are public sector workers more risk averse than private sector workers available evidence suggests that stability of employment is greater in the public sector than in the private sector the value that individuals place on tbis stability depends on tbe individual s degree of risk aversion economic reasoning suggests tbat otber tbings equal tbose individuals witb a high degree of aversion to risk will be more likely tban otbers to seek employment in the public sector this paper tests tbat hypothesis tbrougb tbe use of probit analysis and a measure of risk aversion developed in ibe university of micbigan s panel study of income dynamics the results tend to confirm tbe bypotbesis implying tbat a policy of intersectoral equality of pay for comparable jobs would result inanexcesssupplyof workers to tbe public sector

why do students expect to stay longer in college evidence from europe abstract we investigate expected college completion time of european students in 10 countries we explain observed excess time to graduation by paying special attention to labor market variables such as unemployment wage differentials employment protection and the funding of tertiary education

selecting successful students undergraduate grades as an admission criterion abstractin europe s reformed education system universities may be forced by law to consider undergraduate grade point average ugpa as the primary admission criterion in the selection of graduate students in this article we investigate whether ugpa predicts graduate student performance in order to discuss its usefulness as an admission criterion in our theoretical framework we show that undergraduate students may choose slower study progress in favour of receiving higher grades and conclude that ugpa is a relatively good weak predictor for graduate grade point average study progress having data from a cohort of students whose selection was in clear conflict with the legal requirement we empirically confirm our theoretical predictions by exploiting a unique opportunity for assessing educational policies discussion of our findings leads to some important conclusions concerning the bologna reforms and the lawmakers idea of giving some independence to universities but not too much of it

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

path towards achieving of china s 2020 carbon emission reduction target a discussion of low carbon energy policies at province level abstract following the announcement of the china s 2020 national target for the reduction of the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gdp by 40 45 compared with 2005 levels chinese provincial governments prepared to restructure provincial energy policy and plan their contribution to realizing the state reduction target focusing on fujian and anhui provinces as case studies this paper reviews two contrasting policies as a means for meeting the national reduction target that of the coastal province of fujian proposes to do so largely through the development of nuclear power whilst the coal rich province of anhui proposes to do so through its energy consumption rate rising at a lower rate than that of the rise in gdp in both cases renewable energy makes up a small proportion of their proposed 2020 energy structures the conclusion discusses in depth concerns about nuclear power policy energy efficiency energy consumption strategy and problems in developing renewable energy

job search and impatience workers who are more impatient search less intensively and set lower reservation wages the effect of impatience on exit rates from unemployment is therefore unclear if agents have exponential time preferences the reservation wage effect dominates for sufficiently patient individuals so increases in impatience lead to higher exit rates the opposite is true for agents with hyperbolic time preferences using two large longitudinal data sets we find that impatience measures are negatively correlated with search effort and the unemployment exit rate and are orthogonal to reservation wages impatience substantially affects outcomes in the direction predicted by the hyperbolic model

competition between private and public schools vouchers and peer group effects a theoretical and computational model with tax financed tuition free public schools and competitive tuition financed private schools is developed students differ by ability and income achievement depends on own ability and on peers abilities equilibrium has a strict hierarchy of school qualities and two dimensional student sorting with stratification by ability and income in private schools high ability low income students receive tuition discounts while low ability high income students pay tuition premia tuition vouchers increase the relative size of the private sector and the extent of student sorting and benefit high ability students relative to low ability students

relative prices and investment rates abstract we construct a panel for the price of aggregate investment over consumption and report the following observations 1 relative price differences across countries are large over the entire sample period and this conclusion is not affected by excluding non tradable consumption goods 2 relative price dispersion has decreased during the sample period 3 relative price changes are not persistent across periods while average price levels are moreover the persistence in relative price levels is higher for countries at low relative prices we show that the relative price of investment is negatively correlated with investment rates in a cross section of countries the standard one sector growth model is a natural framework to study quantitatively the effects of barriers to capital accumulation since there is a very simple mapping between barriers to investment and relative prices in this environment we simulate a calibrated version of the model in which barriers follow a stochastic process common to all countries and estimated using relative price data and obtain statistics for investment rates that closely resemble what we observe in the data in particular the model accounts for 90 of the 1985 gini index of relative investment rates and the decline in investment rate dispersion over time the model has two limitations as a theory of development first it cannot account for the income disparity in the data unless we assume unmeasured capital with barriers affecting the broad measure of capital second even under these extreme assumptions the model cannot account for the evolution of income disparity over time

analyzing the impact factors of energy related co2 emissions in china what can spatial panel regressions tell us abstract china produces a huge amount of co2 emissions that need to be reduced to comply with international commitments identifying the driving factors is critical for achieving mitigation targets and transiting toward a low carbon economy in china this study is one of the first few attempts to apply panel data and spatial econometrics models to analyze the spatial dependence of province level co2 emission intensity and the economic drivers of such emissions first we conducted a systematical review of the development of spatial econometrics second we generated a panel data set about energy and socioeconomic development of 30 provinces and municipalities in china from 2005 to 2012 next we chose the most appropriate model to explain the predominant factors of energy related co2 emissions based on a series of tests of the spatial econometrics models the results suggested that technology improvement adjustment of industrial and energy structures and environmentally friendly behaviors and patterns of consumption of habitants play an important role in co2 emissions mitigation the results also revealed that co2 emissions had strong spatial spillover effects which indicate that policies adopted in one province will affect policy making in neighboring provinces implying that provinces need take combined action to balance climate change mitigation and economic policy goals

wage expectations in the labor market survey evidence on rationality using a new set of directly observed wage expectations among firms this paper finds that in general firms forecasts fail the unbiasedness and efficiency requirements of weak form rational expectations these market participants consistently underestimate the wages they actually end up paying and their expectations do not efficiently utilize the information in past realizations the mean absolute forecast error of two percent compares with an error of only five percent if static expectations were held the major source of wage fore cast error seems to be errors in predicting demand rather than in predicting supply or the general price level wage forecast errors are positively correlated across fields with distinct supply patterns and are positively correlated with quantity forecast error the properties of stochastically weighted expectations and the effectiveness of the wage and price controls of the early 1970 s are also discussed this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

how good are standard debt contracts stochastic versus nonstochastic monitoring in a costly state verification environment the authors investigate ex ante efficient contracts in an environment in which implementation is costless in this environment standard debt contracts will typically not be optimal optimal contracts may involve defaults even in states in which the borrower is fully able to repay the authors then examine the welfare costs of arbitrarily restricting the set of feasible contracts to standard debt contracts when model parameters are calibrated to realistic values the welfare loss from exogenously imposing this restriction is extremely small thus if implementation costs are actually nontrivial as seems likely standard debt contracts will be very close to optimal copyright 1994 by university of chicago press

the estimation of demand parameters in hedonic price models this paper shows that the econometric problem of estimating hedonic demand parameters is not a standard identification problem caused by demand supply interaction as has been often assumed estimation procedures based on this assumption lead to biased results the hedonic estimation problem is instead caused by the endogeneity of both prices and quantities when households face a nonlinear budget constraint an instrumental variables solution to this problem is suggested using instruments that exogenously shift the budget constraint

costly intermediation and the poverty of nations this article has two goals i to reduce the 7 fold productivity differential required to explain the observed 33 fold income difference between the richest and poorest countries of the world and ii to explain cross country differences in the capital output ratio to achieve the first goal we modify the production function of the standard neoclassical growth model to include public capital whose provision is subject to intermediation costs for the second goal we distort private investment by introducing credit frictions the model quantified using cross country data generates an income gap of 33 with productivity differences of only 3 under the measured variations in public and private capital the required productivity gap declines even further to 2 1 when we introduce a home production sector on the second goal however credit frictions do a poor job of explaining cross country variations in the capital output ratio

how might china achieve its 2020 emissions target a scenario analysis of energy consumption and co2 emissions using the system dynamics model abstract according to the chinese government s co 2 reduction commitment the production and consumption of traditional and renewable energy in china from 2001 to 2012 this paper forecasts the energy consumption gross co 2 emissions and co 2 emission intensity in china from 2013 to 2020 via system dynamics simulation coupled with the energy system and renewable energy policy factors the effects of different economic growth rates and policy factors on the energy consumption were estimated the results showed that in different economic growth rates scenarios total energy consumption and co 2 emissions increased by 36 140 75 kwh and more than 10 000 billion kg in 10 gdp growth rate scenario than in the 7 scenario in 2020 the co 2 emission per gdp decreased by 52 in 2020 as compared to 2005 under the scenario of 10 gdp growth rate under different renewable energy policy factors scenarios the coal energy consumption decreased by 2 3 in scenario of 5 policy factor as compared to 1 policy factor scenario the co 2 emissions reduced by 3321 94 billion kg in 2020 under the scenario of 5 policy factor as compared to that in the scenario of 1 policy factor the co 2 emission per gdp reduced by 47 50 based on the 2005 level in different scenarios of renewable energy policies we found that with an increase in gdp total energy consumption and co 2 emissions increased in the base scenario higher economic growth rates led to an increase in energy consumption including both the traditional and renewable energy resources in stark contrast to total co 2 emission however co 2 emission intensity decreased with an increase in economic growth rate the renewable energy policy improved the renewable energy development reduced co 2 emissions and co 2 emission intensity it was more effective in energy saving and co 2 reduction than the high growth rate scenarios the results indicated that china is highly likely to achieve its co 2 emission reduction goal under different simulated scenarios besides the energy distribution was similar in different scenarios coal was the major energy source which amounted to more than 70 of the total energy consumption finally we conclude with important policy implications according to our simulations results

the peak of co2 emissions in china a new approach using survival models abstract chinese government proposed the target that china s co2 emissions could peak by 2030 under this background this paper focused on when and how can china s co2 emissions reach peak by analyzing the survival data of 91 countries from 1960 to 2014 this paper adopted the survival models to explore the factors that could influence the timing of emissions peaking and predicted the conditional probability of realizing the peak of co2 emissions the empirical results indicated that the total factor productivity tfp plays a very important role with the average marginal effect of 0 012 and 0 066 for oecd organization for economic co operation and development and non oecd countries respectively it was estimated that china would peak in 2030 2028 and 2025 in three different scenarios with the probability of 50 the probability of peaking will increase to 98 in 2037 2034 and 2030 under the these scenarios these findings could help policy makers to reduce carbon emissions and achieve the co2 emissions target

compensation for earnings risk under worker heterogeneity we use two large data sets to estimate the risk augmented mincer equation and test for risk compensation in expected earnings we replicate earlier findings of a positive premium for risk and a negative premium for skew and add confirmation of the key results if we control for individual ability we compare risk compensation and risk distributions between some labor market groups and find that immigrants and natives do not differ in risk attitudes that public sector workers are undercompensated for their risk and that risk compensation by gender is not fully consistent with higher risk aversion for women we express concern that a linear compensation model may be too simple

an investigation of renewable certificates policy in swedish electricity industry using an integrated system dynamics model abstract energy policy has a vital impact on the investment in renewable energy capacities and on the decommissioning of traditional ones currently sweden and norway aim to expand the renewable electricity production by 26 4 twh between 2012 and 2020 and subsequently to reduce co 2 emissions to achieve this the swedish energy agency issues to renewable producers electricity certificates which are sold on an open market to increase revenues meanwhile the electricity is priced based on a marginal cost principle and the price is highly reliant on the capacity profile and energy balance in the system and consequently on the expanding and decommissioning decisions the above price issues together with the intermittent availability of renewable energy sources and the uncertainty of future fuel costs will significantly affect the economic performance of the electricity producers it is only after understanding the interaction of those factors that we can define companies business models for achieving a sustainable development in the electricity sector this study applies a system dynamics approach and presents a model to integrate both strategic decisions such as capacity expansion decommission and operational features such as randomness and seasonal factors in electricity production the model highlights the complex and nonlinear interaction of important factors in the electricity sector the study results indicate that the energy policy should not be introduced in an isolated manner but rather need to incorporate the incentives of renewables with other decisions such as nuclear decommission additionally this study predicts an upcoming increase in electricity price as well as a more volatile price after the capacity profile has been changed and dominated by hydro biomass and wind this study provides guidelines for policy makers and managers to make better informed decisions for a healthy development of their businesses as well as of the entire electricity sector

can natural gas fired power generation break through the dilemma in china a system dynamics analysis abstract recently the share of natural gas in the generation of electricity has shown a dramatic increase in china however the domestic natural gas source natural gas price and unclear policy environment are the barriers lying on the development way of natural gas power generation this paper aims to evaluate development pattern and constraints in the development of china s natural gas power generation by system dynamics methodology the natural gas price for generation is predicted by market netback pricing method which sets up price linkage mechanism and bundles the natural gas price with alternative energy price the downturn of international oil market pushes natural gas price down in spite of the over demand domestic natural gas market the long term take or pay clauses provide a guarantee for adequate gas supply hence the natural gas price and source are no longer the case meanwhile the promotion policies including subsidy and emission trade scheme are analyzed as a result the natural gas power generation will witness explosive development with an average annual growth rate of about 10 by 2030 natural gas generation installed capacity will reach 235 7 gw

the wage expectations of european business and economics students expected earnings and expected returns to education are seen by labor economists as a major determinant of educational attainment in spite of this the empirical knowledge about expectations and their formation is scarce in this paper we report the results of the first systematic study of the wage expectations of european university students our data are based on a uniform questionnaire answered by about 3 000 business and economics university students across europe we study the determinants of wage expectations and expected employment probabilities the variability of these expectations and their variation across countries and universities we also examine the tradeoff between expected starting wages and expected wage growth

cross country differences in intergenerational earnings mobility international studies of the extent to which economic status is passed from one generation to the next are important for at least two reasons first each study of a particular country characterizes an important feature of that country s income inequality second comparisons of intergenerational mobility across countries may yield valuable clues about how income status is transmitted across generations and why the strength of that intergenerational transmission varies across countries the e rst section of this paper explains a benchmark measure of intergenerational mobility commonly used in u s studies the second section summarizes comparable empirical e ndings that have accumulated so far for countries other than the united states the third section sketches a theoretical framework for interpreting cross country differences in intergenerational mobility

hybrid modelling of long term carbon reduction scenarios for the uk this paper summarizes the development of a new hybrid markal macro m m energy system model for the uk this hybrid model maintains the technological and sectoral detail of a bottom up optimisation approach with aggregated energy demand endogeneity and gdp impacts from a single sector neoclassical growth model the uk m m model was developed for underpinning analysis of the uk s groundbreaking mandatory long term 60 carbon dioxide co2 emissions reduction target hybrid modelling illustrates that long term uk co2 emission reductions are feasible however there are endemic uncertainties notably a trade off between behavioural and technological decarbonisation options with resultant energy system impacts in the requirements for zero carbon electricity uk m m model sensitivity runs further illustrate the range of energy system interactions including the deployment of the uk s limited co2 storage capacity alternate timing of power vs transport sectoral reductions the relative ease of switching between electricity generation portfolios and substitution opportunities between natural gas and coal the macro economic cost impacts range from 0 3 to 1 5 reduction in uk gdp by 2050 with higher cost estimates strongly influenced by pessimistic assessments of future low carbon technologies however cost impacts from the uk m m model are likely to be in the lower range for stringent co2 reduction pathways as the simplicity of the reduced form macro linkage omits competitiveness and transitional impacts on the uk economy c 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

financial intermediation business failures and real business cycles in this paper a general equilibrium business cycle model is construct ed that when subjected to real disturbances mimics observed qualita tive comovements among real output money business failures risk pr emia intermediary loans and prices in contrast monetary disturban ces generate cycles that have several inconsistencies with empirical evidence thus providing support for real business cycle theory at th e expense of monetary theories of the business cycle financial inter mediation arises endogenously in the model and intermediation matters for business cycle behavior a credit supply mechanism acts in tande m with an intertemporal substitution effect in propagating stochastic disturbances copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

public investment in infrastructure in a simple growth model abstract in this paper we examine the implications for capital accumulation when infrastructure enters as an external input into private production functions in our model infrastructure is nonexclusive but may exhibit varying degrees of nonrivalry revenues from uniform taxes on capital and labor income are used to finance public investment in infrastructure we show that the optimal tax rate is independent of the degree of nonrivalry when production exhibits constant returns to augmentable factors the equilibrium displays constant growth for most parameters the growth rate depends on the population size under decreasing returns the optimal trajectory exhibits monotonic convergence to a steady state level

homework in development economics household production and the wealth of nations we introduce home production into the neoclassical growth model and examine its consequences for development economics in particular we study the extent to which one can account for international income differences with differences in policies that distort capital accumulation in models with home production such policies not only reduce capital accumulation but also change the mix of market and nonmarket activity hence these models can generate larger differences in output than standard models for a given policy differential we also show how the welfare implications change when we incorporate home production

financing development the role of information costs to address how technological progress in nancial intermediation aects the economy a costly state veri cation framework is embedded into the standard growth model the framework has two novel ingredients first rms dier in the risk return combinations that they oer second the e cacy of monitoring depends upon the amount of resources invested in the activity a nancial theory of rm size results undeserving rms are over nanced deserving ones under funded technological advance in intermediation leads to more capital accumulation and a redirection of funds away from unproductive rms toward productive ones quantitative analysis suggests that nance is important for growth

financial development and economic growth abstract this paper examines the empirical relationship between long run growth and financial development proxied by the ratio between bank credit to the private sector and gdp we find that this proxy is positively correlated with growth in a large cross country sample but its impact changes across countries and is negative in a panel data for latin america we argue that the latter findings is the result of financial liberalization in a poor regulatory environment our findings also show that the main channel of transmission from financial development to growth is the efficiency rather than the volume of investment

impacts of co2 emission constraints on technology selection and energy resources for power generation in bangladesh abstract this paper examines the impacts of co 2 emission reduction target and carbon tax on future technologies selection and energy use in bangladesh power sector during 2005 2035 the analyses are based on a long term energy system model of bangladesh using the markal framework the analysis shows that bangladesh will not be able to meet the future energy demand without importing energy however alternative policies on co 2 emission constraints reduce the burden of imported fuel improve energy security and reduce environmental impacts the results show that the introduction of the co 2 emission reduction targets and carbon taxes directly affect the shift of technologies from high carbon content fossil based to low carbon content fossil based and clean renewable energy based technologies compared to the base scenario with the cumulative co 2 emission reduction target of 10 20 and carbon tax of 2500 taka ton the cumulative net energy imports during 2005 2035 would be reduced in the range of 39 65 and 37 respectively compared to the base scenario emission level the total primary energy requirement would be reduced in the range of 4 5 22 3 in the co 2 emission reduction targets and carbon tax 2500 taka ton scenarios and the primary energy supply system would be diversified compared to the base scenario

how can china reach its co2 intensity reduction targets by 2020 a regional allocation based on equity and development in late 2009 the chinese government committed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp by 40 to 45 of 2005 levels by 2020 this has raised the issue of how to allocate the co2 reduction target regionally to meet the national reduction target to meet this objective the following aspects may be taken into consideration equity principles common but differentiated responsibilities intensity reduction target fulfillment and economic difference and reduction potential among provinces this paper selects per capita gdp accumulated fossil fuel related co2 emissions and energy consumption per unit of industrial added value as indicators for emission reduction capacity responsibility and potential respectively based on these three indicators a comprehensive index is developed and an intensity allocation model constructed as decision makers may have different preferences when allocating the reduction burden we allocate different weights to the indicators analyzing the results using cluster analysis the following aspects may also be considered together with the national regional development strategy to determine how to share the burden the reduction potential of various regions implementation potential of the plans and promotion of a highly efficient low carbon economic development model

carbon dioxide mitigation target of china in 2020 and key economic sectors china proposed a co2 mitigation target in 2020 to deal with anthropogenic global climate change chinese policy makers mainly focus on three factors comprising consumption structure changes energy technology development and new energy increments in addition sectoral co2 reduction is increasingly concerned in the world thus it is significant to investigate integrated impacts of three factors to china s co2 mitigation target as well as to identify key economic sectors for achieving this target in this study energy demand and co2 emission in 2020 are predicted five scenarios are generated to illustrate the contributions of three factors in addition twelve key economic sectors for reducing energy demand and co2 emission are identified from both production and final demand perspectives under integrated impacts of three factors china s co2 intensity per unit gross domestic product in 2020 will decrease by about 43 9 in 2020 than 2005 level in the short term china s co2 mitigation will be highly dependent on energy technology development in the long term it will mainly rely on reshaped consumption structure changes and new energy development in addition china s future policies should focus on 12 identified key economic sectors

compensating wage differentials for schooling risk in denmark in this paper we analyse the association between wage differentials and risk using detailed information on length and type of education as seen in danish administrative registers our contribution to the literature is that we distinguish between transitory time series and permanent cross sectional income shocks and estimate the compensation for both sorts of risk we find that wage risk in a given education cell is associated with higher wages while skewness is associated with lower wages as a robustness check we see that ad hoc risk measures based on earnings mobility indicators confirm these findings

financial development growth and the distribution of income a paradigm is presented in which both the extent of financial intermediation and the rate of economic growth are endogenously determined financial intermediation promotes growth because it allows a higher rate of return to be earned on capital and growth in turn provides the means to implement costly financial structures thus financial intermediation and economic growth are inextricably linked in accord with the goldsmith mckinnon shaw view on economic development the model also generates a development cycle reminiscent of the kuznet hypothesis in particular in the transition from a primitive slow growing economy to a developed fast growing one a nation passes through a stage in which the distribution of wealth across the rich and poor widens

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

changes in carbon intensity in china empirical findings from 1980 2003 china experienced sustainable rapid economic growth over the period 1980 2003 but at the same time energy related carbon intensity showed a downward trend it begs the question therefore what factors were driving this decline in carbon intensity and will this decline be maintained in future moreover what measures can be adopted to ensure a continual decline in carbon intensity these questions led to increased research in the factors governing co2 emission in china this paper quantifies the driving force behind china s primary energy related carbon intensity and measures the material production sectors final energy related carbon intensity our results show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline of energy related carbon intensity was the reduction in real energy intensity however policies that focus only on the decline in energy intensity are insufficient to further decrease carbon intensity the change of primary energy mix can improve the decline of carbon intensity this should focus on the material production sectors development strategies and final energy use greater emphasis should be given to secondary industry which needs national and regional governments policy support

an empirical analysis of risk aversion and income growth risk aversion enters many theoretical models of human capital investment but attitudes toward risk have not been incorporated in empirical models of human capital investment this article develops a model of the joint investment in financial wealth and human wealth to show that human capital investment is an inverse function of the degree of relative risk aversion using data from the survey of consumer finances i find that wage growth is positively correlated with preferences for risk taking more educated individuals are also more likely to be risk takers thus risk taking explains a portion of the returns to education

multi dimensional pinch analysis for sustainable power generation sector planning in china emerging economies account for a fast growing share of the global energy market in particular energy use in china has become significant from both economic and environmental standpoints this trend makes it necessary to balance the need for affordable reliable electricity supply with the need to ensure that the power infrastructure is environmentally sustainable as such this paper presents a multi dimensional pinch analysis mdpa of the power generation sector in china the analysis considers five key indices carbon footprint energy return on investment eroi water footprint land footprint and risk to humans by simultaneously quantifying five different indices under a common methodological framework we are able to coherently assess the impact on five different environmental concerns this approach provides a more complete picture of the true environmental impact of china s power sector this information can thus help policymakers avoid the problem of shifting environmental impacts to other domains which can occur when the analytic procedure used focuses on a single environmental dimension

agency costs in dynamic economic models we consider an overlapping generations economy where capital is produced from bank loans under stochastic constant returns to scale and subject to idiosyncratic shocks whose realisations are costly to verify our formulation differs from earlier work in permitting investment projects to be infinitely divisible and private agency costs to be convex if there are external economies to financial intermediation then deviations from steady state output are negatively correlated with the spread between loan and deposit rates moreover the capital stock correspondence is set valued a result consistent with poverty traps growth cycles and humpshaped impulse response functions this paper investigates how nonconvexities in financial intermediation particularly in the cost of collecting private information about borrowers enrich the operating characteristics of a simple and relatively tractable onesector growth model the enriched set of equilibria is consistent with a number of phenomena that are hard to reconcile with convex models of economic growth poverty traps rank reversals growth cycles and humpshaped impulse response functions are all possible outcomes of nonconvex information costs bankers and economists alike have long regarded the credit market as key to understanding economic development and to transmitting cyclical shocks through modern industrial economies the growth branch of this literature starts with gurley and shaw 1967 who note that economic growth is almost universally accompanied by financial deepening that is by more intensive use of external finance in investment and by a gradual lifting of distortions in the credit market the cyclical fluctuations branch of the literature focuses on the connection between credit market conditions and business cycles a key concern here is how the credit market propagates and amplifies external shocks through the entire economy the general idea dates back at least to keynes fisher and friedman and schwartz who argued that adverse conditions in financial markets may have exacerbated the effects of prewar recessions including the great depression greenwood and smith 1995 survey work on development among recent contributions we note bencivenga and smith 1991 who study the growth effects of financial intermediation in an overlapping generations model with uncertain liquidity needs intermediation enhances growth because banks are efficient providers of liquidity which frees individuals from the need to maintain low yielding liquid assets similar results are obtained in greenwood and jovanovic 1990 where intermediary institutions are shown to arise

evaluating the interplays among economic growth and energy consumption and co2 emission of china during 1990 2007 the interplays among economy and energy and environment have been widely concerned this paper put forward several indicators to quantify the relationships among economic growth and energy consumption and co2 emission as an example these indicators were applied to evaluate the comprehensive performances of china during 1990 2007 the results show that chinese people has been living a better life with chinese rapid economic growth but not synchronously in urban and rural areas non carbon energy resources share has increased however fossil energy resources have still acted as the main driver for chinese economic growth during this period technical progress has improved the fossil energy efficiency of chinese economic activity which leads to co2 emission per unit gdp and co2 emission per capita unit gdp dropping simultaneously however the two indicators annual decline rates become smaller and smaller which reflects that technical progress role is dropping and economic scale s effect is climbing people s survival has a rising contribution to co2 emission co2 emission per capita has increased which shows that economic scale has greater impact on co2 emission than technical progress does relatively speaking chinese development patterns have become more and more sustainable during this period finally based on the related issues being discussed some corresponding suggestions are put forward for chinese government to further coordinate the relationship among economic development and energy consumption and co2 emission the proposed indicators can form a set of useful tool for policy makers to promote the harmonious development of economy and energy and environment in different regions and countries

estimating the variance of wages in the presence of selection and unobserved heterogeneity abstract identification of potential wage distributions by education is important to the study of the causal links between education inequality and uncertainty potential wage inequality within an educational group that is the variance in wages if all workers had the same education exceeds the observed statistics because self selected education truncates wage distributions decomposing potential wage inequality into heterogeneity known to the agent making the educational choice and uncertainty unknown to the agent suggests that wage uncertainty does not necessarily rise with education it is unobserved heterogeneity not uncertainty that explains the observed relationship between college graduation and higher wage inequality

the demand for and return to education when education outcomes are uncertain this article treats education as a sequential choice that is made under uncertainty a simple model is used to explore the effects of ability high school preparation preferences for schooling the borrowing rate and ex post payoffs to college on the probability of various post secondary college outcomes and the ex ante return to starting college the model motivates an empirical method of accounting for uncertainty about educational outcomes and for nonlinearity in the relationship between years of education and earnings when estimating the expected return to the first year of college

the impact of educational standards on the level and distribution of earnings the goal of this paper is to present the following finding an egalitarian policy maker might prefer higher standards than would a policy maker whose goal was to maximize the sum of earnings the result is based on the observation that if workers are differentiated with respect to ability an increase in educational standards will increase the earnings of both the most able and the least able workers the only workers whose earnings fall are those workers who after the increase fail to continue meeting the standard

application of a system dynamics approach for assessment of the impact of regulations on cleaner production in the electroplating industry in china abstract compared with pollution transfer cleaner production cp is more effective to reduce heavy metal pollution in many less developed countries however it s more difficult to develop an efficient policy to make enterprises to completely invest in cp this paper analyses the effects of cp policies on investment decisions of firms using a dynamic systems model and by simulating a typical electroplating enterprise in shenzhen china results show that water price could be effective only when it is increased by a sufficient amount for instance only when it is increased directly from 2 to 8 cny m 3 0 3 1 2 usd m 3 or from 8 to 16 cny m 3 1 2 2 5 usd m 3 will an enterprise gradually increase cp investment from process modification to recovery technology increasing the metal utilization rate of cp standard plating and surface finishing industry from its current value of 75 85 would encourage an enterprise to add recovery technology uniform preferential tax rate and penalties for the three parts of cp do not affect investment decisions on cp using the same investment subsidy rate for the three parts of cp could be effective in promoting cp only if it is above 60 the current emission standard of metal has played a role in promoting cp a comparison of three possible strategies indicates that a distinct policy for the different parts of cp is the optimal policy combination an overall investigation of typical enterprises based on the abovementioned framework is suggested to make more practical policies which than can promote cp instead of pollution transfer

financial development and economic growth views and agenda this critique argues that the preponderance of theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence suggests a positive first order relationship between financial development and economic growth the body of work would push even most skeptics toward the belief that the development of financial markets and institutions is a critical and inextricable part of the growth process and away from the view that the financial system is an inconsequential sideshow responding passively to economic growth many gaps remain however and the paper highlights areas in acute need of additional research