stabilization policy a reconsideration i introduction in 1936 keynes s general theory explained how fiscal and monetary policy could be used to end depressions since that time no developed country has ever seen a downturn on the scale of the 1930s the general theory was not just a how to book on the avoidance of depressions it was an argument for stabilization policy itself the years since the general theory have seen a revolt against keynesian economics in a revisionist mode milton friedman argued that countercyclical policy cannot affect the average level of unemployment and output robert lucas and thomas sargent 1979 went further contending that it is not only impossible to increase average output it is also impossible to stabilize it more recently lucas 1987 2003 has argued that policies to stabilize output even if effective would yield negligible welfare gains thus stabilization policy should not be a macroeconomic priority lucas s conclusion notwithstanding stabilization policy has long been an explicit or implicit objective of monetary policy in most industrial countries even including those countries with inflation targets the volatility of output has in fact declined in most major industrial countries since the mid 1980s and monetary policy arguably deserves at least partial credit see bernanke 2004 mirroring practice monetary policy research commonly takes it as given that along with price stability stabilization policy the minimization of squared deviations of output around potential is an appropriate policy objective see for example clarida et al 1999 in this article we explore the economic rationale for stabilization as a policy goal concluding that it does in fact deserve high policy priority we survey a large body of literature that critiques the validity of key assumptions in lucas s argument we also offer suggestive evidence that stabilization policy can significantly reduce average levels of unemployment by providing stimulus to demand in circumstances where unemployment is high but underutilization of labor and capital does little to lower inflation a monetary policy that vigorously fights high unemployment should however also be complemented by a policy that equally vigorously fights inflation when it rises above a modest target level the federal reserve act thus wisely enunciated price stability and maximum employment as twin goals for monetary policy ii the case against stabilization policy macroeconomic analysis typically assumes that social welfare depends negatively on both inflation above a modest target level here assumed zero and unemployment above some minimum socially efficient level for example a standard social welfare function is the discounted sum of period losses l sub t of the form see among others barro and gordon 1983 pp 592 93 1 l sub t a u sub t 1 k u sup 2 b pi sup 2 sub t where u sub t and pi sub t are the unemployment and inflation rates in period t and u sup is the natural rate of unemployment the coefficient k is positive reflecting the desirability of unemployment below the natural rate because real economies deviate in many respects from perfect competition the natural rate of unemployment is likely to exceed the socially optimal unemployment rate for example with monopolistic competition goods are underproduced because they are priced above marginal cost so potential output is inefficiently low and equilibrium unemployment is too high standard macroeconomic analysis additionally assumes that inflation is determined by an expectations augmented accelerationist phillips curve of the form 2 pi sub t pi sup e sub t f u sub t u sup epsilon sub t where pi sup e sub t is the expected inflation rate at time t with expectations formed at t 1 and epsilon sub t captures supply shocks to the phillips curve at t

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

harvests and business cycles in nineteenth century america most major american industrial business cycles from around 1880 to the first world war were caused by fluctuations in the size of the cotton harvest due to economically exogenous factors such as weather wheat and corn harvests did not affect industrial production nor did the cotton harvest before the late 1870s the unique effect of the cotton harvest in this period can be explained as an essentially monetary phenomenon the result of interactions between harvests international gold flows and high powered money demand under america s goldstandard regime of 1879 1914

the impact of renewable energy consumption to economic growth a panel data application internationally the importance of renewable energy in the energy mix has been increasingly appreciated the advantages of the renewable energy usage for the world s energy security and the environment are indisputable and much discussed in the literature however its effects on the economic welfare of the countries are yet to be examined fully and described quantitatively the purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of the renewable energy consumption to economic welfare by employing panel data techniques the results show that the influence of renewable energy consumption or its share to the total energy mix to economic growth is positive and statistically significant from a policy point of view promoting renewable energies bears benefits not only for the environment but also for the economic conditions of the countries

inequality of opportunity in energy consumption in china abstract this paper proposes an empirical implementation of the concept of inequality of opportunity in energy consumption expenditure and applies this to data from chinese general social survey cgss we examine the role played by circumstances beyond the control of individuals for instance gender hukou status family background and region of birth in generating inequality in energy consumption expenditure in china this study shows that the relative share of inequality of opportunity ior in energy consumption expenditure in china is 10 02 for the entire sample ior turns out to be larger for the older cohort peaking at 14 40 for the 1955 64 cohort a shapley value decomposition presents that hukou status and region of birth are the two largest contributors to inequality of opportunity across birth cohorts a heterogeneity analysis further shows that more disadvantaged groups for instance female individuals born in the west of rural china with worse family backgrounds are facing more unequal opportunities in energy consumption in china these results suggest that energy policies focused on zero discrimination in opportunities should be encouraged

tariff preferences wto negotiations and the ldcs the case of the everything but arms initiative by assessing the impact of the recently adopted everything but arms eba initiative of the eu on the least developed countries ldcs and by showing how further multilateral trade liberalisations erode the eba preferences and impact the ldcs this paper attempts to uncover the ldcs difficult positions in the wto trade negotiations due to its limited product coverage and previous preferences granted by the eu welfare impacts of the eba on the ldcs are shown to be small and the bulk of these gains are associated with the sensitive products that are subject to gradual liberalisations moreover these small gains are likely to disappear if the eu conducts trade policy reforms in fulfilling its wto obligations resulting in an actually worse off situation for the ldcs extending the analysis to a multilateral trade liberalisation scenario reinforces the above results that the ldcs may well lose due to preference erosion and higher world market prices it concludes that other development assistance measures from developed countries should be made available to the ldcs to ease their dependency on trade preferences and to foster their supply capacities the ldcs themselves should attempt to integrate the duty and quota free market access status contained in the eba into a binding wto agreement to secure a stable trading environment but more importantly in order to solve the difficulties at the root these countries should actively engage in reforming their own trade policies

real rigidities and the non neutrality of money rigidities in real prices are not sufficient to create rigidities in nominal prices and real effects of nominal shocks and by themselves small frictions in nominal adjustment such as costs of changing prices create only small non neutralities but this paper shows that substantial nominal rigidity can arise from a combination of real rigidities and small nominal frictions the paper shows the connection between real and nominal rigidity given the presence of nominal frictions both in general and for two specific sources of real rigidity one arising from goods market imperfections and the other from labour market imperfections

identifying the effects of a lender of last resort on financial markets lessons from the founding of the fed abstract we use the founding of the federal reserve to identify the effects of a lender of last resort we examine stock return and interest rate volatility during september and october when markets were vulnerable because of financial stringency from the harvest stock volatility fell by 40 and interest rate volatility by more than 70 following the monetary regime change the drop is insignificant if major panic years are omitted from the analysis however because business cycle downturns occurred in the same year as financial crises our results suggest that the existence of the federal reserve reduced liquidity risk

the development of nominal wage rigidity in the late 19th century wage price and output indexes suitable for comparing cyclical movements across decades show a decrease in nominal wage flexibility the change in wage inflation associated with output fluctuations after the 1880s following an increase in strike frequency linked to the spread of large scale manufacturing cross sectional data show that firms in industries experiencing more strikes in the 1880s were less likely to cut nominal wages in the depression of 1893 this and other evidence suggests that the nineteenth century decrease in wage flexibility was caused by an increase in workers bargaining power in the absence of binding wage contracts copyright 1993 by american economic association

carbon inequality at the sub national scale a case study of provincial level inequality in co2 emissions in china 1997 2007 abstract this study asks whether sub national inequalities in carbon dioxide co2 emissions mirror international patterns in carbon inequality using the case study of china several studies have examined global level carbon inequality however such approaches have not been used on a sub national scale this study examines inter provincial inequality in co2 emissions within china using common measures of inequality coefficient of variation gini index theil index to analyze provincial level data derived from the ipcc reference approach for the years 1997 2007 it decomposes co2 emissions inequality into its inter regional and intra regional components patterns of per capita co2 emissions inequality in china appear superficially similar to though slightly lower than per capita income inequality however decomposing these inequalities reveals different patterns while inter provincial income inequality is highly regional in character inter provincial co2 emissions inequality is primarily intra regional while apparently similar global patterns in co2 emissions are not mirrored at the sub national scale

changes in the cyclical sensitivity of wages in the united states 1891 1987 the conventional wisdom that nominal wages became less sensitive to the business cycle and more autocorrelated after world war ii is reexamined here by considering whether these properties are artifacts of the methods used to construct prewar wage series a replication based on these methods is more cyclically sensitive and exhibits less autocorrelation than the postwar data aggregation using variable instead of fixed employment weights also greatly exaggerates the cyclicality of prewar wages these biases imply that wages are just as sensitive to the cycle today as one hundred years ago perhaps even more so copyright 1992 by american economic association

indirect carbon emissions in household consumption evidence from the urban and rural area in china abstract resident energy consumption can be divided into direct and indirect parts and the indirect part is often considered to be much more important than direct part by some scholars in this paper on the basis of consumer lifestyle approach cla and the estimation of net primary productivity npp energy ecological footprint eef of indirect energy consumption is calculated using statistical data of chinese urban and rural areas from 1999 to 2010 and then improved stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model is used to empirically study the influences of urbanization level economic level engel coefficient energy intensity and industry structure on indirect energy consumption given the consideration of potential multicollinearity the model is estimated using partial least square pls regression the results indicate that for urban residents the eef of indirect energy use is on the rise it is positively influenced by urbanization level per capita income and the ratio of tertiary industry but negatively influenced by engel coefficient and energy intensity for rural residents the eef is declining it is positively influenced by engel coefficient energy intensity and tertiary industry proportion while negatively influenced by urbanization level and per capita income combining these empirical findings and china s specific circumstances some policy recommendations are made

on the european responsibility in the agricultural multilateral trade negotiations modelling the impacts of the common agricultural policy the present round of multilateral trade negotiations is still deadlocked over agricultural trade the european union eu is urged by its trading partners to open its agricultural markets economic evaluations of trade liberalisation scenarios unanimously conclude that a substantial opening of agricultural markets is required for a successful welfare improving doha round in this paper we perform new evaluations to identify precisely the contributions of the european farm policy and to examine the robustness of these evaluations in the representation of this complex policy using the same specifications as in major previous studies our first simulations show that the eu has a major responsibility in delivering significant gains to the developing countries on the other hand when we conduct the same experiments with a more relevant calibration and modelling of the european farm policy instruments the gains that these developing countries may reap from the eu liberalisation are considerably reduced accordingly the current charge against the eu is simply inopportune

agricultural tariffs or subsidies which are more important for developing economies this article assesses the impact of the world price depressing effect of agricultural subsidies and border protection in organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries on developing economies exports imports and welfare developing economy exporters are likely to benefit from reductions in such subsidies and trade barriers whereas net importers may lose as world prices rise a simple partial equilibrium model of global trade in commodities that benefit from domestic support or export subsidies is developed to estimate the relevant elasticities simulation results suggest that a 50 percent reduction in border protection will have a much larger positive impact on developing economies exports and welfare than a 50 percent reduction in agricultural subsidies although there is significant heterogeneity across developing economies the results suggest that efforts in the doha round of world trade organization wto negotiations should be directed at substantially reducing border protection

the degree of decoupling of area payments for arable crops in the european union in 1992 the common agricultural policy cap of the european union eu significantly changed direction in the arable crop sector with the so called macsharry reform this reform which reduced cereal intervention prices eliminated output payments for oilseeds and introduced per hectare compensatory payments and a compulsory set aside requirement attached to these payments implied a significant change in the policy incentives to produce in 1999 intervention prices were cut further bringing them closer to world market levels as well as aligning payments of cereals and oilseeds the most recent reform in

contractionary devaluation risk evidence from the free silver movement 1878 1900 i identify significant effects of devaluation risk on interest rates and output using us silver coinage policy news between 1878 and 1900 as clean shocks to exchange rate expectations the free sil

impacts of urbanization on renewable energy consumption in china abstract in this paper we used the logarithmic mean divisia index method to investigate the impact of urbanization on renewable energy consumption growth recg the growth in renewable energy consumption is attributed to the urbanization effect energy mix effect energy intensity effect economic effect and population effect recg can be roughly divided into the slow growth stage the fluctuant growth stage and the accelerated growth stage the results showed that the energy mix effect economic effect and population effect positively affected recg however a significantly negative relationship was found between energy intensity and recg furthermore the contribution of urbanization differed in recg stages and urbanization contributed more to the total energy consumption growth than to recg this study would thus provide policymakers with insights about the link between urbanization and renewable energy consumption

cyclical variation in the interindustry wage structure this paper presents an analysis of cyclical variation in the interindustry wage structure the study is therefore concerned with changes in relative wages among industries and not directly with the determination of the absolute wage level or changes in the absolute wage level the theory of the wage structure presented here is based on two hypotheses tihe first introduced initially as a maintained hypothesis is that differences among industries in the competitive structure of their product and labor markets result in wage inequalities for given skill levels the second hypothesis and the major finding of the paper is that the size of the wage differentials is a function not only of the extent and nature of the noncompetitive elements but also of the excess demand conditions in the labor market this result is derived from the proposition that under competitive supply conditions labor allocation is based on relative wages to support the theory a wage structure equation is estimated with the coefficient of variation of straight time average hourly earnings in the two digit manufacturing industries as the dependent variable the implications of the study for aggregate and industry wage equations are then discussed

energy consumption in china and underlying factors in a changing landscape empirical evidence since the reform period abstract in recent decades the phenomenal growth in the chinese economy has created increasing energy consumption this is the first study analysing energy consumption in china considering economic social and political dimensions of globalisation along with the effects from trade and financial sectors the time period covers the full trajectory since the start of economic reform until recent times in this respect we use the konjunkturforschungsstelle kof globalisation index to explore the dynamic link between economic growth financial development trade and various dimensions of globalisation and energy consumption modern time series econometric techniques are used in establishing stationarity long run dynamics and causality of the series the findings suggest that globalisation decreases energy consumption in the short run but increases it in the long run however the effect of financial development on energy consumption in china is opposite to the globalisation effect on energy consumption granger causality reveals a feedback effect between economic globalisation and financial development globalisation in china can only reduce energy consumption if china develops its financial sector to a greater extent in future china should invest in its financial sector and low carbon energy alternatives to achieve sustainable development prevention of energy shortfalls and cleaner environment would assist in bridging the gap both from social and political aspects to ensure china benefits significantly with high economic growth in this asian century

lessons from the 1930s great depression this paper provides a survey of the great depression comprising both a narrative account and a detailed review of the empirical evidence focusing especially on the experience of the united states we examine the reasons for and flawed resolution of the american banking crisis as well as the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy we also consider the pivotal role of the gold standard in the international transmission of the slump and leaving gold as a route to recovery policy lessons for today from the great depression are discussed as are some implications for macroeconomics

social identity and inequality the impact of china s hukou system abstract we conduct an experimental study to investigate the causal impact of social identity on individuals performance under incentives we focus on china s household registration hukou system which favors urban residents and discriminates against rural residents in resource allocation our results show that making individuals hukou identity salient significantly reduces the performance of rural migrant students relative to their local urban counterparts on an incentivized cognitive task and consequently significantly lowers their relative ranking in the earnings distribution under the piece rate regime however the impact of hukou identity salience is insignificant in the tournament regime suggesting that its negative effect on migrant students performance may be mitigated when competition is introduced the results demonstrate the impact of institutionally imposed social identity on individuals economic performance and potentially on inequality

the impact of urbanization on residential energy consumption in china an aggregated and disaggregated analysis abstract although the relationship among urbanization energy consumption and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to the effect of urbanization on residential energy consumption china as the largest developing country still has tremendous potential for urbanization in the future and this paper thus explores the effect of urbanization on the changes of residential energy consumption during 1996 2012 for china both from aggregated and disaggregated perspectives using the divisia decomposition method the findings on aggregated energy show that the urbanization contributes 15 4 to the increase of residential energy consumption during 1996 2012 but with a diminishing trend over time meanwhile from the disaggregated perspective the urbanization process contributes to an improvement of residential energy consumption structure specifically 1 of increase in urbanization rate may result in a decrease of 420 thousand million tonnes of residential coal consumption and an increase of 301 thousand tonnes of oil consumption

immigrants and the making of america we study the effects of european immigration to the u s during the age of mass migration 1850 1920 on economic prosperity exploiting cross county variation in immigration that arises from the interaction of fluctuations in aggregate immigrant flows and of the gradual expansion of the railway network we find that counties with more historical immigration have higher income less poverty less unemployment higher rates of urbanization and greater educational attainment today the long run effects seem to capture the persistence of short run benefits including greater industrialization increased agricultural productivity and more innovation

effects of urbanisation on energy consumption in china as a key issue in china s economic development urbanisation creates increasing pressure on energy supply and the natural environment thus a better understanding of the relationship between urbanisation and energy consumption is necessary for chinese decision makers at various levels to address energy security and sustainable economic and social development this paper empirically investigates the effects of china s urbanisation on residential energy consumption rec and production energy consumption pec through a time series analysis the results show that compared with rural areas urbanisation slows per capita rec growth because of the economy of scale and technological advantages associated with urbanisation but has greater promotional effects on the growth of rec and the improvement of rec structure the economic growth caused by urbanisation most significantly contributes to an increase in pec whereas technological advancement was found to reduce the scale of pec except from 2001 to 2005 finally the structural effect of the energy supply increased rather than decreased china s pec and the effect of industrial structure adjustment on pec was found to be insignificant

drivers of urban and rural residential energy consumption in china from the perspectives of climate and economic effects abstract in this study we investigate the driving forces behind the changes in residential energy consumption rec in china s urban and rural areas over the 2001 2012 period based on the logarithmic mean divisia index method the rec changes are decomposed into seven driving forces which are climate change energy price energy expenditure mix energy cost share in total expenditure expenditure share in income per capita income and population effects according to the results climate effect due to increasing days with abnormal temperature energy cost share effect characterized by more expenditure to be paid for energy use income effect describing constant income growth in the residential sector definitely increase rec in both urban and rural areas in contrast energy prices and energy expenditure mix effects negatively contribute to the rec increase respectively because of the increase in energy prices and the transition from the low priced energy to high priced energy expenditure share and population effects play opposite roles in urban and rural areas and the reasons and implications are analysed in depth

energy consumption by gender in some european countries household total energy use has been estimated in numerous studies in recent decades and differences have mainly been explained by levels of income expenditure studies of gender consumption patterns show that men eat more meat than women and drive longer distances potentially leading to higher total energy use by men in this study we calculated the total energy use for male and female consumption patterns in four european countries germany norway greece and sweden by studying single households significant differences in total energy use were found in two countries greece and sweden the largest differences found between men and women were for travel and eating out alcohol and tobacco where men used much more energy than women we suggest that these findings are policy relevant for the eu which aims to mainstream gender issues into all activities and to lower its total energy use

an annual index of u s industrial production 1790 1915 as a remedy for the notorious deficiency of pre civil war u s macroeconomic data this study introduces an annual index of american industrial production consistently defined from 1790 until world war i the index incorporates 43 quantity based annual series most entirely new in the manufacturing and mining industries in a manner similar to the federal reserve board s monthly industrial production index the index changes our view of the growth and volatility of the u s economy before world war i a direct implication of the index is that antebellum postbellum differences in industrial volatility are statistically indistinguishable the index also demonstrates that the pernicious deflationary depressions that purportedly followed the financial panics in 1837 and 1873 were actually rather mild recessions when expressed in real output

who bears the cost of agricultural support in oecd countries this paper provides quantitative estimates of the impact of removing agricultural support in both oecd and developing countries in partial and general equilibrium frameworks the results show that agricultural support in oecd countries is highly distortionary and tariffs have a larger distortionary impact than subsidies removal of agricultural support would likely raise the international prices of food resulting in an increase in the cost of food for many net food importing countries although the size of the increase is generally small the results also show that most of the benefits from removing agricultural support accrue to the countries that liberalise

energy poverty an overview abstract in the coming decades the energy sector will have to face three major transformations concerned with climate change security of supply and energy poverty the first two have been extensively analysed but less attention has been paid to the third even though it has a great influence on the lives of millions of people this paper presents an overview on energy poverty different ways of measuring it and its implications according to the who indoor pollution causes an estimated 1 3 million deaths per annum in low income countries associated with the use of biomass in inadequate cookstoves although energy poverty cannot be delinked from the broader more complex problem of poverty in general access to energy infrastructures would avoid its most serious consequences and would help to encourage autonomous development according to the iea the cost of providing universal access to energy by 2030 would require annual investment of 35 billion i e much less than the amount provided annually in subsidies to fossil fuels finally the paper argues that energy and energy poverty need to be incorporated into the design of development strategies

protection for maturing industries evidence from canadian trade patterns and trade policy 1870 1913 as industries mature experience is accumulated productivity increases trade performance improves on domestic and international markets and learning potential dissipates using theory consistent empirical specifications i find a strong robust negative relationship linking tariff rates to trade performance for manufactured products that matured during the first decade after canada prioritized protectionist policy objectives in 1879 this relationship also holds at a more aggregate industry level where i can use other measures of maturity control for import penetration use historically contemporaneous trade elasticity estimates link trade performance to trade restrictiveness and effective rates of protection and where i can instrument for import penetration and trade performance using a two stage iv gmm estimation approach the results suggest that after 1890 the canadian government carefully cut tariffs on products produced by maturing canadian producers and this retreat from protectionism significantly lowered the static deadweight losses resulting from canadian trade policy during the post 1890 period protection des industries en phase de maturite illustration par les modeles commerciaux et les politiques commerciales du canada entre 1870 et 1913 a mesure que les industries gagnent en maturite l experience s accumule la productivite croit les performances commerciales s ameliorent sur les marches nationaux et internationaux et le potentiel d apprentissage se dissipe a l aide de modeles empiriques conformes a cette theorie j ai degage une relation negative robuste entre les droits tarifaires et les performances commerciales pour les produits manufactures arrives a maturite au cours de la premiere decennie suivant la decision du canada de prioriser les objectifs de politique protectionniste en 1879 cette correlation est egalement valable a un niveau industriel plus general dans le cadre duquel il est possible d utiliser d autres mesures d evaluation de la maturite de controler la penetration des importations d utiliser des estimations historiquement contemporaines relatives a l elasticite des echanges de correler les performances commerciales aux restrictions des echanges et aux taux de protection effectifs et ou il est egalement possible de mesurer la penetration des importations et les performances commerciales gr ce a une approche estimative en deux etapes iv gmm les resultats suggerent qu apres 1890 le gouvernement canadien a pris soin de diminuer les droits tarifaires sur les produits fabriques par des entreprises canadiennes en phase de maturite et que ce renoncement au protectionnisme diminua significativement les pertes de poids mort statiques resultant des politiques commerciales du canada posterieures a 1890

powering up china income distributions and residential electricity consumption current forecasts suggest that the vast majority of growth in energy demand will come from the developing world and that china will play a major part in that growth this paper presents evidence suggesting that the shape of the income distribution which is typically omitted from forecasting models plays a major role in driving household acquisition of energy using durable goods in rural china we use province level data for rural households to show that the share of the population living above the poverty line is an important determinant of household appliance holdings even controlling for average household income

food and life cycle energy inputs consequences of diet and ways to increase efficiency food consumption is one of the most polluting everyday activities when impacts during product life cycles are considered greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector are substantial and need to be lowered to stabilise climate change here we present an inventory of life cycle energy inputs for 150 food items available in sweden and discuss how energy efficient meals and diets can be composed energy inputs in food life cycles vary from 2 to 220 mj per kg due to a multitude of factors related to animal or vegetable origin degree of processing choice of processing and preparation technology and transportation distance daily total life cycle energy inputs for diets with a similar dietary energy consumed by one person can vary by a factor of four from 13 to 51 mj current swedish food consumption patterns result in life cycle energy inputs ranging from 6900 to 21 000 mj per person and year choice of ingredients and gender differences in food consumption patterns explain the differences up to a third of the total energy inputs is related to snacks sweets and drinks items with little nutritional value it is possible to compose a diet compatible with goals for energy efficiency and equal global partition of energy resources however such a diet is far from the swedish average and not in line with current trends

a near rational model of the business cycle with wage and price inertia this paper presents a model in which insignificantly suboptimal behavior causes aggregate demand shocks to have significant real effects the individual loss to agents with inertial price wage behavior is second order in terms of the parameter describing the shock while the effect on real economic variables is first order thus significant changes in business activity can be generated by anticipated money supply changes provided that some agents are willing to engage in nonmaximizing behavior which results in small losses

a behavioral explanation for nominal wage rigidity during the great depression nominal wages in manufacturing were left unchanged by the large decline in nominal demand that marked the first two years of the great depression this rigidity in nominal wages is explained using the tools of the behavioral theory of the firm the emphasis is on the reasons firms changed their decision rules linking fluctuations in final sales to changes in nominal wages

the cyclical behavior of individual production series 1889 1984 this paper uses simple summary statistics to analyze the volatility persistence and comovement of 38 annual individual production series for the period 1889 1984 it seeks to identify the size source and correlation of fluctuations in the production of specific commodities within various sample periods and to analyze possible changes in these characteristics over time the paper also discusses the implications of the behavior of individual production series for the behavior of the aggregate economy within the prewar interwar and postwar eras

structural path and decomposition analysis of aggregate embodied energy intensities in china 2012 2017 abstract the dependence of the economic development of a region on its energy consumption is a major challenge for developing countries the aggregate embodied energy intensity aei based on an input output framework reflects the interaction between regional economy and energy consumption driven by final demand studying the change in aei from the perspective of sector production and final demand can effectively control the source and trend of energy intensity change in order to control the growth of energy intensity however there is a relative lack of studies determining the causes of aei changes from the perspective of sectors and final demands this study attempted to identify the influencing factors of aei changes and establish an aei based environmental policy in china a multiplicative structural decomposition analysis and a structural path analysis were used to study the aei under conditions of different final demands sectors and transmission layers along with the factors influencing aei changes in china from 2012 to 2017 our results indicate that the final demand category of gross fixed capital formation made the largest contribution to aei changes in 2012 and 2017 and the multiplicative intensity factor significantly inhibited the decrease in aei among the sectors studied only a few were found to significantly affect the change in aei with s11 processing of petroleum coking and nuclear fuel s12 chemical industry and s14 smelting and rolling of metals being the key sectors that input high energy consumption products to other sectors

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

regional differences in china s fossil energy consumption an analysis for the period 1997 2013 abstract measuring regional differences in fossil energy consumption is the first step to the study of natural resource allocation and utilization this paper employs annual and cumulative consumption gini indexes as well as the deviation index to discuss regional differences in the per capita consumption of fossil energy and related products across 30 chinese provinces from 1997 to 2013 the results show that chinese inter provincial gini ratio of fossil energy consumption is below 0 3 in recent years and change in per capita energy consumption is the key factor behind the decline in the overall gini index unlike existing studies based only on annual flows of energy consumption this paper also focuses on cumulative energy consumption moreover decomposing annual and cumulative consumption gini coefficients by type group and incremental variation is rarely seen in other studies based on the above positive analysis the paper provides some policymaking suggestions

the new keynesian synthesis the new keynesians made more rapid progress in understanding the microeconomics of unemployment than in understanding the microeconomics of nominal price rigidity but the past five years have seen important breakthroughs in this second area this paper will describe these breakthroughs discuss our current understanding of nominal rigidity and assess the work that remains to be done

welfare costs of sticky wages when effort can respond abstract we examine the impact of wage stickiness when employment has an effort as well as hours dimension despite wages being predetermined the labor market clears through the effort margin consequently welfare costs of wage stickiness are potentially much much smaller

is deflation costly after all the perils of erroneous historical classifications i estimate average economic activity during periods of inflation and deflation while accounting for measurement errors in 19th century prices these measurement errors lead to underestimation overestimation of economic activity during periods of inflation deflation by exploiting multiple deflation indicators it is possible to recover the true relationship the shortfall of us industrial production growth during periods of deflation ranges from 4 5 pp to 7 6 pp instead of 2 pp i also find a negative relationship between deflation and real activity in the uk i then examine the cross country variation in the estimates for eleven countries the patterns are consistent with stronger biases for countries with more serious measurement errors in prices

china s energy consumption change from 1987 to 2007 a multi regional structural decomposition analysis abstract increasing use of energy has helped to stimulate china s economy despite central planning china has great differences in economic development energy endowment and energy consumption across its regions this paper uses the structural decomposition approach to uncover the regional disparities in energy consumption from 1987 to 2007 we also examine six possible key factors for the change in energy consumption by region we find that final demand change outpaced efficiency improvements to drive up energy use in all regions between 1987 and 2007 more surprisingly from 2002 to 2007 it appears that changes in production structure enhanced energy consumption in most regions china produced more energy intensive goods for capital investment and export we contend that improving the energy efficiency of key energy intensive sectors would lead a significant decline in energy intensity energy directly or indirectly is flowing from northwest central and north china to coastal regions regional specific policies should be designed to promote production structure change and curb energy demand

the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption in china an analysis based on the input output method in recent decades china s rapid economy development has been coupling with the steadily increasing household consumption which in turn leads to ever growing energy consumption and co2 emission with a focus on the decade of 2000 2010 this study examines the energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption using the input output method as well as the influencing factors of the indirect co2 emission the results show that first the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission appear the main parts of total energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption accounting for 69 77 and 77 84 respectively second the indirect co2 emission indicates an increasing trend mainly driven by per capita household consumption and energy intensity finally the five sectors with relatively higher direct or total co2 emission intensity are the key sectors for reducing co2 emission in china i e 1 production and distribution of electric power and heat power pdeh 2 smelting and pressing of metals spm 3 processing of petroleum coking processing of nuclear fuel ppcpn 4 manufacture of non metallic mineral products mnm and 5 manufacture of chemical materials mcm

relative wages efficiency wages and keynesian unemployment while modern economic theorists have produced a variety of explanations for the failure of wages to fall in the face of unemployment keynes emphasis on relative wages has not been reflected in most contemporary discussions this short paper suggests that relative wage theories in which workers productivity depends primarily on their relative wage provide the best available apparatus for understanding actual unemployment and its fluctuations such theories are very closely related to the efficiency wage theories that have received widespread attention in recent years this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

revisiting drivers of energy intensity in china during 1997 2007 a structural decomposition analysis the decline of china s energy intensity slowed since 2000 during 2002 2005 it actually increased reversing the long term trend therefore it is important to identify drivers of the fluctuation of energy intensity we use input output structural decomposition analysis to investigate the contributions of changes in energy mix sectoral energy efficiency production structure final demand structure and final demand category composition to china s energy intensity fluctuation during 1997 2007 we include household energy consumption in the study by closing the input output model with respect to households results show that sectoral energy efficiency improvements contribute the most to the energy intensity decline during 1997 2007 the increase in china s energy intensity during 2002 2007 is instead explained by changes in final demand composition and production structure changes in final demand composition are mainly due to increasing share of exports while changes in production structure mainly arise from the shift of chinese economy to more energy intensive industries changes in energy mix and final demand structure contribute little to china s energy intensity fluctuation from the consumption perspective growing exports of energy intensive products and increasing infrastructure demands explain the majority of energy intensity increase during 2002 2007

a classical marxian model of antebellum slavery this paper outlines a classical marxian model of the antebellum us economy the model assumes that the mobility of capital tended to equalize the rate of profit between north and south whilst land rents were minimized by an expanding frontier under these conditions slave prices are the capitalized present value of the excess surplus value produced by slaves this excess surplus value arose because slaves could be forced to work harder at a lower standard of subsistence than wage laborers who were free to move between individual employers and also between sectors by farming frontier lands if the growth of the slave population saturated the land available for slave production land rents would rise to capture the excess surplus value produced by slaves and slave prices would collapse we find the model predicts historical movements of slave prices and is compatible with contemporaneous views of the impact of territorial restriction on the viability of slavery

a development friendly prioritisation of doha round proposals agriculture looms large on the wto s agenda it was the first substantive item listed in the work programme of the ministerial declaration launching the doha round and it was arguably at the centre of the failure at cancun developing countries made it clear both before and during the cancun meeting that progress on agriculture was their primary objective negotiations in other areas have received less attention and progressed more slowly this paper considers that prioritisation and suggests that the interests of developing countries in the current round of trade negotiations are much broader than is suggested by the narrow range of agricultural issues that have dominated negotiations a true development round would require a significant reprioritisation of many areas of the wto s current agenda

income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions the case of chinese urban households abstract this paper draws on chinese survey data to investigate variations in carbon dioxide emissions across households with different income levels rich households generate more emissions per capita than poor households via both their direct energy consumption and their higher expenditure on goods and services that use energy as an intermediate input an econometric analysis confirms a positive relationship between emissions and income and establishes a slightly increasing marginal propensity to emit mpe over the relevant income range the redistribution of income from rich to poor households is therefore shown to reduce aggregate household emissions suggesting that the twin pursuits of reducing inequality and emissions can be achieved in tandem

does human capital matter for energy consumption in china this article investigates the dynamic relationship between human capital and energy consumption using chinese provincial data over the period 1990 2010 considering for cross sectional dependence and parameter heterogeneity across space and over time we identify a significant and negative human capital energy consumption relationship in china specifically we find that a 1 increase in human capital reduces energy consumption by a range between 0 18 and 0 45 furthermore this negative relationship can be attributed to stronger accumulation of post school human capital in eastern china this finding suggests that energy conservation in china could be achieved by improving post school human capital components such as on the job training experience and learning by doing

macroeconomic effects of corporate default crisis a long term perspective abstract using an extensive data set on corporate bond defaults in the us from 1866 to 2010 we study the macroeconomic effects of bond market crises and contrast them with those resulting from banking crises during the past 150 years the us has experienced many severe corporate default crises in which 20 50 of all corporate bonds defaulted although the total par amount of corporate bonds has at times rivaled the amount of bank loans outstanding we find that corporate default crises have far fewer real effects than do banking crises these results provide empirical support for current theories that emphasize the unique role that banks and the credit and collateral channels play in amplifying macroeconomic shocks

evaluating the atkinson index of household energy consumption in china abstract improving equality and efficiency of household energy distribution is the primary concern of china s policy makers in their effort to reform the energy pricing system in this paper we use atkinson index as an analytical tool to quantitatively and systematically evaluate the equality and efficiency of household energy distribution the result shows that the atkinson index of electricity expenditure is much smaller than that of transportation expenditure which indicates that transportation expenditure responds better to income differences furthermore a geographical distribution analysis indicates that households in middle china suffer greater inequality in energy distribution than those in eastern and western china in view of the oncoming energy pricing reform in china we reevaluate the atkinson index under the new pricing scenarios for electricity and petroleum products compared to the current household energy pricing mechanism the simulated new policies generate more allocative efficiency of household energy and ensure more equality of energy consumption for low income households on this account we suggest that geographical differences and equality in energy distribution be duly addressed in reforming energy policies in china

the estimation of prewar gross national product methodology and new evidence the paper develops new methodology for the estimation of prewar gnp taps previously unused data sources and develops new estimates for the periods 1869 1908 and 1869 1928 primary among the new data sources are direct measures of output in the transportation communications and construction sectors and estimates of the consumer price index new measures of real gnp nominal gnp and the gnp deflator are developed the new estimates of real gnp are as volatile on average over the business cycle as the traditional kuznets kendrick series but dampen the amplitude of some cycles while raising the amplitude of others the new estimates of the gnp deflator are distinctly less volatile than the traditional series and in fact no more volatile than those in the postwar period

research on china s rural household energy consumption household investigation of typical counties in 8 economic zones abstract rural household energy consumption is an important component of national energy consumption and plays an important role in rural social and ecological environment developments in this paper energy consumption of 1440 households in 8 typical counties of 8 china s economic zones was investigated the investigation data analysis revealed significant difference of different economic zones in rural household energy consumption level and structure for 8 studying counties the annual average energy consumption per capita was 26 7 gj 10 4 gj the lowest shanghang county and 86 6 gj the highest shulan county in energy consumption straw biogas fuel wood and electricity accounted for 44 33 23 13 12 79 and 9 61 respectively rural families with high incomes preferred commercial energies e g electricity and liquefied petroleum gas lpg to biomass energy e g straw and fuel wood the traditional biomass energy is still the main energy source for china s rural household research results provide references to understand current situations and future development of china s rural household energy consumption and formulate related energy and environmental policies

the productivity slowdown the oil shocks and the real cycle f ive facts stand out about economic performance in the united states since world war ii the first is that for most of the postwar period the u s has had a slower rate of economic growth than the other major developed democracies except great britain and much lower rates of growth than germany japan and italy the gap between the growth of per capita income of the united states and comparable countries has however tended to diminish over time and the united states has lately grown at about the same rate as most other developed countries the second outstanding fact is that the united states has fallen far behind in many mass production industries in which it used to lead the world whereas it is ahead of other nations in many new and especially high technology industries in automobiles steel tires household appliances and earth moving and farm equipment for example u s production has fallen dramatically in relation to output in most comparable countries and the country has become a net importer of most such products by contrast in newer industries such as computers jet aircraft sophisticated weaponry and high technology in general the united states is often dominant both as producer and exporter the third outstanding fact is that most of the older heartland of american industry roughly the area north and east of an arc drawn from baltimore to st louis to milwaukee has declined dramatically in comparison with the south and the west this change in regional fortunes has been due in large part to migration motivated by differences in economic prospects from the declining to the advancing

cross of euros the eurozone currently confronts severe short run macroeconomic adjustment problems and a deficient institutional architecture that has to be reformed in the longer run europe s efforts at economic and monetary union are historically unprecedented however the gold standard provides lessons regarding what will and won t work macroeconomically and politically in the short run while us history provides long run lessons regarding appropriate institutional structures the latter also suggests that institutional reform only happens at times of great crisis and that it cannot be taken for granted the eurozone s leaders may therefore ultimately have to take heed of the lessons of history regarding currency union breakups