armington elasticities for energy policy modeling evidence from four european countries elasticities of substitution among imports and competing domestic production armington elasticities play an important role in computable general equilibrium cge assessments of energy and climate policy this paper provides estimates of armington elasticities for 15 commodity groups in four european countries since armington elasticities are found to be rather low on average researchers may want to reconsider the device of using high values of armington elasticities in cge models to avoid unrealistic competitiveness effects or emission leakage rates associated with energy or carbon taxes or other forms of energy related regulation estimated elasticities tend to be higher in the case of machinery and other investment goods than in the case of primary products ores and chemicals as well as consumer goods

environmental regulation and u s economic growth in this article we quantify the costs of pollution controls by reporting the results of simulations of the growth of the u s economy with and without regulation for this purpose we have constructed a detailed model of the economy that includes the determinants of long term growth we have also analyzed the interaction between industries in order to capture the full repercussions of environmental regulations however we have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment we find that pollution abatement has emerged as a major claimant on the resources of the u s economy the cost of emission controls is more than 10 of the total cost of government purchases of goods and services

microcredit what can we learn from the past abstract six microcredit organizations of 19th century europe are compared to identify what institutional designs were conducive to success and sustainability organizations that depended on charitable funding were more fragile and tended to lose their focus more quickly than those that obtained funds from depositors an ability to adjust interest rates also appears important in sustainability examining historical microcredit is particularly useful since it offers an opportunity to explore the characteristics of organizations which were sustained over many decades a perspective which is rare in modern microcredit banks and programs most of which are less than 15 years old

network regulation and regulatory institutional reform revisiting the case of australia it is well understood that the success of liberalizing the electricity supply industry depends crucially on the quality and design of the regulatory and institutional framework this paper analyses the regulatory arrangements that underpin the work of the australian energy regulator aer these arrangements are contrasted with the regulatory structure of electricity provision in norway a key difference between the reform processes in the two countries relates to the lack of privatization in norway and the co existence of private and publicly owned generators and distributors in australia this comparative analysis allows us to make several recommendations to improve regulatory arrangements in australia these include greater independence for the aer better coordination among regulatory institutions greater use of benchmarking analysis greater customer involvement and improving market transparency and privatization of government owned corporations however the success of privatization will hinge upon the effectiveness of the regulatory environment

political competition and the politicization of the state in east central europe the expansion and politicization of the postcommunist state even among the reform leaders of czech republic hungary poland and slovakia has confounded early expectations that the state would s

on the net impact of europeanization the eu s telecoms and electricity regimes between the global and the national this article examines the outcome of the eu policy process from various comparative perspectives in an effort to distinguish the net effects of eu membership and eu level regimes from more general perhaps global processes of change it argues that the major features of liberalization would have been diffused to most if not all member states even in the absence of the european commission other agents of supranationalism and eu level intergovernmental commitment to liberalize this is not to suggest that europeanization does not matter but that it matters in less obvious and perhaps in less critical ways than is frequently assumed the argument is supported by comparative empirical analysis of the spatial and temporal diffusion of liberalization since the 1980s and of nationalization since the late 19th century

the effects of oil price shocks on the economies of the gulf co operation council countries nonlinear analysis abstract this paper examines the effects of oil price shocks on the real gdp of the gulf cooperation council gcc countries the empirical method used is the nonlinear cointegrating autoregressive distributed lag nardl model of shin et al 2013 in which short run and long run nonlinearities are introduced via positive and negative partial sum decompositions of the explanatory variable s the results suggest evidence of asymmetries in all the cases we find significant positive oil price changes in all the cases with the expected positive sign implying that increases in oil price lead to increases in real gdp conversely negative oil price changes are significant for only kuwait and qatar with the expected positive sign suggesting that decreases in oil price lead to decreases in their real gdp further analysis implemented using panel data shows that positive oil prices changes increase real gdp and negative changes decrease real gdp overall the results suggest that positive oil price changes have a considerably larger impact on real gdp than negative changes

short run energy economy interactions in egypt abstract this paper discusses the short run adjustment mechanism of the egyptian economy to changes in the domestic price of oil the effects of oil price increases have been analysed in the framework of a short run macroeconomic model with an explicit treatment of energy the results suggest that a reduction in petroleum use induced by a rise in the price of oil will impose difficult adjustment problems for the economy in the short run in terms of increase in inflation fall in the share of wage income and sharp output losses the analysis also indicates that energy demand management through appropriate petroleum pricing strategy cannot bring about desirable impacts on the economy unless efforts are made to reduce cost pressures originating from other energy sectors

applied general equilibrium models of taxation and international trade an introduction and survey we wish to acknowledge the help of three referees and of john pencavel on several earlier drafts as well as the assistance of the modelers whose work is referred to in the paper they corrected our lack of understanding of their work and provided many other helpful comments excellent research and bibliographical assistance have been provided by debbie fretz radwan shaban and janet stotsky helpful comments have been made by charles ballard michael boskin lans bovenberg sylvester damus harvey galper glenn harrison gordon lenjosek jack mutti serena ng t n srinivasan charles stuart and eric toder the authors also acknowledgefinancial support from the national bureau of economic research the national science foundation international business machines and the social sciences and humanities research council ottawa canada

political competition and policy adoption market reforms in latin american public utilities on y docencia econ omicas this article shows that political competition generates incentives that affect the pace of adoption of market reforms in the context of policy convergence previous work shows the effect of financial and technological pressures in promoting policy convergence and the impact of institutional constraints on shaping the pace of policymaking controlling for these effects this article demonstrates the policy effects of political competition and ideological polarization even at a time when ideological policy differences seem to be fading due to policy convergence this article studies policy adoption using duration analysis for the 18 countries of latin america during the 1985 2000 period when most of the market reforms in public utilities were adopted s tudies of market reforms in latin america have typically emphasized the common financial and technological pressures that limited the ability of incumbents to impose their ideological preferences on policy adoption during the 1980s and 1990s this article shows that although it is true that the ideology of incumbents cannot fully explain policy adoption political competition and the relative ideology of challengers did shape the incentives of policymakers and thus played a significant role in the adoption of market reforms the article shows these effects on the market reforms of latin american public utilities which have been widely regarded as an example of policy convergence market oriented reforms in telecoms and electricity including the privatization of assets the liberalization of markets and the separation of regulatory authority from operations spread rapidly around the globe and especially through latin america

temporal aggregation in political budget cycles electoral cycles have been widely debated since the pioneering studies of the 1970s on monetary and fiscal policy 1 drazen sums up the evidence in terms of active fiscal policy and passive monetary policy while expansionary fiscal policy is the main impulse behind electoral cycles monetary policy has an accommodating role 2 recently there has been a flurry of empirical work on political budget cycles pbcs using cross country panels the most influential works concentrate on the budget surplus because it can capture both increases in expenditures and tax cuts before elections and is thus the most sensitive indicator of aggregate pbcs 3a drawback of these extant studies is their reliance on annual observations since elections take place between january and december annual data do not allow one to identify the election year precisely to get around this problem other schemes have been proposed for example by the rule of the semester the previous year is counted as the election year if elections take place before july 4 what are the consequences of temporal aggregation for the measurement of pbcs instead of being concentrated in the election year pre electoral effects may be spread out over the two years leading up to elections more important if the sign of policies is reversed after elections lower frequency data may mask pbcs because the effects in the election year cancel out as akhmedov and zhuravskaya point out in their country study of russia 5to illustrate the differences between using annual and quarterly data to identify the election year imagine that elections take place in june furthermore assume there is a pre electoral deterioration in the budget surplus surplus 1 during the four quarters running up to elections followed by an improvement surplus 1 the next four quarters in the calendar year in which elections take place the net effect on the budget surplus is zero elections are not always in june of course what happens if elections are evenly spread out over the year table 1 presents a simulation where y 0 is the calendar year of elections y 1 is the year before and y 1 is the year after for elections in the first quarter of the election year namely y 0 q 1 our textbook example of a pre electoral expansion in the deficit during the four quarters prior to elections followed by a contraction the next four quarters implies that the surplus equals 1 from y 1 q 2 to y 0 q 1 it equals 1 from y 0 q 2 to y 1 q 1 and it equals 0 otherwise when the budget surplus is at its average value normalized here at zero the same procedure is followed for elections in the other three quarters if we aggregate the effects by calendar year there is a serious underestimation of pbcs in the election year since pre electoral expansions are almost cancelled out by post electoral contractions leaving a net expansive effect that is only 25 percent of the total stimulus before elections the least affected by temporal aggregation are post electoral fiscal adjustments since 62 5 percent of the total effect is reflected the year after elections on the other hand if there were no post electoral fiscal adjustments the problem of temporal aggregation would be much less severe since 62 5 percent of the total expansive effect would be reflected the calendar year of elections and 37 5 percent the year before this paper tackles the issue of temporal aggregation in pbcs head on we build a cross country panel with annual and quarterly data from nineteen latin american countries and twenty member states of the organization for economic cooperation and development oecd over the 1980 2005 period 6 quarterly data allow us to identify the election year more precisely with annual data the election year is the calendar year in which elections take place with quarterly data the election year comprises the election quarter plus the three prior quarters we introduce two nonstandard features in our analysis

can multinational enterprises light up developing countries evidences from the access to electricity in sub saharan africa summary this paper examines the role that multinational enterprises mnes and foreign direct investments fdi can have in enhancing the access to electricity for local communities in developing countries based on the quality of home and host institutions access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing countries the shortage of electricity is mainly the consequence of inability of governments in planning financing and developing necessary electricity infrastructure in this context investments from other actors can be essential particularly we focus on the role of fdi and mnes we claim that when mnes invest in developing countries they are incentivized to solve the lack of electricity infrastructure mainly for two reasons to guarantee their business activities and to gain legitimacy with their local stakeholders in addition we argue that mnes and fdi from institutionally underdeveloped countries will be more prone to develop infrastructure for the provision of electricity to local population as generally they suffer from a negative stereotype for this study we rely on 1 547 observations composed of pairs of 83 home countries and 15 host countries in sub saharan africa observed from 2005 to 2011 due to the nature of the database we adopt panel data techniques i e system gmm and corrected least square dummy variable estimators we find that fdi promotes access to electricity in developing countries with weak institutions and this is more likely true when fdi come from institutionally underdeveloped countries these results are far from obvious as they controvert common idea among institutional scholars that a regulatory authority is essential in the provision of infrastructure in conclusion with this paper we partially rehabilitate the image of mnes investing in developing countries by demonstrating that under certain conditions they could contribute to energy poverty alleviation of local population

where does microfinance flourish microfinance institution performance in macroeconomic context abstract we study whether and how the success of microfinance institutions mfi s depends on the country level context in particular macroeconomic and macro institutional features understanding these linkages can make mfi evaluation more accurate and further can help to locate microfinance in the broader picture of economic development we collect data on 373 mfis and merge it with country level economic and institutional data evidence arises for complementarity between mfi performance and the broader economy for example mfis are more likely to cover costs when growth is stronger and mfis in financially deeper economies have lower default and operating costs and charge lower interest rates there is also evidence suggestive of substitutability or rivalry for example more manufacturing and higher workforce participation are associated with slower growth in mfi outreach overall the country context appears to be an important determinant of mfi performance mfi performance should be handicapped for the environment in which it was achieved

residual state ownership policy stability and financial performance following strategic decisions by privatizing telecoms we question previous research assuming that privatizing firm performance generally benefits from decreasing state ownership and the passage of time both of which purportedly align principal agent incentives promoting organizational decision making that increases shareholder value when state ownership shifts from majority and controlling to minority and non controlling the performance impact may be positive in the short run particularly where there is instability in the local investment policy environment consistent with this proposition we develop and test hypotheses derived from a minority and non controlling or residual state ownership framework grounded in credible privatization and institutional theory we propose that 1 residual state ownership positively affects shareholder returns after strategic decisions by privatizing firms because it signals state support for managerial initiatives 2 the passage of time since initial privatization negatively affects shareholder returns after strategic decisions by privatizing firms because initial undertakings in support of the privatizing firm are reversed and 3 home country investment policy stability moderates these two effects greater stability obviates the need for residual state ownership and slows policy reversals over time we find empirical support for our residual state ownership framework in event study analyses of cumulative abnormal returns cars associated with 196 major investments announced from 1986 to 2001 by 15 privatizing telecoms from around the world cars are positive at 5 25 state ownership levels but turn negative at higher state ownership levels cars turn sharply negative within 1 2 years from initial privatization dates increasing policy stability diminishes positive ownership and negative time effects on cars results confirm the potential supporting role that residual state ownership can play in enhancing strategic decision making and financial performance by privatizing firms particularly where there is instability in the home country investment policy environment

the role of subsidies in microfinance evidence from the grameen bank the grameen bank of bangladesh has been in the vanguard of the microfinance movement showing the potential to alleviate poverty by providing credit to poor house holds part of this success has been built on subsidies in 1996 for example total subsidies evaluated at the economic opportunity cost of capital amounted to about us 26 30 million the evidence helps to explain why institutions like grameen have not just sprung up on their own as private commercial ventures and it underscores the value of openly addressing the costs and benefits of subsidization the paper also describes recent difficulties in maintaining high repayment rates q 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

social cost of environmental quality regulations a general equilibrium analysis the use of cost benefit analysis by federal regulatory agencies has expanded greatly in scope and sophistication unfortunately agencies continue to employ private cost rather than social cost to evaluate environmental quality regulations furthermore general equilibrium impacts and intertemporal effects of regulations are typically not included in the evaluation in this paper we estimate the social cost of environmental quality regulations mandated by the clean air and clean water acts we construct an econometric general equilibrium model of the united states to demonstrate that social cost estimates diverge sharply from private cost estimates we also demonstrate that general equilibrium impacts are significant and pervasive and that intertemporal effects of the regulations heretofore ignored are significant

mainstreaming microfinance social performance management or mission drift summary what scope is there for the pursuit of explicit development goals in the context of increasing integration of specialized microfinance and commercial banking sectors this question and the idea of mission drift is first analyzed using a model that distinguishes between institutions financial and social performance possibilities preferences and assessment systems the model is used to review findings from action research with an international sample of poverty oriented microfinance institutions that suggest some simple steps for improved social performance management it is then used to illustrate the relationship between social and financial performance more widely across the retail financial services sector and to offer pointers for more policy analysis at this level

phasing the operation mode of foreign subsidiaries reaping the benefits of multinationality through internal capital markets the lifetime of foreign equity partnerships is often limited research suggests that mncs abandon their local partners when the need for sharing ownership in foreign subsidiaries has diminished this study shows that mncs may abandon their local equity partners to reap the benefits of multinationality as mncs gain a competitive advantage from leveraging resources across borders they will initially benefit from sharing ownership with a local firm to embed their foreign subsidiaries in the local environment and access local resources more effectively later they will benefit from taking over the local partner s equity share to better embed their subsidiaries in the parent organization and transfer locally accessed resources to the mnc s other locations moderated mediation regressions provide evidence of such practice in the context of cross border transfers of capital resources this strategy seems to work as a corollary of our model panel regressions suggest that sharing ownership with local firms in a host country with a capital resource advantage is associated with appropriating more capital resources from the local debt market while abandoning these partner firms later is associated with transferring more capital resources from this host country via internal capital markets to other parts of the mnc

path dependency and input substitution implications for energy policy modelling in most policy oriented energy models the effectiveness of energy policy instruments crucially depends both on the values of the substitution elasticities between the various inputs and on the rates of technological progress in this paper we argue that due to the fixed cost nature of adjustments to relative price changes these technological parameters are affected by past developments failing to account for the role of history will result in biased parameter estimates and hence the implication for energy policy modelling is that the estimation period should be carefully selected we provide an empirical illustration using data for the netherlands

how to achieve full electrification lessons from latin america electricity coverage in latin america has increased substantially in recent decades rising from 50 of the population in 1970 to more than 95 in 2015 growth however slowed in the 1990s as many countries experienced difficulties in extending their networks further in particular to serve those living in isolated and rural areas in spite of this the process of electrification was not interrupted and at the beginning of the 2010s decade most countries in the region were able to provide access to electricity to almost all of their populations in this paper we examine the main strategies used in latin america to increase coverage and argue that only a combination of policy efforts has made it possible to achieve the current situation we also examine the remaining obstacles at policy and institutional levels to achieving full coverage

uneven domestic knowledge bases and the success of foreign firms in the usa this paper investigates the effect of within country and across country inequalities on firms fdi performance and finds drivers of success in an advanced host economy the usa differ for firms from developed compared to developing countries returns to fdi for firms from developed countries are significantly correlated with home countries level of economic development in contrast successful developing country firms are from countries with lower within country inequality and reflect the industrial structure associated with developing countries they are concentrated in scale intensive industries and benefit especially from capital investment the findings suggest that fdi reflects rather than disrupts unevenness in knowledge bases globally

veto players and the value of political control a theory with evidence from energy privatization we examine how veto players and the government s valuation of political control of economic activity affect the likelihood of privatization when the government ascribes a high value to political control veto players impede privatization because they would have to be compensated for their losses when the value of political control is low the government prefers to privatize enterprises that become difficult to control with multiple veto players we test the theory against data on energy privatizations in developing countries 1988 2008 oil prices offer a quantitative measure of the government s valuation of controlling the energy sector when oil prices are high the government has a keen interest in controlling the energy sector accordingly additional veto players reduce increase the likelihood of privatization in times of high low oil prices beyond illuminating the politics of privatization the results inform debates on the role of veto players in government policy

energy from sugarcane bagasse under electricity rationing in brazil a computable general equilibrium model in the midst of the institutional reforms of the brazilian electric sectors initiated in the 1990s a serious electricity shortage crisis developed in 2001 as an alternative to blackout the government instituted an emergency plan aimed at reducing electricity consumption from june 2001 to february 2002 brazilians were compelled to curtail electricity use by 20 since the late 1990s but especially after the electricity crisis energy policy in brazil has been directed towards increasing thermoelectricity supply and promoting further gains in energy conservation two main issues are addressed here firstly we estimate the economic impacts of constraining the supply of electric energy in brazil secondly we investigate the possible penetration of electricity generated from sugarcane bagasse a computable general equilibrium cge model is used the traditional sector of electricity and the remainder of the economy are characterized by a stylized top down representation as nested ces constant elasticity of substitution production functions the electricity production from sugarcane bagasse is described through a bottom up activity analysis with a detailed representation of the required inputs based on engineering studies the model constructed is used to study the effects of the electricity shortage in the preexisting sector through prices production and income changes it is shown that installing capacity to generate electricity surpluses by the sugarcane agroindustrial system could ease the economic impacts of an electric energy shortage crisis on the gross domestic product gdp

the political economy of stabilization commitment capacity and public response abstract political pressures are generally recognized as important in determining success or failure of economic stabilization and adjustment programs but there has been little comparative analysis of the politics of stabilization this study examines the factors affecting i political leaders commitment to stabilization measures often called political will ii governmental ability to implement stabilization measures and iii the responses of key interest groups and the public at large to those measures the study also discusses political implications of the design of programs and the attempted speed of stabilization and sketches the tactics available to governments to manage political risk including partial compensation persuasion diversion or obfuscation and containment of protest the discussion is based on case studies of stabilization efforts in five fairly poor small highly trade dependent countries ghana in the late 1960s and early 1970s and zambia kenya sri lanka and jamaica in the late 1970s and early 1980s a subsidiary theme within the broader discussion is the ways in which the political economy of stabilization may differ in such countries as compared to larger semi industrialized economies

the politics of foreign direct investment into developing countries increasing fdi through international trade agreements the flow of foreign direct investment into developing countries varies greatly across countries and over time the political factors that affect these flows are not well understood focusing on the relationship between trade and investment we argue that international trade agreements gatt wto and preferential trade agreements ptas provide mechanisms for making commitments to foreign investors about the treatment of their assets thus reassuring investors and increasing investment these international commitments are more credible than domestic policy choices because reneging on them is more costly statistical analyses for 122 developing countries from 1970 to 2000 support this argument developing countries that belong to the wto and participate in more ptas experience greater fdi inflows than otherwise controlling for many factors including domestic policy preferences and taking into account possible endogeneity joining international trade agreements allows developing countries to attract more fdi and thus increase economic growth

do regulated microfinance institutions achieve better sustainability and outreach cross country evidence in spite of increasing pressure on microfinance institutions mfis operating in developing countries to transform into regulated financial intermediaries to date no study has investigated whether regulated mfis actually achieve better financial results and reach more poor clients than nonregulated mfis this article explores the impact of regulation on mfi performance using newly released data for 114 mfis from 62 countries in an empirical model where performance is specified as a function of mfi specific regulatory macroeconomic and institutional variables consistent with recent cross country evidence on the impact of banking regulations on bank performance barth et al 2004 this article finds that regulatory involvement does not directly affect performance either in terms of operational self sustainability or outreach the article also finds that less leveraged mfis have better sustainability the policy implication is that mfis transformation into regulated financial institutions is may not

modelling energy systems for developing countries abstract developing countries energy use is rapidly increasing which affects global climate change and global and regional energy settings energy models are helpful for exploring the future of developing and industrialised countries however energy systems of developing countries differ from those of industrialised countries which has consequences for energy modelling new requirements need to be met by present day energy models to adequately explore the future of developing countries energy systems this paper aims to assess if the main characteristics of developing countries are adequately incorporated in present day energy models we first discuss these main characteristics focusing particularly on developing asia and then present a model comparison of 12 selected energy models to test their suitability for developing countries we conclude that many models are biased towards industrialised countries neglecting main characteristics of developing countries e g the informal economy supply shortages poor performance of the power sector structural economic change electrification traditional bio fuels urban rural divide to more adequately address the energy systems of developing countries energy models have to be adjusted and new models have to be built we therefore indicate how to improve energy models for increasing their suitability for developing countries and give advice on modelling techniques and data requirements

economies of scope of lending and mobilizing deposits in microfinance institutions a semiparametric analysis microfinance emerged as an innovation in lending to the rural poor in asia and in response to frequent failure of previous interventions in rural financial markets such as directed and subsidized production credit disbursed by agricultural development banks while it started as a collection of banking practices built around providing small loans typically without collateral and accepting tiny savings deposits armendariz de aghion and morduch 2005 p 1 today many microfinance institutions mfis expand their services and strive to offer payment and savings facilities insurance housing and longer term loans to marginalized clientele in rural and urban settings estimates show that there are at least 10 000 microfinance programs worldwide two related and important trends are now emerging the first is toward commercialization which essentially is transforming ngo mfis into regulated intermediaries with the intent to lower costs by accessing deposits as well as strengthen the organizations by privatization the second trend is a renewed interest in experimentation to mobilize savings with emphasis on rural savings economies of scope imply that expansion into the savings market can be more cost efficient if done by the same mfis which makes it a significant factor in assessing the feasibility of these innovations however there are few studies that estimate the magnitude and sign of scope economies in this paper we present some preliminary evidence on scope economies using a large sample of mfis

substitutability and the cost of climate mitigation policy we explore how and by how much the values of elasticities of substitution affect estimates of the cost of emissions reduction policies in computable general equilibrium cge models we use g cubed an intertemporal cge model to carry out a sensitivity and factor decomposition analysis the decomposition analysis determines the contributions of changes in average abatement costs and changes in baseline emissions to the change in total mitigation costs the latter has not previously been considered average abatement cost rises non linearly as elasticities are reduced changes in the substitution elasticities between capital labor energy and materials have a greater impact on mitigation costs than do inter fuel elasticities of substitution the former have more effect on business as usual emissions and the latter on average abatement costs as elasticities are reduced business as usual emissions and gdp growth also decrease so that there is not much variation in the total costs of reaching a given target across the parameter space our results confirm that the cost of climate mitigation policy is at most a few percent of global gdp

the politics of infrastructure a number of recent studies attempt to measure the productivity of public capital some estimates indicate that government investments are a potential well spring for economic progress while others indicate that public infrastructure has a negligible effect on private sector output this article investigates political institutions and processes underlying the decisions for public infrastructure spending we apply the framework of strategic models of fiscal policy and develop an empirical model to analyze the substantial differences in public capital across american states institutions such as term limits citizen initiative and budgeting procedures were significant determinants of state public capital stocks and the flow of new public investments during the 1980s the results further suggest that political conditions such as legislative stability and voter volatility are systematically related to infrastructure differences across states

princes and merchants european city growth before the industrial revolution as measured by the pace of city growth in western europe from 1000 to 1800 absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry a region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its total urban population shrink by one hundred thousand people per century relative to a region without absolutist government this might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue maximizing absolutist governments than under nonabsolutist governments which care more about general economic prosperity and less about state revenue

varieties of capitalism in an internationalized world domestic institutional change in european telecommunications this article examines how internationalization affects domestic decisions about the reform of market institutions a developing literature argues that nations maintain different varieties of capitalism in the face of economic globalization because of diverse domestic settings however in an internationalized world powerful forces for change applying across border scan affect decision making within domestic arenas the article therefore analyzes how three factors transnational technological and economic developments overseas reforms and european regulation affected institutional reform in a selected case study of telecommunications regulation in britain france germany and italy between the 1960s and 2002 the author argues that when different forms of internationalization are strong and combined they can overwhelm institutional inertia and the effects of different national settings to result in rapid change and cross national convergence in market institutions hence different varieties of capi

unsubsidized microfinance institutions this paper starts from the observation that 23 of the world s microfinance institutions mfis manage without subsidies we examine how unsubsidized institutions cope with their social mission overall the lack of subsidies worsens social performances however our results show that strategies to achieve financial self sufficiency differ substantially across regions african and asian mfis compensate for non subsidization by charging higher interest rates in eastern europe and central asia unsubsidized mfis find it more suitable to target less poor clients unsubsidized latin american mfis tend to reduce their share of female borrowers

interfuel substitution a meta analysis interfuel substitutability has been of longstanding interest to the energy economics and policy community however no quantitative meta analysis has yet been carried out of this literature this paper fills this gap by analyzing a broad sample of studies of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector manufacturing industry or subindustries or macro economy of a variety of developed and developing economies publication bias is controlled for by including the primary study sample size in the meta regression results for the shadow elasticities of substitution between coal oil gas and electricity for forty six primary studies show that at the level of the industrial sector there are easy substitution possibilities between all the fuel pairs with the exception of gas electricity and coal electricity substitution possibilities seem more constrained at the macro level and less constrained in sub industries estimates also vary across countries publication bias does not seem to be present but model and data specification issues very significantly affect the estimates derived by each individual study estimates from cross section regressions are generally largest fixed effects panel estimates intermediate in magnitude and time series estimates are mostly much smaller econometric research suggests that the fixed effects estimates are likely the best among the existing studies though biased downwards

how investor portfolios shape regulatory outcomes privatized infrastructure after crises summary many developing countries privatized utilities during the 1990s their weak institutional environments however make them prone to crises that generate incentives for governments to renege on contractual commitments to investors to understand variation in post crisis regulatory outcomes in such contexts scholars must consider investors prior choices regarding portfolio structure investors facing high reputational costs from exit are more likely to remain following expropriation and those holding diverse assets in their contract jurisdiction to secure compensation these factors account for significant unexplained within sector and subnational variation for which we provide qualitative and quantitative evidence from argentina s water and electricity sectors following the 2001 crisis

cge models and development policy analysis problems pitfalls and challenges the purpose of this paper is to specify characteristics of computable general equilibrium cge models that are most likely to be useful for policy analysis in developing countries in the first part of the paper alternative criteria for distinguishing cge models are assessed we suggest that cge models with clear microeconomic structure contribute the most to sound policy formulation by helping analysts to understand essential relationships relevant to particular policy configurations the second part of the paper describes how a neoclassical economic model can be extended to address a variety of policy issues in developing countries

age analysis of the impact of a carbon energy tax on the irish economy a computable general equilibrium model with specific detail in taxation and energy use is developed in this paper to quantify the impact of the implementation of energy taxation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in ireland benchmark data combining physical energy and emissions data and economic data in the form of a social accounting matrix sam had to be compiled from various data sources because energy and pollution accounts from the seea are not available for ireland we find that the reduction target for energy related co2 emissions in ireland of 25 8 compared to 1998 levels can be achieved with a carbon energy tax of 10 15 euros per tonne of co2 though fuel switching is important in meeting the target this result is more sensitive to the possibilities for producers to substitute away from energy use welfare would fall but only by small percentages production and consumption patterns would change more significantly with a shift in demand from fuels with a high emission factor to energy sources with a lower carbon intensity and from energy to other commodities this paper confirms that a carbon energy tax leads to greater emission reductions than an equivalent uniform energy tax the latter has a stronger negative impact on the less polluting energy sectors whereas the carbon tax greatly stimulates the use of renewable energy and reduces the use of peat and coal the new sam the model and the application to energy taxes contribute to a better informed debate on environmental policy in ireland

depth of outreach and financial sustainability of microfinance institutions the primary justification for subsidizing microfinance institutions mfis is their enhancement of social welfare by extending credit to the poor households therefore recent emphasis on their financial self sufficiency has created concern that this may adversely affect the mission of social outreach utilizing data from 702 mfis operating in 83 countries this study shows empirical evidence of a positive complementary relationship between financial sustainability and depth of outreach

fdi waves waves of neglect of political risk studies of the impact of local political risk on foreign direct investment inflows overlook that worldwide fdi comes in waves using a simple model we show that the impact of political risk on fdi inflows is likely to be weaker the larger the worldwide amount of fdi which may question standard estimates and their policy implications using a large sample of developing and developed economies we estimate the sensitivity of the distribution of fdi inflows across countries to the local political risk we find that it is a decreasing function of the worldwide amount of fdi this finding has been upheld after many robustness checks

the macroeconomics of specificity specific quasi rents arise in a variety of economic relationships and are exposed to opportunism unless fully protected by contract rent appropriation has important macroeconomic consequences resources are underutilized factor markets are segmented production suffers from technological sclerosis job creation and destruction are unbalanced recessions are excessively sharp and expansions run into bottlenecks while depending on the shock expansions may require reinforcement or stabilization recessions should typically be softened in the long run institutions may evolve to alleviate the problem by balancing appropriation technology choice will also be affected with the appropriated factor partially excluding the other from production to reduce appropriation

assessing the macroeconomic impact of a healthcare problem the application of computable general equilibrium analysis to antimicrobial resistance there is a positive relationship between the health of a nation and its economic prosperity however in evaluating health care economists typically concentrate on the economic impact only to the health care sector which may mis specify the social costs and benefits of a disease or intervention this paper demonstrates the value of using a macroeconomic approach to modelling a major health problem using the context of antimicrobial resistance and the application of the computable general equilibrium technique this approach is described in detail and its added value demonstrated in the case of amr

options for mitigating the adverse effects of fossil fuel subsidies removal in ghana abstract conventional wisdom holds that without environmental benefits and revenue recycling fossil fuel subsidies removal would lead to welfare losses first this study tests the usefulness of general equilibrium theory for validating these claims and draws similar conclusion subsequently the model is readjusted to reflect simulation with two non traditional policy options this time the results suggest that removing subsidies on fossil fuels would create opportunities provided that such is done in tandem with complementary policies in particular we show that a mix of agricultural productivity improvement and a reduction in trade transaction costs at 15 in each case would provide benefits for fossil fuel subsidies removal in ghana these results underscore the need for structural reforms in ghanaian agricultural sector especially those aimed at promoting mechanized agriculture

general equilibrium effects of environmental policy a cge modeling approach estimation of emission control cost functions is often carried out in a partial equilibrium framework i e under the assumption that emission control measures have negligible effects on input and output prices in this paper a computable general equilibrium model is used for simulation of the impact on factor prices and resource allocation of reductions of so infx sup no infx su and co2 emissions thus the model includes markets for tradable emission permits and the equilibrium prices of permits reflect the marginal costs of emission control the results suggest that major emission reductions are likely to have general equilibrium effects and thus that emission control cost functions that fail to take these effects into account may give a distorted picture of the economic impact of emission control

socially relevant policy analysis structuralist computable general equilibrium models for the developing world economist lance taylor is an advocate of aggressive government management of developing economies the models described in this book are are easy to set up and manipulate on microcomputers and should dominate the development debate taylor s detailed discussion of structuralist coe models is followed by contributions that take up their application in specific countries this collection of work reviews the results of using cge models since the early 1970s with an emphasis on models that encompass broad structural factors such as distribution of income and wealth land tenancy relationships foreign trade production markets and control of the means of production that are fundamental to the behavior of developing economies chapters explain the macro constraints on india s economic growth and describe plan austral and other heterodox shocks describe the application of a structuralist model to nicaragua to mexican food consumption policies and to the food market in colombia they discuss a model with portfolio choice for thailand resource mobilization through administered prices and conflicting claims and dynamic inflationary mechanisms in india short run energyeconomy interactions in egypt policy options for growth and the alleviation of poverty in sri lanka currency devaluation in mexico and medium term growth projections for kuwait the book concludes with a manual for a structuralist macro model program lance taylor is professor of economics at mit

on measuring the effects of higher energy prices abstract the dramatic increases in world petroleum prices in the 1970s have been recognized as stimulating significant adverse economic consequences several simple partial equilibrium models have been constructed to analyse a portion of the expected consequences and some complex large scale general equilibrium models have attempted the complete analysis a simple and small general equilibrium model is developed and presented here that allows one to simply investigate and explain the effects of higher energy prices the model is calibrated to the us experience over 1973 1979

financial performance and outreach a global analysis of leading microbanks microfinance contracts have proven able to secure high rates of loan repayment in the face of limited liability and information asymmetries but high repayment rates have not translated easily into profits for most microbanks profitability though is at the heart of the promise that microfinance can deliver poverty reduction while not relying on ongoing subsidy the authors examine why this promise remains unmet for most institutions using a data set with unusually high quality financial information on 124 institutions in 49 countries they explore the patterns of profitability loan repayment and cost reduction the authors find that institutional design and orientation matter substantially lenders that do not use group based methods to overcome incentive problems experience weaker portfolio quality and lower profit rates when interest rates are raised substantially for these individual based lenders one key to achieving profitability is investing more heavily in staff costs a finding consistent with the economics of information but contrary to the conventional wisdom that profitability is largely a function of minimizing cost

economic crisis and policy choice the politics of adjustment in the third world the acute economic pressures of the 1980s have forced virtually all of latin america and africa and some countries in asia into painful austerity programs and difficult economic reforms scholars have intensively analyzed the economics of this situation but they have given much less attention to the political forces involved in this volume a number of eminent contributors analyze the politics of adjustment in thirteen countries and nineteen governments drawing comparisons not only across the full set of cases but also within clusters selected to clarify specific issues why do some governments respond promptly to signs of economic trouble while others muddle indecisively for years why do some confine their response to temporary macroeconomic measures while others adopt broader even sweeping programs of reform what leads some countries to experiment with heterodox approaches while most however reluctantly pursue orthodox courses why confronted with intense political protest have some governments persisted while others have altered or abandoned course the answers to these questions are political not economic and they are examined here by thomas m callaghy stephan haggard miles kahler robert r kauman joan m nelson and barbara stallings

institutions investment and growth new cross country and panel data evidence this paper outlines the alternative channels through which institutions affect growth and studies the empirical relationship between institutions investment and growth the empirical results indicate that i free market institutions have a positive effect on growth ii economic freedom affects growth through both a direct effect on total factor productivity and an indirect effect on investment iii political and civil liberties may stimulate investment iv an important interaction exists between freedom and human capital investment v milton friedman s conjectures on the relation between political and economic freedom are correct vi promoting economic freedom is an effective policy toward facilitating growth and other types of freedom jel o17 o40 p51

a multiscale analysis for carbon price drivers abstract this study proposes a multiscale analysis model to explore and identify the carbon price drivers at different timescales by introducing the latest multivariate empirical mode decomposition carbon price and its potential drivers are decomposed into several groups of simple modes with specific economic meanings the cointegration techniques error correction model and newey west estimator are combined to capture the carbon price drivers at similar timescales illustrated by the samples of the european union emissions trading system from 2009 to 2016 a few interesting results can be found that at the original data level among the three most important drivers of carbon price electricity price and stock index show positive impacts while coal price shows a negative impact at different timescales the effects of electricity and stock index appear comparatively earlier which drive carbon price from the short timescales and continue to strengthen however the impacts of coal oil and gas prices are lagging behind which respectively drive the carbon price at the medium and long timescales

economic effects of a carbon tax with a general equilibrium illustration for belgium abstract the feasibility and efficiency arguments of an international and a national carbon tax are analysed it is argued that an internationally organized carbon tax can be a good instrument for implementing an international co2 abatement strategy less efficient instruments like national co2 reduction emission objectives are more likely to be implemented a national carbon tax is analysed as a policy instrument to reach such an internationally agreed national co2 emission reduction objective this is done for belgium using a dynamic general equilibrium model

some general equilibrium effects of declining crude oil production in australia abstract crude oil production in australia is expected to decline significantly during the 1990s as a result net imports of crude oil could increase sharply over the period in this paper macroeconomic intersectoral and interindustry effects of a fall in domestic crude oil production are examined general equilibrium effects are estimated using orani a large multisectoral model of the australian economy by itself the reduction in crude oil production would require restraint in domestic expenditure and a decline in australia s real exchange rate in order to offset the expected rise in net crude oil imports furthermore a contraction of the domestic oil industry would result in a small decline in gross domestic produce together with an expansion of other import competing and export industries it is important to note that other changes in the energy sector such as the substantial expected increase in production of coal uranium and lng over the next decade have the potential to more than offset the macroeconomic effects of reduced oil production

the intra country distributional impact of policies to fight climate change a survey abstract in this paper we present a survey of distributional impact analysis of environmental policies with emphasis on taxes envisaged or implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ghg these policies usually aim at reducing ghg directly or indirectly however they can produce important changes in factor allocation relative prices in specific countries as well as on world markets when adopted by a large number of countries changes in welfare can be important for vulnerable groups of population in developing countries this survey reviews the evidence on the incidence of these policies in the process it shows that the computable general equilibrium cge microsimulation approach has not been fully exploited in the context

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

the transforming power of democracy regime type and the distribution of electricity theory on democracy and its consequences turns on how democracy influences behavior among politicians and the citizenry ultimately the literature seeks to determine who benefits under democratic rules this is our concern posed in a context that allows us to address a classic question does democracy favor large but diffuse segments of society over small but concentrated interests we employ sectoral electricity consumption data for a panel of 733 country years to examine democracy s impact on the distribution of electricity across three sectors that represent distinct political interests industry agriculture and residential consumers we find that in poorer countries democratization produces significant increases in the residential share of electricity relative to industry suggesting sectors with less per capita financial clout but a stronger voice in elections benefit under democracy unlike the large literatures on democracy s impact on the amounts of publicly provided goods our results are among the first on the distribution of those goods

privatisation discontent and utility reform in latin america abstract privatisation faces strong and increasingly popular opposition in latin america this paper uses individual data on social attitudes socioeconomic status and demographic information from three waves of latinobarometro surveys 1998 2000 and 2002 in 17 countries to study the role of privatisation of utilities and its distributional impact we find that disagreement with privatisation is most likely when the respondent is on a low to middle income and when it involves a high proportion of public services such as water and electricity this complements recent empirical research that points to distributional concerns in the implementation of privatisation in latin america particularly because of inadequate regulation of utilities

on the efficiency effects of subsidies in microfinance an empirical inquiry summary using an original database of rating agencies this paper gives empirical evidence on the impact of subsidy intensity on the efficiency of microfinance institutions mfis we find that subsidies have had a positive impact on efficiency in the sense that mfis that received subsidies are more efficient than those that do not however we find also that subsidization beyond a certain threshold renders the marginal effect on efficiency negative in our sample 26 of mfis receive levels of subsidization higher than that threshold which implies that a marginal cut on subsidy intensity would increase their efficiency

decarbonisation perspectives for the polish economy abstract in the coming decades the energy sector in poland will undergo a substantial transition towards low carbon usage which will have a predominant impact on the economy several modernization scenarios for energy policy are currently being discussed by the government and not yet concluded the main objective of this paper is to provide a tool that allows to simulate such scenarios and to show the impact of decarbonisation on the whole economy we propose an intertemporal hybrid general equilibrium modeling that incorporates energy technologies bottom up approach directly into a macroeconomic structure top down approach by accounting for wide adjustments in the economy while controlling for all major constraints the model gives a unique and detailed insight into the future shape of the energy sector and prospects of low carbon economy in poland our simulation results suggest that there are no free lunches no realistic energy mix allows to achieve sustainable positive economic growth when considerable emission reduction is to be achieved the price on co2 will exceed eur 100 for 30 emission reduction with respect to business as usual scenario gradual phase out of coal requires focusing on biomass technology the first best nuclear and wind power the second best

the institutional environment for infrastructure investment the empirical evidence that links political institutions to economic outcomes has grown dramatically in recent years however virtually all of this analysis is undertaken using data from the past three decades this paper extends this empirical framework by performing a two century long historical analysis of the determinants of infrastructure investment in a panel of over 100 countries the results demonstrate that political environments that limit the feasibility of policy change are an important determinant of investment in infrastructure copyright 2002 oxford university press

energy price shocks in the 1970s impact on industrialized economies abstract the energy price increases in the 1970s profoundly affected the major macroeconomic variables in the economies of the industrialized world this article measures the magnitude of the effect of the 1973 energy price shock on the economies of the usa canada the uk germany and france a short run model of aggregate supply is developed estimated and tested for overall performance and then calibrated to the experience of the 1973 1979 period a positive feature of the model is that it adopts a generalized multisector framework in which an energy sector is explicitly introduced in construction of the aggregate supply function the model also heeds labour market rigidities according to the model the 1973 leap in energy prices generated a major inflationary impulse in all of the countries studied the effects on labour productivity real wages capital utilization rate and energy consumption were also found to be considerable and to a large degree similar an interesting result concerning labour demand is that higher energy prices led to substitution of labour intensive methods of production for energy intensive ones raising the magnitude of the labour output ratio

a lower vat rate on electricity in portugal towards a cleaner environment better economic performance and less inequality abstract this article addresses the budgetary economic distributional and environmental impact of increasing the vat on electricity in portugal the analysis is carried out in the context of a new multi sector multi household dynamic general equilibrium model simulation results suggest that a permanent increase from 6 to 23 improves the public budget and albeit marginally co2 emissions but it leads to detrimental economic and distributional effects as the economy in portugal begins to recover after the great financial crisis and the budgetary situation becomes less constraining pressure is mounting for this vat increase to be reversed this mixed bag of results is an important element for the debate reverting to a lower vat is desirable as it would improve economic performance and have positive distributional effects the question is how to compensate for the loss of tax revenues to offset the adverse budgetary effects of a lower vat we consider several revenue raising strategies our simulation results suggest that an offsetting increase in either the general vat tax rate or the tax on petroleum products would yield more favorable effects from all relevant perspectives economic distributional and environmental while mostly keeping intact the budgetary benefits

political sources of growth a critical note on measurement this note critically reviews the research on the link between political systems and economic growth empirical attempts to capture this patent relationship have been met with mixed success we conclude that the political variables used in these studies i e democracy and political instability do not adequately reflect the investors problem we suggest that a political variable that encompasses all kinds of potential discretionary state interventions would be more effective in explaining cross country differences in economic growth

costs of reducing global carbon emissions po rojecting the costs of reducing carbon emissions is extremely important and exceedingly difficult such projections are an integral component of cost benefit analyses of alternative policies for example for the global climate policy analysis described by william nordhaus in this symposium moreover the nature of the climate change problem dictates that costs be incurred long before benefits can be realized or accurately measured consequently the political spotlight predictably focuses on the cost estimates whenever specific policy options are contemplated projecting the costs of reducing carbon emissions is difficult because many assumptions must be made about how the world will evolve over a very long period of time with and without a control program typically some of these assumptions like population growth are taken from outside sources other factors like the response of energy demand to changes in economic output or energy prices are the result of modeling the behavior of economic actors in response to exogenous stimuli considerable uncertainty exists about both the exogenous factors and the best way to model the behavioral responses the global nature of the climate change problem adds yet another complication to the cost analysis scientists have concluded that it is the global concentration of carbon in the atmosphere that influences climate moreover since carbon in the atmosphere gets mixed more or less uniformly emissions anywhere change concentrations everywhere but with a long lead time current global carbon emissions are estimated to be only about 4 percent of the stock of co2 in the atmosphere attributable to human activity and about

the diffusion of new technology and the market for an innovation this article shows that the diffusion of a capital embodied process innovation results from a pattern of decreasing incremental benefits and adoption costs for later adoptions strategic behavior is inessential to this finding we develop a method for comparing diffusion rates for different market structures in the capital equipment market we consider cases with market power on the seller s side of the market and on the buyers side of the market a case with no market power and the welfare optimal case we find that a joint venture adopts an innovation more slowly than other market regimes to protect existing capital investments and that the adoption rate is slower than is socially optimal a monopoly supplier on the other hand adopts at a rate faster than is socially optimal this result is usually also the case when there is no market power finally we show that the monopoly supplier accelerates adoptions faster than in the case where there is no market power but retards later adoptions market power thus makes a difference in diffusion rates and on which side of the market that power lies makes a considerable difference

exploring the determinants of best practice benchmarking in electricity network regulation abstract in this paper we use a best practice index constructed from the survey responses of regulators in 40 countries to explore the determinants of the methods used in electricity network regulation drawing from the incentive regulation and institutional economics literature we construct an empirical model to investigate the impact of industry size political and economic institutions on the degree of best practice regulation our results suggest that the existence and experience of an independent regulator is the most important institutional determinant of best practice regulation in addition small numbers of network companies act as a constraint on the use of advanced benchmarking methods finally regional effects are also important these findings lead us to question whether one best practice model is in fact applicable to countries with very different political and economic contexts

extending the internationalization process model increases and decreases of mne commitment in emerging economies the internationalization process model suggests that firms internationalize by building positions in foreign markets and networks following iterative cycles of learning and changes in commitment however as subsidiaries evolve commitments may be decreased as well as increased a phenomenon that has rarely been studied moreover it remains an open question why strategic intentions at the outset of an investment project differ from the actual operations established we address these questions by extending the model and combining it with mintzberg and waters framework of strategy formation specifically we suggest that commitment decisions correspond to statements of intended strategy while network positions correspond to realized strategies the processes of learning opportunity creation and trust building triggered by commitment decisions are however moderated by institutional influences that lead to divergences between realized and intended strategies we test propositions derived from this framework on a survey data set of subsidiaries of multinational enterprises in hungary lithuania and poland and find that institutional voids and institutional uncertainty affect subsidiary strategy implementation but in opposing directions under high institutional uncertainty investors prefer low commitment but flexible modes that enable later commitment increases whereas institutional voids increase up front information search and adaptation costs that reduce the likelihood of early post entry adjustments our analysis reinforces the need for more differentiated theoretical analyses of how institutions affect business strategies over time

what type of microfinance institutions supply savings products abstract recent evidence shows that the poor desperately need access to savings products but despite this general consensus microfinance institutions mfis offering savings products are still under studied using random effect probit estimation on a dataset of 722 mfis active over the 2005 2010 period we try to identify the characteristics of those that collect voluntary savings our results suggest that these mfis have received fewer subsidies than their credit only counterparts in other words subsidies would crowd out micro savings products suggesting that donors generate negative externalities on product diversification

a dynamic macroeconomic model for kuwait analysis of the medium term path abstract a dynamic cge model was constructed to analyse the medium term path of the kuwaiti economy the static part of the model is demand driven except for the oil sector it includes four labour markets with a constrained kuwaiti labour supply and imports that are treated as a part of composite commodities the dynamic part captures the medium term changes in the capital stock population size and government assets held abroad the reference path suggests that gdp consumption and exports will grow less than the projected population size with a rapid decrease in per capita foreign assets and a reduction in the household income per kuwaiti

energy demand in greece abstract this paper examines the impact of the two energy crises 1973 74 and 1978 79 on energy demand in greece initially some specific characteristics of energy consumption patterns before and after 1973 are presented and compared then demand parameters for hydroelectric energy liquid fuels and solid fuels were estimated using data for the period 1963 1984 and alternative econometric methods ols 2sls fiml to ensure that estimates do not vary across different estimation methods appropriate tests were used to examine whether a structural change in energy demand has occured following either of the two crises the results indicate that while consumption patterns may be different due to price and income changes after the crises the parameters of energy demand in greece have remained unchanged

applied general equilibrium models for energy studies a survey the importance of energy in any economy developed or underdeveloped became clear after the first oil shock in 1973 since then different studies were carried out to formulate energy policies and to study their impact on the economies since energy policy issues are related to various aspects of the economy such as price formation output determination income generation and distribution consumption behaviour government operation etc a coherent and systematic mechanism is required for such analysis by offering such a framework of analysis age models gained popularity among energy modellers in the 1980s the environmental issues have gained importance and the focus shifted towards curbing and containing emissions of environmentally unfriendly gases resulting from the use of energy age models because of their capability to capture the complexities of the economy have found relevance in analysing the economic impacts of controlling pollution and greenhouse gases this paper surveys the literature on such general equilibrium models as applied to energy studies and reports their special features evolution through time as well as their limitations

which microfinance institutions are becoming more cost effective with time evidence from a mixture model italian speakers tend to stress the second component of german morphologically complex words such as compounds and prefix verbs even if the first component is lexically stressed to improve their prosodic phrasing an automatic pronunciation teaching method was developed based on auditory feedback of prosodically corrected utterances in the learners own voices basically the method copies contours of f0 local speech rate and intensity from reference utterances of a german native speaker to the learners speech signals it also adds emphasis to the stress position in order to help the learners better recognise the correct pronunciation and identify their errors a perception test with german native speakers revealed that manipulated utterances significantly better reflect lexical stress than the corresponding original utterances thus two groups of italian learners of german were provided with different feedback during a training session one group with manipulated utterances in their individual voices and the other with correctly pronounced original utterances in the teacher s voice afterwards both groups produced the same sentences again and german native speakers judged the resulting utterances resynthesised stimuli especially with emphasised stress were found to be a more effective feedback than natural stimuli to learn the correct stress position since resynthesis was obtained without previous segmentation of the learners speech signals this technology could be effectively included in computer assisted language learning software

financing microfinance institutions subsidies or deposit mobilisation abstractaccording to conventional wisdom dependence on subsidies cannot achieve the double bottom lines of microfinance institutions mfis outreach and financial sustainability the application of market based principles to microfinancing such as deposit mobilisation has been long suggested as an answer to this problem this paper documents the following findings regarding this issue first deposit mobilisation crowds out subsidies second subsidies and deposit mobilisation reduce microcredit interest rates and allow mfis to reach poorer borrowers third subsidies and deposit mobilisation worsen financial sustainability fourth subsidies reduce repayment rates while deposit mobilisation has no impact on repayment overall the results suggest that neither subsidies nor deposit mobilisation solve the traditional problem of trade off between outreach and financial sustainability

the perils of polarization economic performance in the postcommunist world perhaps the most striking feature of the postcommunist transformation is the tremendous variation in rates of economic growth across countries to account for these differences this article develops an alternative to the j curve and partial reform views that currently dominate discussions of the politics of economic reform this approach treats economic performance as a political struggle between ex communist and anticommunist factions engaged in a war of attrition over economic and political resources using a pooled time series analysis of economic growth across twenty five postcommunist countries for the period 1990 98 it finds that political polarization between ex communist and anticommunist factions has had a devastating effect on economic growth where these competing factions have had roughly equal power and have struggled over the economic rules of the game as in bulgaria or ukraine economic growth has been slow in contrast where either ex communist or anticommunist factions have dominated the political scene as in estonia or uzbekistan economic performance has been much better in addition economic growth has followed the electoral calendar in polarized countries as elections approach and the odds of a change in economic policy increase growth rates have plummeted in polarized countries these findings have implications for studies of the postcommunist transformation the political business cycle and the politics of economic reform more generally

the effects of oil price shocks on asian exchange rates evidence from quantile regression analysis abstract this paper investigates the effects of oil price shocks on asian exchange rates we employ quantile regression analysis and allow for structural breaks and asymmetry our results indicate that positive and negative oil price shocks have asymmetrical effects on exchange rate returns that vary in significance size and sign throughout the distribution of exchange rate returns the impact of oil price shocks is also affected by market conditions bearish and bullish currency markets during bullish markets in domestic currencies at lower quantiles of currency movements in terms of u s dollar exchange rates rising oil prices cause further appreciation for indonesia korea the philippines and thailand currencies during bearish markets in the domestic currencies at higher quantiles of exchange rate movements in terms of u s dollar exchange rates rising falling oil price causes further currency depreciation for indonesia malaysia thus currencies respond differently to oil price shocks under extreme bullish or bearish currency market conditions and the impact of rising or falling oil prices on foreign exchange markets can vary by country and market conditions