multinationals and the developing countries in multinational enterprise and economic analysis caves provides a summary of economic research on multinationals and developing countries yet for policy makers major questions remain unanswered the gaps can be grouped into four categories the impact of the widespread change in development strategies on multinationals the net impact of foreign direct investment on host countries the causes of declining tensions between developing countries and foreign investors and links between our economic knowledge and the decisions that face private and government managers

earnings instability and earnings inequality of males in the united states 1967 1991 although much research has focused on recent increases in annual earnings inequality in the united states the increases could have come from either of two sources the distribution of lifetime earnings could have become more unequal or the receipt of lifetime earnings could have become more unstable based on an analysis of the 1968 92 panel study of income dynamics we find that lifetime earnings inequality increased during the early 1980s and that earnings instability increased during the 1970s we also examine how these trends are related to changes in the distribution of wages and hours and the returns to education

price reforms in the power sector the world bank s role this paper discusses whether the world bank s bank s policy has been successful in promoting economic efficiency in the power sector the conclusion is that the bank s presence has improved the situation as four countries receiving a disproportionate share of bank assistance have witnessed a more positive development since the late 1980s than developing countries as a whole loans provided through periods of non compliance may have eased the urgency of reform in a longer perspective the financing of such over investment may have been justified on grounds of maintaining the bank s presence in these countries and laying the foundation for the more recent sector reforms co ordination with broader sector reforms is also found to yield positive results

growth rate heterogeneity and the covariance structure of life cycle earnings using u s panel data on adult males i compare the profile heterogeneity model of earnings dynamics in which the earnings experience profile varies across individuals to a competing model in which earnings has a unit root the latter specification enjoys increasing popularity among researchers my analysis questions this favor suggesting the profile heterogeneity model provides a more consistent representation of the data i also provide new estimates of the variation in earnings growth rates previous evidence is from relatively unrepresentative samples individuals one standard deviation above the mean enjoy a 20 30 earnings advantage in just 10 years

a multicriteria approach to sustainable energy supply for the rural poor abstract despite significant progress in energy technology about two billion people worldwide particularly the poor in rural areas of developing countries have no access to electricity decision making concerning the most appropriate energy technology for supplying these areas has been difficult existing energy decision support tools have been useful but are mostly incomplete trade offs as well as impacts that can be positive or negative may emerge as a result of implementing modern forms of energy these can affect both community s livelihoods as well as the confidence of decision makers in relation to alternative technologies the paper discusses a newly designed multicriteria approach and its novel robustness analysis for selecting energy generation systems for the improvement of livelihoods in rural areas the proposed methodology builds upon a sustainable rural livelihoods framework to address multiple interactions and calculate trade offs aimed at boosting decision makers confidence in the selected technologies the methodology is tested via a case study in colombia

the effects of differential income replacement and mortality on u s social security redistribution we study redistribution via the u s social security retirement system for cohorts of men born during the second half of the 20th century our focus is on redistribution across race and education groups the cohorts we study are younger than cohorts studied in previous similar research and thus more exposed to recent increases in earnings inequality all else equal this should increase the degree of progressivity of social security redistribution due to the structure of the benefit formula however we find that redistribution is only modestly progressive for individuals born as late as 1980 differential mortality rates across race and education groups are the primary explanation while black white mortality gaps have narrowed some in recent years they remain large and dull progressivity mortality gaps by education level are also large and unlike the gaps by race they are widening which puts additional regressive pressure on social security redistribution

principal players in utility restructuring the case of orissa abstract research on reform and restructuring in the electricity supply industry does not adequately focus on the process of actual implementation using the restructuring of orissa state electricity board as a case study this paper identifies the principal players and their roles during the restructuring of an electric utility the key players in a utility restructuring exercise are the government top management lending agencies and the consultants three conceptual phases are identified in the restructuring process namely impetus phase reorganisation phase and consolidation phase as the restructuring process moves from one phase to another the roles of the principal players also undergo significant qualitative changes this paper highlights the changing role of the key players as the restructuring process moves from one phase to another

promoting policy reforms the twilight of conditionality abstract for the past 15 years the world bank often in cooperation with the international monetary fund and sometimes also with bilateral donors has tried to encourage policy reforms through conditions attached to structural or sector adjustment loans in the 1990s however such loans are a rapidly dwindling portion of the bank s disbursements this article examines major reasons for this shift including increased flows of private capital democratization the changing nature of the reform agenda itself and growing bank emphasis on ownership reduced direct conditionality is likely to be replaced in part by growing selectivity the results may well be constructive but will not ease tensions in the aid relationship

privatization of electricity distribution in the northeast of brazil the good the bad the ugly or the naive this paper analyzes the evolution of five electricity distribution companies in the northeast of brazil using technical and financial indicators three privatized and two public firms were analyzed between 1997 and 2008 the financial indicators are used as proxies for the capacity of the business to generate value for shareholders while the technical indicators are used as proxies for service quality provided to consumers we observed that the privatized firms had their financial indicators improved after privatization increasing the value of the firm for the shareholders however there is no evidence that privatization affected the quality of service provided to consumers

the privatization of eeb from cash drain to major contributor in this paper we describe the successful part privatization of empresa de energia de bogota eeb the city owned electricity company in bogota colombia we describe the reason the preparation and the actual sale process as well as the outcome following the part privatization eeb went from being a company on the edge of bankruptcy to one of the most financially secure electricity companies in south america we also place the case in relation to the standard views on direct foreign investment and their social benefit finally we aim to generalize the experience to see what other organizations in a similar position can learn

responses to electricity liberalization the regional strategy of a chilean generator abstract chilean reformers joined the new trend toward liberalization of the electricity markets around 1980 12 years before any other latin american country this paper summarizes the main characteristics of the electricity reforms in chile and other latin american countries it then analyzes the strategic response by the electricity generating company endesa de chile to these reforms endesa completely reformulated its competitive strategy its most significant commitments were its investments across latin america in privatized power plants in argentina peru colombia and brazil endesa based its internationalization on its chilean experience in transforming an inefficient state owned firm and operating it in the new electrical regulatory framework favorable to market competition the company s competitive advantage originated to a great extent in that chile was the first country in latin america to reform its electrical sector

steps towards indicators of sustainable development linking economic and ecological concepts abstract conceptions of defining and measuring sustainable development can broadly be placed in two categories weak and strong sustainability the concept of weak sustainability is based on neo classical economic theory and assumes that manufactured and natural capital are close substitutes this means that costs of environmental deterioration e g forest damage can be compensated by benefits from manufactured capital e g income thus environmental damages are valued in monetary units the concept of strong sustainability denies the degree of substitution that weak sustainability assumes at least for some critical elements of natural capital this paper pledges for strong sustainability indicators especially for critical loads and critical levels since the costs and benefits of avoiding critical impacts have to be taken into account a combination of strong and weak sustainability indicators means a linkage of ecological physical and economic monetary approaches should be suggested

the environmental paradox in generation how south america is gradually becoming more dependent on thermal generation there has been an increasing focus on global warming emission of green house gases ghg and the problems this might create in this article we review the trend in sustainable and renewable electricity generation in south america where the generation portfolio increasingly depends on thermal generation in particular gas south america is a region that has relatively low emissions but the current development is not desirable in environmental terms we analyze the underlying reasons for this development which is related to security of supply deregulation and the cost of renewable energy we review and discuss the policies to promote renewables in the region we analyze the potential advantages and drawbacks of different types of market interventions such as direct subsidies that create potentially strong market distortions more sophisticated market interventions that might be less intrusive but not necessarily as effective as e g firm energy markets we also review market based solutions such as the clean market mechanism and its potential and the use of renewable electricity in non interconnected zones which might be one of the most economically attractive applications of renewables however without a stronger and more aggressive intervention from the governments in the region it is unlikely that the increase in thermal generation can be stopped

labor income dynamics and the insurance from taxes transfers and the family article i nfo what do labor income dynamics look like over the life cycle what is the relative importance of persistent shocks transitoryshocksandheterogeneousprofiles to what extent dotaxes transfers and thefamilyattenuate these various factors in the evolution of life cycle inequality in this paper we use rich norwegian population panel data to answer these important questions we let individuals with different education levels have a sepa rate income process and within each skill group we allow for non stationarity in age and time heterogeneous experience profiles and shocksof varying persistence we findthattheincomeprocesses differ systematically by age skill level and their interaction to accurately describe labor income dynamics over the life cycle it is neces sary toallow for heterogeneity by education levelsand account for non stationarity inage and time our findings suggest that the redistributive nature of the norwegian tax transfer system plays a key role in attenuating the magnitude and persistence of income shocks especially among the low skilled by comparison spouse s income matters less for the dynamics of inequality over the life cycle

calculating a water poverty index summary this paper provides discussion of ways in which an interdisciplinary approach can be taken to produce an integrated assessment of water stress and scarcity linking physical estimates of water availability with socioeconomic variables that reflect poverty i e a water poverty index it is known that poor households often suffer from poor water provision and this results in a significant loss of time and effort especially for women by linking the physical and social sciences to address this issue a more equitable solution for water allocation may be found for the purpose of initiating discussion a summary of different approaches to establishing a water poverty index is discussed 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

semiparametric estimation of regression models for panel data linear models with error components are widely used to analyse panel data some applications of these models require knowledge of the probability densities of the error components existing methods handle this requirement by assuming that the densities belong to known parametric families of distributions typically the normal distribution this paper shows how to carry out nonparametric estimation of the densities of the error components thereby avoiding the assumption that the densities belong to known parametric families the nonparametric estimators are applied to an earnings model using data from the current population survey the model s transitory error component is not normally distributed use of the nonparametric density estimators yields estimates of the probability that individuals with low earnings will become high earners in the future that are much lower than the estimates obtained under the assumption of normally distributed error components

unobserved heterogeneity in income dynamics an empirical bayes perspective empirical bayes methods for gaussian compound decision problems involving longitudinal data are considered the new convex optimization formulation of the nonparametric kiefer wolfowitz maximum likelihood estimator for mixture models is employed to construct nonparametric bayes rules for compound decisions the methods are first illustrated with some simulation examples and then with an application to models of income dynamics using panel data we estimate a simple dynamic model of earnings that incorporates bivariate heterogeneity in intercept and variance of the innovation process profile likelihood is employed to estimate an ar 1 parameter controlling the persistence of the innovations we find that persistence is relatively modest 0 48 when we permit heterogeneity in variances evidence of negative dependence between individual intercepts and variances is revealed by the nonparametric estimation of the mixing distribution and has important consequences for forecasting future income trajecto

modelling income processes with lots of heterogeneity all empirical models of earnings processes in the literature assume a good deal of homogeneity in contrast to this we model earnings processes allowing for lots of heterogeneity between agents we also introduce an extension to the linear arma model that allows that the initial convergence

income variance dynamics and heterogeneity recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance in this paper the assumption of i i d income innovations used in previous empirical studies is removed and the focus of the analysis is placed on models for the conditional variance of income shocks which is related to the measure of risk emphasized by the theory we first discriminate amongst various models of earnings determination that separate income shocks into idiosyncratic transitory and permanent components we allow for education and time specific differences in the stochastic process for earnings and for measurement error the conditional variance of the income shocks is modelled as a parsimonious arch process with both observable and unobserved heterogeneity the empirical analysis is conducted on data drawn from the 1967 1992 panel study of income dynamics we find strong evidence of sizeable arch effects as well as evidence of unobserved heterogeneity in the variances