the differential regional effects of monetary policy this paper examines whether monetary policy has similar effects across regions in the united states impulse response functions from an estimated structural vector autoregression reveal a core of regions new england mideast plains southeast and the far west that respond to monetary policy changes in ways that closely approximate the u s average response of the three noncore regions one great lakes is noticeably more sensitive to monetary policy changes and two southwest and rocky mountains are found to be much less sensitive a state level version of the model is estimated and used to provide evidence on the channels for monetary policy

a consistent multidimensional pigou dalton transfer principle abstract the unidimensional pigou dalton transfer principle demands that a regressive transfer in income a transfer from worse off poor to better off rich decreases social welfare in a multidimensional setting the direct link between income or any other attribute and individual well being is absent we interpret the social welfare level of a distribution in which each individual has the same bundle as the individual well being level we define regressivity on the basis of this individual well being ranking in a setting with both transferable and non transferable attributes the imposition of the ensuing consistent pigou dalton principle forces individual well being to have a quasi linear structure in the transferable attributes since we allow for transferable and non transferable attributes our result provides a normative underpinning for criteria in the distinct literatures of multidimensional inequality measurement only transferable attributes and of needs one transferable and one non transferable attribute

regional heterogeneity and the refinancing channel of monetary policy we argue that the time varying regional distribution of housing equity influences the aggregate consequences of monetary policy through its effects on mortgage refinancing using detailed loan level data we show that regional differences in housing equity affect refinancing and spending responses to interest rate cuts but these effects vary over time with changes in the regional distribution of house price growth we build a heterogeneous household model of refinancing with mortgage borrowers and lenders and use it to explore the monetary policy implications arising from our regional evidence we find that the 2008 equity distribution made spending in depressed regions less responsive to interest rate cuts thus dampening aggregate stimulus and increasing regional consumption inequality whereas the opposite occurred in some earlier recessions taken together our results strongly suggest that monetary policy makers should track the regional distribution of equity over time

ranking income distributions a large variety of policy questions involve choices between social states and a consequent ordering of the feasible alternatives when these social states are related to the levels of welfare experienced by individuals or households two central issues stand out in determining the relative desirability of different social outcomes one of these is the essentially positive exercise of achieving comparability between households with different characteristics such as composition or preferences operating in different environments for example facing different price structures the other concerns the normative judgments implicit in the evaluation of alternative allocations of resourcesthe emphasis placed on inequality between households and the extent to which greater inequality can be compensated by higher average living standards this paper focuses on the second of these issues and in doing so we abstract from the problem of household comparability by considering a population of n households identical in all respects except for their incomes the question of ordering social states then becomes one of ranking income distributions over a group of anonymous households or individuals borrowing the usual assumptions imposed on consumer preferences we may suppose that a social ordering of income distributions can be represented by a welfare function 2

the effects of monetary policy shocks on inequality abstract this paper provides new evidence of the effect of conventional monetary policy shocks on income inequality we construct a measure of unanticipated changes in policy rates changes in short term interest rates that are orthogonal to unexpected changes in growth and inflation news for a panel of 32 advanced and emerging market countries over the period 1990 2013 our main finding is that contractionary monetary policy shocks increase income inequality on average the effect is asymmetric tightening of policy raises inequality more than easing lowers it and depends on the state of the business cycle we find some evidence that the effect increases with the share of labor income and is mitigated by redistribution policies finally while an unexpected increase in policy rates increases inequality changes in policy rates driven by an increase in growth and inflation are associated with lower inequality

the regional effects of monetary policy a survey of the empirical literature this survey provides an updated review of the empirical literature on the regional effects of monetary policy in economic activity by means of undertaking a threefold perspective first the main methodological dimensions of this literature are examined while pinpointing those modelling or methodological traits that constitute a source of diverging estimates and thereby produce inconclusive evidence secondly the estimates yielded by the literature are summarized by carrying out a cross study analysis of the results for each monetary union by drawing on empirical regularities that are robust across studies the conclusiveness of the results is assessed while those monetary unions for which conclusive evidence is still lacking are also identified lastly the sources of regional heterogeneity identified by these studies are reviewed in order to shed some light on the linkage between monetary policy and territorial heterogeneity as a result of this threefold perspective this survey delivers overall structured conclusions and updated policy relevant lessons moreover various research gaps and emerging topics in the literature are also identified

mortgages and monetary policy mortgages are long term nominal loans under incomplete asset markets monetary policy is shown to affect housing investment and the economy through the cost of new mortgage borrowing and the value of payments on outstanding debt these channels distinct from traditional transmission of monetary policy are evaluated within a general equilibrium model persistent monetary policy shocks resembling the level factor in the nominal yield curve have larger effects than transitory shocks manifesting themselves as long short spread the transmission is stronger under adjustable than fixed rate mortgages higher persistent inflation benefits homeowners under frms but hurts them under arms

social welfare when needs differ an axiomatic approach if the social welfare of households of different demographic type has to be evaluated we observe considerable disagreement about the way the composition of households is to be taken into account this paper makes an attempt to differentiate some of the various approaches it deals with four methods in order to make their normative content transparent an axiomatic approach is employed the methods are completely characterized and some of their implications are demonstrated

prevention and treatment in environmental policy design abstract in many environmental contexts the damages that result from some externality generating activity can be reduced either through prevention prior to the occurrence of the event or treatment after that occurrence the existing literature has focused on the use of prevention only polinsky and shavell 11 consider explicitly the use of mitigation but their analysis is limited to the case of pareto efficiency in reality policymakers often pursue other objectives such as minimizing damages subject to a budget constraint or minimizing the cost of maintaining a certain safety level this paper provides an analytical framework for examining the choice of prevention vs treatment in the context of these alternative behavioral assumptions it considers first the case where the effectiveness of treatment is known at the time that the allocation decision must be made we then extend the analysis to the case where the effectiveness of treatment is uncertain and develop a framework for addressing the tradeoff between prevention and treatment under a safety rule in both cases we examine the factors that influence the allocation of resources between prevention and treatment and show that these factors can affect the second best allocations of resources in ways that are contrary to the effect under the pareto efficient allocation

the compensation regime in liability law incentives to curb environmental harm ex ante and ex post this paper analyzes private incentives for precautions against environmental harm before accidents occur and for clean up after the fact we consider the compensatory regimes used in various jurisdictions which differ in terms of the basis for compensation the level of harm clean up costs or some combination of the two and the resulting levels of compensation we establish that socially optimal decisions are usually not induced by liability law in any of the compensatory regimes however the different types and levels of compensation have distinct effects allowing the policy maker to identify the most appropriate regime for specific circumstances

pests and pesticides risk and risk aversion abstract theoretical and applied literature on risk in decision making for agricultural pest control is reviewed risk can affect pesticide decision making either because of risk aversion or because of its influence on expected profit it is concluded that risk does not necessarily lead to increased pesticide use by individual farmers uncertainty about some variables such as pest density and pest mortality does lead to higher optimal pesticide use under risk aversion however uncertainty about other important variables such as output price and yield leads to lower optimal levels of pesticide use neglect of these variables in most studies has led to the false assumption that pesticides are always risk reducing inputs furthermore there is evidence that in general the pesticide dosage which maximises expected profit is lower under risk than under certainty depending on the balance of forces to increase and decrease pesticide use under risk in many circumstances the net effect of risk on optimal decision making for pest control may be minimal the effect on risk of information about pest density and other variables as in integrated pest management programmes is discussed evidence on this issue is mixed a range of analytical techniques for analysing risk in pest control is reviewed throughout the paper gaps in the existing literature are identified

environmental research joint ventures under emission taxes the effect of environmentalpolicy depends crucially on the strategicbehavior of firms firms can undertakepollution abatement innovation cooperativelythrough environmental r d joint ventures rjvs environmental rjvs have not onlyenvironmental but also economic impacts threetypes of environmental rjv are discussed inthis paper r d cartelization in which firmschoose r d efforts to maximize the jointprofit rjv competition in which firms sharethe r d fruits to maximize their own profits and rjv cartelization in which firms share r dfruits and maximize the joint profit an r dcartelization minimizes output quantities maximizes the total emission and minimizes thesocial surplus an rjv cartelization with asufficiently high spillover coefficientmaximizes r d efforts minimizes the totalemission and maximizes the social surplus

what do normative indices of multidimensional inequality really measure we argue that normative indices of multidimensional inequality do not only measure a distribution s extent of inequity i e the gaps between the better off and the worse off but also its extent of inefficiency i e the non realized mutually beneficial exchanges of goods we provide a decomposition that allows quantifying these two parts of inequality exact formulas of the inequity and inefficiency components are provided for a generic class of social welfare functions the inequity component turns out to be a two stage measure which applies a unidimensional inequality measure to the vector of well being levels we critically discuss two prominent transfer principles viz uniform majorization and correlation increasing majorization in the light of the decomposition a decomposition of inequality in human development illustrates the analysis

prioritarian poverty comparisons with cardinal and ordinal attributes the ethical view of prioritarianism holds the following if an extra bundle of attributes is to be allocated to either of two individuals then priority should be given to the worse off among the two we consider multidimensional poverty comparisons with cardinal and ordinal attributes and propose three axioms that operationalize the prioritarian view each priority axiom in combination with a handful of standard properties characterizes a class of poverty measures this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

regional effects of monetary policy in the u s an empirical re assessment abstract this paper provides an empirical re assessment of the regional effects of monetary policy in the u s we use the narrative series of romer and romer 2004 as a measure of monetary policy shocks and impulse response functions estimated directly from a single equation spatial model we find that monetary policy tightening leads to a persistent decrease in regional real personal income and employment with asymmetric effects across regions that are magnified by spatial spillovers the magnitude of the effects depends on the period under analysis and on the direction of the monetary policy shock we also provide evidence of the existence of the interest rate and the housing market channels although there is weak support for the presence of the credit channels at the regional level

regulating environmental health risks under uncertainty groundwater contamination in california abstract our method for incorporating uncertainty into environmental health risk policy determination corresponds closely to the legal and political strictures governing these policies an application to a case of grounwater contamination demonstrates that 1 the desirability of developing new water supplies versus cleaning up existing ones varies across locations 2 the stringency of any given policy varies inversely with the margin of sagety required 3 the cost premiums imposed by greater aversion to uncertainty may be quite large and 4 the marginal cost of risk reduction decreases significantly as aversion to uncertainty grows implying that assessments of policies based on average risk will tend to overestimate allowable risk comparing an efficient program to the current inefficient approach to risk management indicates that the cost of inefficiency is not great

a model of optimal import phytosanitary inspection under capacity constraint growth and liberalization of world trade have increased the risks of introduction of quarantine plant pests into importing countries import inspection of incoming commodities is a major tool for prevention of pest introductions related to world trade but inspection capacities are limited this article develops a theoretical and an empirical model for the optimal allocation of inspection effort for phytosanitary inspection of imported commodities when the inspecting agency has a limited capacity it is shown that the optimal allocation of inspection effort equalizes marginal costs of pest introduction across risky commodity pathways the numerical illustration finds the optimal allocation of inspection effort of chrysanthemum cuttings imported in the netherlands the numerical results suggest that ceteris paribus greater inspection effort should be allocated to pathways whose inspection yields a greater reduction in the expected costs of pest introduction the numerical results also suggest that import inspection has a high marginal benefit in particular we found that each additional euro of the inspection capacity decreases the expected costs of pest introduction from 18 to 49 euros depending on the initial inspection capacity

measuring the diffusion of housing prices across space and over time how fast and how long and to what magnitude does a change in housing prices in one region affect its neighbors in this paper i apply a time series technique for measuring impulse response functions from local projections to a spatial autoregressive model of housing prices for a dynamic panel of california counties the data reveal that the diffusion of regional housing prices across space lasts up to two and half years this result and the econometric techniques employed should be of interest not only to housing and regional economists but to a variety of applied econometricians as well copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

same but different testing monetary policy shock measures abstract in this study we determine the reliability and exogeneity of four popular monetary policy shock measures namely the narrative series of romer and romer 2004 the high frequency series of barakchian and crowe 2013 the high frequency series of gertler and karadi 2015 and the hybrid series of miranda agrippino and ricco 2018b to this end we employ the proxy svar model and different empirical diagnostic tools to determine the shock measures information content we find that the measure of miranda agrippino and ricco 2018b combining the insights from the narrative approach and high frequency identification outperforms the other three series