money and asset prices in a continuous time lucas and stokey cash in advance economy abstract this paper develops a continuous time version of the lucas and stokey 1987 money and interest in a cash in advance economy econometrica 55 491 513 cash in advance economy the continuous time setting allows for an exact characterization of equilibrium expected excess returns real and nominal interest rates the price level and the inflation risk premium for general preferences and stochastic processes explicit general equilibrium solutions are obtained for separable logarithmic preferences and serially correlated processes for output and money growth a characteristic feature of the economy is that even when preferences are separable in cash and credit goods money supply still affects asset prices

exchange rate based stabilization imperfect competition and supply side effects abstract this paper studies exchange rate based stabilization programs in the context of a dynamic general equilibrium model for a small open economy that incorporates imperfect competition a backward looking wage setting and an endogenous labor supply in contrast to previous results the analysis shows that a permanent disinflation leads to a sustained expansion in the domestic sector and a slow inflation convergence this study also shows that a temporary stabilization replicates a boom recession cycle these results suggest that a backward looking wage setting and an endogenous labor supply are the key ingredients for reproducing the stylized facts of exchange rate based stabilization

law enforcement and the black market exchange rate abstract this paper examines how a system of multiple exchange rates can give rise to unreported exports and imports and a black market for foreign exchange risk aversion rather than an assumed smuggling or detection technology generally guarantees the coexistence of legal and illegal trading evidence for brazil suggests that enforcement of the exchange rate and trade regime is an important fundamental of the black market exchange rate that has so far invariably been left out of empirical work

program trading and expiration day effects the arbitrage between index futures and the underlying cash index and the cash settlement feature of index futures contracts which requires arbitrageurs to unwind positions in the stock market are thought to be at the heart of the abnormal stock price movements during the triple witching hour the last hour of trading on days on which index futures index options and options on index futures expire simultaneously during 1984 and 1985 volume was substantially higher than normal in the last hour of trading on those quarterly fridays open interest in the expiring futures contracts on the expiration day amounted to about 40 per cent of the average month end open interest the incremental stock market volume however was approximately one third the volume that would be inmplied if the entire expiration day open interest were traded in the stock market analysis of stock market price changes in the last hour of expiration days and the first halfhour of the following day indicates that the volatility of price changes was significantly higher on expiration days with the stock market tending to fall stocks not in the sp index option expirations themselves did not lead to abnormal market movements when the magnitude of price effects was measured by the degree of reversal in prices on the morning after the expiration day the average magnitude of the price effect in the 10 most recent quarterly futures contract expirations examined was about 0 4 per cent of the closing index value at expiration the average expiration day price effect of 0 4 per cent is not large considering that a price impact of approximately 0 25 per cent of the value of the transaction can be expected on the basis of the bid ask spread once this market impact cost is drawn out the average expiration day price impact falls to about 0 15 per cent of the value of the transaction an amount representing the additional cost of liquidity furthermore price impacts in excess of those found on expiration days are frequently encountered in large block transactions where the cost of providing liquidity also increases on expiration days however transactions in many stocks occur simultaneously so the market as a whole is affected

loss aversion and individual characteristics many studies have shown that loss aversion affects the valuation of non market goods using stated choice data this paper presents an empirical investigation of how individual level loss aversion varies with observable personal characteristics and with the choice context we investigate loss aversion with respect to travel time and money and find significant loss aversion in both dimensions the degree of loss aversion in the time dimension is larger than in the money dimension and depends on age and education subjects tend to be more loss averse when the reference is well established

tariff endogeneity evidence from 19th century europe abstract this paper tests an endogenous tariff model for six european countries from around the mid 19th century until the eve of world war 1 ww1 the tariff rate was generally cointegrated with real gnp real wages the price level and the external trade balance results from granger causality tests suggest that real gnp and the price level may be important endogenous determinants of tariff levels

real and monetary determinants of real exchange rate behavior theory and evidence from developing countries abstract this paper develops a dynamic model of real exchange rate rer behavior in developing countries a three goods economy exportables importables and non tradables is considered residents of this country hold domestic and foreign assets and there is a dual exchange rate regime there is a government that consumes importables and non tradables a distinction is made between equilibrium and disequilibrium movements of the rer the determinants of real exchange rate misalignment are studied with emphasis placed on the role of devaluations and balance of payments crises the implications of the model are tested using data for 12 developing countries the results obtained are generally favorable for the model the issue of rer stationarity is also analyzed

exchange rate behavior with currency inconvertibility abstract the paper analyzes exchange rate dynamics in a world where the domestic currency is inconvertible into foreign currency and there is a black market for foreign exchange the official exchnage rate is thus set by policy but the black market rate is determined by portfolio balance the stock of domestic money changes with the reported current account and the stock of foreign assets of the private sector changes with smuggling and other unreported current account transactions the effects of capital and current account disturbances as well as the effects of changes in the level and the rate of crawl of the official rate on the black market premium and on the currency substitution ratio are analyzed in variants of the basic model

a test of the theory of reference dependent preferences eight alternative methods of eliciting preferences between money and a consumption good are identified two of these are standard willingness to accept and willingness to pay measures these methods differ with respect to the reference point used and the dimension in which responses are expressed the loss aversion hypothesis of tversky and kahneman s theory of reference dependent preferences predicts systematic differences between the preferences elicited by these methods these predictions are tested by eliciting individuals preferences for two private consumption goods the experimental design is incentive compatible and controls for income and substitution effects the theory s predictions are broadly confirmed

the political economy of inflation and stabilization in developing countries the traditional literature on inflation in developing countries has focused on three main determinants of inflationary pressures a money creation b fiscal imbalances and c cost push elements while the first two factors have been emphasized by authors of a monetarist persuasion cost factors have played a crucial role in the structuralist theories developed during the 1950s and 1960s however more recent analyses on inflation and stabilization have shifted their attention away from traditional direct economic causes of inflation such as money creation toward political and institutional determinants of inflationary forces this new literature which has come to be known as the political economy approach to macroeconomic policy has built on some important insights of game theory and the theory of public choice trying to explain why some governments decide to run large fiscal deficits and to rely heavily on the inflation tax typically in answering these questions this recent strand of the literature has emphasized the role of political instability credibility reputation and political cycles 2 in spite of providing some important new insights into the determinants of inflation this new literature is subject to two limitations first until recently most of the contributions have been theoretical without providing empirical tests on their most important implications and second the emphasis has been almost exclusively on the industrialized countries ignoring the developing nations the purpose of this article is to discuss selectively some of the most important insights of this new literature on policy making from the developing countries perspective i will emphasize the policy implications of this approach to inflationary analysis and discuss some of the limited empirical results

the trade balance and real exchange rate under currency substitution abstract it is demonstrated that the calvo and rodriguez 1977 results hold up in a utility maximizing model contrary to the claim of liviatan 1981 it is argued that liviatan s conclusions are based on a mistaken assumption having rescued calvo rodriguez from liviatan it is then shown that the calvo rodriguez results are dependent on two special assumptions that there is only one foreign asset traded and its real return is zero the paper also shows that there is an avenue for foreign inflation transmission under perfectly floating exchange rates even when goods prices are perfectly flexible however the direction of response of real variables is in general ambiguous

is the wto passe the wto has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements ptas should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand off where the wto has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage and is now passing the baton to ptas to finish the job this paper surveys a growing economics literature on international trade agreements and argues on this basis that the wto is not passe rather and subject to some caveats this survey of research to date suggests that the wto warrants strong support while a more cautious view of ptas seems appropriate

willingness to accept willingness to pay and the income effect abstract the gap between willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept wta has previously been studied by searching for evidence of substitutability the neoclassical hypothesis or status quo bias testing for neoclassical versus psychological theories of preferences we study the gap differently asking whether the observed pairs of wta and wtp are consistent with neoclassical preferences we use sugden s alternatives to the neoclassical theory of choice in i bateman k g willis eds valuing environmental preferences theory and practice of the contingent valuation method in the us eu and developing countries oxford university press oxford pp 152 180 chapter 6 result showing that the effect of income on wtp can be approximated from information on the ratio wta wtp drawing inferences from a meta analysis of 201 wta wtp ratios we conclude that the data are not consistent with neoclassical preferences

balance of payments crises in a cash in advance economy the author shows that a flexible prices sidrauski type model with a cash in advance constraint is capable of depicting some of the phenomena associated with a balance of payments crisis like the onesrecently observed in argentina and mexico current accounts deficits and appreciation of the real exchange rat e it is also shown that these phenomena become exacerbated as the rate of devaluation before the crisis occurs becomes smaller copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

on the incidence of us tariffs this paper provides evidence on the incidence of tariffs on products of export interest to developing countries by investigating the relationship between per capita incomes of us trading partners and tariff rates it constitutes the first attempt to assess the incidence of tariffs imposed by the us on countries that span the entire range of per capita incomes average tariff rates are lower for the poorest and richest countries and higher for countries in the middle of the income distribution this finding is not consistent with the widely held view that tariffs used by industrial nations bear more heavily on products of export interest to poorer developing countries than on imports from industrial nations it is consistent with the tariff escalation pattern reported in earlier studies if advanced countries account for most products at the high end of the fabrication scale results show that poorest countries will find it difficult to escape tariffs by attaining higher levels of economic development

currency prices terms of trade and interest rates a general equilibrium asset pricing cash in advance approach currency prices terms of trade and interest rates a general equilibrium asset pricing cash in advance approach

workers marginal costs of commuting abstract this paper applies a dynamic search model to estimate workers marginal costs of commuting including monetary and time costs using data on workers job search activity as well as moving behaviour for the netherlands we provide evidence that on average workers marginal costs of one hour of commuting are about 17 euro

order consolidation price efficiency and extreme liquidity shocks we show that the consolidation of orders is important for producing efficient prices especially during times of high liquidity demand the nyse s centralized opening call market performs better than nasdaq s decentralized opening process on typical trading days the nyse is much better than nasdaq on witching days when index arbitrage activity subjects s p 500 stocks to large predictable and mostly informationless order flow around quarterly futures contract expirations nasdaq opening price efficiency improves to nyse levels once nasdaq initiates a consolidated opening call in november 2004 but prices on the decentralized nasdaq remain less efficient at other times of day

information disclosure and price manipulation during the pre closing session evidence from an order driven market on 20 february 2012 the taiwan stock exchange corporation launched an order matching simulation mechanism for five minutes during the start of the pre closing session in order to increase information disclosure during this period 13 25 13 30 pre closing information disclosure significantly reduces both trading costs and closing price volatility as well as price manipulation the decrease in price manipulation found in this work is due to pre closing information disclosure not the behaviour of investors shifting to an earlier time further if a stock price rises or falls by more than 3 5 in the simulation in the last minute during the closing session trading of the stock will be suspended for two minutes from 13 31 to reduce volatility however this trading mechanism suspended closing does not seem to have achieved the intended goals of the authorities as it has not been able to significantly reduce closing price volatility and price manipulation

balance of payments crises and devaluation the collapse of a fixed exchange rate is typically marked by a sudden balance of payments crisis in which speculators fleeing from the domestic currency acquire a large portion of the central bank s foreign exchange holdings faced with such an attack the central bank often withdraws temporarily from the foreign exchange market allowing the exchange rate to float freely before devaluing and returning to a fixed rate regime this paper links the timing of the initial speculative attack to the magnitude of the expected devaluation and to the length of the transitional period off loating an implication of the analysis is that there exist devaluations so sharp and transition periods so short that acrisis must occur the moment the market first learns that the current exchange parity will eventually be altered for sufficiently long transition periods the floating exchange rate overshoots its new peg before appreciating back toward it for shorter periods the rate depreciates monotonically to its new fixed level accordingly the central bank s return tothe foreign exchange market can occasion a capital outflow or a capital inflow this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

exchange rate management viewed as tax policies abstract the paper develops an analytical framework which demonstrates that along the lines of the celebrated lerner symmetry theorem the various forms of exchange rate management are equivalent to corresponding tax policies to highlight the salient issues we consider two specific categories of exchange rate policies the first is a dual exchange rate regime which separates exchange rates for commercial and for financial transactions and the second is a unified exchange rate system in which the country unilaterally pegs its exchange rate at the same rate for all transactions we show that the dual exchange rate policies can be usefully cast as distortionary taxes on international borrowing and unified pegged exchange rate policies can be usefully cast as lump sum tax cum subsidy policies the equivalence between the various characteristics of exchange rate management and tax management suggests that exchange rate analysis could be usefully incorporated into the broader framework of the analysis of fiscal policies a two country model of the world economy is used to demonstrate the international transmission mechanism of these policies

aftermath of banking crises effects on real and monetary variables abstract this paper models the effects of a banking crisis and in particular distinguishes between a short term crisis such as a banking panic and a longer term crisis such as a banking insolvency using an optimizing framework it shows that depositors shift from deposits into cash in both types of crises which results in an increase in the interest rates on deposits and loans and a contraction in output and consumption however when the crisis is resolved in a finite time period there is an intertemporal substitution of consumption and consumption is postponed until the crisis is resolved this in turn results in a further decline in the demand for money availability of credit and output

why are stabilizations delayed when a stabilization has significant distributional implications e g tax increases to eliminate a large budget deficit socioeconomic groups may attempt to shift the burden of stabilization onto other groups the process leading to stabilization becomes a war of attrition each group attempting to wait the others out and stabilization occurring only when one group concedes and bears a disproportionate share of the burden the authors solve for the expected time of stabilization in a model of rational delay and relate it to several political and economic variables they motivate this approach and its results by comparison to historical and current episodes copyright 1991 by american economic association

endogenous changes in the exchange rate regime a bureaucratic incentive model public choice submits that legal changes can be endogenous in such a way that they are manipulated by bureaucrats who want to maximize rents from transactions with various interest groups this paper takes the change in exchange rate regimes to empirically examine the premise it offers a two stage method in which we first show that the exchange rate is influenced by interest group pressures and subsequently that the 1990 market average regime mar as a phase in policy in korea was introduced mainly to serve bureaucratic incentives this method is expected to be useful to a host of countries for various studies attempting to test a possible existence of bureaucratic or other hidden motivations behind any isolated event of policy change

politically realistic objective functions and trade policy profs and tariffs abstract this paper demonstrates a mathematical correspondence between the deus ex machina tariff formation approach and political economy approach the correspondence implies that the tariff chosen by lobbying influenced policy makers will be equivalent to a tariff chosen by a deus ex machina government that gives too much weight to profits this result allows many political economy issues to be addressed in the simple framework of a deus ex machina government which faces a politically realistic objective function prof

temporary stabilization predetermined exchange rates the paper analyzes the impact of a stabilization policy based on a temporary reduction in the rate of devaluation against a background in which a constant rate of devaluation has no real effects it is shown that the temporary policy does and furthermore that the real effects tend to become bigger in absolute value as the horizon of the temporary policy is shortened the central discussion is carried out in terms of a one good cash in advance model with perfect capital mobility and ramsey type consumers results are extended to account for home goods and variable velocity the roles of capital mobility and banking liberalization are briefly discussed

on the costs of temporary policy abstract the effects and costs of a temporary trade liberalization experiment are studied in terms of a model with an infinitely lived individual under perfect capital mobility and no static gains from trade it is shown that the current account deteriorates during liberalization and becomes more negative the shorter is the liberalization period the costs are non monotonic with respect to the latter and timing of their maximum varies widely with parameters the analysis is extended to include durable and home goods money and static gains from trade

foreign exchange premia and non neutrality of monetary policy in general equilibrium models abstract we present a simple monetized extension of a traditional small country real side general equilibrium trade model in which premia on foreign exchange occur with the value of the quota and the quota premium endogenously determined monetary policy is non neutral in the model and has real effects illustrated using a small open economy general equilibrium model of the philippines which includes foreign exchange premia the results emphasize the importance of incorporating domestic monetary policy fixed exchange rates and associated foreign exchange premia when analyzing the trade policy regime in such a country

real exchange rate misalignment and redistribution abstract developing countries frequently maintain an overvalued nominal exchange rate resulting in real exchange rate misalignment to finance import demand at the overvalued exchange rate countries have to raise the level of income taxation or they have to resort to monetary finance this paper explains nominal and implicitly real exchange rate misalignment as the outcome of the political process more specifically the paper explains the misalignment of an import exchange rate relative to a market exchange rate used for exports voters differ in their ownership of a single factor of production real exchange rate overvaluation results if the median voter spends a relatively large share of his income on the importable good the political economy of explicit and implicit import subsidies is first analyzed in a real model which is then extended to include money holdings and exchange rate policy

foreign growth and domestic performance in a small open economy abstract in this paper we develop a small open economy model of trade with endogenous growth induced by human capital accumulation to analyze the effects of foreign growth on the domestic growth performance stronger foreign growth has the potential to increase domestic growth through a change in the terms of trade for this to happen the domestic attitude toward saving as indicated by the intertemporal elasticity of substitution plays a crucial role for economies with sufficiently thrifty consumers changes in the terms of trade generate funds for domestic investment thereby generating enhanced long term growth if however domestic consumers are less prone to thriftiness foreign growth may lead to lower domestic output growth this result suggests that foreign growth is not necessarily a substitute for a weak domestic attitude toward saving

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

the bias in favor of pro tariff lobbies abstract we show that the probability of success of the pro tariff lobby defined as a decreasing function of the ratio of consumer loss to producer gain rent generated by the tariff rises with the tariff under very general conditions this appears as an exception to becker s view that less distortionary measures tend to be adopted over their more distortionary counterparts we then provide a micro foundation for our probability definition using the imperfectly discriminating lobbying framework

why and when do governments initiate public enterprise reform initiating public enterprise reform is a complex decision influenced by economic factors as well as the ideological biases and personalities of political leaders nevertheless the use of a contracting framework yields important generalizations about what drives the decision this article argues that the decision depends fundamentally on the potential efficiency gains from the reform and its associated transactions costs costs arise because of asymmetries in information and opportunism problems that usually plague contract negotiations the article identifies observable variables that may affect either the potential gains or the transactions costs uses them to construct a simple probit decision making model and tests the model using data from fifteen developing countries over a twenty year period

government finance in the wake of currency crises we address three questions i can classical models be reconciled with the fact that many crises are marked by high rates of depreciation and small increases in seignorage revenue ii what are the implications of different financing methods for post crisis rates of inflation and depreciation iii how do governments pay for the fiscal costs associated with currency crises to study these questions we use a general equilibrium model in which prospective government deficits trigger a currency crisis we then use our model in conjunction with fiscal data to interpret government financing in the wake of three recent currency crises korea 1997 mexico 1994 and turkey 2001

the trade off between money and travel time a test of the theory of reference dependent preferences we formulate a model of reference dependent preferences based on the marginal rate of substitution at the reference point of a reference free utility function using binary choices on the trade off between money and travel time reference dependence is captured by value functions that are centered at the reference the model predicts a directly testable relationship among four commonly used valuation measures willingness to pay wtp willingness to accept wta equivalent gain eg and equivalent loss el moreover we show that the model allows recovering the underlying reference free value of time based on a large survey data set we estimate an econometric version of the model allowing for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity in a series of tests of high statistical power we find that the relationship among the four valuation measures conforms to our model and that the constraints on the parameters implied by the model are met the gap between wtp and wta is found to be a factor of four loss aversion plays an important role in explaining responses moreover participants are more loss averse in the time dimension than the cost dimension we further find evidence of asymmetrically diminishing sensitivity finally we show that the fraction of mistakes in the sense that participants are observed to sometimes select dominated options varies systematically in a way consistent with the model of reference dependence the results of the paper have important implications for the evaluation of infrastructure investment and pricing reforms in the transport sector

endogenous real exchange rate fluctuations in an optimizing open economy model abstract this paper constructs a simple intertemporal model of a small open economy inhabited by forward looking agents in which endogenous fluctuations in the real exchange rate can arise in equilibrium i e fluctuations that are not linked to movements in economic fundamentals the key condition for the main results is the assumption that the marshall lerner condition does not hold i e that the country s exports and imports are inelastic to its real exchange rate it is shown that given that the marshall lerner condition fails there exist periodic equilibria and or stationary sunspot equilibria in the neighborhood of the stationary state

neoclassical theory versus prospect theory evidence from the marketplace several experimental studies have provided evidence that suggest indifference curves have a kink around the current endowment level these results which clearly contradict closely held economic doctrines have led some influential commentators to call for an entirely new economic paradigm to displace conventional neoclassical theory e g prospect theory which invokes psychological effects this paper pits neoclassical theory against prospect theory by investigating data drawn from more than 375 subjects actively participating in a well functioning marketplace the pattern of results suggests that prospect theory adequately organizes behavior among inexperienced consumers but consumers with intense market experience behave largely in accordance with neoclassical predictions moreover the data are consistent with the notion that consumers learn to overcome the endowment effect in situations beyond specific problems they have previously encountered this transference of behavior across domains has important implications in both a positive and normative sense

the economics of special interest politics the case of the tariff this paper investigates the interaction of politicians and special interest lobbies the goal is to model the equilibrium levels of redistributive policies such as taxes subsidies tariffs and regulatory decisions the model is applied throughout to the setting of tariffs by contributing to political campaigns special interest lobbies generate economic returns higher tariffs generate revenue for import competing industries through higher product prices higher milk support prices raise dairy farm income and so forth the lobby invests to maximize these net economic returns in evaluating their chances of election politicians weigh the favorable effects of special interest money against the unfavorable association with the lobby and the social cost of the redistributive policy section i explores the lobby s problem it describes a formalization of mancur olson s discussion of the voluntary provision of public goods and optimal contributions by lobbies to political campaigns section ii describes determination of the equilibrium tariff positions of each politician in a political campaign

living wages protection for or protection from low wage workers living wage laws are touted as anti poverty measures yet they apply to only a small fraction of workers most commonly covering only employers with city contracts the apparent contradiction between broad anti poverty goals and narrow coverage suggests that goals other than poverty reduction may partly underlie living wage campaigns this paper considers the hypothesis that living wage laws act to maintain or increase rents among unionized municipal workers by raising the wages that city contractors would have to pay living wage laws may reduce the incentives for cities to contract out work that would otherwise be done by unionized municipal employees hence increasing the bargaining power of municipal unions and leading to higher wages for their members the evidence presented here from an analysis of cps data for 1996 2000 indicates that the wages of unionized municipal workers are indeed increased as a result of living wage laws covering contractors

devaluation levels vs rates and balance of payments in a cash in advance economy abstract this paper investigates the consequences of the currency devaluation both in levels and rates on the balance of payments in a cash in advance economy with finite horizons endogenous capital accumulation and international capital immobility in this context a once and for all currency devaluation induces a balance of payments surplus whereas a sustained increase in the rate of devaluation produces in principle an ambiguous effect on the balance of payments if however non restrictive assumptions on some structural parameters are made an increase in the devaluation rate leads to a balance of payments surplus the exact opposite of calvo s result j int econ 11 2 1981 165

disequilibrium exchange rates as industrialization policy abstract this paper deals with a long standing puzzle why are developing countries so reluctant to change their exchange rates when their currencies have become blatantly overvalued the argument developed here is the following under circumstances that are fairly common to real economies a policy which deliberately maintains the exchange rate at a disequilibrium level can be welfare increasing by promoting structural change this can come via the presence of a systematic link between the real exchange rate and the manufacturing sector s terms of trade vis a vis agriculture the paper considers a model in which there exists a relationship between these two due to technological factors using a two period two sector general equilibrium model it demonstrates that such a link provides authorities with a tool which can be manipulated to bring about industrial growth and increase welfare in the presence of unrealized learning by doing effects

the role of saving and investment in exchange rate determination under alternative monetary mechanisms abstract we argue that the demand for national currencies depends on existing payment arrangements for imports and exports therefore exchange rate movements depend on these arrangement as a result the relationship between exchange rate movements and various macroeconomic aggregates like saving and investment depend on what we call the monetary mechanism these points are explicitly demonstrated by studying two extreme monetary mechanisms one in which all payments are done with the seller s currency and one in which all payments are done with the buyer s currency

anticipated inflation and the capital stock in a cash in advance economy abstract an economy is constructed in which the steady state capital stock is inversely related to the rate of inflation as a result that is directly opposite the usual conclusion

the newly industrializing countries in the international system explanations of the growth of the newly industrializing countries nics by neoclassical economists and dependency theorists neglect the role of politics in shaping development strategies different social configurations state structures and ideas about development help explain the divergent policy choices made by the export oriented east asian nics korea and taiwan and the more inward looking countries of latin america particularly mexico and brazil these different strategic choices in turn account for variations in the patterns of external dependency that characterize countries in the two regions

uncovering the distribution of motorists preferences for travel time and reliability we apply recent econometric advances to study the distribution of commuters preferences for speedy and reliable highway travel our analysis applies mixed logit to combined revealed and stated preference data on commuter choices of whether to pay a toll for congestion free express travel we find that motorists exhibit high values of travel time and reliability and substantial heterogeneity in those values we suggest that road pricing policies designed to cater to such varying preferences can improve efficiency and reduce the disparity of welfare impacts compared with recent pricing experiments

on the theory of reference dependent preferences a theory is proposed in which preferences are conditional on reference points it is related to tversky and kahneman s reference dependent preference theory but is simpler and deviates less from conventional consumer theory preferences conditional on any given reference point satisfy conventional assumptions apart from a continuity condition the only additional restriction is to rule out cycles of pairwise choice the theory is consistent with observations of status quo bias and related effects reference points are treated as subject to change during the course of trade the implications of endogeneity of reference points for behaviour in markets are investigated

explaining price policy bias in agriculture the calculus of support maximizing politicians a model is developed to explain observed patterns of policy intervention in agriculture we analyze the interaction between political support seeking politicians and supportsupplying citizens society consists of a rural and urban group we determine the effects on transfers of relative group size disparities in income endowments between groups and the deadweight loss of redistribution the framework advanced is an alternative to that of the interest group model and is used to explain for example why the export sectors in developing countries are taxed more and why the united kingdom is less adamant for higher price supports than germany

efficient estimation methods for closed ended contingent valuation surveys closed ended contingent valuation surveys can be very useful in the evaluation of nonmarket resources respondents merely state whether they would accept or reject a hypothetical threshold amount either as payment for giving up access to the resource or as a fee for its use the authors develop a maximum likelihood procedure which exploits the variation in the threshold values to allow direct and separate point estimates of regression like slope coefficients and error standard deviations without truncation bias their illustration uses data from a survey of recreational fisherman to examine factors which influence individuals willingness to pay copyright 1987 by mit press

wages and commuting quasi natural experiments evidence from firms that relocate we examine individual level compensating differentials for commuting distance in a quasi natural experiment setting by examining how wages respond to changes in commuting distance induced by firm relocations this set up enables us to test for the relevance of job search frictions within labour market models due to the quasi experimental set up we are able to avoid a range of endogeneity issues we demonstrate that a 1 km increase in commuting distance induces an almost negligible wage increase in the year after the relocation but a more substantial wage increase of about 0 15 three years later 2013 royal economic society

the value of automobile travel time implications for congestion policy abstract public policy has remained stoutly resistant to the economic profession s call to use congestion tolls to minimize the social costs from automobile congestion this paper explores this issue by using stated preference models to estimate the value that commuters are willing to pay to save travel time we find that this value is low and surprisingly insensitive to travel conditions and how toll revenues are used it appears that even high income commuters having adjusted to congestion through their modal residential workplace and departure time choices simply do not value travel time savings enough to benefit substantially from tolls

anticipated devaluations currency flight and direct trade controls in a monetary economy mendation for a country facing a balance of payments deficit this advice is often resisted by country governments instead direct trade controls such as tariffs quotas and subsidies are frequently used in this paper i propose an economic explanation for the reluctance to devalue and the use of trade controls namely the currency flight that can be expected to occur if the devaluation is anticipated in an effort to avoid or offset the effects of this currency flight countries may use direct controls i shall analyze the properties of using import tariffs and export subsidies with or without an anticipated devaluation to affect the balance of payments and obtain the social optimum

real transfers in fixed exchange rate systems and the international adjustment mechanism abstract fixed exchange rates can be maintained by different types of stabilization schemes this paper takes a look at some alternative institutional settings and shows that there is an inherent redistribution mechanism in some of them that will influence the world allocation of consumption an examination of the global adjustment to monetary disturbances illustrates some interesting implications of the institutional differences between alternative systems the results suggest that the description of the international adjustment mechanism under fixed exchange rates given by the monetary approach to the balance of payments is valid only under quite restrictive assumptions

the benefits of inflation in the economies with price controls and the cash in advance black markets abstract i study the welfare implications of an accelerated growth of nominal money supply in an economy with price controls i proceed by embedding barzel s 1974 classical rationing by waiting arguments in a general equilibrium model with money in an endowment economy studied below binding price controls lead to queuing and the black market money is introduced through a cash in advance cia constraint on the black market purchases in sharp contrast to the common view i show that an increase in the growth rate of the money supply is welfare improving both on impact and in the long run this is because it reduces the steady state waiting line by inducing a substitution towards the inflation tax free leisure i discuss the robustness of this finding the results strongly support the case for a complete elimination of price controls ahead of inflation stabilization

the political economy of overvaluation most of the literature on political business cycles e g nordhaus 1975 macrae 1977 van der ploeg i984 assumes that the incumbent political party attempts to secure re election by maximising the expected number of votes cast in its favour at the forthcoming election and to exploit lags due to adaptive expectations the government can then fool the electorate by judiciously depressing output in the early part of its term in office in order to force down the expected rate of inflation and to create a boom without too many adverse inflationary consequences towards election eve in order to gain the sympathy of the electorate such political business cycles rely on a naive electorate and cannot occur in new classical economies with market clearing and rational expectations because then the electorate would see through the government s vote maximising strategy e g mccallum 1978 minford and peel i982 if the private sector has rational expectations and prices or wages are sticky this is observationally equivalent to adaptive expectations and flexible prices and wages e g sargent 1976 but nevertheless the electorate would see through a vote maximising strategy and thus no political business cycle would occur in any case it is not clear that the empirical evidence supports this view of the political business cycle e g frey 1978 one reason for this is that it may not be realistic to assume that output can be changed instantaneously whilst inflation can through expectations only be influenced in a gradual fashion in an open economy it is much easier and faster to affect real income and consumers prices through the exchange rate than it is to have an effect on aggregate demand output and employment an appreciation of the exchange rate immediately cuts import prices and consumers prices and therefore immediately boosts real income this combined with the reduction in the real value of imports depresses aggregate demand but over time standard neoclassical substitution effects ensure that the volume of exports decreases the volume of imports decreases and therefore aggregate demand and output increase the above argument is based on the j curve effect in the balance of trade for which there is ample empirical evidence e g diaz alejandro 1966 magee 1973 this note explores the implications of the j curve effect for the political business cycle in a small open economy as suggested by van der ploeg i984 and dornbusch i987 section iv section i sets up the model of the economy section ii derives the development of the exchange rate real income and output over the course of the political business cycle section iii concludes with an interpretation and qualification of the results

expiration and maturity effect empirical evidence from the spanish spot and futures stock index the paper studies how the time remaining to the expiration date of derivative markets affects the volatility of the ibex 35 index expiration effect and its futures market maturity effect the innovation of the study lies in both effects being studied together for the spanish stock market using bivariate ecm garch including dummy variables that express the time left to expiration day the results obtained show that during the week of the expiration day the conditional variance of both markets increases without presenting any significant behaviour in the correlation level during the second week however the conditional variance diminishes and the degree of correlation between both markets increases

the equivalence of tariffs cum subsidies and official exchange rate devaluations under dual exchange markets abstract this paper demonstrates that under dual exchange markets explicit tariffs cum subsidies on merchandise transactions raise the spread between the parallel and officialexchange rates and thereby create implicit tariffs cum subsidies on capital account transactions this implies that merchandise tariffs cum subsidies assume more of the properties of official exchange rate devaluations under dual exchange markets than under unified exchange markets the two policies are equivalent when there is a one to one correspondence between transactions that are subject to merchandise tariffs cum subsidies and transactions that are channeled by law into the official exchange market

dynamics of a floating exchange rate regime we study the full equilibrium dynamics of a two country world economy with a floating exchange rate traded and nontraded goods and explicit modeling of the use of money the resulting exchange rate equation depends on several details of the economic structure such as the supply structure and propensities to spend on various goods although real exchange rate movements have the usual association with the current account the ordinary exchange rate may appreciate or depreciate when there are deficits on current account even when the quantities of money do not change deviations from purchasing power parity and the fisher equation are shown to be the rule rather than the exception

a note on optimal commodity taxation in india abstract optimal commodity tax rates are calculated and their redistributive impact is studied in the indian context using a new piglog demand system introduced in coondoo and majumder 1987 the results are compared with those obtained by ray 1986 on the same data using les and rnlps

the political economy of price ceilings for necessities abstract developing countries and countries in eastern europe frequently institute price ceilings for necessities such as food or gasoline which implies these goods are provided at prices fixed below market prices to finance the provision of these goods countries often resort to monetary finance which may lead to an accelerating inflation this paper analyses these phenomena in a model where voters decide periodically on stabilizations that amount to adjustments in the price ceilings of the subsidized good recurrent subsidization of necessities through price ceilings occurs if it benefits the median voter the paper also considers the timing of a once and for all elimination of price ceilings

a new meta analysis on the wtp wta disparity abstract this study reports a new meta analysis of papers that elicit willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept compensation wta measures of value for the same good we investigate the effects of type of good and several survey design features on the wtp wta disparity measured as the logarithm of the ratio of mean wta to mean wtp confirming horowitz and mcconnell s 2002 pioneering meta analysis we find the disparity is smaller for ordinary private goods than for public and non market goods that it is not solely an artifact of using hypothetical transactions or other weak experimental or survey methods and that it is smaller for studies using student subjects in addition we find that the disparity is smaller when subjects have experience valuing the good in real markets or through repeated experimental trials in contrast to horowitz and mcconnell we find the disparity is significantly smaller in studies using incentive compatible elicitation mechanisms the disparity is smaller in more recent studies an effect that is attributable only in part to changes in study characteristics

prospective deficits and the asian currency crisis this paper argues that a principal cause of the 1997 asian currency crisis was large prospective deficits associated with implicit bailout guarantees to failing banking systems the expectation that these future deficits would be at least partially financed by seigniorage revenues or an inflation tax on outstanding nominal debt led to a collapse of the fixed exchange rate regimes in asia we articulate this view using a simple model whose key feature is that a speculative attack is inevitable once the present value of future government deficits rises we present empirical evidence in support of the key assumptions underlying our interpretation of the crisis

support and opposition to a pigovian tax road pricing with reference dependent preferences abstract loss aversion can affect support and opposition to pigovian taxes to reduce externalities this paper studies road pricing with reference dependent preferences modeled by a linear gain loss utility function given this specification we find that the socially optimal road toll is smaller than the optimal toll in the absence of reference dependence and it declines in the degree of loss aversion loss aversion can also explain the empirical observation that support for road pricing is lower before than after its introduction we further show that loss aversion may increase or reduce lobbying efforts by driver organizations against the introduction of tolling it will increase lobbying if a high toll is proposed but drivers initially believe that the probability that it will be introduced is small lastly loss aversion unambiguously reduces lobbying by organizations of non drivers representing for example environmentalists or public transport users in favor of the introduction of a toll