anticipated monetary policy in canada some new evidence abstract in this note i examine the policy ineffectiveness proposition for canada using monthly income data due to milbourne et al 1988 i find that anticipated monetary policy altered the evolution of real output in canada recent work by ambler and phaneuf 1988 can be used to attribute this result to a purely new keynesian model of the business cycle although this inference is found to be fragile with respect to the choice of the level of significance used in the hypothesis tests

women s suffrage political responsiveness and child survival in american history women s choices appear to emphasize child welfare more than those of men this paper presents new evidence on how suffrage rights for american women helped children to benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution consistent with standard models of electoral competition suffrage laws were followed by immediate shifts in legislative behavior and large sudden increases in local public health spending this growth in public health spending fueled large scale door to door hygiene campaigns and child mortality declined by 8 15 or 20 000 annual child deaths nationwide as cause specific reductions occurred exclusively among infectious childhood killers sensitive to hygienic conditions

on the co movement between coffee and cocoa prices in international markets in this article we study the movement between cocoa and coffee prices two close substitute commodities using the ardl approach developed by pesaran et al 2001 we found that the two prices are cointegrated the long run elasticity of coffee price with respect to the cocoa one is estimated at 0 88 also using the lag augmented var approach of toda and yamamoto 1995 which is valid whatever the order of integration of the data the cocoa price is found to granger cause the coffee price and not vice versa this finding suggests that models aiming at forecasting coffee prices should incorporate cocoa prices as well

testing liquidity constraints in 10 asian developing countries an error correction model approach an error correction model is used to estimate the fraction of consumers who are liquidity constrained in 10 asian developing countries our estimates of the fraction of consumers who are liquidity constrained range between 0 25 and 0 98 we further investigate whether financial liberalization has resulted in the reduction of liquidity constraints in these countries however the results find support for this only in the cases of south korea sri lanka and taiwan

modelling the link between commodity prices and exchange rates the tale of daily data this paper examines daily data on exchange rates and the prices of three commodities traded on the winnipeg commodity exchange the temporal patterns of commodity prices and exchange rates are shown to be similar daily data are significantly non normal with garch models capturing the processes generating the data commodity prices and exchange rates are examined for cointegration using recent tests proposed by johansen and juselius 1990 currency depreciation is shown to granger cause commodity price inflation this information might be useful to central bankers concerned with reducing general price inflation through targeting commodity price inflation it also suggests that macro events have important effects on commodity markets in canada

is strike behavior cyclical we examine cyclicality of strike frequency and incidence using canadian data on strikes and contracts total strike frequency exhibits significant procyclicality to which within contract strikes contribute appreciably evidence is weaker for procyclical behavior of contract expiry strikes both in total and disaggregated by issue strike incidence is also procyclical particularly in manufacturing though the procyclicality here is confined to strikes over nonwage issues these results mirror those obtained by analyzing the frequency of strikes in the contract data industry specific cyclical variables positively affect strike incidence in manufacturing but region specific variables have no effect

are devaluations contractionary the case of turkey this article studies the output effects of currency devaluation in turkey using annual data from 1970 to 2004 an empirical model that incorporates monetary fiscal and other external variables in addition to exchange rates is developed before estimating the model time series properties of the data are diagnosed two forms of the model one with real exchange rate and the other with nominal exchange rate and relative price level foreign to domestic price ratio are estimated the results suggest that devaluation is contractionary in the short run expansionary in the medium run and neutral in the long run and the effects emanate from nominal devaluation and not from the changes in relative price level

estimating shocks and impulse response functions this paper examines the issue of how to identify the shocks in a cointegrated var when the following assumptions are made the variables can be classified as endogenous or exogenous there are as many cointegrating relations as endogenous variables the cointegrating vectors are identified and they contain at least one exogenous variable it is shown that with these assumptions it is possible to identify the shocks without the use of further restrictions on the covariance matrix of the disturbances or the short run dynamics if the long run parameters are known the whole model can be estimated by ols the analysis is extended to allow the var to have both stationary and non stationary variables an illustration of the method is provided using the traditional benchmark var model involving us data on output prices interest rates and money a liquidity effect is not found using this var methodology

is devaluation expansionary or contractionary empirical evidence from fiji devaluation has been traditionally promoted as an effective tool for increasing exports and improving the external position of the devaluing country if a nominal devaluation results in expenditure switching in this article our aim is to model the relationship between currency devaluations and output for fiji following the approach in bahmani et al 2002 we extend the traditional model by incorporating other monetary and fiscal policy variables we achieve our goal by using the recently developed bounds testing approach to cointegration and the autoregressive distributed lag model and find that devaluation is expansionary in the case of fiji

a dynamic analysis of japanese energy policies their impact on fuel switching and conservation abstract in 1973 the japanese economy was highly dependent on imported oil after the 1973 oil price shock vigorous policy action was undertaken by the japanese government in an attempt to reduce japan s energy consumption and in particular its dependence on imported oil this study attempts to determine how flexibly the japanese economy has responded to the dramatic changes in relative and absolute fuel prices which occurred since 1973 and to what extent government energy policies may have reinforced or undermined market signals and facilitated fuel switching and conservation to analyse the price and income elasticities of energy component demand a dynamic approach to energy demand modelling is employed the study reveals that japanese energy users have responded quite flexibly to the two major oil price rises in the 1970s the probable impact of energy policies on this response is however somewhat problematic

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

are currency devaluations effective a panel unit root test abstract using a panel unit root test with real exchange rate volatility measures this paper shows that currency devaluation leads to a short run contractionary effect for the crisis affected asian economies in addition devaluation is ineffective in the long run in influencing aggregate output

modelling natural resource scarcity using the error correction approach an error correction framework is used to test the long run hypothesis that prices of natural resources commodities in the united states exhibit scarcity properties from the late nineteenth century to 1988 in the sense that real resource commodity prices have been increasing or following a u shaped pattern introduced by m e slade 1982 the model is formulated to test the validity of the deflation procedure itself along with the scarcity properties results indicate that the model works well as a description of the long term behavior of resources prices and supports the u shaped version of the scarcity hypothesis in a majority of cases an error correction framework is used to test the long run hypothesis that prices of natural resources commodities in the u s exhibit scarcity properties from the late nineteenth century to 1988 in the sense that real resource commodity prices have been increasing or following a u shaped pattern slade 1982 the model is formulated to test the validity of the deflation procedure itself along with the scarcity properties results indicate that the model works well as a description of the long term behaviour of resources prices and supports the u shaped version of the scarcity hypothesis in a majority of cases

symmetric or asymmetric price adjustments in the oil market an empirical analysis of the relations between international and domestic prices in the federal republic of germany 1972 89 abstract this paper investigates how german consumer and wholesale prices for gasoline and light heating oil react to changes in the corresponding rotterdam prices monthly data from 1972 to 1989 are employed and the subperiods of the 1970s 1972 to 1979 and 1980s 1980 1989 are distinguished error correction models are estimated to seperate long run equilibrium relations and short run adjustment processes for the 1980s we find rapid symmetric and full adjustment of the german prices to the rotterdam prices whereas during the 1970s we find some asymmetries and at least for gasoline the adjustment processes took considerably more time

on error correction models specification interpretation estimation abstract error correction models ecms have proved a popular organising principle in applied econometrics despite the lack of consensus as to exactly what constitutes their defining characteristic and the rather limited role that has been given to economic theory by their proponents this paper uses a historical survey of the evolution of ecms to explain the alternative specifications and interpretations and proceeds to examine their implications for estimation the various approaches are illustrated for wage equations by application to uk labour market data 1855 1987 we demonstrate that error correction models impose strong and testable non linear restrictions on dynamic econometric equations and that they do not obviate the need for modelling the process of expectations formation with the exception of a few special cases both the non linear restrictions and the modelling of expectations have been ignored by those who have treated ecms as merely reparameterisations of dynamic linear regression models or vector autoregressions

gender economics an assessment concerns about gender equality have jumped to the forefront of public debate in recent years and gender economics is slowly affirming its place as a major field of study this assessment examines where we are in terms of gender equality it reviews the theoretical foundations that can explain existing inequalities and documents the empirical findings supported by the theories identifying avenues for future research and providing a fruitful framework to think about the effectiveness of policies and interventions targeting gender inequality in doing so i provide the foundations against which the contributions in this issue can be placed

an inverse demand analysis with introduction of quality effects an application to spanish consumption of fruit and vegetables this article analyzes consumer preference for fruit and vegetables when by using time series with socioeconomic characteristics of households there can be seemingly unobserved quality effects which are increased by aggregation the changes in spanish demand for fresh and processed fruit and vegetables over the period 1987 2000 are discussed following previous tests and analyses quantities are taken as predetermined and prices as matching the offer conditions thus quality effects based on the nutritional and or health value of the product are estimated from the error terms associated with the functions of the unit values quality variables are introduced as taste shifters in the inverse demand system laitinen theil model the results show the positive effects of quality differences on the normalized price for the group of products through own quality flexibilities and the negative effects between fresh and processed products through cross quality flexibilities

the demand for energy in greek manufacturing abstract this paper considers an econometric approach to measuring substitutability of three types of energy i e crude oil electricity and diesel with capital and labour in the manufacturing sector of greek industry during the period 1970 1990 a general dynamic framework is developed under the assumption that the structure of the production process is weakly separable in capital labour and energy aggregates the translog total cost function is used to represent the production technology the main advantages of the proposed dynamic structure are that it is both disaggregated in energy components and consistent with the neo classical theory of production

does anticipated monetary policy matter more evidence this note provides more evidence on whether anticipated monetary policy alters the evolution of real output in the united states the results are shown to be sensitive to the model selection criterion used to choose the design matrix

economic adjustment and exchange rates in developing countries in spite of the attention paid exchange rates in recent economic debates on developing countries relatively few studies have systematically analyzed in detail the various ramifications of exchange rate policy in these countries in this new volume from the national bureau of economic research leading economists use rigorous models to tackle various exchange rate issues while also illuminating policy implications that emerge from their analyses the volume divided into four main sections addresses the role of exchange rates in stabilization programs and the adjustment process the importance of exchange rate policy during liberalization reform in developing countries exchange rate problems relevant and unique to developing countries illustrated by case studies and the problems defining measuring and identifying determinants of real exchange rates authors of individual papers examine the relation between commercial policies and exchange rates the role of exchange rate policy in stabilization programs the effectiveness of devaluations as a policy tool and the interaction between exchange rate terms of trade an capital flow this research will not only prove crucial to our understanding of the role of exchange rates in developing countries but will clearly set the standard for future work in the field

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

declining discount rates and the fisher effect inflated past discounted future uncertain and persistent real interest rates underpin one argument for using a declining term structure of social discount rates in the expected net present value enpv framework despite being controversial this approach has influenced both the inter agency working group on cost benefit analysis and the uk government s guidelines on discounting we first clarify the theoretical basis of the enpv approach then rather than following previous work which used a single series of u s treasury bond returns we treat nominal interest rates and inflation as co integrated series and estimate the empirical term structure of discount rates via the fisher effect this nests previous empirical models and is more flexible it also addresses an irregularity in previous work which used data on nominal interest rates until 1950 and real interest rates thereafter as we show the real and nominal data have very different time series properties this paper therefore provides a robustness check on previous discounting advice and updated methodological guidance at a time when governments around the world are reviewing their guidelines on social discounting the policy implications are discussed in the context of the social cost of carbon nuclear decommissioning and public health

a survey of some recent econometric methods this survey is written mainly for the applied economist though we hope that the specialist econometrician will find something of interest too our aim has been to try to bring the applied worker as up to date as possible and in the process to improve the quality of applied work by providing access to the latest ideas in econometrics we have tried to describe and explain in a relatively non technical way the main developments that have taken place in the last ten years partly for reasons of space the survey is by no means exhaustive but it does cover a wide range of topics in both time series and cross section analysis among the subjects covered are the followoing the nature of data including integrated and fractionally integrated data four estimation methods maximum likelihood method of moments m estimators and non parametric estimation inference with stationary and integrated regressors a comparison of various model evaluation principles the formulation of models including dynamic specification cointegration and conditional expectations in mean and variance copyright 1989 by royal economic society

regional interest rate pass through in italy this paper estimates the pass through and speed of adjustment of italian regional interest rates to changes in the money market rate for the period 1998q1 2009q4 our main findings suggest that the markup for the lending rates that banks charge are generally higher in the south than in the north moreover our results indicate that the pass through tends to be longer in southern regions we find little evidence supporting the hypothesis of asymmetric adjustment in the lending rates but detect some evidence supporting upward rigidity in the regional deposit rates

optimal hedge ratios at the winnipeg commodity exchange multivariate garch models are employed to estimate time varying hedge ratios for three commodities traded on the winnipeg commodity exchange garch hedge ratios are shown to be superior to those based on the traditional regression approach to calculating the optimal hedge les ratios optimaux de comptant par rapport aux contrats a terme a la bourse de denrees de winnipeg l auteur emploie des modeles multivaries de type garch pour calibrer les ratios optimaux de comptant par rapport aux contrats a terme pour trois denrees transigees a la bourse des denrees de winnipeg ces ratios s averent superieurs a ceux qu on obtient par les methodes de regression traditionnelles

are devaluations contractionary recently a number of authors have criticized the role of devaluations in traditional stabilization programs it has been argued that contrary to the traditional view devaluations are contractionary and generate a decline in aggregate output in spite of the renewed theoretical interest in the possible contractionary effects of devaluations the empirical evidence on the subject has been quite sketchy in this paper the khan and knight 1981 model is extended to empirically address the issue of contractionary devaluations the extended model considers the effect of money surprises fiscal factors terms of trade changes and devaluations on the level of real output the results obtained using a variance components procedure on data for 12 developing countries provide some support to the short run contractionary devaluation hypothesis the results obtained indicate that in the short run a devaluation will generate a decline in aggregate output it is also found that after one year a devaluation will have an expansionary effecton output the evidence suggests that in the long run devaluations will have no effect on output this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

macroeconomic adjustment and private manufacturing investment in turkey a time series analysis despite the drastic switch to market based policies and outward orientation in turkey during the 1980s private investment in manufacturing industry has still not revived after seventeen years of structural adjustment this paper examines the main determinants of private investment in the manufacturing sector and the impacts of structural adjustment particularly financial liberalisation as an integral part of the reform on it the results show that liberalisation policies in financial markets appear to have positive effects by reducing the stringency of quantity constraints on investment while the high interest rates resulting from financial liberalisation had no significant impact on investment macroeconomic instability proxied by the variability of the inflation rate seems to have discouraged investment in manufacturing

determinants of the expected real long term interest rates in the g7 countries the paper investigates which factors determine the expected real long term interest rates of the g7 countries as a whole within a single equation error correction model inflationary expectations are generated using the low frequency component of inflation provided by the hodrick prescott filter a comparison of the calculated expected inflation rates with those resulting from index linked and conventional uk bonds suggests this approach to be appropriate expected real long term interest rates turn out to be influenced positively by real short term interest rates capacity utilization and structural public borrowing

real business cycle analysis a needed revolution in macroeconometrics the contention of this paper is that real business cycle rbc analysis has highlighted fundamental flaws in the underlying macroeconomic theory and econometric methodology of traditional macroeconometric model building but by stating its message crudely and proposing an inferior statistical procedure has failed to receive the recognition it deserves properly understood the lessons to be learned from rbc analysis combined with the new approach of bringing evidence to bear proposed here would amount to a revolution in macroeconometric methodology the outcome of this revolution would be a macroeconometrics better based on macroeconomic theory and a macroeconomics more consistent with the evidence the main failing of most macroeconometric models is in not taking macroeconomic theory seriously enough with the result that little or nothing is learned about key parameter values a fault no amount of econometric sophistication will compensate for consequently macroeconometrics has had surprisingly little influence on macroeconomic theory or macroeconomics teaching and even the main users of macroeconometric models business government the monetary authorities and other national and international bodies are reluctant to employ them for anything other than short term forecasting the popular view of rbc analysis is that it is about whether technology shocks are the predominant cause of aggregate output fluctuations and whether calibration rather than standard econometric methods should be used to analyse this question although this may be a reasonable description of the initial work of kydland and prescott i982 and prescott i 986 subsequent developments make it outdated and obscure its fundamental insights in fact rbc theory is part of a research programme which can be traced back to ramsey and is associated in modern times with lucas in which the aim is to bring out the general equilibrium inter temporal characteristics of macroeconomics before turning to the more difficult issues of disequilibrium in large part the stimuli for adopting the ramsey approach were the now well known criticisms of macroeconometric models made by lucas i976 who argued that macroeconomics should be built on the same theoretical foundations as microeconomics in addition to the weak theoretical foundations of these models lucas objected to the way in which the econometric methods used lent themselves to ambiguous interpretations a good example of this is the difficulty of deciding what meaning to give to observed dynamics the new

currency devaluation aggregate output and the long run an empirical study abstract this paper estimates the effect of currency devaluation on the aggregate output level in six asian countries using a unique methodology developed by wickens et al 1988 economic journal 189 205 the estimated results suggest that devaluation in general is neutral in the long run in some cases it even can have a contractionary effect

car ownership and use in britain a comparison of the empirical results of alternative cointegration estimation methods and forecasts this paper addresses two problems faced by many forecasters in the transport sector namely how to use a relatively small sample to forecast car ownership over a long period of time and avoid the difficulties caused by spurious or nonsense regressions five alternative estimation methods are used to test for cointegrating relationships between per capita car ownership and use and real per capita personable disposable income real motoring costs and real bus fares these are the engle granger two stage the phillips hansen fully modified the wickens breusch one stage the autoregressive distributed lag and the johansen maximum likelihood methods the corresponding error correction models are estimated and a comparison made between the derived short and long run demand elasticities for car ownership and use the ex post forecasting performance of the error correction models together with an arima model specification is evaluated using a number of performance criteria the long range time series fore

an analysis of the disaggregated manufacturing exports of the asian nies to eec usa and japan this paper examines the export performance of the four asian newly industrialized economics nies by modelling their bilateral export flows to three main oecd blocks the usa japan and the european community our estimated export demand models reveal interesting asymmetries between these three areas of destination which do not emerge from previous aggregate empirical studies of nie export performance

does devaluation improve the current account this paper incorporates the link between devaluation foreign interest payments and the current acccount into a fairly general macroeconomic model in which exchange rate changes influence aggregate demand through exports imports and expenditures as well as aggregate supply via the cost of imported factors of production on the basis of avaliable statistical estimates of the behavioral and structural parameters of the model an attempt is mafe to assess the empirical importance of this link among others in a group of highly indebted industrial and developing countries by and large the empirical results indicate that high foreign debt and interest payments tend to reduce the short to medium run effect of devaluation on national income expecially in the ldcs but make little difference to its generally positive effect on the current account

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

tests of exchange market efficiency fragile evidence from cointegration tests abstract several recent papers have employed engle and granger 1987 cointegration tests to determine whether or not markets are efficient we use a new test for cointegration due to johansen 1988 to examine market efficiency with respect to the us dollar exchange rates for canadian japanese and west german currencies the fragile nature of the test indications suggests that cointegration methodologies cannot be relied upon to provide reliable evidence on market efficiency

determinants of agriculture s relative decline thailand during economic development agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output a number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature but their relative historical significance has not been clear this paper develops an econometric methodology to analyze this issue and applies it to time series data for thailand the study investigates the importance of relative commodity prices factor endowments and technical progress as explanations for changing sectoral gdp shares of agriculture manufacturing and services it is concluded that the movement in thailand s aggregate factor endowment relative to labor was the most important determinant of agriculture s relative decline

does devaluation cause stagflation the traditional view that devaluation tends to increase domestic real income and output has been challenged in recent years on the grounds that trade flows including factor imports are relatively insensitive to exchange rate changes especially in developing countries this paper presents a simple macro economic model in which devaluation influences real income and output both through the cost of imported inputs on the supply side of the economy and through exports imports and expenditures on the demand side statistical estimates of the structural parameters of the model for a group of ten industrial and developing countries are used to show that the demand effects dominate the cost effects in most cases thus supporting the traditional view that devaluation has positive real effects in these countries in the short to medium run est ce que la devaluation engendre la stagflation le point de vue conventionnel veut que la devaluation tende a accroitre le niveau du revenu et de la production domestiques c est un point de vue qui a ete remis en question ces dernieres annees parce que dit on les flux de commerce international y compris les flux d importation de facteurs de production semblent relativement insensibles aux changements dans le taux de change ce memoire developpe un modele macro economique simple dans lequel la devaluation influence le niveau de revenu et de production en termes reels via le co ut des facteurs de production importes du cote de l offre et via les exportations les importations et les niveaux de depenses du c6te de la demande les auteurs utilisent la calibration statistique des parametres structurels du modele pour un groupe de dix pays industrialises et en voie de developpement pour montrer que les effets du cot6 de la demande dominent les effets de cofuts dans la plupart des cas voila qui supporte le point de vue traditionnel qui veut que la devaluation ait un impact positif reel dans les pays devaluateurs a court et a moyen tenne

tax decentralization and local government size this paper investigates the relationship between fiscal federalism and the sizes of local governments while many empirical studies emphasized that grants encourage the growth of local public spending and local taxes constrain it they are more silent regarding the effects of different types of tax autonomy the paper addresses this issue by arguing that tax decentralization as organized on tax bases used only by local governments tax separation rather than on tax base sharing would restrain local public expenditures using an unbalanced panel of oecd countries the key finding is that only property taxes mostly based on a tax separation scheme seem to favor smaller local governments thus while tax decentralization is a necessary condition for limiting the growth of local governments it does not appear sufficient as tax separation schemes among government levels would in fact be required

cointegration and dynamic time series models abstract this paper provides a survey of some of the recent developments in the field of econometric modelling with cointegrated time series in particular we describe the testing and estimation procedures which have become increasingly popular in the recent applied literature in addition to the two stage procedure proposed by engle and granger we consider extensions to the modelling of dynamic models with cointegrated variables such as the estimation of models with multiple cointegration vectors simultaneous systems models with seasonally integrated and cointegrated variables furthermore we illustrate the practical application of the techniques describes in the paper by means of a tutorial data set

an empirical assessment of currency devaluation in east asian countries the hypothesis of contractionary devaluation has received surprisingly strong empirical support especially in the context of latin american countries in this paper we study whether it applies equally well in seven east asian countries when we use the pre 1997 crisis data and the trade weighted exchange rate we find no evidence of contractionary devaluations in fact currency devaluation appears strongly expansionary in several countries this is contrasted to the case of chile and mexico where the evidence of devaluation is persistent we find that the results are somewhat sensitive to the definition of the exchange rate and the period of estimation

the demand for the components of broad money error correction and generalized asset adjustment sytems the distinction between bank and non bank deposits have been blurred over the last decade and this has led to changes in the demand for various types of monetary aggregates thus money demand studies which focus only on one monetary aggregate like m3 currency plus bank deposits without allowing for the altered nature of asset substitutions may lead to wrong inferences about the cause of the growth of the money this paper is concerned with the interactions between the components of broad money currency bank and non bank deposits in the long and short run the long run asset demand equations are specified to encompass the transaction and portfolio motives for demanding money while the short run asset adjustment equations are derived from an underlying dynamic cost minimizing model the short run asset adjustment model is of the error correction form and under certain assumptions is shown to nest the generalized adjustment form the model is applied to the case of australia using both quarterly and

towards european monetary union without the ems towards emu without the ems paul de grauwe this paper examines the causes of the breakdown of the ems arguing that ems credibility has always been impaired by recessions this has relevance both for the future of monetary union in europe and for the path by which it might be attained i argue that in comparison with the erm the present more flexible exchange rate arrangements will ease not exacerbate some of the technical problems in making the transition to emu i then analyse the political economy of monetary union and identify the main stumbling blocks that remain finally i set out a specific proposal that takes advantage of the new opportunities to move forward towards emu

polygyny fertility and savings sub saharan africa has a high incidence of polygyny it is also the poorest region of the world in this paper i ask whether banning polygyny could play any role for development using a quantitative model of polygyny i find that enforcing monogamy lowers fertility shrinks the spousal age gap and reverses the direction of marriage payments polygyny leads to high bride prices to ration women which makes buying wives and selling daughters a good investment thus crowding out investment in physical assets for reasonable parameter values i find that banning polygyny decreases fertility by 40 percent increases savings by 70 percent and increases output per capita by 170 percent

the economic consequences of parental leave mandates lessons from europe this study investigates the economic consequences of rights to paid parental leave in nine european countries over the 1969 through 1993 period since women use virtually all parental leave in most nations men constitute a reasonable comparison group and most of the analysis examines how changes in paid leave affect the gap between female and male labor market outcomes the employment to populations ratios of women in their prime childbearing years are also compared with those of corresponding aged men and older females parental leave is associated with increases in women s employment but with reductions in their relative wages at extended durations