the morning after explaining the slowdown in japanese growth in the 1990s abstract this paper uses a var to investigate four possible explanations of the extended slump in japanese economic activity over the 1990s the absence of bold and consistent fiscal stimulus the limited room for expansionary monetary policy due to a liquidity trap overinvestment and debt overhang and disruption of financial intermediation the results indicate that all of these factors played a role but that the major explanation is disruption in financial intermediation largely operating through the impact of changes in domestic asset prices on bank lending

the relationship between the markup and inflation in the g7 economies and australia an i 2 analysis of inflation and the markup is undertaken for the g7 economies and australia we find that the levels of prices and costs are best described as i 2 processes and that except for japan a linear combination of the log levels of prices and costs cointegrate to the markup that is integrated of order 1 it is also shown that the markup in each case co integrates with inflation and that higher inflation is associated with a lower markup in the long run

energy demand substitution from biomass to imported kerosene evidence from tanzania abstract we analyze domestic household energy demand and use patterns in tanzania using a detailed household survey of purchase transactions a multivariate probit model and the quaids modeling framework the main fuel sources that we study are kerosene charcoal and firewood these three accounted for 96 5 of spending on energy by households charcoal and firewood are used for cooking while kerosene is used for lighting and cooking kerosene is almost exclusively imported while charcoal and firewood are produced domestically these fuel sources are important given the impacts of wood harvesting on the environment and kerosene imports on public finances we find a statistically significant response in kerosene demand to charcoal prices suggesting a pattern of substitution but no strong substitution relationships between other fuel pairs these results which we use in a simulation of tariff change imply that policies centered on price changes may not be effective in changing consumer behavior unless alternative sources of energy are readily accessible

more on identification in detailed wage decompositions wage decompositions are often used to decompose wage differentials of two demographic groups into differences in characteristics and differences in returns to those characteristics the latter part is used as an estimate of the degree of discrimination a problem with this approach is that the contributions of individual dummy variables to the wage decomposition are not identified this note proposes a simple solution to the identification problem the solution is illustrated with an empirical application to spanish labor market data

migration and fuel use in rural mexico many households in developing countries rely on renewable natural resources as their main source of energy collecting and burning firewood requires a considerable amount of time has negative health consequences and can cause deforestation and depletion of local resources if forests are not properly managed a transition from traditional to modern fuels can benefit households by reducing these negative effects migration a quintessential feature of development may facilitate this transition but its impacts on fuel choice are theoretically ambiguous it can reduce the household labor available for firewood collection and provide cash to purchase substitutes however it has an income effect that changes the demand for home cooked food and energy to cook it firewood or gas could be used to meet the increase in energy demand to resolve this theoretical ambiguity we use an instrumental variables method with household panel data from rural mexico and investigate the impact of mexico to us migration and remittances on gas expenditures and household labor allocated to firewood collection sending a migrant to the united states causes a significant decrease in reliance on firewood collection and an increase in both stove and gas purchases these findings have potentially far reaching environmental implications as labor moves off the farm

persistence in international inflation rates we test for fractional dynamics in inflation rates based on the consumer price index cpi for 27 countries and inflation rates based on the wholesale price index wpi for 22 countries the fractional differencing parameter is estimated using semiparametric and approximate maximum likelihood methods significant evidence of fractional dynamics with long memory features is found in both cpi and wpi based inflation rates for industrial as well as developing countries implications of the findings are considered and sources of long memory are hypothesized

theoretical analysis regarding a zero lower bound on nominal interest rates this paper explores several issues concerning a possible zero lower bound zlb including its theoretical rationale the magnitude of effects of low sustained inflation on real interest rates the validity of analyzing monetary policy in models with no monetary variables and the dynamic stabilizing properties of taylor rules in a zlb context the most important argument however is that if the short nominal rate is immobilized at zero there nevertheless exists a route for monetary stabilization policy to be effective via the foreign exchange market its quantitative importance is examined in a calibrated optimizing open economy model

on decomposing the wage gap a critical comment on blinder s method many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible

a simple solution to the identification problem in detailed wage decompositions i introduction oaxaca and ransom 1999 show that the oaxaca decomposition suffers from one nagging conceptual problem the detailed oaxaca decomposition of wage differentials is not invariant to the choice of reference group when dummy variables are used 1 that is if one uses dummy variable s then the detailed coefficients effect attributed to dummy variables is not invariant to the choice of the omitted group s 2 this invariance or identification problem is well known to labor economists and has plagued decomposition and discrimination analysis for a long time 3 this article proposes a simple and practical solution to this identification invariance problem the solution is based on the intuitive idea that if alternative reference groups yield different estimates of the characteristics and coefficients effects for each individual variable then it is natural to obtain estimates of the two effects for every possible specification of the reference groups and take the average of the estimates of the two effects with various reference groups as the true contributions of individual variables to wage differentials a close inspection shows that averaging the two effects in the decomposition equation with varying reference groups the averaging approach is equivalent to finding average estimates of constant and dummy variables in wage equations with varying reference groups and then using the average estimates to calculate the oaxaca decomposition equation researchers may react a bit negatively to this suggestion because it could be quite cumbersome and tedious to estimate wage equations permuting the choice of reference groups this article shows that there is no need to estimate multiple wage equations one set of regression estimates is sufficient to resolve the identification problem in the detailed decompositions that is the average of the estimates with varying reference groups can be easily calculated by using only one set of regression estimates with any specific reference group s the identification problem for the detailed decomposition disappears once the contribution of the dummy variables and the constant in the regression equations are identified 4 ii identification problem and invariant decomposition an illustration to understand what the identification problem in the detailed wage decomposition is i will first illustrate the problem with a simple example suppose that there are three categories and the regression equation has only a constant and two dummy variables on the right hand side where the reference group is the first category 5 that is 1 y sub i alpha sub i 3 summation over k 2 d sub ki beta sub ki e sub i where y is log wages and i a or b for two comparison groups coefficients for two dummy variables taking category one as the reference group are estimated using ordinary least squares ols regression and are reported in the second column of table 1 for sample a and for sample b note that the coefficient of the reference group category 1 is restricted to zero similarly i may change my reference group specification and estimate the wage equation two more times the estimates taking category 2 or 3 as the reference group are reported on the next two columns because i have three sets of estimates with varying reference groups i may decompose the wage differentials 0 15 0 76 0 61 into characteristics and coefficients effects three times the characteristics effect delta sub x 1 and coefficients effects delta sub beta 1 are specified as follows when category 1 is the reference group delta sub x 1 summation sup 3 sub k 2 bar d sub ka bar d sub kb beta sub kb and delta sub beta 1 alpha sub a alpha sub b summation sup 3 sub k 2 bar d sub ka beta sub ka beta sub kb

from linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model abstract promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the energy ladder model that suggests that with increasing affluence a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels in this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four year 1992 96 case study of a village in mexico and from a large scale survey from four states of mexico we show that an alternate multiple fuel model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households the multiple fuel model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty a economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels b technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices c cultural preferences and d health impacts this model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households

the importance of noncognitive skills lessons from the ged testing program it is common knowledge outside of academic journals that motivation tenacity trustworthiness and perseverance are important traits for success in life thomas edison wrote that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration most parents read the aesop fable of the tortoise and the hare to their young children at about the same time they read them the story of the little train that could numerous instances can be cited of high iq people who failed to achieve success in life because they lacked self discipline and low iq people who succeeded by virtue of persistence reliability and self discipline the value of trustworthiness has recently been demonstrated when market systems were extended to eastern european societies with traditions of corruption and deceit it is thus surprising that academic discussions of skill and skill formation almost exclusively focus on measures of cognitive ability and ignore noncognitive skills the early literature on human capital e g gary becker 1964 contrasted cognitive ability models of earnings with human capital models ignoring noncognitive traits entirely the signaling literature e g michael spence 1974 emphasized that education was a signal of a one dimensional ability usually interpreted as a cognitive skill most discussions of ability bias in the estimated return to education treat omitted ability as cognitive ability and attempt to proxy the missing ability by cognitive tests most assessments of school reforms stress the gain from reforms as measured by the ability of students to perform on a standardized achievement test widespread use of standardized achievement and ability tests for admissions and educational evaluation are premised on the belief that the skills that can be tested are essential for success in schooling a central premise of the educational testing movement since its inception much of the neglect of noncognitive skills in analyses of earnings schooling and other lifetime outcomes is due to the lack of any reliable measure of them many different personality and motivational traits are lumped into the category of noncognitive skills psychologists have developed batteries of tests to measure noncognitive skills e g robert sternberg 1985 these tests are used by companies to screen workers but are not yet used to ascertain college readiness or to evaluate the effectiveness of schools or reforms of schools the literature on cognitive tests ascertains that one dominant factor g summarizes cognitive tests and their effects on outcomes no single factor has yet emerged to date in the literature on noncognitive skills and it is unlikely that one will ever be found given the diversity of traits subsumed under the category of noncognitive skills studies by samuel bowles and herbert gintis 1976 rick edwards 1976 and roger klein et al 1991 demonstrate that job stability and dependability are traits most valued by employers as ascertained by supervisor ratings and questions of employers although they present no direct evidence on wages and educational t discussants susan mayer university of chicago cecilia rouse princeton university nan maxwell california state university hayward janet currie university of california los angeles

crises and human capital accumulation this paper studies the effects of crises on human capital formation theoretically a crisis undermines total factor productivity which reduces the return to working and to accumulating physical capital if the crisis is temporary young agents will study now and work later human capital rises to test our model we rely on inflation crises as our main empirical proxy using gmm panel procedures our analysis for 86 countries in 1970 2000 confirms the positive effects of crises on human capital our main findings survive several robustness tests jel classification e31 d90 ce memoire etudie les effets des crises sur la formation de capital humain theoriquement une crise mine la productivite totale des facteurs de production ce qui reduit le rendement sur le travail et l accumulation du capital physique si la crise est temporaire les jeunes agents vont alors se mettre aux etudes et decident de travailler plus tard le capital humain s accroit pour mettre au test ce modele on etudie les crises inflationnistes comme reference a l aide des procedures d analyse de donnees de panels a la gmm l etude de 86 pays pour la periode 1970 2000 confirme les effets positifs des crises sur le capital humain les principaux resultats survivent bien a divers tests de robustesse

analysing inflation by the fractionally integrated arfima garch model this paper considers the application of long memory processes to describing inflation for ten countries we implement a new procedure to obtain approximate maximum likelihood estimates of an arfima garch process which is fractionally integrated i d with a superimposed stationary arma component in its conditional mean additionally this long memory process is allowed to have garch type conditional heteroscedasticity on analysing monthly post world war ii cpi inflation for ten different countries we find strong evidence of long memory with mean reverting behaviour for all countries except japan which appears stationary for three high inflation economies there is evidence that the mean and volatility of inflation interact in a way that is consistent with the friedman hypothesis

labor market consequences of poor attitude and low self esteem in youth in a recent national survey that asked employers to rank the importance of particular applicant traits for nonsupervisory and production positions applicant s attitude was the only trait that was reported to be very important in fact academic performance years of schooling completed teachers recommendations and industry based credentials certifying applicant skills all ranked lower bowles et al 2000 a second independent survey of employers in holzer and wissoker 2000 also suggests that more weight is placed on a good attitude than on basic skills among new hires of low skilled workers in this article i assess the role of pre labor market attitude and self esteem in explaining disparities observed in the labor market experiences of a sample of high school graduates the apparent importance employers ascribe to attitude and self esteem gives clear reason to expect that such a relationship exists i demonstrate that such survey responses are corroborated by real economic consequences for those with poor attitude and self esteem using longitudinal data on a 1972 cohort of high school graduates i show that high school students who reveal negative attitudes and self esteem subsequently attain fewer years of postsecondary education relative to their high school cohort are less likely to be employed 14 years following high school and where working for pay earn less accounting directly for the labor force participation decision i also document a higher incidence of unemployment among these individuals furthermore i find evidence that negative attitudes and self esteem are associated with jobs later in life that require the individual to spend time working with things as opposed to people for example and that those who exhibit poor pre labor market attitude and self esteem are subsequently more closely supervised at work and given less discretion in their daily activities all told attitude and self esteem in youth are shown to have important and long lasting economic implications in the following section i briefly discuss related literatures specifically two areas of the literature are considered the effect of joblessness on self esteem and the relationship between other noncognitive skills or worker attributes and labor market outcomes section ii then introduces the data and methods used in investigating the relationships in question empirical results are reported in section iii and are followed by some discussion and concluding remarks i previous literature this article is closely related to two areas of existing literature first there exists a small body of literature that documents a relationship between labor market activity and self esteem however this literature has heretofore focused more on the damage of joblessness to an individual s perception of self worth than on the direction of causality considered here for example goldsmith et al 1995 1996a find relationships between contemporaneous joblessness and self esteem and historic joblessness and subsequent self esteem respectively arguably the causality between attitudes and jobless spells is not clearly in one direction or the other in this article i contribute clear evidence of the reverse causation causation running from attitude and self esteem to future labor market outcomes second there is a growing body of literature on the importance of noncognitive skills in wage determination this literature suggests that measures of aggression and withdrawal osborne 1999 individual motivation goldsmith et al 2000 behavioral problems in high school cawley et al 2001 one s locus of control or outlook on life goldsmith et al 1997b osborne 1999 bertrand and mullainathan 2001 coleman and deleire 2003 and mental health bartel and taubman 1979 1986 frank and gertler 1991 mullahy and sindelar 1993 each have predictive power with respect to wages that employer surveys suggest that attitude is highly valued alone leads one to anticipate that attitude be related to earnings

the japanese deflation has it had real effects could it have been avoided has deflation contributed to the long lasting stagnation of the japanese economy could the bank of japan have stopped deflation by implementing a more expansionary monetary policy tentative answers are probably not to the first question and probably yes to the second question it is found that the total cost of deflation over the period 1995 2003 has been close to a 1 1 rate of lost gdp yet on the basis of statistical significance and robustness to specification choices this evidence is not compelling on the other hand the estimated positive linkage between nominal base money growth and inflation is significant and robust even given current economic conditions however in order to be inflationary monetary policy should have been more expansionary than what actually observed even since the launch of the quantitative easing in 2001

fuelwood consumption and forest degradation a household model for domestic energy substitution in rural india this paper disusses domestic en ergy supply and demand in rural india links be tween forest scarcity and household fuel collec tion are analyzed in a non separable household model focusing on substitution of non commer cial fuels from the commons and the private do main based on data from villages bordering a protected area a novel maximum entropy ap proach is used for estimation it is found that households respond to forest scarcity and in creased fuelwood collection time by substituting fuels from private sources for forest fuelwood however the magnitude of the response appears insufficient to prevent current fuelwood collection practices from causing serious forest degrada tion jel q24

schools skills and synapses american society is polarizing proportionately more american youth are graduating from college than ever before at the same time american born youth are graduating from high school at lower rates than 40 years ago this paper reviews and interprets these trends the origins of inequality are examined and policies to alleviate it are analyzed families play a powerful role in shaping adult outcomes the accident of birth is a major source of inequality recent research by cunha and heckman 2007a 2008b shows that about half of the inequality in the present value of lifetime earnings is due to factors determined by age 18 compared to 50 years ago relatively more american children are being born into disadvantaged families where investments in children are smaller than in advantaged families policies that supplement the child rearing resources available to disadvantaged families reduce inequality and raise productivity

the intergenerational mobility of immigrants this article analyzes the intergenerational mobility of immigrants using the 1940 70 censuses the study reveals an important link between the earnings of immigrants and the earnings of their american born children although there is some regression toward the mean the earnings of second generation americans are strongly affected by variables describing economic conditions in the source countries of their parents current immigration policy therefore not only determines how immigrants perform in the labor market but also determines tomorrow s differences in the labor market experiences of american born ethnic groups

household fuel use in developing countries review of theory and evidence because of recent concerns about the negative externalities of traditional fuel use on the environment and health the issue of the household fuel transition in developing countries from dirty fuels towards clean fuels has received growing research attention this paper provides an up to date survey of the economic literature on household fuel use in these countries first we present the conceptual and theoretical frameworks then we discuss the empirical results that show how a wide range of factors drive the household fuel transition finally we suggest priorities for policy initiatives and highlight areas of future research

the economic progress of black women 1940 1980 occupational distribution and relative wages this paper uses census data on women s wages and occupations from the years 1940 80 to examine long term trends in black women s relative economic status the paper links black women s increased relative wages after 1940 to their entry especially after 1960 into occupations and industries in which they were previously unrepresented most notably factory jobs and clerical work the authors find little evidence that convergence in the characteristics of black and white women increasingly similar education for example is responsible for black women s increased relative wages and occupational status and conclude that black women s improved economic status after 1940 was largely due to decreases in racial discrimination by occupation and industry they also find that in the south racial discrimination had greater adverse effects on black women and began to decrease later than in the rest of the country

the price stability oriented monetary policy of the ecb an assessment the definition of price stability adopted by the ecb has recently been criticized in the literature particularly for being unable to fully anchor inflation expectations and creating a deflation risk in the paper empirical evidence is provided against these claims despite the unfavourable macroeconomic conditions for the euro area since 2001 monetary policy management has lead to the setting of the policy rate at levels compatible with trend inflation the long run inflation forecast in the range 1 3 and therefore without affecting negatively the inflation outlook

household energy elasticities and policy implications for pakistan abstract this study estimates fuel expenditure and price elasticities of household fuels in pakistan the burning of biomass is harmful to health and the environment and may cause preventable morbidity and mortality it is important to investigate how households fuel choices are linked to prices so that governments can consider appropriate steps to enhance the consumption of clean fuels using three pooled cross sectional surveys from pakistan and applying the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids model we found that all fuel types except natural gas were price inelastic at the national level and for urban households in rural areas natural gas and lpg were found to be more price elastic compared to urban areas simple policy simulations based on our results suggest that in order to reduce indoor air pollution by encouraging the adoption of clean fuels lpg and piped natural gas governments should subsidies clean fuels rather than imposing taxes on solid fuels moreover in the case of pakistan a subsidy for lpg should be preferred over a subsidy for piped natural gas as it produces a more cost effective reduction in solid fuel use

overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy the paper proposes three options for overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy a carry tax on money open market operations in long bonds and monetary transfers a variable carry tax on electronic bank reserves could enable a central bank to target negative nominal interest rates a carry tax could be imposed on currency to create more leeway to make interest rates negative quantitative policy monetary transfers and open market purchases of long bonds could stimulate the economy by creating liquidity broadly defined a central bank needs more fiscal support than usual from the treasury to pursue quantitative policy at the interest rate floor

the environmental impact of poverty evidence from firewood collection in rural nepal abstract we investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural nepal using 1995 96 and 2002 3 world bank living standards measurement survey lsms data we incorporate village fixed effects endogenous censoring measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of different household assets we find no evidence in favor of the poverty environment hypothesis the evidence for the environmental kuznets curve depends on the precise measure of living standards and time period studied firewood collections fall with a transition to modern occupations and rise with increasing population and household division the local interhousehold collection externality is negligible indicating that policy interventions are justified only by ecological considerations or nonlocal spillovers

the energy transition in action urban domestic fuel choices in a changing zimbabwe two questionnaire surveys of fuel use by low income households in zimbabwe were conducted in four small towns in 1994 and in these towns plus four larger towns in 1999 an energy transition from wood through kerosene to electricity occurred a with rising household income b with increasing electrification status among towns and c over time in the smaller towns in spite of falling household incomes in two of the towns increasing discrepancy in the incomes of higher and lower income groups over time was not associated with greater divergence in their fuel choices by 1999 electricity was used by almost all households in towns with good electricity supplies while use of firewood in these towns was infrequent however even the wealthiest households continued to combine electricity with other fuels usually kerosene electricity use by less affluent households is apparently limited by lack of connections in the home and by access to appliances while fuel prices which are subject to government subsidies and fell in real terms over 5 years have been less important zimbabwe s urban domestic energy policy has had considerable success in terms of equity but this is increasingly difficult to maintain given present economic and political uncertainty

effect of fuelwood scarcity and socio economic factors on household bio based energy use and energy substitution in rural ethiopia abstract in ethiopia biomass is predominantly utilized for household energy needs often using inefficient rudimentary stoves which cause adverse environmental and welfare effects this paper examined the contribution of biomass resources to rural household energy use and energy substitution the analysis applied the ordinary least square in the final stage estimation of fuelwood and overall biomass energy consumption by using predicted shadow prices the paper used tobit model to estimate charcoal and agricultural fuel consumption due to the presence of censoring an increase in fuelwood shadow price was associated with reduced household fuelwood consumption with price elasticity of 0 38 the cross price elasticity between fuelwood and agricultural fuels revealed no evidence of energy substitution which conforms to the findings of previous studies household access to electricity was associated with lower household biomass energy utilization but kerosene was not fuelwood substitute household energy use conformed to the fuel stacking or multiple fuel use concept but households preferred modern energy options as welfare increased in areas where modern energy is available this suggests that there is a promising prospect for fuel transition but access to modern energy and economic growth have key roles the findings suggest that a concerted policy effort is required that would help diversify rural livelihoods improve living standards and encourage economic growth encourage inter fuel substitution through improved modern energy access and afforestation to increase biomass supply

energy consumption in rural china a household model for three villages in jiangxi province abstract in china fuelwood and coal are the most important energy sources for rural households in poor areas along with population and economic growth excessive fuelwood collection is a major cause of deforestation burning coal contributes to environmental problems such as air pollution acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions the purpose of this article is to analyze factors determining choice of energy source and labor input into fuelwood collection in poor forest rich regions and to provide policy recommendations on ways to affect these choices to this end a nonseparable household model reflecting choices in labor allocation and energy demand of rural households is estimated from available data for three villages in a poor forest rich region in jiangxi province southeast china innovative aspects of this article are the analyses of factors driving household substitution between forest and non forest fuels and of dissimilarities in household responses under different market access conditions

economic growth and the rise of forests although forests have diminished globally over the past 400 years forest cover has increased in some areas including india in the last two decades aggregate time series evidence on forest growth rates and income growth across countries and within india and a newly assembled data set that combines national household survey data census data and satellite images of land use in rural india at the village level over a 29 year period are used to explore the hypothesis that increases in the demand for forest products associated with income and population growth lead to forest growth the evidence is consistent with this hypothesis which also shows that neither the expansion of agricultural productivity nor rising wages in india increased local forest cover

household energy preferences for cooking in urban ouagadougou burkina faso abstract an extensive survey on household expenditures in ouagadougou the capital of burkina faso was used to analyze the factors determining urban household energy choices using a multinomial logit model wood energy remains the preferred fuel of most urban households in the country though rational the choice is not sustainable as it portends a threat to the savanna woodlands and the economy many important policies have been adopted by public authorities to minimize household wood energy consumption and to substitute it by alternative fuel despite the magnitude of all these policies the depletion rate of the forest resource is increasing a kind of inertia is thus observed for household preferences for cooking fuel this model analyzes the sociological and economic variables of household energy preferences for cooking in ouagadougou the analyses show that the inertia of household cooking energy preferences are due to poverty factors such as low income poor household access to electricity for primary and secondary energy low house standard household size high frequency of cooking certain meals using woodfuel as cooking energy the descriptive analyses show that the domestic demand for wood energy is strongly related to household income the firewood utilization rate decreases with increasing household income in other words this fuel appears as a transition good for these households which aim for other sources of energy for cooking that are more adapted for urban consumption this implies that a price subsidy policy for liquid petroleum gas lpg and its cook stoves could significantly decrease the utilization rate of wood energy

application of an almost ideal demand system aids to ethiopian rural residential energy use panel data evidence abstract it is well known that poor rural households in low income economies are reliant on traditional fuels to meet basic domestic energy needs but little is known about the specific underlying socio economic drivers of residential fuel choices in ethiopia i used the linear approximation almost ideal demand system laaids with normalized prices to compute expenditure elasticity and a multinomial logit model mlm to examine household fuel use the laaids model result showed that expenditure was elastic for modern fuels but inelastic for traditional fuels regression results from the mlm indicated that fuel choice behaviour of rural households could be more accurately described as fuel stacking behaviour as opposed to the energy ladder hypothesis in rural areas household fuel choice may be constrained by limited access to commercial fuels and efficient cook stoves supply dependency and affordability consumer preferences and a web of other intricate factors rural households had less incentive for fuel switching due to underlying factors and the availability of fuel wood without direct financial cost with continued deforestation and receding forests households are expected to develop inter fuel substitution and switching behaviour conditional on access to modern energy technologies

inflation crises deflation and growth further evidence bruno and easterly 1998 provide a simple historical description of per capita gdp growth rates before during and after periods of high inflation crises the pattern of growth shows resurgence in after crisis growth to above the before crisis level the robustness of this finding is tested against justifiable changes in the data sample used and against different crisis definitions the results show that after crisis growth rates do not recover to a level above those experienced before crisis in contrast to bruno and easterly the important distinction between open and closed economies is emphasized only in the former case are their results that growth deviations from the world average after crisis improve relative to the before crisis periods confirmed finally the pattern of growth before during and after deflationary periods is analysed the data reveal a potentially important asymmetry in the correlation between deflation and growth and inflation and growth low rates of deflation are associated

the ethnic employment and income gap in sweden is skill or labor market discrimination the explanation this study uses a cognitive test score the swedish military enlistment test taken at age 18 to identify whether the ethnic employment and income gap in sweden is caused by a pre market skill gap and or ethnic discrimination the employment gap and income gap are estimated for males born in sweden with different ethnic backgrounds their parents were born in sweden or in southern europe or outside europe controlling for the cognitive test score does not affect the ethnic employment gap and for incomes the ethnic income gap almost disappears

woodfuels livelihoods and policy interventions changing perspectives in the 1970s it appeared that fuelwood use was growing rapidly and this could have major adverse impacts on the resource and poor users by the mid 1980s revised assessments indicated that there was less of a problem than had been foreseen and much less of a need for forestry interventions to maintain supplies as a result many of the latter were sharply scaled back additional information and analysis that has become available since the 1980s support the view that there is no need for large scale interventions devoted just to provision of fuelwood however declining access to supplies or markets can raise significant problems in some areas and for particular categories of user growing urban demand for charcoal can also cause local problems in particular in africa the potentials for appropriate forms of intervention are discussed

incentive enhancing preferences personality behavior and earnings suppose there is a principal agent relationship between employer and employee in which effort is not contractible but is elicited through employer incentive mechanisms we term preferences that allow the employer to elicit effort at lower cost incentive enhancing we analyze how such preferences affect earnings nd then provide evidence that one of the relevant behavioral traits efficacy as well as other psychological aspects of individuals are significant influences on earnings we conclude that measures of cognitive performance are not sufficient indicators of the effectiveness of schools in promoting student labor market success incentive enhancing preferences are irreducibly heterogeneous incentive enhancing preferences help explain the persistence of poverty over generations within families and unlike cognitive skills incentive enhancing traits need not be welfare increasing for their bearers

the great recession us dynamics and spillovers to the world economy abstract this paper provides an empirical investigation of both the within us and international channels of transmission of macroeconomic and financial shocks by means of a 50 country macroeconometric model estimated over the 1980 2009 period including measures of excess liquidity and financial fragility specifically designed in order to evaluate the relevance of the boom bust credit cycle view put forward as an interpretation of the recent great recession episode we find that such a view is consistent with the empirical evidence moreover concerning the real effects of financial shocks within the us we detect stronger evidence of an asset prices channel rather than a liquidity channel concerning the spillovers to the world economy we find that while financial disturbances are transmitted to foreign countries through us house and stock price dynamics as well as excess liquidity creation the trade channel is the key trasmission mechanism of real shocks

can the urban poor afford modern energy the case of ethiopia abstract comparing rough measures of costs of using modern fuels and purchasing power of the urban poor in ethiopia this article finds that while kerosene is relatively cheap even for the very poor electricity is extremely expensive even for the relatively well to do the upper stratum of the poor may have the purchasing power to access butane gas in addition the article examines the relevance of the energy ladder hypothesis generally both at the aggregate level and for individual urban areas the prediction from the hypothesis holds but our results indicate that the relevance of the hypothesis weakens on lower levels of aggregation implying significant inter city variations finally demand equations for each fuel are econometrically estimated and the elasticities are used to examine price and income effects the budget elasticities indicate that with economic growth the demand for traditional fuels will increase in addition the cross price elasticities show that increase in the price of a traditional fuel mainly shifts demand towards other traditional fuels rather than towards modern fuels this slows down the transition towards modern fuels the article concludes by presenting policy recommendations arising from the analysis

food versus fuel examining tradeoffs in the allocation of biomass energy sources to domestic and productive uses in ethiopia rural households in ethiopia have limited options to meet their domestic energy needs because they lack access to modern fuels and technologies domestic use of certain fuel sources such as cow dung can hinder agricultural outcomes and productivity this article explores the tradeoffs between domestic and productive uses of biomass energy sources in the nile basin of ethiopia using a nonseparable farm household model where labor allocation to energy collection and farming are analyzed simultaneously we estimate a system of five structural equations using three stage least squares and find that the use of dung as a domestic fuel source has negative implications for the value of harvested crops while use of on farm fuelwood is associated with increased value of agricultural output on farm production of fuelwood appears to increase the value of crop output and provide labor savings by making fuelwood collection more convenient for households policy interventions to support the expansion of agroforestry and increase access to new energy efficient technologies are needed to ensure that agricultural productivity can be both increased and sustained

on inflation and inflation uncertainty in the g7 countries abstract the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty is investigated in the g7 countries from 1948 to 1993 garch models are used to generate a measure of inflation uncertainty and then granger methods are employed to test the causality between average inflation and inflation uncertainty in all g7 countries inflation significantly raises inflation uncertainty as predicted by friedman and ball weaker evidence is found that inflation uncertainty granger causes inflation in three countries us uk and germany increased inflation uncertainty lowers inflation while in two countries japan and france increased inflation uncertainty raises inflation

psychological traits and earnings differentials among men a study of second generation immigrants in sweden the purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of psychological traits on earnings differentials between second generation immigrants and individuals with native born parents the study is base