the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

measuring national economic performance without using prices abstract recent years have seen increasing awareness of the deficiencies of conventionally defined national income as a measure of a nation s overall economic performance alternative measures have been proposed involving either the modification of national income accounting conventions or the abandonment of national income itself in favour of something such as the genuine progress indicator gpi however such alternatives like national income itself all involve the use of monetary valuation for aggregation this paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of national economic performance which follows naturally from ecological economics as the study of economic activity rooted in a proper appreciation of its material circumstances and which does not involve using prices for aggregation the paper gives some results for three variants of the new approach and compares and discusses them while this new approach does not purport to provide a single definitive assessment of the sustainability of current economic activity which is an infeasible goal it could provide useful inputs to relevant research activity and to policy analysis and debate

how might nature value man abstract while much time and effort is spent attempting to quantify environmental services for inclusion in the economic system no one seems to ask how nature might value us an ecological accounting process is devised to accommodate ecosystem flows allowing for the computation of ecological prices and leading to the calculation of net ecosystem output and the efficiency of its production the process is somewhat similar to economic accounting but allows us to consider the ecosystem as open conforming to thermodynamic laws examples such as intervention to reduce soil erosion illustrate how humans might be appreciated by the ecosystem in some instances the net output might be higher with some human presence than with no human presence

german dominance in the ems evidence from interest rates abstract the paper presents an empirical analysis of german dominance and asymmetries in the ems based on a dynamic system of equations explaining national money market interest rates the hypothesis of strict german dominance of the ems is rejected however there are some noticeable asymmetries in the ems germany is a relatively strong player and has been the least dependent country in the early phase of the system since 1983 german independence has diminished in contrast france throughout and italy in the early phase of the ems have been relatively weak players in the system

valuation of ecosystem goods and services part 1 an integrated dynamic approach abstract this is the first part of a two part paper which offers a new approach to the valuation of ecosystem goods and services the existing literature on environmental valuation is based on two distinct foundations the ecological valuation methods derive values by a cost of production approach their common characteristic is the neglect of consumer preferences the economic valuation methods focus on the exchange value of ecosystem services their common characteristic is that they are finally based on consumer preferences and do not adequately take account of the complex internal structure of ecosystems as the existing methods for the valuation of ecosystem services emphasize either the economic system or the ecosystem the main objective of part 1 is to provide the conceptual foundations for a new method of valuation of ecosystem services which deals simultaneously with the ecosystem the economic system and society in a balanced way within a simple pre industrial model it is shown how the interdependencies between the three subsystems influence values and how values change over time

coalition and party formation in a legislative voting game we examine a legislative voting game where decisions are being made over both ideological and distributive dimensions and legislators preferences are separable over the two dimensions in equilibrium legislators prefer to make proposals for the two dimensions together rather than offering sequential proposals on the two dimensions separately the equilibria exhibit interaction between the ideological and distributive dimensions and in any equilibrium there is a positive probability that a proposal is made and approved which excludes the median legislator as defined over the ideological dimension in contrast with a game where no distributive decision is being made moreover in any stationary equilibrium there is more than one ideological decision that has a positive probability of being proposed and approved we show that legislators can gain from forming political parties and consider examples where predictions can be made about the composition of parties we discuss the impact of political parties on the outcome

a new keynesian is curve for australia is it forward looking or backward looking this article estimates the forward looking backward looking and an extended version of the new keynesian is curve for australia the validity of these models is investigated by imposing the constraint on real rate of interest as well as when the constraint is relaxed two measures of output gap namely gap1 constructed using the unobserved components approach and gap2 constructed using a quadratic trend are utilized our results suggest that the baseline backward looking and forward looking models are overwhelmingly rejected by the data this evidence strongly supports the extended backward looking model with gap2 being relevant for monetary policy analysis

a biophysical analysis of the energy real gdp ratio implications for substitution and technical change abstract this paper quantifies the factors that caused the energy real gdp ratio to change during the post war period in france the federal republic of germany japan and the united kingdom econometric results indicate that changes in the types of fuel used changes in the energy consumed by the household sector changes in the types of goods and services produced and changes in energy prices account for most of the variation in this ratio price elasticities estimated from these results are lower than those estimated by neoclassical economists and indicate that the system boundaries used by neoclassical economists overestimate the amount of energy saved by substitution analysis of the error term from the regression results indicates that energy saving technical change has had little effect on the amount of energy used to support economic activity

monetary policy and exchange rate volatility in a small open economy we lay out a small open economy version of the calvo sticky price model and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap we use the resulting framework to analyse the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rulebased policy regimes for the small open economy domestic inflation and cpi based taylor rules and an exchange rate peg we show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail we also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with the suboptimal rules

carbon weighted economic development performance and driving force analysis evidence from china based on a data envelopment analysis framework this study develops an indicator termed as carbon weighted economic development cwed covering the dimensions of energy environment economy and resources to measure the economic development performance in a carbon emission conscious economy as an empirical application the proposed approach is applied to a case study of 30 provinces in china in addition to identify the driving forces underlying low carbon economic development in china we analyze the endogenous interactions and dynamic behaviors between cwed foreign direct investment foreign trade industrial structure local fiscal expenditure and energy consumption structure using a panel vector auto regression model the main findings show that 1 adjusting industrial structure by vigorously developing the service industry and reducing the coal energy share in the primary energy consumption structure are the two most effective approaches to improve cwed in both the short run and long run in return cwed has positive feedback effects on both approaches in the long run 2 increase of the fiscal expenditure has a short term positive effect on cwed 3 fdi has an indirect negative effect on cwed in the long run and foreign trade has an indirect positive effect on cwed in the short term

on the use of ecological prices and system wide indicators derived therefrom to quantify man s impact on the ecosystem abstract ecological prices and other system wide quantitative descriptors of ecosystem functioning are derived from the assumption that ecosystems allocate available resources efficiently among their components however ecological prices are not efficiency prices only and using them does not require one to assume that the ecosystem is completely controlled by man the same prices balance flows of different biomasses in a multicomponent system as such they play the role of exchange prices in a decentralized ecosystem properly defined with the help of ecological prices the resulting ecosystem productivity is no less a significant indicator of ecosystem functioning than the national product is significant for assessing the functioning of an economy considerations of the values taken simultaneously by our proposed indicators and by their economic analogs are of much help in judging the desirability of projects with relatively mild environmental repercussions these values are obtained from an integrated model of a system in which ecological and economic activities are intertwined however for the indicators to have an analytical meaning the methodology should be applied to trace only those dynamic paths during which the system possesses unique state dependent intensive properties in other cases a more comprehensive methodology one which also pays due regard to the viability of the ecosystem must supplement the analytical approach this rather comprehensive methodology is scale dependent and probabilistic in nature while delineating relations between the structure of the system and its behavior this method implies that efficiency and viability are two complementary rather than two commensurate attributes of a single entity an outside observer may be guided by his own values in his attempts to weigh these features but no inherent property of the system exists that supports his values unequivocally nevertheless this paper proposes an approximation to overcome this difficulty and to estimate a quantitative limit to the rate of substitution between productivity and viability such a limit is also an intensive property of the simulated system and the estimation of its value is shown to be crucial for studying the vulnerability of real ecosystems to severe man made disturbances

a complex systems approach to the value of ecological resources a theory of value sits at the core of every school of economic thought and directs the allocation of resources to competing uses ecological resources complicate the modem neoclassical approach to determining value due to their complex nature considerable non market values and the difficulty in assigning property rights application of the market model through economic valuation only provides analytical solutions based on virtual markets and neither the demand nor supply side techniques of valuation can adequately consider the complex set of biophysical and ecological relations that lead to the provision of ecosystem goods and services this paper sets out a conceptual framework for a complex systems approach to the value of ecological resources this approach is based on there being both an intrinsic quality of ecological resources and a subjective evaluation by the consumer both elements are necessary for economic value this conceptual framework points the way towards a theory of value that incorporates both elements so has implications for principles by which ecological resources can be allocated c 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

looking for a guide to protect the environment the development of the precautionary principle abstract if the precautionary principle is to become the guide of the international community for environmental protection policies an economic interpretation of the principle is in order the analysis of case studies and a survey of the recent decision theoretic literature show the lack of a fully satisfactory economic model more generally various theoretical and empirical results show that the principle cannot be assumed to apply a priori though it has been proposed by international treaties as a rule of thumb for situations of scientific uncertainty the precautionary principle could actually be inefficient

commensuration and theories of value in ecological economics abstract without a theory of value price in ecological economics the valuation of ecosystem and economic resources cannot be rigorously defended at the crux of the matter is the valuation or mixed units problem of commensurating biophysical inputs outputs which are different this paper critically reviews candidate theories of value which have emerged in the ecological economics literature for dealing with this problem first of all the neo ricardian approach using sraffa type systems is discussed in particular judson s assertion that the sraffa system is suitable for ecological economics is questioned as it is based on circular flow generation of a surplus and exchange values none of these ideas are consistent with a biophysical characterisation of an economic system which is paramount in ecological economics a more fruitful avenue for establishing a biophysical theory of value based on ecological and thermodynamic principles is to extend patterson s quality equivalent methodology qem to explicitly include mass flows in addition to energy at this point a model close to costanza and hannon s biosphere model of price determination emerges the extended qem model however has a number of important advantages over the costanza hannon model because it has a more generalised formulation and is not reliant on necessarily using solar energy as the numeraire the paper concludes with a discussion of some outstanding issues that need to be resolved before a biophysical theory of value can be properly established in ecological economics

ecosystem service value assessment for constructed wetlands a case study in hangzhou china abstract based on a comprehensive analysis of various classifications of natural resource values we summarized an ecological economic value system of constructed wetland cw ecosystems for treating eutrophic water using the cw located at the hangzhou botanical garden as an example the contingent valuation method cvm and shadow project approach spa were applied to estimate the economic values of cw system ecosystem services the cvm estimated a value of 800 000 yuan yuan chinese currency 7 6 yuan 1 usd as of august 2007 as the total economic value of the cw in a twenty year period meanwhile the spa calculated a value of 23 04 million yuan as the total economic value of the cw in a twenty year period it is determined that compared to the cvm the spa provides a more approximate value of the true monetary value of the hangzhou botanical garden cw this study could fill the gap of knowledge and provide a benchmark when evaluating constructed ecosystem services and help policy makers to promote the development of constructed wetlands in china

the benefits of long term developmental planning an estimate abstract this paper measures the gains in social welfare achieved by implementing a series of five year plans within the framework of longer term 10 or 20 year horizons we employ an econometric model of czechoslovakia and optimal control techniques to optimize plan fulfillment over various time horizons we find that most of the gains from long term planning can be obtained by using a 10 year horizon that long term planning is more useful in periods of rapid structural change and that one of the main benefits of long term plans is the avoidance of the cyclical behaviour engendered by five year plans

environmental valuation to use or not to use a comparative study of the united states and europe valuation methods have been used for five main purposes in environmental decision making cost benefit analysis cba of projects cba of new regulations natural resource damage assessment environmental costing and environmental accounting the relatively lower importance attached to economic efficiency in environmental decision making in most european countries compared to the u s a both legally and in practice might account for our general finding that there are very few valuation studies in europe which have served as a decisive basis for environmental policy and regulations however with eu s goal to establish environmentally adjusted national accounts and to apply cba to environmental policy and regulations time seems ripe for an increased use of valuation techniques in europe

following germany s lead using international monetary linkages to estimate the effect of monetary policy on the economy abstract forward looking behavior on the part of the monetary authority makes it difficult to estimate the effect of monetary policy interventions on output we present instrumental variables estimates of the impact of interest rates on quarterly real output for several european countries using german interest rates as the instrument these estimates confirm a strong forward looking bias in least squares estimates that persists even conditional on standard controls for the history of the system due to the potential for correlation of output shocks across countries we interpret our estimates as lower bounds for the effect of monetary policy on real output

interest rate targeting abstract the paper develops a model in which the monetary authority successfully targets the nominal interest rate while also holding down the forecast variance of the price level the latter objective pins down the extent of monetary accommodation to shifts in the demand for money and other shocks and thereby makes determinate the levels of money and prices at each date empirical evidence for the united states suggests that the model s predictions accord reasonably well with observed behavior for nominal interest rates growth rates of the monetary base and rates of inflation

does nnp growth indicate welfare improvement abstract we show that instantaneous increases in real nnp over time are an accurate indicator of true dynamic welfare improvements this highlights a connection between the theory of green or comprehensive national income accounting and the theory of real price indices

ppp strikes back aggregation and the real exchange rate we show the importance of a dynamic aggregation bias in accounting for the ppp puzzle we prove that the aggregate real exchange rate is persistent because its components have heterogeneous dynamics established time series and panel methods fail to control for this using eurostat data we find that when heterogeneity is taken into account the estimated persistence of real exchange rates falls dramatically its half life for instance may fall to as low as eleven months significantly below the consensus view of three to five years

the optimal rate of industrialization in developed and developing centrally planned economies a general equilibrium approach abstract the investment policies of czechoslovakia and romania are examined by means of counterfactual experiments employing econometric models of these countries alternative investment policies considered are 1 an increase in aggregate investment with unchanged sectoral distribution 2 a shift in investment from other sectors to manufacturing and 3 a shift in investment from manufacturing to services for czechoslovakia policy 2 is deemed superior to the historical pattern of investment and to the other two hypothetical policies while for romania policy 3 is best the general equilibrium evaluation of development policies shows the conflicts among planners goals in setting investment policy and the effect of external constraints such as the availability of food and raw material imports on planners ability to implement desirable strategies

green accounting and economic policy abstract through the lens of conventional national accounting resource depletion and natural environment degradation often appear misleadingly as desirable economic growth the old system of national accounts sna has been revised and a set of environmental satellite accounts proposed certain weaknesses however pervade the new proposals the conventional measurements remain largely unaltered and the satellite accounts are of unclear purpose and unnecessarily complex as proposed they rely on the valuation of environmental stocks while the economically more important flow accounts to their detriment are to be derived indirectly from changes in stock values the sna the paper stresses is primarily an economic framework incapable of capturing all environmental change and the national accounts are far more useful economically than environmentally greening the accounts would be optional for most affluent countries whose overriding environmental concern is pollution this can be addressed directly through taxation and regulation pollution information in satellite accounts can indeed be valuable but revised and fully integrated resource accounting is a priority concern for those developing countries that are running down natural resources and for which conventional accounting distorts macroeconomic measurement analysis and policy the paper argues that green accounting can only ensure income sometimes called weak sustainability which should be considered as a step leading ultimately to an ecological or stronger sustainability

the convergence of neo ricardian and embodied energy theories of value and price abstract the concepts of embodied energy entropy and the like have made limited inroads into orthodox economic thought ecological economists however have been developing a coherent theoretical perspective to be considered with and or against orthodox economics this paper focuses on the classical economic implications of the embodied energy theory of value it is argued that the embodied energy theory of value is very similar to neo ricardian economics after examining the issues separating classical and neoclassical economics the paper makes a beginning theoretical integration between these two theories finally several suggestions for theoretical development of embodied energy theory and for the empirical testing of the theory are made

the role of thermodynamics in the study of economic and ecological systems abstract economic theory has always maintained that economic value is generated solely within the economy where it is fully distributed among the factors of production before being consumed according to this theory the economy is an isolated system that does not need flows to pass across its boundaries in support of its steady state general equilibrium from a thermodynamic point of view this idea is unacceptable according to thermodynamic theory any open system which allows flows of matter and energy to cross its boundaries is capable of maintaining itself in steady state only because it transport value from its environment to restore the value that has been consumed within the system and dissipated drawing on the analogy with thermodynamics this paper replaces the traditional systemic analog of the economy which is the closed circular flow process with the steady flow process according to this analog any efficient economy is an open system both physically and economically requiring a flow of economic value to maintain its steady state in other words an economically isolated system has to be inefficient and is bound to misallocate and overuse environmental resources whether the economy behaves as an economically isolated inefficient or open efficient system is an empirical question however if real economies are economically open and efficient and environmental resources are abused due to the economy s unrestrained material growth parts of traditional economic theory espicially those related to benefit evaluation will have to be modified policy recommendations will be affected in any case because internalization the panacea of resource misallocations cannot be more than a temporary solution instead of opening the economy internalization encloses the harmed resource and saves it by abusing excessively other environmental resources

ecological pricing and transformity a solution method for systems rarely at general equilibrium abstract this paper outlines a new method for determining ecological prices transformities in complicated ecological economic systems where non equilibrium prices are likely to be prevalent that is an eigenvalue eigenvector mathematical solution method for solving an overdetermined homogeneous system of simultaneous linear equations is proposed and tested previous mathematical approaches to the problem of ecological pricing are reviewed before proceeding with an explanation of the new solution method for the determination of ecological prices the proposed method seeks to avoid the need to make a number of untenable assumptions used in previous methods e g the assumption that there necessarily needs to be an equal number of processes and quantities in the ecological economic system the paper also provides practical advice and an algorithm for solving the ecological pricing problem for example advice on how to overcome the problem of ill conditioned matrices which are sometimes encountered

economic and ecological concepts for valuing ecosystem services abstract the purpose of this special issue is to elucidate concepts of value and methods of valuation that will assist in guiding human decisions vis a vis ecosystems the concept of ecosystem service value can be a useful guide when distinguishing and measuring where trade offs between society and the rest of nature are possible and where they can be made to enhance human welfare in a sustainable manner while win win opportunities for human activities within the environment may exist they also appear to be increasingly scarce in a full global ecological economic system this makes valuation all the more essential for guiding future human activity this paper provides some history background and context for many of the issues addressed by the remaining papers in this special issue its purpose is to place both economic and ecological meanings of value and their respective valuation methods in a comparative context highlighting strengths weakness and addressing questions that arise from their integration

interest rates and bank risk taking abstract a recent line of research views the low interest rate environment of the early to mid 2000s as an element that triggered increased risk taking appetite of banks in search for yield this paper uses approximately 18000 annual observations on euro area banks over the period 2001 2008 and presents strong empirical evidence that low interest rates indeed increase bank risk taking substantially this result is robust across a number of different specifications that account inter alia for the potential endogeneity of interest rates and or the dynamics of bank risk notably among the banks of the large euro area countries this effect is less pronounced for french institutions which held on average a relatively low level of risk assets finally the distributional effects of interest rates on bank risk taking due to individual bank characteristics reveal that the impact of interest rates on risk assets is diminished for banks with higher equity capital and is amplified for banks with higher off balance sheet items

taylor rules and the deutschmark dollar real exchange rate we explore the link between an interest rate rule for monetary policy and the behavior of the real exchange rate the interest rate rule in conjunction with some standard assumptions implies that the deviation of the real exchange rate from its steady state depends on the present value of a weighted sum of inflation and output gap differentials the weights are functions of the parameters of the interest rate rule an initial look at german data yields some support for the model

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

electricity end use efficiency an assessment of the scope for efficiency gains and policy options abstract the demand for electricity is generally growing faster than that for other energy carriers in industrialized countries rising concern about the environmental impact of energy production and use as well as about the costs of increasing electricity consumption are fuelling interest in opportunities for slowing demand growth by improving end use efficiency an assessment of historical developments and currently available end use technologies in the electricity sector of iea member countries reveals considerable scope for further improvement this potential gain can only be achieved however through vigorous and concerted action on the part of consumers governments and electric utilities these initiatives include demand side management strategies and measures which have been receiving increasing attention in recent years

the advantage of tying one s hands ems discipline and central bank credibility abstract it is often argued that the ems is an effective disciplinary device for inflation prone countries in europe since it forces the respective policy makers to pursue more restrictive monetary policies than they would otherwise it is not clear however why these countries should submit themselves to such discipline this paper argues that to answer this question appropriately one must consider that ems membership brings potentially large credibility gains policy makers in inflation prone countries the reason is that not only it attaches an extra penalty to inflation in terms of real appreciation but makes the public aware that the policy maker is faced with such penalty and thus helps to overcome the inefficiency stemming from the public s mistrust of the authorities

measures of energy cost and value in ecosystems the physical output of ecological processes have different values even though they may be measured in the same physical units using linear input output theory we derive a set of weights based on direct and indirect energy requirements for ecosystem commodities which uniquely converts them into commensurable unit costs under certain conditions these costs are equal to values or prices using this system behavioral theories can be better posed for experimental verification

identifying monetary policy in a small open economy under flexible exchange rates abstract previous empirical study on the effects of monetary policy shocks in small open economies has generated puzzling dynamic responses in various macroeconomic variables this paper argues that these puzzles derive from an identification of monetary policy that is inappropriate for such economies to remedy this it is proposed that a structural model be estimated to explicitly account for the features of the small open economy such a model is applied to canada with tightly estimated results overall the dynamic responses to the identified monetary policy shock are consistent with standard theory and highlight the exchange rate as a transmission mechanism

valuing forest ecosystem services what we know and what we don t abstract ecosystem services valuation has achieved considerable prominence in research and policy circles in recent years this paper reviews the studies that have tried to estimate the value of forest ecosystem services broadly this study addresses the following questions 1 what insights do these studies provide on the value of forest ecosystems 2 what lessons do they offer from an economic and policy perspective 3 what are the shortcomings of the existing studies and what are the challenges and issues for future research evidence from a cross section of forest sites countries and regions suggests that not only the total valuation of ecosystem services varies widely across studies but also the valuation of individual services this variation suggests that policies to conserve ecosystems and their services should emphasise local contexts and values this paper concludes by discussing the shortcomings of existing studies and suggests that among other things future research should focus on the neglected ecosystem services disservices assess the role of dynamic factors and environmental catastrophes on the provision of ecosystem services and assess the benefits of keeping forests intact versus converting them to alternative uses

one money for europe lessons from the us currency union currency union barry eichengreen the creation of a monetary union in europe is often justified by the desire to reap the full benefits of economic integration the complete removal of capital controls raises a large number of issues the case for free capital mobility is strong but not overwhelming it hinges on issues of technology transport costs market structure and labour mobility and in the end is an empirical matter for which us experience may provide useful information policy making institutions differ in important respects however the us tradition of fiscal federalism for example has no ec wide counterpart yet its functions seem a desirable feature of a monetary union in particular it is shown to play an important role in absorbing regional disturbances mostly via the tax system us experience also suggests that a currency union creates pressure for fiscal policy harmonization affecting both taxes and spending although a currency union fundamentally alters the balance of payments adjustment process the potential problem of depressed regions remains a serious one given the increased tightness of the external constraint the limited extent of labour mobility and other features of european labour markets solutions based on us experience include extensive swap facilities and a european version of fiscal federalism

economic effects of currency unions we develop a new instrumental variable iv approach to estimate the effects of different exchange rate regimes on bilateral outcomes the basic idea is that the characteristics of the exchange rate between two countries are partially related to the independent decisions of these countries to peg explicitly or de facto to a third currency notably that of a main anchor this component of the exchange rate regime can be used as an iv in regressions of bilateral outcomes we apply the methodology to study the economic effects of currency unions the likelihood that two countries independently adopt the currency of the same anchor country is used as an instrument for whether they share a common currency we find that sharing a common currency enhances trade increases price comovements and decreases the comovement of real gross domestic product shocks

degradacao ambiental e teoria economica algumas reflexoes sobre uma economia dos ecossistemas there are few consistent theoretical reflections on the suitability of economic instruments per se in facing the issue of natural capital degradation this paper presents some considerations about the relationship between environmental degradation and economic theory in a critical perspective the guiding assumption of the arguments is that the treatment given so far to the environment is largely reductionist which must necessarily be overcome by a transdisciplinary approach the sequencing of the ideas outlined converges to the need of building this new framework referred to here as economics of ecosystems

the optimality of socialist development strategies an empirical inquiry abstract this paper examines the optimality with which czechoslovak planners have allocated investment between 1954 and 1972 applying optimal control techniques to an econometric model of the czechoslovak economy we find that greater levels of industrial output and of aggregate welfare could have been obtained by devoting a greater proportion of investment to housing and urban services thus facilitating rural urban migration the optimal pattern of investment is sensitive to the need to restrain domestic inflation and to the existence of potential difficulties in securing imports of raw materials from socialist countries we conclude that taking into account the need to restrict domestic inflation and the difficulty in obtaining greater supplies of raw materials from socialist countries czechoslovak planners have allocated investment in an effective manner

electoral competition and special interest politics have fixed positions on some issues but vary their positions on others in order to attract votes and campaign contributions in this context we examine whether special interest groups are governed by an electoral motive or an influence in their campaign giving and how their contributions affect the equilibrium platforms we show that each party is induced to behave as if it were maximizing a weighted sum of the aggregate welfares of informed voters and members of special interest groups the party that is expected to win a majority of seats caters more to the special interests

monetary policy in a data rich environment abstract most empirical analyses of monetary policy have been confined to frameworks in which the federal reserve is implicitly assumed to exploit only a limited amount of information despite the fact that the fed actively monitors literally thousands of economic time series this article explores the feasibility of incorporating richer information sets into the analysis both positive and normative of fed policymaking we employ a factor model approach developed by stock j h watson m w diffusion indices journal of business economic statistics 2002 20 2 147 forecasting inflation 1999 journal of monetary economics 44 2 293 that permits the systematic information in large data sets to be summarized by relatively few estimated factors with this framework we reconfirm stock and watson s result that the use of large data sets can improve forecast accuracy and we show that this result does not seem to depend on the use of finally revised as opposed to real time data we estimate policy reaction functions for the fed that take into account its data rich environment and provide a test of the hypothesis that fed actions are explained solely by its forecasts of inflation and real activity finally we explore the possibility of developing an expert system that could aggregate diverse information and provide benchmark policy settings

ecological production based pricing of biosphere processes abstract ecological pricing theory and method is reviewed and then applied to the valuation of biosphere processes and services ecological pricing values biosphere processes on the basis of biophysical interdependencies between all parts of the ecosystem not just those that have direct or obvious value to humans the application of the ecological pricing method to the biosphere for 1994 indicates that the total value of primary ecological inputs services to be nearly us 25 trillion this compares with us 33 trillion obtained in the costanza et al 1997 study our analysis also indicated a good correspondence between the shadow ecological price and the observed market price for all marketable goods except fossil fuel which was undervalued by the market

integrated value theory for natural areas abstract value assessment is a necessary component of any rational decision making process concerning the use or management of natural areas this paper describes an integrated value theory for identifying measuring and aggregating human values for natural areas to ensure philosophical coherence the framework makes a commitment to a specific theory of end values three related levels of end value are identified which give meaning to the values expressed by humans the theory addresses the three rational modes of human value expression weakly comparable noncompensatory and exchange exchange value expressions are consistent with neoclassical economic notions of value the other types of value expression are not current techniques for aggregating values include multicriteria analysis and benefit cost analysis multicriteria analysis can encompass the three modes of value expression but does not readily discriminate between them and so fails to take advantage of the full information content of noncompensatory and exchange preferences benefit cost analysis on the other hand assumes a particular structure of values which means it should be limited to assessment of exchange preferences the framework outlined in this paper provides an advance on both of these methods in that it combines the specificity of benefit cost analysis with the breadth of multicriteria analysis

a science driven market based instrument for determining the cost of environmental services a comparison of two catchments in australia abstract an auction based approach or mbi for market based instrument was used to purchase environmental services from landowners and to establish a long term economic resource forest plantations in two catchments in the state of victoria australia the policy goal of the mbi was to encourage the conversion of cleared land to forest plantations it was desired to achieve this while also reducing the amount of land affected by dryland salinity with minimum impact on water available for irrigation operationally interested landowners identified areas on which they would be willing to establish forest plantations and stated the amount of money they would require from the government to undertake plantation establishment this constituted a landowner bid the proposed planting area associated with each bid was processed through a quantitative hydrological model to estimate off site impacts on dryland salinity and the change in water yield resulting from the conversion of individual non forested areas to forest plantations landowner bids were then accepted or not based on the economic trade offs among dollars requested by a landowner reduction in water yield and decrease in dryland salinity to enable a comparison of costs the mbi was independently trialled in two catchments for both the cost to government of a hectare of plantation and or a hectare of salinity benefit was calculated a number of ways assuming the existence of a calibrated hydrological model costs associated with distributing money via such an mbi were publicity fieldwork processing the bids through the model probity legal and administration in the gippsland catchment the total cost to establish forest plantations was 5340 per ha whereas it was 1635 per ha in the corangamite catchment no salinity benefit was obtained in gippsland but in corangamite if considered in isolation of the economic forest plantation benefit the cost per hectare of salinity benefit was 5020 operational aspects of the mbi are presented and discussed and a comparison is made to the expected costs of a conventional non science driven approach to landowner incentives

ecosystem prices activity analysis applied to ecosystems abstract in this paper a method is developed to derive prices for natural goods from information about material and energy flows within ecosystems the derivation is based on an analogy between ecological and economic systems both systems are characterized by flows of material and energy to derive ecosystem prices the mathematical structure of koopman s economic linear production model his activity analysis is applied to a material flow model of ecosystems the ecological interpretation of these prices is discussed and the uniqueness of the price system is investigated an algorithm for price calculation is derived and demonstrated with a numerical example finally it is discussed whether ecosystem prices may be suitable as surrogates for economic valuations of natural goods