large scale deployment of renewables for electricity generation comparisons of resource assessments suggest that sufficient renewable energy resources are available to allow for large scale deployment of renewable energy technologies economic analysis identifies barriers to the adoption of renewable energy sources resulting from i market structure ii competition in an uneven playing field and iii various non marketplace barriers however even if these barriers are removed the problem of technology lock out remains the key policy response is strategic deployment coupled with increased r d support to accelerate the pace of improvement through market experience this paper suggests significant contributions from various technologies are possible but does not assess their optimal or maximal market share copyright 2005 oxford university press

how do learning externalities influence the evaluation of ontario s renewables support policies abstract support programs for renewable electricity generation in ontario have been in place since 2005 including feed in tariffs and a competitive procurement process these programs have been criticized on a number of fronts in particular critics claim the level of support was excessive and creating surplus supply however prior studies have ignored one potential benefit of renewable energy support that it can help to promote cost reductions in new technologies through learning by doing this paper uses a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model featuring learning by doing effects to assess the renewable support programs provided in ontario our results in line with previous studies do not justify the high support rates paid in ontario given our core range of assumptions but our modeling approach allows us to identify the combination of key parameter values relating to learning effects and environmental damages that justify the observed rates these parameters are hard to measure empirically and our modeling approach introduces a new tool for examining the impact of variations in these parameters on policy analysis

price stability vs output stability tales of federal reserve administrations abstract this study disentangles policy parameters from those describing private sector behavior by simultaneously estimating an empirical model for inflation and output along with a loss function for the last three federal reserve administrations three important results emerge first the federal reserve appears to put more emphasis on price stability than output stability when the entire sample is considered second and more importantly the loss function parameters exhibit structural break at the time paul volcker was appointed chairman the accommodative characteristics of monetary policy were replaced with a more active policy towards controlling inflation finally interest rate smoothing is found to be an important feature of the monetary policymaking process for all three administrations

do central bank forecasts influence private agents forecasting performance versus signals focusing on a set of central banks that publish their internal macroeconomic forecasts in real time enables one to shed light on the expectations channel of monetary policy the main contribution of this paper is to assess whether central bank forecasts influence private forecasts the response is positive for inflation forecasts in sweden the uk and japan to disentangle the sources of influence of central banks two concepts are proposed endogenous influence which is due to more accurate central bank forecasts and exogenous influence which is due to central bank signals on either future policy decisions or private information original empirical evidence on the central bank forecasting performance relative to private agents is provided and estimates show that in sweden more accurate inflation forecasts generate specific central bank influence that is different from the influence from signals the publication of forecasts may therefore refer to two central banking strategies that aim to shape private expectations forecasting or policymaking

tapping the supercomputer under your desk solving dynamic equilibrium models with graphics processors this paper shows how to build algorithms that use graphics processing units gpus installed in most modern computers to solve dynamic equilibrium models in economics in particular we rely on the compute unified device architecture cuda of nvidia gpus we illustrate the power of the approach by solving a simple real business cycle model with value function iteration we document improvements in speed of around 200 times and suggest that even further gains are likely

evaluation and optimization of feed in tariffs abstract feed in tariff program is an incentive plan that provides investors with a set payment for electricity generated from renewable energy sources that is fed into the power grid as of today fit is being used by over 75 jurisdictions around the world and offers a number of design options to achieve policy goals the objective of this paper is to propose a quantitative model by which a specific fit program can be evaluated and hence optimized we focus on payoff structure which has a direct impact on the net present value of the investment and other parameters relevant to investor reaction and electricity prices we combine cost modeling option valuation and consumer choice so as to simulate the performance of a fit program of interest in various scenarios the model is used to define an optimization problem from a policy maker s perspective who wants to increase the contribution of renewable energy to the overall energy supply while keeping the total burden on ratepayers under control numerical studies shed light on the interactions among design options program parameters and the performance of a fit program

monetary policy shifts and the stability of monetary policy models since the publication 1976 of the classic lucas critique researchers in empirical macroeconomics have endeavored to specify models that capture the underlying dynamic decision making behavior of consumers and firms who require forecasts of future events recently a number of researchers have developed simple models that have become the workhorses for monetary policy analysis the models vary considerably with regard to optimizing foundations and explicit treatment of expectations however relatively little effort has been devoted to testing the empirical importance of the lucas critique for these simple models can one find specifications that are policy invariant this paper develops and implements a set of tests for several monetary policy models used extensively in the literature in particular we attempt to test the robustness of optimizing versus nonoptimizing models to changes in the monetary policy regime we present evidence that shows that some forward looking models from the recent literat

a hardware approach to value function iteration abstract this paper proposes a novel approach for the computation of dynamic stochastic equilibrium models we design an fpga specialized in the computation of a bellman equation via value function iteration vfi our hardware approach exhibits significant speed gains vis a vis gpu based data parallelization techniques the speed gains arise from two layers of parallelism accessible to hardware developers instruction level and pipeline parallelism at the logical resources level by and large the paper documents significant computational speed gains from hardware specialization so far unexplored by the macroeconomic literature

structural stability testing in models estimated by generalized method of moments this article proposes a new methodology for testing structural stability in models estimated via generalized method of moments like most previous studies of this general problem attention is focused on the case in which some aspect of the model potentially changes at a single point in the sample known as the breakpoint unlike this earlier work however our approach is based on a decomposition of the null hypothesis into two components involving parameter constancy and the validity of the overidentifying restrictions both before and after the suspected breakpoint using this framework we propose a testing strategy that offers the potential to discriminate between parameter variation and more general forms of instability statistics are presented for testing our null hypotheses in both the known and unknown breakpoint cases the tests are applied to the conditional capital asset pricing model used by harvey to explain the international variation in stock index returns harvey reported that data from

factor demand models with nonlinear short run fluctuations abstract this paper considers asymmetric costs of adjustment that propagate nonlinear shortrun fluctuations in stochastic factor demand systems the model endogenously generates asymmetric cyclical demand for capital and labour between peaks and troughs of the business cycle the empirical analysis of the model is based on quarterly time series data of the dutch manufacturing sector for the period 1971 i 1984 iv and annual time series data of the u k manufacturing sector for the period 1955 1986 i find important differences of adjustment speed of capital and labour inputs between expansionary and contractionary phases of the business cycle

an historical perspective on the forecasting performance of the treasury model forecasting the growth in uk consumers expenditure drawing upon treasury official economic forecasts vols i ii a series of treasury model tm forecasts of the percentage growth in real total consumers expenditure are derived for the period 1967 to 1989 the one two and three step ahead forecasts examined cover an interesting period which includes major shocks to the uk economy business cycle effects and changes in economic policy whilst a battery of forecast evaluation statistics and tests do not detect any evidence of forecast bias or irrationality over the whole sample split sample analysis provides evidence of a switch from overprediction to underprediction around 1977 in addition the application of modified versions of holden peel 1990 tests provides evidence of the longest horizon forecasts failing to capture the full movement of changes in consumption growth using simple regression and a selection of forecast encompassing tests shorter horizon forecasts are found to dominate longer horizon forecasts a feature which might be expe

inference in nonlinear econometric models with structural change this paper extends the classical test for structural change in linear regression models see chow 1960 to a wide variety of nonlinear models estimated by a variety of different procedures wald lagrange multiplier like and likelihood ratio like test statistics are introduced the results allow for heterogeneity and temporal dependence of the observations in the process of developing the above tests the paper also provides a compact presentation of general unifying results for estimation and testing in nonlinear parametric econometric models

electoral uncertainty fiscal policy and macroeconomic fluctuations abstract in this paper we study the link between elections fiscal policy and aggregate fluctuations the setup is a stylized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model incorporating both technology and political re election shocks the latter are incorporated via a two party model with elections the main theoretical prediction is that forward looking incumbents with uncertain prospects of re election find it optimal to follow relatively shortsighted fiscal policies and that this hurts capital accumulation our econometric estimation using u s data finds a statistically significant link between electoral uncertainty and policy instruments and in turn macroeconomic outcomes

testing the assumptions and predictions of the hotelling model in this paper we empirically examine whether the assumptions and predictions of the hotelling model are consistent with patterns observed in data we consider nonlinear functional forms for the extraction cost and resource demand to develop an empirical hotelling model with technological progress and stock dependent extraction costs using panel data on fourteen nonrenewable natural resources to estimate this empirical hotelling model we get qualitatively different results as compared to the related literature we find evidence of stock dependent extraction costs for most resources there is no evidence against the linearity of the optimal extraction rate in the resource stock for almost all resources studied furthermore the hotelling model may sustain a zero long run growth rate in resource prices these results depend on whether firms use different extractive technologies or whether the structural break observed on resource prices is taken into account

modelling risk premia in international asset markets abstract the intertemporal capital asset pricing model icapm has been widely used as a vehicle to explain the predictability of excess returns in forward foreign exchange markets this approach ignores the heterogeneity in the assets actually traded in international asset markets in this paper it is shown that the latent variable risk premium model is not rejected by the data when tested on a portfolio including equity and bonds in four currencies however application of a more general test rejects parameter stability suggesting that the latent variable model is not as successful as the previous tests would imply

why does the yield curve predict output and inflation the slope of the yield curve has been shown empirically to be a significant predictor of inflation and real economic activity but there is no standard theory as to why the relationship exists this article constructs an analytical rational expectations model to investigate the reasons for the empirical results the model suggests that the relationships are not structural but are instead influenced by the monetary policy regime however the yield curve should have predictive power for output and inflation in most circumstances various implications of the theoretical model are tested and confirmed empirically

a method for taking models to the data abstract this paper develops a method for combining the power of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with the flexibility of a vector autoregressive time series model to obtain a hybrid that can be taken directly to the data it estimates this hybrid model via maximum likelihood and uses the results to address a number of issues concerning the ability of a prototypical real business cycle model to explain movements in aggregate output and employment in the postwar us economy the stability of the real business cycle model s structural parameters and the performance of the hybrid model s out of sample forecasts

a review of uncertainties in technology experience curves abstract the use of log linear experience curves or learning curves relating reductions in the unit cost of technologies to their cumulative production or installed capacity has become a common method of representing endogenous technical change in energy economic models used for policy analysis yet there are significant uncertainties in such formulations whose impact on key model results have been insufficiently examined or considered this paper reviews the major types of uncertainty in log linear experience curves and their effect on projected rates of cost reduction uncertainties are found not only in the learning rate parameter of a log linear model but also in the functional form that determines the shape of an experience curve evidence for alternative forms such as an s shaped curve is reviewed along with case studies that demonstrate the uncertainties associated with cost increases during early commercialization of a technology a phenomena that is widely recognized but rarely quantified or incorporated in learning models additional factors discussed include the effects of learning discontinuities institutional forgetting and the influence of social economic and political factors we then review other models of causality which aim to improve modelers ability to explain and predict the influence of other underlying processes that contribute to technology cost reductions in addition to learning ignoring other types of underlying mechanisms can create a false sense of precision and overestimate the true contribution of learning currently however uncertainties in such multi factor models remain large due to the difficulties of estimating key parameters such as private sector r d investments and extending models of a specific technology to a broader suite of technologies and cost projections pending the development and validation of more robust models of technological change we suggest ways to significantly improve the characterization and reporting of current learning model uncertainties and their impacts on the results of energy economic models to help reduce the potential for drawing inappropriate or erroneous policy conclusions

does consumption take a random walk some evidence from macroeconomic forecasting data abstract professional quarterly forecasts of aggregate u s consumption series are used to test hall s 1978 random walk hypothesis results from band spectrum regressions suggest that forecasts predict about 40 percent of the low frequency variation in growth rates of expenditures on nondurables and services the forecasts have no explanatory power for high frequency variations the rejection of the random walk hypothesis is traced to excess sensitivity of consumption growth to forecasted income growth at the business cycle frequencies

bias in federal reserve inflation forecasts is the federal reserve irrational or just cautious abstract inflation forecasts of the federal reserve seem to have systematically under predicted inflation from the fourth quarter of 1968 until volcker s appointment as chairman and to systematically over predict it afterwards until the second quarter of 1998 furthermore under quadratic loss commercial forecasts seem to have information not contained in those forecasts to investigate the cause of this apparent irrationality this paper recovers the loss function implied by federal reserve s inflation forecasts the results suggest that the cost of having inflation above an implicit time varying target was larger than the cost of having inflation below it for the period since volcker and that the opposite was true for the pre volcker era once these asymmetries are taken into account the federal reserve s inflation forecasts are found to be rational

technological learning and renewable energy costs implications for us renewable energy policy abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between current renewable energy technology costs and cumulative production research development and demonstration expenditures and other institutional influences combining the theoretical framework of learning by doing and developments in learning by searching with the fields of organizational learning and institutional economics offers a complete methodological framework to examine the underlying capital cost trajectory when developing electricity cost estimates used in energy policy planning models sensitivities of the learning rates for global wind and solar photovoltaic technologies to changes in the model parameters are tested the implications of the results indicate that institutional policy instruments play an important role for these technologies to achieve cost reductions and further market adoption

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technology detail in a social accounting framework abstract hybrid climate policy simulations have sought to bridge the gap between bottom up engineering and top down macroeconomic models by integrating the former s energy technology detail into the latter s macroeconomic framework construction of hybrid models is complicated by the need to numerically calibrate them to multiple incommensurate sources of economic and engineering data i develop a solution to this problem following howitt s howitt r e 1995 positive mathematical programming american journal of agricultural economics 77 329 342 positive mathematical programming approach using data for the u s i illustrate how the inputs to the electricity sector in a social accounting matrix may be allocated among discrete types of generation so as to be consistent with both technologies input shares from engineering cost estimates and the zero profit and market clearance conditions of the sector s macroeconomic production structure

comparing solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies this paper compares solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies the authors compute and simulate the stochastic neoclassical growth model with leisure choice using undetermined coefficients in levels and in logs finite elements chebyshev polynomials second and fifth order perturbations and value function iteration for several calibrations the authors document the performance of the methods in terms of computing time implementation complexity and accuracy and they present some conclusions about their preferred approaches based on the reported evidence

labor and investment frictions in a real business cycle model abstract this paper develops a prototype real business cycle model in which labor and investment frictions may compete directly with technology shocks in accounting for fluctuations in the postwar us economy using ireland s 2004a a method for taking models to the data journal of economic dynamics and control 28 1205 1226 methodology we establish that both types of friction are quantitatively important technology shocks still explain a substantial fraction of the fluctuations in aggregate output as the baseline real business cycle model predicts formal hypothesis tests suggest that changes in the recurrence of shocks frictions and structural parameters all play a role in accounting for the shift in the time series properties of the data between the periods before and after 1980

estimating new keynesian phillips curves a full information maximum likelihood approach abstract the new keynesian phillips curve has recently become an important ingredient in monetary policy models however using limited information methods the empirical support for the new keynesian phillips curve appear to be mixed this paper argues by means of monte carlo simulations with a simple new keynesian sticky price model that single equations methods e g gmm are likely to produce imprecise and biased estimates then it is argued that estimating the model with full information maximum likelihood fiml is a useful way of obtaining better estimates finally a version of the model used in the monte carlo simulations is estimated on u s data with fiml and although the pure forward looking new keynesian phillips curve is rejected a version with both forward and backward looking components provides a reasonable approximation of u s inflation dynamics

representing induced technological change in models for climate policy analysis induced technological change itc whereby the relative price effects of reducing greenhouse gas emissions stimulate innovation that mitigates the cost of abatement is both tantalizing to decision makers and challenging to represent in the computational economic and engineering models used to analyze climate change policy this overview reconciles the divergent views of technology and technological change within different types of models elucidates the theoretical underpinnings of itc introduces the reader to the techniques of their practical implementation and evaluates the implications for models results

age analysis of the impact of a carbon energy tax on the irish economy a computable general equilibrium model with specific detail in taxation and energy use is developed in this paper to quantify the impact of the implementation of energy taxation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in ireland benchmark data combining physical energy and emissions data and economic data in the form of a social accounting matrix sam had to be compiled from various data sources because energy and pollution accounts from the seea are not available for ireland we find that the reduction target for energy related co2 emissions in ireland of 25 8 compared to 1998 levels can be achieved with a carbon energy tax of 10 15 euros per tonne of co2 though fuel switching is important in meeting the target this result is more sensitive to the possibilities for producers to substitute away from energy use welfare would fall but only by small percentages production and consumption patterns would change more significantly with a shift in demand from fuels with a high emission factor to energy sources with a lower carbon intensity and from energy to other commodities this paper confirms that a carbon energy tax leads to greater emission reductions than an equivalent uniform energy tax the latter has a stronger negative impact on the less polluting energy sectors whereas the carbon tax greatly stimulates the use of renewable energy and reduces the use of peat and coal the new sam the model and the application to energy taxes contribute to a better informed debate on environmental policy in ireland

the new econometrics of structural change dating breaks in u s labor productivity we have seen the emergence of three major innovations in the econometrics of structural change in the past fifteen years 1 tests for a structural break of unknown timing 2 estimation of the timing of a structural break and 3 tests to distinguish unit roots from broken time trends these three innovations have dramatically altered the face of applied time series econometrics in this paper we review these three innovations and illustrate their application through an empirical assessment of u s labor productivity in the manufacturing durables sector

on measuring synchronization of bulls and bears the case of east asia abstract this paper implements estimation and testing procedures for comovements of stock market cycles or phases in asia we extend the harding and pagan harding d pagan a p 2006 synchronization of cycles journal of econometrics 132 1 59 79 test for strong multivariate nonsynchronization smns between business cycles to a test that allows for an imperfect degree of multivariate synchronization between stock market cycles moreover we propose a test for endogenously determining structural change in the bivariate and multivariate synchronization indices upon applying the technique to five asian stock markets we find a significant increase in the cross country comovements of asian bullish and bearish periods in 1997 a power study of the stability test suggests that the detected increase in comovement is more of a sudden nature i e contagion or asian flu instead of gradual i e financial integration it is furthermore argued that stock market cycles and their propensity toward increased synchronization contain useful information for both investors policy makers and financial regulators

assessing generalized method of moments estimates of the federal reserve reaction function estimating a forward looking monetary policy rule by the generalized method of moments gmm has become a popular approach we reexamine estimates of the federal reserve reaction function using several gmm estimators and a maximum likelihood ml estimator first we show that over the baseline period 1979 2000 these alternative approaches yield substantially different parameter estimates using monte carlo simulations we show that the finite sample gmm bias can account for only a small part of the discrepancy between estimates we find that this discrepancy is more plausibly rationalized by the serial correlation of the policy shock causing misspecification of gmm estimators through lack of instrument exogeneity this correlation pattern is related to a shift in the reaction function parameters around 1987 reestimating the reaction function over the 1987 2000 period produces gmm estimates that are very close to the ml estimate

design of an economically efficient feed in tariff structure for renewable energy development abstract evidence suggests albeit tentatively that feed in tariffs fits are more effective than alternative support schemes in promoting renewable energy technologies rets fits provide long term financial stability for investors in rets which at the prevailing market price of electricity are not currently cost efficient enough to compete with traditional fossil fuel technologies on the other hand if not properly designed fits can be economically inefficient as is widely regarded to have been the case under the public utility regulatory policies act of 1978 purpa under purpa too high a guaranteed price led to the creation of so called purpa machines poorly performing generating units that could survive financially only because of heavy subsidies that came at the expense of retail customers similarly because of their adverse impacts on retail electricity rates german fits have been subject to increasing political pressure from utilities and customers in this paper we propose an innovative two part fit consisting of both a capacity payment and a market based energy payment which can be used to meet the renewables policy goals of regulators our two part tariff design draws on the strengths of traditional fits relies on market mechanisms is easy to implement and avoids the problems caused by distorting wholesale energy markets through above market energy payments the approach is modeled on forward capacity market designs that have been recently implemented by several regional transmission organizations in the usa to address needs for new generating capacity to ensure system reliability

climate policies and induced technological change which to choose the carrot or the stick policies to reduce emissions of greenhousegases such as co2 will affect the rate andpattern of technological change in alternativeenergy supply and other production processes imperfections in markets for non pollutingtechnologies imply that a decentralised economydoes not deliver a socially optimal outcome and this could justify policy interventionssuch as subsidies this paper considers thewelfare effects of technology subsidies as partof a carbon abatement policy package we arguethat the presence of spillovers in alternativeenergy technologies does not necessarily implythat subsidy policies are welfare improving weillustrate this point in the context of ageneral equilibrium model with two forms ofcarbon free energy an existing alternative energy which is a substitute for carbon basedfuels and new vintage energy which providesa carbon free replacement for existing energyservices subsidisation of alternative energyon the grounds of spillover effects can bewelfare worsening if it crowds out new vintagetechnologies

testing the nairu model for the united states this paper tests using u s data the dynamics implied by the nairu view of the relationship between inflation and the unemployment rate the results are somewhat sensitive to the measure of inflation used but they generally reject the dynamics an alternative way of thinking about the relationship between inflation and the unemployment rate is suggested

inferring monetary policy objectives with a partially observed state accounting for the uncertainty inherent in real time perceptions of the state of the economy is believed to be critical for the analysis of historical monetary policy we investigate this claim through the lens of a small scale new keynesian model with optimal discretionary policy and partial information about the state the model is estimated using maximum likelihood on us data over the volcker greenspan bernanke regime a comparison of our estimates to those from a version of the model with complete information reveals that under partial information i the federal reserve demonstrates a significant concern for stabilizing fluctuations in the output gap and ii the discrepancy between optimal and observed policy behavior is smaller

benchmarking machine learning software and hardware for quantitative economics abstract we investigate the performance of machine learning software and hardware for quantitative economics we show that the use of machine learning software and hardware can significantly reduce computational time in compute intensive tasks using a sovereign default model and the least squares monte carlo option pricing algorithm as benchmarks we show that specialized hardware and software speed up calculations by up to four orders of magnitude when compared to programs written in popular high level programming languages such as matlab julia python numpy and r and high performing low level languages such as c

technology shocks capital utilization and sticky prices abstract we quantitatively evaluate a business cycle environment featuring endogenous capital utilization and nominal price rigidity that illustrates a negative relationship between labor hours and technology tfp shocks and a positive relationship between hours and investment mei shocks sticky prices induce firms to suppress changes in output due to tfp shocks through changes in the utilization rate of the existing capital stock and labor demand mei shocks have an indirect impact on output via their link with capital utilization and are shown to be the dominant driver of post 1979 us business cycles

on the predictive accuracy of crude oil futures prices abstract this paper evaluates the predictive accuracy of 1 3 6 9 and 12 month ahead crude oil futures prices for 1991 01 2001 12 in addition to testing for unbiasedness a naive forecasting model is constructed to generate comparable forecasts as benchmarks our empirical findings reveal that futures prices and naive forecasts are unbiased at all forecast horizons however the 1 and 12 month ahead futures prices are the only forecasts outperforming the naive suggesting their potential usefulness in policy making continuing political instability of the middle east and the inability of opec to offset market sentiment among other factors may in the future adversely affect the predictive accuracy of the 1 and 12 month ahead futures prices accordingly caution must be exercised when utilizing such prices as a forecasting tool

the political economy of the paris agreement income inequality and climate policy abstract we empirically assess how both between country inequality and within country inequality relate to climate policy ambition as defined by ndc pledges of the paris agreement cop21 we exploit the difference between high and low ambition targets submitted by parties to construct a climate policy ambition index we find that both inequalities shape countries pledges first low income countries tend to be more ambitious in setting their pledges when external support is received second within country inequality is associated with i lower mitigation ambition in low and middle low income countries and with ii higher mitigation ambition although non statistically significant for upperhigh and high income countries our results are discussed in terms of i climate policy being a superior good in rich countries and ii elites benefiting from emitting economic activities in poorer countries

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technologies and the cost of limiting us co2 emissions abstract in the us the bulk of co 2 abatement induced by carbon taxes comes from electric power this paper incorporates technology detail into the electricity sector of a computable general equilibrium model of the us economy to characterize electric power s technological margins of adjustment to carbon taxes and to elucidate their general equilibrium effects compared to the top down production function representation of the electricity sector the technology rich hybrid specification produces less abatement at a higher welfare cost suggesting that bottom up models do not necessarily generate lower costs of abatement than top down models this result is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity with which technologies generating capacities adjust to relative prices

testing the rationality of price forecasts new evidence from panel data this paper tests the rationality of individual price forecasts in a panel of professional forecasters here unlike in most previous studies rationality is not rejected the results here differ because 1 using individual forecasts avoids aggregation bias 2 comparison of forecasts to initial data avoids bias due to data revision 3 the professional forecasters have economic incentives to state their expectations accurately and 4 a new covariance matrix estimator consistent when forecast errors are correlated across individuals is used copyright 1990 by american economic association

precautionary savings illiquid assets and the aggregate consequences of shocks to household income risk households face large income uncertainty that varies substantially over the business cycle we examine the macroeconomic consequences of these variations in a model with incomplete markets liquid and illiquid assets and a nominal rigidity heightened uncertainty depresses aggregate demand as households respond by hoarding liquid paper assets for precautionary motives thereby reducing both illiquid physical investment and consumption demand we document the empirical response of portfolio liquidity and aggregate activity to surprise changes in idiosyncratic income uncertainty and find both to be quantitatively in line with our model the welfare consequences of uncertainty shocks and of the policy response thereto depend crucially on a household s asset position

explaining the transition between exchange rate regimes this paper studies the transition between exchange rate regimes using a markov chain model with time varying transition probabilities the probabilities are parameterized as nonlinear functions of variables suggested by the currency crisis and optimal currency area literature results using annual data indicate that inflation and to a lesser extent output growth and trade openness help explain the exchange rate regime transition dynamics

estimating the liquidity of m2 components in the post didmca era i introduction the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 1980 didmca together with the garn st germain act and related federal reserve actions resulted in a thorough redefinition of the money stock measures as discussed in anderson and kavajecz 1994 and related writings the current components of m1 and m2 recognize the significant changes among existing assets that occurred throughout the 1970s examples include the rapid growth of money market mutual funds mmmfs and the breakdown of distinctions between deposits of commercial banks and thrift institutions the measures of money include assets introduced by legislation such as now accounts and money market deposit accounts mmdas the didmca also deregulated interest rates on bank deposits with january 1986 completing the phase out of regulation q this paper examines the liquidity of the assets within the restructured definitions of m1 and m2 we offer empirical evidence regarding the cost of decreasing these asset holdings as well as for other bank deposits such as individual retirement accounts iras the results can be used to assess how easily they can be converted into a medium of exchange section ii features the model formulation based upon a representative household s intertemporal optimization problem with liquidity costs our study provides estimates of both relative and absolute liquidity as lippman and mccall 1986 discuss liquidity represents a fundamental characteristic of assets yet remains elusive in its measurement to this extent research seeking to measure or estimate liquidity is sparse lippman and mccall s 1986 criterion consists of the optimal expected amount of time to transform an asset into money hooker and kohn 1994 define liquidity as the difference between the asset price at its optimal sale relative to its immediate sale adjustment cost serves as our measure for liquidity this criterion conforms to commonly used definitions found in economics textbooks particularly those that emphasize asset withdrawal for transactions mishkin 1995 55 for example defines liquidity as the relative ease and speed with which an asset can be converted into a medium of exchange the adjustment cost approach measures withdrawal costs in dollar units it regards liquidity as an inherent characteristic of the asset and captures the total cost involved with changing asset holdings the implicit inclusion of time costs within the formulation is consistent with lippman and mccall 1986 asymmetry in adjustment cost arises because liquidity explicitly involves the cost of reducing asset holdings while economic units incur costs due to increasing financial assets larger costs result from withdrawal we use a minor modification of pfann and verspagen s 1989 asymmetric adjustment cost function proposed by dutkowsky 1995 the function offers several attractive properties for estimating liquidity cost it allows for asymmetry in the direction of either increases or decreases within portfolio reallocation further the commonly used linear quadratic function is nested within this equation enabling straightforward testing for greater withdrawal cost the asymmetric adjustment cost specification has been utilized previously by pfann and palm 1993 within labor demand section iii reports empirical findings we estimate the structural parameters using generalized method of moments gmm and monthly data for the december 1983 march 1993 period the results reveal significant evidence of asymmetry in the direction of decreasing asset holdings for all components except demand deposits this finding supports the existence of greater cost for withdrawing as opposed to increasing holdings among interest bearing accounts further the evidence points to a definite ordering of liquidity among several assets within this group savings deposits rank as the most liquid followed by small time deposits mmmfs and individual retirement accounts

endogenous money or sticky prices abstract what explains the correlations between nominal and real variables in the postwar us data are these correlations indicative of significant nominal rigidity or do they simply reflect the particular way that monetary policymakers react to developments in the real economy to answer these questions this paper uses maximum likelihood to estimate a model of endogenous money this model allows but does not require nominal prices to be sticky the results show that nominal price rigidity over and above endogenous money plays a role in accounting for key features of the data

assessing the temporal variation of macroeconomic forecasts by a panel of changing composition this paper calls attention to the problem of changing panel composition in surveys of forecasters and documents the problem in the survey of professional forecasters to study the temporal variation of forecasts we recommend analysis of the time series of predictions made by individual forecasters this makes transparent the heterogeneity of the panel and avoids improper inferences due to changing panel composition we warn against the traditional practice of aggregate time series analysis which con ates changes in the expectations of individual forecasters with changes in the composition of the panel should analysis of aggregated predictions be thought desirable as a simplifying device we recommend analyses of sub panels of xed composition

when and how should infant industries be protected abstract this paper develops and analyzes a welfare maximizing model of infant industry protection the domestic infant industry is competitive and experiences dynamic learning effects that are external to firms the competitive foreign industry is mature and produces a good that is an imperfect substitute for the domestic good a government planner can protect the infant industry using domestic production subsidies tariffs or quotas in order to maximize domestic welfare over time as protection is not always optimal although the domestic industry experiences a learning externality the paper shows how the decision to protect the industry should depend on the industry s learning potential the shape of the learning curve and the degree of substitutability between domestic and foreign goods assuming some reasonable restrictions on the flexibility over time of the policy instruments the paper subsequently compares the effectiveness of the different instruments given such restrictions the paper shows that quotas induce higher welfare levels than tariffs in some cases the dominance of the quota is so pronounced that it compensates for any amount of government revenue loss related to the administration of the quota including the case of a voluntary export restraint where no revenue is collected in similar cases the quota may even be preferred to a domestic production subsidy

multi round procurement auctions with secret reserve prices theory and evidence when a secret reserve price is used in an auction the auctioneer cannot guarantee that the good can be sold out at the auction and can reauction the unsold objects in the next round motivated by this interesting feature observed in the procurement auctions organized by the indiana department of transportation we construct a dynamic bidding model in multi round procurement auctions with secret reserve prices and evaluate how the release of the auctioneer s reserve price affects bidders bidding behavior and the auctioneer s expected payment our theoretical model predicts that the equilibrium bids uniformly decline over stages and the numerical analysis of our model indicates that hiding the reserve price may be better than announcing it for the auctioneer under some specifications of underlying distributions we develop an empirical model with bidders discount factor equal to zero to recover the unknown structural parameters and to conduct counterfactual analyses copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

the lucas critique and the stability of empirical models this paper re considers the empirical relevance of the lucas critique using a dsge sticky price model in which a weak central bank response to inflation generates equilibrium indeterminacy the model is calibrated on the magnitude of the historical shift in the federal reserve s policy rule and is capable of generating the decline in the volatility of inflation and real activity observed in u s data using monte carlo simulations and a backward looking model of aggregate supply and demand we show that shifts in the policy rule induce breaks in both the reduced form coefficients and the reduced form error variances the statistics of popular parameter stability tests are shown to have low power if such heteroskedasticity is neglected in contrast when the instability of the reduced form error variances is accounted for the lucas critique is found to be empirically relevant for both artificial and actual data

the production smoothing model is alive and well abstract monthly data in physical units for seven industries are used to examine the production smoothing hypothesis the results strongly support this hypothesis significant effects of expected future sales on current production are found for four industries and the estimated decision equations for all seven industries imply production smoothing behavior the previous negative results appear to be due to the use of data biased against the hypothesis the shipments and inventory data of the department of commerce the paper also shows that sensible results can be obtained from estimating approximations to decision equations as opposed to estimating euler equations

the cost of climate policy in the united states abstract we re evaluate prospects for us economic growth and the likely costs of advanced technologies given recent developments and then apply the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model to evaluate three core ghg policy scenarios for the us that cap emissions at different levels the three policy scenarios involve allowance allocations that through 2050 are 1 constant at present emissions levels 2 linearly reduced to 50 below present 3 linearly reduce emissions to 80 below present the cumulative allowance allocations over the horizon of the policy are 287 203 and 167 gt of co 2 equivalent respectively we compare the results to previous analysis of these same policy scenarios to evaluate how the changed growth and technology prospects affect the results we focus on 203 and 167 gt scenarios because current proposals envision deep cuts in emissions from present the 167 gt scenario is closest to proposals currently being considered by congress and supported by the us administration however we do not attempt to model specific details of actual proposals we test results to alternative assumptions about program coverage and banking behavior measured in terms of changes in economic welfare the economic cost of 203 and 167 gt cases is in the range of 2 to 3 by 2050 with co 2 prices between 48 and 67 in 2015 rising to between 190 and 266 by 2050 implementation details matter when an idealized economy wide cap and trade is replaced by coverage omitting some sectors or if the credibility of long term target is weak limiting banking behavior prices and welfare costs change substantially

the emperor has no clothes limits to risk modelling abstract this paper considers the properties of risk measures primarily value at risk var from both internal and external regulatory points of view it is argued that since market data is endogenous to market behavior statistical analysis made in times of stability does not provide much guidance in times of crisis in an extensive survey across data classes and risk models the empirical properties of current risk forecasting models are found to be lacking in robustness while being excessively volatile for regulatory use the var measure may give misleading information about risk and in some cases may actually increase both idiosyncratic and systemic risk

corporate prediction markets evidence from google ford and firm x despite the popularity of prediction markets among economists businesses and policymakers have been slow to adopt them in decision making most studies of prediction markets outside the lab are from public markets with large trading populations corporate prediction markets face additional issues such as thinness weak incentives limited entry and the potential for traders with biases or ulterior motives raising questions about how well these markets will perform we examine data from prediction markets run by google ford motor company and an anonymous basic materials conglomerate firm x despite theoretically adverse conditions we find these markets are relatively efficient and improve upon the forecasts of experts at all three firms by as much as a 25 reduction in mean squared error the most notable inefficiency is an optimism bias in the markets at google the inefficiencies that do exist generally become smaller over time more experienced traders and those with higher past performance trade against the identified inefficiencies suggesting that the markets efficiency improves because traders gain experience and less skilled traders exit the market

comparing the feed in tariff incentives for renewable electricity in ontario and germany the development of feed in tariff fit programs to support green electricity in ontario the green energy and green economy act of 2009 and germany the erneuerbare energien gesetz of 2000 is compared the two policies are highly comparable offering similar rates for most renewable electricity technologies major differences between the policies include the level of differentiation found in the german policy as well as the use of a price degression strategy for fit rates in germany compared to an escalation strategy in ontario the german renewable electricity portfolio is relatively balanced compared to ontario where wind power dominates the portfolio at the federal level canada does not yet have a policy similar to the european directive on renewable energy and this lack may impact decisions taken by manufacturers of renewable technologies who consider establishing operations in the province ontario s green energy and green economy act could be benefit from lessons in the german system especially with regard to degression of feed in tariff rates over time which could significantly reduce payments to producers over the course of a contract and in turn encourage greater competitiveness among renewable power providers in the future

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

changes in seasonal patterns are they cyclical this paper explores the hypothesis that the seasonal patterns of macroeconomic variables vary with expansions and contractions graphical techniques and generalized predictive tests for structural stability are used to identify and test patterns of changing seasonality a monte carlo exercise shows the power of the tests against interesting alternatives the empirical results suggest that seasonal patterns are unstable and that in many cases changes are linked to the stages of the business cycle the forecasting costs incurred by treating seasonality as constant are discussed and evaluated

forecast encompassing as the necessary condition to reject futures market efficiency fluid milk futures the traditional necessary condition for futures market inefficiency is the existence of alternative forecasting methods that produce mean squared forecast errors smaller than the futures market here a more exacting requirement for futures market efficiency is proposed forecast encompassing using the procedure of harvey and newbold multiple forecast encompassing is tested using chicago mercantile exchange fluid milk futures time series models and usda experts provide competing forecasts results suggest milk futures do not encompass the information contained in the usda forecasts at a two quarter horizon while the competing forecasts generate positive revenues it is unlikely that returns exceed transaction costs in this relatively new market

how stable is the predictive power of the yield curve evidence from germany and the united states empirical research over the last decade has uncovered predictive relationships between the slope of the yield curve and subsequent real activity and inflation some of these relationships are highly significant but their theoretical motivations suggest that they may not be stable over time we use recent econometric techniques for break testing to examine whether the empirical relationships are in fact stable we consider continuous models which predict either economic growth or inflation and binary models which predict either recessions or inflationary pressure in each case we draw on evidence from germany and the united states models that predict real activity are somewhat more stable than those that predict inflation and binary models are more stable than continuous models the model that predicts recessions is stable over our full sample period in both germany and the united states

the informational content of ex ante forecasts the informational content of different forecasts can be compared by regressing the actual change in a variable to be forecasted on forecasts of the change we use the procedure in fair and shiller 1987 to examine the informational content of three sets of ex ant forecasts the american statistical association and national bureau of economic research survey asa data resources incorporated dri and wharton economic forecasting associates uefa we compare these forecasts to each other and to quasi ex ante forecasts generated from a vector autoregressive model an autoregressive components model and a large scale structural model the fair model

reaching inflation stability inflation volatility has significantly declined over the last 20 years in the u s to find out why i follow a structural approach i estimate a complete new keynesian model which imposes cross equation restrictions on the time series of inflation the output gap and the interest rate i perform counterfactual analysis with two commonly used measures of inflation consumer price index cpi and gross domestic product deflator gdpd while the change in the propagation mechanism of the economy induced most of the cpi volatility drop it played a smaller role in the reduction of gdpd volatility our maximum likelihood estimates imply that the most important factor behind the drop in inflation volatility was the more forward looking price setting behavior of the 1980s and 1990s

how does tax system on energy industries affect energy demand co2 emissions and economy in china abstract energy savings and co2 emission reduction have become a major issue in recent years taxes on energy production sectors may be an effective way to save energy reduce co2 emissions and improve environmental quality this paper constructs a dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium cge model to analyze the impact of the energy tax on energy economy and environment from the perspective of tax rates and tax forms specific tax and ad valorem tax the results show that adjusting the tax system and the tax rate has important implications for energy conservation while having minor impacts on the output of other industries the impact of an increasing energy tax on the energy demand is greater than the impact on sectoral output indicating that energy efficiency will be increased to some extent the co2 reduction will increase over time when an ad valorem tax is implemented on enterprises we found that ad valorem tax has greater elasticity of economic output energy demand and co2 emission reduction the results support the direction of china s resource tax reform however we argue that it is better to increase the tax rate relatively and relax the control on energy prices so that energy efficiency will increase