energy consumption and economic growth relationship evidence from panel data for low and middle income countries abstract this paper uses the panel data of energy consumption ec and economic growth gdp for 51 countries from 1971 to 2005 these countries are divided into three groups low income group lower middle income group and upper middle income group countries firstly a relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated by employing pedroni 1999 panel cointegration method secondly panel causality test is applied to investigate the way of causality between the energy consumption and economic growth finally we test whether there is a strong or weak relationship between these variables by using pedroni 2001 method the empirical results of this study are as follows i energy consumption and gdp are cointegrated for all three income group countries ii the panel causality test results reveal that there is long run granger causality running from gdp to ec for low income countries and there is bidirectional causality between ec and gdp for middle income countries iii the estimated cointegration factor is not close to 1 in other words no strong relation is found between energy consumption and economic growth for all income groups considered in this study the findings of this study have important policy implications and it shows that this issue still deserves further attention in future research

financial development and energy consumption evidence from a heterogeneous panel of asian countries abstract this paper examined relationships between financial development and energy consumption in asia for the period of 1980 2012 for the purpose of the empirical analysis it performed the heterogeneous panel causality test suggested by dumitrescu and hurlin 1 the findings of the panel cointegration test indicated that there was a long run equilibrium relationship between finance and energy consumption in the region moreover the heterogeneous panel causality test detected a unidirectional causality from energy consumption to financial development but not vice versa these results indicate that an expansion of energy usage could be a driving force behind financial development in asia

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

the incremental information content of investor fear gauge for volatility forecasting in the crude oil futures market abstract this paper aims to investigate whether investor fear gauge ifg contains incremental information content for forecasting the volatility of crude oil futures for this purpose we use oil volatility index ovx to measure the ifg adding the ifg to existing heterogeneous autoregressive har models we develop many har models with ifg subsequently we employ these har models to predict the volatility of crude oil futures the results from the parameter estimation and out of sample forecasting show that the in sample and out of sample performances of har models with ifg are significantly better than their corresponding har models without ifg the results are robust in different ways thus the har models with ifg are more beneficial to the decision making of all participants including financial traders manufacturers and policymakers in the crude oil futures market more importantly the results suggest that the investor fear gauge has a significant positive effect on volatility forecasting and can help improve the performances of almost all the existing har models

is protectionism on the rise assessing national trade policies during the crisis of 2008 to understand the role of trade policies in the crisis of 2008 this paper constructs the overall trade restrictiveness indices for a wide range of countries using their tariff schedules in 2008 and 2009 the index summarizes the trade policy stance of a country taking into account the share of each good in trade as well as its corresponding import demand elasticity results show that there is no widespread increase in protectionism via tariff policies since the global financial crisis has unfolded while many countries have adjusted tariffs upward on selected products only a handful of countries such as malawi russia argentina turkey and china focus on products that have significant impacts on trade flows the united states and the european union by contrast rely mainly on anti dumping duties to shield domestic industries overall while the rise in tariffs and anti dumping duties in these countries may have jointly caused global trade to drop by as much as us 43 billion during the crisis period it explains less than 2 percent of the collapse in world trade

finance and the sources of growth at various stages of economic development this article studies the effects of financial development on the sources of growth in different groups of countries recent theoretical work shows that financial development may affect productivity and capital accumulation in different ways in industrial versus developing countries this hypothesis is tested with panel data from 74 countries using gmm dynamic panel techniques results are consistent with the hypothesis finance has a strong positive influence on productivity growth primarily in more developed economies in less developed economies the effect of finance on output growth occurs primarily through capital accumulation jel o4 g1

optimal auction with resale this paper investigates the design of seller optimal auctions when winning bidders can attempt to resell the good in that case the optimal allocation characterized by myerson 1981 cannot be achieved without resale i find a sufficient and necessary condition for sincere bidding given the possibility of resale in two bidder cases i prove that the myerson allocation can be achieved under standard conditions supplemented with two assumptions with three or more bidders achieving the myerson allocation is more difficult i prove that it can be implemented in special cases in those cases the myerson allocation is generated through a sequence of resale auctions each optimally chosen by a reseller

trade restrictiveness indices in the presence of externalities an application to non tariff measures we extend the trade restrictiveness index approach to the case of market imperfections and domestic regulations addressing them we focus on standard like non tariff measures ntms affecting cost of production and potentially enhancing demand by reducing negative externalities we apply the framework to the database of kee et al 2009 and derive ad valorem equivalents aves for technical measures about 39 of the product lines affected by ntms exhibit negative aves indicating a net trade facilitating effect of these measures accounting for these effects significantly reduces previous measures of countries trade policy restrictiveness obtained while constraining these ntms to be trade reducing

the nexus between financial development and energy consumption in the eu a dynamic panel data analysis abstract the relationship between financial development and energy consumption has newly started to be discussed in energy economics literature this paper investigates this issue in the eu over the period 1990 2011 by using system gmm model no significant relationship is found in the eu27 the empirical results however provide strong evidence of the impact of the financial development on energy consumption in the old members greater financial development leads to an increase in energy consumption regardless of whether financial development stems from banking sector or stock market by contrast we find for the new members that the impact of financial development on energy consumption depends on how financial development is measured using bankindex the impact of financial development displays an inverted u shaped pattern while no significant relationship is detected once it is measured using stockindex

globalization labor markets and policy backlash in the past the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have many things in common both periods recorded fast growth convergence and labor market integration between oecd members both periods witnessed intense debate about who gained and who lost from globalization furthermore the earlier period saw a retreat from global liberalism long before the interwar deglobalization disaster did globalization of that time plant seeds of its own destruction are there lessons for the present

does financial development have a non linear impact on energy consumption evidence from 30 provinces in china abstract this paper uses a sample of 30 provinces in china for the period 1997 2017 to examine the relationship between financial development and energy consumption based on the traditional convergence hypothesis this paper constructs a functional convergence model and explores the dynamic convergence of energy consumption the results show that there is a significant threshold effect between financial development and energy consumption there is an inverse u shaped relationship between foreign investment ratio financial efficiency and energy consumption besides financial interrelations ratio and insurance depth increase energy consumption the trend of china s energy consumption tends to be consistent in the eastern region the growth rate of energy consumption is negatively correlated with the initial level there is only a convergence effect on energy consumption in the central region however the difference in energy consumption in the western region is continually expanding

inter factor inter fuel substitution carbon intensity and energy related co2 reduction empirical evidence from china carbon dioxide co2 reduction which is the central issue in addressing global warming depends on the extent that clean energy can substitute for co2 emitting coal and non energy factors can substitute for energy factor the purposes of this paper are to empirically investigate inter factor inter fuel substitution in china and to evaluate the determinants of china s energy related carbon intensity as well as mitigation effects of carbon tax considering china s rapid increase in energy consumption and the slow adjustment in substitution the two stage estimation method and the dynamic error correction mechanism are employed in this study the empirical results suggest substitutability among different types of energy sources as well as substitutability among energy labor and capital the magnitude of cross price elasticities indicates that the substitutions are inelastic which limits the scope of the chinese government to implement substitution strategy aiming at energy conservation and environmental management china s carbon intensity declined during 1985 2012 most of which can be attributed to labor substitution and energy price increase however carbon intensive technology being embodied in china s capital investment energy consuming equipment has contributed to the increase in carbon intensity a carbon tax of rmb 50 tonne could reduce 332 9 million tonnes co2 emissions on the basis of 2012 in addition if ignoring the feedback between inter factor inter fuel substitutions co2 mitigation potential would be underestimated

energy consumption and economic growth new insights into the cointegration relationship abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp including energy prices for 25 oecd countries from 1981 to 2007 the distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long run relationship indeed cointegration between the common components of the underlying variables indicates that international developments dominate the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp furthermore the results suggest that energy consumption is price inelastic causality tests indicate the presence of a bi directional causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

tariff and quota reform with international capital mobility in a small open economy with a convex production set international capital mobility raises the cost of tariff protection on one subset of imports if there are irremovable quotas on another given irremovable quotas on one subset of imports free trade is the optimal policy toward all other imports with or without international capital mobility further in the scalar case international capital mobility reduces the optimal implicit excess tariff on the quota constrained import if an irremovable tariff is in place on the other import

service sector restrictiveness and economic performance an estimation for the mena region this article aims to assess barriers to service provision in the banking and telecom sectors of four middle east and north africa mena countries and the impact of these barriers on firm performance our methodology involves the computation of aggregate and modal trade restrictiveness indices tris by sector and utilisation of these tris as regressors of firms economic performance our analysis shows that significant regulatory reforms have taken place in the service sectors over the last decade in the mena region but that a broad range of restrictions still remain the most significant change in these service sectors has been the lifting or softening of constraints on foreign equity participation these regulatory reforms however have had varying degrees of impact on market structure depending on the country the sector and the mode moreover service restrictions have had an impact on economic performance in the three studied sectors while a rent creating effect seems to dominate restrictions on banking and fixed telecom sectors a cost inefficiency effect seems to dominate the mobile telecom sector finally we find evidence of interactions between modal restrictions for banking services our results suggest a complementarity between modes 3 and 1 as well as a substitution effect between modes 3 and 4 in the banking sector

collusion under asymmetric information when applied to groups the revelation principle postulates a bayesian nash behavior between agents their binding agreements are unenforceable or the principal can prevent them at no cost we analyze instead a mechanism design problem in which the agents can communicate between themselves and collude under asymmetric information we characterize the set of implementable collusion proof contracts both when the principal offers anonymous and nonanonymous contracts after having isolated the nexi and the stakes of collusion we proceed to a normative analysis perform some comparative statics discuss our concept of collusion proofness and provide some insights about transaction costs in side contracting

collusion via signalling in simultaneous ascending bid auctions with heterogeneous objects with and without complementarities collusive equilibria exist in simultaneous ascending bid auctions with multiple objects even with large complementarities in the buyers utility functions the bidders collude by dividing the objects among themselves while keeping the prices low in the most collusive equilibrium the complementarities are never realized the scope for collusion however narrows as the ratio between the number of bidders and the number of objects increases

the contribution of energy use and financial development by source in climate change mitigation process a global empirical perspective abstract the danger of climate change has over the years become a reality in the public domain while efforts to mitigate climate change involve energy mix energy efficiency and cleaner technology financial development has also been considered as an important factor indicator of financial development may draw fdi and advanced degree of research and development which can accelerate economic growth and hence affect dynamism of environmental performance this study examines the impacts of energy use and financial development indicators by source in the environment growth energy model for 90 countries categorized on the basis of income possession over the period 1980 2014 the study applies the panel analysis that accounts for cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity of series used in the estimation results from panel dynamic ordinary least squares dols show that in all the categories of countries fossil fuel energy use and gdp per capita are found to be the major drivers of co2 emissions though fossil fuel energy use possesses the bigger elasticities population however displays a sign contrary to expectation regarding economic theory in high income countries renewable energy and financial development on the other hand are capable of reducing co2 emissions however the magnitude of the long run elasticity of co2 emissions with respect to renewable energy use and financial development are much greater in the models with m2 gdp than the model with m2 reserve especially in the high income countries policies should be geared towards stimulating investments in renewable energy technology there is need to develop robust financial systems to lend financial credence to research institutes to work towards producing energy that have less carbon or are carbon free

ratifiable mechanisms learning from disagreement in a mechanism design problem participation constraints require that all types prefer the proposed mechanism to some status quo if equilibrium play in the status quo mechanism depends on the players beliefs then the inference drawn if someone objects to the proposed mechanism may alter the participation constraints we investigate this issue by modeling the mechanism design problem as a two stage process consisting of a ratification state followed by the actual play of the chosen game we develop and illustrate a new concept ratifiability that takes account of inferences from a veto in a consistent way

on the nexus of financial development economic growth and energy consumption in china new perspective from a gmm panel var approach abstract this paper studies the endogenous relationships among financial development energy consumption and economic growth in china by applying a gmm panel var approach with a panel data of 30 chinese provinces over the period 1996q1 2015q4 financial development is measured by six individual indicators and by a comprehensive indicator obtained through the pca method we also account for regional heterogeneity by dividing our sample into three regions eastern region central region and western region we underline our findings in three aspects first financial development measured by most individual indicators m2 credit revenue of the insurance industry and stock market value and the comprehensive one has a significantly negative impact on economic growth second energy consumption can significantly contribute to economic growth in all regions while no feedback effect is found except in the western region this result is further supported by the granger causality tests last financial development in the sense of m2 credit stock turnover and the comprehensive indicator can significantly lessen energy consumption in all regions but this inhibitory effect is found to be largest in the western region followed by the eastern region and be smallest in the central region the granger causality tests confirm further the existence of heterogeneity across regions a bidirectional granger causality between the two variables is found in the eastern region a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to financial development is identified in the central region and no significant causal relationship shows up in the western region our findings provide valuable policy implications for china heading for a green economic growth

global supply chains and trade policy responses to the 2008 crisis the collapse in trade and the contraction of output that occurred during 2008 9 was comparable to and in many countries more severe than the great depression of the 1930s however it did not give rise to the rampant protectionism that followed the great crash the idea that the rise in the fragmentation of production across global value chains vertical specialization may be a deterrent against protectionism is under appreciated in the literature institutions also played a role in limiting the extent of protectionist responses world trade organization discipline raises the cost of using trade policies for member countries and has proved to be a stable foundation for the open multilateral trading system that has been built over the past 50 years using tradeand protection data for seven large emerging market countries that have a history of active use of trade policy the influence of these and other factors on trade policy responses to the 2008 crisis are empirically examined an instrumental variables strategy is used to identify their impact participation in global value chains is found to be a powerful economic factor determining trade policy responses

collusive bidder behavior at single object second price and english auctions models of collusive bidder behavior at single object second price and english auctions are provided the ind ependent private values model is generalized to permit the formulatio n of coalitions and a strategic response by the auctioneer cooperati ve strategies are found to be dominant in these models coalitions of any size are viable and the payoff to each member increases with th e size of the coalition in addition the collusive strategies of the coalition represent a noncooperative equilibrium the optimal respon se of the auctioneer is to establish a reserve price that is a functi on of the coalition s size these and other features of the model are found to be consistent with the essential features of actual behavio r copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

pro poor trade policy in sub saharan africa abstract this paper examines the presence of a pro poor bias in the existing structure of protection of six sub saharan african ssa countries burkina faso cameroon cote d ivoire ethiopia gambia and madagascar we build on a simple agricultural household production model and we propose an extension to include adjustments in labor income our approach which can be implemented without repeated cross sections of household level data suits well the data constraints in ssa it also allows us to capture the heterogeneity in trade protection at the tariff line level the pro poor bias indicators suggest that ssa s trade policies tend to be biased in favor of poor households as these policies redistribute income from rich to poor households this is because protection increases the agricultural prices of goods that are sold by african households and this effect dominates both the impacts of higher consumption prices and the strong stolper samuelson effects that benefit skilled over unskilled workers

energy consumption financial development and economic growth in india new evidence from a nonlinear and asymmetric analysis this paper investigates the asymmetric relationship between energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating financial development capital and labour into a production function covering the indian economy from 1960q1 2015q4 the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach is applied to examine the asymmetric cointegration between the variables an asymmetric causality test is also employed to examine the causal association between the considered variables the results indicate cointegration between the variables in the presence of asymmetries the asymmetric causality results show that only negative shocks in energy consumption have impacts on economic growth in the same vein only negative shocks in financial development have impacts on economic growth by contrast symmetrically capital formation causes economic growth finally over the study period a neutral effect exists between the labour force and economic growth in india the implications of these results for growth policies in india are also discussed

measuring the restrictiveness of trade policy this article provides an introduction to the trade restrictiveness index tri which equals the uniform tariff that is welfare equivalent to a given pattern of trade protection unlike standard measures of trade restrictiveness the tri has a solid theoretical basis can incorporate both tariffs and quantitative restrictions and can be adapted to construct the trade policy equivalent of domestic distortions the article compares a number of applications and describes procedures for operationalizing the tri on a personal computer the authors conclude that the tri has considerable potential in empirical work

measuring quality change in quota constrained import markets the case of u s footwear abstract theoretical models predict that quantitative import restrictions such as orderly marketing agreements omas lead to substitution into higher quality products within the quotaconstrained import category the country specific nature of omas results in further substitution among supplying countries using index number techniques this paper measures the impact of product and country substitution on the price of u s footwear imports in the period surrounding the 1977 1981 footwear oma with korea and taiwan upgrading of the import bundle was observed in most quota categories throughout the oma period and accounted for 12 percent of the observed rise in the average price of footwear imports

optimal second degree price discrimination and arbitrage on the role of asymetric information among buyers the traditional theory of second degree price discrimination tackles individual self selection but does not address the possibility that buyers could form a coalition to conduct arbitrage we study the optimal sale mechanism that takes into account both individual and coalition incentive compatibility we show that the monopolist can achieve the same profit regardless of whether or not buyers can form a coalition although marginal rates of substitution are not equalized across buyers of different types in the optimal sale mechanism they fail to realize the gains from arbitrage because of the transaction costs in coalition formation generated by asymmetric information

financial development and energy consumption in central and eastern european frontier economies this study examines the impact of financial development on energy consumption in a sample of 9 central and eastern european frontier economies several different measures of financial development are examined including bank related variables and stock market variables the empirical results obtained from dynamic panel demand models show a positive and statistically significant relationship between financial development and energy consumption when financial development is measured using banking variables like deposit money bank assets to gdp financial system deposits to gdp or liquid liabilities to gdp of the three stock market variables investigated only one stock market turnover has a positive and statistically significant impact on energy consumption both short run and long run elasticities are presented the implications of these results for energy policy are discussed

can trade costs explain why exchange rate volatility does not feed into consumer prices abstract if countries specialize in imperfectly substitutable goods trade costs increase the share of expenditure devoted to domestic output reducing the exposure of consumer price inflation to exchange rate changes i present a multi country flexible price model where expenditure shares are inversely related to trade costs through a gravity equation in this setting consumer price inflation can be approximated as an expenditure share weighted average of the contributions to inflation from all countries i use data from 24 oecd countries 1970 2003 to estimate a structural gravity model i combine the fitted expenditure shares from the estimation with actual data on exchange rates to construct predictions of inflation the behavior of these predictions indicates that trade costs can explain both qualitatively and quantitatively the failure of exchange rate volatility to feed into inflation

how does financial development affect energy consumption evidence from 21 transitional countries abstract financial development significantly impacts energy consumption this paper uses cross country panel data from 21 transitional countries for the period 2006 2015 while considering different financial development indicators and nonlinear relationships between financial development and energy consumption this is done by selecting five financial development indicators to measure financial development and testing linear and nonlinear relationships between financial development and energy consumption it found the following first there are no significant linear relationships between financial development and energy consumption financial development does have significant nonlinear impacts on energy consumption in transitional countries with estimated nonlinear parameters that are significant second financial development affects energy consumption in transitional countries in differing ways financial intermediation development positively affected energy consumption in all the countries studied stock markets development led decreased energy consumption in china and poland financial openness development reduced energy use except in georgia and the kygyz republic

monopoly with incomplete information recent theoretical research on principal agent relationships has emphasized incentive problems that arise when the parties involved are constrained by either asymmetric information or their inability to monitor each other s actions here we concentrate on the former constraint and consider the case of a single principal the monopolist the main contribution is to show that under a separability assumption strong conclusions can be drawn about the nature of optimal incentive schemes although the primary focus is on optimal quantity discounts in a monopolized market the results also shed light on related topics such as optimal income taxation and commodity bundling

co2 emissions and financial development in an emerging economy an augmented var approach abstract this paper explores the influence of economic and financial development on carbon emissions in a small emerging economy the study employs ardl approach to investigate the long run relationship between carbon emissions and a set of economic and financial variables an error correction model ecm to capture the short run dynamics granger causality in an augmented var framework to check the causality direction and variance decomposition based on an estimated vector error correction model vecm to determine the relative contributions of economic and financial variables to the evolution of per capita carbon emissions the periods considered were the full sample 1971 2011 and a reduced sample sub period 1988 2011 that corresponded to greater liberalization and financial sector development the financial variables played a role in emission mitigation only in the latter period where greater degree of liberalization and financial sector development occurred even then the relative magnitude of emissions mitigation attributable to financial variables was much smaller compared to the emissions raising impact of rising per capita incomes this underscores the need for adopting other mitigation policies for reducing carbon footprints in those emerging economies where a sufficient degree of financial deepening and financial sector development has not yet taken place

optimum tariffs and retaliation how country numbers matter abstract this paper identifies a new terms of trade externality that is exercised through tariff setting a north south model of international trade is introduced in which the number of countries in each region can be varied as the number of countries in one region is increased each government there competes more aggressively with the others in its region by lowering its tariff to attract imports from the other region in doing so all countries in a region exert a negative terms of trade externality on each other collectively undermining their own terms of trade and welfare this externality can increase efficiency if the numbers of countries in both regions are increased simultaneously

financial development and economic growth convergence or divergence abstract this study tests for convergence in financial development and economic growth by incorporating the interaction between the real and financial sectors into an otherwise traditional test for convergence the results show strong evidence for conditional convergence middle and high income countries conditionally converge to parallel growth paths not only in per capita gdp but also in financial development the mutually reinforcing relationship between financial development and economic growth is stronger in the early stage of economic development and this relationship diminishes as sustained economic growth gets under way as such low income countries with a relatively well developed financial sector are more likely to catch up to their middle and high income counterparts and those with a relatively under developed financial sector are more likely to be trapped in poverty this finding explains the observed great divergence between poor and rich countries another finding is that while human capital is more important to growth in the early stage of economic development economic freedom becomes more important in the later stage

measuring protection mission impossible abstract there seems to be some confusion between openness and protection measures in the international trade literature the aim of this paper is to bring together the state of the art in quantifying trade policy measures and for this reason we focus on the extent of the protection granted by policies rather than on the degree of openness of the economy given the considerable amount of literature that deals with these issues we will limit our review as follows on the one hand we focus on trade policies implemented at the border and therefore do not consider all the other possible public interventions influencing trade flows on the other hand we only take into account indexes that explicitly adopt a metric expressed in a scalar aggregate tariff and quota equivalent measures or an index in a closed interval we distinguish between indexes that aggregate across products same barrier for more products and indexes that aggregate across instruments more barriers for the same product finally in order to classify the large number of indexes covered in our review we propose a typology based on three categories incidence outcome and equivalence

the impact of growth energy and financial development on the environment in china a cointegration analysis this article aims to investigate the impact of financial development economic growth and energy consumption on environmental pollution in china from 1953 to 2006 using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing procedure the main objective is to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between financial development and environmental pollution the results of the analysis reveal a negative sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development in china has not taken place at the expense of environmental pollution on the contrary it is found that financial development has led to a decrease in environmental pollution it is concluded that carbon emissions are mainly determined by income energy consumption and trade openness in the long run moreover the findings confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in the case of china

nonlinear pricing with random participation the canonical selection contracting programme takes the agent s participation decision as deterministic and finds the optimal contract typically satisfying this constraint for the worst type upon weakening this assumption of known reservation values by introducing independent randomness into the agents outside options we find that some of the received wisdom from mechanism design and nonlinear pricing is not robust and the richer model which allows for stochastic participation affords a more general empirical specification we develop a multidimensional methodology for addressing this class of problems providing two important applications to nonlinear pricing first with nonlinear pricing by a monopolist the familiar nodistortion at the top result persists but in tandem with the surprising conclusion that there is either no distortion at the bottom or bunching second in a simple model of product differentiated duopolists competing with nonlinear pricing we show that generally the duopoly outcome is qualitatively similar to the monopoly outcome however when marginal costs are symmetric and competition is sufficiently intense distortions disappear and the equilibrium outcome takes a remarkably simple form efficient quality allocations with cost plus fee pricing

strategic buyers and exclusionary contracts this paper characterizes equilibrium exclusionary contracts between buyers an incumbent firm and a potential entrant when buyers can either vertically integrate or contract with the outside entrant in this setting exclusionary contracts are generally shown to be efficient and to deter inefficient entry that would otherwise occur with multiple unorganized buyers equilibrium contracts are shown to take a divide and conquer form and in some cases to deter some efficient entry in such cases efficient contracting can be restored by a policy that prohibits price discrimination and gives agents free reign to sign exclusionary agreements copyright 1994 by american economic association

tariffs and growth in the late 19th century the paper estimates the correlation between tariffs and economic growth in the late 19th century in the context of three types of growth equation unconditional convergence equations conditional convergence equations and factor accumulation models it does so for a panel of ten countries between 1875 and 1914 tariffs were positively correlated with growth in these countries during this period economic theory is ambiguous as regards the relationship between trade policy and growth the growth literature of the past decade has produced an impressive array of models in which protection can either increase or reduce long run growth rates grossman and helpman 1991 rivera batiz and romer 1991 stokey 1991 young 1991 such theoretical ambiguity invites empirical research while new growth theory is ambiguous on the subject the new empirical growth literature has produced a consensus that free trade is positively associated with growth based on evidence from the late 20th century but see rodrlguez and rodrik 1999 for a sceptical review of the literature the clear

tariff structure trade expansion and canadian protectionism 1870 1910 canada s trade policy at the end of the 19th century is commonly viewed as protectionist and extremely costly in this paper we employ the anderson neary trade restrictiveness index to re examine this view based on product level customs data we show that canadian trade policy between 1870 and 1910 was more restrictive than previously understood but created smaller welfare losses than previously believed these results are primarily driven by high tariffs on inelastic non competing import goods although canada s tariff structure becomes more restrictive over the period our findings indicate it was not as protectionist or as costly as once thought structure tarifaire expansion du commerce et protectionnisme canadien entre 1870 et 1910 la politique commerciale canadienne a la fin du 19e siecle est habituellement consideree comme protectionniste et extremement couteuse dans ce memoire on emploie l indice de restriction du commerce de anderson neary pour reexaminer ce point de vue a partir de donnees du service des douanes au niveau du produit on montre que la politique commerciale canadienne entre 1870 et 1910 a ete plus restrictive que ce qu on avait pense autrefois mais qu elle a cree des pertes de bien etre moindres que ce qu on avait cru anterieurement ces resultats sont d abord engendres par des droits de douanes eleves sur des biens d importation qui ne concurrencent pas les biens domestiques et dont la demande est inelastique meme si la structure tarifaire du canada devient plus restrictive au cours de cette periode les resultats montrent qu elle n est ni aussi protectionniste ni aussi couteuse qu on l a deja pense

forecasting the volatility of crude oil futures using har type models with structural breaks abstract we introduce sixteen har type volatility models with structural breaks and estimate their parameters by applying 5 min high frequency transaction data for wti crude oil futures we find significant structural breaks in the volatility of crude oil futures additionally the historical realized volatility continuous sample path variation negative realized semivariance signed jump signed semi jump and leverage components contain substantial and salient information for forecasting the volatility of crude oil futures then we use loss functions to assess the forecasting performance of these sixteen new models and finally rank these models using the promethee ii method our results indicate that different models exhibit different predictive power in forecasting the 1 day 1 week and 1 month volatility of crude oil futures of the new har type models the new har rsv model performs best at forecasting the 1 day and 1 month volatilities whereas the new har cj best forecasts the 1 week volatility

foreign direct investment and decoupling between energy and gross domestic product in developing countries on a sample of 20 developing countries we noticed a clear decline in the energy intensity as foreign direct investment increases the reason for that probably is the use of modern technologies that came with foreign direct investment i e a leapfrogging over the old fashioned traditional technologies in use in these countries

co2 gdp and ret an aggregate economic equilibrium analysis for turkey there is a worldwide interest in renewable electricity technologies rets due to growing concerns about global warming and climate change as an eu candidate country whose energy demand increases exponentially turkey inevitably shares this common interest on ret this study using an aggregate economic equilibrium model explores the economic costs of different policy measures to mitigate co2 emissions in turkey the model combines energy demands capital requirements and labor inputs at a constant elasticity of substitution under an economy wide nested production function growing energy demand triggered by economic growth is met by increased supply and initiates new capacity additions investment into ret is encouraged via the incorporation of a endogenous technological learning through which the ret cost declines as a function of cumulative capacity and b a willingness to pay wtp function which imposes the wtp of consumers as a lower bound on ret installation the wtp equation is obtained as a function of consumer income categories based on data gathered from a pilot survey in which the contingent valuation methodology was employed the impacts of various emission reduction scenarios on gdp growth and ret diffusion are explored as expected ret penetration is accelerated under faster technological learning and higher wtp conditions it is found that stabilizing co2 emissions to year 2005 levels causes economic losses amounting to 17 and 23 of gdp in the years 2020 and 2030 respectively

the short and long run causality relationship among economic growth energy consumption and financial development evidence from south mediterranean countries smcs abstract this study aims at examining the short run and long run causal link between economic growth energy consumption and financial development by using data set of 6 smcs for the 1995 2015 periods the basic testing procedure requires four steps adf and pp unit root tests bound tests for co integration ardl approach and vecm method the results confirm cointegration between the variables it means that the long run relationship exists the short run causal relationships unidirectional exist at least once for each country except egypt the granger causality results for individual countries give mixed results these results urge for the attention of the policy makers in smcs to design a comprehensive energy conservation policy to minimize the consequences of massive energy consumption on economic growth by adding financial development

international trade and unemployment theory and cross national evidence abstract we present a model of trade and search induced unemployment where trade results from heckscher ohlin h o and or ricardian comparative advantage using cross country data on trade policy unemployment and various controls and controlling for endogeneity and measurement error problems we find fairly strong and robust evidence for the ricardian prediction that unemployment and trade openness are negatively related this effect dominates the positive h o effect of trade openness on unemployment for capital abundant countries which turns negative for labor abundant countries using panel data we find an unemployment increasing short run impact of trade liberalization followed by an unemployment reducing effect leading to the new steady state

measuring protection a cautionary tale abstract this paper comments on a theoretically based index of protection recently developed by anderson and neary the index must be calculated within the context of a specific cge model anderson and neary propose a generic model and have found that the index is robust to changes in the elasticities embedded within that model is the index also robust to changes in the specification of the model the paper identifies one historical instance where the index is extremely sensitive to the specification of the model s demand side there are important methodological lessons to be learnt from this example

consumer strategies limiting the monopolist s power multiple and joint purchases i characterize the menu of bundles price quantity combinations offered by a monopolist when consumers can buy several bundles share bundles with others or do both in a two type setting i find that although perfect arbitrage prevents any price discrimination partial arbitrage in the form of multiple or joint purchases may actually lead to more pronounced price discrimination than when consumers can only pick one single bundle further clear predictions emerge for the price pattern contrasting with the existing literature with multiple purchases only the firm offers strict quantity discounts with joint purchases only discounts are infeasible

robustly collusion proof implementation a contract with multiple agents may be susceptible to collusion we show that agents collusion imposes no cost in a large class of circumstances with risk neutral agents including both uncorrelated and correlated types in those circumstances any payoff the principal can attain in the absence of collusion including the second best level can be attained in the presence of collusion in a way robust to many aspects of collusion behavior the collusion proof implementation generalizes to a setting in which only a subset of agents may collude provided that noncollusive agents incentives can be protected via an ex post incentive compatible and ex post individually rational mechanism our collusion proof implementation also sheds light on the extent to which hierarchical delegation of contracts can optimally respond to collusion

linking financial development economic growth and energy consumption in pakistan abstract this paper aims at exploring the finance growth energy nexus for pakistan over the 1972 2012 period by employing the system gmm estimation technique the study tries to capture the impact of financial development over energy consumption through economic growth channel and includes energy prices and urbanization in the structural model the study finds positive and significant impact of economic growth and urbanization on energy consumption while the effect of energy prices over energy consumption is significant but negative financial development positively and significantly affects energy consumption through the economic growth channel our analysis is important for policy makers for effective energy demand planning and conservation policies that would ensure sustainable economic development as well as serve as motivation to search alternative energy sources to meet the bourgeoning energy demand in pakistan

the organization of regulated production complementarities correlation and collusion we analyze the choice between vertical separation vs and vertical integration vi when two regulated firms produce complementary inputs with correlated costs and are protected by ex post break even constraints first in the absence of collusion the regulator prefers vi vs for negative and weak positive respectively strong positive correlation second if the firms can collude under vs and know all costs then vs is equivalent to vi however if firms collude under asymmetric information then collusion does not affect the choice between vs and vi since the regulator takes advantage of the transaction costs created by asymmetric information

the mercantilist index of trade policy we introduce an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff that maintains the same trade volume as a given tariff quota structure our index overcomes the problems of the trade weighted average tariff it avoids substitution bias correctly accounts for general equilibrium transfers and takes import volume instead of welfare as benchmark empirical applications to international cross section and time series comparisons of trade policy confirm our theoretical results trade weighted average tariffs generally underestimate the true height of tariffs as measured by the trade volume equivalent index this in turn always underestimates the welfare equivalent index

optimal collusion proof auctions abstract we study an optimal collusion proof auction in an environment where subsets of bidders may collude not just on their bids but also on their participation despite their ability to collude on participation informational asymmetry facing the potential colluders can be exploited significantly to weaken their collusive power the second best auction i e the optimal auction in a collusion free environment can be made collusion proof if at least one bidder is not collusive or there are multiple bidding cartels or the second best outcome involves a non trivial probability of the object not being sold regardless optimal collusion proof auction prescribes non trivial exclusion of collusive bidders i e a refusal to sell to any collusive bidder with positive probability

changes in automobile energy consumption during urbanization evidence from 279 cities in china abstract automobile sector is one of the important parts of the transportation industry china s booming auto sector has also brought huge energy consumption and energy consumption in the automobile sector will continue to increase with the further development of china s economy urbanization is a complex process of modernization and it may be an important reason for the change in automobile energy consumption according to the current literature the impact of urbanization may exist as a positive or negative mechanism based on the sample of 279 cities in 31 provinces of china from 2003 to 2015 this paper analyzes how urbanization affects automobile energy consumption in the disparity of income and then it also further explores the heterogeneity of automobile energy consumption in different regions the conclusion of this paper shows that considering the income disparity the effect of urbanization on automobile energy consumption increased first and then decreased the regions with relatively low automobile energy consumption will gradually catch up with the high energy consumption regions and automobile energy consumption in each region will not converge to its own steady state

the direct and relative effects of preferential market access abstract the proliferation of preferential trade agreements has resulted in a complex system of preferences in which market access conditions are often discriminatory in this paper we investigate how market access conditions have evolved between 2000 and 2009 and how this has affected international trade our results show that the proliferation of preferential access has increased bilateral trade not only due to lower tariffs but also because preferential access often resulted in higher preferential margins vis a vis foreign competitors the results also indicate that the evolution of the system of preferences has been disadvantageous for countries that did not actively engage in forming new trade agreements

the uruguay round and welfare in some distorted agricultural economies abstract the uruguay round s induced changes in world agricultural prices will affect the welfare of developing countries the standard terms of trade effect calculation can mislead since the distortion effect operates alongside the terms of trade effect this study of the uruguay round s impact on nine agricultural economies reveals distortion effects which are many times larger than terms of trade effects in three of nine cases the distortion effect reverses the impact of the terms of trade effect in two other cases the distortion effect raises trivial terms of trade effect up to around 1 of national income

how many times again will we examine the energy income nexus using a limited range of traditional econometric tools during the last three decades following closely the developments in econometric theory energy and environmental economists have empirically examined the energy income nexus for different countries and time periods however today in spite of the growing interest in this area the state of knowledge is still controversial and unsettled this viewpoint paper attempts to highlight some of the issues related to the existing literature on the long run relationship and causality between energy consumption and economic growth in particular it discusses how it is difficult to make policy recommendations on the basis of inconsistent and conflicting results in the published literature on the subject in order to do so the paper first illustrates the increasing trend in the number of studies published in this area providing also a brief comparison of the conventional methods used to estimate the energy income nexus it then deals with new directions and different viewpoints on the same issue

analyzing time varying volatility spillovers between the crude oil markets using a new method abstract the spillover effect is an important factor affecting the volatility of crude oil price basing on the study of diebold and yilmaz 2009 2012 2014 we propose a new method that calculates the time varying volatility spillover indexes by the generalized forecast error variance decomposition of tvp var sv model then using the new method we study the time varying volatility spillovers between four major crude oil markets wti brent oman tapis from november 29 2002 to july 13 2018 by comparing the results of our new method and traditional rolling window method we verify the superiority of our new method the results show that the volatility spillovers calculated by the new method are clearer more stable and not outlier sensitive from the estimated results of time varying volatility spillovers we find that the volatility spillover between crude oil markets is slowly increasing but there are obvious cyclical changes and from the correlation analysis and the granger causality test we find that the volatility and volatility spillovers are positively correlated and are two way granger causality which supported for the market infection hypothesis of king and wadhwani 1990

customer coalitions monopoly price discrimination and generic entry deterrence abstract this paper analyzes the interplay between a profit maximizing monopolist and a set of consumers who are able to form coalitions that bargain with the monopolist and or integrate into production we show that the monopolist will deter the formation of these countervailing coalitions through strategic selection of generic limit price offers to each consumer these limit prices are derived as subgame perfect equilibria in two alternative models of customer monopoly interplay in both models price discrimination emerges in environments wherein it has previously been considered unprofitable welfare analysis of the equilibria demonstrates the procompetitive effects of potential customer coalitions and generally provides an efficiency based motivation for a government ban on price discrimination

the impact of financial development on energy consumption in emerging economies abstract financial development is often cited as a very important driver of economic growth in emerging economies and it is thus likely that financial development affects energy demand this study uses generalized method of moments estimation techniques to examine the impact of financial development on energy consumption in a sample of emerging countries several different measures of financial development are examined using a panel data set on 22 emerging countries covering the period 1990 2006 the empirical results show a positive and statistically significant relationship between financial development and energy consumption when financial development is measured using stock market variables like stock market capitalization to gdp stock market value traded to gdp and stock market turnover the implications of these results for energy policy are discussed

the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption in china an analysis based on the input output method in recent decades china s rapid economy development has been coupling with the steadily increasing household consumption which in turn leads to ever growing energy consumption and co2 emission with a focus on the decade of 2000 2010 this study examines the energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption using the input output method as well as the influencing factors of the indirect co2 emission the results show that first the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission appear the main parts of total energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption accounting for 69 77 and 77 84 respectively second the indirect co2 emission indicates an increasing trend mainly driven by per capita household consumption and energy intensity finally the five sectors with relatively higher direct or total co2 emission intensity are the key sectors for reducing co2 emission in china i e 1 production and distribution of electric power and heat power pdeh 2 smelting and pressing of metals spm 3 processing of petroleum coking processing of nuclear fuel ppcpn 4 manufacture of non metallic mineral products mnm and 5 manufacture of chemical materials mcm

the long run and causal analysis of energy growth openness and financial development on carbon emissions in turkey abstract the aim of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between financial development trade economic growth energy consumption and carbon emissions in turkey for the 1960 2007 period the bounds f test for cointegration test yields evidence of a long run relationship between per capita carbon emissions per capita energy consumption per capita real income the square of per capita real income openness and financial development the results show that an increase in foreign trade to gdp ratio results an increase in per capita carbon emissions and financial development variable has no significant effect on per capita carbon emissions in the long run these results also support the validity of ekc hypothesis in the turkish economy it means that the level of co 2 emissions initially increases with income until it reaches its stabilization point then it declines in turkey in addition the paper explores causal relationship between the variables by using error correction based granger causality models

financial development and environmental quality the way forward the present paper re examines the asymmetric impact of financial development on environmental quality in pakistan for the period 1985q1 to 2014q4 a comprehensive index of financial development is generated using bank and stock market based financial development indicators the results show that inefficient use of energy adversely affects the environmental quality this suggests adoption of energy efficient technology at both production and consumption levels these technologies would be helpful to improve environmental quality enhance the productivity in long run and save energy bank based financial development also impedes the environment the government should encourage lenders to ease the funding for energy sector and allocate financial resources for environment friendly businesses rather than wasting them in consumer financing

globalisation and obesity he externalities arising as a consequence of trade liberalisation have rarely been a topicof much public debate a possible exception would be the relationship between the inter national trade and resulting environmental degradation markusen 1975 conrad 1993 ludema and wooton 1994 even then the mechanisms that link the volume of internationaltrade and the rate of environmental degradation are seldom adequately explained part of theproblem is that the environmental problems that are faced are extremely varied both in char acter and severity and it is fruitless to attempt to provide a single remedy for all of them but environmental degradation is hardly the only externality caused by trade liberalisation ifone considers a broader process such as globalisation de ned as a process by which national regional economies societies and cultures have become integrated through a global networkof economic technological socio cultural political and biological factors croucher 2004 rather than the trade liberalisation only the possibility of its resulting externalities increasessigni cantly there is for example a growing literature addressing possible adverse impact ofglobalisation including trade liberalisation on cultural diversity within in particular non wes tern countries castells 1997 cowen 2002 segerstrom 2003 in addition the relevance ofthe topic is underscored by the unesco 2001 universal declaration on cultural diversity which emphasises the role of cultural goods as vectors of identity and is concerned aboutcurrent trade imbalances in related sectors furthermore one can easily imagine the adverseimpact of globalisation with its free ow of people goods and in turn the lifestyle on spread ing of infectious diseases such as aids altman 1999 attawell 2004 according to the world health organization who 2006 approximately 1 6 billionadults were overweight and at least 400 million were obese in 2005 all around the world more recent statistics show that just in the united states 33 3 percentage of the total popula tion is obese and about 60 percentage is overweight or obese wyatt et al 2006 who 2009 these numbers set the united states among top three countries in the world with thehighest obesity rate who 2009 shared with egypt and saudi arabia obesity has not onlyincreased in developed countries but more surprisingly in developing countries as well according to the food and agriculture organization of the united nations fao 2008 obesity increases rapidly in developing countries even in those where hunger still exists forinstance the number of overweight people increased from less than 10 to 15 percentage inchina during the last two decades in sub saharan countries where hunger rates are the high est obesity is increasing as well some developing countries such as brazil and colombia have 40 percentage of overweight or obesity rate a number comparable to those in developedcountries due to this rapid and continuous global increase of obesity the who describesobesity as a global epidemic

forecasting the good and bad uncertainties of crude oil prices using a har framework abstract good or bad uncertainty is the volatility that is associated with positive or negative innovations to asset prices this paper proposes new heterogeneous autoregressive type har type models to forecast the good and bad uncertainties of crude oil prices in this paper we investigate the effects of lagged bad and good uncertainties daily positive and negative signed jump variations and leverages on predicting good and bad uncertainties by in sample and out of sample analysis the in sample results show that bad and good uncertainties have long memory property and the predictability of long term good and bad uncertainties is stronger than that of short and mid term good and bad uncertainties the out of sample results indicate that lagged bad or good uncertainties daily positive signed jump variation and daily negative signed jump variation contain incremental out of sample information for forecasting good or bad uncertainties and in most cases lagged leverages also play indispensable roles in forecasting the good and bad uncertainties in the crude oil market moreover the results of out of sample analysis remain robust across using the other estimation window other har type models and the other sample

local food prices and international price transmission world food prices spiked in the periods 2007 8 and 2010 11 the impact of these spikes in world food prices on local food prices and thus on local consumers is determined by the food price pass through pass through is defined as the extent to which changes in world food prices lead to changes in local food prices we examine the determinants of variation in food price pass through from global to local consumer prices in a global sample of 147 countries using fao data on world food prices and ilo data on food prices for consumers while market integration matters our study finds that income per capita is the dominant factor explaining cross country variation in pass through of food prices we estimate an elasticity of about 0 3 of pass through with respect to income per capita this means far greater price transmission of food price shocks at the commodity level to final consumers in low income countries than in high income countries the implication is that future swings in world food prices will in particular jeopardize food security in poor countries trade policy measures of market integration also affect the pass through significantly whereas infrastructure and geography measures play no significant role

tariff rates tariff revenue and tariff reform some new facts this article compares the statutory and valorem tariff rates official rates with the ratio of tariff revenues to import values collected rates for jamaica kenya and pakistan it identifies four general features of the tariff codes considers whether these features apply to all developing countries and discusses four implications of these features for tariff reform first the collected rate for any given item in the tariff code is only weakly related to the official rate for the item second the variation of collected rates on average increase much less than the official rates fourth the relation between official rates and collected rates is nonlinear because the slope is lower at higher levels of the official rate

factor content functions and the theory of international trade this paper introduces the concepts of direct and indirect factor trade utility functions and uses them to derive marshallian and hicksian factor content functions which express the quantities of factors of production embodied in net imports as functions of the exogenous variables facing the economy the properties of these functions are discussed and they are used to derive a number of new results in particular it is shown that in certain circumstances the existence of gains from trade is sufficient for the heckscher ohlin theorem to hold in its factor content form

collusion in auctions with externalities in standard auctions collusion among buyers eliminates bidding competition despite informational asymmetries collusion can however be imperfect when the situation involves externalities among buyers that is when a buyer is worse off if one rival wins the goon rather than if nobody gets it for intermediate values of the externality and under various objective functions the seller finds it optimal to design an auction that leads in equilibrium to a collusive outcome that is ex post inefficient for the group of buyers an ex ante incentive efficient collusion mechanism for the buyers is characterized in this situation

evaluating the atkinson index of household energy consumption in china abstract improving equality and efficiency of household energy distribution is the primary concern of china s policy makers in their effort to reform the energy pricing system in this paper we use atkinson index as an analytical tool to quantitatively and systematically evaluate the equality and efficiency of household energy distribution the result shows that the atkinson index of electricity expenditure is much smaller than that of transportation expenditure which indicates that transportation expenditure responds better to income differences furthermore a geographical distribution analysis indicates that households in middle china suffer greater inequality in energy distribution than those in eastern and western china in view of the oncoming energy pricing reform in china we reevaluate the atkinson index under the new pricing scenarios for electricity and petroleum products compared to the current household energy pricing mechanism the simulated new policies generate more allocative efficiency of household energy and ensure more equality of energy consumption for low income households on this account we suggest that geographical differences and equality in energy distribution be duly addressed in reforming energy policies in china

energy human capital and economic growth in asia pacific countries evidence from a panel cointegration and causality analysis this paper examines the cointegration and causal relationship between energy consumption and economic development in 16 asia pacific countries over the period 1970 2011 using the augmented production function which considers not only physical capital and labor but also human capital this is likely among the first of the energy growth nexus literature to include human capital in the multivariate framework using recently developed panel unit root test and cointegration test that allow for cross sectional dependence this paper finds a long run cointegrating relationship between these variables continuously updated fully modified cup fm estimates are subsequently compared with panel heterogeneous fully modified ordinary least squares fmols results to confirm the importance of accounting for interdependence across countries the bootstrap panel granger causality test results find economic growth granger cause energy use in the region but the relationship varies for individual countries

the effect of financial development on convergence theory and evidence we introduce imperfect creditor protection in a multicountry schumpeterian growth model the theory predicts that any country with more than some critical level of financial development will converge to the growth rate of the world technology frontier and that all other countries will have a strictly lower long run growth rate we present evidence supporting these and other implications in the form of a cross country growth regression with a significant and sizable negative coefficient on initial per capita gdp relative to the united states interacted with financial intermediation in addition we find that other variables representing schooling geography health policy politics and institutions do not affect the significance of the interaction between financial intermediation and initial per capita gdp and do not show any independent effect on convergence in the regressions our findings are robust to removal of outliers and to alternative conditioning sets estimation procedures and measures of financial development

the dynamic links between energy consumption economic growth financial development and trade in china fresh evidence from multivariate framework analysis abstract this study investigates the relationship between energy use and economic growth by incorporating financial development international trade and capital as important factors of production function in case of china over the period of 1971 2011 the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration was applied to examine long run relationship among the series while stationarity properties of the variables was tested by applying structural break test our empirical evidence confirmed long run relationship among the variables the results showed that energy use financial development capital exports imports and international trade have positive impact on economic growth the granger causality analysis revealed that unidirectional causal relationship running from energy use to economic growth financial development and energy use granger cause each other there is bidirectional causality between international trade and energy use the feedback relation exists between financial development and international trade there is also bidirectional causality exists between capital and energy demand financial development and economic growth and international trade and economic growth this paper makes significant contribution in energy economics and opens up new direction for policy makers to explore new and alternative sources of energy which would be helpful in meeting the rising demand of energy due to sustained rate of economic growth

fighting collusion in auctions an experimental investigation the danger of collusion presents a serious challenge for auctioneers in this paper we compare the collusive properties of two standard auctions the english auction and the first price sealed bid auction and a lesser known format the amsterdam second price auction in the amsterdam auction the highest losing bidder earns a premium for stirring up the price we study two settings in one all bidders can collude and in another only a subset is eligible the experiments show that the amsterdam auction triggers less collusion than the standard auctions we compare experimental results to theoretical predictions and provide an explanation where they differ

production weighted estimates of aggregate protection in rich countries towards developing countries a challenge in the development of aggregate indexes of trade protection is weighting individual tariffs in ways that a reflect their importance and b are not endogenous to the protection being measured the most obvious basis for weights is actual imports but these may be highly endogenous various authors have worked to correct this endogeneity for example in the bouet et al 2004 macmap data set weights are based on imports of reference groups of countries but eliminating the endogeneity is difficult in product areas where protection is high and widespread i develop a new set of estimates of overall protection in rich countries with respect to developing ones that eschews import weights as much as possible in favour of weights based on the value of exporter s total production the results are generally higher than those of bouet et al product areas in which protection is high and widespread seem systematically de emphasised when using macmap weights especially in agriculture i also estimate tariff equivalents of trade distorting subsidies by country and commodity agricultural tariffs dominate subsidies in trade distorting effect and agricultural protection in turn dominates goods protection generally japan is most protective largely because of rice tariffs near 900 per cent followed by norway and switzerland because of their greater reliance on agriculture the poorest countries face the highest barriers despite tariff preferences