policy watch infrastructure investment and economic growth in the late 1980s david aschauer 1989 triggered a long overdue dialogue among economists and political leaders when he published a study arguing that much of the decline in u s productivity that occurred in the 1970s was precipitated by declining rates of public capital investment my own work confirmed these results munnell 1990a spending advocates seized on these findings as support for increased public investment the enthusiasm among policymakers for the early aschauer results was matched if not surpassed by skepticism on the part of many economists critics of these studies charged that the methodology was flawed that the direction of causation between public investment and output growth is unclear and that even if the historical empirical relationships were estimated correctly they provide no clear indications for current policy who s right what do we know and not know about the link between public infrastructure and productivity and what are the implications of these results for policy

asset prices credit and the business cycle abstract this paper uses the multivariate unobserved components model with phase shifts to analyse the interaction of interest rates output asset prices and credit in the us we find close linkages amongst cyclical fluctuations in the variables

are airports engines of economic development a dynamic panel data approach this paper applies the dynamic panel data generalized method of moments estimator to the data on commercial passenger air traffic at all primary airports in the united states to evaluate the impact of traffic volume and number of destinations served with non stop flights on the key indicators of regional economic development we find that number of destinations served with non stop flights has a much clearer and more robust impact on level of employment number of business establishments and average wage in the region passenger traffic volume affects employment and average wage but not number of establishments at the sample median connecting a metropolitan statistical area with an extra destination keeping everything else constant creates 98 jobs and facilitates the opening of four new business establishments that employ people the corresponding numbers for the sample mean are 223 jobs and 15 businesses the impact of air travel on regional economic development is influenced by competition on the

decoupling of emissions and gdp evidence from aggregate and provincial chinese data abstract we provide a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between greenhouse gas ghg emissions and gdp in china using both aggregate and provincial data the trend or kuznets elasticity is about 0 6 for china higher than that in advanced countries but below that of major emerging markets the elasticity is somewhat lower for consumption based emissions than for production based emissions providing mild evidence consistent with the pollution haven hypothesis the kuznets elasticity is much lower for the last three decades than for the three previous decades suggesting a longer term trend toward decoupling as china has become richer further evidence of this comes from provincial data richer provinces tend to have smaller kuznets elasticities than poorer ones in addition to the trend relationship we find that there is a cyclical relation also holding in china

preventing competition because of solidarity rhetoric and reality of airport investments in spain from a public interest perspective there could be a justification for constraining market mechanisms with the aim of progressive redistribution however some policies might be based on selfish motivations of government agents in this article we empirically contrast if the infrastructure policy is based only on public interest motivations or if it is also based on the private motivations of policy makers in this way spain infrastructure policy provides a useful policymaking field to test hypothesis about the behaviour of policy makers we find some evidence regarding the strength of political motivations in explaining such behaviour in fact results from our analysis show that political motivations can eventually play a more relevant role than social welfare maximization

inflation dynamics and real marginal costs new evidence from u s manufacturing industries this paper deals with the analysis of price setting in u s manufacturing industries recent studies have heavily criticized the ability of the new keynesian phillips curve nkpc to t aggregate in ation see e g rudd and whelan 2006 can rational expectations sticky price models explain in ation dynamics american economic review vol 96 1 pp 303 320 we challenge this evidence showing that forward looking behavior as implied by the new keynesian model of price setting is widely supported at the sectoral level in fact current and expected future values of the income share of intermediate goods emerge as

measures of potential output an application to israel this paper estimates measures of potential output for israel with the aim of providing evidence on whether the recent growth slowdown is principally a cyclical slowdown or a structural shift towards a slower growth path after the dramatic developments associated with the years of heavy immigration israel poses a challenge because traditional methods of measuring potential output assume relatively stable conditions over an extended period of time five methodologies are employed to derive estimates and it is found that four of the measures imply the slowdown stems largely from reduced growth of potential output rather than a cyclical slowdown

london and property markets a long term view this paper examines the relationship between investment in built structures economic growth and economic cycles in the uk from the middle of the 19th century and relates its findings to the development of london a rising price of built structures relative to investment in equipment has existed throughout virtually all of the time period this it is argued has encouraged suburbanisation in addition a long term rise in demand for housing is putting additional pressure on living space in the city london has benefited however from the high level of building investment in modern economies particularly in attracting key building intensive activities like financial services long phases of building activity are shown in the data and they are argued to have a destabilising effect on london s economic growth these relationships between the relative price of investment goods long phases of higher and lower activity in their provision and the london economy reinforce the need for a london wide planning a

multivariate detrending under common trend restrictions implications for business cycle research abstract this paper outlines a methodology to detrend multiple time series under common trend restrictions the same filters used to construct the estimated trend in univariate exercises are shown to be appropriate in multivariate studies with a single common trend however to estimate the common trend in the multivariate case the filter is applied to a linear combination of series rather than to each series individually an empirical example and simulation exercises illustrate the implications of common trend detrending for measurement of business cycle properties

the theory of taxation for developing countries tax policy has far reaching implications for economic development and public administration this book which presents a modern theory of public finance brings together many of the most distinguished economists who have written on the subject they provide coherent principles for tax design and a systematic framework for the analysis of practical questions of tax reform and pricing policy in developing countries the book is especially timely as countries experience increasing shortages of government revenue and the distortions brought about by poorly designed tax systems it pays particular attention to the special problems of developing countries such as the taxation of agriculture the aim throughout is to develop techniques that can be quantitatively applied given the data available and empirical case studies illustrate the methods in action the authors analyze the links between tax theory social cost benefit analysis and the pricing of publicly supplied goods and services they also explore the empirical and econometric problems of identifying the tradeoffs between equity and efficiency other topics treated include the analysis of labor markets the taxation of foreign private investment and of fuel and the pricing of education although the models used concentrate on developing countries most of the methods and discussion apply as well to the problems of more affluent countries

trade integration and business cycle convergence is the relation robust across time and space in this paper we investigate the relationship between trade intensity and the business cycle correlation using a panel data set taken from 24 countries over the period 1959 2003 most previous studies did not account for the possibility that the business cycle correlation may be influenced by unobservable country pair specific effects our estimates using both fixed and random effects methodologies suggest that trade intensity and the business cycle correlation are positively related to one another however detailed investigation shows that this relationship exists mainly for the european countries

asymmetric phase shifts in u s industrial production cycles abstract we identify cyclical turning points for 74 u s manufacturing industries and uncover new empirical regularities a industries tend to comove between expansion and contraction phases over the business cycle b clusters of industry turning points are highly asymmetric between peaks and troughs troughs are much more concentrated and sharper than peaks c the temporal pattern of phase shifts across industries supports the spillovers through input output linkages and d macroeconomic shocks such as unanticipated changes in monetary policy government spending oil prices and financial conditions are significant drivers of industrial phase shifts

bridging dsge models and the raw data abstract a method to estimate dsge models using the raw data is proposed the approach links the observables to the model counterparts via a flexible specification which does not require the model based component to be located solely at business cycle frequencies allows the non model based component to take various time series patterns and permits certain types of model misspecification applying standard data transformations induces biases in structural estimates and distortions in the policy conclusions the proposed approach recovers important model based features in selected experimental designs two widely discussed issues are used to illustrate its practical use

a disaggregated analysis of asymmetrical behaviour in the uk housing market potential asymmetrical adjustment in uk house prices is considered the present analysis extends previous research in a number of crucial ways first a seminal examination of asymmetry in regionally disaggregated uk house prices is undertaken secondly data are examined which are further disaggregated according to the age or vintage of the housing stock however the major development concerns the application of a non parametric testing approach to detect cyclical asymmetry in contrast to previously employed tests in the economics literature the triples test employed possesses high power and is not sensitive to outliers it is found that extensive asymmetry is present in uk house prices with cyclical peaks typically being greater in magnitude than corresponding troughs the implications of these findings for the comparison and construction of economic theories of the housing market the specification of econometric models and the construction and implementation of economic policy are noted

airport expansions and property values the case of chicago o hare airport abstract the paper adds to the empirical literature by providing up to date estimates of the effect of airport noise on property values around one of the world s busiest airports chicago o hare the results indicate that home values were about 9 lower within a 65 db noise contour band of o hare in 1997 opponents of airport expansions argue that increased noise will reduce property values and lower tax bases the results of this paper suggest that aircraft are becoming so much quieter that the airport can be expanded without causing a drop in local property values or tax bases estimates suggest that house prices may rise by as much as 284 6 million in the densely populated area around o hare after a new runway is added to the airport

business cycles in switzerland a comparative study abstract the goal of this paper is to provide an empirical description of business cycles in switzerland and a comparison with business cycles in other countries we adopt a view of business cycles as a set of regularities in the movements and the co movements of economic aggregates common to all decentralized economies lucas 1977 and test whether switzerland conforms to this view in order to identify the appropriate cyclical series we follow a procedure proposed by hodrick and prescott 1980 we then compute correlations of various types we test their stability through time and compare with corresponding estimates for the u s france germany and the u k

inflation and other aggregate determinants of the trend in us divorce rates since the 1960s this article extends empirical research on the determinants of divorce in two ways first i examine the effect of inflation on divorce second the use of a structural time series modelling approach attributes unobservables and omitted variables to an unobserved component which allows for the model s parameters to be estimated consistently inflation is statistically significant positive and persistent i show that the effects of inflation are robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables and various trend specifications the long run implications of inflation are also substantial i conclude that price stability has the potential to reduce divorce rates

too close for comfort geographic propinquity to political power and stock returns abstract we show that firm headquarters geographic proximity to political power centers state capitals is associated with higher abnormal returns consistent with the notion that this effect is rooted in social network links we find it is more pronounced in communities with high levels of sociability and political values homophily and that it dissipates when firms move their headquarters to another state finally in line with the view that investors perceive such networks to be associated with political risk we find that this effect is particularly strong when there are substantial levels of corruption dependency on government spending and politicians turnover

a deeper look at asymmetries in uk consumers expenditure the nonparametric analysis of 100 disaggregates the literature on testing for the presence of cyclical asymmetry in uk consumers expenditure is extended via the application of nonparametric tests to data subject to a higher degree of disaggregation than considered in previous studies the results obtained at an intermediate level of disaggregation depict a positive relationship between the durability of goods and the degree of asymmetry they exhibit at high levels of disaggregation to specific expenditure categories it is found that the aggregate and intermediate evidence of deepness asymmetry is driven by a relatively small number of expenditures with almost no evidence of deepness asymmetry in non durable categories of expenditure prominent among the durable and semi durable good expenditure categories exhibiting significant positive deepness asymmetry are expenditures relating to housing fittings and communication consistent with a degree of lumpiness in expenditure which may be associated with the impact of credit rationing or threshold eff

long range growth economic development in the global network of air links we study the impact of international long distance flights on the global spatial allocation of economic activity to identify causal effects we exploit variation due to regulatory and technological constraints which give rise to a discontinuity in connectedness between cities at a distance of 6000 miles we show that these air links have a positive effect on local economic activity as captured by satellite measured night lights to shed light on how air links shape economic outcomes we first present evidence of positive externalities in the global network of air links connections induce further connections we then find that air links increase business links showing that the movement of people fosters the movement of capital in particular this is driven mostly by capital flowing from high income to middle income but not low income countries taken together our results suggest that increasing interconnectedness generates economic activity at the local level by inducing links between businesses but also gives rise to increased spatial inequality locally and potentially globally

business cycle convergence in emu a first look at the second moment we analyse the dynamics of the standard deviation of demand and supply shocks as well as of the demand component of gdp across countries in the european monetary union emu this analysis allows us to evaluate the patterns of cyclical comovement in emu and compare them the cyclical performance of the new members of the eu and other oecd countries we make use of sigma convergence methods to identify synchronization patterns in business cycles the eurozone has converged to a stable lower level of dispersion across business cycles during the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s the new eu members have also experienced a strong pattern of convergence from 1998 to 2005 when a strong divergence trend appears an enlargement of the emu to 22 members would not significantly decrease its optimality as a currency area there is evidence for some europe specific characteristics as compared to global comovements in business cycles authors abstract

the effect of government corruption on the efficiency of us commercial airports abstract in this paper we argue that the cost of providing public goods is affected by local government corruption because bureaucrats have no strong incentives to pursue mandated tasks under a corrupt environment commercial airports in the united states are chosen to demonstrate such impacts of corruption we first develop a theory which predicts the impacts of corruption on productivity and variable input allocation of airports we then test the predictions by estimating a stochastic variable cost frontier model which incorporates both technical and allocative efficiency of airports the empirical evidence confirms the theoretical predictions by revealing the following 1 airports are less productive in more corrupt environments and 2 airports tend to use more contracting out to replace in house labor in more corrupt environments the findings can be applied to the context of other public goods and have important policy implications for reforming governance structure of public good provision

international business cycles financial markets and household production abstract this paper investigates the properties of an international real business cycle model with household production we show that a model with disturbances to both market and household technologies reproduces the main regularities of the data and improves existing models in matching international consumption investment and output correlations without irrealistic assumptions on the structure of international financial markets sensitivity analysis shows the robustness of the results to alternative specifications of the stochastic processes for the disturbances and to variations of unmeasured parameters within a reasonable range

detrending stylized facts and the business cycle the stylized facts of macroeconomic time series can be presented by fitting structural time series models within this framework we analyse the consequences of the widely used detrending technique popularised by hodrick and prescott 1980 it is shown that mechanical detrending based on the hodrick prescott filter can lead investigators to report spurious cyclical behaviour and this point is illustrated with empirical examples structural time series models also allow investigators to deal explicitly with seasonal and irregular movements that may distort estimated cyclical components finally the structural framework provides a basis for exposing the limitations of arima methodology and models based on a deterministic trend with a single break

reconciling output gaps unobserved components model and hodrick prescott filter abstract this paper reconciles two widely used trend cycle decompositions of gdp that give markedly different estimates the correlated unobserved components model yields output gaps that are small in amplitude whereas the hodrick prescott hp filter generates large and persistent cycles by embedding the hp filter in an unobserved components model we show that this difference arises due to differences in the way the stochastic trend is modeled moreover the hp filter implies that the cyclical components are serially independent an assumption that is decidedly rejected by the data by relaxing this restrictive assumption the augmented hp filter provides comparable model fit relative to the standard correlated unobserved components model

trends and cycles in macroeconomic time series two structural time series models for annual observations are constructed in terms of trend cycle and irregular components the models are then estimated via the kalman filter using data on five u s macroeconomic time series the results provide some interesting insights into the dynamic structure of the series particularly with respect to cyclical behavior at the same time they illustrate the development of a model selection strategy for structural time series models

the limits of business cycle research assessing the real business cycle model the real business cycle model dominates business cycle research in the new classical tradition typically real business cycle modelers both offer the bold conjecture that business cycles are equilibrium phenomena driven by technology shocks and also novel strategies for assessing the success of the model this article critically examines the real business model and the assessment strategy surveys the literature supporting and opposing the model and evaluates the evidence on the empirical success of the model it argues that on the preponderance of the evidence the real business cycle model is refuted copyright 1997 by oxford university press

real time forecasting regional tourism with business sentiment surveys abstract this study provides evidence that supply side soft information retrieved from business surveys is effective in real time forecasting of hotel arrivals at the regional level we assess the effect of including business sentiment indicators in commonly used naive specifications and structural time series models using residuals and predictive diagnostics we find that both the goodness of fit and the forecasting accuracy of the augmented models are superior to those of the baseline models whence the opportunity to extend to the tourism sector the surveys on the business sentiment currently realized by the provincial chambers of commerce for the manufacturing sector allowing an effective and timely managing of local tourism market where official information is likely to be either lacking or poor in quality

the price of silence markets for noise licenses and airports this article presents a market design for the management of noise pollution created by aircraft traffic around airports a local market for noise licenses allows noise generators to compensate noise victims and to meet social acceptability we show that the market allows the market designer to implement the social planner s optimal allocation of flights as long as the latter does not put too high a weight in his her objective function on firms profits compared to the disutility of noise pollution the fact that local representatives of noise victims may be strategic players does not fundamentally alter this finding because of the market auctioneer s information constraints noise licenses are likely to distribute windfall gains to residents which alters the urban structure in the long run

output gaps and monetary policy in the emu area abstract several considerations suggest that the ecb may respond to emu wide output gaps in setting policy estimated reaction functions indicate that central banks respond to output gaps a taylor rule in which the central bank responds to inflation and the gap accounts for recent movements in interest rates in the emu area and optimal control exercises conducted in estimated econometric models suggest that reacting to the gap may be optimal even if the central bank cares solely about inflation in this paper we obtain point estimates with associated confidence bands of the emu wide output gap using uc models

international transmission of business cycles evidence from dynamic correlations abstract we exploit dynamic correlations to estimate determinants of output comovement between oecd countries trade intensity financial integration and specialization patterns have significantly different effects on comovements at different frequencies this sheds more light on previous results based on statistical filters

comparisons of business cycles in the ec idiosyncracies and regularities annual data since 1960 and the real business cycle model as a guidance the evidence suggests that there are remarkable similarities between the business cycle pattern of these countries despite significant differences in the patterns of fiscal and monetary policies and the terms of trade we take this evidence to suggest that the type of shocks and the propagation mechanism is fairly similar across the ec countries hence the process of european integration under a set of uniform institutions and policies should not be a problem as far as the business cycle is concerned

asset correlations in single factor credit risk models an empirical investigation abstractthe internal ratings based irb approach based on a single risk factor model was designed by the basel committee on banking supervision bcbs to determine banks regulatory credit risk capital key inputs of the model asset correlations are prescribed by the regulator relevant banks must use them for capital determination to ascertain whether these correlations are too onerous or too lenient empirical asset correlations embedded in loss data spanning different loss milieu were backed out of the regulatory model static and rolling correlations over a period of time were compared with the prescribed correlations for developed and developing economies and found to be significantly more conservative

some evidence on hysteresis in unemployment rates abstract we propose an unobserved components model to evaluate unemployment data for evidence on hysteresis effects unemployment is decomposed into a natural rate component assumed to be nonstationary and a cyclical component assumed to be stationary hysteresis effects are modelled by allowing lagged cyclical unemployment to affect the current natural rate the model is estimated using canadian german u k and u s unemployment rate series we find substantive hysteresis effects in the canadian german and u k unemployment series hysteresis effects in the u s unemployment series are negligible

the hodrick prescott technique a smoother versus a filter abstract it is shown that the hodrick prescott filter acts as a smoother over the sample and as a true filter at the end of the sample using these two different concepts the output gap resulting from the true filter is consistent with the policy maker s interpretation of the cyclical component of real output and provides better out of sample forecasts of inflation

the seasonal cycle and the business cycle almost all recent research on macroeconomic fluctuations has worked with seasonally adjusted or annual data this paper takes a different approach by treating seasonal fluctuations as worthy of study in their own right our results show that seasonal fluctuations are an important source of variation in all macroeconomic quantity variables but are small or entirely absent in both real and nominal price variables the timing of the seasonal fluctuations consists of increases in the second and fourth quarters a large decrease in the first quarter and a mild decrease in the third quarter the paper demonstrates that with respect to each of several major stylized facts about business cycles the seasonal cycle displays the same characteristics as the business cycle in some cases even more dramatically than the business cycle that is we find that at seasonal frequencies as well as at business cycle frequencies output movements across broadly defined sectors move together the timing of production and the

is public expenditure productive abstract this paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government spending variables the empirical results indicate that i the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending ii military capital bears little relation to productivity and iii a core infrastructure of streets highways airports mass transit sewers water systems etc has most explanatory power for productivity the paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the productivity slowdown of the last fifteen years

the role of airports in city employment growth 1950 2010 abstract this study considers the effects of commercial airports on local economies over the post world war ii period specifically 1950 2010 to overcome endogeneity concerns a pooled synthetic control event study strategy is employed on newly digitized historical aviation data to estimate treatment effects on a variety of employment population and wage outcomes i find that airports have led to on average 3 9 percent growth in total employment and 3 4 growth in population per decade over the 30 year period for which wage and air traffic data are available earnings per worker increased by 2 and per capita personal income increased by 3 corresponding to growth rates of up to 1 2 percent per decade respectively

estimation of dsge models when the data are persistent dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge models are often solved and estimated under specific assumptions as to whether the exogenous variables are difference or trend stationary however even mild departures of the data generating process from these assumptions can severely bias the estimates of the model parameters this paper proposes new estimators that do not require researchers to take a stand on whether shocks have permanent or transitory effects these procedures have two key features first the same filter is applied to both the data and the model variables second the filtered variables are stationary when evaluated at the true parameter vector the estimators are approximately normally distributed not only when the shocks are mildly persistent but also when they have near or exact unit roots simulations show that these robust estimators perform well especially when the shocks are highly persistent yet stationary in such cases linear detrending and first differencing are shown to yield biased or imprecise estimates

public capital accumulation and private sector performance abstract this paper analyzes the effects of public capital on private sector variables in a vector auto regressive framework empirical results suggest first that public capital follows a policy rule that relates public capital positively with lagged output and negatively with lagged employment second public capital crowds in private capital while the long term effects on employment are only marginally positive finally a one dollar increase in public capital increases private output in the long term by 65 cents accordingly while public capital is productive its effects on output are much lower than claimed in the previous literature

building sectoral job search indices for the united states abstract this study investigates job search activity in the united states by constructing a set of sectoral job search activity indices based on internet search volumes the indices are positively associated with countercyclical labour market measures including unemployment and layoff rates but are negatively associated with procyclical measures overall our evidence supports previous empirical findings job search intensity is countercyclical which contradicts the theoretical model s prediction

estimating labour and output gap evidence from the athens olympic region in greece the present article estimates potential labour and labour gap as well as potential output and output gap using a cobb douglas production function and a hodrick prescott filter we investigate the athens region in greece by sector of economic activity with the aid of the non accelerating wage inflation rate of unemployment concept the results support the idea that the athens region seems to be working mostly over the regional economy s capabilities a fact which leads to inflationary pressure

more international evidence on the historical properties of business cycles this paper establishes stylized facts about business cycles in the late 19th century using spectral analysis techniques which allow an intuitive description and analysis of cyclical structure in economic fluctuations analysis of industrial production data for 13 countries permits the following generalizations in the advanced north atlantic economies a fairly regular long cycle with a periodicity of 7 10 years is identified in all countries this component explains a substantial fraction of overall variation in industrial production there is some evidence of a less regular less powerful short cycle of 3 5 years duration in peripheral economies experience is varied but it is more often the short cycle that exercises greater influence the long cycle component is shown to be highly correlated among the core economies much less so between core and peripheral economies and least of all among peripheral economies the long cycle is more highly correlated among countries with important trading ties and those on a metallic monetary standard throughout the period

understanding the economic performance of metropolitan areas in the united states examining the drivers of metropolitan economic performance this paper models two dependent variables change from 1990 to 2000 in gross metropolitan product and msa employment it is found that initial year economic structure an above average share of manufacturing employment agglomeration economies human capital share of population with bachelor degrees or higher and presence of state right to work laws are positively and significantly related to gmp and employment growth while the economic age of the area percentage of black non hispanic residents and average wage at the beginning of the period are negatively and significantly related to both the regional dummy variables commonly used to explain economic growth and typically highly significant are augmented by including climate related amenity business environment and economic age when these three variables are included in the model as independent variables with the regional dummy variables all three are significant for growth in gmp and

airline traffic and urban economic development this paper provides new evidence on the link between airline traffic and employment in us metropolitan areas the evidence confirms the common view that good airline service is an important factor in urban economic development frequent service to a variety of destinations reflected in a high level of passenger enplanements facilitates easy face to face contact with businesses in other cities attracting new firms to the metro area and stimulating employment at established enterprises the empirical results show that a 10 per cent increase in passenger enplanements in a metro area leads approximately to a 1 per cent increase in employment in service related industries however airline traffic has no effect on manufacturing and other goods related employment suggesting that air travel is less important for such firms than for service related businesses these estimates are generated controlling for reverse causality between employment and traffic the results imply that expansion of chicago s o hare ai

trend cycle correlation drift break and the estimation of trend and cycle in canadian gdp abstract univariate correlated trend cycle models are highly sensitive to the specifications of breaks in the data this paper argues using monte carlo experiments that a bivariate correlated unobserved components uc framework with breaks delivers substantially more accurate results for the trend cycle parameters than the corresponding univariate frameworks in a finite sample size the paper estimates stochastic trend and cyclical fluctuations in canada from a bivariate uc model results show a fairly volatile stochastic trend after the drift break and the negative trend cycle shock correlation are accounted for the estimated cyclical component is large persistent and consistent with ecri denoted canadian recessions

airport activity and local development evidence from italy the role of infrastructure as a factor of growth and development of countries and regions is often considered to be crucial among the various types of transport infrastructure airports are considered as particularly strategic because of the increasing importance of air transport in connecting territories this paper studies the impact of airports on italian provinces to this end it builds on the framework proposed by brueckner where sectoral employment is regressed on a series of controls and on airline traffic that framework is extended to take account of selection bias due to the location choices of airports and spatial spillover effects it is found that the elasticity of service sector employment to airport passengers is 0 045 and that of spillover effects due to neighboring airports is almost 0 017

an ekc pattern in historical perspective carbon dioxide emissions technology fuel prices and growth in sweden 1870 1997 the environmental kuznets curve ekc has been subject to research and debate since the early 1990s this articleexamines the inverted u trajectory of swedish co2 emissions during an extended time

the cyclical component of u s economic activity quarterly data on industrial production and deflated gross national product in the united states from 1947 through 1985 are decomposed into independent nonstationary trend and stationary cycle components using kalman filtering and smoothing techniques estimates of the model parameters imply that at least half of the quarterly innovation in u s economic activity can be attributed to a stationary cyclical component that persists over periods of time as long as five years this finding is inconsistent with the hypothesis that most of the apparent variation in u s economic activity can be attributed to a nonstationary trend component

hours per capita and productivity evidence from correlated unobserved components models recent studies debate the effect of a permanent productivity shock on hours per capita within a structural var context this paper examines the issue using a correlated unobserved components uc framework the estimates show that permanent shocks to productivity are negatively correlated with transitory shocks to hours this result is robust for non stationary or levels stationary specifications of hours model comparisons indicate that the data do not favor imposing var type restrictions on the uc models copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

monitoring tourism flows and destination management empirical evidence for portugal we propose the use of a tool recently introduced by gayer 2010 known as the economic climate tracer to analyze and monitor the cyclical evolution of tourism source markets to portugal considering the period 1987 2015 we evaluate how tourism to portugal has been affected by economic cycles this tool is useful as it clearly illustrates the evolutionary patterns of different markets and allows us to identify close relationships with economic fluctuations we found that german tourism plays a leading role since its movements are followed with delays by tourism flows from other countries and exhibits higher resilience to shocks also domestic and spanish tourism have both displayed less irregular behaviors than tourism from other source markets on the contrary tourism from the netherlands and the uk have displayed irregular patterns which demonstrates the urgency to diversify tourism source markets to reduce the country s vulnerability to external shocks and economic cycles

does detrending matter for the determination of the reference cycle and the selection of turning points we examine the sensitivity of turning points classification to detrending and compare the implied cycles to those derived by nber or doc researchers two dating rules are considered turning point dates are broadly insensitive to detrending with one dating rule but not the other and many procedures generate false alarms and miss several common turning points with the latter one amplitude and duration properties are also sensitive detrending and dating rules the hodrick and prescott and a frequency domain filters are best in mimicing nber and doc cycles regardless of the dating rule used

identification of new keynesian phillips curves from a global perspective this paper is concerned with the estimation of new keynesian phillips curves nkpc and focuses on two issues the weak instrument problem and the characterization of the steady states it proposes some solutions from a global perspective using a global vector autoregressive gvar model steady states are estimated as long horizon expectations and valid instruments are constructed from the global variables as weighted averages the proposed estimation strategy is illustrated using estimates of the nkpc for eight developed industrial countries the gvar generates global factors that are valid instruments and help alleviate the weak instrument problem the steady states also reflect global influences and any long run theoretical relationships that might prevail within and across countries in the global economy the gvar measure of the steady state performed better than the hp measure and the use of foreign instruments substantially increased the precision of the estimates of the output coefficient