revisiting structural change and market integration in late 19th century american capital markets this article draws on a variety of time series tools to more deeply explore issues surrounding the emergence of a national capital market in the late 19th century our focus is on the timing of the emergence of a national capital market rather than relying on the absolute narrowing of regional interest rate differentials which is a common approach in this literature we use gregory and hansen cointegration tests which allow us not only to test for cointegrating relations in the interest rate series but to identify unknown structural change dates as a byproduct we also use dynamic conditional correlations to determine the dates at which regional interest rate correlations began increasing our results suggest that structural changes are centred around the year 1900 which is consistent with sylla s argument that the lowering of capital requirements by the gold standard act of 1900 increased bank entry and competition and facilitated regional capital market convergence

direct estimation of synergy a new approach to the diversity performance debate this study examines the linkages between relatedness and synergy in the context of diversification among u s pharmaceutical firms for the period 1960 1980 rather than assume as in the entropy herfindahl and concentric indices of diversification that the levels of synergy generated by different related combinations of business units are identical we estimate synergy directly using a modified version of the concentric index in addition to estimating synergy using capital market performance of the firm as a whole we examine the effects of nondrug diversification on the innovative productivity of firms pharmaceutical divisions alone our two main findings are that production relatedness such as that between drugs and chemicals in fact did not imply synergy over the period of our study and that the patterns of synergy for different types of relatedness shifted over time with the industry life cycle

competitive tension the awareness motivation capability perspective this paper investigates competitive tension or the strain between a focal firm and a given rival that is likely to result in the firm taking action against the rival drawing on the awareness motivation capability perspective we show how perceived competitive tension as constructed from managers and industry stakeholders competitor assessments is influenced by the independent and interactive effects of three factors relative scale rival s attack volume and rival s capability to contest our results provide a new avenue for studying competitors and the relationship between competitor analysis and interfirm rivalry in science there is a steady state in which opposing forces hold each other in check until the build up of tension turns the static relationship into dynamic interplay the point when the steel cable snaps the steam chamber s pressure valve opens or one psychological force overwhelms the other in business practice a similar phenomenon exists when tension that one opponent imposes on another triggers rivalrous actions competitor analysis is central to strategy and organization research hitt ireland hoskisson 2005 porter 1980 previous research has explored a number of important issues including conjecture variation amit domowitz fershtman 1988 competitor identification porac thomas 1990 and blind spots zajac bazerman 1991 and has made advances in such areas as theoretical integration of competitor analysis and interfirm rivalry chen 1996 fundamental questions such as who a focal firm s competitors are and how much competition the firm faces from each rival have been implicitly or explicitly addressed by a variety

the role of multilateral institutions in international trade cooperation the world trade organization wfo lacks the power to directly enforce agreements it is therefore important to understand what role the wto can play to facilitate international cooperation and whether a multilateral institution can offer distinct advantages over a web of bilateral agreements this paper examines two potential benefits of a multilateral trade institution first verifying violations of the agreements and informing third parties thus facilitating multilateral reputation mechanisms second promoting multilateral trade negotiations rather than a web of bilateral negotiations the model suggests that a multilateral approach is particularly important when there are strong imbalances in bilateral trading relationships

collusion in multiproduct oligopoly games under a finite horizon applying recent results on finitely repeated games to oligopoly theory the author finds that there exists a class of finite horizon output games in which collusion can be achieved as a subgame perfect equilibrium trigger strategies prevent defection from the cooperative outcome by credibly threatening that the defector will be forced to exit the industry for the case of a multiproduct oligopoly it is shown that collusion in one market can be enforced by the threat of punishment in a second market if someone defects even though the two markets are structurally independent the firms make them strategically interdependent through their strategies copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

product innovation and firm growth evidence from the integrated circuit industry applied research on growth and innovation seems to suggest that successful innovations do not significantly enhance firm growth this paper tests the hypothesis that the level of observation at which applied research is typically conducted hampers identification of a significant association between innovation and sales growth rates exploiting a unique data set we find that product innovations commercialized in the immediate past positively affect the corporate revenue streams of semiconductor companies

assessing firm behavior in carve out markets evidence on the impact of carve out policy abstract airlines wanting to cooperatively set prices for their international air travel service must apply to the relevant authorities for antitrust immunity ati while cooperation may yield benefits it can also have anti competitive effects in markets where partners competed prior to receiving ati a carve out policy forbids ati partners from cooperating in markets policymakers believe will be most harmed by anti competitive effects we examine carve out policy applications to three ati partner pairings and find evidence more consistent with cooperative pricing in carve out markets in spite of the policy calling into question the effectiveness of the policy in achieving intended market outcomes

entry exit and performance in airline markets abstract data from the airline industry indicate that 1 entry generally is not induced by price levels substantially above the norm 2 entry reduces fares and increases output and exit increases fares and reduces output and 3 incumbents cut price and maintain output in response to entry and survivors increase both price and output in response to exit these findings cast doubt on the ability of entry to prevent or reverse price increases from anticompetitive mergers

diversification multi market contact and profitability this paper analyses the relationships between diversification multi market contact and industry profitability it focuses on the link between diversification and multi market contact to show that when diversification establishes or increases the extent to which firms meet in more than one market the effect of such multi market contact is to increase the possibility that collusion emerges as an evolutionary stable strategy as a result multi market contact may increase the potential for tacit collusion and so lead to higher profitability the effects of diversification and multi market contact on the price cost margin and the rate of return to capital are estimated using a specially constructed new database for uk manufacturing industry in 1979 this database provides information on the diversification and multi market contact of 418 firms across 134 manufacturing industries thus linking firm and industry level data the results show a clear positive effect of multi market contact on industry profitability

business cycles and bank regulations what happens to bank provisioning a more comprehensive look at 49 countries numerous researchers provide evidence that many banks intend to increase their loan loss provisioning llp when the economy is in a downward trend however the answer whether banks provide sufficient provisions when the economy is in an upturn trend remains unsolved furthermore provisioning must be influenced not only by business cycles and bank earnings but also by the regulatory system nevertheless empirical research on this issue has been scarce thus this study intends to answer two questions shown above the evidence shows that with steady growth in both the economy and bank earnings the bank management will tend to increase llp whereas with a buoyant economy but negative growth in bank earnings the management will exhibit an inclination to reduce llp as regards the influence of bank regulation on provisions the evidence shows that under certain circumstances banks make more provision based on regulatory considerations this explains why bank regulations regarding llp across countries

competitive advantage and collusive optima cost differences may often be important in real oligopolies if side payments are impossible the standard cartel objective total industry profits lacks plausibility when costs differ this essay considers plausible alternatives four different technologies for effecting collusion which are essentially identical when costs are equal define sets of possible profits axiomatic bargaining models are used to select unconstrained optima from among these possibilities simple functional forms are employed low cost firms with large shares in cournot equilibrium may have little to gain from collusion if collusion is effective low cost firms will have relatively low estimated conjectural variations

the dynamics of multimarket competition in exploration and exploitation activities prior studies of multimarket contact have investigated exploitation rather than exploration activities we contrast effects of multimarket contact on entry and exit dynamics in these two settin

trade costs and multimarket collusion contrary to conventional wisdom this article argues that trade liberalization may facilitate collusion and reduce welfare with the help of a duopoly model in which firms interact repeatedly in multiple markets we first show that if trade costs i e tariffs transport costs and discount factors are not too high efficient cartel agreements necessitate the cross hauling of goods as that entails lower deviation incentives in this setting we then demonstrate that reciprocal trade liberalization always raises total output when trade costs are within a range whose lower bound exceeds a threshold level but may reduce total output and thus be pro collusive when trade costs are below that threshold level

durables nondurables down payments and consumption excesses abstract we examine a model that generalizes the standard buffer stock model of saving to accommodate durables nondurables down payment requirements and adjustment costs in the durables market we find that nondurable consumption becomes more volatile relative to income as down payments decrease at the individual and at the aggregate level moreover for plausible parameter values the model can explain the excess smoothness and excess sensitivity observed in u s aggregate data the result follows from a gradual adjustment of consumption to permanent income shocks when agents attempt to spread out the burden of down payments over time compounded by slow adjustment due to transaction costs

inequality as a cause of environmental degradation abstract this paper advances two hypotheses first the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners who derive net benefits from the activity and the losers who bear net costs second greater inequalities of power and wealth lead all else equal to more environmental degradation

hypercompetition in a multimarket environment the role of strategic similarity and multimarket contact in competitive de escalation the effect of intra industry heterogeneity on hypercompetitive escalation and de escalation in a multimarket environment is examined the authors study two critical dimensions of intra industry heterogeneity strategic similarity which captures similarity in competitive orientation and multimarket contact which captures the degree of overlap between rivals in the multiple markets of the industry theory predicts that both variables influence the intensity of rivalry and competitive disruption the predictions in the literature about the effect of strategic similarity on the intensity of rivalry are mixed while strategic group theory proposes that strategic similarity may lead to lower rivalry other theories focusing on product differentiation the resource based view of the firm and hypercompetitive escalation predict that strategic similarity may actually increase rivalry those diametrically opposed propositions are captured as alternative hypotheses of the effect of strategic similarity with r

saving and liquidity constraints this paper is concerned with the theory of saving when consumers are not permitted to borrow and with the ability of such a theory to account for some of the stylized facts of saving behavior the models presented in the paper seem to account for important aspects of reality that are not explained by traditional life cycle models copyright 1991 by the econometric society

co2 taxes equity and the double dividend macroeconomic model simulations for austria abstract this paper investigates the impacts of co2 tax schemes on co2 emissions equity and macroeconomic indicators in austria with the macroeconomic model dynk aut our scenarios focus on non ets co2 emissions and comprise different tax rates and revenue recycling options lower labor taxes lower vat and lump sum payments the short term comparative scenario analysis indicates that co2 taxes without recycling lead to significant co2 emission reductions at moderate economic costs equity impacts on households depend on the indicator used but can be regressive without recycling most recycling schemes can achieve a double dividend i e emission reductions and increases in gdp lump sum payments are less efficient than reducing the vat or labor taxes equity impacts are progressive with lump sum payments rather proportional with lower vat and regressive with lower labor taxes a combination of recycling schemes and or a restriction of lump sum payments to lower income households can minimize the trade off between equity and efficiency our simulations suggest that well designed co2 tax schemes could be a crucial and socially acceptable element within a comprehensive policy package to achieve ghg emission targets for non ets sectors in austria

smoothing income in anticipation of future earnings abstract recent theory argues that concern about job security creates an incentive for managers to smooth earnings in consideration of both current and future relative performance we find support for this theory our evidence suggests that when current earnings are poor and expected future earnings are good managers borrow earnings from the future for use in the current period conversely when current earnings are good and expected future earnings are poor managers save current earnings for possible use in the future however sensitivity analysis indicates that we cannot rule out selection bias as a potential alternative explanation for our findings

is consumption growth consistent with intertemporal optimization evidence from the consumer expenditure survey in this paper we show that some of the predictions of models of consumer intertemporal optimization are in line with the patterns of nondurable expenditure observed in u s household level data we propose a flexible specification of preferences that allows multiple commodities and yields empirically tractable equations we estimate preference parameters using the only u s micro data set with complete consumption information we show that previous rejections can be explained by the simplifying assumptions made in previous studies we also show that results obtained using good consumption or aggregate data can be misleading

debt ownership structure and legal system an international analysis this paper is concerned with the ownership structure of corporate debt from an institutional perspective an attempt is made to identify the factors affecting bank debt use from an international sample of companies from austria germany japan belgium france italy holland spain portugal finland sweden and the usa the results show that bank debt depends both on factors specific to each company and on institutional features of each country more exactly it is found that bank loans are related to firm size to the quality and risk of the projects and to the collateral it is also found that a number of legal institutional factors are impacting on the source of firms debt such as creditor protection firm disclosure requirements and law enforcement

multimarket contact and collusive behavior traditional analyses of industrial behavior typically link the exercise of market power in an industry to internalfeatures such as demand conditions concentration and barriers to entry nevertheless some economists have remained concerned that external factors such as contact across markets may also play a significant role in determining the level of competitiveness in any particular industry in this article we examine the effect of multimarket contact on the degree of cooperation that firms can sustain in settings of repeated competition we isolate conditions under which multimarket contact facilitates collusion and show that these collusive gains are achieved through modes of behavior that have been identified in previous empirical studies of multimarketfirms

collusive conduct in duopolies multimarket contact and cross ownership in the mobile telephone industry the deregulation of the telecommunications industry has resulted in a variety of industry structures which have been created in hopes of increasing competition one example is the licensing of cellular telephone services in the united states where the fcc created duopolies in which two firms were granted licenses to compete in strictly defined product and geographic markets taking advantage of the unique regulatory environment we test to what degree duopolistic competition leads to competitive market outcomes we find that cross ownership and multimarket contact are important factors in explaining non competitive prices

capital adequacy ratio regulations and accounting choices in commercial banks abstract this study examines a commercial bank manager s incentives to reduce regulatory costs imposed when the bank s capital adequacy ratio falls below its regulatory minimum it also tests the general political sensitivity hypothesis that a manager seeks to reduce political costs incurred when revenue is unusually large tests of adjustments to the loan loss provision loan charge offs and securities gains and losses attempt to control for exogenous economic conditions and previous investing decisions results are consistent with hypotheses associating accounting adjustments with capital adequacy ratio guidelines but fail to support the political sensitivity hypothesis

overcoming incentive constraints by linking decisions consider a bayesian collective decision problem in which the preferences of agents are private information we provide a general demonstration that the utility costs associated with incentive constraints become negligible when the decision problem is linked with a large number of independent copies of itself this is established by defining a mechanism in which agents must budget their representations of preferences so that the frequency of preferences across problems mirrors the underlying distribution of preferences and then arguing that agents incentives are to satisfy their budget by being as truthful as possible we also show that all equilibria of the linking mechanisms converge to the target utility levels the mechanisms do not require transferable utility or interpersonal comparisons of utility and are immune to manipulations by coalitions

local appeal and competition in multiple geographic markets evidence from california retail banking between 1900 and 1990 this article assesses the effect of identity related local appeal when firms compete in multiple geographic markets and investigates how local appeal and multimarket advantages collectively determine the competitive strength of an organization compared with numerous studies that identified the benefits for being a chain system recent researches on organizational identity highlight the social sanctions and discount when an organizational form does not fully conform to the norms and expectations at a given market empirical evidence from california retail banks in the 20th century demonstrates that organizational identity can be an important source of competitive strength even when considerable scale and scope advantages exist however when customers are not locally oriented an organization s identity based appeal becomes less meaningful such a finding suggests the scope condition for organizational identity research

optimal cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring abstract there exist optimal symmetric equilibria in the green porter model 4 8 having an elementary intertemporal structure such an equilibrium is described entirely by two subsets of price space and two quantities the only production levels used by firms in any contingency the central technique employed in the analysis is the reduction of the repeated game to a family of static games

symmetric research joint ventures cooperative substitutes and complements we introduce the concepts of cooperative substitutes and complements and use them to explain when all firms in a research joint venture will choose equal levels of r d we show that the second order conditions for a symmetric optimum take a particularly simple form ruling out both excessive cooperative substitutability and excessive cooperative complementarity and nesting conditions already derived in the literature finally we apply our results to the comparison between cooperative and non cooperative r d and show in an important special case that asymmetric outcomes are only optimal for a very limited range of parameter values

competition in a multimarket environment the case of market exit studies of competition typically have two underlying assumptions that competition occurs within the boundaries of industries or markets and that all firms in a market or industry are affected equally by competitive pressures the concept of multipoint competition challenges both assumptions multipoint theory addresses how different levels of contact between firms across multiple markets affect competition in individual markets its main argument is that high levels of contact between firms across markets will induce mutual forbearance causing multipoint competitors to refrain from aggressively attacking each other the restraint stems from the fact that high levels of intermarket contact enable a firm to respond to an aggressive action by a multipoint rival in markets other than the one in which the action takes place that possibility raises the potential costs of aggressive moves and serves as a credible deterrent especially if a firm can respond in several markets in addition multipoint competiti

commitment in utility regulation a model of reputation and policy applications abstract this paper builds a dynamic model of utility regulation where a government cannot commit to a time inconsistent policy of not expropriating investment by allowing the government s type to change over time i explore how reputation concerns may generate partial commitment restricting attention to equilibria that are strongly renegotiation proof i show that there is a unique perfect bayesian equilibrium this contains episodes of investment and good behaviour followed by periods of expropriation and non investment i then apply the model to consider how the power of the incentive scheme and decentralization may influence the properties of this equilibrium in the case of the power of incentives the model suggests that price caps may worsen commitment in developing countries but not in developed ones similarly the model suggests that decentralisation is likely to have a significant effect on commitment but that this effect will depend on the general ability of the government to commit overall we conclude that the effect of such policies on commitment will be different across countries depending on the institutional environment

the effect of risk based capital requirements on profit efficiency in banking the purpose of this paper is twofold to show how to measure profit efficiency in banking using a newly developed technique and to use that technique to determine the effect of risk based capital requirements on the profit performance of us banks the measure of profit efficiency used captures deviations from profit maximization arising from technical inefficiency caused by a lack of managerial oversight and allocative inefficiency which is caused by managers choosing a nonoptimal mix of inputs and outputs a leverage ratio constraint and a risk weighted capital ratio constraint are explicitly included in the model which allows identification of the effect on profits of those constraints the techniques are applied to random samples of us banks for 1990 1992 and 1994 the results indicate that allocative inefficiency is a larger source of profit loss than technical inefficiency and that the risk based capital standards have a significant effect on bank allocative efficiency

on interdependent supergames multimarket contact concavity and collusion abstract following bernheim and whinston 1990 this paper addresses the effects of multimarket contact on firms ability to collude real world imperfections tend to make firms objective function strictly concave and market supergames interdependent firms payoffs in each market depend on how they are doing in others then multimarket contact always facilitates collusion it may even make collusion sustainable in all markets when otherwise it would not be sustainable in any the effects of conglomeration are discussed multigame contact is shown to facilitate cooperation in supergames other than oligopolies as long as agents objective function is submodular in material payoffs journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d43 l13 l21

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

multimarket contact economies of scope and firm performance we integrate the efficiency and competitive effects of product market scope choice into a comprehensive model of economic performance and empirically test the model in the context of the u s airli

hubs and high fares dominance and market power in the u s airline industry this article estimates the importance of route and airport dominance in determining the degree of market power exercised by an airline the results indicate that an airline s share of passengers on a route and at the endpoint airports significantly influences its ability to mark up price above cost the high markups of a dominant airline however do not create much of an umbrella effect from which carriers with smaller operations in the same markets can benefit the article suggests a number of possible explanations for this asymmetry

multimarket contact competition and pricing in banking abstract in this paper we assess the impact of multimarket contact of banks on their market power by means of a simultaneous equation model in which the divergence of price from marginal cost is a function of multimarket linkages the model is estimated using aggregate data from the italian regions for the years 1997 2009 our results show that multimarket contact is positively and significantly correlated to the market power index and is also connected to both home and non home market concentration the evidence is robust to changes in model specification and multimarket contact measures and supports the idea that firms which have a greater amount of contact are more likely to collude

collusion versus differential efficiency testing alternative hypotheses the predictions of collusion and efficiency based static equilibrium explanations of interindustry profitability differences are formally developed and tested using appropriate econometric techniques with intraindustry data on seventy u s internal revenue service minor manufacturing industries in 1963 and 1972 none of the explanations has much explanatory power the 1963 data are consistent with collusion based models while the 1972 data are inconsistent with all non null hypotheses considered patterns of profitability are sharply different in the two years in complex ways apparently unrelated to cyclical forces or the phase ii price controls implications of these results are discussed copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

price discrimination or uniform pricing which colludes more abstract conventional wisdom attributes different economic outcomes of uniform pricing and price discrimination to the heterogeneity in market conditions or market participants such as differences in demand elasticity or production costs we offer a new explanation for the observed differences that relates to behavioral aspects rather than demand or supply side effects in particular in a symmetric bertrand duopoly laboratory experiment for which theory predicts no differences between the two pricing regimes we find that tacit price collusion is systematically higher under price discrimination than under uniform pricing

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

living by the golden rule multimarket contact in the u s airline industry this paper examines empirically the effects of multimarket contact on pricing in the u s airline industry the analysis of the time series and cross sectional variability of airline fares in the 1000 largest domestic city pair routes reveals the presence of statistically significant and quantitatively important multimarket effects fares are higher in city pair markets served by carriers with extensive interroute contacts these findings are consistent with the claims of industry experts that airlines live by the golden rule i e that they refrain from initiating aggressive pricing actions in a given route for fear of what their competitors might do in other jointly contested routes during his testimony mr steven b elkins senior director of marketing systems development for northwest airlines cited an example in which northwest lowered fares on night flights that were flying with empty seats in a number of routes from minneapolis and upper midwest cities to various west coast cities he said that continental airlines swiftly responded by cutting prices in important northwest markets mr elkins s memo advises northwest pricing analysts we will live by the golden rule in his testimony he explained that the golden rule in that context was that i did not want my pricing analyst initiating actions in another carrier s market like chicago for fear of what that other carrier might do to retaliate wall street journal october 9 1990 p b1

managing valuable knowledge in weak ip protection countries although knowledge assets provide multinational corporations mncs with competitive advantages in foreign markets it can be difficult for firms to protect their knowledge in foreign countries especially countries with weak intellectual property ip protection building on and extending the knowledge management institutional theory and expatriate literatures this article explores whether home country expatriates can substitute for weak ip protection and drive an increase in more and more valuable knowledge transfers to foreign operations located in weak ip protection countries because of their ties to headquarters knowledge of parent firm assets priorities and routines and activities in local operations i argue that home country expatriates can transform the local operation to offer higher protection for parent firm knowledge in weak ip countries in ways that local managers cannot the results from a comprehensive panel of us multinationals suggest that home country expatriates can substitute for weak ip protection but that this effect is contingent on the manufacturing and knowledge capabilities of foreign operations for higher value parent firm knowledge transfers overall this article extends our understanding of the global management and protection of knowledge by mncs by exploring how organizational practices can buffer country level institutional deficiencies for firm knowledge

collusion at the extensive margin abstract we augment the multi market collusion model of bernheim and whinston 1990 by allowing for firm entry into and exit from individual markets we show that this gives rise to a new mechanism by which a cartel can sustain a collusive agreement collusion at the extensive margin whereby firms collude by avoiding entry into each other s markets or territories we characterise parameter values that sustain this type of collusion and identify the assumptions where this collusion is more likely to hold than its intensive margin counterpart specifically it is demonstrated that where duopoly competition is fierce collusion at the extensive margin is always sustainable finally we provide a theoretic foundation for the use of a proportional response enforcement mechanism

adjustment costs and the sequencing of trade liberalisation a common feature of trade agreements between countries is that the integration of markets proceeds in stages this paper examin es conceptually the role played by adjustment costs in determining the best way to structure an agreement between two countries when there are multiple sectors to be liberalised adjustment costs to liberalisatio n of industries might influence the timing of liberalisatio n with the analysis bearing similarity to why tariff reductions tend to be phased in over time when two industries have no spillover eff ects trade agreements with sequential liberalisation will be less costly to sustain however if the liberalisation of one in dustry influences permanently the flow of benefits from liberalising the other industry simultaneous liberalisation may be easier to sustain

uncertainties in macroeconomic assessments of low carbon transition pathways the case of the european iron and steel industry abstract the climate targets agreed in paris 2015 render deep decarbonization of energy and emission intensive industries crucial policy makers are interested in the macroeconomic consequences of such decarbonization pathways and often rely on integrated modelling studies however the underlying modelling assumptions and uncertainties often remain unquestioned or invisible although they may govern the models results for the case of a zero process emission pathway of the european iron and steel industry we demonstrate how different assumptions on different layers of uncertainty influence results we show that effects strongly depend on technology choice prevailing macroeconomic states as well as regional characteristics the underlying socio economic development and the climate policy trajectory seem to play a less important role particularly we find that the choice of model i e which macroeconomic theory strand it arises from influences the sign and magnitude of macroeconomic effects and thus should be well understood in terms of appropriate interpretations by both modelers and policy makers we emphasize that model assumptions should be transparent results sought as to be robust across a range of possible contexts and presented together with the conditions under which they are valid to that end co design and co production in research would support its relevance and applicability

the distribution of material footprints in germany this study investigates the within country heterogeneity of material footprints implied by households consumption in germany material footprints are defined as the amount of biomass minerals and fossil fuels extracted to produce the goods that households consume combining input output data with households consumption expenditures from the german sample survey of income and expenditure evs we present the first comprehensive study on the distribution of material footprints among households highlighting hot spots of unsustainable consumption patterns by household groups households in the quartile with the highest consumption expenditures have material footprints three times as large as those in the quartile with the lowest expenditures results of a microeconomic model of household s consumption behaviour estimated on the evs data suggest that price based instruments can reduce material footprints of luxury consumption such as leisure and private transport without imposing large burdens on low affluence households the material footprints caused by energy consumption do not react sensitively to price changes suggesting that non price policies are more effective to reduce them

the carbon footprint of european households and income distribution abstract this paper calculates the carbon footprint of private consumption in the eu27 by five groups of household income using a fully fledged macroeconomic input output model covering 59 industries and five groups of household income for the eu27 due to macroeconomic feedback mechanisms this methodology besides induced intermediate demand also quantifies i private consumption induced in the other household groups ii impacts on other endogenous final demand components and iii negative feedback effects due to output price effects of household demand the carbon footprint is calculated separately for the consumption vector of each of the five income groups the simulation results yield a non linear income elasticity of direct and indirect emissions at each income level the value of the direct footprint income elasticity decreases from 1 32 first quintile to 0 69 fourth quintile the value of the indirect footprint income elasticity is always below unity and decreases from 0 89 to 0 62 the results in general reveal a relative decoupling effect the share of the top income group in income 45 is much larger than its share in the carbon footprint 37 and vice versa for the bottom income group 6 in income and 8 in footprint

competition in european aviation pricing policy and market structure the purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of liberal bilateral agreements on some european air routes in terms of price competition and market structure the author proposes a model that explains firms behavior and shows that after the liberalization firms exploit their cost advantages and differentiate their products more but market structure still depends on access to airport facilities and other ancillary services controlled by the flag carriers these results differ from american evidence in that the author finds that the effect of airport presence on prices through lower costs more than offsets the effect through higher perceived quality copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd