asset transformation and the challenges to servitize a utility business model abstract the traditional energy utility business model is under pressure and energy services are expected to play an important role for the energy transition experts and scholars argue that utilities need to innovate their business models and transform from commodity suppliers to service providers the transition from a product oriented capital intensive business model based on tangible assets towards a service oriented expense intensive business model based on intangible assets may present great managerial and organizational challenges little research exists about such transitions for capital intensive commodity providers and particularly energy utilities where the challenges to servitize are expected to be greatest this qualitative paper explores the barriers to servitization within selected swiss and german utility companies through a series of interviews with utility managers one of them is asset transformation the shift from tangible to intangible assets as major input factor for the value proposition which is proposed as a driver for the complexity of business model transitions managers need to carefully manage those challenges and find ways to operate both new service and established utility business models aside policy makers can support the transition of utilities through more favorable regulatory frameworks for energy services and by supporting the exchange of knowledge in the industry

can we explain inflation persistence in a way that is consistent with the microevidence on nominal rigidity this paper adopts the impulse response methodology to under stand inflation persistence it has often been argued that existing models of pricing fail to explain the persistence that we observe we adopt a common general framework which allows for an explicit modelling of the distribution of contract lengths and for different types of price setting we also evaluate how far the theories are consistent with recent evidence on price and wage rigidity we find that allowing for a distribution of durations can take us a long way to solving the puzzle of inflation persistence but not all the way yet

the quantitative analytics of the basic neomonetarist model this paper constructs a dynamic macroeconomic model with less than perfect price flexibility which has a classical side consistent with real business cycle theory augmented by investment adjustment costs increasing returns to scale and a new flexible formalization of imperfect competition something akin to the classical dichotomy is justified by a mode of approximation appropriate for a model in which one state variable adjusts quickly while another state variable adjusts slowly even with investment adjustment costs monetary expansions are found to raise the real interest rate the determinants of real rigidity and the macroeconomic rate of price adjustment are investigated copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

real rigidities and the non neutrality of money rigidities in real prices are not sufficient to create rigidities in nominal prices and real effects of nominal shocks and by themselves small frictions in nominal adjustment such as costs of changing prices create only small non neutralities but this paper shows that substantial nominal rigidity can arise from a combination of real rigidities and small nominal frictions the paper shows the connection between real and nominal rigidity given the presence of nominal frictions both in general and for two specific sources of real rigidity one arising from goods market imperfections and the other from labour market imperfections

on the competitiveness of grid tied residential photovoltaic generation systems in pakistan panacea or paradox abstract pakistan is experiencing a slow uptake of grid tied residential pv generation systems gtrpvgs despite of steep fall in pv module price higher solar irradiation and enactment of net metering by the government this slow uptake is attributed to the lack of awareness of four major stakeholders namely the house hold utility financier and the policy maker this paper presents a coherent framework that addresses the concerns of the stakeholders using four country specific parameters i e the local solar irradiation pv system costs borrowing and discount rates and electricity tariffs to compute npv irr payback period and levelized cost of electricity lcoe assuming net metering we model the economic payoffs on self consumption and sale of pv electricity at varying net metering rates system sizes load to generation profiles borrowing and discount rates findings suggest economic competitiveness of pv electricity with an irr and payback averaging around 28 and 5 years respectively moreover the lcoe is also found to be significantly lower than the retail rates the findings inform the household and financier on the economic yield utility on efficient tariff setting and government on sustainable policy design finally we argue that gtrpvgs bears huge potential for pakistan suffering from energy deficit unsustainable cost transmission losses and environmental hazards

slow recoveries any role for corporate leverage abstract this paper examines whether financial conditions of the non financial corporate sector can explain why the recovery from recessions in the united states is slower since the mid 1980s leverage by the corporate sector has increased significantly since the financial deregulation of the mid 1980s empirical evidence shows that slow recoveries are associated with a significant drop in the growth rates of investment and bank loans and with a surge in the growth rates of corporate bonds in an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a financial accelerator counterfactual experiments based on estimates of two samples 1965 1983 and 1984 2007 show that the non financial corporate indebtedness affects only marginally the speed of the recovery in the two samples

empirical evidence on inflation expectations in the new keynesian phillips curve abstract we review the main identification strategies and empirical evidence on the role of expectations in the new keynesian phillips curve paying particular attention to the issue of weak identi

executive incentives and the horizon problem an empirical investigation abstract this paper investigates the hypothesis that ceos in their final years of office manage discretionary investment expenditures to improve short term earnings performance we examine the behavior of r d expenditures for a sample of firms in industries that have significant ongoing r d activities the results suggest that ceos spend less on r d during their final years in office however we find the reductions in r d expenditures are mitigated through ceo stock ownership there is no evidence that the reduced r d expenditures are associated with either poor firm performance or reductions in investment expenditures that are capitalized for accounting purposes

risk and potential insurance in europe abstract this paper argues that risk is related to long run volatility of income and therefore stabilization policies should target permanent fluctuations we show that such fluctuations can in principle be insured away by a multinational fiscal federation which smooths income cross sectionally and has no ex ante permanent redistribution effects we propose a measure of risk and a measure of potential insurable risk we estimate these measures for the european countries and compare results with the us results show that potential insurable income risk in europe is about 45 most countries will benefit from an average income tax of 10 but gains differ widely across countries

distribution network prices and solar pv resolving rate instability and wealth transfers through demand tariffs 1 in 4 detached households in southeast queensland have installed rooftop solar pv amongst the highest take up rates in the world electricity distribution network capacity is primarily driven by periodic demand and household load generally peaks in the early evening whereas solar pv production peaks during the middle of the day and thus a mismatch exists compounding matters is the fact that the structure of the regulated two part network tariff is dominated by a flat rate variable charge in this article interval meter data at the customer switchboard circuit level confirms that solar households use only slightly less peak capacity than non solar households and that non trivial cross subsidies are rapidly emerging a tariff model demonstrates that a peak capacity based demand tariff is a more efficient cost reflective and equitable pricing structure that improves the stability of tariffs given a rate of return regulatory constraint

nominal price rigidity money supply endogeneity and business cycles abstract this paper investigates the ability of nominal price rigidity to explain the co movement of inflation with the cyclical component of output observed in the post war u s data a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed with the introduction of monopolistic competition and nominal price rigidity in a standard real business cycle model allowing for an endogenous money supply rule it is then demonstrated that sticky price models can explain the observed associations between movements in inflation and output much better than flexible price models this result depends little on whether money supply is assumed to be endogenous or not

economic performance and policies for grid connected residential solar photovoltaic systems in brazil abstract we analyze the economic competitiveness of grid connected distributed solar photovoltaic generation through small scale rooftop installations in five brazilian state capitals the locations represent a comprehensive set of the two essential parameters for the economic viability of pv solar irradiation and local electricity tariffs levelized electricity costs lec for pv generation and net present values npv for a specific pv system are presented the analysis comprises three different interest rate scenarios reflecting different conditions for capital acquisition to finance the generators subsidized mature market and country specific risk adjusted interest in the npv analysis revenue flow is modeled by the sale of pv electricity at current residential tariffs assuming net metering using subsidized interest rates the analysis shows that solar pv electricity is already competitive in brazil while in the country specific risk adjusted rate the declining but still high capital costs of pv make it economically unfeasible at a mature market interest rate pv competitiveness is largely dependent on the residential tariff economic competitiveness in this scenario is given for locations with high residential tariffs we demonstrate the high potential of distributed generation with photovoltaic installations in brazil and show that under certain conditions grid connected pv can be economically competitive in a developing country

an analysis of the use of accounting and market measures of performance in executive compensation contracts prior research has provided useful insights into the structure of compensation plans and their incentive effects however one important limitation of these studies is the virtual absence of any cross sectional analyses of the attributes of compensation contracts 2 this absence is related in part to the problems associated with controlling for other factors that affect compensation that is compensation contracts are

staggered price setting translog preferences and endogenous persistence abstract this paper generates persistent real effects of a monetary disturbance in the context of staggered price setters the model combines two related and reinforcing features a translog demand structure and a particular input output production structure these features offer a rationale why a firm when computing its own optimal contract price is influenced by the prices set in other overlapping contracts practically the two features interact in a positive manner and provide a way to generate significant endogenous persistence

sticky price models of the business cycle can the contract multiplier solve the persistence problem we construct a quantitative equilibrium model with firms setting prices in a staggered fashion and use it to ask whether monetary shocks can generate business cycle fluctuations these fluctuations include persistent movements in output along with the other defining features of business cycles like volatile investment and smooth consumption we assume that prices are exogenously sticky for a short time persistent output fluctuations require endogenous price stickiness in the sense that firms choose not to change prices much when they can do so we find that for a wide range of parameter values the amount of endogenous stickiness is small thus we find that in a standard quantitative model staggered price setting alone does not generate business cycle fluctuations

price elasticities and demand side real rigidities in micro data and in macro models abstract high degrees of demand side real rigidities are able to generate the large monetary non neutrality found in aggregate data this paper provides micro based evidence on the key parameters governing this rigidity using european homescan data we find strong evidence for demand side real rigidity which is however significantly lower than that normally assumed in macro models in a menu cost model calibrated to our estimates we show that these estimates are associated with reasonable values for production side parameters but they are not able to generate the degree of monetary non neutrality observed in macro data

chaos in power pakistan s electricity crisis abstract pakistan is facing a severe electricity crisis due to a persistent and widening gap between demand and available system generating capacity the worsening of power shortages has become a major political issue reflecting the hardships for individuals and businesses it threatens to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of government and to further stress the social fabric of the country the power crisis did not emerge suddenly it is the direct result of imprudent and reckless energy policies over the last three decades these policies have impeded the development of cheap and abundant domestic energy sources they have also resulted in very inefficient fuel mix choices compromising energy and economic security pakistan s energy bankruptcy is ultimately due to massive institutional and governance failure this paper analyzes the problems confronting pakistan s electricity sector and identifies the key elements of a potential policy response to address the country s severe power crisis

sectoral price rigidity and aggregate dynamics abstract this paper studies the business cycle implications of sectoral heterogeneity in price rigidity using a highly disaggregated multi sector model the model is estimated by the simulated method of moments using a mix of aggregate and sectoral u s data the frequencies of price changes implied by our estimates are consistent with those reported in micro based studies we show that heterogeneity in price rigidity is the primary factor explaining the heterogeneity in the responses of sectoral output and inflation to a monetary policy shock we also find that ignoring sectoral heterogeneity in price rigidity leads to the mismeasurement of the relative importance of aggregate and sector specific shocks in aggregate and sectoral fluctuations

how to compare taylor and calvo contracts a comment on michael kiley in a recent paper michael kiley argued that the calvo model of price adjustment is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from the taylor model what we show is that kiley along with most other people are choosing the wrong parameterization to compare the two models in effect they are comparing the average age of calvo contracts with the completed length of taylor contracts when we compare the average age of taylor contracts with the average of calvo the differences become muchsmaller and easier to understand we also show that autocorrelation of output can be larger in a taylor economy than in the age equivalent calvo economy

estimating new keynesian phillips curves a full information maximum likelihood approach abstract the new keynesian phillips curve has recently become an important ingredient in monetary policy models however using limited information methods the empirical support for the new keynesian phillips curve appear to be mixed this paper argues by means of monte carlo simulations with a simple new keynesian sticky price model that single equations methods e g gmm are likely to produce imprecise and biased estimates then it is argued that estimating the model with full information maximum likelihood fiml is a useful way of obtaining better estimates finally a version of the model used in the monte carlo simulations is estimated on u s data with fiml and although the pure forward looking new keynesian phillips curve is rejected a version with both forward and backward looking components provides a reasonable approximation of u s inflation dynamics

valuing executive stock options with endogenous departure abstract executive stock options differ from exchange traded options because of vesting and portability restrictions executive departure from the firm forces early exercise reducing the value of executive options current methodology calculates the option value by multiplying the black scholes option price by the departure probability this ignores the possibility that executive departure is less likely when stock price is high and thus is correlated with the stock price we show that this correlation implies a substantial increase in option values a similar situation occurs in performance based option packages where the actual number of options granted depends on stock performance

investigating inflation persistence across monetary regimes under inflation targeting estimates of the indexation parameter in hybrid new keynesian phillips curves are either equal to zero or very low in the united kingdom canada sweden and new zealand analogous results hold for the euro area under the european monetary union and for switzerland under the new monetary regime under stable regimes with clearly defined nominal anchors inflation appears to be purely forward looking these results question the notion that the intrinsic inflation persistence found in post wwii u s data is structural in the sense of lucas carnegie rochester conference series on public policy 1 1976 19 46 and suggest that hardwiring inflation persistence in macroeconomic models is potentially misleading

squaring the sunny circle on balancing distributive justice of power grid costs and incentives for solar prosumers abstract solar prosumers are about to revolutionize the power sector utilities are challenged in recovering the costs of distribution grids as parts of their revenue basis decreases through self consumption adjusting the grid tariff sets off a reinforcing feedback loop that increases the attractiveness of solar investments but also leads to a distribution effect between solar prosumers and conventional consumers the question is how to recover distribution grid costs equitable without hampering the diffusion of solar power can the two criteria be fulfilled at the same time or is do we aim for squaring a circle to address this question i present a system dynamics simulation model designed to understand the interactions and assess these competing goals the occurring distribution effect under the volumetric grid tariff with net purchase and sale appears to be rather limited simulation experiments reveal that grid tariff designs strongly influence investments for solar power a capacity tariff can reduce deviations from the cost causation principle of solar prosumers and incentivizes investments in decentralized storage solutions to reduce peak demand nevertheless also the capacity tariff causes a distribution effect

inflation forecasts and monetary policy proposals for inflation targeting as a strategy for monetary policy leave open the important operational question of how to determine whether current policies are consistent with the long run inflation target an interesting possibility is that the central bank might target current private sector forecasts of inflation either those made explicitly by professional forecasters or those implicit in asset prices we address the issue of existence and uniqueness of rational expectations equilibria when the central bank uses private sector forecasts as a guide to policy actions in a dynamic model which incorporates both sluggish price adjustment and shocks to aggregate demand and aggregate supply we show that strict targeting of inflation forecasts is typically inconsistent with the existence of rational expectations equilibrium and that policies approximating strict inflation forecast targeting are likely to have undesirable properties we also show that economies with more general forecast based policy rules are particularly susceptible to indeterminacy of rational expectations equilibria we conclude that although private sector forecasts may contain information useful to the central bank ultimately the monetary authorities must rely on an explicit structural model of the economy to guide their policy decisions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a small estimated euro area model with rational expectations and nominal rigidities abstract we estimate a small model of the euro area to be used for evaluating alternative monetary policy strategies starting with the relationship between output and inflation we compare the fit of the nominal wage contracting model due to taylor j political econom 88 1980 1 and the relative real wage contracting model proposed by buiter and jewitt the manchester school 49 1981 211 reprinted in buiter ed macroeconomic theory and stabilization policy manchester university press manchester 1989 and estimated with u s data by fuhrer and moore quart j econom 110 1995 127 while fuhrer and moore reject nominal contracts in favor of relative contracts which induce more inflation persistence we find that both specifications fit euro area data reasonably well when considering france germany and italy separately however we find that nominal contracts fit german data better while the relative contracting model does well with respect to formerly high inflation countries such as france and italy we close the model by estimating an aggregate demand relationship and investigate the implications of nominal versus relative contracts for the inflation output variability tradeoff when monetary policy follows taylor s rule

interpreting inflation persistence comments on the conference on quantitative evidence on price determination the past decade has seen important advances in the analysis of price setting behavior most notably in my view a great deal of effort has been directed at the development of models that on the one hand have an explicit behavioral interpretation the models are clear about who sets prices what they seek to achieve when choosing prices and to what constraints they are subject when making the decision and at the same time can be parameterized so as to be compared in detail to inflation data this has allowed these models to be incorporated into complete dsge models of business fluctuations and of the monetary transmission mechanism that can be econometrically estimated this raises the prospect that it should soon be possible to base policy analysis on models that are both quantitatively realistic and plausibly invariant under the kinds of changes in policy that the analyst may wish to contemplate some argue that these two desiderata remain in considerable tension with one another that one cannot insist upon optimizing foundations at least under the current state of knowledge without substantial sacrifice of quantitative realism it is somewhat unfair however to present the quest for a model with optimizing foundations as a retreat from full insistence upon empirical realism given the fact that models with clear behavioral interpretations can be checked against a wider range of types of empirical evidence which should ultimately allow greater confidence in the realism of the specification that can withstand such scrutiny for example the exhaustive recent study of evidence on price setting in the euro area undertaken by the eurosystem s inflation persistence network compares alternative models in the light of three distinct

the sensitivity of ceo wealth to equity risk an analysis of the magnitude and determinants abstract to control risk related incentive problems equity holders are expected to manage both the convexity and slope of the relation between firm performance and managers wealth i find stock options but not common stockholdings significantly increase the sensitivity of ceos wealth to equity risk cross sectionally this sensitivity is positively related to firms investment opportunities this result is consistent with managers receiving incentives to invest in risky projects when the potential loss from underinvestment in valuable risk increasing projects is greatest firms stock return volatility is positively related to the convexity provided to managers suggesting convex incentive schemes influence investing and financing decisions

macroeconomic effects of regulation and deregulation in goods and labor markets product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution it typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects to study these effects we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions monopolistic competition in the goods market which determines the size of rents and bargaining in the labor market which determines the distribution of rents product market regulation determines entry costs and the degree of competition labor market regulation determines the bargaining power of workers we show the effects of deregulation we then use our results to discuss the political economy of deregulation and recent macroeconomic evolutions in europe

prices output and hours an empirical analysis based on a sticky price model abstract i show that a simple sticky price model based on rotemberg 1982 is consistent with a variety of facts concerning the correlation of prices hours and output it is consistent with the negative correlation between forecastable movements in prices and output as well as the smaller negative correlation between forecastable movements in prices and hours it is also consistent with the positive correlations of unexpected movements in prices output and hours these patterns are harder to reconcile with the flexible price version of the model in particular they require that money respond differently to forecastable and to unforecastable real shocks

the exercise and valuation of executive stock options abstract in theory hedging restrictions faced by managers make executive stock options more difficult to value than ordinary options because they imply that exercise policies of managers depend on their preferences and endowments using data on option exercises from 40 firms this paper shows that a simple extension of the ordinary american option model which introduces random exogenous exercise and forfeiture predicts actual exercise times and payoffs just as well as an elaborate utility maximizing model that explicitly accounts for the nontransferability of options the simpler model could therefore be more useful than the preference based model for valuing executive options in practice

new evidence on inflation persistence and price stickiness in the euro area implications for macro modeling this paper evaluates new evidence on price setting practices and inflation persistence in the euro area with respect to its implications for macro modeling it argues that several of the most commonly used assumptions in micro founded macro models are seriously challenged by the new findings jel e31 e52

price stickiness and sectoral inflation persistence additional evidence in this paper using u s as well as french sectoral data and indicators of price rigidity we reexamine the lack of relation between price stickiness and inflation persistence this has recently been put forward by bils and klenow 2004 as evidence against time dependent price setting models we obtain that when filtering out sector specific shocks along the lines of boivin giannoni and mihov 2009 and allowing for an alternative assumption on the marginal cost process the case against the time dependent calvo model is substantially weakened

solar energy markets economics and policies abstract solar energy has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years due to both technological improvements resulting in cost reductions and government policies supportive of renewable energy development and utilization this study analyzes the technical economic and policy aspects of solar energy development and deployment while the cost of solar energy has declined rapidly in the recent past it still remains much higher than the cost of conventional energy technologies like other renewable energy technologies solar energy benefits from fiscal and regulatory incentives including tax credits and exemptions feed in tariff preferential interest rates renewable portfolio standards and voluntary green power programs in many countries the emerging carbon credit markets are expected to provide additional incentives to solar energy deployment however the scale of incentives provided by the existing carbon market instruments such as the clean development mechanism of the kyoto protocol is limited despite the huge technical potential the development and large scale deployment of solar energy technologies world wide still has to overcome a number of technical financial regulatory and institutional barriers the continuation of policy supports might be necessary for several decades to maintain and enhance the growth of solar energy in both developed and developing countries

the doping effect of italian feed in tariffs on the pv market abstract in less than six years italy has become one of the leading markets for pv power plants and one of the countries in the world with the largest number of installations and installed peak power such a quick and large growth is due to a series of feed in tariff schemes that have been uncapped until 2012 as a matter of fact any size or any number of pv power plants could be installed during a period of three years since the feed in tariffs are not paid by national taxes but are charged on the electricity bills italian energy users are now due to pay each year a surcharge of 9 billion euros on their energy bills this paper aims at discussing this development by highlighting the benefits but also some significant drawbacks that the application of uncontrolled feed in tariffs has produced

the impact of the degrees of operating and financial leverage on systematic risk of common stock the capital asset pricing model postulates that the equilibrium return on any risky security is equal to the sum of the risk free rate of return and a risk premium measured by the product of the market price of risk and the security s systematic risk in the capital asset pricing model beta as an index of systematic risk is the only security specific parameter that affects the equilibrium return on a risky security

underemployment equilibrium with rational expectations in this paper i use some recent work in the microeconomics of imperfect information to construct a macro model the microeconomic theory suggests that atomistically competitive firms face kinked demand curves in this model there is a range of aggregate equilibria consistent with correct information i then show that individual firms can face a free rider problem in trying to move from one equilibrium to another by changing the price level monetary policy is not subject to this problem even if the policy is fully anticipated

are ceos really paid like bureaucrats a common view is that there is little correlation between firm performance and ceo pay using a new fifteen year panel data set of ceos in the largest publicly traded u s companies we document a strong relationship between firm performance and ceo compensation this relationship is generated almost entirely by changes in the value of ceo holdings of stock and stock options in addition we show that both the level of ceo compensation and the sensitivity of compensation to firm performance have risen dramatically since 1980 largely because of increases in stock option grants

pricing models a bayesian dsge approach for the u s economy this paper compares and estimates three pricing mechanisms in the context of a small dsge model of the u s economy we interpret our results as favoring the pricing mechanism presented in wolman 1999 wolman model over the new keynesian model with indexation gali and gertler 1999 smets and wouters 2004a and the sticky information model of mankiw and reis 2002 the key factor that explains the performance of the wolman model is that the data reject the key assumption of the new keynesian model that the firm s probability of price change is constant over time and independent of the contract s vintage our results also show that incorporating indexation in the new keynesian model represents a poor expedient in matching the autocorrelation function of the inflation process over the last 20 years

imperfect credibility and inflation persistence in this paper we formulate a dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered nominal contracts in which households and rms use optimal ltering to disentangle persistent and transitory shifts in the monetary policy rule the calibrated model accounts quite well for the dynamics of output and insation during the volcker disinsation and implies a sacri ce ratio very close to the estimated value our approach indicates that insation persistence and substantial costs of disinsation can be generated in an optimizing agent framework without relaxing the assumption of rational expectations or relying on arbitrary modi cations to the aggregate supply relation jel classi cation e31 e32 e52

contract length heterogeneity and the persistence of monetary shocks in a dynamic generalized taylor economy we develop the generalized taylor economy gte in which there are many sectors with overlapping contracts of different lengths in economies with the same average contract length monetary shocks will be more persistent when longer contracts are present using the bils klenow distribution of contract lengths we find that the corresponding gte tracks the u s data well when we choose a gte with the same distribution of completed contract lengths as the calvo the economies behave in a similar manner

the cross sectional distribution of price stickiness implied by aggregate data we provide evidence on three mechanisms that can reconcile frequent individual price changes with sluggish aggregate price dynamics to that end we estimate a semistructural model that can extract

generalised taylor and generalised calvo price and wage setting micro evidence with macro implications the generalised calvo and the generalised taylor models of price and wage setting are unlike the standard calvo and taylor counterparts exactly consistent with the distribution of durations observed in the data using price and wage micro data from a major euro area economy france we develop calibrated versions of these models we assess the consequences for monetary policy transmission by embedding these calibrated models in a standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model the generalised taylor model is found to help rationalise the hump shaped and persistent response of inflation without resorting to the counterfactual assumption of systematic wage and price indexation

european inflation dynamics abstract we provide evidence on the fit of the new phillips curve npc for the euro area over the period 1970 1998 and use it as a tool to compare the characteristics of european inflation dynamics with those observed in the u s we also analyze the factors underlying inflation inertia by examining the cyclical behavior of marginal costs as well as that of its two main components namely labor productivity and real wages some of the findings can be summarized as follows a the npc fits euro area data very well possibly better than u s data b the degree of price stickiness implied by the estimates is substantial but in line with survey evidence and u s estimates c inflation dynamics in the euro area appear to have a stronger forward looking component i e less inertia than in the u s d labor market frictions as manifested in the behavior of the wage markup appear to have played a key role in shaping the behavior of marginal costs and consequently inflation in europe

proxies for the corporate marginal tax rate abstract this paper focuses on how best to measure the corporate marginal tax rate which is an important input into financial analysis of the cost of capital financing policy corporate hedging and corporate reorganizations the results indicate that the simulated tax rate used by shevlin 1990 and graham 1996 although difficult to calculate is the best available proxy for the true marginal tax rate if the simulated rate is unavailable an easy to calculate trichotomous variable or the statutory marginal tax rate which captures the progressivity in the tax schedule are reasonable alternatives better than most commonly used tax variables

aggregation and optimization with state dependent pricing the literature on the aggregation of s s policies has ignored the impact of aggregate behavior on the individual s optimization problem in the case of pricing the feedback effects are clear not only do pricing strategies determine the evolution of the price level but the evolution of the price level also influences the optimal pricing strategies in this paper we provide a consistent treatment of aggregation and optimization we use this model to analyze three issues in the menu cost pricing literature the relationship between strategic complementarity and the real effects of money the relationship between the variance of the money supply and the correlation between money and output and the relationship between the cost of price adjustment and the size of price adjustment questions concerning the dynamics of aggregate variables such as prices employment investment and consumption represent the core of business cycle analysis one striking feature of these variables is the radical difference between properties of these aggregates and the nature of the individual behavior that underlies them the behavior of a firm s prices investment and employment and the behavior of an individual s consumption all involve frictional elements that lead to discrete adjustment at the microeconomic level heterogeneity among individuals however tends to smooth the behavior of the corresponding aggregates in recent years a large body of research has developed to examine the manner in which microeconomic frictions influence aggregate dynamics one of the centerpieces of this research has been the s s model developed by arrow harris and marschak 1951 the key element of this model is the state dependence of individual decisions agents act when a state variable crosses some critical threshold which balances the cost and benefits of adjustment the aggregate implications of this form of microeconomic behavior have been analyzed by blinder 1981 caplin 1985 and mosser 1991 in the context of inventory dynamics by caplin and spulber 1987 caballero and engel 1991 1993 and caplin and leahy 1991 in the context of prices and by bertola and caballero 1990 caballero 1993 and eberly 1994 in the context of con sumer durables one of the most limiting aspects of these models is that they focus exclusively on the impact that microeconomic inertia has on aggregate dynamics they 1we would like to thank michael harrison loannis karatzas john leahy sr andreu mas colell a co editor and four anonymous referees for helpful discussions and comments and the national science foundation and the sloan foundation for financial support

corporate performance and managerial remuneration an empirical analysis abstract economic theories of efficient compensation predict a positive relationship between executive pay and corporate performance and yet efforts to document this relationship have been largely unsuccessful in this paper we argue that previous cross sectional studies have omitted important variables which seriously bias their results using data that focus on individual executives over time we find that executive compensation is strongly positively related to corporate performance as measured by shareholder return and growth in firm sales the results are robust to the stock market performance measure utilized

optimal price setting and inflation inertia in a rational expectations model abstract this paper presents and estimates a new keynesian monetary model for the us economy it proposes possible solutions to two problems in this model class the lack of inflation inertia and persistence in versions of these models that insist on rigorous microfoundations and rational expectations and the small contribution of technology shocks to business cycles price setting takes the form of optimal two part pricing policies formulated under conditions of upward sloping firm specific marginal cost curves furthermore this form of price setting applies not only to prices and wages but also to user costs of capital in this setting past inflation becomes a key determinant of current inflation even though price setting is entirely forward looking technology is modeled as a random walk with technology growth shocks that follow a highly persistent process the model is estimated by bayesian methods and performs significantly better than a bayesian var it generates inertial and persistent inflation and technology shocks account for a large share of business cycle variation

inflation dynamics marginal cost and the output gap evidence from three countries recent studies have argued that the new keynesian phillips curve calvo pricing model is empirically valid provided that real marginal cost rather than detrended output is used as the variable driving inflation one interpretation of this result is that real marginal cost is not closely related to the output gap and so models for monetary policy need to include labormarket rigidities an alternative interpretation is that marginal cost and the output gap are closely related but that the latter needs to be measured in a manner consistent with dynamic general equilibrium models to date there has been little econometric investigation of this alternative interpretation this paper provides estimates of the new keynesian phillips curve for the u s the u k and australia using theory consistent estimates of the output gap using this theory to measure the output gap leads to a considerable improvement in the empirical performance of output gapbased phillips curves

microfoundations of macroeconomic price adjustment survey evidence from swedish firms this paper presents the results of a survey on price setting behavior conducted on a large random sample of swedish firms the median firm adjusts the price once a year state and time dependent price setting are about equally important the four highest ranked explanations for price rigidity in this study implicit contracts sluggish costs explicit contracts and the kinked demand curve have close correspondents among the top five places in two similar large scale surveys carried out in the uk and the u s the results point to the importance of the long term relations with customers for the rigidity of prices the estimated share of sales that go to regular customers is more than 80

the macroeconomics of trend inflation most macroeconomic models for monetary policy analysis are approximated around a zero inflation steady state but most central banks target an inflation rate of about 2 percent many economists have recently proposed even higher inflation targets to reduce the incidence of the zero lower bound constraint on monetary policy in this survey we show that the conduct of monetary policy should be analyzed by appropriately accounting for the positive trend inflation targeted by policymakers we first review empirical research on the evolution and dynamics of u s trend inflation and some proposed new measures to assess the volatility and persistence of trend based inflation gaps we then construct a generalized new keynesian model that accounts for a positive trend inflation in this model an increase in trend inflation is associated with a more volatile and unstable economy and tends to destabilize inflation expectations this analysis offers a note of caution regarding recent proposals to address the existing zero lower bound problem by raising the long run inflation target jel e12 e31 e32 e52 e58

state dependent pricing and the general equilibrium dynamics of money and output economists have long suggested that nominal product prices are changed infrequently because of fixed costs in such a setting optimal price adjustment should depend on the state of the economy yet while widely discussed statedependent pricing has proved difficult to incorporate into macroeconomic models this paper develops a new tractable theoretical state dependent pricing framework we use it to study how optimal pricing depends on the persistence of monetary shocks the elasticities of labor supply and goods demand and the interest sensitivity of money demand

identifying the influences of nominal and real rigidities in aggregate price setting behavior we formulate a generalized price setting framework that incorporates staggered contracts of multiple durations and that enables us to directly identify the influences of nominal vs real rigidities we estimate this framework using macroeconomic data for germany 1975 1998 and for the u s 1983 2003 in each case we find that the data are well characterized by nominal contracts with an average duration of about two to three quarters we also find that new contracts exhibit very low sensitivity to marginal cost corresponding to a relatively high degree of real rigidity finally our results indicate that backward looking price setting behavior such as indexation to lagged inflation is not needed in explaining the aggregate data at least in an environment with a stable monetary policy regime and a transparent and credible inflation objective

renewable energy sources in power generation in pakistan abstract pakistan as an underdeveloped and populous country requires an uninterrupted source of energy to keep its development on track and provide its citizens with a reasonable standard of living conversely the country is unable to fulfil its domestic energy requirements and is undergoing an acute energy crisis electricity is a sector that has suffered the most from the energy shortages the gap between demand and supply is met through blackouts and at times the country plunges into darkness for more than 10 12 h a day this crisis that the country is currently facing did not occur overnight the root cause of this debacle goes back in history and can be attributed to decades of mismanagement poor planning and negligence this article provides a comprehensive overview of the electricity sector in pakistan and the issues it is beset with in addition an analysis of the energy policies that the country has announced over the years as well as the impact that they have had on the electricity sector is presented it is concluded that pakistan s existing energy mix is not sustainable due to the excessive reliance on imported fossil fuels rising electricity generation cost and increase in power generation related emissions this paper develops a roadmap and proposes the energy sources that can fulfil the country s rising energy requirements whilst being sustainable at the same time the roadmap identifies and highlights the primary tasks that the country must undertake to reach its vision of meeting its energy needs and integrating renewable energy sources in the power generation the recommendations of this paper will provide guidelines to the decision makers and policymakers with an insight on how the energy technology and resource development should be carried out which sources should be given priority and how the issues should be resolved both in the short and long term

ceo stock based compensation an empirical analysis of incentive intensity relative mix and economic determinants the use of stock based compensation for u s ceos has increased significantly throughout the 1990s research interest in particular on stock option compensation has similarly increased yet contradictory results create questions about the theoretical underpinnings therefore we revisit the controversy surrounding stock option awards and we further the understanding of restricted stock grants which have escaped similar research focus using a recent data set we obtain convincing empirical support for most theoretical predictions about stock option awards we also find that restricted stock due to its linear payoffs is relatively inefficient in inducing risk averse ceos to accept risky value increasing investment projects copyright 2000 by university of chicago press