urbanization and poverty reduction the role of rural diversification and secondary towns a rather unique panel tracking more than 3 300 individuals from households in rural kagera tanzania during 1991 4 2010 shows that about one in two individuals households who exited poverty did so by transitioning from agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy or secondary towns only one in seven exited poverty by migrating to a large city although those moving to a city experienced on average faster consumption growth further analysis of a much larger cross country panel of 51 developing countries cannot reject that rural diversification and secondary town development lead to more inclusive growth patterns than metropolitization indications are that this follows because more of the poor find their way to the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns than to distant cities the development discourse would benefit from shifting beyond the rural urban dichotomy and focusing instead more on how best to urbanize and develop the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns

exploring the core factors and its dynamic effects on oil price an application on path analysis and bvar tvp model abstract as the uncertainty of oil price increases impacts of the influential factors on oil price vary over time it is of great importance to explore the core factors and its time varying influence on oil price in view of this based on the path analysis model this paper obtains the core factors builds an oil price system var model which uses demand supply price and inventory as endogenous variables and china s net imports as well as dollar index as exogenous variables then we set up a bvar tvp time varying parameter model to analyze dynamic impacts of core factors on oil price the results show that 1 oil prices became more sensitive to oil supply changes and the influence delays became shorter 2 the impact of oil inventories on oil prices with a time lag of two quarters but has a downward trend 3 the impact of oil consumption on oil prices with a time lag of two quarters and this effect is increasingly greater 4 the us dollar index is always the important factor of oil price and its control power increases gradually and the financial crisis occurred in 2008 further strengthens the influence of us dollar

crude oil corn ethanol nexus a contextual approach this paper offers a holistic study on the complex relationships between crude oil corn and ethanol during a turbulent period between 2006 and end of 2011 through a holistic mapping of the current market situation and a contextual analytical design we show that there exists a strong relationship between crude oil and corn markets on one side and crude oil and ethanol on the other however the price relationship between corn and ethanol was revealed to be less straightforward and is driven by the us government fuel policy furthermore the study indicates that corn markets have became more prone to volatility due to ethanol production especially when the demand for corn is high and or the crude oil prices are high enough to create a competitive market for ethanol

promotion of the agricultural sector and political power in austria in most industrialized countries farmers as a small and well orgnized group are ableto influence government decisions to get rent creating proposals enacted two different viewsare presented to explain why the chicagoan view efficient redistribution hypothesis and the virginian view inefficient outcome of political bargaining a vertically structuredempirical model of the austrian farm sector is employed to test both hypotheses quantitativeresults of the welfare transfers from consumers taxpayers to farmers and agribusiness firmsare derived and the political weights of these groups are presented

modelling money demand in germany in this paper an empirically stable money demand model for m3 in germany is presented the sample period 1975 94 includes german unification it is shown that this development has not substantially destabilized money demand parameter stability is extensively tested and not rejected applying encompassing tests this model encompasses two recent models but is not encompassed by them exogeneity of the explanatory variables is discussed and tested along the definitions given in engle hendry and richard 1983 there is evidence that inflation and long term interest rates are super exogenous with respect to the parameters of the demand for m3 model this result and the empirical long run money demand function presented in this paper may affect the applicability of the so called p star concept for german m3 1998 john wiley sons ltd

predatory versus productive government the case of u s agricultural policies this essay will argue that agricultural policy in the united states has led to both the enhancement of efficiency through productive policies and the transfer of wealth and income to special interests through redistributive or predatory policies these two activities can be labeled as pests and perts pest policies or political economic seeking transfers are meant to redistribute wealth from one social group to another and are not explicitly concerned with efficiency in contrast perts or political economic resource transactions are intended to correct market failures or to provide public goods these policies have neutral distributional effects at least in design a review of the history of public policy in agriculture reveals not only tension between the pert and pest roles of the public sector but also some coordination between these two types of activities as different interest groups pressure the political process the government trades off pests and perts in its attempts to acquire balance and secure political power at times this has led to combinations of programs that appear incoherent in such a world the challenge for economists is to design and advocate policies that are both economically productive and politically sustainable

political economy of public policies insights from distortions to agricultural and food markets the agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational while others have been gradual but persistent this paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions and the political economy explanations that have been advanced based on a rich global data set covering a half century of evidence on commodities countries and policy instruments the paper identifies hypotheses that have been explored in the literature on the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which reform may be feasible

intergenerational transfers in philippine rice villages gender differences in traditional inheritance customs abstract this paper examines education land and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the philippines a model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children in a subsample with completed inheritance daughters receive less education land and total inheritance but are compensated with nonland assets parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender daughters of better educated mothers receive more land nonland assets and total inheritance better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons but favor daughters in education

oil price effects on personal consumption expenditures abstract this paper uses a logistic smooth transition model to examine the impact of rising oil prices on personal consumption expenditures in open and industrialized economies the empirical results suggest a nonlinear and asymmetric relation between oil price changes and personal consumption expenditures in particular the effects of rising oil prices on personal consumption expenditures are greater than those of falling oil prices while oil price changes affect personal consumption expenditures via real balance effects smooth transition effects also come into play below a threshold value an increase in oil prices reduces personal consumption expenditures in other words in the face of uncertainty regarding future oil prices consumers initially rationally postpone spending however once oil prices above the threshold after a prolonged upward trend the prices of domestic production factors rise this fuels continued price hikes and further increases personal consumption expenditures until a cost pushed inflation takes hold due to differences in economic developments and structures the effects of rising oil prices vary from one country to another with different countries usually to different monetary policies from each other as a result personal consumption expenditures also show various patterns across countries

tests for parameter instability in regressions with i 1 processes this article derives the large sample distributions of lagrange multiplier lm tests for parameter instability against several alternatives of interest in the context of cointegrated regression models the fully modified estimator of phillips and hansen is extended to cover general models with stochastic and deterministic trends the test statistics considered include the supf test of quandt as well as the lm tests of nyblom and of nabeya and tanaka it is found that the asymptotic distributions depend on the nature of the regressor processes that is if the regressors are stochastic or deterministic trends the distributions are noticeably different from the distributions when the data are weakly dependent it is also found that the lack of cointegration is a special case of the alternative hypothesis considered an unstable intercept so the tests proposed here may also be viewed as a test of the null of cointegration against the alternative of no cointegration the tests are applied to three data se

the dynamics pattern of price dispersion in retail fuel markets abstract this paper empirically investigates the dynamics of price dispersion in retail fuel markets as a response to the corresponding wholesale price changes for this purpose we take advantage of a daily dataset of prices fixed by gas stations in two spanish regions it is consistently found that retail price dispersion is temporarily enlarged as a consequence of wholesale price increases while it is reduced due to decreases the presence of asymmetries in the short run dynamics is also revealed the impact of positive changes in the wholesale price is in the first days of adjustment clearly greater the dynamics pattern could be explained at least in part by the faster response of prices in the stations associated with the two vertically integrated companies that have the largest market share i e repsol and cepsa

nutrition and labor producvivity in agriculture estimates for rural south india using panel data for rural south india a fixed effects individual wage equation and farm production function are estimated that have calorie intake and nutritional status weight for height of workers as their arguments neither market wages nor farm output are observed to be responsive to changes in the daily energy intake of workers however both are highly elastic with respect to weight for height these results suggest that while the human body can adapt to inadequate nutrition in the short run it cannot adapt as readily to chronic malnutrition that eventually results in loss of weight for height copyright 1988 by mit press

extreme risk spillovers between crude oil and stock markets abstract this paper investigates the spillovers of extreme risks between crude oil and stock markets using daily data of the s p 500 stock index and west texas intermediate wti crude oil futures returns based on the method of granger causality in risk value at risk var is employed to measure market risk and a class of kernel based tests is used to detect negative and positive risk spillover effects empirical results reveal that there are significant risk spillovers between the two markets extreme movements past or current in one market may have a significant predictive power for those in the other market prior to the recent financial crisis there are positive risk spillovers from stock market to crude oil market and negative spillovers from crude oil market to stock market after the financial crisis bidirectional positive risk spillovers are strengthened markedly the risk spillovers may occur instantaneously and or with a long time delay both positive and negative risk spillover effects exhibit asymmetric correlations

oil price shocks and transportation firm asset prices abstract the transportation sector is a major user of oil based energy even as oil prices continue to fluctuate greatly the impact of oil price changes on transportation firms has heretofore not been adequately examined this paper fills this gap documenting important new findings based on analysis of over two decades of daily data on large changes in oil prices oil price shocks first while transportation firm returns are influenced negatively by oil price increases risks are increased more by oil price declines second firm characteristics are important with the market to book ratio being the most important firm characteristic and roa firm size and the prior run up in prices are also important in influencing oil price related returns betas variances and trading volumes third in the s p transportation sub sector industry concentration is negatively related to returns oil price risk and trading volume and asymmetrically related to returns and market betas these new findings enhance our understanding of the asset price impact of oil price shocks and should be of much interest to scholars corporate executives money managers regulators and policy makers

program interventions intrahousehold distribution and the welfare of individuals modelling household behavior abstract in this essay the implications for the intrahousehold distribution of resources derived from economic models of household behavior that treat the household as maximizing a single welfare function are reviewed particular attention is paid to the within family allocation of time and food and to the effects of these resources on the schooling earnings and health status of individuals as they are affected by direct food intervention and female employment schemes and price altering policies empirical applications are provided from data sets from india indonesia and the philippines to illustrate the power and limitations of such models for illuminating household interventions and for placing restrictions on data

regression based measure of urban sprawl for italian municipalities using dmsp ols night time light images and economic data night time light can be used in order to evaluate the degree of urbanization and urban sprawl in a specific territory in fact at the local level the lower the urban density the higher the per c

economic geography and wages abstract this paper estimates the agglomeration benefits that arise from vertical linkages between firms we identify the agglomeration benefits off the spatial variation in firms nominal wages u

evidence on the political economy of the urbanization process urbanization and economic development go hand in hand as a country moves from a rural agricultural base to an urban industrial base this paper argues that urbanization per se occurs in response to the basic sector shift out of agriculture and government policies such as price controls and trade protection of industry affect the process only indirectly through their effect on sector composition however urban concentration the extent to which a country s urban resources are concentrated in one or two large cities as opposed to more evenly spread is much more directly affected by policies and politics the paper finds specifically that investments in inter regional infrastructure facilitates urban deconcentration away from primate to hinterland cities as does increasing democratization or increasing fiscal decentralization the findings move beyond establishing basic correlations in the data to trying to quantify causal effects in a panel framework with instrumental variables estimation

the determination of technology and commodity policy in the us dairy industry united states dairy policy includes both predatory and productive components the milk price support program is designed to transfer income to dairy farmers while research and extension expenditures are designed to increase social welfare the purpose of this chapter is to provide an empirical example of the theory developed in chapter 4

the general equilibrium costs and impacts of oil price shocks in newfoundland and labrador abstract the 2014 2015 dramatic drop in world oil prices had devastating impacts on a global scale we analyse economic costs and impacts of a negative oil price shock following the 2014 2015 decrease in oil prices on the provincial economy of newfoundland and labrador canada we use a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to estimate a drop in oil prices by inputting the estimated effect as a direct impact to royalties which are the land input in the oil and gas sector of the provincial economy we provide sensitivity to account for the duration and magnitude of the shock as well as the timing of recovery our results suggest that a shock in the price of oil will have its most significant impact on gdp in the initial years over the first five years the reduction in gdp due to this shock would be roughly 2 1 of gdp in our most realistic shock scenario but could be much higher in other scenarios considered a sharp drop in gdp over the first five years will be mitigated somewhat in the long run as the growth in oil prices rises however negative long run impacts to gdp persist due to the oil price shock in 2014 2015 and will worsen if there is a prolonged shock

global economic activity and crude oil prices a cointegration analysis abstract this paper empirically investigates the cointegrating relationship between crude oil prices and global economic activity the kilian economic index is used as an indicator of global economic activity based on a supply demand framework and the cointegration theory we find that real futures prices of crude oil are cointegrated with the kilian economic index and a trade weighted us dollar index and crude oil prices are influenced significantly by fluctuations in the kilian economic index through both long run equilibrium conditions and short run impacts we also develop an empirically stable data coherent and single equation error correction model ecm which has sensible economic properties empirical results based on the ecm show that the adjustment implied by a permanent change in the kilian economic index is a relatively drawn out process

estimating the intrahousehold incidence of illness child health and gender inequality in the allocation of time in this paper the authors develop and implement a method for estimating the effects of infant morbidity on the differential allocation of time of family members based on discrete indicators of health and activity participation commonly available in survey data and within the context of a household model in which health is determined endogenously their estimates that take into account the simultaneity of health activity associations indicate that increased levels of infant morbidity significantly exacerbate existing differentials in the accumulation of human capital across teenage boys and girls in indonesia copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

industrial centralization in indonesia in certain situations economic liberalization policies can increase the degree of spatial centralization of resources and spatial concentration of manufacturing in large metropolitan areas in addition historical patterns of location make it difficult to alter the degree of centralization this article explores these issues by specifying and estimating a nested logit model of industrial location of manufacturing activity in java focusing on the unincorporated sector the results indicate that plants strongly prefer locations with mature plants in related industries which offer a built up stock of local knowledge in addition the 1983 liberalization in indonesia was associated with increased centralization of the unincorporated sector although the liberalization gave unincorporated firms better access to government and other centralized services firms needed to centralize to take advantage of these opportunities because the bureaucratic process is centralized and communications are poor the relative increased growth of the corporate sector following liberalization may also have helped to further draw unincorporated plants into centralized locations

political preference functions and public policy reform a model of policy making is developed where governments seek to maximize support from social groups through the combination of both pert social welfare increasing and pert welfare transferring policies the implicit weights of a political preference function shift with a change in the relative cost of interest group organizing attention is paid to the degree of wealth transfers as total social welfare increases because of pert policy changes the model demonstrates that in the case of two competing groups the weight given to one group in the allocation of social surplus will increase as total social welfare increases with a bias toward the other group the relative weights placed on consumers and producers based on pest policies alone are misleading indicators of the political influence of groups a number of general implications of this political economic analysis for the reform of public policies are investigated

crop insurance in a political economy an alternative perspective on agricultural policy lawmakers often subsidize farmers in times of financial distress this article models this political impulse as a constraint on government farm policy describing how ex ante government farm insurance can deter ex post disaster relief and improve production incentives by countering the moral hazard that otherwise prevails absent ex ante government policy ex post relief takes the form of revenue insurance which prompts excessive entry into farm production and under production by operating farmers ex ante government policy can raise economic and political welfare by buying out low productivity farmers and offering profitable farmers a combination of revenue insurance price supports and a program participation fee copyright 2003 oxford university press

education gender gaps in pakistan is the labor market to blame abstract differential labor market returns to male and female education are one potential explanation for large gender gaps in education in pakistan we empirically test this explanation by estimating private returns to education separately for male and female wage earners this article contributes to the literature by using a variety of methodologies ordinary least squares heckman correction two stage least squares and household fixed effects in order to estimate economic returns to education the latest nationally representative data the pakistan integrated household survey 2002 are used earnings function estimates consistently reveal a sizable gender asymmetry in economic returns to education with returns to women s education being substantially and statistically significantly higher than men s the return to an additional year of schooling ranges between 7 and 11 for men and between 13 and 18 for women there are also large direct returns to women s education at low levels of schooling

why do oil prices jump or fall this paper discusses theories that can explain the zig zags of oil prices in general and in particular the recent jump more precisely the following explanations are discussed homo oeconomicus pure profit maximization if demand is dynamic and convex price reaction function price increases and respectively declines depend on capacity utilization cartelization contingent on output or revenues of which the latter can lead to backward bending supply segments and multiple equilibria statistical descriptions mean reversion homo politicus i e arguments for price hikes that are rational public choice despite the long run economic loss finally two approaches are presented that emphasize demand uncertainty one extending the above mentioned dynamic demand framework and the other considers a dynamic game of non competitive suppliers with lumpy investments summing up a demand shock seems to be the most suitable explanation of today s high prices indeed a shock given that international energy agency iea and department of energy doe were promising just a couple of years ago that we are going to have lots of oil at low prices while others and in particular politics have surprisingly little or no explanatory power

oil price dynamics 2002 2006 abstract oil price dynamics during 2002 2006 have been characterized by high volatility high intensity jumps and strong upward drift and were concomitant with underlying fundamentals of oil markets and world economy namely pressure on oil prices resulting from rigid crude oil supply and expanding world demand for crude oil a change in the oil price process parameters would require a change in underlying fundamentals market expectations extracted from call and put option prices anticipated no change in underlying fundamentals in the short term markets expected oil prices to remain volatile and jumpy and with higher probabilities to rise rather than fall above the expected mean

oil futures prices and stock management a cointegration analysis abstract futures markets are considered important to hedgers and speculators therefore they are relevant to stock management this issue is tested empirically by applying the methodology of cointegration analysis and causality testing to the monthly average of commercial non strategic primary oil stocks and monthly averages of west texas intermediate wti spot and futures prices for one month and three months delivery over the period january 1985 to june 1993 long and short run relations are presented the results support the view of a relationship between futures prices and oil stocks

arsenic mitigation in bangladesh a household labor market approach rural families in bangladesh one of the poorest countries in the world face financial risks from major illness both from the cost of medical care and from the loss of income associated with reduced labor supply and productivity chronic exposure to arsenic in drinking water has often been associated with the development of skin cancers and internal cancers especially of the bladder liver and lungs and a wide variety of other health conditions such as diabetes respiratory problems cardiovascular diseases hyperpigmentation hypopigmentation and keratosis a condition in which painful nodules grow on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet most of the economic work on arsenic contamination in bangladesh has had an epidemiological focus that has tried to effectively monetize a dose response relation using either a cost of illness or a willingness to pay approach

a political economic analysis of u s rice export programs to japan and south korea a game theoretic approach the uruguay round agreement on agriculture ur has contributed to the increase in u s and world rice trade since 1994 despite this the japanese and korean rice markets continue to be characterized by high levels of trade intervention this paper attempts to analyze both import markets incorporating econometric estimates and public choice theory in a game theoretic framework various scenarios are analyzed the results show that the overall nash equilibrium occurs with a 4 tariff reduction for japan and korea under the u s market development program which includes the market access program and foreign market development program

procrastination and obedience in this lecture i shall focus on situations involving repeated decisions with time inconsistent behavior although each choice may be close to maximizing and therefore result in only small losses the cumulative effect of a series of repeated errors may be quite large thus in my examples decision makers are quite close to the intelligent well informed individuals usually assumed in economic analysis but cumulatively they make seriously wrong decisions that do not occur in standard textbook economics this lecture discusses and illustrates several pathological modes of individual and group behavior procrastination in decision making undue obedience to authority membership of seemingly normal individuals in deviant cult groups and escalation of commitment to courses of action that are clearly unwise in each case individuals choose a series of current actions without fully appreciating how those actions will affect future perceptions and behavior the standard assumption of rational forwardlooking utility maximizing is violated the nonindependence of errors in decision making in the series of decisions can be explained with the concept from cognitive psychology of undue salience or vividness for example present benefits and costs may have undue salience relative to future costs

estimating and forecasting the real prices of crude oil a data rich model using a dynamic model averaging dma approach given that oil price fluctuations have been of great interest for macroeconomics in the recent years due to its important implications for future inflation economic growth and policy making the aim of this paper is to estimate and forecast west texas intermediate wti crude oil prices using a large monthly dataset that covers the period from march 1983 to december 2011 to achieve this aim forecasting with factor models offers a usual approach that utilizes large datasets however a forecasting model which simply includes all factors in state space equation and does not allow for time varying may be not suitable with a highly volatile market such as oil market to overcome these limitations an approach that accounts both for parameter and model uncertainty is employed in particular this study uses the dynamic model averaging dma approach suggested by koop and korobilis 2012 the key element of the dma approach is that it allows both for model and parameter to vary at each point of time by doing so the dma is robust to structural breaks empirical findings show that dma approach outperforms any other alternative model used in the forecasting exercise results also show that there is model but not parameter variation in this oil price forecasting exercise finally the findings suggest that the dma approach provides a better proxy of expected spot prices than future prices

a critical assessment of the political preference function approach in agricultural economics abstract the policy preference function ppf approach has become popular with economists seeking to explain the origin of government policies in this paper a distinction between positive and normative work with the ppf concept is made positive work is shown to suffer from a variety of shortcomings including the misspecification of traditional ppfs and the failure to consider the importance of institutions constraints and the interaction between different commodity policies these weaknesses are reflected in the counter intuitive results of a simple ppf model designed to reflect the interaction between the ec s wheat and barley policies furthermore it is demonstrated that ppf weights change as a result of both political preferences and market parameters hence changes in ppf weights cannot be attributed to changes in preferences alone test of the axioms of revealed preference theory are used to demonstrate that even though ppf weights derived for the ec s wheat and barley markets have fluctuated considerably since the early 1970s we are not able to conclude that there has been a shift in political preferences the paper concludes with some comments about the use of ppfs in a normative framework the underlying assumption that policy makers optimise seems not surprisingly often to lead practitioners to the conclusion that observed policies are not so bad after all economists should also beware of the tendency to overlook possible differences between the ppf and the social welfare function

is there co movement of agricultural commodities futures prices and crude oil even though significant attempts have appeared in literature the current perception of co movement of commodity prices appear inadequate and static in particular we focus on price movements between crude oil futures and a series of agricultural commodities and gold futures a comparative framework is applied to identify changes in relationships through time and various cointegration methodologies and causality tests are employed our results indicate that co movement is a dynamic concept and that some economic and policy development may change the relationship between commodities furthermore we show that biofuel policy buffers the co movement of crude oil and corn futures until the crude oil prices surpass a certain threshold

a roll call analysis of the endangered species act amendments public choice economics view legislative process as a transaction in the political market interest groups demand regulation in their favor and lobby lawmakers the lawmakers analyze an assortment of factors and supply legislation to the winning group thereby maximizing their rent from the political market this article examines endangered species act esa amendments from a public choice perspective congressional voting on the esa amendments are assessed using a model based on political incentive and ideology the results show that the lawmakers voting behavior is correlated with their party affiliation ideology and several characteristics of their home state such as number of endangered species proportion of urban population contribution of the natural resources and construction sectors in gross state product and geographical location copyright 2001 oxford university press

price distorting compensation serving the consumer and taxpayer interest in this paper we address a bothersome question for public choice analysis why do consumers and taxpayers acquiesce to seemingly inefficient wealth transfers to a relatively small number of producers the most common and briefest answer given by political economists is that any individual consumer taxpayer suffers too little in the rent seeking game to bear the cost of opposing the aggressive political influence of producers who enjoy the concentrated benefits in this paper we examine an alternative answer lying in the potential benefits that accrue to consumers and taxpayers from price distorting wealth transfers to heterogeneous producers this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

estimating statistical properties of political economic decisions revelation of criteria implicit in setting policy is addressed in a political economic framework that includes identification and estimation of unknown parameters in the presence of multiple sources of uncertainty policy formation is viewed as an optimization process under which the government maximizes a criterion function subject to market constraints a method for estimating political criterion function weights and their associated standard errors over multiple time periods is presented the approach is illustrated with an empirical example from japanese rice and wheat trade policy

oil prices exchange rates and emerging stock markets abstract while two different streams of literature exist investigating 1 the relationship between oil prices and emerging market stock prices and 2 the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates relatively little is known about the dynamic relationship between oil prices exchange rates and emerging market stock prices this paper proposes and estimates a structural vector autoregression model to investigate the dynamic relationship between these variables impulse responses are calculated in two ways standard and the recently developed projection based methods the model supports stylized facts in particular positive shocks to oil prices tend to depress emerging market stock prices and us dollar exchange rates in the short run the model also captures stylized facts regarding movements in oil prices a positive oil production shock lowers oil prices while a positive shock to real economic activity increases oil prices there is also evidence that increases in emerging market stock prices increase oil prices

renewable resource policy when distributional impacts matter the standard assumption in bioeconomic resource models is that optimal policies maximize the present value of economic surplus to society this assumption implies that regulatory agencies should not be concerned with the distributional consequences of management strategies both contemporary welfare theoretic and rent seeking approaches suggests distributional issues are important in designing resource management policies this paper explores resource management when the managing agency has preferences defined over the economic welfare of various groups with a direct economic interest in the use of resources policy schemes consistent with this approach are derived and compared with standard results

health and wage a simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in this article we propose all econometric approach for estimating the simultaneouls effects of health and wages in a structural equations framework in the theoretical works of grossmana 1972a 1972b health is viewed as anl elldogen1oulsly determined capital stock the demand for health should rise with the wage rate as the rate of return to health investment increases with wage onl the other hand better health should raise market productivity and hence wages since health capital is an abstract theoretical concept it can hardly be measured quantitatively however most population surveys include various health indicators these indicators are usually discrete variables in the empirical work of grossman and benham 1974 these qualitative indicators are treated as continuous variables and two stage least squares estimation techniques are used this specification raises various econometric problems see e g goldberger 1964 pp 248 255 domencich and mcfadden 1975 and nerlove and press 1973 a satisfactory specification should take into account the discrete nature of the indicators our specification generalizes the dummy variables simultaneous equations system of heckman 1978 the measurement models of joreskog and goldberger 1975 and is closely related to the models of muthe n 1976 1979 muthen studies full information maximum likelihood procedures for estimation except for very simple cases this does not generally yield feasible or tractable procedures in this article we introduce a tractable procedure for statistical estimation and testing this specification and the estimation procedure is then applied to study the joint dependence of health and wages another departure of our approach from others is that we will test and correct the possible incompatibility of the various health capital indicators in the population surveys one may have subjective health indicators such as self evaluation of health which may reflect different populations perception of health we propose a statistical procedure for testing measurement compatibility and if required for correcting this problem this article is divided into two parts initially we describe the model specification estimation and statistical tests in a general simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in the second part of the paper we consider specification of a simultaneous equation model for health and wages the model

are government transfers efficient an alternative test of the efficient redistribution hypothesis the efficient redistribution hypothesis says that no available government policies are pareto superior to observed government policies efficient redistribution from government policy is a central tenet of much recent theoretical and applied political economy literature in this paper limitations of previous attempts to test the efficient redistribution hypothesis are discussed and an alternative test of the efficient redistribution hypothesis that uses vector optimization theory and bootstrap methodology is presented

modeling inflation in australia this article develops an empirically constant data coherent error correction model for inflation in australia the level of consumer prices is a markup over domestic and import costs with adjustments for dynamics and relative aggregate demand we address issues of cointegration general to specific modeling dynamic specification model evaluation and testing parameter constancy forecasting and exogeneity we also test this model against existing models of australian prices this model encompasses but is not encompassed by the existing models

the effect of financial liberalization on the capital structure and investment decisions of indonesian manufacturing establishments this article analyzes the consequences of financial liberalization using a large panel of indonesian manufacturing establishments it discusses whether financial reforms have had an impact on investment and on the allocation of credit and whether the effects differ depending on the type of firms the overall conclusion is that shifting from administrative toward market based allocation of credit has increased borrowing cost particularly for smaller firms but at the same time has benefited firms by giving them widened access to finance

industrial location in post reform india patterns of inter regional divergence and intra regional convergence where do new industrial investments locate and what factors drive the industrial location decisions do these investments follow the model of divergence followed by convergence suggested by the cumulative causation agglomeration economies and transport costs approaches these questions are examined with district level data from india for the pre and post reform periods using first tables and maps of concentration and clustering aggregated for all industry and disaggregated into five sectors heavy industries chemicals and petroleum textiles agribusiness and utilities and second logistic and ols heckman selection regression models for these six elements the data provide solid evidence both of inter regional divergence and intra regional convergence and suggest that concentrated decentralisation is the appropriate framework for understanding industrial location in post reform india

the empirical relationship between energy futures prices and exchange rates abstract this paper investigates the interaction between energy futures prices and exchange rates results are presented to show that futures prices for crude oil heating oil and unleaded gasoline are co integrated with a trade weighted index of exchange rates this is important because it means that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between these four variables granger causality results for both the long and short run are presented evidence is also presented that suggests exchange rates transmit exogenous shocks to energy futures prices

u s trade threats rhetoric or war working paper 95 7 the international agricultural trade research consortium is an informal association of university and government economists interested in agricultural trade its purpose is to foster interaction improve research capacity and to focus on relevant trade policy issues it is financed by united states department of agriculture ers fas and csrs agriculture canada and the participating institutions

what drives natural gas prices a structural var approach abstract in this study we develop a structural vector autoregressive model var for the german natural gas market our setup allows us to analyze the determinants of the natural gas price in a comprehensive framework in particular we illustrate the usefulness of our approach by disentangling the effects of different fundamental influences on gas prices during three recent supply interruptions the russian ukrainian gas dispute of january 2009 the libyan civil war in 2011 and the withheld russian exports in february 2012 our results show that the natural gas price is affected by temperature storage and supply shortfalls in the short term while the long term development is closely tied to both crude oil and coal prices capturing the economic climate and the substitution relationship between the different energy commodities

exogenous oil supply shocks how big are they and how much do they matter for the u s economy abstract the paper proposes a new measure of exogenous oil supply shocks the timing the magnitude and the sign of this measure may differ greatly from current state of the art estimates it is shown that only a small fraction of the observed oil price increases during oil crisis periods can be attributed to exogenous oil production disruptions exogenous oil supply shocks cause a sharp drop of u s real gdp growth after five quarters rather than an immediate and sustained reduction in economic growth and a spike in cpi inflation after three quarters overall exogenous oil supply shocks made remarkably little difference for the evolution of the u s economy since the 1970s although they did matter for some historical episodes

multiscale entropy analysis of crude oil price dynamics abstract price formation in crude oil markets is the result of the action of many participants e g producers governments speculators etc whose effects are perceived at different time scales from days to years the diversity of participants as well as the occurrence of extreme socio political events yields a market with complex price evolution this paper uses entropy methods to monitor the evolution of crude oil price movements as the complexity of the price can depend of the time horizon entropy computations are performed for different time scales via low pass filtering of the price difference dynamics the results are interpreted in term of relative market efficiency concepts in the sense that high entropy values should be related to a more complex and hence less predictable market evolution it is shown that the highest market efficiency is found for small time scales up to one or two weeks the multiscale entropy pattern for high time scales longer than one quarter is interesting as it shows alternating periods of high and low entropy levels interestingly this alternating pattern has a dominant spectral component of about 4 3 years which could be related to macroeconomic kitchin business cycles it is shown that u s recessions in the recent 25 years are coincident with periods of reduced entropy levels meaning that during economic downturn the long run market complexity is drastically reduced the possible effects of extreme events e g iraq war are analyzed in terms of the relative market efficiency suggesting that some events have affected the short term but not the long term market complexity overall these results show that methods based on entropy concepts can shed light on the structure of crude oil markets as well as on its link to macroeconomic conditions and socio political extreme events

global economic activity crude oil price and production stock market behaviour and the nigeria us exchange rate abstract this paper investigates the dynamic relationship among oil price nigeria us exchange rate stock market activity kilian s global economic activity index and global oil production we develop a robust stable single equation error correction model where the exchange rate solely bears the burden of short run adjustments with causal influences from the rest of the variables included in the model we find a role for asymmetry in the long run confirming the presence of equilibrium path adjustment asymmetry and suggesting that the positive and negative variations must be accounted for in designing the policymaking process to enforce stable exchange rate movement by comparing the linear and nonlinear models we find that the two models are complementary and that each is horizon bound in its forecasting ability

integration of environmental concerns into agricultural policies of industrial and developing countries abstract the question which this paper addresses concerns the types of environmental and resource related agricultural policy adjustments that could properly address the costs of resource degradation and increase long term prospects for sustainable development various public policy approaches e g polluter pays principle fiscal measures regulations etc are discussed and analyzed with regard to their environmental and resource impacts the paper provides illustrative experiences from industrial and developing nations and where possible lessons and insights of relevance to policy making in developing countries are sought

cost pooling in australian grain handling a common property analysis the common property analysis of rausser zusman and foster is expanded and applied t australian grain transportation systems with a conservative decision rule a statically inefficient cost pooling system may lead to optimal investment decisions as benefits become pooled with ramsey pricing in contrast losers may veto many investment decisions so that allocations become equitable but technically inefficient efficiency gains from price policy reform may not be achieved unless accompanied by property right reallocation

environmental and agricultural policy linkages and reforms in the united states under the gatt the initial design of the uruguay round of the gatt negotiations was laudable in many respects the round has been unique in its concentration on agriculture and its attempt to focus on internal distorting policies agricultural tradedistorting policies were recognized by the initial designers as a means for rationalizing internal policies that support domestic agricultural sectors as a result it should be no surprise that the negotiating performance thus far during the uruguay round can be traced largely to the conflict over internal agricultural policies

understanding recent oil price dynamics a novel empirical approach crude oil is a major driver of the global economy and its price dynamics are a key indicator for producers consumers and investors the increasing volatility of crude oil prices in the last decade has encouraged many researchers to model its dynamics recent studies have tried to explain this dynamics by taking into account the role of various market participants many of whom have increasingly used crude oil for portfolio diversification we propose a modified supply demand framework which assumes that the real price of crude oil is affected not only by fundamental shocks but also by financial shocks we assess the role of what we define as the financial shock component when describing the dynamics of the real crude oil price and endeavor to measure a possible equilibrium relationship between standard supply demand variables and our financial shock component using a dynamic ordinary least squares dols approach and an ecm framework we are able to empirically assess the significant role of hedging pressure on the real price of oil and find evidence that the impact of the hedging pressure is not only affecting quick reverting short term deviations but also the structural long run equilibrium of the oil price

from senators to the president solve the lumber problem or else we use key events associated in the two decade long u s canada softwood lumber trade dispute to present the dynamic relationship between u s congress and the administration in the formation of international trade policy we find that the executive branch of the u s government responded quickly to several letters from a group of u s senators demanding a solution to the lumber problem a roll call analysis is used to identify factors influencing senators willingness to sign these letters and pressure the president on behalf of the u s lumber industry the results show that the economic importance of the lumber industry in a senator s home state is positively correlated with signatory on these letters and that the presence of a large housing industry in a state makes a senator less likely to sign these letters

the role of regulatory uncertainty in certificate markets a case study of the swedish norwegian market abstract price volatility in green certificate markets reflects uncertainty over future prices representing a major source of risk for renewable energy generators price risk is considered the principal deficiency of this market based policy since it causes investors to require higher returns moreover investors are exposed to regulatory risk namely the risk that a change in the regulation will materially impact the certificate price regulatory uncertainty is reflected in market volatility exacerbating certificate price risk using an econometric approach we investigate the role of regulatory changes on price volatility in the swedish certificate market the results of our analysis indicate that regulatory changes strongly affect certificate markets resulting in periods of higher volatility moreover we analyze whether certificate price volatility has changed after creating a joint swedish norwegian market results indicate that the ambivalence surrounding the creation of this bigger market led to a period of increased price volatility between 2010 and 2011 overall this article brings a better understanding of the role of regulatory uncertainty on certificate markets and gives evidence for its negative impact in terms of increased price volatility

identifying spatial efficiency equity tradeoffs in territorial development policies evidence from uganda abstractwe contribute to the debate on the spatial allocation of infrastructure investments by examining where these investments generate the highest economic return spatial efficiency and identifying trade offs when infrastructure coverage is made more equitable across regions spatial equity we estimate models of firm location choice in uganda drawing on insights from the new economic geography literature the main findings show that manufacturing firms gain from being in areas that offer a diverse mix of economic activities public infrastructure investments in other locations are likely to attract fewer private investors and will pose a spatial efficiency equity trade off

exclusionary policies in urban development under servicing migrant households in brazilian cities localities in developed countries often enact regulations to deter low income households from moving in in developing countries such restrictions lead to the emergence of informal housing sectors to deter low income migrants localities in developing countries withhold public services to the informal housing sector using a large sample of brazilian localities we examine migration and exclusion focusing on the public provision of water to small houses where low income migrants are likely to live withholding water connections reduces the locality growth rate particularly of low education households in terms of service provision during dictatorship in brazil we find evidence of strategic exclusion where localities appear to withhold services to deter in migration we also find evidence of strategic interactions among localities within metro areas in their setting of service levels if one locality provides more services to migrant households other localities respond by withholding service

migration selectivity and the effects of public programs abstract a model of the spatial distribution of mobile heterogeneous agents is formulated to assess how a price change or program subsidy that is location specific affects the composition of local residents via selective migration and thus biases evaluations of the effectiveness of the program based on its local consequences longitudinal data from colombia are used to test the implications of migration selectivity the findings confirm the existence of selective migration suggesting that local subsidies to human capital attract high income but within income groups low fertility households and those with low human capital endowments these migration patterns are shown to be consistent with the dominance of endowment over tastes heterogeneity in the population under plausible behavioral assumptions

agricultural policy adjustments in the korean rice economy abstract a political preference function is used to endogenize government actions in a simultaneous equation model for south korean rice policy the effects of economic changes on rice pricing decisions through estimated political weights are tested to improve our understanding of policy adjustments in that country and open the way for further research in east asia

the effects of human capital on wages and the determinants of labor supply in a developing country abstract the heckman procedure is used to correct for sample selection bias in estimating wage offer and net labor market supply equations the findings show that wages are affected by education and experience in addition the wage offer is influenced by other genetic and environmental influences captured in the wage of one s father calories as predicted by exogenous instruments are also shown to influence the wage offer suggesting that better nutrition increases labor productivity the probability of market labor participation as well as the amount of net market labor supply declined with the size of paddy landholding in addition to the net market supply elasticity increasing with the amount of land owned and being lower for urban than rural workers

on the environmental economic and budgetary impacts of fossil fuel prices a dynamic general equilibrium analysis of the portuguese case abstract this paper examines the influence of fossil fuel prices on carbon dioxide emissions economic activity and the public sector account in portugal it uses a dynamic general equilibrium model which highlights the mechanisms of endogenous growth and includes a detailed modeling of the public sector fuel price scenarios are based on forecasts by the us department of energy doe us the international energy agency iea oecd and ihs global insight inc the differences in relative fuel prices among the three scenarios lead to substantially different environmental impacts higher fuel prices in the doe us scenario lead to a 10 2 reduction in the policy effort required to meet the eu 2020 emission targets while relative price changes in the iea oecd scenario result in a 19 2 increase in the required policy effort and decreasing fuel prices increase the emissions deficit by 95 9 under the ihs scenario in terms of the long term economic impacts our results suggest a 2 2 reduction in gdp in the doe us scenario and 1 9 in the iea oecd scenario and an increase of 1 4 in the ihs scenario as to the budgetary impact higher fuel prices lead to lower tax revenues which coupled with a reduction in public spending translates to lower public deficits from a methodological perspective our results highlight the importance of the mechanisms of endogenous growth a scenario of higher fuel prices would under exogenous economic growth assumptions result in larger baseline emissions growth substantially smaller economic effects and rather different budgetary effects from a policy perspective our results highlight the importance of fossil fuel prices in defining the level of policy intervention required for compliance with international and domestic climate change legislation

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

evaluating the effects of optimally distributed public programs child health and family planning interventions this paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization the model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in laguna province in the philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels the impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program a basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies pareto efficient the model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households is efficient when both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest

differences in social and public risk perceptions and conflicting impacts on point nonpoint trading ratios if stochastic nonpoint pollution loads create socially costly risk then an economically optimal point nonpoint trading ratio the rate point source controls trade for nonpoint controls is adjusted downward a risk reward for nonpoint controls encouraging more nonpoint controls however in actual trading programs ratios are adjusted upward in response to nonpoint uncertainties a risk premium for nonpoint controls this contradiction is explained using a public choice model in which regulators focus on encouraging abatement instead of reducing damages the result is a divergence of public and social risk perceptions and a trading market that encourages economically suboptimal nonpoint controls copyright 2001 oxford university press

efficiency of crude oil markets evidences from informational entropy analysis abstract the role of crude oil as the main energy source for the global economic activity has motivated the discussion about the dynamics and causes of crude oil price changes an accurate understanding of the issue should provide important guidelines for the design of optimal policies and government budget planning using daily data for wti over the period january 1986 march 2011 we analyze the evolution of the informational complexity and efficiency for the crude oil market through multiscale entropy analysis the results indicated that the crude oil market is informationally efficient over the scrutinized period except for two periods that correspond to the early 1990s and late 2000s us recessions overall the results showed that deregulation has improved the operation of the market in the sense of making returns less predictable on the other hand there is some evidence that the probability of having a severe us economic recession increases as the informational efficiency decreases which indicates that returns from crude oil markets are less uncertain during economic downturns