in the average cost of energy production and 2 4 2 7 c of global warming by 2100 wem projects that limiting global warming to 2 c will reduce the industrial output growth rate by 0 1 0 2 however wem also plots industrial decline by 2150 for cases of uncontrolled climate change or increased population growth the general behaviour of wem is far more stable than world3 but its results still support the call for a managed decline in society s ecological footprint

primary commodity prices manufactured goods prices and the terms of trade of developing countries what the long run shows the authors revisit in this article the empirical foundation of the alleged secular decline in the prices of primary commodities relative to those of manufactures they use a newly constructed index of commodity prices and two modified indexes of manufactured good prices and find that from 1900 to 1986 the relative prices of all primary commodities fell on trend by 0 5 percent a year and those of nonfuel primary commodities by 0 6 percent a year they thus confirm the sign but not the magnitude of the trend implicit in the work of prebisch but even the more limited secular decline shown by their relative price indexes may be magnified by an incomplete account of quality improvements in manufactures they then show that the evolution of terms of trade of nonfuel primary commodities is not the same as that of the net barter terms of trade of non oil exporting developing countries finally they find that despite the decline that has probably occurred during the current century in the terms of trade of nonfuel primary commodities the purchasing power of total exports of these products has increased considerably similarly the fall that may have occurred after world war ii in the net barter terms of trade of developing countries seems to have been more than compensated for by the steady improvement in their income terms of trade

unions industrial concentration and wages a re examination market structure or industrial concentration has long been recognized as an important influence on industrial output employment and profits it has also been recognized that some proportion of the profits from concentration may be diverted into wages through collective bargaining yet the precise nature of these relationships has received little attention although it has important implications for the evaluation of wage structure and the welfare loss arising from monopoly empirical studies of the impact of unions and industrial concentration on wages weiss 1966 jones and laudadio 1975 dalton and ford 1977 long and link 1983 follow a similar format after a brief verbal justification for the ability of unions to win higher wage increases when the employer is earning oligopoly profits these studies specify a wage equation of the general form

thedouble negativeeffect onthe earnings of foreign born females in canada this paper contributes to the debate over immigrant quality by examining whether or not a double negative effect on the earnings of female immigrants exists in canada contrary to popular belief this study observes that labour market adjustments occur at a faster rate for female immigrants than for male immigrants the results indicate that immigrant women in canada suffer from a double negative effect mainly because of gender earnings discrimination rather than birthplace discrimination earnings discrimination by birthplace is more pronounced among males than females the findings suggest that in evaluating immigrant quality researchers should take into account the potential role of labour market discrimination

payment source and the cost of hospital care evidence from a multiproduct cost function with multiple payers abstract this study investigates the capacity of hospitals to vary the intensity of their services based on patients expected sources of payment while the concept of price discrimination by hospitals based on payer generosity cost shifting has been discussed extensively the notion that hospitals can adjust payer specific marginal costs to reflect differences in reimbursement policies has not been studied in depth to examine this issue this analysis employs a multiproduct cost function with hospital outputs defined as admissions by payment source controlling for the distribution and severity of illness casemix for each payer marginal costs of casemix adjusted discharges are obtained and compared for medicare medicaid private payers and a residual category that includes uncompensated care we find that indeed payer specific marginal costs generally reflect payer generosity

when grilli and yang meet prebisch and singer piecewise linear trends in primary commodity prices abstract in this study we test the prebisch singer hypothesis on the secular decline of relative primary commodity prices with the extended grilli and yang 1988 data set ending at 2010 rather than asking whether it holds for the whole sample period we examine if the hypothesis holds sometimes during the sample period by estimating the piecewise linear trends of primary commodity prices we employ the new l1 trend filtering proposed by kim et al 2009 to estimate the piecewise linear trends we find that the prebisch singer hypothesis holds sometimes but not always for many of the primary commodities in the grilli yang data the strength of the prebisch singer hypothesis has become substantially weaker recently as the relative prices of many primary commodities have increased sharply since around 2000

time varying macroeconomic effects of energy price shocks a new measure for china abstract in this paper we examine the effects of world energy price shocks on china s macroeconomy over the past two decades we begin by showing that the use of oil prices as a proxy for more general energy price dynamics is not appropriate for the case of china having established this fact we propose a new energy price index which accurately reflects the structure of china s energy expenditure shares and intertemporal fluctuations in international energy prices we then employ a sufficiently rich set of time varying vars identified through a new set of agnostic sign restrictions to estimate the effects of energy price shocks on china s macroeconomy our main result is that positive energy price shocks generate statistically significant reductions in real gdp growth and increases in inflation interestingly both the sets of responses have consistently declined over the sample period next the interest rate responses are found to be consistently positive over the sample period given the aforementioned stagflation result this suggests that the pboc is more focused on inflation stabilization as compared to facilitating output growth all presented results are shown to be robust under both official national data and those developed by chang et al 2015 thus strengthening our conclusion that energy price shocks have significant time varying effects on china s macroeconomy

commodity prices and growth in africa a frican economies export primary commodities and most export little else policymakers as well as economists and historians of african economic development have seen these exports as both a hope and a curse the following parable tells the story once upon a time a servant of the ruler discovered a miraculous plant which grew readily in that country and whose seeds could be woven into fine cloth so desirable was this fabric that it became prized all over the world and fetched a high price after two score years the plant accounted for most of the country s trade with the world the ruler ordered the peasants to grow the plant paid them only a fraction of its price and he and his nobles became fabulously wealthy because the ruler wished to be remembered as a great ruler and as the father of his country he used his wealth to build a great army and brought machines from foreign countries to make the fine goods that previously could only be obtained from foreign merchants but the machines often broke down and the goods that they made were of poor quality and after the ruler died they were left to rust under the ruler s successor there was a war in a foreign land where the plant also grew so that there was a great shortage and its price increased threefold in only three seasons the new ruler spent his newfound riches on fantastic extravagance while immense sums were expended on public works after the manner of the east and on productive works carried out in the wrong way or too soon not even the threefold increase in prices could support these expenditures and the country soon found itself deeply in debt when the war ended and the price fell the country could no longer pay the interest on its debt or borrow more money even after it had sold its only useful public work to a foreign power so that power sent a mission to the country the publication of whose report from which the above

how much did oil market developments contribute to the 2009 recession in germany in this paper we use a structural vector autoregressive model to study the effects of oil market developments on the german economy we find that higher oil prices are always associated with a decline in private consumption expenditures but the response of gross domestic product gdp crucially depends on the underlying shock while a disruption in oil supply provokes a recession positive world demand shocks prompt a temporary increase in exports and investment which initially outweigh the cutback on consumption in a counterfactual analysis we show that the world demand shocks that led to the 2007 2008 oil price rise triggered a delayed 0 8 percent decrease in german gdp in 2009 and therefore notably contributed to the recession of that year

a short note on updating the grilli and yang commodity price index the grilli and yang commodity price index is one of the most widely used commodity price series in the applied economics literature this note provides some practical advice on updating this data series by listing the base period index values identifying relevant data sources and describing a method for computing subindex weights in 1988 enzo grilli and maw cheng yang published their seminal article on the long run development of an index of 24 primary commodity prices gycpi deflated by an index of manufactured goods unit values the sample of average annual primary commodity prices covers about 54 percent of the primary commodity trade in the index reference period 1977 79 the deflators considered for manufacturing prices were the u s manufacturing price index usmpi and the manufacturing unit value index muv 1widely used and discussed the grilli and yang data set has been extended by a number of researchers the data have been employed in a variety of contexts in later studies thus the gycpi data continue to enjoy wide popularity in their own right and as a benchmark for new approaches to empirical studies

the macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks evidence from a statistical identification approach we analyze the dynamics in the global crude oil market based on a structural vector autoregressive model we identify the model by presuming that reduced form residuals can be traced back to structural shocks that are independently distributed over the cross equation dimension the resulting point estimates of the impulse response functions allow for a direct comparison with the outcomes of more conventional identification approaches our results are remarkably similar to the results regarding oil market dynamics in kilian and murphy 2012 and inoue and kilian 2013 even though they rely on statistical arguments instead of a set of theory based a priori restrictions based on the results from our statistical approach we investigate the cumulative contributions of different oil shocks on the rapid fall in oil prices at the end of 2008 and 2014 as well as the effects of different oil shocks on macroeconomic aggregates in the us the euro area and china

piecewise linear trends and cycles in primary commodity prices we extend the methodology put forward in yamada and yoon 2014 journal of international money and finance 42 c 193 207 to analyze the trend and cyclical behavior of relative primary commodity prices these authors propose the use of the so called l1 filter that renders piecewise linear trends of the underlying data our focus on the calibration of such filter and its implications for the empirical analysis of primary commodity prices especially the interpretation given to the resulting trend we also illustrate how suitably calibrated filters may be used to compute piecewise linear super cycles whose turning points are easy to identify