efficient methods of measuring welfare change and compensated income in terms of ordinary demand functions a utility maximizing consumer with a completely known system of ordinary demand functions q h p c is considered let p qo and p q be two arbitrary equilibrium situations the problem is to evaluate in which of the situations the utility is higher without knowing the utility function revealed preference theory tells that the ordinary demand functions which are in principle observable contain enough information to solve the problem remaining difficulties are therefore mainly computational we present how the compensated income c i c p qo and the compensated demand h p cl1 are calculated with arbitrary accuracy using only the ordinary demand system our two efficient algorithms also have interesting interpretations in terms of index numbers and consumer surplus measures

determinants of import demand for non renewable energy petroleum products empirical evidence from nigeria abstract this study estimated determinants of import demand for refined petroleum products in nigeria for the period 1984 2013 it employed the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test cointegration method and analysed both long run and short run determinants of import demand for total and specific petroleum products in the long run aggregate and sectoral incomes are significant determinants of import of refined kerosene further real effective exchange rate reer aggregate income gdp manufacturing sector s income domestic energy production dep and population growth rate pgr are drivers of import of refined motor spirit moreover reer dep and manufacturing sector s income are propellers of import of refined distillate fuel also reer and total output of petroleum products are major drivers of total import of refined petroleum products short run results show that previous period gdp pgr and manufacturing and service sectors incomes are determinants of import demand for refined kerosene moreover reer gdp previous pgr and manufacturing sector s income exert significant effects on the import of refined motor spirit further significant effects of reer dep previous pgr domestic output of the product and manufacturing and service sectors incomes on the import demand for distillate fuel were found policy implications of the foregoing are articulated in the paper

the demand for gasoline abstract sufficient time must be allowed to elapse to assess fully the response of gasoline demand to price changes hitherto empirical work on the subject has generally not examined the period beyond 1975 moreover the extant time series studies concentrate almost exclusively on the usa this study extends both the observation period and the country coverage a vehicle stock adjustment model is estimated via its reduced form without explicit consideration of the vehicle stock itself however the estimation procedure incorporates the structure by way of constraints on the parameters cross section analysis offers additional evidence concerning the truly long run price elasticity the results suggest that there is no need to resort to elaborate models to explain adequately gasoline demand gasoline demand exhibits a long run price elasticity near unity with time lags exceeding six years while there is tentative evidence that the duration of these lags is not fixed

ethanol demand under the flex fuel technology regime in brazil abstract this paper analyzes the characteristics of ethanol demand in the context of fuel mix diversification in brazil currently ethanol is the most important gasoline additive and alternative fuel consumed in brazil and is responsible there for profound changes in the dynamics of fuel consumption the diffusion of flex fuel vehicles in brazil symbolizes a new stage of ethanol expansion and is a central component of the increasing demand for fuel accordingly we evaluate ethanol demand in brazil following the introduction of flex fuel vehicles using a cointegration approach and autoregressive distributed lag bounds tests over the period 2003 2010 the evidences confirm that during the last decade ethanol has strengthened its position as both an independent fuel and a substitute for gasoline there is also evidence that growth in the brazilian automobile fleet based on flex fuel technology is a major driving factor of long run ethanol demand further the dynamics of gasohol mandatory blend of gasoline and ethanol and ethanol prices operate in a symmetric manner over ethanol demand thereby evidencing the increasing substitutability between these alternative fuels

estimation on oil demand and oil saving potential of china s road transport sector national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013 national natural science foundation of china 71203186 fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221051 national science foundation for disting

an estimation of crude oil import demand in turkey evidence from time varying parameters approach abstract the aim of this study is to model crude oil import demand and estimate the price and income elasticities of imported crude oil in turkey based on a time varying parameters tvp approach with the aim of obtaining accurate and more robust estimates of price and income elasticities this study employs annual time series data of domestic oil consumption real gdp and oil price for the period 1966 2012 the empirical results indicate that both the income and price elasticities are in line with the theoretical expectations however the income elasticity is statistically significant while the price elasticity is statistically insignificant the relatively high value of income elasticity 1 182 from this study suggests that crude oil import in turkey is more responsive to changes in income level this result indicates that imported crude oil is a normal good and rising income levels will foster higher consumption of oil based equipments vehicles and services by economic agents the estimated income elasticity of 1 182 suggests that imported crude oil consumption grows at a higher rate than income this in turn reduces oil intensity over time therefore crude oil import during the estimation period is substantially driven by income

reprint of price and quantity collars for stabilizing emission allowance prices laboratory experiments on the eu ets market stability reserve abstract we report on laboratory experiments with financially motivated participants comparing alternative proposals for managing the time path of emission allowance prices in the face of random firm specific and market level structural shocks market outcome measures such as social surplus and price variability are improved by the use of a price collar auction reserve price and soft price cap comparable performance enhancements are not observed with the implementation of a quantity collar that adjusts auction quantities in response to privately held inventories of unused allowances in some specifications the quantity collar performed worse than no stabilization policy at all the experiment implemented a specific set of structural elements and extrapolation to other settings should be done with caution nevertheless an examination of the observed behavioral patterns and deviations from optimal behavior suggests that a price collar has an important although perhaps not exclusive role to play in constructing an effective market stability policy

demand for gasoline in kuwait an empirical analysis using cointegration techniques abstract this paper estimates the demand for gasoline in kuwait for the period 1970 1989 using a cointegration and error correction model ecm it is found that gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to price in the short and long run and while it is elastic in the long run gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to income in the short run this suggests that gasoline demand response to income changes is higher in the long run than in the short run furthermore gasoline consumption adjusts towards its long run level with about 52 of the adjustment occurring in the first year

a cointegration analysis of gasoline demand in the united states time series estimation of gasoline demand elasticities often does not take into account the possibility of nonstationarity in the underlying data which may render the parameter estimates spurious studies have shown that the time trending variables used to explain gasoline demand could be difference stationary and therefore may require cointegration analysis to assess the relationship among the trending variables in this work we use the cointegration technique to derive long run and short run demand elasticities of noncommercial gasoline consumption using time series data for the usa from 1949 to 2004 we also attempt to incorporate the presence of a structural break in the data generation process of the time trending variables our results show that the consumption of gasoline and lifetime income have a long term stable relationship after the second oil shock of 1978 prior to the first oil shock of 1973 no such long run relationship could be established through cointegration

the effectiveness of gasoline taxation to manage air pollution abstract higher gasoline taxes can be justified because cars cause significant local regional and global air pollution damages this study examines whether charging higher taxes would result in significant emission reductions both experimental survey data and actual behavior in southern california and connecticut are evaluated to explore whether people would change their driving behavior in response to higher gasoline prices both sets of results reveal that drivers are price inelastic in the short run 0 4 to 0 6 and long run 0 5 to 0 7 imposing environmental surcharges on gasoline will result in only a small reduction in driving and thus only a small improvement in the environment such taxes will place a heavy and clear burden on drivers however making gasoline taxes extremely unpopular finally the study finds that the income elasticity of gasoline is low 0 1 0 2 so that the gas tax will fall heavily on the poor

lowering consumer search costs can lead to higher prices we demonstrate that regulations that lower consumer search costs and make them less heterogeneous across consumers can lead to higher prices charged by firms we estimate the distribution of consumer search costs for 366 isolated retail gasoline markets and find that reducing the mean and standard deviation by 20 and 48 respectively leads to price increases in 32 of markets and an average price increase of 5 2 cents per gallon across all markets thus price transparency regulation that results in higher prices may not stem from collusion but from an equilibrium with less consumer search

influencing factors on electricity demand in chinese nonmetallic mineral products industry a quantile perspective abstract chinese nonmetallic mineral products industry is one of the largest electricity consumer in china and has a large impact on overall electricity consumption in china this paper examines the impact of economic variables on the demand for electricity in chinese nonmetallic mineral products industry where economic growth sectoral value added per worker sectoral r d intensity and energy price were utilized to analyze sectoral electricity consumption with an application of quantile model the paper s estimates unveiled the varying effects of economic variables across the spectrum of sectoral electricity consumption where the coefficient of economic growth was positive and significant across all quantiles while sectoral value added per worker had both positive and negative significant coefficients an increase in income level and sectoral value added per worker will increase the electricity consumed by the industry however the latter will also enhance a decreasing trend in few regions across china and did not influence high energy efficiency but rather enhanced the production of additional outputs while sectoral r d intensity and energy price will ensure a substantial decrease in sectoral electricity consumption with the latter having a greater impact increase in investment for sectoral r d intensity will boost technological advancement and is recommended as a cornerstone to ensuring decline in sectoral energy consumption that will buttress sectoral value added per worker coupled with a robust energy price

theory experiment and the federal communications commission spectrum auctions abstract the fcc uses the simultaneous multi round auction sma to assign spectrum licenses congress mandated that the sma be compared to an auction that allows combinatorial bids we review the theoretical and experimental evidence relevant to the sma procedures and their inherent defects results from experiments evaluating the sma in comparison to a combinatorial auction designed by charles river and associates show that several of the sma rules hinder efficiency and create a trade off between efficiency and auction length the combinatorial auction outperforms the sma when license values are superadditive but requires more time to complete and is not robust

gasoline demand revisited an international meta analysis of elasticities meta analysis is used to determine if there are factors that systematically affect price and income elasticity estimates in studies of gasoline demand four econometric models are estimated using long run and short run price and income elasticity estimates from previous studies as the dependent variables explanatory variables include functional form lag structure time span national setting estimation technique and other features of the model structure elasticity estimates are found to be sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of some measure of vehicle ownership static models appear to overestimate short run elasticities underestimate long run price elasticities but pick up the full long run income responsiveness there is variation in the elasticity of demand across countries especially in the short run and gasoline demand appears to be getting more price elastic and less income elastic over time

a co integration analysis of the price and income elasticities of energy demand in turkish agriculture abstract agriculture has an important role in every country s development particularly the contribution of agriculture to development and competitiveness is increasing with agricultural productivity growth productivity in turn is closely associated with direct and indirect use of energy as an input therefore the importance of energy in agriculture cannot be denied as one of the basic inputs to the economic growth process following the importance of energy in turkish agriculture this study aims to estimate the long and short run relationship of energy consumption agricultural gdp and energy prices via co integration and error correction ecm analysis annual data from 1970 to 2008 for diesel and electricity consumptions are utilized to estimate long run and short run elasticities according to ecm analysis for the diesel demand model the long run income and price elasticities were calculated as 1 47 and 0 38 respectively for the electricity demand model income and price elasticities were calculated at 0 19 and 0 72 respectively in the long run briefly in turkey support for energy use in agriculture should be continued in order to ensure sustainability in agriculture increase competitiveness in international markets and balance farmers income

horizontal product differentiation in auctions and multilateral negotiations we experimentally compare first price auctions and multilateral negotiations after introducing horizontal product differentiation into a standard procurement setting both institutions yield identical surplus for the buyer a difference from prior findings with homogeneous products that results from differentiation s influence on sellers pricing behaviour the data are consistent with this finding being driven by concessions from low cost sellers in response to differentiation reducing their likelihood of being the buyer s surplus maximizing trading partner further analysis shows that introducing product differentiation increases the intensity of price competition among sellers which contrasts with the conventional wisdom that product differentiation softens competition

an estimation of u s gasoline demand a smooth time varying cointegration approach abstract in this paper the u s gasoline demand from 1976 to 2008 is estimated using a time varying cointegrating regression we find that price elasticity increased rapidly during the late 1970s and then decreased until 1987 after a relatively small scaled increase decrease cycle from 1987 to 2000 the price elasticity rose again after 2000 the time varying change of the elasticities may be explained by the proportion of gasoline consumption to income and fluctuation of the degree of necessity the result of the error correction model shows that a deviation from a long run equilibrium is corrected quickly and the welfare analysis illustrates there may be a gain by shifting the tax scheme from income tax to gasoline tax

time varying volatility spillover between chinese fuel oil and stock index futures markets based on a dcc garch model with a semi nonparametric approach abstract this paper reveals some new evidence on the volatility spillover between fuel oil and stock index futures markets in china by considering its time variant feature time varying effect is specified by the legendre polynomials in a dcc garch model moreover the semi nonparametric snp approach accounting for marginal excess kurtosis and asymmetry is applied we find different time evolving patterns of volatility spillover across multiple periods due to the structural breaks the direction of mean volatility spillover is found to be bilateral moreover the strength of mean volatility spillover shows that the effect from stock index to fuel oil futures is much stronger than the other way around this implies that the stock index futures market plays a leading role in information processing these findings have important implications for the fuel oil stakeholders as well as risk management

modeling energy demand some emerging issues abstract the proliferation of papers on energy demand modeling has offered different dimensions both in terms of methodology and estimation while this development has strengthened our understanding of the subject it may render the identification of gaps in the literature arduous for future research thus this study sets out to document some emerging issues that seem to have engendered new directions on energy demand modeling ranging from asymmetric price responses time varying demand parameters triangulation analyses to seasonal and climate change effects it is hoped that access to this review complemented with the previous ones will facilitate the comprehension of the extant literature as well as areas of future research in energy demand modeling

exact consumer s surplus and deadweight loss consumer s surplus is a widely used tool in applied welfare economics both economic theorists and cost benefit analysis often use consumer s surplus despite its somewhat dubious reputation the basic idea is to evaluate the value to a consumer or his willingness to pay for a change in price of a good from say pricep to pricep because price changes affect consumer welfare an evaluation of this effect is often a key input to public policy decisions yet consumer s surplus is probably the most controversial of widely used economic concepts both paul samuelson and ian little conclude that the economics profession would be better off without it it is my feeling of the situation that substantial agreement exists on the correct quantities to be measured the amount the consumer would pay or would need to be paid to be just as well off after the price change as he was before the price change the quantities correspond to john hicks compensating variation measures an alternative measure which takes ex post price change utility as the basis of comparison is hicks equivalent variation the controversy arises in the measurement of these quantities the usual measurement procedure is to use the area to the left of the marshallian market demand curve between two price levels jules dupuit originated this measure of welfare change and alfred marshall and hicks derived appropriate conditions for its use the primary condition for the area to the left of the demand curve to correspond to the compensating variation is to have constant marginal utility of income marshall gave this condition and if it holds the same quantity will be derived as the area to the left of the compensated hicksian demand curve this area to the left of the compensated demand curve is exactly what the compensating variation and equivalent variation measure thus the constant marginal utility of income is a sufficient condition for marshallian consumer s surplus to be equal to hicks consumer s surplus in this case arnold harberger s plea to use the welfare triangle as one half times the product of the price change times the quantity change to measure deadweight loss corresponds to the correct theoretical amount of welfare change in a recent paper robert willig derives bounds for the percentage difference between the correct measure of either the compensating or equivalent variation and the marshallian measure derived form the market demand curve his bounds which depend on the income elasticity of demand for the single good in the region of price change being considered as well as the proportion of the consumer s income spent on the good demonstrate that the marshallian consumer s surplus is often a good approximation to hicks consumer s surplus the fact that the proportion of the consumer s income spent matters as well as the income elasticity was first pointed out by harold hotelling willig contends that the approximation error will be less than the errors involved in estimating the demand curve thus he hopes to remove the need for apology that applied economists often need to give to theorists who remark on the inappropriateness of using marshallian consumer s surplus to measure welfare change however in this paper i show that for the case primarily considered by willig of a single price change which is also the situation in which consumer s surplus is often used in applied work no approximation is necessary professor of economics massachusetts institute of technology and research associate national bureau of economic research i would like to thank peter diamond erwin diewert daniel mcfadden robert merton robert solow hal varian joel yellin and the referees for help and comments research support from the national science foundation is acknowledged the reason that we still have two rather than one of samuelson s six measures of consumer s surplus arises from an index number problem of the correct basis for the welfare comparison i will give both measures but plan to concentrate on the compensating variation

insurance induced moral hazard a dynamic model of within year medical care decision making under uncertainty health insurance may lead individuals to overconsume medical care many studies explore this moral hazard using models that aggregate medical care decisions up to the annual level using employer employee matched data from the medical expenditure panel survey meps i estimate moral hazard using a dynamic model of within year medical care consumption that allows for endogenous health transitions variation in medical care prices and individual uncertainty within a health insurance year i then estimate moral hazard under a second set of conditions that are consistent with the assumptions of most annual decision making models the within year decision making model produces a moral hazard estimate that is 19 2 larger than the alternative model i highlight the importance of controlling for within year dynamics in a model of medical care consumption using a counterfactual policy simulation that implements the individual mandate provision of the 2010 patient protection and aordable care act i nd that full implementation of the policy decreases the percentage of uninsured individuals in the population being analyzed from 11 8 to 6 0 furthermore when all uninsured individuals are forced into coverage their predicted annual medical care expenditure increases by 45 5

time varying income and price elasticities for energy demand evidence from a middle income panel abstract we estimate time varying income and price elasticities for energy demand for a 26 country middle income balanced panel that spans 1996 2014 to do so we employ a recently developed local linear dummy estimation method to estimate the trend and coefficient functions we find that the price elasticity for energy demand is either insignificant or positive and small while the income elasticity for energy demand behaves in a non linear fashion over time it is always less than unity and is generally within 0 6 0 8 a gdp elasticity of less than one suggests that these middle income countries are on the right hand side of an inverted u energy intensity gdp path that is consistent with the dematerialization process also this finding suggests that energy intensity but not energy consumption in these countries will fall with economic growth hence intensity based targets may be met in a business as usual setting but aggregate or per capita based carbon emissions targets would likely require policy interventions

household adjustment to gasoline price change an analysis using 9 years of us survey data this paper examines the dynamics and composition of household adjustment to changes in the real price of gasoline using a panel of us households by decomposing the demand for gasoline into the demand for vehicle miles traveled and the demand for household composite miles per gallon we are able to add rich detail to the description of how households respond to gasoline price changes while obtaining total price elasticity estimates well within the range found in the literature we find that consumers initially respond to a price rise with a much larger decrease in consumption than would be indicated by the total elasticity in addition households respond to price changes by adjusting vehicle miles traveled more than composite miles per gallon in the year after a price change

testing and estimating time varying elasticities of swiss gasoline demand this paper is intended to test and estimate time varying elasticities for gasoline demand in switzerland for this purpose a smooth time varying cointegrating parameters model is investigated in order to describe smooth mutations of the swiss gasoline demand the methodology based on chebyshev polynomials is rigorously outlined our empirical finding states that the time invariance assumption does not hold for long run price and income elasticities furthermore they highlight that gasoline demand passed through some periods of sensitivity and non sensitivity with respect to the price our empirical statements are of great importance to assess the performance of a gasoline tax as an instrument for co2 reduction policy indeed such an instrument can contribute to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases only if the demand is not fully inelastic with respect to the price our results suggest that such a carbon tax would not be always suitable since the price elasticity is found not stable over time and not always significant

speculation and demand reduction in english clock auctions with resale many auctions are followed by a resale market which occurs when the winner of the auction resells the item won to one of the participants from the original auction the existence of such transactions may initially appear counter intuitive however this paper will show that active inter bidder resale results from payoff maximizing decisions in the auction that take into account the incentives of a resale opportunity specifically i examine how the existence of an inter bidder resale opportunity impacts bidder behavior in an english clock auction and to what extent altering the bargaining power of the final buyer and reseller in the resale market determines the strategies followed in the initial auction in an attempt to understand the existence of these inter bidder transactions theoretical and behavioral analysis is used to develop hypotheses of speculation bidding above value and demand reduction bidding below value which are directly tested in a controlled experimental setting while value bidding is a dominant strategy in a standard english clock auction without resale when resale is allowed this theoretical claim is weaker demand reduction is observed when the bargaining power is shifted to the final buyer in resale and when the bargaining power is shifted toward the reseller speculation is observed the revenue achieved in the initial auction depends on the behavior observed in the auction regardless of bargaining power revenue is shown to decrease below what would have been earned in an english auction without resale due to demand reduction when the reseller has the bargaining power and speculation is observed this loss in revenue is somewhat mitigated by increased speculation

seller beware supply and demand reduction and price manipulation in multiple unit uniform price auctions we experimentally compare under revelation of supply and demand across alternative variations of ascending and descending two sided price clock auctions we find that buyers reduce demand more when the price is ascending but sellers behavior is consistent across clock directions as a result the clock price rule has empirical effects on efficiency even though it is theoretically neutral

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

auction institutional design theory and behavior of simultaneous multiple unit generalizations of the dutch and english auctions historically english and dutch auctions have been used for the exchange of single objects such as works of art or single lots of a good such as produce fish or cut flowers where these institutions have been used for the exchange of multiple units such as the australian wool auction using english rules successive lots of the good are sometimes sold sequentially at auction in some but not all instances this is because the goods are not identical even though the various lots may be close substitutes see penny burns 1985 where the goods are accepted universally as being homogeneous as in the securities markets multiple units are often commonly auctioned simultaneously in the securities industry orders are batched for simultaneous execution in multiple unit auctions in what are referred to as call markets that is the security is called for auction at a particular point in time this type of market is used on the stock exchanges of austria belgium france germany and israel some of these are verbal and some are sealed bid auctions although the u s organized exchanges are predominantly continuous rather than call markets except that call markets are used each day to open trading in each listed security there is a growing number of exceptions such as the proliferation since 1984 of auction preferred stock goldman sachs and co october 1984 and money market preferred stock lehman brothers july 1984 we now have dutch auction rate transferable securities called darts stated rate auction preferred stock or straps and many more after the initial subscription offering of this type of security the market is called every 49 days to reset the preferred dividend rate using a multiple unit auction the exchange of shares and the dividend determination is based on the array of stated dividend rates at which existing holders and potential new holders are willing to sell and or buy corresponding quantities the dividend rate and exchange of shares every 49 days is executed using the uniform price or competitive sealed bid mechanism vernon l smith et al 1980 the discussion to follow will be confined to this sealed bid form of the call market call markets provide temporal consolidation of trade orders or other forms of expressing the desire to buy and sell by comparison with continuous trading call markets offer both advantages and disadvantages robert a schwartz 1988 pp 442 6 the cited advantages include low cost of operating the exchange information aggregation and presumed pricing efficiency price stability individual trades which are thought to have a small impact on price reduced price uncertainty and finally nondiscriminatory pricing however there are offsetting disadvantages 1 the market is inaccessible except at the time of call 2 no bid offer contract or price information is available until the results of the call are announced and 3 there is transaction uncertainty because a submitted bid offer may be too low high to execute inside the supply demand cross these conditions are only partially alleviated if there is a secondary market between calls these disadvantages may be significant in september 1988 the wall street journal published an article on the failure of a call market for the auction rate preferred stock economic science laboratory university of arizona tucson arizona this material is based upon work supported by the national science foundation under grant no ses 8320121

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

auction format and auction sequence in multi item multi unit auctions an experimental study we experimentally study the effect of auction format sealed bid versus closed clock versus open clock and auction sequence simultaneous versus sequential on bidding behaviour and auction outcomes in auctions of multiple related multi unit items prominent field applications are the sale of emission permits fishing rights and electricity we find that when auctioning simultaneously clock auctions outperform sealed bid auctions in terms of efficiency and revenues this advantage disappears when the items are auctioned sequentially in addition auctioning sequentially has positive effects on total revenues across all auction formats resulting from fiercer competition on the item auctioned first

tax avoidance and the deadweight loss of the income tax traditional analyses of the income tax greatly underestimate deadweight losses by ignoring its effect on forms of compensation and patterns of consumption the full deadweight loss is easily calculated using the compensated elasticity of taxable income to changes in tax rates because leisure excludable income and deductible consumption are a hicksian composite good microeconomic estimates imply a deadweight loss of as much as 30 of revenue or more than ten times harberger s classic 1964 estimate the relative deadweight loss caused by increasing existing tax rates is substantially greater and may exceed 2 per 1 of revenue

expenditure function estimates of the efficiency and distributive impact of indirect taxes in the united kingdom abstract this paper uses the expenditure function to consider the efficiency and distributional impact of indirect taxes in the united kingdom estimates of the parameters of the linear expenditure system of demand equations are employed to measure the compensating variation and equivalent variation costs of taxes on households in different income groups in addition distributional weights are used to consider the overall impact of different taxes and tax changes on social welfare finally we consider other types of demand system estimates which might be used in this kind of exercise

oil prices and stock markets does the effect of uncertainty change over time abstract this paper investigates empirical marginal effects of uncertainty measured by conditional variance of the stock and crude oil prices on their returns using stock index prices for u s japan korea and hong kong over the period 1996 2015 a time varying parameter model with a dynamic conditional correlation dcc bivariate garch in mean specification is considered to investigate time varying marginal effects of uncertainty on the stock and crude oil returns the empirical findings show that there exist significant negative time varying effects of uncertainty on the returns over some sub periods

reduction potential of co2 emissions in china s transport industry newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1311 19436 ministry of education 10 jbg 013 national social science foundation of china 71203186

the design testing and implementation of virginia s nox allowance auction we report on the design and testing of three auction mechanisms to maximize revenue and efficiency in the sale of two vintages of nitrous oxide emission allowances by the commonwealth of virginia in 2004 the three mechanisms considered were a combinatorial sealed bid csb auction a sequential english clock sec auction and a combinatorial english clock cec auction we find the sec and cec mechanisms to be superior the csb when demand is relatively elastic 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

nonparametric estimation of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss we apply nonparametric regression models to estimation of demand curves of the type most often used in applied research from the demand curve estimators we derive estimates of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss which are the most widely used welfare and economic efficiency measures in areas of economics such as public finance we also develop tests of the symmetry and downward sloping properties of compensated demand we work out asymptotic normal sampling theory for kernel and series nonparametric estimators as well as for the parametric case the paper includes an application to gasoline demand empirical questions of interest here are the shape of the demand curve and the average magnitude of welfare loss from a tax on gasoline in this application we compare parametric and nonparametric estimates of the demand curve calculate exact and approximate measures of consumers surplus and deadweight loss and give standard error estimates we also analyze the sensitivity of the welfare measures to components of nonparametric regression estimators such as the number of terms in a series approximation

the impact of the massachusetts health care reform on health care use among children in 2006 massachusetts enacted a major health care reform aimed at achieving near universal coverage in the state while other studies have found that this reform substantially affected the use of health services in general the impact of the reform on children is largely unexplored children are of special interest to policymakers because it is widely believed that better health in early childhood results in large payoffs to adult health and achievement i analyze how the reform affected the insurance coverage health care utilization patterns and health outcomes of children under 18 years old

the impact of nearly universal insurance coverage on health care utilization evidence from medicare the onset of medicare eligibility at age 65 leads to sharp changes in the health insurance coverage of the u s population these changes lead to increases in the use of medical services with a pattern of gains across socioeconomic groups that varies by type of service while routine doctor visits increase more for groups that previously lacked insurance hospital admissions for relatively expensive procedures like bypass surgery and joint replacement increase more for previously insured groups that are more likely to have supplementary coverage after 65 reflecting the relative generosity of their combined insurance package under medicare

oil and the macroeconomy when prices go up and down an extension of hamilton s results in an important paper hamilton 1983 demonstrated a strong correlation between oil price changes and gross national product growth in u s data however his study pertained to a period in which all the large oil price movements were upward and thus it left unanswered the question whether the correlation persists in periods of price decline moreover the price variable he used was somewhat distorted by price controls in the 1970s this note investigates whether hamilton s results continue to hold when the sample is extended to include the recent oil market collapse and the oil price variable is corrected for the effects of price controls particular attention is given to the possibility of asymmetric responses to oil price increases and decreases as suggested in the structural employment literature loungani 1986 davis 1987 hamilton 1988 like hamilton i based my investigation on the gnp equation in sims s 1 980b six variable quarterly vector autoregressive model