estimating the tax advantage of corporate debt this paper presents estimates of the effective tax value of incremental interest deductions for corporations taking into account that they may not be able to utilize all their interest deductions fully because of either insufficient taxable income or the availability of nondebt tax shields after describing particular features of the tax code which may drive a wedge between statutory and effective tax rates for debt finance we present estimates using the treasury corporate tax model of effective tax rates for a variety of industry groupings our estimates suggest that the after tax cost of debt varies widely across industries the magnitude of the effective tax advantage to debt finance has important implications for corporate financial behavior one issue which has been examined extensively in the corporate finance literature is whether the value of the firm is affected by the firm s leverage ratio in a recent contribution deangelo and masulis 3 have shown that financing decisions can affect the value of the firm if the effective tax advantage to debt finance varies among firms or is reduced by the presence of nondebt tax shields such as investment tax credits and depreciation deductions the effective tax advantage to debt is also an important determinant of leverage related costs gordon and malkiel 5 have recently used the statutory tax rate to estimate expected bankruptcy costs induced by the corporate tax when the firm is assumed to balance the marginal tax advantage to debt with marginal expected bankruptcy costs if however the effective tax rate for interest deductions falls short of the statutory rate the magnitude of these costs may be overstated this paper presents detailed estimates of the marginal effective tax advantage to debt finance our estimates based on data in the treasury 1978 corporate master statistical file and on simulations done with the treasury corporate tax model quantify the impact of increasing interest deductions without changing other items on the corporation s income statement 1 we simulate the impact of a change in a firm s capital structure holding its investment and production decisions constant this is an appropriate procedure for estimating the marginal

estimates of effective marginal tax rates on factor incomes this chapter describes a method of calculating summary measures of effective factor income tax rates in the united states using readily available data the numbers resulting from application of this method in a study are reported in the chapter and some of their possible uses are discussed the estimated factor income tax rates behave over time in a manner quite consistent with the behavior of other broad measures of federal tax policy the postwar movement in the tax rate on income from labor relative to that on income from capital or more accurately the relevant components of these tax rates provides suggestive support for the miller scholes hypothesis that the federal personal income tax has been moving in the direction of a pure consumption tax the tax rates reported in the chapter are consistent with other studies that show a decrease since the 1950s in rates of taxation at the corporate level of income from corporate held capital they are also consistent with the view that rates of taxation of such income at the noncorporate level have risen but not quite sufficiently to offset the decline in the corporate tax burden

mean reversion in short horizon expected returns this article develops and estimates a simple model for monthly expected stock returns that relies on the rapidly decaying structure of shorter horizon weekly expected returns the most striking aspect of our findings is that the rapid mean reversion in short horizon expected returns implies much greater variation through time in monthly expected returns than has been documented in earlier studies for instance during the 1962 to 1985 period over 25 percent of the return variance of small firms can be explained by time variation in expected returns article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

the arbitrage pricing model and returns on assets under uncertain inflation the impact of inflation on equilibrium returns in capital markets has been the subject of several articles in recent years chen and boness 1 friend landskroner and losq 4 long 7 and roll 13 have all constructed general equilibrium models which incorporate the impact of uncertain inflation on returns all of these authors have derived models in a mean variance world utilizing methodologies similar to that first utilized by mossin 9 or merton 8 the basic underlying tenet of mean variance analysis is that for any given level of expected return investors wish to minimize the variance of return in mean variance equilibrium models the only risk that cannot be diversified away is the covariance of an asset s return with the market return assets which have the same covariance with the market have the same equilibrium required return thus in a mean variance world if each member of the following pairs of assets had the same covariance with the market each member would have the same expected return a a stock which was a perfect hedge against inflation versus one which was not b a stock which was a perfect hedge against oil price changes versus one which was not c a security that hedged against interest rate changes versus one which did not in this article we break out of the limitations of the mean variance assumptions by utilizing the arbitrage pricing theory apt of ross 15 16 17 this

survey measures of expected u s inflation of real interest rates and cash flows for decisions concerning investment expenditures international capital flows and exchange rate movements hinge in large part on expected real yield differentials across countries the federal reserve needs reliable measures of expected inflation to formulate and gauge the thrust of monetary policy in fact inflation expectations have become more important to the fed given the diminished stability of the link between the monetary aggregates and gdp expenditures since the early 1980s and the greater role which has been thrust upon expected real short term interest rates in the implementation of federal reserve policy the issue of rationality of inflation expectations that is the extent to which agents form expectations without making systematic mistakes in their beliefs about what inflation will be is important if inflation expectations are formed rationally labor and financial markets will strongly tend to neutralize the potential redistributive effects of inflation over time financial capital will flow efficiently within and across national borders moreover some of the stronger claims of new classical macroeconomics like the claim that only unexpected monetary policy actions will

forecasting inflation using interest rate and time series models some international evidence it has been suggested that inflation forecasts derived from short term interest rates are as accurate as time series forecasts previous analyses of this notion have focused on u s data providing mixed results in this article the authors extend previous work by testing the hypothesis using data taken from the united states and five other countries using monthly eurocurrency rates and the consumer price index for the period 1967 86 their results indicate that time series forecasts of inflation have equal or lower forecast errors and have unbiased predictions more often than the interest rate based forecasts copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

stamp returns and economic factors in the last two decades a number of prominent financial economists have considered the extent to which assets provide hedges against inflation and or other sources of systematic risk motivated by the high inflation rates of the 1970s fama and schwert 5 conducted the seminal analysis on asset returns and inflation investigating the extent to which the returns to various assets including common stock government bonds treasury bills real estate and human capital were hedges against anticipated and unanticipated inflation fama and schwert found that bonds bills and real estate provided effective hedges against anticipated inflation for the period 1953 1971 but only real estate provided a hedge against unanticipated inflation in fact most of the assets had a negative sensitivity to unanticipated inflation with common stock showing a negative relationship to both sources of inflation

some empirical tests in the arbitrage pricing theory macro variables vs derived factors abstract this study investigates the ability of two models based on the arbitrage pricing theory apt to predict portfolio returns over the period 1971 1986 the difference between the two models lies in the factors used in the factor loading model flm the factors are produced by factor analysis and are thus unspecified in the macroeconomic variable model mvm the factors are defined as innovations in a set of macrovariables the two approaches are compared in several different ways observed differences in test results between the two models are generally relatively small given some attractive features of the mvm such as economically interpretable factors this finding is encouraging and suggests that factor analysis may be unnecessary in implementing the apt

real asset returns inflation and activity in a small open cash in advance economy abstract the effects of inflation are worked out for a small open economy with cash in advance cia constraints on bond purchases if all transactions are subject to cia constraints an increase in the inflation rate will reduce savings bringing about a current account deficit while the capital stock will be unaffected if investment is not subject to cia constraints an increase in the inflation rate will encourage investment and reduce savings bringing about a current account deficit numerical evaluation of the model gives rise to falls in real interest rates that are in line with recent empirical findings

economic guideline about financial utilization of flat plate solar collectors fpscs for the consumer segment in the city of eskisehir abstract solar energy systems yield energy savings relative to conventional systems by considering the ecological balance although it still has barriers the most commonly used system of this type is fpsc in turkey which produces hot water by absorbing solar energy through fpscs this study is a kind of guidance about utilization of fpscs in eskisehir that concentrates on a consumer segment the aim of the study is displaying the necessity of transition to renewable energy systems in the local free markets where the place of domestic resources the data is supplied from an original hand collected survey and turkish governmental institutions such as the central bank of the republic of turkey cbrt and the turkish statistical institute turkstat that is used for a possible scenario to show how these systems can become an extensive investment and financed in the city the most significant finding is purchasing a fpsc device which is a rational and profitable investment decision for households in the economic conditions of eskisehir this type of energy system has certain costs including installation credit and annual maintenance costs however after they have been set up fpsc systems yield many ecological advantages that more than offset the associated costs such as fuel savings over the long term and exemptions from tax payments that apply to other types of fuels these advantages benefit both the environment on a global scale and the region in which the system is constructed therefore the global and local economy can improve its structure by utilizing fpscs

an empirical inquiry into the nature of the forward exchange rate bias abstract this paper tests whether anticipated real exchange rate movements fully account for the systematic time varying discrepancies between forward and future spot exchange rates the data do not reject this hypothesis the results demonstrate that 1 real exchange rate changes are predictable 2 anticipated real exchange rate changes are reflected in the forward bias and 3 information available at the signing of the forward contract is useless in forecasting differences between forward and future spot prices beyond the information s ability to predict real exchange rate changes the results emphasize the importance of real exchange rates in international asset pricing

inflation real returns and capital investment we find evidence for the hypothesis of mundell 1963 and tobin 1965 that the expected real return component of interest rates is negatively related to the expected inflation component in the mundell tobin model the variation in expected real returns is caused by the variation in expected inflation our evidence suggests however that the variation in expected real returns is more fundamentally an outcome of the capital expenditures process equilibrium expected real returns vary directly with capital expenditures in order to induce equilibrium allocations of resources between consumption and investment this positive relation between expected real returns and real activity which comes out of the real sector combines with a negative relation between expected inflation and real activity which is traced to the monetary sector thus inducing the negative relation between expected inflation and expected real returns predicted by mundell and tobin but explained in terms of a model much different from theirs

unanticipated inflation and the value of the firm abstract evidence presented here indicates that the relationship between stock returns and unexpected inflation differs systematically across firms the differences are shown to be consistent with cross sectional variation in firms nominal contracts monetary claims and depreciation tax shields the differences are also partially explained by proxies for underlying firm characteristics that could create interaction between unexpected inflation and operating profitability finally much if not most of the differences appear to arise because unexpected inflation is correlated with changes in expected aggregate real activity the effects of which tend to vary across firms according to their systematic risk

exchange rate and foreign inflation risk premiums in global equity returns abstract we test for the pricing of exchange rate and foreign inflation risk in equities our tests are motivated by the empirical implications of the models of solnik 1974b solnik b 1974b the international pricing of risk an empirical investigation of the world capital market structure journal of finance 365 377 as revised by sercu 1980 sercu p 1980 a generalization of the international asset pricing model revue de l association francaise de finance 1 91 135 grauer et al 1976 grauer f litzenberger r stehle r 1976 sharing rules and equilibrium in an international capital market under uncertainty journal of financial economics 3 233 256 and adler and dumas 1983 adler m dumas b 1983 international portfolio choice and corporation finance a synthesis journal of finance 38 925 984 both exchange rate and foreign inflation risk factors can explain part of the within country cross sectional variation in returns our results have important implications for hedging exchange rate risk they also demonstrate that home bias at least in us equity portfolios cannot be the result of us investors efforts to hedge their domestic inflation

the congress and fiscal policy although the common belief is that the congress has paid little attention to fiscal policy the same kinds of political economic models which have been used to explain presidential budgetary policy may be used equally well to explain congressional budgetary behavior the congress fiscal policy appears to be systematically sensitive to both economic and political factors changes in the unemployment rate have a major impact on congressional budgetary policy as for political factors the president s lead is followed most closely on revenue proposals and not at all on the expenditure side the electoral cycle in particular the off year congressional election year is also important inducing larger deficits and smaller increases in revenues

u s defense spending and the soviet estimate there is a glaring and potentially important discontinuity surrounding discussions of u s defense expenditure policy making on the one hand a growing body of empirically based research questions whether the u s reacts in any significant fashion to the military expenditures of the soviet union on the other hand defense policy makers routinely justify defense increases as a response to similar increases by the soviet union the discontinuity is resolved in the context of a multistep model of the defense expenditure policy making process that incorporates a new estimate of soviet defense spending and mass public opinion once formulated the model provides answers to the following two questions 1 does the u s insofar as defense spending is concerned react to the military expenditures of the soviet union 2 if so what is the magnitude of the reaction the answers indicate that not only does the u s react to estimated soviet defense spending but that the reaction is directly responsible for a very substantial portion of the post 1978 increases in u s military expenditures

taxable and tax exempt interest rates the link with inflation abstract a single equation model utilizing taxable tax exempt yield spreads is developed to test restrictions required by the darby feldstein inflation tax hypothesis evidence indicates these restrictions generally can be rejected for post accord data and that there is important information in both yields linking them to inflation

measuring inflation expectations a survey data approach expectations of inflation can be important determinants of actual inflation because they influence the process of wage bargaining price setting speculative buying and financial investing decisions englander and stone 1989 a central bank given its primary objective of price stability therefore takes a natural interest in inflationary expectations of economic agents in fact as illustrated by the theoretical work of e g kydland and prescott 1977 and barro and gordon 1983 inflationary expectations of the public are an important factor determining the success of the central bank in achieving its policy goal measures of inflation expectations can be used for monetary policy purposes for example as information variables in the sense defiined by friedman 1993 or as intermediate targets in the so called direct inflation targeting strategy svensson 1996 fuhrer 1997

hedging against commodity price inflation stocks and bills as substitutes for futures contracts this study is concerned with the influence of changes in commodity prices on security prices the study is motivated by the observation that stochastic changes in commodity prices represent a risk to each consumer investor and that attempts to deal with these risks may be reflected in the demand for securities and ultimately in their prices and rates of return if security rates of return do reflect information regarding relative price change risk it should be possible to extract that information from the price and returns history of the securities following this reasoning we attempt to form portfolios of stocks and u s treasury bills that hedge against price changes of various commodities this approach differs from previous studies on hedging because we attempt to hedge against price changes in individual commodities not macro aggregates our empirical results however indicate that the history of stock and bill returns contains very little information regarding relative price changes so that our attempts to hedge against commodity price

the political policy cycle presidential effort vs presidential control after disentangling presidential budget proposals from budgetary changes attributable to fluctuations in the economy and to congressional action we find consistent evidence for a presidential macroeconomic policy cycle attuned to the elctoral cycle proposed budgets are more expansionary in election years than at other times the congress however also plays a significant role in determining fiscal outcomes its budgets are systematically related to those of the president and in general reinforce presidential efforts to respond to the electoral cycle

common stocks as hedges against shifts in the consumption or investment opportunity set the purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of using common stocks as hedges against unanticipated shifts over time in investors consumption or investment opportunity sets the generalized or multiperiod capital asset pricing model capm developed in different forms by merton 1973 long 1974 richard 1977 and breeden 1979 forms the basis for this exploration in this model shifts in investors consumption or investment opportunity sets are caused by changes in the stochastic elements of the state of the world that affect investor taste for wealth the state of the world is defined in terms of the level of state variables so that unanticipated changes in the levels of the state variables imply or are associated with changes in the state of the world the analysis of this paper does not constitute a test of the generalized capm because hedging potential is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the generalized capm to improve upon the traditional two factor model the existence of hedging potential is of interest in itself howthis paper contains an investigation of the potential for using nyse stocks as hedges against changes in the consumptioninvestment opportunity set we perform this investigation under two characterizations of a multiperiod or generalized capital asset pricing model we find sufficient crosssectional dispersion in common stock return covariances with unanticipated changes in real gnp the price level and aggregate consumption that hedge portfolios offer meaningful hedging potential in the portfolioformation period the positive hedging potential persists out of the portfolio formation period but is strongly significant only for consumption

the tax effects of inflation depreciation debt and miller s equilibrium tax rates indexing historical cost accounting to inflation has received considerable attention in the accounting literature from a tax perspective it is often argued that with historical cost accounting inflation increases effective corporate tax rates ceteris paribus see davidson and weil 1978 williams 1979 bernard 1981 and gonedes 1981 1 a major reason is the failure of historical cost accounting to index the depreciation tax shield to inflation but explicit indexation may not be necessary to achieve all the effects of indexation the same effects can be attained at least with respect to expected rates of inflation if nominal interest rates incorporate unbiased forecasts of rates of inflation gonedes 1981 p 247 2 davidson and weil 1976 note that price level adjusting the tax system would increase the depreciation tax shield but it would diminish the tax saving attribute of debt financing in a period of rising prices 1976 p 99

an empirical investigation into the international real interest rate linkages linear dynamic stochastic processes are derived for the ex ante real interest rates from those followed by the ex post real rates under the identifying assumption of rational expectations the technique is used to study instantaneous and lagged effects of u s ex ante real rates on a number of oecd ex ante real rates the author finds significant contemporaneous correlations between ex ante real rates in the long run however real rates seem to be insulated

employment impacts of solar energy in turkey abstract solar energy is considered a key source for the future not only for turkey also for all of the world therefore the development and usage of solar energy technologies are increasingly becoming vital for sustainable economic development the main objective of this study is investigating the employment effects of solar energy industry in turkey some independent reports and studies which analyze the economic and employment impacts of solar energy industry in the world have been reviewed a wide range of methods have been used in those studies in order to calculate and to predict the employment effects using the capacity targets of the photovoltaic pv and concentrated solar power csp plants in the solar roadmap of turkey the prediction of the direct and indirect employment impacts to turkey s economy is possible as a result solar energy in turkey would be the primary source of energy demand and would have a big employment effects on the economics that can only be achieved with the support of governmental feed in tariff policies of solar energy and by increasing research development funds

stock returns as predictors of interest rates and inflation this study examines whether stock returns provide forecasts of changes in interest rates and inflation in contrast to earlier work that indicated that changes in expected inflation negatively affect stock returns we find a statistically significant positive relation between stock returns and future inflation rate changes as well as a significant positive relation between stock returns and future interest rate changes real estate investment trusts which are particularly interest and inflation sensitive securities provide better forecasts than a broad market index finally we find that most of the evidence supporting the forecasting ability of stock returns occurs in the october 1979 to october 1982 period when the federal reserve board chose not to counteract interest rate changes

the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea choosing pigs prostitutes and poker chips over panels this study explores the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea the authors collected primary data through semi structured research interviews conducted over the course of february 2010 april 2010 respondents included government officials financiers planners commercial distributors and companies teachers and rural villagers in addition to members of civil society academics consultants and trainers these interviews were supplemented with site visits to port moresby goroka and madang and field research in the villages of akameku asaroka lufa kundiawa okifa simbu and talidig the study draws from these interviews and visits to discuss four types of barriers technical barriers relate to substandard equipment and logistical problems economic barriers include high rates of poverty misconceptions about the role of currency and lack of financing political barriers include poor institutional capacity and a government commitment to fossil fueled grid electrification social barriers encompass unrealistic expectations about what shs can provide along with jealousy theft vandalism and unfamiliarity with solar technology

the effect of the fed s large scale asset purchases on inflationary expectations in 2008 u s demand collapsed and triggered deflation the fed employed large scale asset purchases lsap to fight deflation how did news of lsap affect inflationary expectations if investors believed that lsap would raise inflation they would sell assets exposed to inflation and purchase inflation hedges this would lower the prices of assets that are harmed by inflation and raise the prices of assets that benefit from inflation examining the relationship between asset price changes and inflation sensitivities can thus shed light on how financial markets process lsap news results across 60 assets indicate that initially lsap announcements lowered expected inflation only as inflation approached its target did news of lsap raise expected inflation

influences on executive and congressional budgetary priorities 1955 1981 a reduced form equation system is used to analyze the influence of economic political and institutional influences on the budgetary priorities of the executive branch and congress during fiscal 1955 81 three related issues are considered the extent to which political and macroeconomic factors affect priorities the degree of interdependence among the components of the federal budget and between spending and revenues and differences between the executive branch and congress with respect to these issues both types of interdependence are present within both executive branch and congressional budgeting although this interdependence is stronger within the executive branch the influence of economic conditions on budgetary outcomes is strong but varies considerably across spending categories there is no evidence of apolitical business cycle political variables exert a modest influence on the budgetary outcomes examined differences between democratic and republican budgetary policies as well as differences in the budgetary priorities of different presidential administrations are small by comparison with the differences between executive and congressional policies

on the robustness of the roll and ross arbitrage pricing theory roll and ross 6 have written what has quickly become the classic article on testing the arbitrage pricing theory apt originally proposed by ross 8 they presented methods both for estimating the return generating process and for testing whether particular elements factors in the return generating process were priced in equilibrium they found that more factors are priced than one would expect to be priced if the capital asset pricing model capm were held

commodity contracts and common stocks as hedges against relative consumer price risk evidence provided here suggests that investors could have identified ex ante portfolios that hedge against uncertainty in the prices of three major categories of consumption food shelter and transportation this finding has implications for the practical impor tance of multi period capital asset pricing theories that assume investors can identify such hedge portfolios the study also provides some surprising evidence about the usefulness of common stocks and commodity futures contracts in hedging against specific price infla tion certain combinations of common stocks serve as effective hedges but combinations of commodity futures contracts contribute nothing to hedging ability

three factors interest rate differentials and stock groups motivated by the single period capital asset pricing model e g sharpe 33 for years research centered on the use of a single factor model where the single factor represented the return on the market portfolio subsequently multifactor models were derived in a generalized capm setting by sharpe 34 long 23 merton 25 etc as well as in the arbitrage pricing theoretic framework by ross 30 31 merton 25 in the context of continuous time intertemporal asset pricing derives what we might call a two factor model where the additional factor is a portfolio which is perfectly negatively correlated with changes in the risk free rate the general intertemporal asset pricing models developed by long 23 or more recently by cox ingersoll and ross 5 can also be interpreted as multifactor models on the empirical side numerous studies were finding systematic ex post dependence in the residuals from single factor models e g agmon and lessard 1 arnott 2 basu 4 estep 7 farrell 8 9 levy 20 rosenberg and

the pricing of interest rate risk evidence from the stock market this paper addresses the issue of whether firms are required to pay an ex ante premium to investors for bearing the risk of interest rate changes a two factor apt model with the market and changes in the yield on long term government bonds as factors is employed the paper shows that empirically most of the interest sensitive stocks are in the utility industries and that there is reasonable evidence that the interest factor is priced in the sense of the apt several sources for the interest sensitivity are considered and regulatory lags are focused on as a likely candidate some firms exhibit ex post sensitivity in their stock returns to unanticipated changes in interest rates are these firms required to pay investors ex ante for bearing this risk of interest rate changes the framework for examining pricing of unanticipated interest rate changes is a two factor apt model with the market and changes in the yield on long term government bonds as factors the issue is whether the interest rate change premium is significant to study this the paper uses full information maximum likelihood fiml estimation on groups of twenty five individual firms with both cross equation constraints and withinequation nonlinear constraints on the parameters as mandated by the apt model whether the risk of unanticipated changes in interest rates is priced in the market is of particular interest with regard to regulated firms regulated firms especially electric utilities turn out to comprise the big majority of firms that are sensitive to unanticipated interest rate changes after some preliminary investigation the analysis focuses on electric utilities much empirical work on the apt relies on factor analysis e g roll and ross 30 bower bower and logue 5 use factor analysis in comparing the apt and the capm to explain utilities returns the present paper however uses observable variables at the macro level chan chen and hsieh cch 7 and chen roll and ross crr 8 also examine apt models with specific macroeconomic factors cch and crr use a traditional fama macbeth type of cross sectional estimation approach in the premia calculations rather than a fiml approach gibbons and stambaugh have applied fiml techniques to models using only the market as an explanatory variable gibbons 20 used a noniterative algorithm on portfolios of firms equivalent to a two step cross sectional approach stam

in search of a strictly rational forecast this paper proposes criteria for classifying time series forecasts of inflation as weakly sufficiently strongly and strictly rational forecasts taken from the asa nber surveys some well known one step ahead forecasting techniques and a novel variable length autoregressive moving average model are tested against these criteria none of the forecasts series meets the criteria for strict rationality nor even the less demanding criteria for strong rationality while agents forecast as best they can their forecasts are not likely to meet stringent rationality criteria suggested by econometricians copyright 1991 by mit press

a comparison of inflation forecasts interest rate models provide slightly better monthly forecasts and substantially better eight and fourteen month forecasts of inflation than a univariate time series model the livingston surveys underestimate eight and fourteen month inflation rates especially during the high inflation period of 1978 81 in contrast eight and fourteen month inflation forecasts extrapolated from one month interest rates show little bias and track ex post eight and fourteen month inflation rates better than the survey forecasts

beyond technology push and demand pull lessons from california s solar policy abstract the scale of the technological transformation required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels while minimizing economic impacts necessitates an emphasis on designing climate policy to foster or at least not impede environmental innovation there is only a weak empirical base for policy makers to stand on regarding the comparative innovation effects of various climate policy options however empirical scholarship in environmental innovation is hindered by the complexity of both the innovation process and the interactions between the dual market failures of pollution and innovation that are in play and it appears that the field would benefit from the structure provided by a common lexicon this paper focuses on the issues related to policy categorization in this field these issues have received little attention in the literature despite their importance to making insights gained from empirical studies generalizable the paper reviews the origins strengths and weaknesses of the dominant policy typology of technology push versus demand pull instruments its primary contribution however is to assemble a comprehensive chronology of solar policy in california and its impacts on innovation where known and then use this as a basis for building a new policy categorization that takes advantage of the intuitive resonance of the dominant typology while encompassing the broader range of policy instruments that are employed in practice in order to stimulate environmental innovation the most noteworthy aspect of the new categorization is that it introduces a third category of environmental innovation policy instrument that focuses on improving the interface between technology suppliers and users this reflects developments in the economics of innovation literature as well as considerable evidence in the domain of distributed solar energy technologies that opportunism by some of the actors that work at this interface can be a barrier to innovation

industry returns and the fisher effect we investigate the cross sectional relation between industry sorted stock returns and expected inflation and we find that this relation is linked to cyclical movements in industry output stock returns of noncyclical industries tend to covary positively with expected inflation while the reverse holds for cyclical industries from a theoretical perspective we describe a model that captures both i the cross sectional variation in these relations across industries and ii the negative and positive relation between stock returns and inflation at short and long horizons respectively the model is developed in an economic environment in which the spirit of the fisher model is preserved the fisher model states that expected nominal rates of return on assets should move one for one with expected inflation this belief is generally attributed to irving fisher s 1930 work on interest rates in particular to his view that the real and monetary sectors are causally independent in an apparent contradiction to the fisher hypothesis however it is a common empirical finding that stock returns are negatively related to both expected and realized inflation 1 this negative correlation is especially surprising for stocks which as claims against real assets should compensate for movements in inflation we provide two main contributions to the existing literature on the relation between stock returns and inflation the first contribution of the article is to provide a theoretical description of the cross sectional relation between stock returns and expected inflation we describe an asset pricing model that predicts cross sectional variation in the coefficients of expected inflation across various industry portfolios an interesting feature of the model is that it synthesizes some of the more palatable features of existing explanations of the negative relation between inflation and returns of special interest is the development of the model in a money neutral world so that the basic premise underlying fisher s work is maintained since most theoretical models of the

modeling u s budgetary and fiscal policy outcomes a disaggregated systemwide perspective this paper develops and estimates a model of u s federal budgetary outcomes that allows for considerable disaggregation across spending categories while providing through cross equation coefficient restrictions substantially more statistical power than traditional approaches we identify significant top down fiscal policy effects on budgetary allocations primarily within the defense budget budgetary responses to macroeconomic conditions are generally countercyclical although middle class entitlements appear to react procyclically to inflation political control of congress influences budgetary outcomes with democrats giving higher priority to domestic spending programs the relative rate of public sector inflation affects spending growth consistent with baumol s disease public opinion affects defense and low income entitlement spending defense spending has also been influenced by perceived soviet threat as well as the level of armed conflict there appear to be small election year effects although not of the sort predicted by political business cycle models with a few exceptions administration specific impacts are relatively small and not systematically related to the party of the president

explaining presidential priorities the competing aspiration levels model of macrobudgetary decision making this article develops a new statistical model of trade offs among defense nondefense and fiscal policy concerns as they are reflected in the presidential budgetary process the competing aspiration levels model calm builds on crecine s 1971 great identity argument unlike most previous attempts to model presidential budgeting calm explicitly represents the interdependence of decisions about defense nondefense and totalfederal expenditures calm models this interdependence as the result of the interaction of minimal aspirations for defense and nondefense expenditures with a maximum acceptable level of expenditures from a fiscal policy standpoint statistical analyses of presidential budgets for the fiscal years from 1955 through 1980 provide strong support for the calm formulation substantively the results indicate that fiscal constraints on total expenditures have progressively weakened that the maximum acceptable expenditure level has generally exceeded the minimal expenditure aspiration level and that when a potential fiscal surplus has existed the nondefense sector has been more successful in capturing a share of this surplus than the defense sector in keeping with traditional incrementalist arguments the results indicate that previous year expenditure levels provide a relatively secure budgetary base for both the defense and nondefense sectors both sectors tend to receive their minimal aspiration levels plus a share of whatever fiscal surplus exists the analysis also indicates that the executive branch has not been as strong a direct force for budgetary growth as congress

the purchasing power of money and nominal interest rates a re examination while it has been known for some time that under uncertainty the original version of the fisher hypothesis is not precisely correct empirical researchers have largely ignored this fact such an omission has possibly resulted in erroneous conclusions concerning other hypotheses most notably the impact of prices on the real economy this paper clarifies some of the previous interpretations of the existing empirical literature and provides a theoretical version of the relation between prices and interest rates empirical tests based on both the livingston survey data and data from time series forecasting models provide support for the fisher effect and the hypothesis that only covariance risk is priced in the treasury bill market one of the basic hypotheses concerning rationality in financial markets is based on statements generally attributed to fisher 18 fisher argued that the nominal or money rate of return on an asset should compensate an investor for his or her required real rate of return and changes in the purchasing power of money for the uncertainty case fisher replaced known purchasing power changes with the expected inflation rate whereas the fisher relationship under certainty is well defined his basic theorem under uncertainty is not precise as fama 15 has argued it is changes in the purchasing power of money not the inflation rate that should concern investors under uncertainty the expected value of one is not by jensen s inequality the inverse of the expected value of the other moreover fama and farber 16 grauer and litzenberger 20 and benninga and protopapadakis 3 have shown that when investors are risk averse the fisher relationship will generally not hold even after adjustment has been made for the distinction between purchasing power changes and the inflation rate in particular these authors show that an adjustment must be made for the fact that the real rate of return on nominal bonds is random while these issues have been discussed in the theoretical literature they have largely been ignored in the empirical work on this topic given the fact that nominal rates do not seem to adjust as rapidly to price changes as fisher hypothesized numerous empirical researchers have expanded the basic fisher model in an attempt to explain this empirical anomaly these extensions include the incorporation of a inflation rate variability and the growth in real output

china s transition to green energy systems the economics of home solar water heaters and their popularization in dezhou city abstract studying the popularization of solar water heaters swhs is significant for understanding china s transition to green energy systems using dezhou as a case study this paper presents new angles on analyzing swh deployment in china by addressing both the economic potential and the institutional dimensions at the local level using estimates from the demand side of hot water for a typical three person household in dezhou the paper evaluates the economic potential of a swh in saving electricity and reducing carbon dioxide emissions then expanding the analysis beyond economics we take an institutionalist approach to study the institutional factors that contribute to dezhou s success in swh adoptions by examining the five main actors in dezhou s energy regime we find that dezhou s swh deployment is driven by an urge to develop businesses and the local economy and its success results from at least five unique factors including the development of swh industrial clusters in dezhou big manufacturers market leadership in swh innovations a tight private enterprise local government relation geographic location within the swh industrial belt and the adaptive attitude of dezhou s households towards natural resource scarcity

inflation risk and international asset returns abstract we show that inflation risk is priced in international asset returns we analyze inflation risk in a framework that encompasses the international capital asset pricing model icapm of adler and dumas 1983 in contrast to the extant empirical literature on the icapm we relax the assumption that inflation rates are constant we estimate and test a conditional version of the model for the g5 countries france germany japan the uk and the us over the period 1975 1998 and find evidence of statistically and economically significant prices of inflation risk in addition to priced nominal exchange rate risk our results imply a rejection of the restrictions imposed by the icapm in an extension of our analysis to 2003 we show that even after the termination of nominal exchange rate fluctuations in the euro area in 1999 differences in inflation rates across countries entail non trivial real exchange rate risk premia

the deployment of electricity generation from renewable energies in germany and spain a comparative analysis based on a simple model abstract the fulfilment of the aims set by the european union in the deployment of renewable energy sources for electricity generation res e has counted and must continue to count on public funding from the member states which promote private investment in this type of facilities this funding guarantees a cost oriented remuneration which being higher than the market price means an additional cost to the electricity system with the aim of minimizing the economic impact as the weight of res e in the electricity mix increases the generation costs of renewable units must approach those of the market which are expected to increase according to the fossil fuel price forecasts the present study analyzes both the res e development and deployment in spain and germany two pioneering countries worldwide and with very similar electricity systems based on their national action plans and a simple model this analysis approaches the res e surcharge comparing and contrasting the results obtained in both countries

the effects of inflation and taxes on growth investments and replacement policies this paper investigates the effect of inflation and taxes on the optimal duration of investments the main conclusion is that inflation does not always increase the duration of investments for example in the case of equipment with a short replacement cycle increased inflation tends to decrease the duration of the cycle contrary to the common theoretical analysis these results imply that inflation may increase some forms of capital investments

new evidence on the forward premium puzzle the forward premium anomaly exchange rate changes are negatively related to interest rate differentials is one of the most robust puzzles in financial economics we recast the underlying parity relation in terms of lagged forward interest rate differentials documenting a reversal of the anomalous sign on the coefficient in the traditional specification we show that this novel evidence is consistent with recent empirical models of exchange rates that imply exchange rate changes depend on two key variables the interest rate differential and the magnitude of the deviation of the current exchange rate from that implied by purchasing power parity

rationality of negative stock price responses to strong economic activity monthly quarterly and annual data between 1956 and 1995 were used to examine the effects of real economic variables on stock returns future corporate cash flows and future inflation in general relative effects of various economic variables on stock returns are justified by their effects on future corporate cash flows and on inflation in particular employment growth shows the strongest negative effect on stock returns compared with other variables employment growth is related more negatively with future corporate cash flows and more positively with future inflation these effects are most pronounced in annual data which reflect long term relationships based on these results negative stock price responses to strong economic activity seem to be rational

budget deficits inflation risk and asset prices abstract kitchen examines how us budget deficit news affects asset prices and concludes that news of lower deficits reduces the inflation risk premium this paper constructs narrative histories of several deficit reduction laws to identify when markets learned that deficits would fall it then estimates a multi factor model that allows the inflation risk premium to vary following news of deficit reductions the results indicate that there is a large and statistically significant drop in the factor price associated with inflation following news that budget deficits would decline

the impact of attribute preferences on adoption timing the case of photo voltaic pv solar cells for household electricity generation we are concerned with micro generation individual households generating electricity using a renewable technology we focus on modeling the adoption probability of photo voltaic solar panels by households using data from ontario canada where a generous feed in tariff is available to households generating electricity from solar panels we measure household level preferences for panels and use these preferences along with household characteristics to predict adoption time intentions we use discrete choice experiments to measure household level preferences and establish a causal link between the attributes of the technology and adoption time intentions using discrete time survival mixture analysis significant preferences included lower cost greater energy savings and lower fossil fuel inflation the conditional hazard probability of adoption at a particular time given no previous adoption showed that the attribute preferences had intuitively reasonable effects the hazard probabilities allow us to compute the cumulative probability of adoption over a 10 year period per household technology awareness has a significant effect on the adoption probability reinforcing the need for effective education our approach indicates the level of heterogeneity in preferences particularly high for investment criteria and co2 emissions these findings suggest that education campaigns should explain more about investment criteria feed in tariffs and environmental effects

upsetting national priorities the reagan administration s budgetary strategy we use simulations based on a multiequation model of federal budgetary outcomes to assess the reagan administrations impact on the federal budget during fiscal years 1982 86 reagan s aggregate budget priorities represent a significant departure from the priorities of prior postwar administrations the bulk of this shift in priorities had occurred by fiscal 1984 defense spending and uncontrollable domestic spending were higher and spending on domestic controllable programs lower under reagan than they would otherwise have been the distinctiveness of reagan s budgetary priorities can be attributed to his tax cuts and far from a strategy of starving the budget by reducing revenues to a failure to allow fiscal pressures to restrain spending the model projects that without tax cuts reagan s predecessors would have spent no less on defense than reagan cutting taxes increased the deficit by about 400 billion cumulatively during fiscal years 1982 86 and reduced expenditures by roughly 30 billion

assessing the investment performance of swedish timberland a capital asset pricing model approach this paper evaluates the investment performance of swedish timberland during the last three decades using the capital asset pricing model capm results suggests that swedish timberland investments show diversification potential and can serve as a hedge against inflation furthermore the analysis suggests that the return on timberland is higher than on investment alternatives in the same risk class the results are in line with similar studies performed in other countries

monetary regimes and the relation between stock returns and inflationary expectations this paper analyzes the impact of changes in monetary policy regimes on the relation between stock returns and changes in expected inflation post war evidence from four countries reveals a direct link between these relations and the central banks operating targets i e money supply or interest rates specifically the post war negative relations between stock returns and changes in expected inflation are significantly stronger during interest rate regimes

non linearities and nominal contracting effects the case of the depreciation tax shield abstract this paper shows that the effect of nominal contracting on stock returns may be more important than previously believed when information on the maturity structure of depreciation tax shields is incorporated into tests of the nominal contracting hypothesis nominal contracting effects that are not otherwise detectable become so additionally the proportion of stock return variation explained by nominal contracting effects and the aggregate effect on stock returns of depreciation tax shield revaluations are found to be greater than previously believed

stock market seasonals and prespecified multifactor pricing relations despite nonstationarities in the factor betas and factor prices of the chen roll ross 1986 multifactor model investors are rewarded for bearing risks associated with the change in expected inflation and industrial production in non january months however variations in these factors have opposite influences on stock prices these findings may partially explain why several recent studies fail to detect a significant non january risk premium in the stock market but this evidence is only suggestive since theoretical and statistical difficulties prevent precise interpretations of specific pricing relations in the chen roll ross model

inflation output and money this paper uses money demand theory and a rational expectations version of the quantity theory of money to study inflation in the united states during the post korean war period the major results are as follows 1 the theory and tests explain the phenomenon of stagflation that is the negative relation between inflation and real activity observed during the post 1953 period the analysis calls into question the many variants of the phillips curve which presume that inflation real activity relations are positive 2 consistent with the models of patinkin 1961 and fama 1980 monthly quarterly and annual data indicate that the base currency plus reserves held against deposits is the relevant monetary variable in the inflation process and that demand deposits are irrelevant the direct policy implication is that the base is the key monetary variable in the control of inflation 3 the most convincing evidence for the simple quantity theory view of inflation proposed here comes from the comparison of the conditional exmoney demand theory and the quantity theory of money are used to study the inflation process as predicted by the model monthly quarterly and annual data indicate that inflation is positively related to money growth rates and negatively related to growth rates of real activity the theoretical and empirical origins of stagflation are explained and changes in monetary arrangements to simplify the control of inflation are prescribed

exploiting the conditional density in estimating the term structure an application to the cox ingersoll and ross model we propose an empirical method that utilizes the conditional density of the state variables to estimate and test a term structure model with known price formulae using data on both discount and coupon bonds the method is applied to an extension of a two factor model due to cox ingersoll and ross 1985 cir our results show that estimates based on only bills imply unreasonably large price errors for longer maturities we reject the original cir model using a likelihood ratio test and conclude that the extended cir model also fails to provide a good description of the treasury market

solar energy markets economics and policies abstract solar energy has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years due to both technological improvements resulting in cost reductions and government policies supportive of renewable energy development and utilization this study analyzes the technical economic and policy aspects of solar energy development and deployment while the cost of solar energy has declined rapidly in the recent past it still remains much higher than the cost of conventional energy technologies like other renewable energy technologies solar energy benefits from fiscal and regulatory incentives including tax credits and exemptions feed in tariff preferential interest rates renewable portfolio standards and voluntary green power programs in many countries the emerging carbon credit markets are expected to provide additional incentives to solar energy deployment however the scale of incentives provided by the existing carbon market instruments such as the clean development mechanism of the kyoto protocol is limited despite the huge technical potential the development and large scale deployment of solar energy technologies world wide still has to overcome a number of technical financial regulatory and institutional barriers the continuation of policy supports might be necessary for several decades to maintain and enhance the growth of solar energy in both developed and developing countries

politics institutions and welfare spending in industrialized democracies 1960 82 electoral turnout as well as left and center governments increase welfare effort that the welfare efforts of governments led by particular types of parties show significant differences and vary notably with the strength of oppositional and junior coalitional parties and that relatively neocorporatist centralized and traditionalistic polities are high on welfare effort overall our findings suggest that contrary to many claims both partisan and nonpartisan facets of democratic politics and political institutions shape contemporary social welfare effort

the use of market data and accounting data in hedging against consumer price inflation this paper examines the use of alternative information sets in the construction of inflation hedge portfolios the study is motivated by consideration of the investor s problem in a multiperiod world several authors e g merton 1973 and breeden 1979 have shown that in a multiperiod setting optimal investment behavior will in general involve holding portfolios that can be used to hedge against changes in certain relevant states of nature one potentially relevant state of nature is the rate of inflation in general prices jones 1982 and elton gruber and rentzler 1983 in contrast to prior related research the empirical results indicate that it is possible to construct inflation hedge portfolios successfully if certain accounting information is used however portfolios constructed on the basis of historical security price information do not serve as effective hedges one contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the potential usefulness of accounting information to a price taking investor although financial statements play an important role in the setting of equilibrium

the analysis on photovoltaic electricity generation status potential and policies of the leading countries in solar energy abstract energy which is the main agenda of our world is crucially important for the people many countries frequently held meetings and discussions with energy agenda these countries are working to balance the energy demand and supply for finding the solution are researched researches should be attempted to present a more efficient way to use energy as well as renewable energy resources effectively photovoltaic energy power systems take place as the most dominant source among renewable energy technologies the most important reason is that it is unlimited and clean energy of the solar power systems many studies show that photovoltaic power systems will have an important share in the electricity of the future in this study to generate electricity from solar energy using photovoltaic systems have a leading position in some european countries united states of america china and japan s current status and future policies will be analyzed in various comments were made

the effects of inflation and income taxes on interest rates some new evidence this paper reexamines the empirical relation between inflation and interest rates concentrating on the tax effect proposed by darby and feldstein using the random walk intercept model relative responses of taxable yields and tax exempt yields to expected infla tion are estimated the results show that for the sample period 1953 1982 the nominal yields on treasury bills rise at a rate greater than one for one with expected inflation while the nominal yields on default free municipal bonds rise approximately one for one with expected inflation thus the tax adjusted fisher hypothesis by darby and feldstein is empirically supported the components of treasury bills are also extracted and their variances are compared it is shown that variation of expected inflation is not overwhelmingly larger than that of the after tax real rate therefore on an after tax basis changes in the real rate explain a substantial portion of changes in the nominal rate of interest

short term interest rates as predictors of inflation on testing the hypothesis that the real rate of interest is constant in an innovative and provocative paper in this review eugene fama presents evidence which appears to be consistent with the joint hypothesis that the real rate of interest ignoring taxes is a constant and that the market for u s treasury bills is efficient in the sense of embodying rational expectations those findings are strikingly at variance with a long list of previous studies which seemed to support the view that the real rate of interest varies over time and can be related to economic variables such as real output monetary policy and so forth 2 the methodologies which lead to these contradictory conclusions are quite different previous studies had followed the lead of irving fisher by relating nominal interest rates to distributed lags on past rates of inflation 3 these distributed lags are generally interpreted as approximations to the market s expected rate of inflation and thus any remaining variation is attributed to variation in the real rate 4 fama s methodology on the other hand draws on the fact that the difference between the market interest rate and the subsequently observed rate of inflation the ex post real interest rate consists by definition of the ex ante real interest rate plus a pure forecasting error 5 the hypothesis of market efficiency implies that these forecasting errors must be serially random thus observing ex post real rates is equivalent to observing ex ante real rates with random measurement error these errors of course confound the problem of identifying variation in the ex ante real rate in this paper we will argue that the relative magnitude of these measurement errors is such that the tests carried out by fama were not powerful enough to reject the joint hypothesis that the ex ante real rate is a constant and expectations are rational more powerful tests which are presented in this paper using the same data do lead to rejection of that hypothesis of course rejection

inflation forecast errors and time variation in term premia the expectations theory of the term strueture is well known to give wrong signals as to the future course of long term interest rates one explanation involves rational time varying term premia however the anomaly may also be due to inflation forecast errors we study survey forecasts of inflation it seems that the respondents forecasts are insufficiently adaptive interest rates reflect expectations similar to the inflation forecasts as a result past survey forecast errors reliably predict premia on u s government bonds

an alternative approach to understanding budgetary trade offs in this paper we criticize existing research on budgetary trade offs on a number of grounds including 1 its focus on only a limited form of trade off behavior 2 its use of a modeling strategy that avoids an explanation of trade off outcomes and likely results in specification error and 3 its generally weak development of the central concept of trade off accordingly we propose an alternative methodology for studying budgetary trade offs we begin by presenting a general taxonomy of trade offs then we analyze when and where the various types of trade offs are likely to occur within the u s federal budget process finally we conduct empirical analysis of two trade off choices in the federal process that between defense and domestic spending and that between transfer spending and consumption unlike previous trade off studies our models assume that trade off outcomes will vary depending on environmental conditions foreign policy factors seem to be the key determinants of the domestic defense trade off outcome while economic conditions appear critical to the choice between transfers and consumption

treasury bill factors and common stock returns capital asset pricing theory gives a linear ex ante relationship between a security s return and one special portfolio return the return on all assets this linear equation is called the capital asset pricing model capital asset pricing theory alone provides no empirical hypotheses because it is derived and defined wholly with expectations tests of empirical hypotheses with historical data require an additional proposition that relates ex ante and ex post returns a model for this second proposition is called a return generating equation arbitrage pricing theory gives a more compact method for deriving a linear ex ante security return model in the arbitrage theory developed by ross 6 the return generating equation is the basis for the ex ante return relationship briefly an approximate linear expected return equation is derived directly from the return generating equation so two separate models are not required in addition the ex ante return equation is defined in terms of an arbitrary number of special factor portfolio returns rather than a single market portfolio return in this sense arbitrage pricing theory has richer implications and a simpler structure than capital asset pricing arbitrage pricing theory starts with a linear return generating equation for each security

interest rates and exchange rates some new empirical results abstract this paper presents indirect evidence on the behavior on the real interest rate by studying the correlations between changes in nominal interest rates and in exchange rates these correlations are examined both before and after october 6 1979 the empirical evidence supports the views that monetary shocks affect the real rate and that the change in fed monetary policy on october 6 led to greater variation in the real rate

elections keynes bureaucracy and class explaining u s budget deficits 1961 1978 the determination of u s federal budget deficits and surpluses during a period of keynesian fiscal activism is modeled in light of relevant social science literatures rational choice emphases upon electoral manipulation of the economy and keynesian stabilization marxian emphases upon monopolization andfiscal control of labor militancy organizational decision theory emphases upon budgeting inertia and a number of additional thrusts from other literatures are supported by time series regression analyses of 1961 1978 surpluses deficits the final model is statistically well behaved analysis of so called high employment measures of discretionary surpluses deficits supports all interpretations requiring discretionary policy making but an indication of automatic stabilization emerges as well a focus upon executive policy making roles is suggested as one means to further theoretical integration of explanations of state macroeconomic policy

the consumption based asset pricing model a note on potential tests and applications abstract breeden s demonstration that merton s multi beta capital asset pricing model can be collapsed into a single beta model where betas are computed with respect to aggregate consumption is an important theoretical advance nonetheless breeden s model retains many of the empirical problems that beset merton s earlier version in general the consumption betas will be nonstationary so that the state variables must be observable for the model to be estimated

defense expenditures and national well being the existence of a trade off between military expenditures and social spending is widely hypothesized but often difficult to establish empirically this article constructs a model to test the effects of changes in military spending on federal expenditures for health and education from 1941 through 1979 important economic demographic and political changes are controlled no systematic tradeoff between military spending and federal health and education expenditures is found nor in this period was there any significant depressing effect on health and education expenditures by republican presidential administrations thus the current reagan administration under which there are major increases in military spending and major cuts in health and education spending emerges as exceptional

risk and inflation this paper examines the effect of risk differences on the oft documented negative rela tionship between stock returns and inflation we find risk related patterns of coefficients on our estimates of the level and change in expected inflation and on unexpected inflation these patterns are consistent with the hypothesis developed in fama 2 and in geske and roll 7 that future real output growth simultaneously helps to determine current stock returns and various measures of inflation

on the accuracy of time series interest rate and survey forecasts of inflation there has been much work examining and evaluating different methodologies in forecasting inflation for example fama 1975 1977 develops an interest rate model to predict the 1 monthahead rate of inflation using the cpi fama and gibbons 1982 1984 modify the interest rate model to account for a nonconstant real rate of interest and compare it to a univariate timeseries forecasting model and to the livingston forecasts carlson 1977a 1977b and others also analyze the consensus forecasts from the livingston survey pertaining to multiperiod forecasts of inflation pearce 1979 considered the livingston survey and time series forecasts our purpose in this paper is to investigate further the relative forecasting ability of three different methodologies in contrast to previous studies that have generally used the cpi to measure inflation our analysis uses the implicit gnp deflator this modification is motivated largely by the fact that calculations of the cpi inflat n rate often are distorted greatly by changes in relative prices e g blinder 1980 fischer 1981 this paper compares the accuracy of three different inflation forecasting procedures these include a univariate time series model an interest rate model based on the methodology of fama and gibbons and the median forecasts derived from the american statistical association national bureau of economic research survey the evidence presented is based on ex ante forecasts of quarterly inflation rates using the gnp deflator for the period 1970 11984 11 based on the evidence presented the general conclusion is that the survey forecasts provide the most accurate inflation forecasts

economic analysis of flat plate solar collectors fpscs a solution to the unemployment problem in the city of eskisehir abstract this study performs a regional economic analysis of solar energy systems in eskisehir turkey that focuses on production and utilization of fpscs the data is obtained from a locally conducted survey and used for practical estimations both the survey findings and the theoretical predictions give close results and they sustain each other under the condition of free market considering profit maximization to produce 30 fpscs per day in optimum conditions 30 workers would be employed per shift if a company can meet the market demand 450 000 000 turkish liras tl 1 2 85tl with current prices of revenue will be earned from the production of 300 000 fpscs in 30 years are displayed on the other hand this renewable energy system has some costs however once it has been set up the system will produce many ecological advantages that more than offset its costs these effects benefit both the local region in which the system is established and the environment on a global scale in addition the process of collecting and utilizing solar energy can be used together with recycling systems to generate advantages for a local economy and can also benefit the global economy by solving unemployment problems by creating employment opportunities

a test of the cox ingersoll and ross model of the term structure we test the theory of the term structure of indexed bond prices due to cox ingersoll and ross cir the econometric method uses hansen s generalized method of moments and exploits the probability distribution of the single state variable in cir s model thus avoiding the use of aggregate consumption data it enables us to estimate a continuous time model based on discretely sampled data the tests indicate that cir s model for index bonds performs reasonably well when confronted with short term treasury bill returns the estimates indicate that term premiums are positive and that yield curves can take several shapes however the fitted model does poorly in explaining the serial correlation in real treasury bill returns article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

do forest assets hedge inflation forest assets are commonly viewed as good hedges against inflation the view is based largely however on anecdotal evidence rather than empirical analysis this paper examines the historical relationship between forestry returns and inflation the results suggest that forests in the u s west and south have been superior hedges against higher than anticipated inflation forests in the northeast have been less effective inflation hedges the results also indicate that western and southern forests have been overvalued during periods of relatively high expected inflation markets for forests in the northeast however have been relatively efficient processors of inflation expectations

taxes and firm size abstract firm size has been used as a proxy for the firm s political costs and hence managers proclivity to choose income reducing accounting procedures this study provides additional evidence on this topic by examining the association between firm size and effective corporate tax rates the latter are one component of a firm s political costs the roughly fifty largest u s exchange listed firms in particular oil and gas companies and manufacturing firms have significantly higher worldwide tax rates than other firms these higher tax rates are observed primarily after the implementation of the u s 1969 tax reform act and after the opec countries raised their tax rates on u s oil producers the findings which are insensitive to alternative sources of data alternative measures of firm size and alternative measures of effective tax rates are consistent with the use in previous studies of firm size as a proxy for the firm s political costs

the pricing of forward exchange rates abstract this paper tests the hypotheses that 1 risk premia fully account for the observed systematic discrepancies between forward and future spot exchange rates and 2 efficient markets versions of ppp holds a simple theoretical framework is used to derive testable restrictions on the parameters of a multivariate regression model the data reject the restrictions and each hypothesis in contract to past investigations the empirical analysis strongly suggest that forward exchange rates incorporate anticipated real exchange rate movements

macroeconomic activity and monetary policy actions some preliminary evidence monetary policy is conducted through open market operations loans at the discount window and changes in the reserve requirement structure the purpose of this paper is to formally investigate the notion that the effect of changes in reserve requirement ratios is different from the effect of other policy tools this is accomplished by decomposing the monetary base into those changes caused by changes in reserve requirement ratios and those caused by other monetary policy actions some preliminary evidence suggesting differential real effects from the policy tools is provided copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

the illusion of choice defense and welfare in advanced industrial democracies 1948 1978 research on the tendency of governments to trade off welfare spending for defense has generated diverse and often contradictory findings this study attempts to clarify the issue of trade offs by examining expenditure patterns since 1948 for the four major na to allies united states united kingdom federal republic of germany and france when viewed from the perspective of long term trends in shares of outlays trade offs are evident when short term changes in expenditure which are more germane to the potential for one spending category to benefit at the expense of the other are studied no pattern of trade off can be detected a three equation model is estimated to control for the variety of possible determining factors of public resource allocation in none of the four nations does a pattern of trade off emerge except in periods of wartime or postwar reconstruction these findings are consistent with the ability of governments to finance new spending through either increased taxes or larger budget deficits the growing disinclination to use these methods however suggests that the potential for trade offs has perhaps reappeared in the 1980s

a survey of energy policy priorities in the united states energy supply security economics and the environment security environment and economic concerns are commonly identified as three major objectives of energy policy state and federal governments have set aggressive targets for carbon emissions reductions and for alternative fuel use and increased vehicle efficiency to reduce petroleum consumption moreover jobs creation and gdp growth are often cited as key drivers for energy policies previous studies on energy policy decision making have examined the process for developing and evaluating options using multi criteria decision analysis tools in addition energy opinion polls have either elicited preferences between two goals or whether the public supports a specific policy action in this article we report results from a survey of 884 members of professional membership organizations on how the u s should prioritize energy policy across the goals of energy supply security environment and climate and economics and job creation the majority favor policymaking that is balanced across all three security and economic concerns increase with age for male respondents whereas environment is the highest priority for females regardless of age unlike previous surveys that target the general public and focus on a particular objective or technology these results provide an example of eliciting a portfolio allocation across multiple energy policy goals from targeted constituents

returns to farm real estate revisited barry s research on farm real estate returns suggests that when farm assets are viewed as a part of the nation s wealth portfolio returns are not persistently low as is commonly asserted in policy debates this paper extends barry s research by explicitly accounting for the effects of uncertain inflation using a broader market proxy and lengthening the sample period the results suggest farm real estate offers only slight not substantial premiums above those for systematic risk contributes little systematic risk to a well diversified portfolio and exhibits substantial risk due to uncertain inflation

forecasting rational expectations and the phillips curve an empirical investigation abstract the rational expectations version of the phillips curve is empirically evaluated for switzerland using a wide variety of specifications it turns out that the results are highly sensitive to measurement of both the natural rate and expectations of nominal variables no reliable phillips curve seems to exist in addition information on the relative quality of different forecasting schemes is obtained for a number of important macroeconomic variables