the american business cycle continuity and change in recent decades the american economy has experienced the worst peace time inflation in its history and the highest unemployment rate since the great depression these circumstances have prompted renewed interest in the concept of business cycles which joseph schumpeter suggested are like the beat of the heart of the essence of the organism that displays them in the american business cycle some of the most prominent macroeconomics in the united states focuses on the questions to what extent are business cycles propelled by external shocks how have post 1946 cycles differed from earlier cycles and what are the major factors that contribute to business cycles they extend their investigation in some areas as far back as 1875 to afford a deeper understanding of both economic history and the most recent economic fluctuations seven papers address specific aspects of economic activity consumption investment inventory change fiscal policy monetary behavior open economy and the labor market five papers focus on aggregate economic activity in a number of cases the papers present findings that challenge widely accepted models and assumptions in addition to its substantive findings the american business cycle includes an appendix containing both the first published history of the nber business cycle dating chronology and many previously unpublished historical data series

the inequalities of public utility products in china from the perspective of the atkinson index abstract the chinese households make up approximately a quarter of the world s total compared with its size of population china s reserves of natural resources are relatively limited with the actual concerns about sustainable development in china we should pay more attention to the unequal distribution of energy which may result low efficiency and wasting of energy therefore how to best allocate the scarce public utility products pups for the household usage should be closely addressed in terms of equity and efficiency based on the micro household level data from crecs which investigated in 2013 in different scales city all over the country we measure the distribution of pups consumption quantitatively and evaluate the inequality of household income expenditures on electricity gas and water in the china s residential sector by using the atkinson index the results show that the atkinson index of households total pups consumption in medium scale city is equal to 0 0261 which is 83 0 higher than that of large scale city and 35 6 higher than that of small scale city it indicates that the inequalities of pups and income are greater in medium scale cities than in large scale and small scale cities considering the sustainability of pups we suggest further reform in china s public utility sectors the government should take more consideration on equality and efficiency of distribution and ensure that people have equal living standards especially for the low income households who serve as the main anchor for the sustainable development of china

household saving in ldcs credit markets insurance and welfare some ways in which farmers in ldcs can protect their living standards against fluctuations in income are discussed after considering the theory of consumption under uncertainty when there is no or limited borrowing the case where some borrowing is allowed is also examined empirical evidence from some ldcs is used to look at i household borrowing and lending their importance and timing and their role in smoothing consumption and ii the life cycle behavior of consumption and income the results suggest that hump lifecycle saving is not likely to be a very important generator of wealth in ldcs and provide further evidence on the limited role of credit markets

does energy poverty really exist in china from the perspective of residential electricity consumption abstract china is undergoing a market oriented reform in energy and the residential sector will be involved in the near future the analysis of energy poverty is crucial in breaking the illusion of the dilemma between enhancing energy efficiency and controlling poverty based on chinese residential energy consumption survey we firstly estimated the energy poverty in china by the 10 indicator and lihc indicators and then proposed a minimum end use method to classify the energy poor households into lifeline and consumption energy poverty results show that energy poverty exists in china at the proportion of 18 9 and 46 of the energy poor houses are in short of modern energy consumption and are sensitive to tariffs with a level of electricity consumption lower than the basic demand the energy poverty rate is highest in central china while the lifeline energy poor are relatively concentrated in the western region in terms of public policy we suggest focusing on heterogeneity by considering different groups of households when implementing energy efficiency measures and targeting more on the consumption energy poor in poverty alleviation we also suggest paying particular attention to targeting households with low income by supporting practices such as coupons for energy consumption and appliance purchasing

the cyclical behavior of prices abstract the procyclical behavior of prices has been a staple of business cycle lore since the work of the early nber business cycle researchers this paper reexamines that empirical fact the aggregate data do not support procyclical price movements as a stable feature of the business cycle the only episode where it is a robust feature of the data is the period between the two world wars particularly the period of the great depression

long term consequences of short term precipitation shocks evidence from brazilian migrant households we find that large short term precipitation shocks damage the long term income of households that have permanently migrated from rural to urban areas this outcome is consistent with the behavior of credit constrained rural households who are willing to accept lower long term income in urban areas following the depletion of their productive assets during an adverse shock our empirical evidence suggests that there may be a link between large precipitation shocks in rural areas and urban poverty further exploration is warranted on the mechanisms by which natural disasters cause these long term losses

on measuring energy poverty in indian households summary the relationship between energy and poverty is obvious and goes both ways recognizing this this paper provides a short overview of different approaches to measuring energy poverty it then presents a novel two dimensional measure of energy poverty and energy distribution that combines the elements of access to different energy types and quantity of energy consumed an assessment of the extent of energy poverty and changes in energy distribution pattern are analyzed by applying this measure to indian household survey data for 1983 2000 the analysis shows a significant reduction in the level of energy poverty and a rapidly developing subcontinent the new measure is a good complement to conventional monetary measures and is general enough to be applied to other developing countries

energy poverty in china an index based comprehensive evaluation abstract energy poverty has got increasing attention during the latest three decades measuring energy poverty is the premise of policy making to alleviate energy poverty there is no unified energy poverty measurement that has been widely accepted this paper reviews the commonly used energy poverty measurements through classifying them into three categories energy service availability energy service quality and satisfaction of energy demand for human s survival and development this paper also analyzes the suitability of the commonly used energy poverty measurement for china from the prospective of data availability and index applicability furthermore we construct a new energy poverty comprehensive evaluation index in this study and the index is illustrated to evaluate regional energy poverty in china the evaluation results indicate that china s energy poverty showed an alleviating trend from 2000 to 2011 and during this period china s energy service availability improved slightly energy consumption cleanliness showed no significant change energy management completeness decreased with fluctuations and household energy affordability and energy efficiency improved continually in addition china s regions show different characteristics of energy poverty for example middle reaches of yangtze river region showed the worst energy availability and eastern coastal region showed the worst energy management completeness several policy implications for energy poverty alleviation are also proposed in this study including for instance increasing investment on energy infrastructure and spreading energy management organization in rural area decreasing relative cost on household commercial energy consumption and encourage the utilization of modern clean and efficient household energy consumption equipment

the cyclical relationship between output and prices an analysis in the frequency domain research showing a negative correlation between output and prices has brought into question the conventional wisdom that prices are procyclical however this finding has been shown to be sensitive to the sample period considered this paper examines the relationship in the frequency domain the covariance of output and prices is decomposed into spectral components to investigate whether differences in the price output relationship across sample periods reflect changes in the importance of various frequencies embedded within the correlations or whether they reflect more fundamental changes in the entire spectral relationship some implications for model evaluation are also considered

international evidence on the historical properties of business cycles we contrast properties of real quantities with those of price levels and stocks of money for ten countries over the last century although the magnitude of output fluctuations has varied across countries and periods relations among real quantities have been remarkably uniform properties of price levels however exhibit striking differences between periods inflation rates are more persistent after world war ii than before and price level fluctuations are typically procyclical before world war ii and countercyclical afterward fluctuations in money are less highly correlated with output in the postwar period but are no more persistent than in earlier periods jel e32 e31

quantifying the severity of fuel poverty its relationship with poor housing and reasons for non investment in energy saving measures in ireland fuel poverty has generally been calculated by quantifying the number of households spending in excess of 10 of income on home heating this definition has a number of significant practical and scientific limitations this paper employs self reported data to calculate the severity of fuel poverty in ireland to identify chronic fuel poor households from occasional sufferers it also assesses domestic energy efficiency levels ireland is a useful case study as it demonstrates the highest variations in seasonal mortality and morbidity in northern europe both of which are associated with fuel poverty ireland is also experiencing extreme difficulties meeting its environmental emissions targets in light of recent spectacular economic growth reducing fuel poverty would lower energy related emissions assisting policy makers achieve these challenging targets furthermore little empirical research has been undertaken on fuel poverty in ireland this paper identifies key social groups at risk by conducting detailed socio economic and socio demographic analyses the relationship between fuel poverty and adverse housing conditions damp condensation is also examined moreover the reasons behind householders not investing in energy saving measures are reported the results show that ireland suffers from similar levels of fuel poverty as the uk with low income households suffering the greatest the key policy implications are outlined

energy poverty in rural bangladesh energy poverty is a well established concept among energy and development specialists international development organizations frequently cite energy poverty alleviation as a necessary condition to reduce income poverty several approaches used to measure energy poverty over the past 20 years have defined the energy poverty line as the minimum quantity of physical energy needed to perform such basic tasks as cooking and lighting this paper uses a demand based approach to define the energy poverty line as the threshold point at which energy consumption begins to rise with increases in household income at or below this threshold point households consume a bare minimum level of energy and should be considered energy poor this approach was applied using cross sectional data from a comprehensive 2004 household survey representative of rural bangladesh the findings suggest that some 58 percent of rural households in bangladesh are energy poor versus 45 percent that are income poor the findings also suggest that policies to support rural electrification and greater use of improved biomass stoves might play a significant role in reducing energy poverty

detrending stylized facts and the business cycle the stylized facts of macroeconomic time series can be presented by fitting structural time series models within this framework we analyse the consequences of the widely used detrending technique popularised by hodrick and prescott 1980 it is shown that mechanical detrending based on the hodrick prescott filter can lead investigators to report spurious cyclical behaviour and this point is illustrated with empirical examples structural time series models also allow investigators to deal explicitly with seasonal and irregular movements that may distort estimated cyclical components finally the structural framework provides a basis for exposing the limitations of arima methodology and models based on a deterministic trend with a single break

assessing the extent and intensity of energy poverty using multidimensional energy poverty index empirical evidence from households in india abstract in this paper we have made a comprehensive assessment of the extent and various socio economic implications of energy poverty in india amartya sens s capability approach to development underpins the analysis of household level data taken from the india human development survey ii ihds ii 2011 12 using the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi the overall results show that energy poverty is widespread in india and the existence of energy poverty also coincides with the other forms of deprivations such as income poverty and social backwardness for example dalits lower caste and adivasis tribal are found to be extremely energy poor compared to the other social groups in india the results also reveal that it is the responsibility of women to manage the domestic chores such as collection of firewood and making of dung cake in traditional indian households inefficient use of such biomass fuels is found to cause health hazards

the history of the phillips curve consensus and bifurcation while the early history of the phillips curve up to 1975 is well known less well understood is the post 1975 fork in the road the left fork developed a theory of policy responses to supply shocks in the context of price stickiness in the non shocked sector its econometric implementation interacts shocks with backward looking inertia the right fork approach emphasizes forward looking expectations that can jump in response to anticipated policy changes the left fork approach is better suited to explaining the postwar us inflation process while the right fork approach is essential for understanding behaviour in economies with unstable macroeconomic environments the history of the phillips curve pc has evolved in two phases before and after 1975 with a widespread consensus about the pre 1975 evolution which is well understood bifurcation begins in 1975 when the pc literature split down two forks of the road with little communication or interaction between the two forks the major contribution of this paper and hence the source of bifurcation in its subtitle is to examine contrast and test the contributions of the two post 1975 forks the pre 1975 history is straightforward and is covered in section i the initial discovery of the negative inflation unemployment relation by phillips popularized by samuelson and solow was followed by a brief period in which policy makers assumed that they could exploit the trade off to reduce unemployment at a small cost of additional inflation then the natural rate revolution of friedman phelps and lucas overturned the policy exploitable trade off in favour of long run monetary neutrality those who had implemented the econometric version of the trade off pc in the 1960s reeled in disbelief when sargent demonstrated the logical failure of their test of neutrality and finally were condemned to the wreckage of keynesian economics by lucas and sargent following the twist of the inflation unemployment correlation from negative in the 1960s to positive in the 1970s the architects of neutrality and the opponents of the keynesian trade off emerged triumphant with two major caveats that their own models based on information barriers were unconvincing and that their core result that business cycles were driven by monetary or price surprises floundered without supporting evidence after 1975 the evolution of the pc literature split in two directions each of which has largely failed to recognize the other s contributions section ii reviews the left fork of the road the revival of the pc trade off in a coherent and integrated dynamic aggregate supply and demand framework that emerged in the late 1970s in econometric tests in theoretical contributions and in intermediate macro textbooks this approach which i have called mainstream is resolutely keynesian because the inflation rate is dominated by persistence and inertia in the form of long lags on past inflation an important difference between the mainstream approach and other post 1975 developments is that the role of past inflation is not limited to the formation of expectations but also includes a pure persistence effect due to fixed duration wage and price contracts and lags between

energy poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation is there a trade off energy poverty alleviation has become an important political issue in the most recent years several initiatives and policies have been proposed to deal with poor access to modern sources of energy in many developing countries given the large number of people lacking basic energy services an important question is whether providing universal access to modern energy could significantly increase energy demand and associated co2 emissions this paper provides one of the few formal assessments of this problem by means of a simple but robust model of current and future energy consumption the model allows mapping energy consumption globally for different classes of energy use quantifying current and future imbalances in the distribution of energy consumption our results indicate that an encompassing energy poverty eradication policy to be met by 2030 would increase global final energy consumption by about 7 roughly 20 ej the same quantity of energy could be saved by reducing by 15 energy consumption of individuals with standards above current european levels the additional energy infrastructure needed to eradicate energy poverty would produce 44 183 gtco2 over the 21st century and contribute at most 0 13 c of additional warming

concepts of poverty and the poverty line abstract various approaches adopted in developed economies to distinguishing between the poor and non poor to setting a poverty line are reviewed these include the budget standard food ratio official subjective and relative poverty line methods as well as the analysis of indicators of deprivation there has been significant progress in recent years in the degree of sophistication involved and a movement away from approaches with a quasi absolute background however all the methods face formidable problems at conceptual and empirical levels and no single approach is likely to dominate

rural electrification and energy poverty empirical evidences from brazil the aim of this article is to evaluate the impact of rural electrification on the reduction of energy poverty in brazil through the analysis of 23 000 rural domiciles or rural properties between the years 2000 and 2004 the results indicate a fast change in the profile of energy consumption and a reduction of energy poverty this new approach works as a complement among other variables to analyze and quantify the real economic social and energy impacts in rural electrification programs generally applied in developing countries

energy poor or fuel poor what are the differences abstract energy poverty and fuel poverty are descriptors of problems of households energy consumption they are both distinct problems and have been addressed by many researchers organizations and governments cross use of the terms of energy poverty and fuel poverty in published papers is common as an accurate descriptor is the presupposition of research and policy development especially for those who just started to pay attention to this issue this paper compares the definitions research priorities status quo and problems of these two concepts and summarizes the relationship between them the paper suggests that only when the research targets are households who are living in a cold climate and have difficulty in getting access to electricity or modern cooking facilities and in supplying indoor heating with appropriate cost the concepts of energy poverty and fuel poverty have the chance to be broadened and mutually integrated

what moves and works broadening the consideration of energy poverty greater detail on the specific technological and planning challenges facing energy deprived developing economies is required to improve energy policy making and development assistance practice the current literature tends to highlight electricity services and to a lesser extent clean cooking this article calls for a closer look at mobility and mechanical power as essential energy services in addition to a refinement of the specific institutional arrangements needed to reduce energy poverty and deprivation this article augments and refines arguments made by morgan bazilian and his colleagues in their viewpoint more heat and light

who is energy poor evidence from the least developed regions in china abstract energy poverty has become one of the major challenges faced by the world s energy system however there is no consensus on the measure of energy poverty several approaches have been proposed among which the energy poverty line has been defined as the minimum quantity of energy required for basic life particularly for cooking and heating this paper estimates the relationship between energy expenditure and household income and identifies the energy poverty line based on the threshold above which the energy share becomes insensitive to household income using household survey data from rural qinghai china considering the ongoing energy transition and the negative impacts of biomass energy consumption for the environment and health the study sets a scenario in which all bioenergy consumption is replaced with electricity the findings show that 57 of rural households in rural qinghai are energy poor the phase of energy poverty in terms of basic energy access has passed so increasing the share of efficient modern energy in household energy consumption requires more attention considering the existence of a population that is not income poor but is energy poor a conventional policy design that primarily targets income poor households may be inappropriate in this case

fuel poverty potential risk index in the context of climate change in chile abstract public housing policies face a challenge in order to meet not only the right to housing but also an affordable and comfortable use for them in this context most of the studies related to fuel poverty are based on a diagnosis of existing conditions but there is a lack of information focusing on how to predict the risk of fuel poverty in future dwellings considering a context of climate change this research develops an index to assist policymakers in the decision making process during the early stages of social housing allocation the analysis is based on the applicability of adaptive comfort the influence of climate change the urban context and the building features energy use patterns and the ability to pay utility bills have been also considered for social housing in the central south of chile after that several future scenarios are discussed considering the probable income and energy inflation rates the potential risk variables that influence the early stages of design are also discussed the results reveal that the fuel poverty potential risk index is an effective tool to select appropriate housing for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable segments of society considering the future climate income and energy price trends

a multidimensional measure of energy poverty in china and its impacts on health an empirical study based on the china family panel studies abstract inability or insufficient access to modern forms of energy is an important issue in development which makes the notion of energy poverty a widely discussed topic a consensus has been reached that energy poverty has serious health education and other socio economic impacts for people in a country however measurements of energy poverty have generally been absent or inaccurate especially for developing countries at the micro level this paper begins with the multidimensional nature of energy poverty and uses household level survey data in china to construct a quantitative measure of energy poverty covering both affordability of and accessibility to a broad range of forms of energy it then builds an econometric model to address empirically how much energy poverty affects health a statistically significant and robust negative impact on health from energy poverty is confirmed our results have important policy relevance in terms of understanding the current status quo of energy poverty in china and its consequences the concept can also be expanded to investigate similar issues in other developing countries

the cyclical behavior of prices interpreting the evidence previous studies of the cyclical behavior of prices have found that the cross correlations between output and prices in post wwii u s data are generally negative these correlations h have been interpreted as being more consistent with supply driven models of business cycle fluctuations than with models that focus on demand shocks in this paper the authors show that the signs of price output correlations provide little information about the underlying shock for instance a simple keynesian model driven by demand shocks leads to negative correlations between these variables the authors results suggest that price output correlations may not be a particularly useful way to characterize the cyclical behavior of prices copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

an econometric analysis of the drivers for residential heating consumption in the uk and germany abstract affecting millions of europeans energy poverty is increasingly high on the political agenda this paper compares space and water heating demand at household level in germany and in the united kingdom uk between 1991 and 2015 the elasticities of consumption of space and water heating with respect to price income and heating degree days hdd are examined using non parametric models domestic heating consumption is highly elastic with hdd in both countries and hdd elasticities are found to be higher in the uk from a certain income threshold heating demand decreases as income increases in german households whereas demand rises with higher incomes in the uk high price elasticities indicate that uk households are very responsive to energy conservation measures therefore implying that a pricing policy will effectively reduce heating consumption however in germany the impact of pricing policies is unclear thus the most effective policy measure to decrease domestic heating consumption in germany in the long run should be one which targets improvements of building envelope performance levels

the cyclical behavior of prices much empirical work has documented a procyclical general price level for many countries since there is much in the recent theoretical literature and academic debates that runs counter to a procyclical price level a comprehensive reexamination of the empirical evidence for the cyclical behavior of prices is worthwhile it is found that the price levels for ten countries generally are procyclical from the late nineteenth century until the second world war with the exception of a period around world war i and they are countercyclical for the post depression period with the exception of a period in the 1950s or 1960s copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

are prices countercyclical evidence from the g 7 abstract this paper re examines the cyclical behavior of prices using postwar quarterly data for the g 7 we confirm recent evidence that the price level is countercyclical however we find strong evidence that the inflation rate is procyclical in our sample our results show the importance of making a clear distinction between inflation and the cyclical component of the price level when reporting and interpreting stylized facts regarding business cycles

measuring energy poverty focusing on what matters abstract the provision of modern energy services is recognised as a critical foundation for sustainable development and is central to the everyday lives of people effective policies to dramatically expand modern energy access need to be grounded in a robust information base metrics that can be used for comparative purposes and to track progress towards targets therefore represent an essential support tool this paper reviews the relevant literature and discusses the adequacy and applicability of existing instruments to measure energy poverty drawing on those insights it proposes a new composite index to measure energy poverty both the associated methodology and initial results for several african countries are discussed whereas most existing indicators and composite indices focus on assessing the access to energy or the degree of development related to energy our new index the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi focuses on the deprivation of access to modern energy services it captures both the incidence and intensity of energy poverty and provides a new tool to support policy making

energy poverty in ghana any progress so far abstract this paper investigates the dynamics of energy poverty in ghana using two nationwide cross sectional datasets ghana living standards surveys round 5 and round 6 employing the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi as a measure of energy poverty this paper estimates that the share of energy poor people decreased from 88 4 in 2005 2006 to 82 5 in 2012 2013 the results indicate that although there has been a significant decline in the overall energy poverty in ghana during the study periods the incidence of energy poverty remains high moreover the study findings show a large gap between urban and rural energy poverty over the two periods rural people are almost twice as energy poor as urban people these findings suggest the need for the incorporation of energy poverty reduction strategies into income poverty reduction strategies to help improve not only access to modern energy but also in terms of affordability