competitive storage rational expectations and short run food price determination this paper demonstrates that lags between retail and wholesale food prices can be explained by inventory behavior of retailers theoretical considerations indicate that the markup model should be modified to include a jorgenson type user cost variable which depends on expected future wholesale price the rational expectations hypothesis is used to derive price expectations the retail price specification therefore depends on the stochastic process generating expected wholesale price the econometric methodology employing both causality testing and nonlinear estimation is illustrated by estimating monthly price relationships for beef the results are consistent with the theory and indicate rejection of the markup model

discrete equilibrium price dispersion an explicit solution of an equilibrium model with price setting firms and searching customers makes possible a number of comparativestatics predictions about how cost differences among firms search costs of customers and taxes will affect the mean and variance of the distribution of market prices another implication of the model is that a firm s demand depends on the difference between its price and the average price in the market

the past decade s natural rate and the dynamics of german unemployment a case against demand policy this paper attempts to highlight some recent cyclical and structural aspects of the german labor market moreover whenever possible the results of our analysis are compared with findings for the u s labor market finally policy implications which may be inferred from our study are discussed at some length research on unemployment may draw attention to at least two different but not mutually exclusive problems the cyclical movement of unemployment gives rise to concern about the amount of the unemployment rate that can be reduced by aggregate demand policy only at the cost of an accelerating inflation rate the relevant question is whether this unemployment rate has been constant during the last decade or whether it has been subject to exogenous shocks such as the oil price explosion and the productivity slowdown with this knowledge the policy maker can be advised as to what extent an expansive demand policy is an appropriate tool for achieving lower rates of unemployment without facing an accelerating inflation rate and moreover why the reduction of inflation in the seventies by restrictive demand management might cost more unemployment than in the sixties the latter query calls in question some economic policy measures in the seventies macroeconomic policy may not be able to make oil cheaper but can try to mitigate adverse secondary effects on aggregate output and employment but a recovery will not make the problem of unemployment simply disappear evenly for everyone the analysis of aggregate unemployment is silent about which group of the labor force shoulders the main burden of unemployment and is more likely to suffer from extreme low escape probabilities from unemployment if the notion of a hard core of unemployed

normal costs and demand effects in price setting a study of retailing the study aims at contributing to the debate whether there are demand effects in models that seek to explain prices as mark ups on costs for costs it considers actual costs normal costs and an intermediate model with a partial adjustment to the deviation of actual from normal costs for demand effects it considers an effect on the price level of a change of demand with an allowance for asymmetry between demand growth and demand decline tests and estimates are conducted on the basis of data from retailing

farm size and the determinants of productive efficiency in the brazilian center west this paper explores the determinants of technical efficiency and the relationship between farm size and efficiency in the center west of brazil this is the region where agricultural production and total factor productivity have grown the fastest since 1970 it is also a region characterised by unusually large farms technical efficiency is studied with data envelopment analysis and county level data disaggregated by farm size and type of land tenure the efficiency measure is regressed on a set of explanatory variables which includes farm size type of land tenure composition of output access to institutions and indicators of technology and input usage the relationship between farm size and efficiency is found to be non linear with efficiency first falling and then rising with size type of land tenure access to institutions and markets and modern inputs are found to be important determinants of the differences in efficiency across farms

price smoothing and inventory this paper explains the phenomenon of price rigidity or price smoothing as the outcome of the optimal inventory policy of a multi period profit maximizing firm under demand and output uncertainties price smoothing may be manifested in two forms first price changes may be moderated with respect to those implied by the demand function and second the firm may choose to restrict price fluctuations by establishing upper and or lower bounds on prices we show that the extent of the asymmetry in price smoothing depends on the relationship between the inventory holding cost and the backlog penalty cost our model accommodates a wide range

the impact of demand and price expectations on the behavior of prices the effects of demand and price expectations on price behavior are analyzed using data from the manufacturing sector and a model formulated to pinpoint the demand oriented factors affecting prices and to incorporate price expectations as a direct influence on price behavior the expected normal demand is seen to have a strong and systemic influence on price behavior the expected normal level of new orders is found to be an adequate measure with sector data in general although some industries require more specification the effects of inventories and unfilled orders on prices are sporadic and across sectors and industries demand oriented forces are concluded to perform as well statistically as cost push determinants expectations concerning the current normal industry price level have a significant and consistent impact on price behavior this supports the idea that firms setting prices take into account their estimates of competitor s prices future price expectations appear to have little effect on current price information 15 references

oil development operating cost estimates 1955 1985 abstract few if any published oil production cost estimates can be verified as to method and basic data using us drilling costs and some assumptions explained in the text this paper estimates development operating costs in 41 oil producing nations from 1955 to 1985 from publicly available data on drilling estimation methods are described in detail so that anyone with access to better information on any item can substitute it to arrive at a better estimate

an evaluation of excess demand actual cost and normal cost pricing hypotheses using non nested tests this paper has emperically analyzed three versions zero lag geometric lag and almon lag of three price change hypotheses namely the excess demand actual cost and the normal cost hypothesis the goal being to select the hypothesis that describes the underlying price dynamics for manufactured goods the rival models are specified as non nested alternatives and each version is estimated by using an efficient estimator the traditional discrimination criteria which clearly reject the zero lag version are found to be impotent in discriminating between the dynamic versions of the models a sequential cross evaluation of the two dynamic versions using both pairwise and multiple non nested hypothesis tests proposed by davidson and mackinnon reveals a systematic domination by the almon version of normal cost pricing over both the excess demand and the actual cost pricing mechanisms in the canadian manufacturing sector during the period 1961 1 87 4 this result is robust under alternative specifications of th

adjustment lags economically rational expectations and price behavior source and the extent of lags in the response of prices to changes in various explanatory variables knowledge of the relevant lag patterns is of obvious importance for forecasting movements in prices and for formulating policies that are designed to reduce the rate of inflation in the recent empirical literature on prices the model most commonly used to specify price equations is the static neo classical model of price formation 1 this model presumes that the representative firm behaves as if it were a simple monopolist that faces competitive factor input markets the firm is assumed to set its price so as to maximize current profits the model yields the proposition that the firm s long run optimal price depends on expected normal factor input prices and variables e g expected real income that shift the firm s demand curve lags are introduced into the pricing process of this model in two ways some authors2 focus on expectation formation lags whereby normal factor input prices or variables that shift the firm s demand curve are related through distributed lags to past values of the variable being forecast often the distributed lag is assumed to be

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 future of uk final user energy demand anticipation of final user energy demand is central to suppliers and policy makers plans recent developments in dynamic econometrics such as the cointegration approach have enabled energy modellers to study long run relationships between demand and its determinants principally economic activity and real prices the purpose of this paper is to present the seecem output elasticity estimates and forecasts using the cointegration approach as well as the methodology and analysis underlying them as economic activity is expected to grow in all but the iron and steel sector the long run relationships indicate that most sectors will increase overall fuel use up to the year 2000 despite weak but potentially volatile world oil prices and given stable environmental policies average real oil prices should remain broadly constant except in the transport sector economic activity elasticities and increased competition in supply industries imply that natural gas and electricity are likely to take an increasing share of final user requirements at the expense of petroleum products and coal this gradual and continued shift towards cleaner fuels is likely to ameliorate adverse environmental consequences resulting from the overall growth in final user fuel demand

the output inflation relationship abstract this paper shows how the optimal pricing and production policy of a multiperiod profit maximizing firm under demand and output disturbances leads in the aggregate to a positive relationship between production and price deviations from the expected level as depicted by the lucas type supply function the pricing and production decisions are made simultaneously by market agents who base their decisions on the same rational expectations before the disturbances are realized here although the planned production is not affected by the price deviations there is still a contemporaneous positive relationship between them where both production and prices reflect the firm s adjustment to unexpected levels of inventory we show that this positive relationship prevails even when the production decisions are made ex ante based only on expectations before the realization of the random shocks a closed form linear approximation for the supply function is derived which captures the effect of both systematic and unsystematic economic disturbances finally we present an empirical test which supports our assertion that our inventory adjustment mechanism contributes to the creation of the positive relationship between production and price deviations

production smoothing in the japanese vehicle industry abstract physical data from the japanese vehicle industry covering monthly observations from 1985 1 to 1994 12 are investigated across nine goods ranging from bicycles to large buses smaller variance of production is found relative to sales across all goods for unadjusted data and in 17 out of 18 cases for seasonally adjusted data such evidence in favor of the production smoothing model psm is confirmed by full information maximum likelihood employed jointly on inventories and sales equations the estimates suggest the industry operates in the range of increasing marginal costs in six out of nine goods positive costs of being away from targeted inventory are also present in six out of these nine goods which make the psm a good description of this industry

the determination of oil prices 1945 1995 the paper provides a theoretical framework to explain the determination of international oil prices based upon the interaction of supply and demand curves the analysis of components of the framework identifies important characteristics of the global market for crude oil the paper applies the framework to the oil market from 1945 in particular it incorporates key changes in the market to enhance understanding of how the market has been and is working finally the framework is used to explain why oil prices have become more volatile and what issues and questions arise from current oil market behaviour

spatial price transmission and asymmetry in the ghanaian maize market abstract this paper utilizes recently developed threshold cointegration tests that allow for asymmetric adjustment toward a long run equilibrium relationship to examine price linkages between principal maize markets in ghana unlike previous studies the approach employed here assumes that economic agents only act to move the system back to equilibrium when the deviation from equilibrium exceeds a critical threshold whereby the benefits of this adjustment exceed the costs the findings indicate that major maize markets in ghana are well integrated both the threshold cointegration and asymmetric error correction models reveal that wholesale maize prices in local markets accra and bolgatanga respond more swiftly to increases than to decreases in central market techiman prices accra prices are found to react faster than bolgatanga prices to changes in techiman market prices

investment in finished goods inventories an analysis of adjustment speeds it is well known that fluctuations in inventory investment are a major source of fluctuations in gross national product this has stimulated numerous empirical studies designed to understand the causes of changes in inventory investment these studies include those for example michael lovell that utilize a flexible accelerator model of inventory behavior as well as those for example david belsley that utilize the linear decision rule approach to optimal inventory holding the latter approach however can be interpreted in terms of a flexible accelerator model see j c r rowley and p k trivedi for a survey of the literature recently several authors for example martin feldstein and alan auerbach observed that these studies yield very implausible empirical results the basic difficulty is that the estimates of the speed with which firms close gaps between desired and actual inventory stocks are very low often the estimated speed of adjustment is less than 10 percent per quarter as feldstein and auerbach stress this is extremely implausible when even the largest swings in inventories in a given quarter amount to less than one day s production the purpose of this paper is to undertake an analysis of adjustment speeds for finished goods inventory investment in our empirical work we utilize a modified flexible accelerator model of inventory investment 1 like the conventional flexible accelerator the model permits firms to close a fraction of the gap between desired and actual inventories in any period the relevant fraction is of course the adjustment coefficient and it may vary in principle between zero and unity our model differs from the conventional model in assuming that the desired stock of finished goods inventories depends on the normal levels of exogenous variables that firms must forecast to make decisions on inventory holdings these include not only the normal level or orders or demand which is a standard explanatory variable in the empirical literature but also the normal levels of real factor input prices and real interest rates in addition we permit the normal levels to change relatively slowly in response to changes in past levels of orders real factor input prices and real interest rates our objective is to investigate whether the slow adjustment speeds that have been estimated in the literature are due to the use of models which contain an incomplete menu of exogenous variables to determine desired inventories and pay inadequate attention to lags in the adjustment of normal levels of exogenous variables

cost savings and activity levels in the ukcs a positive sum game abstract declining production in mature fields relatively small sizes of new fields the fall in oil prices and the high tax takes in old fields have combined to squeeze profit margins on petroleum exploitation in the ukcs achieved reductions in development and operating costs can help to sustain activity levels over the next two decades contractors as well as oil companies and the nation generally will benefit from the substantial number of induced extra field developments achieved from cost savings of 20

the effects of changing input costs on food prices the relationships between changes in food sector input costs and retail food prices are examined results indicate that increases in factor prices pass quickly to consumers within two quarters for most foods in addition rising farm level prices and substantial increases in nonfarm resource prices appear to explain why food prices rose more rapidly than nonfood prices in the 1970s the analysis is based on a twenty equation econometric model of the food price determination process specified following popkin s stage of processing approach causality and validation test statistics for the model are presented

determinants of price adjustment this paper reports results of an empirical study investigating the adjustment speed of prices to change in costs and demand particular emphasis is laid on the impact of concentration on the adjustment speed in addition the effects of the business cycle and capital intensity are considered it shows that concentrated industries tend to adjust prices faster while capital intensity has a negative impact prices are more flexible during an upswing than in times of a recession

monopolistic competition aggregation of competitive information and the amount of product differentiation consider an industry with a large number of homogeneous firms each firm s profits are a function of its own strategy and the strategies the other firms select suppose other firms strategies enter into each firm s profit function only through one or more statistics for example average price in the market may parameterize every firm s profit function we prove that as a general rule the industry s firms will in equilibrium follow at most m 1 distinct strategies where m is the number of statistics by which competitors strategies affect each firm s profits

oil prices the start of an era abstract the paper argues that the international oil market has recently experienced fundamental changes which could well result in a significant discontinuity leading to much lower prices and consequent instability the paper develops an analytical framework to explain how oil prices are determined it then considers the future prospects for the various factors and driving forces which will influence future price it outlines in what way the oil market environment has altered and then considers two consequences of this new environment the volatility of oil prices and their absolute level

target buffer stocks the behaviour of a buffer stock holding firm facing stationary demand shocks is considered from the viewpoint of recent evidence on inventories and price setting attention is focussed on the responses of price and supply to changes in autonomous demand and compared with those of a nondurable producer the results conflict with recent theoretical work in providing support for a keynesian interpretation of inventory series

inventory adjustment and dynamic winery behavior this paper develops a dynamic model of processor behavior which is applied to the california wine industry price production and input demand functions are derived from an optimal control model which takes into account inventory growth from aging and the linkage between product inventories and input purchases an important feature of the model is that expected future market conditions and beginning inventories influence current behavior through changes in the inventory shadow price the empirical results generally conform to the theoretical specification and emphasize the role of demand expectations on winery behavior

on the theory of the firm underlying empirical models of aggregate price behavior recent empirical work on aggregate and industrial price behavior has been conducted within the framework of a static neo classical theory of price formation 2 the purpose of this paper is to propose a more general theoretical framework for analyzing price behavior the proposed framework is neo classical in its basic characteristics but unlike the recent literature it is based on a dynamic theory of firm behavior in which decisions on price inventories and the capital stock are integrated to serve as a basis for comparison with the model developed here it is useful to state briefly the main propositions of the static neo classical model the model presumes that the typical firm behaves as if it were a simple monopolist that faces competitive factor input markets and sets its price so as to maximize current profits assuming a log linear demand function and production function the model yields the result that the firm s long run optimal price policy in general is

price and output adjustment in a model with inventories econometric evidence from categorical in this paper we investigate the role of inventories in the adjustment process of prices and output in response to demand and cost shocks using the qualitative information contained in business surveys of u k firms the discussion is organized around a model based on the assumption of monopolistic competition and which permits a production smoothing role for inventories the econometric results suggest that the stock of inventories has no impact on output decisions the effect on pricing decisions is weak at best anticipated demands shocks are the main factor accounting for output changes while both cost and demand shocks are important determinants of prices coauthors are fabio schiantarelli jon breslaw and william low copyright 1993 by mit press