a review of the recent empirical literature on displaced workers this article reviews the empirical literature on job displacement job displacement is widespread and strongly countercyclical tending to peak during economic downturns but concentrated in indus

from shadow to green linking environmental fiscal reforms and the informal economy in the past few decades many papers have analysed in some depth different environmental tax reforms and the double dividend hypothesis i e the possibility of improving not only the environment but also the economy through the reduction of distortions in the tax system recently more stress has been placed on testing empirically what effects a reduction in labour taxes may have on unemployment when accompanied by a carbon or other environmental tax however such studies have not modelled the effects of the presence of a shadow economy even though informal markets account for a significant and growing part of gdp in many developed economies this paper analyses this link using an applied general equilibrium model for the case of spain which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and one of the biggest informal economies of any wealthy country we conclude that our analysis strengthens the case for an environmental tax reform in spain if revenues from a co2 tax are recycled via a labour tax reduction

relative price determination in the medium run the influence of wages productivity and international prices this work explores three critical assumptions of the balassa samuelson productivity differential model for the short and medium run wage equalization competitive labor markets and purchasing power parity the data reveal violations in these assumptions for france germany japan the u k and the u s significant wage and unit labor cost differentials exist across industries and traded and nontraded sectors and these differentials do not diminish over time the findings are consistent with the presence of industry and or sectoral specific human capital

co2 emissions and income dynamics what does the global evidence tell us this paper analyzes the co evolution of two major determinants of social welfare namely income and carbon emissions in particular by using a distribution dynamics approach based on markov chains we investigate the shape and behavior of the joint distribution of per capita income and carbon dioxide emissions we arrive at several interesting conclusions especially in the context of international negotiations on climate change first evidence does not support theoretical models predicting the existence of a poverty environment trap specifically in the long run two main groups of countries will emerge poor versus polluting countries second the typical development path leads initially to high emission levels and subsequently to high income third the convergence process towards the stationary distribution is very slow finally for carbon emissions whenever it is observed the environmental kuznets curve seems to be only a transitory phenomenon

has work sharing worked in germany industry by industry basis in an attempt to raise employment whether this work sharing works is theoretically ambiguous i exploit the cross industry variation in standard hours reductions to examine their impact on actual hours worked wages and employment analysis of industry level data suggests that work sharing may have reduced employment in the period 1984 1994 using individual data from the german socio economic panel i substantiate the union claim of full wage compensation the hourly wage rose enough to offset the decline in actual hours worked

green goals and full employment are they compatible abstract two empirical correlations are studied one between economic growth and environmental impacts and the other between the lack of economic growth and unemployment it is demonstrated that at a global level economic growth is strongly correlated with environmental impacts and barriers to fast decoupling are large and numerous on the other hand low or negative growth is highly correlated with increasing unemployment in most market economies and strategies to change this lead to difficult questions and tradeoffs the coexistence of these two correlations which have rarely been studied together in the literature on green growth degrowth and a growth justifies ambivalence about growth to make key environmental goals compatible with full employment the decoupling of environmental impacts from economic output has to be accompanied by a reduction of dependence on growth in particular strategies to tackle unemployment without the need for growth several of which are studied in this article need much more attention in research and policy

industry specific human capital occupation and firm size evidence from taiwan this paper investigates the importance of various types of human capital and highlights the role played by industry tenure in determining wages in taiwan it also aims to offer possible explanations as to why industry specific human capital is much less significant than it is in the united states empirically it is found that other things being equal accumulating industry tenure decreases earnings for both the least skilled workers and those employed in mid sized firms industry specific skills are not yet deeply implemented in most occupations and firms of all sizes this might also account for the remarkable level of labor reallocation among industries that is observed in taiwan furthermore the capital stock accumulated through education is found to be the most crucial in determining wages in all estimations and a factor considered the engine of growth during the miraculous development of taiwan s economy however the importance of other types of human capital on earnings namely general labor market experience and firm specific human capital varies substantially across groups

panel tests of okun s law for ten industrial countries donald g freeman i introduction okun s law describes an empirical regularity between unemployment and real output growth each extra percentage point in the unemployment rate above four percent i e full employment has been associated with about a three percent decrement in real gnp okun 1962 9 1 okun s law has proved to be one of the more durable relationships in modern macroeconomics and is now often presented as an element of core beliefs as in textbooks by hall and taylor 1993 77 and in policy discussions by blinder 1997 durability and simplicity being relatively scarce commodities in macroeconomics okun s law is appealing as a shorthand guide to policy outcomes whether okun s law travels well is another question cross country comparisons of the relationship between unemployment and output have been estimated for other countries by knoester 1986 paldam 1987 and moosa 1997 among others but magnitudes vary depending on country and time period estimates in these papers of the increase in output growth associated with unemployment reduction of one percent range from a low of around two percent in the u s and canada to three to five percent in europe to more than 10 percent in japan with estimates for europe tending to be higher for more recent time periods because of the way that okun s law is framed tests of its proposition involve two imposing empirical problems first as usually stated the law refers to the relationship between departures of real gdp 2 and unemployment from their long run or equilibrium trends often referred to as potential gdp and the natural rate of unemployment respectively these equilibrium trends must be estimated either by time series methods as in moosa 1997 or by construction using a modified production function approach in which potential output is estimated using fully employed inputs as in gordon 1984 or adams and coe 1989 either of these fapproaches invites considerable criticism of assumptions and methods see for example the comments of clark 1984 and of baily 1984 on gordon 1984 second in formulating his law okun seems clearly not to be referring to a ceteris paribus relationship between changes in the unemployment rate and changes in real gdp writing later okun posited that other factors and inputs would be changing pari passu with employment the 3 percent result from a reduction of one percent in the unemployment rate implies that considerable output gains in a period of rising utilization rates stem from some or all of the following induced increases in the size of the labor force longer average weekly hours and greater productivity okun 1970 p 140 thus a complete specification of the effect of changing unemployment rates on output would include factors such as capital inputs labor hours and participation rates all measured as deviations from long run trends this article addresses these two obstacles by using a recent trend cycle decomposition developed by baxter and king 1999 to measure gaps in output unemployment capital stock and the labor force the baxter king bandpass filter extracts the trend component of economic time series by eliminating both high frequency those less than two years and low frequency more than eight years components it is both flexible and easy to implement by using the bandpass filter to filter all the time series using the same methodology this paper departs from previous research of prachowny 1993 and attfield and silverstone 1997 incorporating capital and labor to augment estimates of okun s law additionally using the bandpass filter allows the estimates in this article to incorporate more timely data reflecting the shift to lower levels of unemployment in the u s and higher levels of unemployment in europe and japan during the 1990s the latest year of observation for the constructed data sets of gordon and of adams and coe used for example by prachowny 1993 and attfield and silverstone 1997 is 1988

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

okun s law theoretical foundations and revised estimates okun s law has been accepted as an empirical regularity that predicts a 3 percentage point increase in output for every 1 point reduction in the unemployment rate but only because other facts such as weekly hours induced labor supply and productivity tend to rise as well when output gaps are estimated for the u s economy with a production function approach using two different data sets for potential output and nairu it is found that the marginal contribution of a 1 point reduction in unemployment is only about two thirds percent increase in output changes in weekly hours and capacity utilization have independent effects on the output gap copyright 1993 by mit press

okun s law and productivity innovations a long tradition in macroeconomics dating back to arthur okun 1965 and walter oi 1962 regards cyclical productivity fluctuations as an artifact a residual generated from the incomplete and lagged response of employment and labor hours to demand driven fluctuations in real output in okun s version a one percent decline in output relative to trend is divided up into a reduction of 1 3 point in productivity and 2 3 point in aggregate hours the latter is further subdivided into a reduction of 1 3 point in the employment rate with the remaining adjustment taking the form of lower hours per employee and in the labor force participation rate hereafter lfpr yet this tradition of regarding cyclical productivity fluctuations as a byproduct of demand driven output cycles has been almost forgotten over the past three decades as a result of widespread adoption of the real business cycle rbc model in which productivity shocks are treated as exogenous as unexplained as unrelated to aggregate demand and as the sole driver of business cycles even in the more enlightened modern macro work on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models aggregate demand and sticky prices have reappeared but most recent papers still include an autonomous technology shock as one of several causes of short term business cycle fluctuations revisiting and rethinking the business cycle

sectoral transformation and labour market flows in this chapter we examine the dynamics of adjustment in the labour market and in particular the movement of workers between industries it is often assumed that the speed with which the labour market must adjust has increased due to globalisation and or technological change if this is the case then these forces may be responsible for greater instability in the workplace the displacement of growing numbers of especially unskilled workers from declining sectors longer periods of unemployment and wage losses

global land use implications of first and second generation biofuel targets recently an active debate has emerged around greenhouse gas emissions due to indirect land use change iluc of expanding agricultural areas dedicated to biofuel production in this paper we provide a detailed analysis of the iluc effect and further address the issues of deforestation irrigation water use and crop price increases due to expanding biofuel acreage we use globiom an economic partial equilibrium model of the global forest agriculture and biomass sectors with a bottom up representation of agricultural and forestry management practices the results indicate that second generation biofuel production fed by wood from sustainably managed existing forests would lead to a negative iluc factor meaning that overall emissions are 27 lower compared to the no biofuel scenario by 2030 the iluc factor of first generation biofuels global expansion is generally positive requiring some 25 years to be paid back by the ghg savings from the substitution of biofuels for conventional fuels second generation biofuels perform better also with respect to the other investigated criteria on the condition that they are not sourced from dedicated plantations directly competing for agricultural land if so then efficient first generation systems are preferable since no clear technology champion for all situations exists we would recommend targeting policy instruments directly at the positive and negative effects of biofuel production rather than at the production itself

the determinants of earnings a behavioral approach we survey the determinants of earnings and propose a framework for understanding labor market success we suggest that the advantages of the children of successful parents go considerably beyond the benefits of superior education the inheritance of wealth or the genetic inheritance of cognitive ability we suggest that noncognitive personality variables such as attitudes towards risk ability to adapt to new economic conditions hard work and the rate of time preference affect both earning and the transmission of economic status across generations

environment versus growth a criticism of degrowth and a plea for a growth in recent debates on environmental problems and policies the strategy of degrowth has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth this new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it one conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept another is that degrowth may not be an effective let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure it is subsequently argued that a growth i e being indifferent about growth is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth given that gdp per capita is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare in addition focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic political support than an ex ante explicit degrowth strategy in line with this a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters

should degrowth embrace the job guarantee degrowth should consider the right to work a job guarantee jg as a way of making a smaller economy more just and socially sustainable economic shrinkage in richer countries is accompanied by increased unemployment a bad enough problem in itself but also a barrier to voters acceptance of the degrowth path since being out of work is distinct from being poor anti poverty income policies should be approached separately the jg is one of several paths to full employment including reduced working time this essay only briefly mentions some real world jg programs and some technical objections the main suggestion is to move employment from being a matter of economics particularly economic growth to being a political right a right to work is necessarily effective and would avoid sacrificing the ecological and social goals of degrowth on the altar of full employment

the okun curve is non linear abstract this paper presents cross country evidence on a non linear okun curve the analysis is based on a simple error correction model of unemployment the model is estimated using a threshold model estimator evidence from 20 oecd countries for the period 1960 1997 provides support for the existence of non linearities in terms of the output growth effects output growth has a strong effect on unemployment when unemployment is low and output is high and vice versa thus in bad times the effect of output growth on unemployment can be close to zero

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

survival duration of plants evidence from the us petroleum refining industry abstract this paper presents a duration analysis on the survival of us petroleum refining plants for the 1981 1986 period when the industry as a whole declines in response to the decontrol of crude oil markets the purpose is to examine the duration dependence and determinants of post deregulation plant lifetimes the weibull model with the correction for unobserved individual heterogeneity provides a better fit to the data empirical results show that plant size age regulatory subsidies technology use and multiplant coordination are key determinants of refinery life duration after deregulation in addition major integrated oil companies tend to make timely restructuring via refinery closures and sales the interactive effects of size and technology use and of multiplant coordination and integrated organization are also important to the refinery survival

scar effects of unemployment an assessment of institutional complementarities this article uses panel data from the survey of income and program participation sipp and the european community household panel echp for a comparative analysis of workers post unemployment earnings trajectories in the united states and 12 western european countries across the study sample of industrialized countries results of difference in difference propensity score matching show post unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent and particularly significant for high wage and older workers as well as for women the analyses also show that negative effects of unemployment on workers subsequent earnings are mitigated through either generous unemployment benefit systems or strict labor market regulation these effects stem partly from favorable behavioral responses that prevent downward occupational and industrial mobility and partly from changes in the overall structure of labor markets favoring the transferability of worker skills between jobs these positive effects materialize despite t

the industrial mobility of displaced workers this article uses a two industry model of unemployment duration and job search to estimate rates of transition of displaced workers from unemployment to employment distinguishing between employment in a worker s previous industry and in other industries the competing risks model allows inferences about search strategies to be drawn from data concerning employment outcomes and allows tests of some fundamental implications of search theory there is evidence that improvements in the prospects for employment in their previous industry induce displaced workers to reduce search intensity or increase reservation wages in other industries

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

risk of labor displacement and cross industry labor mobility a well supported conclusion of previous research is that displacement entails large and persistent costs for workers it therefore seems reasonable to expect workers to try to anticipate and respond to the risk of displacement using 1983 93 data from the panel survey of income dynamics and the displaced workers supplement to the current population survey the author investigates whether industry specific measures of job loss risk are correlated with workers propensity to cross industry lines for new jobs she finds that a one standard deviation increase in the risk of job loss an 86 increase from the mean level increased the probability of inter sectoral mobility by 10 5 in a sample of white men three factors that appreciably increased the likelihood of inter sectoral mobility in response to job insecurity were voluntary separation from the previous job high educational attainment and being currently employed as opposed to temporarily laid off

an analysis on the structural stability of okun s law a cross country study okun s law postulates an inverse relationship between movements of the unemployment rate and the real gross domestic product gdp this article investigates okun s law for 15 oecd countries and checks for its the structural stability by using data on employment and the labour force whether structural instability is caused either from the demand side or supply side is inferred

okun s law asymmetries and jobless recoveries in the united states a markov switching approach abstract prevailing markov regime switching approaches to asymmetries in okun s law assume either asymmetry between unemployment and output across regimes or asymmetry within a regime we combine both approaches and give an insight into the 1991 and 2001 united states jobless recoveries

re spending rebound a macro level assessment for oecd countries and emerging economies abstract it is well known that energy conservation can lead to rebound effects that partly offset the original energy savings one particular rebound mechanism is re spending of money savings associated with energy savings on energy intensive goods or services we calculate the average magnitude of this re spending rebound for different fuels and countries and for both energy and carbon co2 emissions we find that emerging economies neglected in past studies typically have larger rebounds than oecd countries since such economies play an increasingly important role in the global economy the re spending rebound is a growing concern the re spending effect is generally larger for gasoline than for natural gas and electricity paradoxically stronger financial incentives to conserve energy tend to increase the rebound this suggests that with climate regulation and peak oil the re spending rebound may become more important we discuss the policy implications of our findings

growth in global materials use gdp and population during the 20th century the growing industrial metabolism is a major driver of global environmental change we present an assessment of the global use of materials since the beginning of the 20th century based on the conceptual and methodological principles of material flow accounting mfa on the grounds of published statistical data data compilations and estimation procedures for material flows not covered by international statistical sources we compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass fossil energy carriers metal ores industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900 to 2005 this period covers important phases of global industrialisation and economic growth the paper analyses the observed changes in the overall size and composition of global material flows in relation to the global economy population growth and primary energy consumption we show that during the last century global materials use increased 8 fold humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons gt of materials per year in particular the period after wwii was characterized by rapid physical growth driven by both population and economic growth within this period there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards mineral materials materials use increased at a slower pace than the global economy but faster than world population as a consequence material intensity i e the amount of materials required per unit of gdp declined while materials use per capita doubled from 4 6 to 10 3 t cap yr the main material groups show different trajectories while biomass use hardly keeps up with population growth the mineral fractions grow at a rapid pace we show that increases in material productivity are mostly due to the slow growth of biomass use while they are much less pronounced for the mineral fractions so far there is no evidence that growth of global materials use is slowing down or might eventually decline and our results indicate that an increase in material productivity is a general feature of economic development

okun s law in panels of countries and states this article contributes to the empirical literature of okun s law in three respects first in contrast to the limited data used in the existing studies we employ two extensive across countries and across states i e within a country panel data sets to investigate the validity of okun s law second the use of the pooled mean group pmg estimator permits us not to pre filter the data as often done in the current literature and can take into account the possibility of cointegration between unemployment and output third in addition to the short run relationship or cyclical components between unemployment and output we also estimate the long run linkage between these two important variables empirical results show that unemployment and output are long run cointegrated irrespective of using country or state level data moreover the unemployment output linkages are found to be negative and highly significant both in the short and long run our results not only confirm the validity of okun s law

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

ghg emissions gdp growth and the kyoto protocol a revisit of environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the kyoto protocol attempts through political negotiations to guide participating industrialized countries greenhouse gas ghg emissions from a positive growing trend to reach a peak point or turning point and then be reduced to a negative growth that means the relationship between decreasing ghg emissions and economic growth may be described by an inverted u curve or called a bell shaped curve which is consistent with the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis this research observed that the economic development and ghg emissions in economies in transition eits exhibit a hockey stick curve trend or called quasi l shape curve that also generates a lot of hot air which is significant to the implementation of the kyoto protocol in addition through the analysis of single country time series data and gdp data this research demonstrated that statistical data for most of the annex ii countries do not possess evidence that supports the ekc hypothesis for ghg emissions the results from this study also indicated that the 38 industrialized countries are unable to meet their targets under the kyoto protocol within the specified time period which are probably caused by the econometric method s inability to predict accurately the extents and development of innovative technologies and clean development mechanism cdm projects if the international community truly wants to reduce the ghg emissions the effectiveness of the existing international framework for emissions reduction needs to be reconsidered seriously and the global cooperation mechanism also needs to be greatly enhanced

the relationship between production and unemployment in japan okun s law in comparative perspective abstract this paper studies the question whether the celebrated okun s law a relation between excess capacity and unemployment applies to the postwar japanese economy though the fitness of estimation is weak the coefficient that measures the responsiveness of the output gap to the unemployment rate is very large reaching 28 this large coefficient can be attributed to the elastic response in the female participation ratio to flexible working hours to the slow adjustment in employment and to changes in industrial structures the results are compared with those in the united states

where to go workers reasons to quit and intra vs interindustry job mobility we show that workers reasons for quitting their job affect their decision to stay in or leave their industry using survey data among public sector employees in the netherlands workers quitting for e g pay work pressure or job duties move relatively often to another industry in contrast to workers quitting for commuting time or the atmosphere at work this suggests that workers use their experience in the initial job to update their expectations on other jobs in the industry as the first set of job aspects is more likely to be related among jobs within an industry than the latter furthermore it is shown that workers reasons to quit fully explain the differences in wage growth between intra and interindustry job movers lastly we find that workers who quit for pay or management often leave the public sector altogether the data used in this article are proprietary

the economic value of improvements in beef tenderness by genetic marker selection a genetic simulation model is combined with an economic model of the u s beef industry to determine how consumer demand shifts resulting from bull and heifer selection strategies that improve steak tenderness affect economic profitability at four points in the beef supply chain the results indicate that a selection strategy in which bulls in the upper 30 of genetic merit are selected each year would result in increased profitability of 9 60 head for feeder cattle and 1 23 head for fed cattle in 20 years the net present value of the genetic improvement program is estimated to produce economic benefits of 7 6 billion

is the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a threatened theory a meta analysis of the literature abstract although widely studied deforestation remains a common research topic the relationship between economic development and deforestation is still in question this paper presents a meta analysis of environmental kuznets curve ekc studies for deforestation using 69 studies offering 547 estimations we shed light on why ekc results differ we investigate the incidence of choices made by authors such as econometric strategy measure of deforestation geographical area and presence of control variables on the probability of finding an ekc after a phase of work corroborating the ekc we find a turning point after the year 2001 building on our results we conclude that the ekc story will not fade until theoretical alternatives are provided

the influence of traded and nontraded wages on relative prices and real exchange rates abstract this work demonstrates for fourteen oecd economies that wage differentials between traded and nontraded goods significantly affect the relative price of nontradeables and the real exchange rate in the short and medium run 1997 elsevier science s a

excess worker reallocation workers face a trade off between macroeconomic and individual incentives to work in different occupations industries namely between search frictions and personal comparative advantages workers endowed with heterogeneous multi dimensional skills search for jobs that require different skill combinations in equilibrium specialized individuals contact few selected types of vacancies where they are likely to be hired those with weak comparative advantages are seldom chosen among competing applicants thus seek any job type in a tight labour market comparative advantages dominate waiting costs offsetting labour mobility across industries occupations excess worker reallocation is lower and matches are more successful consistently with direct and indirect evidence

is there a core of practical macroeconomics that we should all believe with emphasis on the adjective practical and the normative verb should my answer to the question of this session is a resounding yes indeed i spent a good deal of time between january 1993 and january 1996 acting on the belief that there is such a core macro model so i certainly hope it exists this believable core model falls well short of perfection leaves many questions unanswered and is subject to substantial stochastic errors nonetheless it is both useful and extensively used in policy analysis where contact with reality is a necessity and you cannot beat something with nothing it also closely resembles but does not quite match the way macroeconomics is taught to beginning and intermediate but not to graduate students in this short presentation i will describe briefly the main practical elements that i think we should agree on without worrying too much about their theoretical underpinnings then i will turn to two critical failings of the standard macro model which cry out for theoretical and empirical repair my organizing principle is the textbook exposition that has been standard though not universal in teaching intermediate macroeconomics for years the question is how does it differ from the core model used in policy analysis

a cross country analysis of the okun s law coefficient convergence in europe the paper examines whether or not evidence is consistent with convergence of the okun s law coefficient olc among several alternative groupings of european economies a two step empirical strategy is employed the first step obtains rolling regression estimates of the olc for individual european countries the second step examines how the cross country variance of the olc evolves over the decade until 2002 in the selected country groupings evidence is found consistent with convergence of the olc among northern european countries and among countries with centralized wage bargaining but an absence of convergence in other country groups

the impact of tfp growth on steady state unemployment theoretical predictions of the impact of total factor productivity tfp growth on unemployment are ambiguous and depend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs we evaluate a model with embodied and disembodied technology capitalization and creative destruction effects in econometric estimates with a panel of industrial countries we find a large negative impact of tfp growth on unemployment which implies that embodied technology and creative destruction play no role in the steady state dynamics of unemployment capitalization effects explain some of the estimated impact but a part remains unexplained

asymmetry in okun s law in this paper we support the proposition that the output unemployment relationship as represented by okun s law is asymmetric okun s coefficients are defined based on a dynamic model that allows for asymmetry in the relationship between cyclical output and unemployment using data from the united states for the post war period our results show that the short run effects of positive cyclical output on cyclical unemployment are quantitatively different from those of negative ones and the data are consistent with the proposition that cyclical unemployment is more sensitive to negative than to positive cyclical output several theoretical

sustainability in a post keynesian growth model for an open economy the paper expands the bop constraint growth model and kaldorian regimes productivity and demand regimes in order to include some of the concerns raised by ecological economics in post keynesian models for open economies the demand regime is modified by taking into account porter s hypothesis which suggests that environmental innovations spurred by environmental policies can foster competitiveness as a result the equilibrium bop constrained rate of growth increases leading to a different version of thirlwall s law which opens room for analyzing the impact of environmental innovations on convergence between developing and developed economies the productivity regime in turn considers the growth and employment implications of innovations in labor productivity standard innovations and environmental efficiency environmental innovations it is argued that the fiscal policy and composition of public expenditure matter for long run growth employment and sustainability

can the share economy conquer stagflation this paper analyzes weitzman s contention that a share economy will significantly improve the unemployment inflation tradeoff it is shown that the argument rests on a critical proposition that share contracts lead to labor s being in perpetual excess demand the basis of this proposition is challenged using a wide variety of models of the labor market the paper concludes that the microeconomics of share economies differs little from that of wage economies and that a widespread introduction of share contracts is unlikely to improve macroeconomic performance

cyclical output cyclical unemployment and okun s coefficient a new approach estimates of okun s coefficient are obtained using new estimates of cyclical gnp and cyclical unemployment rates for the post war usa empirical estimates of the coefficient are near 0 25 somewhat smaller in magnitude than other recent estimates obtained applying similar econometric techniques to different estimates of cyclical output and unemployment tests fail to reject the hypothesis of parameter stability across an hypothesized break between the third and fourth quarters of 1973 suggesting similar relationships between cyclical output and unemployment both before and after the supply shocks of the 1970s

declining us output volatility and its effect on labour flow volatility an mgarch analysis this article analyses flow rates of us workers between employment and unemployment using new quarterly data for the period 1967 to 2002 multivariate garch models are used to investigate links between flow rate volatilities the results suggest that links changed substantially in the mid 1980s coinciding with the documented decline in output volatility these changes in adjustment dynamics are consistent with a move to greater use of hours rather than worker adjustment

inter and intrasectoral shocks effects on the unemployment rate intersectoral shocks require resource reallocation across sectors while intrasectoral shocks require resource reallocation within sectors a crucial difference between these shocks is that the former require much higher adjustment costs than the latter using accounting data to calculate returns on capital in manufacturing industries i generate proxies for these shocks i find that the magnitude of intrasectoral shocks is much greater than that of intersectoral shocks but intersectoral shocks explain the aggregate unemployment rate better than intrasectoral shocks i also find that intersectoral shocks are more closely related to the unemployment rate in the later part of the sample considered

seniority sectoral decline and employee retention an analysis of layoff unemployment spells we investigate the effect of tenure on employee retention under varying labor market conditions using a competing risks analysis of recall and new job acceptance applied to layoff unemployment spell data from waves 15 and 16 1982 83 of the panel study of income dynamics we find that adverse conditions sectoral employment decline significantly reduce the positive tenure effect on recall probabilities this result is consistent with firm default on delayed payment contracts and does not appear to reflect the effect of technological change on the value of firm specific investments

taking the u out of kuznets a comprehensive analysis of the ekc and environmental degradation unlike most environmental kuznets curve ekc studies which focus on narrow measures of pollution as proxies for environmental quality we test the validity of the ekc using the ecological footprint ef a more comprehensive measure of environmental degradation we find no empirical evidence of an ekc relationship between the ef and economic development and only limited support for such a relationship among the components of the ef in addition we discover that energy is largely responsible for the lack of an ekc relationship and that energy consumption levels would have to be cut by over 50 in order for a statistically significant ekc relationship to emerge from the data overall these results suggest that growth alone will not lead to sustainable development

the role of selective job search in uk unemployment selective search where unemployed job losers confine their job seeking efforts to matches in the pre separation sector has attracted consid erable attention as a possible source of high and persistent unemployment however this idea is questionable those opting for selection may do so because this strategy is more effective at gener ating an acceptable offer using uk microdata i find evidence in support of the latter view selective searchers cannot account for the persistence of high unemployment since the early 1980s

the role of nontraded and traded wages in the productivity differential model purchasing power parity ppp remains the benchmark model for long run nominal exchange rate determination since cassel s pioneering work 3 despite weak empirical support 6 7 12 14 seminal work by balassa 1 and samuelson 15 explains that movements in real exchange rates are due to changing real factors in the economy balassa and samuelson show that differing productivity rates between traded and nontraded sectors can explain deviations in ppp hsieh 10 has empirically supported the importance of productivity differentials in explaining real exchange rate movements although the balassa samuelson productivity differential model is commonly cited by international textbooks as an explanation of ppp failure 4 11 several assumptions have not been explicitly tested this paper examines four critical assumptions of the balassa model for fourteen oecd economies and demonstrates that some are weak and deserve additional study real exchange rate movements affect the competitiveness of a nation s tradable goods sector and represent deviations from purchasing power parity seminal work by balassa on real exchange rates and ppp violations relies on several underlying premises 1 the traded sector possesses higher productivity growth and larger intercountry differences than the nontraded sector 2 intracountry wage rates are equalized between traded and nontraded sectors due to labor mobility 3 wages in the traded good sector are linked to productivity in that sector 4 innovations in unit labor cost wage compensation adjusted for productivity cause corresponding movements in the relative price of nontraded goods this paper examines general patterns and interrelationships among traded and nontraded productivity real wages and relative prices for 14 oecd economies and extends the work of strauss and ferris 16 we construct gdp price indices productivity measures and real wage compensation rates for the traded and nontraded sectors for the years 1970 1990 the key finding is that differences in intersectoral wage growth appear to influence the relative price of nontradables more than differences in productivity growth the results support the proposition that produc

a further critique of growth economics is aggregate physical growth still economic as it was in the empty world or has it become uneconomic as we have moved into the full world era first i discuss why this critical question has been ignored by mainstream economists and policy makers second i consider 11 fallacies or anomalies that confuse reasoning about economic growth and undercut the current policy presumption in its favor

more leisure or higher pay a mixed methods study on reducing working time in austria working time reduction has become a central topic in the debate on social ecological transformation as it has the potential to mitigate unemployment improve well being and reduce environmental pressures this article analyses which groups of employees want to reduce their working time and for which reasons a novel working time policy in austria the leisure option provides a unique possibility to examine this question this policy enables employees to choose between a wage increase and more leisure time we use a mixed methods approach to analyse employees preferences and the decision to reduce working time with two empirical parts run in parallel a binary logit regression based on austrian microcensus 2012 data investigates factors associated with a preference for reduced working time qualitative interviews are conducted among employees at a firm in the electronics industry that offers the leisure option our results suggest that working time preferences are to a large extent shaped by social norms such as the full time working norm and gender roles we also find that the desire to work less is strongly moulded by personal values placed either on leisure and family time or on financial security

sectoral shocks and movement costs effects on employment and welfare abstract in this paper we provide a general equilibrium model of a two sector economy which accounts for low employment due to the incomplete responses of workers to sectoral shocks this model is used to reconcile the seemingly contradictory results of macro and micro evidence namely that sectoral shocks explain fluctuations of employment even though we do not observe cyclical movements of labor across sectors we further find that increasing the frequency of sectoral shocks holding the magnitude of the shocks fixed decreases total employment this allows us to account for the phenomena that the unemployment rate itself has been higher since 1970 a period characterized by an increased frequency of sectoral shocks we also study the theoretical implications of two opposite policies one which subsidizes mobility and the other which eliminates the partial insurance provided in the model the former increases employment and welfare while the latter increases employment but reduces welfare

work sharing during the great depression did the president s reemployment agreement promote reemployment the president s reemployment agreement pra of 1933 directed firms to reduce workweeks during the great depression so existing jobs could be spread into additional employment opportunities similar work sharing policies have recently been implemented across europe in hopes of reducing unemployment i find that ceteris paribus the work sharing aspects of the pra created nearly 2 5 million new employment opportunities in around four months however the programme also required firms to raise hourly wage rates offsetting close to half of these gains furthermore most of the remaining employment gains were wiped out after cartel oriented industry specific codes of fair competition supplanted the pra