economic determinants of free trade agreements abstract the purpose of this study is to provide the first systematic empirical analysis of the economic determinants of the formation of free trade agreements ftas and of the likelihood of ftas between pairs of countries using a qualitative choice model we develop this econometric model based upon a general equilibrium model of world trade with two factors of production two monopolistically competitive product markets and explicit intercontinental and intracontinental transportation costs among multiple countries on multiple continents the empirical model correctly predicts based solely upon economic characteristics 85 of the 286 ftas existing in 1996 among 1431 pairs of countries and 97 of the remaining 1145 pairs with no ftas

solar energy market developments in india abstract considering india s ambition to ensure energy security renewable energy sources like solar wind biomass and small hydro can play crucial role in the energy mix of the country solar has been identified as one of the key renewable sources to supplement the conventional energy sources and reduce carbon footprint in india authors review solar energy potential market developments capacity additions actual production and component manufacturing industry trade status and economics of solar energy in the country recently the government revised target for solar power capacity installation from 20 gw to100 gw by 2022 however the solar industry faces a significant level of challenges in the areas of grid connectivity and evacuation infrastructure regulatory policy developments capacity utilization initial capital investment lack of innovative financing models consumer awareness and acceptance authors suggest that by taking key strategic steps like creating attracting investment climate making easy access to financing developing transmission and distribution infrastructure skill development and developing domestic component manufacturing industry the challenges can be addressed such progressive steps would enable india to achieve the objective of industrialization through clean energy

returns to regionalism an analysis of nontraditional gains from regional trade agreements the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in regional trade agreements with many policymakers and academics seeming to believe that these provide more than the traditional gains from trade this article examines several possible benefits that regional trade agreements may confer on their partners including credibility signaling bargaining power insurance and coordination it assesses the necessary conditions for each possible channel to work gives stylized examples of specific types of policy where the benefit might be applicable examines cases where the explanation might be relevant and discusses their overall plausibility it concludes by examining the north american free trade agreement and the europe agreements

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

understanding the determinants of structural change in world food markets american journal of agricultural economics 80 december 1052 1062 this study assesses the interaction between climate change and agricultural trade policies we distinguish between two dimensions of agricultural trade policy market insulation and subsidy levels building on the previous work of tsigas frisvold and kuhn 1997 we find that in the presence of current levels of agricultural subsidies increased price transmission as called for under the uruguay round agreement on agriculture reduces global welfare in the wake of climate change this is due to the positive correlation between productivity changes and current levels of agricultural support increases in subsidized output under climate change tend to exacerbate inefficiencies in the global agricultural economy in the absence of market insulation however once agricultural subsidies have also been eliminated price transmission via the global trading system contributes positively to economic adaptation under climate change products this may partially explain the relatively slow growth of world grain import demand in recent years in addition bilateral agreements with east asia nafta and the evolution of the cap have all had important impacts on the structure of world food and agricultural trade the objective of this paper is to assess the relative role of each of the major forces consumer demand factor accumulation transport costs and policy change in driving changes in the composition of world food trade in 1980 1995 to do so we employ a modified version of the global trade analysis project gtap model of world trade which permits us to isolate the contribution of each of these related factors to the changing composition of world food trade in a general equilibrium context we evaluate the relative role of each of these factors by simulating the model backwards in time from 1995 to 1980 under different assumptions this general approach termed backcasting i e backwards forecasting takes as exogenous the basic drivers of change and attempts to explain the resulting change in food trade composition the model produced changes in the composition of agricultural and food trade are compared with historical trade data to determine the relative importance of each factor on the changing composition of food trade given limited space our focus will be on explaining the changes in the global composition of food and agriculture trade a natural follow on effort would target specific markets in more detail this type of backcasting approach was first employed by gehlhar 1997 who sought to explain the shift in exports of primary commodities to manufactures in east asia in the 1980 s he calibrated the gtap model to 1992 data then implemented shocks to factor endowments and economywide total factor productivity tfp in order to force each economy back to its 1982 levels of population land labor human capital physical capital and technology by comparing actual and predicted changes in export shares in this period he found human capital accumulation played a key role in explaining the change in the aggregate composition of east asian exports gehlhar hertel and martin 1994 built on this work in an effort to predict future changes in the pattern of agricultural trade from 1992 2002 they also emphasized the importance of supply side determinants of agricultural trade in this paper we go beyond this earlier work in a number of ways first we focus on the composition of agricultural exports rather than simply looking at the share of agriculture in total trade secondly we incorporate the cranfield et al estimates of rimmer and powell s recently developed implicitly directly additive demand system nicknamed aidads into the gtap model this permits us to better capture the impact of demand side changes on the pattern of global tr

estimating the effects of free trade agreements on international trade flows using matching econometrics abstract this paper provides the first cross section estimates of long run treatment effects of free trade agreements on members bilateral international trade flows using nonparametric matching econometrics our nonparametric cross section estimates of ex post long run treatment effects are much more stable across years and have more economically plausible values than corresponding ols cross section estimates from typical gravity equations we provide plausible estimates of the long run effects of membership in the original european economic community eec and the central american common market cacm between 1960 and 2000 and the estimates confirm anecdotal reports of these agreements effectiveness

inflation and welfare in a monetary economy it is in everyone s private interest to try to get someone else to hold non interest bearing cash and reserves but someone has to hold it all so these efforts must simply cancel out all of us spend several hours per year in this effort and employ thousands of talented and highly trained people to help us these person hours are simply thrown away wasted on a task that should not have to be performed at all

deep integration and production networks an empirical analysis this paper investigates the two way relationship between deep integration and production networks trade we capture deep integration with a set of indices constructed in terms of policy areas covered in preferential trade agreements we estimate an augmented gravity equation to investigate the impact of deep integration on production networks trade the results show that on average signing deeper agreements increases production networks trade between member countries by almost 12 percentage points in addition the impact of deep integration is higher for trade in automobile parts and information and technology products compared with textile products to analyse whether higher levels of network trade increase the likelihood of signing deeper agreements we follow the literature on the determinants of preferential trade agreements the estimation results show that after taking into account other pta determinants a ten percentage increase in the share of production network trade over total trade increases the depth of an agreement by approximately 6 percentage points in addition the probability of signing deeper agreements is higher for country pairs involved in north south production sharing and for countries belonging to the asia region

recent developments of solar energy in india perspectives strategies and future goals abstract power is the most paramount ingredient of infrastructure for growth in economics and welfare of a nation development for sustaining the growth of the indian economy in the existing infrastructure is crucial the power sector of india is one of the largest expanded power sectors in the world due to the continuous increment in electricity demand day by day indian power sector is interfacing some challenges to maintain the balance between the power generation and demand with suffering from supply constraints and shortages in power for maintaining the ratio of generation and demand of power moving from conventional sources to non conventional sources is not only an option it is a necessity the importance of using solar as an energy source in india s perspectives in not only to increase power generation but also to expand energy reliability with considering the environmental social independent and financial beneficial properties this paper analyzes the recent scenario strategies availability future potential policies and development of solar energy in emerging indian power sector

heterogeneous trade agreements wto membership and international trade an analysis using matching econometrics this article explores the heterogeneous effects of trade agreements tas and world trade organization wto membership on the volume of international trade we extend baier and bergstrand s 2009a application of matching econometrics by distinguishing between different types of tas and wto participation and account for the endogenous nature of trade policy for a panel data set covering 1960 2005 and 187 countries we find that the treatment effect on international trade systematically varies with the type of ta and wto membership

exchange rate uncertainty and agricultural trade using a sample of bilateral trade flows across ten developed countries between 1974 and 1995 this article explores the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on the growth of agricultural trade as compared to other sectors based on a gravity model that controls for other factors likely to determine bilateral trade the results show that real exchange rate uncertainty has had a significant negative effect on agricultural trade over this period moreover the negative impact of uncertainty on agricultural trade has been more significant compared to other sectors

subsidies to new energy sources do they add to energy stocks energy production subsidies are paradoxically shown to be likely to increase u s dependence on imported oil standard studies of net energy yields are shown to be seriously biased upward for two reasons first many omit indirect energy inputs which our input output calculation shows probably causes large errors second those studies all omit the energy opportunity costs of nonenergy inputs e g the fuel substituted elsewhere for the labor used to produce energy we prove that absent externalities any fuel output subsidy which causes an otherwise unprofitable expansion must yield an incremental fuel output smaller than the increment in energy input plus the energy opportunity costs of other inputs

assessing the impact of unilateral trade policies eba and agoa on african beneficiaries exports using matching econometrics the existing literature studying the impact of non reciprocal preferential trade agreements nrptas assumes implicitly nrptas are non randomly assigned without showing the evidence of that using a matching methodology this paper investigates whether the african growth and opportunity act agoa and the everything but arms eba unilateral trade concessions have had an impact and in what magnitude on the exports of african beneficiary countries in the light of the evidence of the non random nature endogeneity of nrptas methodologically previous studies using the matching procedure focused on bi or multilateral trade agreements our work focuses on nrptas that depend only on donors conditions accordingly we show that for nrptas gravity covariates cannot be used for the matching procedure we propose to use political variables as determinants for obtaining non reciprocal trade preferences in order to address the endogenous nature of nrpta assignment our main results confirm that a country becomes eligible for a nrpta only when it meets certain conditions defined by their donors such as political stability and economic regulation for agoa and freedom of expression and human development for eba results also show that both agoa and eba policies have had a positive impact on african beneficiary countries exports to nrpta s providers even if the magnitude impact of eba is significantly lower than that of agoa

persistent trade effects of large exchange rate shocks this paper presents a theoretical basis for the argument that large exchange rate shocks such as the 1980s dollar cycle may have persistent effects on trade flows and the equilibrium exchange rate itself we begin with a partial equilibrium model in which large exchange rate fluctuations lead to entry or exit decisions that are not reversed when the currency returns to its previous level then we develop a simple model of the feedback from hysteresis in trade to the exchange rate itself here we see that a large capital inflow which leads to an initial appreciation can result in a persistent reduction in the exchange rate consistent with trade balance

inside and outside money as alternative media of exchange we study a random matching model of money in which a subset of people called bankers have known histories and the rest called nonbankers have unknown histories earlier we showed that if there are no outside assets then an optimal arrangement has bankers issuing objects banknotes that are used in trades involving nonbankers here the same model is used to compare such exclusive use of inside money to the exclusive use of outside money we show that the set of implementable outcomes using outside money is a strict subset of the set using inside money

the demand for money financial innovation and the welfare cost of inflation an analysis with household data we use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized baumol tobin model our data set contains information on average currency deposits and other interest bearing assets the number of trips to the bank the size of withdrawals and ownership and use of atm cards we model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold interest bearing assets the interest rate and expenditure flow elasticities of the demand for currency are close to the theoretical values implied by standard inventory models however we find significant differences between individuals with an atm card and those without the estimates of the demand for currency allow us to calculate a measure of the welfare cost of inflation analogous to bailey s triangle but based on a rigorous microeconometric framework the welfare cost of inflation varies considerably within the population but never turns out to be very lar

financing risks involved in distributed pv power generation in china and analysis of countermeasures abstract the pv industry is a strategic emerging industry in china with extensive application easy local accommodation and little impact on the power grid distributed pv power generation is viewed as a major way of pv power generation in the future in recent two years the chinese government has rolled out policies concerning distributed pv power generation in the hope to quickly expand the domestic market ease the impact on the pv industry from global market fluctuations and reduce the excess capacity of the pv industry however distributed pv power generation faces complex financing problems at home with the unclear definition of rooftop property rights risks in pv power generation policies risks in the access to power grids and uncertainties in profitability the paper summarizes that china must improve laws polices and management institution to dissolve the financing risks related to distributed pv power generation

the impact of ftas on mena trade in agricultural and industrial products abstractthis article analyses the impact of free trade agreements ftas on middle east and north african countries mena trade for the period 1994 2010 the analysis distinguishes between industrial and agricultural trade to take into account the different liberalization schedules an augmented gravity model is estimated using up to date panel data techniques to control for all time invariant bilateral factors that influence bilateral trade as well as for the so called multilateral resistance factors we also control for the endogeneity of the agreements and test for self selection bias due to the presence of zero trade in our sample the main findings indicate that north south ftas and south south ftas have a differential impact in terms of increasing trade in mena countries with the former being more beneficial in terms of exports for mena countries but both showing greater global market integration we also find that ftas that include agricultural products in which mena countries have a clear comp

one money one market the effect of common currencies on trade currency unions their dramatic effect on international trade a gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade the panel data bilateral observations for five years during 1970 90 covering 186 countries includes 300 observations in which both countries use the same currency i find a large positive effect of a currency union on international trade and a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility even after controlling for a host of features including the endogenous nature of the exchange rate regime these effects statistically significant imply that two countries sharing the same currency trade three times as much as they would with different currencies currency unions like the european emu may thus lead to a large increase in international trade with all that that entails andrew rose

looking backward to look forward water use and economic growth from a long term perspective recent research has examined the relationship between natural resources and economic growth considered vitally important not only for humanity s well being but also for the integrity of the ecosystem the relationship between water use and economic growth has nevertheless traditionally attracted little attention by analysts this article studies water use trends from 1900 to 2000 throughout the world and their relationship to the main determinants of economic growth to do this we first analyse water use trajectories second to proceed with the determinants of water use we reformulate the ehrlich and holdren s impact population affluence technology ipat equation 1971 decomposing water use trends into changes in economic demands and in water use intensity on the basis of a decomposition analysis finally a simple scenario analysis is conducted to project future water use trends under different economic demographic and technological assumptions the empirical evidence shows that economic and

efficiency and the role of government in energy policy abstract it is well established that the presence of a monopolist producer removes efficiency from the world oil market efficiency in energy resource utilization can nevertheless be the proclaimed objective of an energy policy by an oil importing nation if imported oil is considered a non produced resource available at a given price this article presents an example of such a policy which consists of the institution of price guarantees for energy alternatives and of government subsidies for the development of new energy technologies we illustrate how this policy will attain efficiency and the ratio of benefits to the costs associated with its adoption are calculated

what is challenging renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries this paper cumulates the findings from a review of the challenges faced by renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries to date research that could facilitate the success of renewable energy entrepreneurs in the world s developing regions has been fragmented across two main bodies of literature management specifically entrepreneurship and renewable energy by conducting a qualitative review of the extant literature i propose that the findings from both bodies of research may be distilled to six 6 key challenges inadequate access to institutional finance the price of renewable energy technologies rets the lack of skilled labour underdeveloped physical infrastructure and logistics power dominance of incumbents inadequate government or policy support through this research i not only advance a unified conceptualisation of the challenges faced by renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries but also highlight a number of the revealed opportunities for future research

demandable debts as a means of payment banknotes versus checks we examine whether transactable forms of privately issued demandable debt are better used as banknotes or checks the distinction between the two is that a check must be redeemed by the issuing bank with each use whereas a banknote can circulate we find that the answer to the question depends on the cost of early redemption if this cost is small banknotes will not circulate so the question is moot if this cost is large incentive problems may prevent the circulation of banknotes for intermediate values of the early redemption cost banknotes will be preferred over checks

optimal subsidies to new energy sources abstract this paper broadens previous discussion on the conditions for subsidizing new energy sources several arguments for and against subsidizing new energy sources such as solar energy and synthetic fuels are reviewed and critiqued emphasis is given to vintage subsidies to conventional energy sources net energy analysis and a variety of production externalities a theorem for determining optimal subsidies to new energy sources is developed based on a general theorem proposed by baumol and bradford 2 finally two equity issues are also considered

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

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

recent incentives for renewable energy in turkey abstract recently the importance of renewable energy sources has increased significantly as climate change has become an important long term threat to global ecosystems and the world economy in the face of increased concern about climate change and high fossil fuel costs together with a reduction in the primary energy sources such as oil natural gas and coal alternative energy sources renewables are increasingly needed to respond to the threat of climate change and growing energy demand in the world recent developments in turkey such as the liberalization of the electricity market and improvements in the renewable legislations have accelerated the growth process and investment opportunities in the field of renewable energy turkey s naturally endowed potential for renewables such as solar geothermal and wind also accompanied these developments and attracted world attention to this market in turkey renewable energy sources have gained great importance in the last decades due to growing energy demand and incentive policies which foster the utilization of renewable energy sources this study aims to explore the availability and potential of renewable energy sources in turkey and discuss the government policies and economic aspects

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

do we really know that the wto increases trade comment in a recent article in the american economic review andrew k rose 2004 finds that countries belonging to the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt and its successor the world trade organization wto did not trade more than countries that abstained from membership a vast literature on the gatt and the wto presupposes that these organizations were important but until rose there were few systematic efforts to test the assumption that membership increased trade rose s contribution is striking because he assembles a large dataset performs a myriad of analyses and uncovers scant evidence that the gatt and the wto had any impact rose describes his negative findings as an interesting mystery 112 the solution to this mystery lies in understanding who actually participated in the gatt we show that rose has overlooked a large proportion of countries to which the agreement applied and mistakenly classified them as nonparticipants when in fact they had rights and obligations under the agreement this causes a downward bias in his estimates of the gatt s effect on trade because his gravity regressions

consumer attitudes towards domestic solar power systems the success of the uk policy to reduce carbon emissions is partly dependent on the ability to persuade householders to become more energy efficient and to encourage installation of domestic solar systems solar power is an innovation in the uk but the current policy of stimulating the market with grants is not resulting in widespread adoption this case study using householders in central england investigates householder attitudes towards characteristics of solar systems and identifies some of the barriers to adoption the study utilises diffusion of innovations theory to identify attitudes towards system attributes and isolates the characteristics that are preventing a pragmatic early majority from adopting the technology a group of early adopters and a group of assumed early majority adopters of solar power were surveyed and the results show that overall although the early majority demonstrate a positive perception of the environmental characteristics of solar power its financial economic and aesthetic characteristics are limiting adoption differences exist between the two groups showing support for the concept of a chasm between adopter categories after moore crossing the chasm marketing and selling high tech products to mainstream customers second ed harper perennial new york however if consumers cannot identify the relative advantage of solar power over their current sources of power which is supplied readily and cheaply through a mains system it is unlikely that adoption will follow recommendations concerning the marketing and development of solar products are identified

monopolistic competition and international trade reconsidering the evidence we test some propositions about international trade flows that are derived from models of monopolistic competition developed by elhanan helpman and paul krugman we investigate whether the volume of trade between oecd countries is consistent with the predictions of a model in which all trade is intraindustry trade in differentiated products we then repeat the test with non oecd countries we also investigate whether the share of intraindustry trade is consistent with a more general theoretical model in which some but not all trade is intraindustry trade our results lead us to question the apparent empirical success of these models

causes of world trade growth in agricultural and food products 1951 2000 a demand function approach the objective of the present study is to analyse the causes of the growth of international agricultural and food trade in volume terms from 1951 to 2000 the results suggest that income growth has been the principal reason for this expansion while exchange rate stability and the real price of agricultural products played only a minor role multilateral trade liberalization and trade costs given their long term stability are not elements that could have stimulated their growth finally the intensive liberalization of trade which took place in various economic regions especially in europe became a key factor in promoting agricultural trade among the countries participating in regional trade agreements the study results also indicate that the determinants of trade growth for these goods were different to those for other goods and other periods

the mercantilist index of trade policy we introduce an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff that maintains the same trade volume as a given tariff quota structure our index overcomes the problems of the trade weighted average tariff it avoids substitution bias correctly accounts for general equilibrium transfers and takes import volume instead of welfare as benchmark empirical applications to international cross section and time series comparisons of trade policy confirm our theoretical results trade weighted average tariffs generally underestimate the true height of tariffs as measured by the trade volume equivalent index this in turn always underestimates the welfare equivalent index

a generalized design for bilateral trade flow models abstract this paper suggests a full interaction effects design to analyze bilateral trade flows this is illustrated with an unbalanced panel of bilateral trade between the triad eu15 usa and japan economies and their 57 most important trading partners over the period 1986 1997 our full interaction model finds empirical support for the new trade theory and linder s hypothesis we show that the omission of one or more interaction effects can result in biased estimates and misleading inference

the effects of the gstp on trade flow mission accomplished this paper investigates whether the global system of trade preferences among developing countries gstp achieves its intent to increase the trade of capital goods between member countries for this purpose trade data disaggregated by the degree of commodity differentiation and various gstp regional dummies are employed in a gravity equation estimation results say that the value of trade between gstp member countries has increased significantly since the formation of the gstp in 1989 and the trade of differentiated commodities has increased remarkably compared with other commodities therefore it can be asserted that the mission of the gstp has been accomplished successfully

money and interest in a cash in advance economy the authors analyze an aggregative general equilibrium model in which the use of money is motivated by a cash in advance constraint applied to purchases of a subset of consumption goods the system is subject to both real and monetary shocks which are economy wide and observed by all they develop methods for verifying the existence of characterizing and explicitly calculating equilibria copyright 1987 by the econometric society

a unified framework for monetary theory and policy analysis search theoretic models of monetary exchange are based on explicit descriptions of the frictions that make money essential however tractable versions of these models typically make strong assumptions that render them ill suited for monetary policy analysis we propose a new framework based on explicit micro foundations within which macro policy can be studied the framework is analytically tractable and easily quantifiable we calibrate the model to standard observations and use it to measure the cost of inflation we find that going from 10 percent to 0 percent inflation is worth between 3 and 5 percent of consumption much higher than previous estimates

monetized value of the environmental health and resource externalities of soy biodiesel abstract this study monetizes the life cycle environmental damage human health risk and resource depletion externalities associated with the production and use of biodiesel fuels from soybean feedstock applying a framework that couples life cycle damage measurements with social preferences elicited from a conjoint choice experiment allows for comparison of petrodiesel and biodiesel s external damages the results of the study reveal that production and consumption of soybean based biodiesels produce improvements in environmental health and resource impacts of 0 27 per gallon relative to petrodiesel for a 20 blend and 3 14 per gallon for a 100 blend

regional integration and trade controlling for varying degrees of heterogeneity in the gravity model using a panel dataset of bilateral export flows from 12 eu countries to 20 oecd trading partners over the 1992 2003 period this paper examines whether the effect on trade of european regional integration denoted by an eu dummy holds across a representative number of specifications for two gravity models one based on the traditional trade determinants the other based on newer trade theories ntt for both gravity model specifications the coefficient of the eu dummy declines in magnitude and becomes insignificant as an increasing degree of country heterogeneity is admitted into the model this suggests the fundamental importance of the econometric specification when evaluating trade policy effects

solar subsidies and economic efficiency abstract in this paper the case for subsidies for solar energy to counter inefficient pricing practices of electric utilities hidden subsidies to non solar fuels and tax law biases are examined the conclusion reached for two of three regions in the usa in the case of solar energy replacing electricity for hot water heating is that far from offsetting biases against solar energy current subsidies reinforce pre existing biases in favour of the use of solar energy systems

currency unions and trade how large is the treatment effect currency unions and trade what can the data say the impact of a common currency on trade can be grossly mismeasured if countries that belong to currency unions are systematically different from those that do not and if the relationship between trade and its observable determinants is complex i argue that such complications are plausible and likely to distort the empirical results of a recent economic policy paper by andrew rose issue 30 2000 pp 7 45 using techniques designed to be robust in this situation i find that the effects of common currency on international trade are considerably less dramatic and much less precisely estimated torsten persson i have always maintained that the measured effect of a single currency on trade appears implausibly large but i am not convinced by torsten persson s diagnosis and proposed solution i apply a variety of estimation techniques to a new larger data set where many more instances of currency union creation and abandonment make it possible to rely on time series as well as cross sectional evidence the results are similar to my earlier ones the effect of a single currency on trade is large andrew rose

assessing the trade impact of the european neighbourhood policy on the eu med free trade area the european neighbourhood policy enp set an additional objective for the southern mediterranean countries smcs the prospect of a stake in the internal market the launch of this new policy has been the occasion for a revival of empirical studies aimed at assessing the impact of the eu med partnership on bilateral trade the novelty of this work is twofold i to present nonparametric matching estimators besides gravity estimates ii to assume as a counterfactual of the treatment the ex post long run average treatment effects of the europe agreements by controlling for likely selection bias and country and time heterogeneity using both qualitative and quantitative measures of the policy variable we assess ex post the trade enhancing impact of the eu preferential agreements towards smcs and ex ante the actual efficacy of the enp

the long run and causal analysis of energy growth openness and financial development on carbon emissions in turkey abstract the aim of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between financial development trade economic growth energy consumption and carbon emissions in turkey for the 1960 2007 period the bounds f test for cointegration test yields evidence of a long run relationship between per capita carbon emissions per capita energy consumption per capita real income the square of per capita real income openness and financial development the results show that an increase in foreign trade to gdp ratio results an increase in per capita carbon emissions and financial development variable has no significant effect on per capita carbon emissions in the long run these results also support the validity of ekc hypothesis in the turkish economy it means that the level of co 2 emissions initially increases with income until it reaches its stabilization point then it declines in turkey in addition the paper explores causal relationship between the variables by using error correction based granger causality models

panel thoughts on the future of payments and central banking maintaining a uniform electronic currency the role a central bank should play in operating or regulating a payments system is not a new issue back in 1913 for example congress decided that the federal reserve would play a major role providing the country with a national check clearing system and a single uniform currency and while that role has not changed much over the years in 1980 congress revised its view of the payments system with the passage of the depository institution deregulation and monetary control act among other things the act requires the federal reserve to price its check clearing services and earn a competitive return or exit the business today the role of the federal reserve in providing a national currency is being reexamined this reexamination is driven by recent technological advances banks now have the ability to offer a new kind of currency electronic cash also known as ecash that could readily compete with federal reserve notes so the question naturally arises should congress allow banks to issue their own private currency a privilege banks used to have before the civil war to answer that question we need to address several concerns including one that is often overlooked the loss of a uniform currency allowing banks to issue currency e cash usually raises concerns about the loss of seigniorage the effectiveness of monetary policy and the overall stability of our monetary system allowing banks to issue their own currency will no doubt reduce seigniorage because e cash will be a close substitute for federal reserve notes the success of e cash will be at the expense of the united states treasury related to the concern over the loss of seigniorage is the concern that as the demand for federal reserve notes declines so will the impact of monetary policy furthermore the introduction of e cash may not only weaken monetary policy but it may also make markets less stable based on the history of private money systems some economists worry that banks would be tempted to overissue their currency while these are legitimate concerns a concern that is often overlooked when the e

energy and economic analysis for large scale integration of small photovoltaic systems in buildings the case of a public location in southern spain abstract the integration of grid connected pv systems into buildings or public areas is one of the most usual applications of the photovoltaic solar energy in developed countries and it is being highly promoted by several european governments in this paper it has been evaluated the photovoltaic potential of the campus of the university of jaen and it has been defined possible areas where the pv systems could be installed according to power requirements space possibilities the electrical configuration of the campus and some social integration requirements too the definition of the pv potential together with a technical analysis for the calculation of the energy generated is the previous step for carrying out an economic and cost analysis in order to certify the profitability of these systems in general particularizing the study for the case of this university located in southern spain the pv electricity cost generated has been calculated through the concept levelised cost of electricity lcoe where in our case is estimated to be around 0 13 0 14 kwh 1 the results obtained in this economic analysis recommend the implementation of pv grid connected systems pvgcs as the internal rate of return reaches a maximum value of 6 21 the net present value is positive and the discounted payback time is around 16 years an additional sensitive analysis shows the influence that some parameters have on the lcoe specially the initial investment the energy yield and the nominal discount rate

what is the cause of growth in regional trade trade liberalisation or rtas the case of agriculture this paper delves into the debate on the proliferation of regional trade arrangements by focusing on bilateral agricultural trade data over the 1962 1995 period for countries that currently are members of nafta mercosur the eu and apec agricultural is chosen because it has historically been protected by developed and dis protected by developing nations while in the case of the eu its common agricultural policy was the major policy jointly managed and funded by member countries we suggest that the literature has tended to focus on factors explaining the level of trade and neglected factors affecting growth in trade while neighborhood characteristics affect neighborhood trade they also appear to affect the policy regimes of neighboring countries the shift to more outward oriented regimes is thus likely to induce a dynamic in trade among neighboring countries requiring several years to stabilize as neighborhood trade grows it is natural to form trade arrangements so as to harmonize policies and to remove other barriers if this is the case then we should expect the growth in intra regional trade to exceed growth in extra regional trade and these patterns should occur before the formation of regional trade arrangements our results support this explanation this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

trade policy trade costs and developing country trade this paper briefly reviews new indices of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have been developed at the world bank the paper also compares the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions applied at the border with the effects of domestic policies that affect trade costs based on a gravity regression framework the analysis suggests that tariffs and non tariff measures continue to be a significant source of trade restrictiveness for low income countries despite preferential access programs this is because the value of trade preferences is quite limited a new measure of the relative preference margin developed in the paper reveals that this is very low for most country pairs most countries with very good duty free access to a market generally have competitors that have the same degree of access the empirical analysis suggests that measures to improve logistics performance and facilitate trade are likely to have the greatest positive effects in expanding developing country trade increasing the trade impacts of lowering remaining border barriers by a factor of two or more

the direct and relative effects of preferential market access abstract the proliferation of preferential trade agreements has resulted in a complex system of preferences in which market access conditions are often discriminatory in this paper we investigate how market access conditions have evolved between 2000 and 2009 and how this has affected international trade our results show that the proliferation of preferential access has increased bilateral trade not only due to lower tariffs but also because preferential access often resulted in higher preferential margins vis a vis foreign competitors the results also indicate that the evolution of the system of preferences has been disadvantageous for countries that did not actively engage in forming new trade agreements

optimal departures from marginal cost pricing focuses on departures from marginal cost pricing optimal allocation or resources level of tax revenue that will be collected by the government theorems developed for resource allocation ebsco

economic and environmental effectiveness of renewable energy policy instruments best practices from india abstract renewable energy re has been identified as a key tool to counter climate change and enhance energy security countries across the globe have been promoting this sector by several policy measures however limited research has been undertaken on the economic and environmental efficacy of re policy instruments especially in context of emerging economies like india which have witnessed substantial capacity addition and have set ambitious targets to de carbonize their economy this paper identifies 25 innovative practices followed in india which have enabled accelerated re capacity addition with minimal financial obligations these include energy entrepreneurship energy democratization private sector participation hedging and apportioning re procurement use of auctions with stringent participatory norms creditworthy counter party leverage of risk capital by developmental institutions regular revision of tariffs environmental cess on polluting industries long term re purchase trajectory and incentivizing green power output results indicate high financial impact of instruments support of us 3 5 mw h over applicable tariff which gets neutralized when tax inflow is considered lower carbon abatement cost us 3 6 tco2eq depicts high environmental efficacy the paper shares best practices from india in terms of efficient use of re policy enablers which may be contextualized in other emerging economies as per the local requirements

the long run decline in the share of agricultural and food products in international trade a gravity equation approach to its causes the objective of this study is to determine the causes of the loss of share of agricultural products and food in international trade the article compares using a gravity model the impact of various factors upon bilateral trade in agricultural products in manufactures and in total trade between 1963 and 2000 for a representative sample of 40 countries the results clearly demonstrate how the low demand elasticity for agricultural products and food the high degree of protectionism to which they were subjected and their meagre share in intra industrial trade are the principal causes of their relatively slow growth