co2 emissions from china s power sector at the provincial level consumption versus production perspectives abstract the chinese electricity sector plays an important role in domestic co2 mitigation efforts due to its large contribution to overall emissions however primary energy resources used for electricity generation are not evenly distributed across the country such a supply and demand mismatch in reality results in large parts of electricity to be transferred from economically less developed provinces in the west to economic growth centres in the east a literature review shows that the emissions embodied in electricity transfer within china have not been explicitly studied although in fact they cause a shift of environmental pollution away from economically well off provinces to resource rich and less developed provinces therefore it is critical for policy makers to address this issue under such a circumstance a bottom up model is developed to calculate direct co2 emissions embodied in electricity export and import between chinese provinces it helps quantifying emissions from the power sector associated with both production and consumption perspectives and sheds lights on the environmental impact of regional supply and demand mismatch in china results show that the difference between consumption and production based co2 emissions from electricity sector in some provinces were higher than the total co2 emissions from electricity sector in netherlands in the case of beijing or as high as the total co2 emission from france s electricity sector in the case of guangdong based upon chinese realities policy implications and suggestions are made such as how to set up appropriate emission reduction targets for electricity sector at provincial level and the inclusion of consumption emissions in designing china s cap and trade mechanism the methodology and findings may be useful for investigation of embodied emissions throughout various regions of the world

estimating markups and market conduct with multidimensional product attributes we demonstrate how to estimate a model of oligopoly pricing when products are multi dimensionally differentiated we provide an empirical counterpart to recent theoretical work on product differentiation using specifications informed by economic theory we estimate price cost margins for products differentiated in many dimensions

the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s fossil fired power plants an empirical analysis abstract this paper investigates the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s generation plants based on the third industrial census data and the first economic census data partial factor productivity pfp analysis indicates that the productivity improvements in labor and capital inputs associated with the reforms are approximately 26 and 45 respectively the effect of the reforms on fuel expense is weakly significant but there is evidence of significant productivity improvement in fuel usage further total factor productivity tfp analysis shows that the efficiency gain from the reforms is still significant when the substitution effect of labor and capital inputs are considered though the magnitude is much lower than that of the pfp analysis the effect of the reforms on technical efficiency becomes weakly significant when fuel expense is further included in tfp analysis but a significant positive effect is expected if fuel input is measured in physical quantity

environmental efficiency analysis of power industry in china based on an entropy sbm model chinese national natural science fund 71073040 710201139 71273075 humanities and social science fund of the ministry of education 09yjc790061

renting vs buying a home a matter of wealth accumulation or of geographic stability abstract i study the housing tenure decision in the context of a spatial life cycle model with uninsurable individual income risk plausibly calibrated to match key features of the us housing market i find that the relatively low ownership rate of young households is mainly explained by their high geographic mobility downpayment constraints have minor quantitative implications on ownership rates except for old households i also find that idiosyncratic earnings uncertainty has a significant impact on homeownership rates based on these results i argue that the long term increase in ownership rates observed over the period 1993 2009 was not necessarily due to mortgage market innovations and the relaxation of downpayment requirements as is often argued instead it was simply an implication of us demographic evolution most notably the decline in interstate migration and less importantly population ageing the model predicts that an increase in the income risk i e higher income inequality has a positive impact on geographical mobility of young households which means that young homeowners are less affected by the labour market inefficiency associated with homeownership

a comparative analysis of intertemporal behavior of profits japan and the united states this paper first asks whether the working of market forces in japanese manufacturing industries is unique to them or similar to u s counterparts it is found that autoregressive profit equations for 376 japanese firms over 1964 82 are on average similar to those for 413 u s firms over 1964 80 the paper next asks whether the interindustry pattern of profit adjustments in japan is related to industry traits in a manner analogous to the united states in this case specific national differences between the two countries in the effects of imports industry growth and capital intensity on the profit adjustment process are found copyright 1989 by blackwell publishing ltd

japan s different trade regime an analysis with particular reference to keiretsu many claim that although formal trade barriers have been removed at the border japanese markets remain unusually closed because of non tariff barriers after describing japan s development strategy and the debate over the sources of japanese growth we consider current trade barriers recent research has made some headway investigating the impact of one of the alleged invisible barriers in particular efforts have been made to test if the behavior of japanese corporate groups known as keiretsu creates a barrier to trade finally we consider whether private sector trade restrictions warrant a public response what if anything should be done about keiretsu

the rebound effect for heavy industry empirical evidence from china abstract energy efficiency improvement will reduce the effective price of energy services and hence at least partially mitigate original expected energy conservation therefore the magnitude of rebound effect is important for the design and timing of an effective energy conservation policy under the framework of translog cost share equations we estimates the direct rebound effect for heavy industry in china for the first time by conducting an empirical research on the relationship between the direct rebound effect and the ease with which energy services can substitute for other inputs additionally asymmetric price responses are specified in the model for the rebound effect estimation empirical results in our paper indicate that the rebound effect for heavy industry in china is about 74 3 this reveals that energy efficiency improvement can save energy to a certain degree since the rebound effect is less than 100 back fire but most of the expected reduction in heavy industry energy consumption is mitigated these findings prove that energy pricing reforms and energy taxes should be further implemented to achieve effective energy conservation in china s 12th five years plan

optimal cartel trigger price strategies abstract a dynamical model of industry equilibrium is described in which a cartel deters deviations from collusive output levels by threatening to produce at cournot quantities for a period of fixed duration whenever the market price falls below some trigger price in this model firms can observe only their own production level and a common market price the market demand curve is assumed to have a stochastic component so that an unexpectedly low price may signal either deviations from collusive output levels or a downward demand shock

measurement of energy rebound effect in households evidence from residential electricity consumption in beijing china abstract energy efficiency improvement policies have special significance for carbon emissions reduction and the mitigation of the effects of climate change however the energy rebound effect caused by technological progress will indirectly increase energy consumption the magnitude of the rebound effect largely determines the effectiveness of energy efficiency in mitigating energy consumption this study reviews the main theory behind estimated methods of energy rebound effect measurement focuses on constructing a double logarithm energy demand model and an error correction model of the asymmetric demand responses of electricity price changes to empirically analyse the direct rebound effect on residential electricity use in beijing it integrates consumer s demand theory with the embodied electricity of household spending from a seven sector environmental energy input output e i o analysis to estimate the indirect rebound effect the three income elasticity weight change and proportional re spending scenario simulation results show that residential electricity use in beijing exhibits a partial rebound effect and the long term direct and indirect rebound effects are 46 to 56 and the short term direct rebound effect is 24 to 37 finally the direct and indirect energy rebound effect for various income groups needs further research an appropriate policy mix should be adopted to mitigate effectively the rebound effect in china s current lower energy price and lower energy efficiency market

optimal cross holding with externalities and strategic interactions we analyze a two period setting where firms first choose equity positions in each other and second engage in operating activities that cause externalities firms facing positive externalities optimally choose long equity positions to increase their profits firms facing negative externalities encounter a prisoners dilemma where each firm optimally chooses short positions in the first period committing to a more aggressive operating stance that results in lower profits in contrast to the prior literature regulation restricting cross holdings reduces consumer surplus and economic welfare when the number of firms is fixed however such regulation can increase entry improving net welfare

price mark ups market structure and business fluctuation in japanese manufacturing industries howard wach tel and peter adelsheim 1977 and keith cowling 1983 have argued that firms in concentrated industries tend to increase their price mark ups in recession this hypothesis is variously tested for japanese manufacturing industries in 1958 82 most of the results weakly suggest an effect opposite to wachtel and adelsheim and only when industry specific business conditions are taken into account is some albeit weak evidence found in favor of them copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

common ownership market power and innovation abstract i examine the effects of overlapping ownership on market power when there are external effects across firms this is done in an oligopoly model with cost reducing innovation with technological spillovers where firms have an overlapping ownership structure based largely on lopez and vives 2019 the model allows for cournot competition with homogeneous product and for bertrand with differentiated products as well as for strategic effects of r d investment it derives positive testable implications and normative results to inform policy

re spending rebound a macro level assessment for oecd countries and emerging economies abstract it is well known that energy conservation can lead to rebound effects that partly offset the original energy savings one particular rebound mechanism is re spending of money savings associated with energy savings on energy intensive goods or services we calculate the average magnitude of this re spending rebound for different fuels and countries and for both energy and carbon co2 emissions we find that emerging economies neglected in past studies typically have larger rebounds than oecd countries since such economies play an increasingly important role in the global economy the re spending rebound is a growing concern the re spending effect is generally larger for gasoline than for natural gas and electricity paradoxically stronger financial incentives to conserve energy tend to increase the rebound this suggests that with climate regulation and peak oil the re spending rebound may become more important we discuss the policy implications of our findings

energy savings potential in china s industrial sector from the perspectives of factor price distortion and allocative inefficiency abstract china s industrial energy consumption accounted for 70 82 of national and 14 12 of world energy usage in 2011 in the context of energy scarcity and environmental pollution the industrial sector in china faces unsustainable growth problems by adopting the stochastic frontier analysis sfa framework this paper analyzes the factor allocative efficiency of china s industrial sector and estimates the energy savings potential from the perspective of allocative inefficiency this paper focuses on three issues the first is examining the factor allocative inefficiency of china s industrial sector the second is measuring factor price distortion by the shadow price model the third is estimating the energy savings potential in china s industrial sector during 2001 2009 major conclusions are thus drawn first factor prices of capital labor and energy are distorted in china due to government regulations moreover energy price is relatively low compared to capital price while is relatively high compared to labor price second the industry wide energy savings potential resulted from energy allocative inefficiency was about 9 71 during 2001 2009 the downward trend of energy savings potential implies the increasing energy allocative efficiency in china s industrial sector third a transparent and reasonable pricing mechanism is conducive to improving energy allocative efficiency

competition and collusion in the american automobile industry the 1955 price war movements in total quantity and in quality adjusted price suggest a supply side shock in the american automobile market in 1955 this paper tests the hypothesis that the shock was a transitory change in industry conduct a price war the key ingredients of the test are alternative equilibrium models of oligopoly under product differentiation in nonnested cox tests of hypotheses a collusive solution is sustained in 1954 and in 1956 while a competitive solution holds in 1955 the result does not appear to be an artifact since it is robust in tests against alternative specifications copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

passive cross holding as a strategic entry deterrence this paper builds a duopoly model to study the strategic effects of cross holding on entry deterrence we show that in equilibrium the incumbent optimally chooses strictly positive cross holdings in each other to deter entry for the potential entrant

the risk free rate in heterogeneous agent incomplete insurance economies abstract why has the average real risk free interest rate been less than one percent the question is motivated by the failure of a class of calibrated representative agent economies to explain the average return to equity and risk free debt i construct an economy where agents experience uninsurable idiosyncratic endowment shocks and smooth consumption by holding a risk free asset i calibrate the economy and characterize equilibria computationally with a borrowing constraint of one year s income the resulting risk free rate is more than one percent below the rate in the comparable representative agent economy

silent financial interests and product innovation abstract we study quality enhancing r d price competition and welfare in markets with asymmetric passive partial ownership ppo holdings the asymmetries in ppos generate a positive re allocation effect which in some cases can increase consumer and total surplus in markets with no spillovers

the trend in retirement a model with leisure production and endogenous retirement is used to explain declining labor force participation rates of elderly males the model is calibrated to cross sectional data on labor force participation rates of u s males by age their drop in consumption and leisure good expenditure share in 2000 running the calibrated model for the period 1850 2000 a prediction of the evolution of the cross section is obtained the model accounts for more than 87 of the increase in retirement of men over 65 the increase in retirement is driven by rising wages and falling prices of leisure goods

reciprocal shareholding and takeover deterrence reciprocal shareholding has been argued to increase managerial power and facilitate takeover resistance the latter may translate into higher premiums in the event of an actual takeover thus benef

winners and losers in housing markets this paper is a quantitatively oriented theoretical study into the interaction between housing prices aggregate production and household behaviour over a lifetime we develop a life cycle model of a production economy in which land and capital are used to build residential and commercial structures we find that in an economy where the share of land in the value of structures is large housing prices react more to an exogenous change in expected productivity or the world interest rate causing large redistribution effects between net buyers and net sellers of houses changing the financing constraint however has limited effects on housing prices

defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

wealth distribution in life cycle economies abstract this paper compares the age wealth distribution produced in life cycle economies to the corresponding distribution in the us economy the idea is to calibrate the model economies to match features of the us earnings distribution and then examine the wealth distribution implications of the model economies the findings are that the calibrated model economies with earnings and lifetime uncertainty can replicate measures of both aggregate wealth and transfer wealth in the us furthermore the model economies produce the us wealth gini and a significant fraction of the wealth inequality within age groups however the model economies produce less than half the fraction of wealth held by the top 1 percent of us households

collusion and the banking structure of a duopoly the author shows that in credit relationships the choice of a lender may become a determinant of the extent of competition in downstream industries in the presence of imperfect output markets and asymmetric information in financial markets members of an industry may achieve a partial collusion in the output market by borrowing from the same bank in an oligopoly debt is procompetitive as it gives incentives to the borrowing firm to undertake an aggressive output strategy as both firms borrow the industry becomes more competitive and riskier the firms debt value is decreased a common lender can better control these incentive effects and hence limit the extent of competition in the output market

bertrand competition when firms hold passive ownership stakes in one another abstract we show that the bertrand oligopoly model with cost asymmetries may admit multiple nash equilibria when firms hold passive ownership stakes in each other the equilibrium price may be as high as the monopoly price of the most efficient firm

differentiated effects of diversified technological sources on china s electricity consumption evidence from the perspective of rebound effect abstract technological progress is an effective way to improve electricity efficiency due to the existence of the rebound effect it is of great significance to optimize the technical power saving policy by examining the rebound effect caused by different technological progress paths based on the panel data of electricity industry in 30 provinces of china from 1997 to 2013 this paper systematically examines the rebound effects of electricity consumption under the two sources of technological progress namely independent innovation and technology import then it discusses the impact of coal electricity linkage policy the empirical results are as follows 1 without considering rebound effect independent innovation significantly promotes electricity conservation while the effects of technology import is not obvious 2 when considering the rebound effect electricity price declining driven by independent innovation is not conducive to electricity saving while electricity price declining driven by technology import has an electricity saving effect 3 the coal electricity linkage policy that began in 2004 not only reduced the rebound effect by increasing the flexibility of electricity prices to a certain extent and improved the electricity saving effect of independent innovation but also reduced the electricity saving effect of technology import

current real business cycle theories and aggregate labor market fluctuations hours worked and the return to working are weakly correlated traditionally the ability to account for this fact has been a litmus test for macroeconomic models existing real business cycle models fail this test dramatically we modify prototypical real business cycle models by allowing government consumption shocks to influence labor market dynamics this modification can in principle bring the models into closer conformity with the data our empirical results indicate that it does

vertical cross shareholding theory and experimental evidence abstract this paper analyzes vertical cross shareholding that is the mutual holding of a minority of shares between vertically related firms first we explore the issue in a game theoretic model and show that cross shareholding is sufficient to obtain efficient outcomes we then test the model s predictions in an experiment theory predicts the seller decisions accurately but the buyer decisions only to a small extent buyers are more likely to agree on cross shareholding than sellers in an attempt to avoid the winner s curse cross shareholding occurs more frequently than predicted and it increases the likelihood of trade

the strategic value of partial vertical integration we investigate the strategic incentives for partial vertical integration namely partial ownership agreements between manufacturers and retailers when retailers privately know their costs and engage in price competition with differentiated goods the partial misalignment between the profit objectives within a partially integrated manufacturer retailer hierarchy implies a higher retail price than under full integration this information vertical effect translates into a competition horizontal effect the partially integrated hierarchy s commitment to a higher price induces the competitor to increase its price which strategically relaxes competition our analysis provides implications for vertical merger policy and theoretical support for the recently documented empirical evidence on partial vertical acquisitions

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

quantifying the coordinated effects of partial horizontal acquisitions abstract recent years have witnessed an increased interest by competition agencies in assessing the competitive effects of partial acquisitions we propose an empirical structural methodology which can deal with settings involving all types of owners and ownership rights to quantify the coordinated effects of partial horizontal acquisitions on differentiated products industries by evaluating the impact of such acquisitions on the minimum discount factors for which coordination can be sustained we also provide an empirical application of the methodology to several acquisitions in the wet shaving industry that give rise to cross and common ownership structures the results are as follows i the incentives to coordinate of the firms that the acquiring party is pre acquisition able to influence are non decreasing with any acquisition ii the incentives to coordinate of the acquired firm are non decreasing with acquisitions involving full or partial both financial and corporate control rights but non increasing with acquisitions involving full or partial solely financial rights and iii the incentives to coordinate of the remaining firms in the industry are non increasing with any acquisition this implies that the coordinated effects of partial horizontal acquisitions are in general ambiguous which illustrates the importance of an empirical structural methodology

the output and profit effects of horizontal joint ventures the effects of production joint ventures on their parents profits and total industry output are analyzed using a conjectural variations model joint ventures that represent new producing entities are shown to be more likely because the profits of parents in the same industry are more likely to increase under conditions of cooperative as opposed to rivalrous behavior under the same circumstances industry output increases although a modest rise in cooperation among firms suffices to reverse these effects the precise results are shown also to depend upon the degree of coordination of the output decisions of the joint venture and its parents copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

income risk macroeconomic and demographic change and economic inequality in japan abstract using an olg model with heterogeneous households we investigate the relationship among income risk macroeconomic and demographic changes and economic inequality between 1980 and 2000 in japan by decomposing the primary factors in earnings and consumption inequality into macroeconomic variables and the demographic variable we find that our model replicates the evolution of economic inequality in japan by performing counterfactual simulations we demonstrate that two factors changes in time varying macroeconomic factors and the unexpected decline in the total factor productivity growth rate played important roles in the increase in earnings and consumption inequality in the 1990s

joint dynamics of house prices and foreclosures this paper studies the joint transitional dynamics of the foreclosures and house prices in a standard life cycle incomplete markets model with housing and a realistic long term mortgage structure we calibrate our model to match several long term features of the u s housing market and analyze the effects of several unexpected and permanent shocks on the house price and the foreclosure rate both across the steady states and along the transition between the steady states we examine permanent unexpected shocks to the risk free interest rate the minimum down payment ratio and unemployment during the transition these shocks create large movements in house prices more importantly the foreclosure dynamics are quite significant along the transition compared to the steady state changes and there are strong feedbacks between foreclosures and house prices we assess the effects of a temporary reduction in the risk free interest rate which has moderate effects on house prices but little effect on foreclosure dynamics we also study the effects of an ex ante macroprudential policy which establishes a minimum down payment requirement at a higher threshold such a macroprudential policy helps substantially stabilize both house prices and foreclosures

when is it rational for firms to acquire silent interests in rivals abstract the cartelizing effects of firms shareholding in rivals have been well established theoretically yet empirical instances of such are rate to nonexistent it is argued here that if the stock market is efficient in the sense that share prices reflect post share trading product market equilibria then acquiring shares in rivals is not subgame perfect for cournot oligopolies but is subgame perfect for some bertrand oligopolies acquiring a silent interest in a rival is an example of the fat cat ploy that the stock market is not a cartel maker is consistent with cournot having wide empirical application but not with bertrand

analysis of technological progress and input prices on electricity consumption evidence from china abstract this paper establishes a translog cost function model with productivity growth equations to study the influence of technological progress and price changes on electricity production factors and consumption within a unified analytic framework regression is applied to the panel data for seven regions in china during the period 1997 to 2013 the functions of production costs on factor substitution are analyzed based on the regression the influence of electricity price and technological progress on electricity productivity and the rebound effect of electricity are discussed electricity price can significantly and positively influence electricity productivity expressed by the total value of output consumed by unit electricity however the stimulation of technological progress is not notable the rebound effect of electricity computed based on an electricity price breakdown showed that values of the rebound effect in southwestern china and central china were higher than 100 while annual average values of the rebound effect in northeastern china and southern china were 60 39 and 81 47 respectively the area with the lowest annual average value for the rebound effect was northwestern china at 14 96

efficiency in auctions with crossholdings we study the impact of crossholdings on the efficiency of the standard auction formats the ascending auction is not equivalent to the second price auction in a class of examples the ascending auction is the only efficient standard auction format

vertical separation and horizontal mergers the author considers a duopoly setting consisting of two manufacturer retailer pairs in which the observable contract between each manufacturer retailer pair specifies a two part tariff without intraband competition the author shows that an upstream merger is anticompetitive under very general demand and cost conditions downstream merger is analyzed using linear demand and constant marginal cost and is shown not to be anticompetitive both with and without intraband competition and for both price and output competition between retailers in the premerger regime copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

strategic alliances as stackelberg cartels concept and equilibrium alliance structure abstract this paper analyzes incentives of oligopolistic firms to form strategic alliances and the effects of the endogenously derived alliance structure on product market competition a three stage game is considered in the first stage firms decide about forming strategic alliances in the second stage each alliance designs a strategic contract and in the third stage alliance members and outsiders compete in the product market it is shown how contractual terms about transfer prices and profit sharing in a production joint venture for an intermediate product may serve as an appropriate commitment device profits of alliance members and outsiders under different alliance structures are then determined based on this profit structure the alliance formation process is analyzed in a linear cournot oligopoly with at most five firms only one alliance forms and industry output is reduced with more than five firms an alliance structure with at least two alliances results if an equilibrium of the alliance formation game exists and in this case competition is enhanced

estimating energy augmenting technological change in developing country industries assumptions regarding the magnitude and direction of energy related technological change have long been recognized as critical determinants of the outputs and policy conclusions derived from integrated assessment models particularly in the case of developing countries however empirical analysis of technological change has lagged behind simulation modeling this paper presents estimates of sectoral productivity trends and energy augmenting technological change for several energy intensive industries in india and south korea and for comparison the united states the key findings are substantial heterogeneity among both industries and countries and a number of cases of declining energy efficiency the results are subject to certain technical qualifications both in regards to the methodology and to the direct comparison to integrated assessment parameterizations nevertheless they highlight the importance of closer attention to the empirical basis for common modeling assumptions

collaborate or consolidate assessing the competitive effects of production joint ventures we analyze collaborations in which two firms facing external competition reorganize to form an input joint venture as an alternative to horizontal merger under standard regularity conditions the collaboration can lead to higher profits than a horizontal merger though the effect on prices quantities and welfare depends on the form of downstream competition in light of our results regarding profits we provide reasons why firms might still wish to merge imperfect information cost synergies and organizational asymmetries we further consider how our comparisons change with the managerial structure of the joint venture i e by delegation of input pricing jel l13 l23 l42

the competitive effects of partial equity interests and joint ventures abstract antitrust authorities should consider the trade off between enhanced efficiency and reduced competition in cases of partial ownership this paper examines the competitive effects side of that trade off in the context of a modified cournot model we show that in markets where entry is difficult partial ownership arrangements could result in less output and higher prices than otherwise even if the ownership shares are relatively small these effects arise solely because these arrangements link the fortunes of actual or potential competitors producing a positive correlation among their profits in this sense the effects are purely structural they arise not because of increased opportunities for collusion or changes in the concentration of control but because the linking of profits reduces each firm s incentive to compete since these links internalize free rider problems associated with policing collusion and investing in entry deterrence however they could also enhance cartel stability and profitability

agreements between firms and the technological life cycle model evidence from information technologies abstract contrarily to most previous contributions which have addressed the issue of cooperative agreements essentially in a perspective of comparative statics in this paper a model is proposed that relies on the technological trajectory notion suggested by evolutionary theories and emphasizes the relevance of the technological and market dynamics in explaining why and to what extent firms have recourse to agreements in particular it is claimed that the propensity of firms towards collaborative ventures and the characteristics of the cooperation depend upon the phase of the technological life cycle of the industry branch in which the cooperation takes place based on a cross sectional analysis of 45 industry branches in the information technology industrial system the paper also provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the propensity towards agreements and the nature of the agreements concluded do change during the technological life cycle to this end it takes advantage of the arpa database developed at the polytechnic of milan and containing detailed information on over 2 000 agreements concluded in the 1980 1986 period all over the world in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries

the cyclical and secular behaviour of the labour input comparing efficiency units and hours worked summary a monthly labour input series designed to correct for the fact that all hours worked are not of the same quality is constructed and its properties compared with unadjusted hours worked this efficiency units series is constructed from bls data on hours worked and earnings by age and sex the cyclical fluctuations displayed by the efficiency units series are smaller on average than those displayed by hours worked although the difference is not large however the secular behaviour of the series is quite different hours worked per capita displays a significant positive trend while efficiency units per capita does not

cross shareholdings and competition in a rent seeking contest abstract we consider a tullock rent seeking contest with two firms and two investors each investor owns a majority share in one firm and a silent minority cross shareholding in the other firm we measure competition by either firms aggregate efforts or rent dissipation we show that aggregate efforts are smaller in our contest than in the benchmark case without cross shareholdings next we provide the necessary and sufficient conditions such that equilibrium rent dissipation in our contest is larger than in the benchmark case rent dissipation is larger under cross shareholdings if and only if one firm is much more efficient than the other firm and the cross shareholding in the more efficient firm is sufficiently smaller than the cross shareholding in the less efficient firm

externalities and corporate objectives in a world with diversified shareholder consumers if shareholders own diversified portfolios and if companies impose externalities on one another shareholders do not want value maximization to be corporate policy instead shareholders want companies to maximize portfolio values this occurs when firms internalize between firm externalities any kind of externality pecuniary or nonpecuniary vertical or horizontal suffices what matters is simply that one company s actions affect another s value thus besides the traditional benefit of risk reduction portfolio diversifi cation offers additional benefits to shareholders through helping internalize externalities this paper documents the extent of diversification and cross ownership of stocks among companies where these externalities are likely to be large and provides a capital market test of how merger offers vary with the extent of cross ownership

dynamic oligopoly with partial cooperation and antitrust threshold correspondance corresponding author tel 39 011 6705753 fax 39 011 6705783 merlone ugo

effect of partial cross ownership on supply chain performance abstract partial cross ownership pco in a dyad supply chain refers to a situation where each firm holds a portion of its partner s shares we study this topic in push and pull supply chains and prove that neither the supply chain s nor any member s profit changes with the percentage of the leader s shares the follower holds however while the profits of the chain and the leader increase with the percentage of the follower s shares held by the leader the follower s profit does not necessarily increase or decrease as a result both partners can always achieve a win win by setting a proper price for transferring the follower s shares to the leader moreover the equilibrium wholesale price may be greater than the retail price in the push chain but less than the marginal production cost in the pull chain contradicting the usual results found in the literature we also derive a necessary and sufficient condition on the structure of pco allowing a pull chain to perform better than a push one this extends cachon 2004 s result that a pull chain always performs better than a push one without pco finally pco can coordinate a chain if and only if each one holds half of the other s shares

the impact of china s differential electricity pricing policy on power sector co2 emissions abstract this article investigates the impact of china s differential electricity pricing policy on power sector co 2 emissions using the logarithmic mean divisia index method the differential pricing policy intended to reduce energy intensity in manufacturing is being implemented in eight electricity intensive industries the study finds that during 2004 2009 the policy accounted for a drop of roughly 115 twh in electricity use which amounted to a reduction of 82 million tons of co 2 emissions the policy has been most effective in reducing electricity use in the nonferrous metal smelting and rolling industry and least effective in the ferrous metal smelting and rolling industry because the differential pricing policy has had significantly different effects across industries improving the policy s design and implementation going forward will require a more detailed understanding and analysis of how it can be better tailored to individual industries

estimating the rebound effect in us manufacturing energy consumption abstract the energy price shocks of the 1970s are usually assumed to have increased the search for new energy saving technologies where eventual gains in energy efficiencies will reduce the real per unit price of energy services and hence the consumption of energy will rise and partially offset the initial reduction in the usage of energy sources this is the rebound effect which is estimated for the us manufacturing sector using time series data applying the dynamic ols method dols when allowing for asymmetric price effects the rebound effect is found to be approximately 24 for the us manufacturing sector

in pursuit of monopoly power recent quantitative work in industrial economics this paper reviews empirical work in industrial organization devoted to the question of inferring the existence of monopoly power from data on observed market outcomes like profits and prices the discussion covers inter industry work long conventional in the area newer developments in intra industry analysis and case studies and concludes with some remarks on a small but growing body of work assessing market dynamics the wide range of studies reviewed all generally reveal that market power exists in many industries

on the optimality of age dependent taxes and the progressive u s tax system abstract in life cycle economies where an individual s optimal consumption work plan is almost never constant the optimal marginal tax rates on capital and labor income vary with age conversely the progressivity imbedded in the u s tax code implies that marginal tax rates vary with age because tax rates vary with earnings and earnings vary with age using numerical simulations this paper shows that if the tax authority is prevented from conditioning tax rates on age some degree of progressivity is desirable as progressive taxation better imitates optimal age dependent taxes than an optimal age independent tax system this role for progressive taxation emanates from efficiency reasons and does not rely on any insurance nor re distribution arguments

collusive conduct in duopolies multimarket contact and cross ownership in the mobile telephone industry the deregulation of the telecommunications industry has resulted in a variety of industry structures which have been created in hopes of increasing competition one example is the licensing of cellular telephone services in the united states where the fcc created duopolies in which two firms were granted licenses to compete in strictly defined product and geographic markets taking advantage of the unique regulatory environment we test to what degree duopolistic competition leads to competitive market outcomes we find that cross ownership and multimarket contact are important factors in explaining non competitive prices

direct rebound effect on urban residential electricity use an empirical study in china abstract though improving energy efficiency is an important approach to decrease the energy consumption the rebound effect caused by technology progress negatively affects the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies this paper empirically investigates direct rebound effect of urban residential electricity use in china using china s 30 provincial government panel data from1996 to 2010 we build a co integration equation and a panel error correction model to analyze the direct rebound effect the results indicate that an obvious rebound effect in the chinese urban residential electricity consumption does exist specifically the long term rebound effect is 0 74 while the short term rebound effect is 0 72 therefore the rebound effect significantly impairs functions of energy efficiency policies for this reason chinese government should take the rebound effect into consideration when formulating energy policies

collusion or competition interfirm relationships in the chinese auto industry the chinese passenger vehicle industry contains a large number of manufacturers some of them are members of big corporate groups centered around state owned enterprises these corporate relationships may facilitate collusion this paper applies the non nested hypothesis test methodology to data on passenger vehicles to identify whether price collusion exists within corporate groups or across groups our empirical results support the assumption of bertrand nash competition in the chinese passenger vehicle industry we find no evidence for within or cross group price collusion our policy experiments show that indigenous brands will gain market shares and profits if within group companies merge

partial vertical ownership abstract a backward ownership interest held by a downstream firm yields a partial rebate of the upstream margin input demand increases with backward ownership and the upstream firm optimally responds by raising price with symmetric costs every downstream firm s equilibrium input output choice is invariant across a class of ownership profiles including uniform ownership moreover equity trading results in uniform holdings so partial vertical ownership may have no real effects with asymmetric costs ex ante equity trading amplifies the asymmetries and shifts output toward lower cost firms with homogeneous goods this improves producer and total surplus with differentiated goods it may harm consumers

product innovation transfer under passive partial ownership holdings abstract we investigate the incentives of a high quality firm to transfer for free its proprietary product innovation technology to its standard quality rival on which it has passive partial ownership holdings ppos we identify the conditions under which there exists an ownership threshold to make such a free transfer profitable for the high quality firm and show that these conditions are more stringent under bertrand than under cournot competition finally we show that technology transfer increases aggregate output industry wide profits consumers surplus and social welfare

business cycles unemployment insurance and the calibration of matching models this paper theoretically and empirically documents a puzzle that arises when an rbc economy with a job matching function is used to model unemployment the standard model can generate sufficiently large cyclical fluctuations in unemployment or a sufficiently small response of unemployment to labor market policies but it cannot do both variable search and separation finite ui benefit duration efficiency wages and capital all fail to resolve this puzzle however either sticky wages or match specific productivity shocks can improve the model s performance by making the firm s flow of surplus more procyclical which makes hiring more procyclical too

countervailing power and consumer prices this paper considers the importance of countervailing power manifested as the effects of increased retail concentration on consumer prices and welfare within a market setting where imperfectly competitive retailers negotiate intermediate prices with a monopoly supplier only when retailer services are regarded as very close substitutes do final prices fall following a reduction in the number of retailers even in these circumstances the social benefits of countervailing power may not be realised as the supplier may seek to protect its profits by using a refusal to supply restraint to engage in exclusive trading

the effectiveness of energy efficiency improvement in a developing country rebound effect of residential electricity use in south korea abstract the government of south korea considers an energy efficiency improvement policy an effective economic measure for climate change like many other governments but it is unaware of any rebound effect the unexpected result of energy efficiency improvement so the rebound effect of residential electricity use in south korea was estimated using two different scales in this paper at the macro level the rebound effect was estimated indirectly by using price elasticity and at the micro level the rebound effect of individual home appliances was estimated directly by using a non linear relationship between energy efficiency and energy use at the macro level the long and short term results of rebound effect were estimated at 30 and 38 respectively also at the micro level the rebound effect of air conditioners was 57 70 while refrigerators showed only a composite of rebound and income effects finally there was no backfire effect and efficiency improvement brought energy reduction in conclusion these suggest that rebound effect is an important factor that the government of south korea must consider when planning its energy efficiency improvement policy

technical compatibility and the mode of foreign entry with network externalities we examine the preferences of a foreign firm and a local government over two modes of foreign direct investment de novo entry and acquisition of the domestic incumbent two crucial features of the model are network externalities and partial incompatibility between the domestic and the foreign technology the relative welfare impact of the two entry modes depends on the degree of market competition and the strength of the network externality the clash between the foreign firm s choice and the local government s ranking of the two entry modes can motivate limits on the degree of foreign ownership of the local firm ce texte examine les preferences d une firme etrangere et d un gouvernement du pays hote quant a deux modes d investissement direct de l etranger entree de novo de la firme etrangere versus acquisition d une firme domestique en place deux facteurs pris en compte sont la presence d externalites de reseau et d incompatibilite partielle entre la technologie locale et celle introduite par la firme etrangere l impact relatif des modes d entree sur le mieux etre local depend du degre de concurrence sur le marche et de l importance des externalites de reseau le conflit entre les preferences de l entreprise etrangere et les preferences du gouvernement local peuvent etre a la source de politiques qui limitent le degre de proprieteetrangere permis

the business cycle human capital accumulation nexus and its effect on hours worked volatility abstract this paper studies hours worked volatility and the cyclicality of human capital investments by embedding a ben porath life cycle model of human capital accumulation into an rbc setting agents differ across two dimensions age and productivity in learning our results show that individuals invest more in human capital during economic downturns however human capital accumulation is more counter cyclical for young and low productivity individuals because they face a lower opportunity cost of education and a higher marginal product of human capital these results are confirmed empirically using us data from the current population survey and the american time use survey in addition the paper contributes to the rbc literature by showing that the model s business cycle properties in particular hours worked volatility are sensitive to assumptions of heterogeneity introducing heterogeneity in productivity increases the volatility of aggregate hours worked and changes the life cycle profile for hours volatility to better match the data

the impacts of energy prices on energy intensity evidence from china in this paper we present a review of the deregulation of energy prices in china between 1985 and 2004 and assess the impacts of changes in energy prices on aggregate energy intensity and coal oil electricity intensity we used time series data to provide estimates of energy price elasticities empirical results showed that 1 the own price elasticities of coal oil and aggregate energy were negative in periods both before and after 1995 implying that higher relative prices of different energy types lead to the decrease in coal oil and aggregate energy intensities however the positive own price elasticity of electricity after 1995 probably indicates that the price effect was weaker than other factors such as income effect and population effect 2 the impacts of energy prices were asymmetric over time 3 sectoral adjustment also drove the decrease in aggregate energy intensity although raising energy prices to boost efficiency of energy use seems to be an effective policy tool other policy implications concerned with energy prices such as energy supply security and fuel poverty must also be considered

cross holdings with asymmetric information and technologies abstract we show that a high cost firm may be induced to compete less aggressively when its ownership is increasingly held by a low cost firm with asymmetric information on technologies cross holdings may make it desirable for both the high and low cost firms to reveal private information

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

competitive advantage and collusive optima cost differences may often be important in real oligopolies if side payments are impossible the standard cartel objective total industry profits lacks plausibility when costs differ this essay considers plausible alternatives four different technologies for effecting collusion which are essentially identical when costs are equal define sets of possible profits axiomatic bargaining models are used to select unconstrained optima from among these possibilities simple functional forms are employed low cost firms with large shares in cournot equilibrium may have little to gain from collusion if collusion is effective low cost firms will have relatively low estimated conjectural variations

partial ownership arrangements and collusion in the automobile industry this paper develops a conjectural variation model that allows for partial ownership arrangements and foreign trade this model is applied to the japanese and us automobile industries although collusion is found to occur in the japanese automobile industry it is found to be more competitive than the us automobile industry the effect imports have on firms price cost margins in both countries is also found to be different

measures of per capita hours and their implications for the technology hours debate structural vector autoregressions give conflicting results on the effects of technology shocks on hours the results depend crucially on the assumed data generating process for hours per capita we show that the standard measure of hours per capita and productivity have significant low frequency movements that are the source of the conflicting results hodrick prescott hp filtered hours per capita produce results consistent with those obtained when hours are assumed to have a unit root we show that important sources of the low frequency movements in the standard measure are sectoral shifts in hours and the changing age composition of the working age population when we control for these low frequency components to determine the effect of technology shocks on hours using long run restrictions we get one consistent answer hours decline in the short run in response to a positive technology shock we further extend the analysis by examining the effects of demographic controls on the impulse responses to investment specific technology shocks our results are less conclusive

divesting ownership in a rival we examine the consumer welfare effect of a firm s partial ownership of a competitor and compare the implications of alternative forms of divestiture we identify conditions under which turning voting shares into non voting shares is preferable to selling the shares to the firm s current shareholders an option frequently chosen we also show that selling the voting shares to a large independent shareholder is preferable to selling them to small shareholders we provide additional theoretical results and apply them to the divestiture of portugal telecom s holdings in ptm

horizontal integration in the dutch financial sector in this paper the consequences of cross shareholding in an n firm industry are analyzed our attention focuses on the case where firms have silent interests in each other these interests can be direct or indirect we analyze the effects of cross shareholding on the price cost margins in a cournot and a bertrand setting in all cases competition is reduced due to shareholding interlocks as an empirical example the dutch financial sector is used comparing the case of shareholding with the case of no shareholding the price cost margins are found to be up to 2 higher in a bertrand market and at least 8 higher in a cournot market c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification g20 l13 l41

housing market dynamics this paper presents a dynamic theory of housing market fluctuations it develops a life cycle model where households are heterogeneous with respect to income and preferences and mortgage lending is restricted by a down payment requirement the market interaction of young credit constrained households with older or richer unconstrained households generates the following results 1 current income of young credit constrained households affects housing prices independently of aggregate income 2 housing prices and the number of housing transactions are positively correlated 3 housing prices over react to income shocks 4 a relaxation of the down payment constraint triggers a boom bust cycle these results are consistent with patterns observed in the us and the uk

a dynamic model of housing demand estimation and policy implications a dynamic model of housing demand using data from the panel study of income dynamics psid we specify estimate and simulate a dynamic structural model of housing demand our model generalizes previous applied econometric work by incorporating realistic features of the housing market including non convex adjustment costs from buying and selling a home credit constraints from minimum downpayment requirements and uncertainty about the evolution of incomes and home prices we argue that these features are critical for capturing salient features of housing demand observed in the psid after estimating the model we use it to simulate how consumer behavior responds to house price and income declines as well as tightening credit these experiments are motivated by the u s recession starting in december of 2007 that saw large falls in home prices large negative income shocks for many households and tightening credit standards in the short run relatively few households adjust their housing stock households respond instead by reducing non housing consumption and reducing wealth because they wish to avoid losing their home and the associated adjustment costs households that adjust in the short run are those hit with a series of bad shocks such as a negative income shock and a home price decline a larger proportion of households do adjust their consumption in the long run increasing their housing stock since housing is less expensive however such changes may occur several years after the shocks listed above

measuring unilateral effects in partial horizontal acquisitions recent years have witnessed an increased interest by competition agencies in assessing the competitive effects of partial acquisitions we propose an empirical structural methodology to examine quantitatively the unilateral impact of partial horizontal acquisitions the acquisitions may be direct or indirect and may or may not correspond to control the proposed methodology simulates the effects on prices market shares firm profits and consumer welfare it can deal with differentiated product industries and nest full mergers as a special case we provide an empirical application to several acquisitions in the wet shaving industry

understanding technological progress and input price as drivers of energy demand in manufacturing industries in india abstract this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of energy demand behaviour of seven energy intensive manufacturing industries and the aggregate manufacturing sector in india during 1973 74 to 2011 12 the policy perform achieve and trade pat has mandated energy efficiency targets for these manufacturing industries in india we focus on two major drivers of energy demand technological progress and energy price productivity growth accounting and estimation of parametric cost function using annual survey of industry data bring out important implications regarding the role of these two drivers results suggest that these industries experienced technological progress over the study period 1973 74 to 2011 12 with significant energy saving bias during 1998 99 to 2011 12 increase in energy price has led to reduction in energy demand and augmented technological progress in most of the industries energy and material inputs are mostly substitutes during 1998 99 to 2011 12 productivity growth of energy input was induced by both technological progress and increase in energy price estimates of inter factor substitution suggest that price induced reduction in energy demand can be a capital intensive process in case of some industries rebound effect has never taken back full gains of energy efficiency policies in the context of these industries

why has house price dispersion gone up we calibrate a dynamic general equilibrium island model to investigate the 30 year increase in the level of house prices and their dispersion across u s metropolitan areas the model is based on two main assumptions households o w in and out metropolitan areas in response to local productivity shocks and the housing supply cannot adjust instantly because of technological and regulatory constraints the calibration reveals that the observed tightening of housing supply regulation cannot quantitatively account for the rise in the level and dispersion of house prices in equilibrium workers o w out of tightly regulated towards less regulated metropolitan areas undoing most of the price impact of local supply restrictions in contrast the observed increase in wage dispersion across metropolitan areas does create the observed increase in the level and dispersion of house prices workers o w towards exceptionally productive metropolitan areas and drive house prices up the calibration also suggests that the welfare eects of housing supply regulation are large when wages become more dispersed

human capital prices productivity and growth separate identification of the price and quantity of human capital has important implications for understanding key issues in labor economics and macroeconomics price and quantity series are derived and subjected to robustness checks the human capital price series associated with dierent education levels are highly correlated and exhibit a strong secular trend three result

tariff jumping and joint ventures it is well known that high tariffs tend to induce foreign direct investment fdi by encouraging the investors to jump the tariff wall this paper examines the economic interaction among tariffs fdi and international joint ventures ijv we show that in the presence of a strong local competitor even if opening a fully owned subsidiary is not profitable to a foreign firm the foreign firm may still enter the host country market through ijv however ijv is not profitable for sufficiently high tariff rates hence we argue that liberal trade policies may attract foreign investments through the formation of joint ventures