efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading we consider bargaining problems between one buyer and one seller for a single object the seller s valuation and the buyer s valuation for the object are assumed to be independent random variables and each individual s valuation is unknown to the other we characterize the set of allocation mechanisms that are bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational and show the general impossibility of ex post efficient mechanisms without outside subsidies for a wide class of problems we show how to compute mechanisms that maximize expected total gains from trade and mechanisms that can maximize a broker s expected profit journal of economic literature classification number 026

marriage market divorce legislation and household labor supply this paper provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of the marriage market and divorce legislation on household labor supply in our approach the sex ratio in the marriage market and the rules governing divorce are examples of distribution factors these factors are defined as variables that affect the household members bargaining position but not preferences or the joint budget set we extend the collective labor supply model developed by chiappori to allow for distribution factors we show that our model imposes new restrictions on the labor supply functions and eases the identification of individual preferences and the intrahousehold decision process the model is estimated using psid data for the year 1988 our results do not reject the restrictions imposed by the model also the sex ratio and divorce laws deemed favorable to women are found to affect labor supply behavior and the decision process in the directions predicted by the theory and to have sizable effects

rational household labor supply traditionally household behavior is derived from the maximization of a unique utility function in this paper we propose an alternative approach in which the household is modeled as a two member collectivity taking pareto efficient decisions the consequences of this assumption are analyzed in a three good model in which only total consumption and each member s labor supply are observable if the agents are assumed egoistic i e they are only concerned with their own leisure and consumption it is possible to derive falsifiable conditions upon household labor supplies from both a parametric and nonparametric viewpoint if alternatively agents are altruistic restrictions obtain in the nonparametric context useful interpretation stems from the comparison with the characterization of aggregate demand for a private good economy

spousal conflict and divorce the optimal balance between keeping marriages intact despite spousal conflict and allowing for divorce is a subject of policy debate in the united states to explore the trade offs i construct a structural model with information asymmetries which may generate inefficient outcomes parameters are estimated using data from the national survey of families and households i find that eliminating separation periods decreases the conflict rate by 9 2 of its baseline level and increases the divorce rate by 4 0 perfect child support enforcement decreases the frequency of conflict and divorce by 2 7 and 21 2 respectively and reduces the incidence of inefficient divorces

marriage divorce and asymmetric information we use data on people s valuations of options outside marriage and beliefs about spouses options the data demonstrate that in some couples one spouse would be happier and the other spouse unhappier outside of some marriages suggesting that bargaining takes place and that spouses have private information we estimate a bargaining model with interdependent utility that quantifies the resulting inefficiencies our results show that people forgo some utility in order to make their spouses better off and in doing so offset much of the inefficiency generated by their imperfect knowledge thus we find evidence of asymmetric information and interdependent utility in marriage

financial integration capital mobility and income convergence recent studies have found that capital moves uphill from poor to rich countries and brings little or no growth dividend when it does flow into poor economies we show that europe does not conform to this paradigm in the european experience of financial integration capital has flown from rich to poor countries and such inflows have been associated with significant acceleration of income convergence analysing broader samples of countries we find that downhill capital flows tend to be observed above certain thresholds in institutional quality and financial integration but europe remains different even when allowing for such threshold effects and its experience is similar to that of interstate flows within the united states our findings are consistent with the notion that financial diversification reduces countries incentives to save in order to self insure against specific shocks abdul abiad daniel leigh and ashoka mody

did unilateral divorce laws raise divorce rates a reconciliation and new results application of the coase theorem to marital bargaining suggests that shifting from a consent divorce regime to no fault unilateral divorce laws should not affect divorce rates each iteration of the empirical literature examining the evolution of divorce rates across us states has yielded different conclusions about the effects of divorce law liberalization i show that these results reflect a failure to jointly consider both the political endogeneity of these divorce laws and the dynamic response of divorce rates to a shock to the political regime taking explicit account of the dynamic response of divorce rates to the policy shock i find that liberalized divorce laws caused a discernible rise in divorce rates for about a decade but that this increase was substantially reversed over the next decade that said this increase explains very little of the rise in the divorce rate over the past half century both administrative data on the flow of new divorces and measures of the stock of divorcees from the census support this conclusion these results are suggestive of spouses bargaining within marriage with an eye to their partner s divorce threat

accounting for asymmetric price responses and underlying energy demand trends in oecd industrial energy demand abstract this paper explores the way technical progress and improvements in energy efficiency are captured when modelling oecd industrial energy demand the industrial sectors of the developed world involve a number of different practices and processes utilising a range of different technologies consequently given the derived demand nature of energy it is vital when modelling industrial energy demand that the impact of technical progress is appropriately captured however the energy economics literature does not give a clear guide on how this can be achieved one strand suggests that technical progress is endogenous via asymmetric price responses whereas another strand suggests that it is exogenous more recently it has been suggested that potentially there is a role for both endogenous technical progress and exogenous technical progress and consequently the general model should be specified accordingly this paper therefore attempts to model oecd industrial energy demand using annual time series data over the period 1962 2010 for 15 oecd countries using the structural time series model framework the general specifications allow for both asymmetric price responses for technical progress to impact endogenously and an underlying energy demand trend for technical progress and other factors to impact exogenously but in a non linear way the results show that almost all of the preferred models for oecd industrial energy demand incorporate both a stochastic underlying energy demand trend and asymmetric price responses this gives estimated long run income elasticities in the range of 0 34 to 0 96 estimated long run price maximum elasticities in the range of 0 06 to 1 22 estimated long run price recovery elasticities in the range of 0 00 to 0 27 and estimated long run price cut elasticities in the range of 0 00 to 0 18 furthermore the analysis suggests that when modelling industrial energy demand there is a place for endogenous technical progress and an exogenous underlying energy demand trend consequently it is argued that any modelling strategy should start by including both and only imposed restrictions if accepted by the data

annual miles drive used car prices this paper investigates whether the net benefits from owning a vehicle proxied by annual miles driven explain the price declines observed over a vehicle s life we first model the household decision on how much to drive each of its vehicles then we empirically establish that variation in household annual miles across brands explains observed price declines furthermore the effect of vehicle age on annual miles decisions and consequently on market value depends on household characteristics and the composition of the vehicle stock owned

primary energy demand in japan an empirical analysis of long term trends and future co2 emissions abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy demand gnp and the real energy price in japan using data covering 1887 2001 it is found that if an underlying energy demand trend is appropriately incorporated the resulting econometric model produces a long run income elasticity of about unity and a long run price elasticity of about 0 2 the estimated model is utilised to forecast energy consumption and co 2 emissions up to 2012 it is shown that given current economic conditions and policies there is considerable uncertainty about whether japan will be able to meet its kyoto target by reducing co 2 emissions in 2008 2012 to the 1990 level it is shown that this uncertainty depends on the strength of the economy and leaves the japanese government with a difficult policy dilemma if there is a resurgence in growth to something near the annual average growth rate since the early 1980s a considerable effort will be required in order to meet its kyoto target requiring not only using the kyoto mechanisms but also additional tougher domestic policies and measures such as emissions capping r d incentives and education for energy conservation in addition to a pricing and tax policy

country size and the medium term growth process some cross country evidence abstract this paper summarizes the findings of an empirical study of the influence of country size and remoteness on the sources of growth and nature of the growth process in industrializing countries various hypotheses were investigated in the study in the context of a model of disequilibrium growth which allows for technological spillover between sectors and between countries the model was estimated for a large sample of developing economies for 1973 1985 the stability of the model s parameters for various dimensions of size and remoteness was tested evidence of significant structural breaks permitted inferences to be drawn about how the nature and extent of technological spillovers are influenced by country size this paper reports on the results and implications of the empirical tests

evaluation of the subjective probabilities of survival in the health and retirement study in the health and retirement study respondents were asked about the chances they would live to 75 or to 85 we analyze these responses to determine if they behave like probabilities of survival if their averages are close to average probabilities in the population and if they have correlations with other variables that are similar to correlations with actual mortality outcomes we find that generally they do behave like probabilities and that they do aggregate to population probabilities most remarkable however is that they covary with other variables in the same way actual outcomes vary with the variables for example respondents with higher socioeconomic status give higher probabilities of survival whereas respondents who smoke give lower probabilities we conclude that these measures of subjective probabilities have great potential use in models of intertemporal decision making under uncertainty

small states small problems income growth and volatility in small states abstract small states have attracted a large amount of research in this paper we test whether small states are any different from other states in terms of their income growth and volatility outcomes we find that controlling for location small states have higher per capita gdp than other states this income advantage is largely due to a productivity advantage constituting evidence against the idea that small states suffer from an inability to exploit increasing returns to scale small states also do not have different per capita growth rates than other states small states do have greater volatility of annual growth rates which is in part due to their greater volatility of terms of trade shocks this terms of trade based volatility is in turn due to small states greater openness their greater openness on balance has however a positive net payoff for growth the one differential policy measure that might be relevant for small states is to further open up to international capital markets in order to better diversify risk but the benefits of even that are still unresolved in the literature we conclude that small states are no different from large states and so should receive the same policy advice that large states do

transfers among divorced couples evidence and interpretation we analyze divorce settlements made by a cohort of whites who graduated from high school in 1972 the effects of spouses incomes on the divorce transfer are estimated and used to simulate the welfare effects of divorce on husbands wives and children under alternative assumptions about marriage contracts and the ability of a couple to continue coordinating resources in the aftermath of divorce we find a positive negative relationship between divorce transfers and the growth of husband s wife s earnings during marriage the estimated expenditure on children in the divorce state is only half the accustomed level during marriage

the retirement consumption puzzle a marital bargaining approach abstract evidence from several countries reveals a substantial drop in household consumption around the age of retirement that is difficult to explain with life cycle models using food consumption data from more than 550 households from the panel study of income dynamics for the years 1979 1986 and 1989 1992 we find that married couple households decrease their expenditures on both food consumed at home and away from home by about 9 following the retirement of the male household head no significant decrease in consumption is found for single households either in a sample of males or a pooled sample of single males and females these results are consistent with a model of marital bargaining in which wives prefer to save more than their husbands do to support an expected longer retirement period and relative control over household decisions is affected by control over market income the pattern of the consumption decline which is increasing in the age gap between husband and wife lends further support to this interpretation

bargaining and distribution in marriage the standard economic model of the family is a common preference model that assumes that a family maximizes a single utility function and implies that family behavior is independent of which individuals receive income or control resources in recent years this model has been challenged by game theoretic models of marriage that do not impose pooling and are therefore consistent with empirical evidence that income controlled by husbands and wives does have different effects on family behavior in this paper the authors review a number of simple bargaining models and relevant empirical evidence and discuss their implications for distribution within marriage

expectations life expectancy and economic behavior this study analyzes responses to a questionnaire designed to elicit subjective expectations and probabilities of survival people do extrapolate past improvements in longevity when they determine their subjective horizons and they are fully aware of levels of and movements within todays life tables the subjective distribution has greater variance than its actuarial counterpart and the subjective variance decreases with age the implications of these findings for optimal social security for the construction of annuities for the analysis of savings behavior and for evaluating lifetime earnings are discussed the data were collected in the united states from a sample of 411 white male economists and a sample of 363 white males in a midwestern smsa excerpt

cleaning in the shadow of the law bargaining marital investment and the impact of divorce law on husbands intrahousehold work abstractprevious literature has established that unilateral divorce laws may reduce women s household work and overall marital investment if unilateral divorce has differential costs by gender it may impact household work by gender through bargaining channels however little research has examined how divorce laws affect men s levels and share of household production to examine this i use data on matched couples from the panel study of income dynamics and exploit time variation in state divorce laws i find that unilateral divorce laws lead to a decrease in marital investment as measured by mens and women s household work the evidence also supports a bargaining response to divorce laws as fathers in states without joint custody laws engage in a significantly higher share of household work under unilateral divorce than those in states with joint custody laws consistent with a higher cost of marital dissolution among fathers who stand to lose custody of their children

gender differences in education in a dynamic household bargaining model in this paper we explore the issue of gender differences in education in the context of a two sex overlapping generations model where men and women of each generation bargain over consumpt ion number of children and investment in education of their children conditional on gender and parents are altruistic toward their children we show that the difference in the education levels of boys and girls implied by our model is smaller than the one that would result from a pure investment model also we show that as long as the time cost associated with bearing children is positive women bear the entire time cost associated with child rearing we use our model to estimate the cost to a woman of having a child the estimate we obtain using cross country data suggests that such cost amounts to about 5 of the working lifetime of a woman

cohabitation marriage and divorce in a model of match quality the objective of this research is to further our understanding of how and why individuals enter and leave coresidential relationships we develop and estimate an economic model of nonmarital cohabitation marriage and divorce that is consistent with current data on the formation and dissolution of relationships jovanovic s journal of political economy 87 1979 972 90 theoretical matching model is extended to help explain household formation and dissolution behavior implications of the model reveal what factors influence the decision to start a relationship what form this relationship will take and the relative stability of the various types of unions the structural parameters of the model are estimated using longitudinal data from a sample of female high school seniors from the united states new numerical methods are developed to reduce computational costs associated with estimation the empirical results have interesting interpretations given the structural model they show that a significant cause of cohabitation is the need to learn about potential partners and to hedge against future bad shocks the estimated parameters are used to conduct several comparative dynamic experiments for example we show that policy experiments changing the cost of divorce have little effect on relationship choices

the special problems of small countries abstract the paper describes the characteristics of small economies and discusses the advantages and disadvantages arising from these characteristics it is shown that small economies by their very nature tend to be less diversified and to have relatively high foreign trade risks in spite of these drawbacks a number of small economies have achieved high rates of economic growth some reasons given to explain this success are the relatively small size of the agricultural sector concentration on labor intensive exports and sociological and psychological factors such as the ability to respond in a flexible manner to changes the paper ends with a discussion on whether the drawbacks of small size can be overcome by economic integration it is argued that the experience in this regard is disappointing

do husbands and wives pool their resources evidence from the united kingdom child benefit common preference models of family behavior imply income pooling a restriction on family demand functions such that only the sum of husband s income and wife s income affects the allocation of goods and time testing the pooling hypothesis is difficult because most family income sources are not exogenous to the allocations being analyzed in this paper we present an alternative test based on a natural experiment a policy change in the united kingdom that transferred a substantial child allowance to wives in the late 1970s using family expenditure survey data we find strong evidence that a shift toward greater expenditures on women s clothing and children s clothing relative to men s clothing coincided with this income redistribution

saving risk sharing and preferences for risk saving decisions are made jointly by household members who generally earn risky incomes consequently to interpret saving patterns it is crucial to analyze the relationship between intrahousehold risk sharing and intertemporal choices to that end in this paper the household is characterized as a group of agents with possibly heterogeneous preferences making efficient decisions two results are obtained first it is shown that risk sharing can increase the amount saved by the household second i find that an increase in risk aversion and prudence of an individual member can reduce household risk aversion and prudence these results are consistent with the empirical evidence collected using the hrs

multiple dimensions of private information evidence from the long term care insurance market we demonstrate the existence of multiple dimensions of private information in the long term care insurance market two types of people purchase insurance individuals with private information that they are high risk and individuals with private information that they have strong taste for insurance ex post the former are higher risk than insurance companies expect while the latter are lower risk in aggregate those with more insurance are not higher risk our results demonstrate that insurance markets may suffer from asymmetric information even absent a positive correlation between insurance coverage and risk occurrence the results also suggest a general test for asymmetric information

strategic delay in bargaining with two sided uncertainty the role of strategic delay is analyzed in an infinite horizon alternating offer model of bargaining a buyer and seller are engaged in the trade of a single object both bargainers have private information about their own preferences and are impatient in that delaying agreement is costly an equilibrium is constructed in which the bargainers signal the strength of their bargaining positions by delaying prior to making an offer a bargainer expecting large gains from trade is more impatient than one expecting small gains and hence makes concessions earlier on trade occurs whever gains from trade exist but due to the private information only after costly delay panmunjom korea upi the american general and the north korean general glared at each other across the table and the only sound was the wind howling across the barren hills outside their hut maj gen james b knapp negotiator for the united nations command unc was waiting for maj gen ri choonsun of the democratic people s republic of north korea to propose a recess they sat there arms folded for 42 hours not a word finally gen ri got up walked out and drove away evening bulletin philadelphia 11 april 1969

why are stabilizations delayed when a stabilization has significant distributional implications e g tax increases to eliminate a large budget deficit socioeconomic groups may attempt to shift the burden of stabilization onto other groups the process leading to stabilization becomes a war of attrition each group attempting to wait the others out and stabilization occurring only when one group concedes and bears a disproportionate share of the burden the authors solve for the expected time of stabilization in a model of rational delay and relate it to several political and economic variables they motivate this approach and its results by comparison to historical and current episodes copyright 1991 by american economic association

the implications of increasing globalization and regionalism for the economic growth of small island states abstract this paper provides an overview of the implications of globalization and increasing regionalism for small island states in the context of the critical determinants of their economic growth a brief outline of the globalization process is provided followed by a discussion of regionalism and the trend in subnational regional autonomy this is followed by an overview of the empirical literature on the critical factors determining the growth of small states next is an analysis of the implications for small island states of increasing globalization and regionalism in the context of the critical growth factors identified in the preceding section the paper concludes by proposing an agenda for further research into the implications for small island states of the impact of globalization on specific growth factors

limited information and advertising in the u s personal computer industry traditional discrete choice models assume buyers are aware of all products for sale in markets where products change rapidly the full information assumption is untenable i present a discrete choice model of limited consumer information where advertising influences the set of products from which consumers choose to purchase i apply the model to the u s personal computer market where top firms spend over 2 billion annually on advertising i find estimated markups of 19 over production costs where top firms advertise more than average and earn higher than average markups high markups are explained to a large extent by informational asymmetries across consumers where full information models predict markups of one fourth the magnitude i find that estimated product demand curves are biased toward being too elastic under traditional models i show how to use data on media exposure to improve estimated price elasticities in the absence of micro ad data

tourism and development a recent phenomenon built on old institutional roots is tourism an opportunity for lagging countries in the elusive quest for growth easterly 2002 recent empirical evidence suggests that the answer is a cautious yes aggregate cross country data show that tourism specialization is likely to be associated with higher per capita gdp growth rates than those observed in industrialized countries however this evidence ignores the importance of institutional quality and results are likely to be biased by omitted variable problems in this paper we frame our starting question within the general debate about the importance of good bad institutions as fundamental determinants of economic growth acemoglu et al 2001 and ask whether previous positive results of tourism on growth are in fact driven by the presence of growth enhancing institutions our empirical analysis exploits newly available datasets and controls the robustness of previous results on growth and tourism in the presence of several institutional quality variables by means of descriptive statistics and some simple cross country regressions we confirm that the quality of institutions is important for growth yet our results strongly suggest that the weight of tourism in an economy is an independent and robust predictor of higher than average growth

bargaining under incomplete information this paper presents and analyzes a bargaining model of bilateral monopoly under uncertainty under the bargaining rule proposed the buyer and the seller each submit sealed offers that determine whether the good in question is sold and the transfer price the nash equilibrium solution of this bargaining game implies an offer strategy of each party that is monotonic in its own reservation price and depends on its assessment of the opponent s reservation price issues of relative bargaining advantage and efficiency are examined for a number of special cases finally we discuss the appropriateness of the nash solution concept

combining micro and macro data in microeconometric models or panel samples to improve accuracy of estimation in this paper we show how to do this efficiently we show that the gains from use of marginal information can be substantial we also discuss how to test the compatibility of sample and marginal information

asymmetric price responses and the underlying energy demand trend are they substitutes or complements evidence from modelling oecd aggregate energy demand abstract a number of energy demand studies have considered the importance of modelling asymmetric price responses apr for example the often cited work of gately and huntington 2002 griffin and schulman 2005 questioned the asymmetric approach arguing that this is only capturing energy saving technical progress huntington 2006 however showed that for whole economy aggregate energy and oil demand there is a role statistically for both apr and exogenous energy saving technical change in a separate strand of the literature the idea of the underlying energy demand trend uedt has been developed see for example hunt et al 2003a and 2003b and dimitropoulos et al 2005 they argue that it is important in time series energy demand models to allow for stochastic trends or uedts based upon the structural time series dynamic regression methodology recommended by harvey 1989 1997 this paper attempts to bring these strands of the literature together by proposing a testing procedure for the uedt and apr in energy demand models within both a panel context consistent with the huntington 2006 approach and the structural time series modelling framework a set of tests across a range of specifications using time series and panel data are therefore suggested in order to try and ascertain whether energy saving technical change or the more general uedt and apr are substitutes for each other when modelling energy demand or whether they are actually picking up different influences and are therefore complements using annual whole economy data for 17 oecd countries over the period 1960 2006 the results suggest that for most of the countries the uedt is preferred to apr whereas for another group the uedt and apr are complements and for another group they are substitutes it is argued therefore that energy demand modellers should not assume at the outset that one method is superior to the other moreover wherever possible a general model be it in a time series or panel context that includes a non linear uedt and apr should be initially estimated and only if accepted by the data should symmetry and or a more restrictive uedt be imposed

sustainable development in small island developing states agricultural intensification economic development and freshwater resources management on the coral atoll of tongatapu small island developing states sids are vulnerable due to their small size in both biophysical and socio economic senses they are increasingly confronted with the environmental consequences through utilisation of their fragile natural resources for economic development here we illustrate the dilemmas experienced by sids associated with sustainable economic development our focus is the main island of the kingdom of tonga tongatapu located in the south pacific ocean we analyse the intensification of agriculture and the attendant pressures on the islands freshwater resources we combine environmental and economic data tongatapu 256 km 2 is a raised coral atoll and the freshwater resources exist as lenses that float on top of denser salt water underneath the island since 1987 tonga has exported squash pumpkin solely to japan over the last 10 years these exports have accounted for more then 40 of total export earnings and represent 60 to 70 of gdp derived from agricultural export this increase in exports is matched by an abrupt increase in the import and usage of agricultural chemicals the island s freshwater lenses are increasingly under pressure from agricultural intensification in the economic decision process environmental impacts are not taken into account this is partly because of overlapping institutional responsibilities of water management and opaque institutional structures which are highlighted in the paper the environmental consequences experienced by sids in terms of primary production stresses the need of taking natural capital into account when the benefits from international trade are evaluated at the same time pollution will result in irrecoverable losses in terms of tourist potential improved agricultural practices have to be implemented through educational tools to ensure continuing economic prosperity derived from agricultural exports economic development of sids should also focus on the maintenance of kin relationships overseas securing rent incomes and regional cooperative development efforts c 2006 elsevier b v all rights reserved

examining the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors in energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria policy implications abstract this paper examines the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors such as consumers preferences lifestyles and values which have hitherto been ignored in energy demand and co2 emissions modelling for nigeria we use a structural time series model to estimate various energy demand and co2 intensity models that take account of the aforementioned factors we adopt preferred models from these estimates to analyse how energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria might evolve by generating three different future scenarios to 2025 we find energy efficiency and non economic factors to influence energy demand and co2 emissions the long run income and price elasticities obtained differ significantly from those in existing studies that have ignored these salient factors in a business as usual scenario the results indicate that energy demand will continue to grow consequently present policies do not sufficiently mitigate aggregate co2 emissions in nigeria the lesson for policy makers is that the extant policies introduced to restrain co2 emissions from a production perspective have to be combined with new policies that influence consumers lifestyles and behaviours develop energy efficient technologies and apply low tariffs on imported energy efficient appliances to drive down co2 emissions from a consumption perspective

did unilateral divorce raise divorce rates evidence from panel data since early 1996 at least eight states have begun to consider rolling back unilateral and no fault divorce a major reversal of the liberalizing trend in divorce laws which began around 1970 the proponents of tightening the divorce regime often argue that making divorce more difficult will strengthen families however both theoretical and empirical evidence is decidedly mixed over whether the no fault revolution actually contributed to the sharp increase in divorce rates in the united states observed over the last 30 years in this paper i address the dispute by using a panel of state level divorce rates including state specific trends allows unobserved state divorce propensities to trend linearly and even quadratically over time and reveals that unilateral divorce raised divorce rates significantly and strongly excerpt

rational expectations information acquisition and competitive bidding most rational expectations market equilibrium models are not models of price formation and naive mechanisms leading to such equilibria can be severely manipulable in this paper a bidding model is developed which has the market like features that bidders act as price takers and that prices convey information higher equilibrium prices convey more favorable information about the quality of the objects being sold than do lower prices bidders can benefit from trading only if they have a transactions motive or if they have access to inside information apart from exceptional cases prices are not fully revealing a two stage model is developed in which bidders may acquire information at a cost before bidding and for which the equilibrium price is fully revealing resolving a well known paradox

small island developing states and their economic vulnerabilities abstract many small island developing states sids face special disadvantages associated with small size insularity remoteness and proneness to natural disasters these factors render the economies of these states very vulnerable to forces outside their control a condition which sometimes threatens their very economic viability the gdp or gnp per capita of these states often conceals this reality in this paper the major vulnerabilities faced by sids are discussed and when possible quantified in the form of an index an attempt is also made to construct a composite index of vulnerability

the impact of political dependence on small island jurisdictions summary this paper examines the connection between political dependence and welfare and development of small island jurisdictions four possible advantages of political dependence are access to foreign aid foreign capital and external labor markets and gains in the tourism industry this study analyzes if political dependence is associated with these possible advantages and the relative importance of each on the welfare and development within the island it is shown that politically dependent islands have achieved significantly higher levels of welfare and development with some of the reasons being due to the large inflows in the form of tourism foreign direct investment labor and aid

the effects of public spending shocks on trade balances and budget deficits in the european union we investigate the consequences of an increase in public spending for trade balances and budget deficits in the european union using a panel var approach whereas the literature tends to treat the trade balance gdp ratio as a single variable we include exports and imports as separate variables this allows us to track in more detail the sources of trade balance movements further we use annual rather than quarterly data this facilitates the interpretation of the shocks and reduces potential anticipation effects of fiscal policy changes however the identification assumptions become stronger and we extensively check their validity according to our baseline estimate a 1 gdp increase in public spending produces a 1 2 on impact with a 1 6 peak rise in gdp rising imports and falling exports are responsible for a fall of the trade balance by 0 5 of gdp on impact and a peak fall of 0 8 in addition the spending increase produces a 0 7 impact and peak budget deficit thereby pointing to the potential relevance of the twin deficits hypothesis for the european union jel e62 h60

fiscal policy and the current account are microstates different this article examines the empirical link between fiscal policy and the current account focusing on microstates defined as countries with a population of less than 2 million between 1970 and 2009 this article employs panel regression and panel vector autoregression pvar on 155 countries of which 42 are microstates panel regression results show that a percentage point improvement in the fiscal balance improves the current account balance by 0 4 percentage points of gross domestic product gdp the real effective exchange rate has no significant impact on the current account in microstates but the coefficient is significant in the global sample pvar results show that an increase in government consumption results in real exchange appreciation but the effect on the current account after an initial deterioration dies out quicker in microstates than in the global sample the result implies that fiscal policy has little effect on the current account in microstates beyond its direct impact on imports overa

do retirement dreams come true the effect of unanticipated events on retirement plans analyzing data from the retirement history study the authors find that the retirement plans of male workers aged 58 63 in 1969 were significantly affected by unanticipated events over the next decade specifically unanticipated increases in social security wealth induced retirement earlier than originally planned as did deterioration in personal health whereas the recession of the 1970s tended to delay retirement this evidence that policy changes do affect retirement behavior in systematic ways provides support for the decision by congress to defer until the turn of the century the application of several important provisions of the 1983 amendments to the social security act

household intertemporal behaviour a collective characterization and a test of commitment in this paper a formal test of intra household commitment is derived and performed to that end two models of household intertemporal behaviour are developed in both models household members are characterized by individual preferences in the first formulation household decisions are always on the ex ante pareto frontier in the second model the assumption of intra household commitment required by ex ante efficiency is relaxed it is shown that the full efficiency household euler equations are nested in the no commitment euler equations using this result the hypothesis that household members can commit to future allocations of resources is tested using the consumer expenditure survey i strongly reject this hypothesis it is also shown that the standard unitary framework is a special case of the full efficiency model however if household members are not able to commit household intertemporal behaviour cannot be characterized using the standard life cycle model these findings have two main implications first policy makers can change household behaviour by modifying the decision power of individual household members second to evaluate programmes designed to improve the welfare of household members it would be beneficial to replace the standard unitary model with a characterization of household behaviour that allows for lack of commitment

contract renegotiation and coasian dynamics consider a long term relationship between a seller and a buyer whose valuation for a per period service or a durable good is private as trade progresses the valuation will be partially revealed and it may be impossible for the parties to commit ex ante not to take advantage of this we analyse this situation first by supposing that the parties can sign a sequence of short term contracts and secondly by supposing that they can sign a long term contract but cannot commit not to renegotiate it later we find a close relationship in the second case between the optimal long term contract and the non commitment outcome in the standard coasian durable good model our results also have implications for hidden information principal agent models

quantifying the impact of exogenous non economic factors on uk transport oil demand abstract this paper attempts to quantify the impact of exogenous non economic factors on uk transport oil demand in addition to income price and fuel efficiency by estimating the demand relationship for oil transport for 1960 2007 using the structural time series model from this the relative impact on uk transport oil demand from income price and efficiency are quantified moreover the relative impact of the non economic factors is also quantified based on the premise that the estimated stochastic trend represents behavioural responses to changes in socio economic factors and changes in lifestyles and attitudes the estimated elasticities for income price and efficiency are 0 6 0 1 and 0 3 respectively and it is shown that for efficiency and price the overall contribution is relatively small whereas the contribution from income and non economic factors is relatively large this has important implications for policy makers keen to reduce transport oil consumption and associated emissions but not willing to reduce the trend rate of economic growth taxes and improved efficiency only have a limited impact hence a major thrust of policy should perhaps be on educating and informing consumers to persuade them to change their lifestyle and attitudes and thus reduce their consumption through the non economic instruments route

harmonization without representation small states the basel committee and the wto summary for many small states the experience with the basel committee and other standard setting bodies has not been favorable as they have been excluded from participation in the formulation of standards that negatively affect them this raises common concerns for small states including lack of representation non transparency discrimination and lack of sovereignty this paper argues that small states which cannot comply with basel standards are effectively placed at a competitive disadvantage and stand to lose potential domestic and international investors it argues that one possible way to address this problem is by formally strengthening the participatory role of small states in the wto

adverse selection in insurance markets policyholder evidence from the u k annuity market in this paper we investigate the importance of adverse selection in insurance markets we use a unique data set consisting of all annuity policies sold by a large u k insurance company since the early 1980s to analyze mortality differences among individuals who purchased different types of policies we find systematic relationships between ex post mortality and annuity policy characteristics such as whether the annuity will make payments to the estate in the event of an untimely death and whether the payments from the annuity rise over time these mortality patterns are consistent with the presence of asymmetric information in the annuity market we find no evidence of substantive mortality differences however across annuities of different size even though models of insurance market equilibrium with asymmetric information would predict such differences we also find that the pricing of various features of annuity contracts is consistent with the self selection patterns we find in mortality rates our results therefore suggest that selection may occur across many specific features of insurance contracts and that the absence of selection on one contract dimension does not preclude its presence on others this highlights the importance of considering the detailed features of insurance contracts when testing theoretical models of asymmetric information

offshore pariahs small island economies tax havens and the re configuration of global finance the stock of wealth held offshore is estimated at us 6 trillion many small island economies sies host offshore finance centers and some sies are highly dependent upon offshore finance extreme examples have over 90 of government revenues derived from finance sector activities since 1998 a series of international initiatives have been launched to combat harmful tax practices money laundering and inadequate financial regulation these initiatives will transform the economies of many sies this paper explores the dependence of many sies upon offshore finance and the barriers to diversification arising from their smallness and unique political economies

a comparison of the economic performance of different micro states and between micro states and larger countries the economic performance of micro states and those sub national regions enjoying a high degree of autonomy is a generally under researched area this paper builds on earlier research armstrong and read 1995 by employing quantitative techniques to test 1 a the extent to which the economic performance of micro states differs by comparing their gnp per capita with that of the region in which they are located and with the countries to which they are adjacent 2 b whether some micro states perform better than others as a result of differences in their economic structure and 3 c whether the rates of growth of micro states have been faster or slower than those of larger countries considerable diversity among micro states is revealed although most exhibit strong economic performance

a bargaining model with incomplete information about time preferences etude d un jeu de negociation strategique sequentiel avec information incomplete caracterisation d une classe d equilibres sequentiels appeles equilibres sequentiels de negociation et demonstration de l unicite de cet equilibre

diagnostic checking of unobserved components time series models diagnostic checking of the specification of time series models is normally carried out using the innovations that is the one step ahead prediction errors in an unobserved components model other sets of residuals are available these auxiliary residuals are estimators of the disturbances associated with the unobserved components they can often yield information that is less apparent from the innovations but they suffer from the disadvantage that they are serially correlated even in a correctly specified model with known parameters this article shows how the properties of the auxiliary residuals may be obtained how they are related to each other and to the innovations and how they can be used to construct test statistics applications are presented showing how residuals can be used to detect and distinguish between outliers and structural change

underlying trends and seasonality in uk energy demand a sectoral analysis this paper demonstrates the importance for energy demand modelling of allowing for trends and seasonal effects that are stochastic in form inherent underlying trends may be non linear and reflect not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction using quarterly unadjusted data for various sectors in the uk it is shown that unless energy demand models are formulated so as to allow for stochastic trends and seasonals estimates of price and income elasticities could be seriously biased

marriage and divorce informational constraints and private contracting the relationship between divorce rates in the united states and laws regulating divorce are analyzed using data from a special current population survey undertaken in 1979 with particular reference to the adoption by many states of no fault divorce laws the author utilizes a contract theoretic framework to examine the impact of both legal and informational constraints on several aspects of the marriage relationship 1 the probability of divorce 2 compensation at divorce i e the terms of the divorce settlement 3 the probability of entering marriage and 4 incentives for investment in marriage specific capital two different models are developed the first assumes that ex post information about the value of each spouses opportunites at divorce is symmetric and that since divorce would only occur if the joint benefits outweigh the joint costs the law has no effect on the divorce rate the second model asserts that the existence of asymmetric information results in a fixed wage marriage contract and that divorce would be higher in states that allow unilateral divorce the evidence supports the first of these hypotheses excerpt

the short run macroeconomic impact of foreign aid to small states an agnostic time series analysis abstract this paper investigates the short run macroeconomic impact of aid in small developing countries sdcs by using a vector auto regression var model to study the impact of aid on net import absorption and domestic demand spending we focus on average country effects within two country sub groups and find substantial differences between aid dependent sdcs and other sdcs that are more dependent on natural resources tourism or financial services in aid dependent sdcs aid absorption more or less equals spending although only half of the aid flow is absorbed and spent in the non aid dependent group aid does not seem to be absorbed or spent in any systematic fashion

the role of transport costs as a determinant of price level differentials between the isle of man and the united kingdom 1989 the isle of man experiences price levels which for consumer convenience goods are some 10 higher than those in nearby regions of the uk mainland the observed price differentials indicate incomplete economic integration with the united kingdom this paper presents the results of two major research projects undertaken on behalf of the isle of man board of consumer affairs by a team of researchers at lancaster university the research analyzes the role which transport costs to the island play in determining the observed price differentials between the isle of man and the united kingdom transport costs both marine and road haulage were found to account for only a relatively small part of the observed price differentials other major causes of price differentials between the island economy and the mainland were found to include high stockholding and inventory costs the failure to exploit economies of scale fully in the on island wholesaling and retailing sectors as a result of small market size and imperfect competition among island business sectors the study highlights the difficulties faced in integrating island and mainland economies freight transport improvements alone cannot eliminate price differentials

estimating petroleum products demand elasticities in nigeria a multivariate cointegration approach this paper formulates and estimates petroleum products demand functions in nigeria at both aggregative and product level for the period 1977 to 2006 using multivariate cointegration approach the estimated short and long run price and income elasticities confirm conventional wisdom that energy consumption responds positively to changes in gdp and negatively to changes in energy price however the price and income elasticities of demand varied according to product type kerosene and gasoline have relatively high short run income and price elasticities compared to diesel overall the results show petroleum products to be price and income inelastic

tiny poor and war torn development policy challenges for east timor abstract following its decisive vote for independence on 30 august 1999 east timor will soon become the world s newest country the country has a particularly tragic history centuries of portuguese colonialism and neglect 24 years of troubled occupation by indonesia and the horrific violence and massive destruction of infrastructure which occurred in the wake of the 1999 vote for independence the country will start from one of the lowest points conceivable on the scale of socioeconomic development extremely low income very limited bureaucratic capacities barely functioning institutions and potentially hostile elements in its giant neighbor the formidable development policy challenges facing this new country are the subject of this paper

energy consumption and economic activity in industrialized countries the dynamic aggregate time series relationship abstract most econometric studies suggest that the income elasticity of demand for energy is approximately unity for the developed market economies it is shown that over the period 1950 1978 the long run income elasticity is substantially higher than unity in terms of a ces energy demand function this result reflects the application of a generalized dynamic estimation methodology where serial correlation is regarded as a diagnostic guide to distributed lag fitting price elasticities are also estimated but these are in line with conventional estimates

twin deficit or twin divergence fiscal policy current account and real exchange rate in the u s abstract in spite of concerns about twin deficits fiscal and the current account deficits for the united states economy empirical evidence suggests that twin divergence is a more usual feature of the historical data i e when fiscal accounts worsen the current account improves and vice versa this paper empirically studies the effects of fiscal policy government budget deficit shocks on the current account and the real exchange rate during the flexible exchange rate regime period based on var vector auto regression models we identified exogenous fiscal policy shocks after controlling for business cycle effects on fiscal balances in contrast to the predictions of most theoretical models the u s results suggest that an expansionary fiscal policy shock or a government budget deficit shock improve the current account and depreciate the real exchange rate increases in private savings and declines in investment contribute to the current account improvement while a nominal exchange rate depreciation as opposed to a relative price level change is mainly responsible for the real exchange rate depreciation the twin divergence of fiscal balances and current account balances is also explained by the prevalence of output shocks i e output shocks more than fiscal shocks appear to drive the co movements of the current account and the fiscal balance

estimating a bargaining model with asymmetric information evidence from medical malpractice disputes this article uses a unique data set on medical malpractice disputes in florida to estimate the parameters of a bargaining game with asymmetric information the main findings of the article suggest that the bargaining game can replicate most of the qualitative and quantitative features of the data the article also simulates alternative policy regimes to quantify the effects of possible tort reforms such as imposing limits on contingency fees and caps on jury awards

innovative development strategies from non sovereign island jurisdictions a global review of economic policy and governance practices summary the world s sub national island or mainly island jurisdictions constitute a timely valid and valuable category of political and economic analysis on the basis of a global largely inductive and discriminant analysis five economic and four political capacities are suggested as being characteristic of the innovative development strategies practised today by various island autonomies extant mainland island relations can provide insights to other smaller non island as well as larger players beyond the strictures of both economic vulnerability and sovereignty

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

the economics of the marriage contract theories and evidence abstract we analyze the role of the marriage contract we first formalize three prominent hypotheses on why people marry marriage provides an exogenous payoff to married partners it serves as a commitment device and it serves as a signaling device for each theory we analyze how a reduction in the costs of divorce affects the propensity to divorce for couples at any given duration of marriage we then use individual marriage and divorce certificate data from the united states to bring these alternative views of the marriage contract to bear on the data we exploit variations in the timing of the adoption of unilateral divorce laws across states to proxy a one off and permanent reduction in divorce costs the results suggest that the dominant reason that couples enter into a marriage contract is that it serves as a commitment device

income and outcomes a structural model of intrahousehold allocation there is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat many person households as a single decision maker if this is the case then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household we develop a method of identifying how incomes affect outcomes given conventional family expenditure data the basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes we apply our method to a sample of canadian couples with no children we find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth

a paradigm shift to a new strategy for small island economies embracing demand side economics for value enhancement and long term economic stability abstract the article answers three interrelated questions pertaining to small island economies and tourism development under the condition of globalization 1 why is tourism relevant for small island economies 2 why is a supply perspective inappropriate for these economies and 3 why is a demand perspective more appropriate for small island economies in the era of globalization empirical realities indicate that small islands have performed well in specializing as tourist destinations despite their size constraints and resulting disadvantage in economic terms the caribbean region is an appropriate proxy for small island economies however globalization may be taking its toll on sectoral specialization in the caribbean as a development strategy the supply side strategy seems to have lost its effectiveness to reverse this trend the study proposes the implementation of new tourism strategies based on a demand focused approach to sustain value enhancement these strategies have important managerial and policy implications

twin deficits squaring theory evidence and common sense in this paper we reconsider the twin deficit hypothesis that fiscal shocks generating budget deficits also worsen external trade both from a theoretical point of view and by analyzing data for australia canada the uk and the us first we assess the joint dynamics of budget and trade deficits along the business cycle uncovering a strikingly recurrent s shaped relation between the two the correlation is actually negative suggesting twin divergence this observation however cannot rule out the possibility that government spending expansions and or tax cuts may cause trade deficits as the overall correlation is likely to be dominated by cyclical factors second we reconsider the transmission of government spending in a standard two country two good model we find that openness and the persistence of fiscal shocks are major determinants of the magnitude or even sign of the response of the trade balance to fiscal shocks for a given persistence of the fiscal shock the closer an economy the larger the crowding out effect on investment the lower the deterioration of the trade balance third we take this insight to the data investigating the transmission of fiscal shocks in a var framework in the four countries in our sample our empirical findings tend to support our view in the us and australia which are relatively less open than canada and the uk and where government spending shocks are less persistent we find that the external impact of fiscal policy is rather limited instead private investment responds substantially the reverse is true for canada and the uk these findings confirm and put into perspective earlier results whereas fiscal expansions in the us are found to have on average a negligible effect on the country s trade balance however we emphasize that these results are consistent with a call for a us fiscal retrenchment to address global imbalances the impact of budget cuts on the us external trade is muted by their positive effect on domestic investment strengthening the us ability to generate resources against future interest and debt repayment