migrants in a guest worker system a utility maximizing approach this paper examines the behavior of utility maximizing migrants in a system of guest worker migration their pattern of leisure and commodity consumption at home and abroad is analysed and related

the demand for energy evidence from a cross country demand system abstract some new evidence on the income own price elasticities of demand for energy consumption by consumers is presented estimates are derived from a complete system of cross country demand equations with energy being one of the commodities considered

comparative productivity of korean manufacturing 1967 1987 this paper compares productivity levels in south korean manufacturing with those in the usa for 13 manufacturing branches the comparison is based on specific industry of origin purchasing power parities value added per hour worked in korean manufacturing rose from only 4 5 percent of the us level in 1967 to more than 18 percent in 1987 total factor productivity rose from only 9 percent in 1967 to 26 percent of the us level in 1987 at a more detailed level especially the leather metals and machinery industries have reached high productivity levels some of which approach levels in european manufacturing the considerable labour productivity gap between korea and the united states can partly be explained by capital intensity structural effects size effects and levels of education

comparative productivity the ussr eastern europe and the west this paper compiles comparative measures of output per worker in 1975 in four socialist and seven western market economy wme countries and explores sources of observed differences between the two groups of countries in that regard such differences seem explicable only partially by reference to differences in per worker capital stock and farm land a residual disparity of 25 to 34 percent in favor of wme countries appears to testify to superior efficiency in the latter copyright 1987 by american economic association

what impact does the choice of formula have on international comparisons in this paper an empirical comparison of a number of alternative multilateral index number formulae is undertaken the magnitude of the effect of choosing one formula over another is ascertained using an appropriate cross sectional data set constructed under the auspices of the eurostat oecd purchasing power parity programme to this end a new indicator is proposed that facilitates the measurement of the difference between two sets of bloc consumption shares each computed using a different multilateral comparison method jel classification c31 c43 c81 e31 f31 o57 quel impact est ce que le choix des formules a sur les comparaisons internationales ce memoire propose une comparaison empirique d un certain nombre de formules de nombres indices multilateraux on tente de jauger la magnitude de l impact du choix d une formule plutot qu une autre en utilisant une base de donnees transversales appropriee construite sous l egide du programme de parite du pouvoir d achat eurostat ocde on propose un nouvel indicateur qui facilite la mesure de la difference entre deux ensembles de patterns de consommation chacun calculea l aide d une methode de comparaison multilaterale differente

income and price elasticities of demand at low levels of real income abstract for levels of real per capita income starting at 3 of the u s per capita income in 1975 income and price elasticities of demand are tabulated the prominent role of food consumption for low income households is emphasized

world product and income a review article kravis heston and summers provided comparable price and volume data for gross domestic product and its components for each of 34 countries varying in affluence from india and malawi to the united states the article discusses the data and the way in which they are generated and considers the use of these data for applied demand analysis

social welfare effects of removing multiple exchange rates evidence from the rice trade in iran in order to encourage the involvement of the private sector in importing rice the iranian government plans to relax the system of multiple foreign exchange rates applied to importers wishing to supply the domestic market in this article the welfare effects of removing the current controls on the rice trade and a domestic rice coupon program are evaluated by applying a partial equilibrium analysis to 1961 1999 data the results show that as far as foreign exchange is concerned liberalization of the rice market causes an increase in rice imports mainly due to a decrease in domestic supply in welfare terms the loss in producer surplus from rice market liberalization is relatively high but most rice consumers and the iranian taxpayer would gain overall gains to consumers and taxpayers are estimated to be higher than the losses incurred by domestic suppliers and therefore net social welfare at national level can be improved by rice market liberalization in iran issues for further discussion include residual food security roles for the state and supply side adjustments in terms of resource use and higher quality production

a cross country tabulation of own price elasticities of demand abstract this paper tabulates frisch slutsky and cournot own price elasticities for each of 10 goods at the per capita real income levels of 30 countries ranging from india to the united states

predictive power of weekly money stock announcements abstract the objective of this study is to test if the weekly money stock can help to predict the monthly money stock using the data in the period of 1974 to 1985 pitman s nearness measure and a statistic which is similar to the linear feedback statistic are used respectively for the qualitative and quantitative investigations other variables such as interest rates and stock prices are also considered in the model the results indicate that the weekly money supply provides little information concerning the monthly money stock

another perspective on changes in international inequality from 1950 to 1980 abstract real income data derived from the third phase of the international comparisons project are used to compute theil s population weighted indices of intercountry inequality for several years between 1950 and 1980 contrary to some recently reported results a substantial increase in inequality is observed internationally comparable consumption data indicate consumption inequality increased more than income inequality

tariffs transfers and the real exchange rate the deviation of exchange rates from purchasing power parities ppp s has recently become the subject of theoretical and empirical attention the massive body of data collected and presented by the international comparisons project icp under the direction of kravis heston and summers khs 9 11 has permitted new empirical investigation of an old topic and has stimulated the construction of theoretical models to account for observed patterns in the icp project and the related literature the focus is on the ratio of the exchange rate to the ppp the concept of this ratio is closely related to the concept of the real exchange rate which is defined as the actual exchange rate multiplied by the ratio of an index of foreign prices to an index of domestic prices the term real exchange rate a term widely employed in both economics journals and in the financial press is frequently used to describe changes over time in a particular country and its calculation requires only time totime changes in exchange rates and price indexes the ratio of the exchange rate to the ppp on the other hand refers to a comparison of the levels of the exchange rate and the ppp at a moment in time and its calculation requires the availability of a ppp survey of the kind performed by the icp the purpose of the present paper is to analyze the effects of tariffs and transfers on the real exchange rate of a small country in this theoretical endeavor we shall hold constant the prices in foreign countries in this context it can easily be seen that the real exchange rate and the ratio of the exchange rate to the ppp are identical concepts provided that the expenditure weights used in the index of domestic prices are the same as those used in the calculation of the ppp

a framework for analyzing food subsidies abstract budgetary pressures and foreign exchange scarcities are increasingly forcing countries to review the costs and benefits of food subsidy programs this paper is intended to help policymakers to assess alternative food subsidy policies and to draw out their more important implications a number of alternative policies are analyzed including both rationing and market clearing schemes these schemes are assessed according to 1 their effectiveness in restricting program benefits to the most nutritionally at risk segment of the population 2 their effect on the level and composition of demand for other goods particularly imports 3 consequences for domestic agricultural price and 4 the long run implications of economic growth for the size of the subsidy bill the conclusions highlight the importance of the demand characteristics of the subsidized good

an extended cross country time series analysis of the volume and quality of consumption abstract the approach of finke and theil 1985 is extended to include four countries ireland japan luxembourg and west germany for which consumption data are available at a less detailed level

a new cross country tabulation of the quality index of consumption abstract cross country data are used to tabulate a quality index of consumption for each of 30 countries ranging in affluence from the u s to india as well as the real income relative price and residual components of the quality index

goodness of fit and outliers in cross country demand systems abstract for a 10 good consumer demand system the fit for 30 countries in the sample is compared with that for five countries outside the sample

accounting for u s regional real exchange rates we examine the relationship between the relative price of nontradables and real exchange rate movements for fixed exchange rate regimes using bls cpi data we show that purchasing power parity holds strongly for tradables across u s regions as a result nontradables play a central role in u s regional real exchange rate movements indeed changes in the relative price of nontradables explain up to 80 of regional real exchange rate changes over medium and long run horizons we also argue that nontradables can account for a large portion of real exchange rate changes internationally with high nontradables expenditure shares

preliminary data errors and their impact on the forecast error of simultaneous equations models econometric models especially when designed for forecasting purposes tend to use updated economic series the last figures s of which embed first published or preliminary data errors this article identifies and assesses the contribution of errors in preliminary data to the forecast error and to the forecast error variance of linear dynamic simultaneous equation models the effect of preliminary data errors is shown to be pervasive although not necessarily weighty the suggested decomposition of the forecast error is applied to a small macroeconometric model of the italian economy

frich s conjecture and the own price elasticity of the demand for food abstract frich s 1959 conjecture on the behavior of the income elasticity of the marginal utility of income is tested by means of cross country data particularly in relation to the behavior of the frisch own price elasticity of the demand for food

is there curvature in the slutsky matrix d o the poor substitute among commodities more flexibly than the rich when relative prices change even when compensated for the income effects of the price changes is it necessary to add a third dimension to the slutsky substitution matrix to identify household income in short do the terms of the slutsky elasticity matrix curve smoothly from poor households to rich households in such a way that equation 1 is meaningful

cross country demand systems and centrally planned economies abstract the cross country data of kravis et al 1982 include data on four centrally planned economies the question is addressed as to how such data fit cross country demand systems

world food demand long term projections of global food demand are heavily dependent on which functional form of the food demand equation is used given that real incomes can change substantially over the long term key elements are the dependence of the income elasticity on income which ensures that the food budget share always lies within the 0 1 range and the role of income inequality this article analyzes these issues proposes a new functional form that deals with them and presents estimates of income and price elasticities for food in 138 countries copyright 2012 oxford university press

a time series analysis of a demand system based on cross country coefficient estimates abstract annual dutch consumption data 1952 1977 for 10 goods which exhaust the consumer s budget are analyzed by means of a complete demand system whose coefficients are obtained from the cross country data collected by kravis 1982

aggregate deposit insurance funding and taxpayer bailouts abstract recent events have focused attention on the fragility of the federal deposit insurance funds and made redesign of the insurance system an active policy issue this paper explores the implications of different rate structures for the long term solvency of the fund using two simulation techniques based on historical loss distributions three findings stand out 1 under the former 8 33 bp premium rate as well as under the 15 bp premium rate mandated as the new long run target or default premium rate by both firrea and the fdic assesment rate act of 1990 the probability that the fund could become insolvent over a given 55 year period is higher than previously recognized 2 raising the effective cap on the fund to as low as 2 5 of deposits can substantially reduce the probability of insolvency without further increasing the premium rate and 3 the anticipated temporary 1991 premium rate of 19 5 bp implies a quite low probability of insolvency

income elasticities at different price vectors abstract cross country data are used to evaluate the income elasticities of the demand for ten broad groups of goods at two different price vectors the observed prices of separate countries and the geometric means of these prices across all countries the major effect is on the income elasticity of the demand for food using observed rather than geometric mean prices results in lower elasticity values for the more affluent countries

allocation of goods and services in vat this paper examines the allocation of goods and services in three hypothetical rates of the planned greek value added tax vat this allocation is based on six criteria i e the revenue criterion the luxuriousness criterion the regressivity of indirect taxes the relation of goods and services the criterion of import component of domestic demand and on the social criterion when drawn together the six criteria suggest a final classification of goods and services in the greek vat based on this final classification the microeconomic bases of the vat are estimated for the average greek household and also for households of different socioeconomic characteristics

verifying a demand system by simulation abstract an intriguingly small value of the asymptotic standard error of the estimate of the income flexibility inspired us to simulate the demand system the procedure used should have more general applicability

estimation of complete demand systems from household budget data the linear and quadratic expenditure systems in this paper we explore two issues in empirical demand analysis the estimation of complete systems of demand equations using household budget data section i and the incorporation of demographic characteristics into such systems section ii although there are numerous studies which use time series data to estimate complete demand systems and many which estimate engel curves from household budget data there are virtually none which combine budget data from different periods to estimate complete systems since each budget study corresponds to a single price situation one might conjecture that estimation of complete systems would not be possible unless budget studies were available from a large number of periods this is incorrect in section i we argue that interesting complete demand systems can be estimated from a small number of budget studies despite the limited price variability represented in such data to demonstrate this we use budget study data for two periods to estimate a pair of related demand systems the familiar linear expenditure system les and a quadratic expenditure system qes a generalization of les in which the demand equations are quadratic in total expenditure the inclusion of demographic variables in the analysis of household consumption patterns is desirable because there are likely to be systematic differences in the consumption behavior of households with different demographic characteristics but the effects of demographic characteristics have seldom been studied within the framework of complete demand systems in section ii we propose translating as a general method for incorporating demographic variables into complete systems of demand equations this method has not previously been discussed as a general technique for bringing demographic variables into demand systems although it has been employed in several studies to improve the estimates of the les and the qes presented in section i we reestimate these two systems using translating to incorporate family size

the ussr before the fall how poor and why this essay appraises the scholarly findings on the level of consumption and output in the ussr compared with that in the west such aggregative calculations are onerous for any country and not very surprisingly have encountered particular difficulty where such a strange society as soviet communism has been in question predictably the results have been controversial but properly viewed they still provide illuminating perspective on the extraordinary events that have lately transpired in the ussr

preliminary data error and monetary aggregate targeting preliminary monetary aggregate data are subject to subsequent revision because of errors from seasonal and nonseasonal sources that will only be known later this article examines the characteristics of these revision errors and analyzes their possible effect on monetary policy it is found that false signals in the sense that the preliminary m1 growth rate falls within the tolerance band set monthly by the federal open market committee while the final revised figure lies outside the tolerance limits or vice versa occur about two fifths of the time it is shown that this proportion can be halved by the adoption of improved seasonal adjustment procedures