public goods in networks this paper considers incentives to provide goods that are non excludable along social or geographic links we find first that networks can lead to specialization in public good provision in every social network there is an equilibrium where some individuals contribute and others free ride in many networks this extreme is the only outcome second specialization can benefit society as a whole this outcome arises when contributors are linked collectively to many agents finally a new link increases access to public goods but reduces individual incentives to contribute hence overall welfare can be higher when there are holes in a network

are there civic returns to education abstract the hypothesized effects of educational attainment on adult civic engagement and attitudes provide some of the most important justifications for government intervention in the market for education in this study i present evidence on whether these externalities exist i assess and implement two strategies for identifying the effects of educational attainment one is based on the availability of junior and community colleges the other on changes in teen exposure to child labor laws the results suggest that educational attainment has large and statistically significant effects on subsequent voter participation and support for free speech i also find that additional schooling appears to increase the quality of civic knowledge as measured by the frequency of newspaper readership

corporate sustainability reporting index and baseline data for the cruise industry sustainability policies and corporate reports demonstrate the impacts cruise companies acknowledge as their responsibility and the actions put in place to address them this paper develops a corporate social responsibility index based on the global reporting initiative with industry specific additions including labor and human rights health and safety and environmental and economic aspects companies disclose more management than performance data which is typical of early stages of development companies disclosing less information focus on soft indicators which are easy to mimic and demonstrate posturing items disclosed tend to be marginal to the core of the business have a positive economic impact or pre empt sector regulation reports echo the voice of the corporations and not the demands of stakeholders institutional isomorphism has not influenced a homogenization in reporting with only the largest firms reporting at this stage

social spillovers in the classroom identification estimation and policy analysis i present a method to jointly estimate social spillovers in the classroom and the distributions of teacher and student effects this method is based on the covariance and higher order moments restrictions of the test scores requiring the random assignment of teachers and students to classrooms using the tennessee project star dataset i estimate sizeable spillovers in kindergarten classrooms and departures from normality of the teacher and student ability distributions the estimates also show that reducing class size has a positive effect on mean performance but it increases the inequality based on these estimates i perform several input neutral policy counterfactuals involving teachers and students assignment rules and changing the distribution of class sizes for the latter i derive an optimal class size distribution rule which increases mean test scores and reduces the overall variance

international trade and business cycles is vertical specialization the missing link within academic and policy circles it is a given that international trade is important in transmitting business cycles from one country to another most analyses of the effects of the 1997 1998 asia currency crisis on the world economy focused on the trade linkages between the asian crisis countries and the rest of the world with mounting evidence of a slowdown in u s growth questions have already been raised about the effect of a reduction in u s imports on emerging economies indeed the metaphor when the u s sneezes europe catches a cold is often invoked to highlight the importance of these linkages recent empirical research has reaffirmed the above wisdom by finding that pairs of countries with stronger international trade linkages tend to have more highly correlated business cycles the goal of this paper is to examine whether these findings can be explained by standard international business cycle models we focus on the model by david backus et al 1994 which is the workhorse two good internationalbusiness cycle model in the backus et al 1994 model trade is induced by an armington aggregator which combines domestic and foreign intermediate goods to produce the final good while the aggregator has the drawback of forcing the specialization pattern to be determined in advance flying in the face of trade theory it has been very useful in quantitative and empirical applications we add transportation costs to the model in order to be consistent with the empirical research frankel and rose 1998 clark and van wincoop 2001 which deals with the endogeneity of trade by employing instrumental variables such as distance and adjacency we simulate the model and compute the effect of different transportation costs different trade intensities on the correlation of business cycles our main result is that the standard international business cycle model cannot deliver results that are quantitatively consistent with the recent empirical work in a world of fully integrated asset markets the model delivers a qualitatively counterfactual result as high trade intensity is associated with lower businesscycle correlations under portfolio autarky the model delivers increased correlations as trade intensity increases but the increased correlation is only a fraction of what it is in the data we then introduce the idea that an increasing amount of trade is vertical or fragmented countries increasingly specialize in particular stages of a good s production sequence as opposed to producing the entire good allowing for more of this back and forth trade might lead to greater business cycle correlation responsiveness to stronger trade ties however we find that adding the simplest form of vertical specialization to the model also falls short

on the empirics of social capital this paper critically examines the way in which empirical evidence is developed in support of a role for social capital in socioeconomic outcomes three leading studies of social capital are reviewed and in each case argued to suffer from various identification problems a general set of conditions under which social capital effects may be identified in linear models is given careful attention to these conditions combined with greater openmindedness as to what constitutes appropriate evidence seems the best route to improving empirical studies of social capital

measuring world business cycles using kalman filtering and dynamic factor analysis the authors decompose aggregate output consumption and investment for the g7 countries into factors that are 1 common across all countries and aggregates 2 common across aggregates within a country and 3 specific to each individual aggregate in quarterly data for the period 1970 through 1993 fluctuations in all aggregates contain world and country specific common components that are both statistically significant and quantitatively important the authors find that the world and country specific common components play different roles in different business cycle episodes for each of the seven countries and that either may be dominant during a particular episode copyright 1997 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

segregation in friendship networks we analyze a network formation model where agents belong to different communities both individual benefits and costs depend on direct as well as indirect connections benefits of an indirect connection decrease with distance in the network while the cost of a link depends on the type of agents involved two agents from the same community always face a low linking cost while the cost of forming a relationship between two agents from different communities diminishes with the rate of exposure of each of them to the other community we find that socialization among the same type of agent can be weak even if the cost of maintaining links within one s own type is very low our model also suggests that policies aimed at reducing segregation are socially desirable only if they reduce the within community cost differential by a sufficiently large amount

sustainability in mining minerals and energy new processes pathways and human interactions for a cautiously optimistic future the supply of minerals and energy is critical to global society however this supply is associated with social and environmental impacts leading to concerns of generational and intergenerational equity in light of these concerns a call for papers for a special volume on the mining industry was issued with the view that such academic work could assist in reducing the negative impacts associated with this industry this paper introduces the special volume the sustainability agenda of the minerals and energy supply and demand network an integrative analysis of ecological ethical economic and technological dimensions the special volume contains 84 articles divided into several themes sustainability accounting and reporting corporate social responsibility future mining challenges integrative frameworks for sustainability management aspects mining in a developing context and new frontiers in the oil and gas industry the special volume also includes two letters on contemporary issues with commentaries on these from experts in the fields viz community conflict and land rehabilitation insights obtained across these themes are summarized and recommendations are made of what is needed to build upon the findings of this special volume a research agenda is proposed for the future from the gaps and synergies identified the overall contribution of this special volume is that it renews the debate on the sustainability challenges for the mining industry and provides transdisciplinary insights into resolving some of these challenges

does education improve citizenship evidence from the united states and the united kingdom abstract many studies document an association between schooling and civic participation but none credibly investigate causal links we explore the effect of extra schooling induced through compulsory schooling laws on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the united states and the united kingdom we find that educational attainment is related to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries we find a strong and robust relationship between education and voting for the united states but not for the united kingdom our us results approach the uk findings when conditioning on registration possibly indicating that registration rules present a barrier to participation

one money one market the effect of common currencies on trade currency unions their dramatic effect on international trade a gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade the panel data bilateral observations for five years during 1970 90 covering 186 countries includes 300 observations in which both countries use the same currency i find a large positive effect of a currency union on international trade and a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility even after controlling for a host of features including the endogenous nature of the exchange rate regime these effects statistically significant imply that two countries sharing the same currency trade three times as much as they would with different currencies currency unions like the european emu may thus lead to a large increase in international trade with all that that entails andrew rose

peer effects in endogenous networks abstract this paper presents a model of strategic network formation with local complementarities in effort levels and positive local externalities results are obtained for a general class of payoff functions which subsumes the linear quadratic specification frequently used in theoretical and applied work we assume homogeneous agents and characterize equilibria for two sided and one sided link formation pairwise nash equilibrium networks are nested split graphs which are a strict subset of core periphery networks we highlight the relevance of the convexity of the value function for obtaining these structures more central agents are shown to exert more effort and obtain higher gross payoffs in equilibrium however net of linking cost central agents may obtain strictly lower net payoffs the curvature of the value function is also important for efficiency considerations these findings are relevant for many social and economic phenomena such as educational attainment criminal activity labor market participation and r d expenditures of firms

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

sustainability reporting among mining corporations a constructive critique of the gri approach abstract the environmental crisis is giving rise to growing public demand for socially responsible and ecologically viable mining practices large mining corporations are responding by advancing the idea of a sustainable mining industry these responses are accompanied by concerted efforts to advertise a company s relative progress in this direction through the publication of sustainability reports based on the global reporting initiative gri framework many scholars contest the effectiveness of that framework arguing that gri based reports can mislead decision makers who are concerned with sustainability or even camouflage unsustainable practices particularly at the site level few scholars however have scratched below the surface of criticism in order to consider how to improve the effectiveness of that framework this article takes a closer look at this problem by answering the following question what needs to be changed in mining corporations gri based frameworks for the purpose of promoting more meaningful and reliable sustainability performance information this article followed a qualitative methodological approach based on literature reviews and 41 semi structured interviews the analysis was guided by an evaluation of the extent to which the predominant gri based approach to sustainability reporting meets a number of principles of sustainability assessment and reporting known as the bellagiostamp principles this paper outlines a number of specific changes that should be promoted in mining corporations frameworks if their reports are to provide meaningful and accurate information about sustainability progress such changes include a more systematic consideration of site level performance scenario building and legacy effects overall this article corroborates the view that meaningful and reliable standardized disclosures of contributions to sustainability are unlikely to emerge any time soon the geographical dispersion of mining facilities imposes substantial difficulties to the contextualization of sustainability evaluations

assigning firm level ghge reductions based on national goals mathematical model empirical evidence abstract the so called paris agreement signed by 195 countries has led to the setting of some ambitious target reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by most developed countries the over arching goal of those reduction targets is to limit global warming to less than 2oc compared to pre industrial levels yet despite these commitments from the highest governance levels there is still no deterministic model on how these national target reductions will be cascaded down to the commercial sector which accounts for the lion s share of these emissions in this paper we present a novel framework which enables the setting measurement and tracking of the emissions performance of every commercial entity based on a single metric we further present empirical evidence from the automotive industry to illustrate how the model helps to readily identify the low versus high performers the model also reveals one car company that stands out as the industry benchmark by already exceeding the performance required by the 2025 emissions target set by the us the model proves successful in achieving the objectives of being science based goal driven equitable comparable and actionable and as such can be readily used to accurately compare competitors from the same industry and provide the basis of a more equitable performance based carbon tax market as well as the ability to assess accurately how well a specific country is meeting its reduction quota and how the various industry sectors are impacting that goal

cyclical and causal patterns of inflation and gdp growth empirical foundations for the view that high inflation impairs gdp growth are examined using annual data for 115 countries over the period 1960 1995 taking into account country heterogeneity and time specific symmetric shocks as well as endogeneity of inflation and dynamics of gdp growth dynamic panel data models of the effects of inflation on growth are estimated no evidence is found supporting the view that inflation is in general harmful to gdp growth on the other hand there is a negative correlation between contemporaneous intra country inflation and growth for periods characterized by positive oil price shocks

global output growth and volatility spillovers this article examines discernable patterns of real gross domestic product gdp growth co movements across 29 countries using consistent time series data 1912 2008 of these countries only 12 are found to form three statistically significant groupings i e g6 six organization for economic co operation and development oecd european countries g4 four anglo saxon countries and g2 two major asian countries one may then conclude that inter alia geographical proximity cultural ties and the level of socio economic and financial ties among countries determine the global systematic co movements of growth rates our results indicate that any recession in the us initially engulfs other anglo saxon countries as well as g6 and g2 countries before exerting its adverse knock on effects to the rest of the world a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity mgarch model is also used to examine the transmission of gdp growth across these three groups and their corresponding vol

endogenous job contact networks we use the uk quarterly labour force survey to document the presence of two phenomena first a positive correlation between unemployment rate and the proportion of job seekers who use social networks to nd jobs network use second a non monotone relation between unemployment rate and the proportion of recently employed workers who found their job through friends or relatives network productivity this second relation is positive for low levels of unemployment rate while it becomes negative for high levels of unemployment rate existing models of social networks and labor market generally assume that social networks are exogenous this assumption implies a negative correlation between unemployment rate and network productivity we develop a model where social networks are used to collect job oers but workers decide strategically how much to invest in their network we show that equilibrium job contact networks are dense and more productive in transmitting information when labor market turnover is moderate while they are less productive and segmented into clusters for either high or low turnover the equilibrium response of job contact networks to changes in labor market conditions is sucient to generate

social networking and individual outcomes beyond the mean field case we study individually optimized continuous outcomes in a dynamic environment in the presence of social interactions and where the interaction topology may be either exogenous and time varying or endogenous the model accommodates more general social effects than those of the mean field type we address endogenous networking by assuming that each individual chooses the weights she attaches to the characteristics and the decisions of other agents this amounts to choosing the elements of a row of a weighted adjacency matrix endogenous social networking thus involves simultaneity between decisions and patterns of directed social interactions

the system boundaries of sustainability abstract the energy systems of the western industrialized nations have passed through different stages of development and fundamental energy crises over the course of their history 14th 18th and the end of the 20th century these crises have contributed decisively to the transformation of the energy system and of european societies the various historical energy systems their system boundaries and the restrictions resulting from them have decisively influenced the opportunities for development in european societies based upon this knowledge the question arises as to what energy system boundaries a future sustainability strategy will have to deal with the different sustainability concepts strong and weak sustainability imply different system boundaries for an energy system aiming at sustainable development climate change the design of the future energy system and the finiteness of the fossil energy system are the restrictions for the future energy system hence the boundaries of the sustainability system are determined by four dimensions based on the finiteness of the fossil energy system the development of a post fossil energy system the problem of climate change and the chosen sustainability paradigm this sustainability approach could enable sustainable development opportunities for the present generation without affecting the welfare of future generations

explaining u shape of the referral hiring pattern in a search model with heterogeneous workers this paper presents a search model with heterogeneous workers social networks and endogenous search intensity there are three job search channels costly formal applications and two costless informal channels through family and professional networks our model explains a u shape referral hiring pattern observed in empirical studies and a strong selection of workers on productivity across the three channels moreover combining family and professional referrals into one informal channel may generate a spurious result of wage premiums penalties if high low productivity workers are dominating in the empirical data and their productivity is not fully observable to the econometrician

social interactions and spillovers the aim of this paper is to provide a tractable model where both socialization or network formation and productive efforts can be analyzed simultaneously this permits a full fledged equilibrium welfare analysis of network formation with endogenous productive efforts and heterogeneous agents we show that there exist two stable interior equilibria which we can pareto rank the socially efficient outcome lies between these two equilibria when the intrinsic returns to production and socialization increase all equilibrium actions decrease at the pareto superior equilibrium while they increase at the pareto inferior equilibrium in both cases the percentage change in socialization effort is higher in absolute value than that of the productive effort

the implications of labor market network for business cycles we embed a frictional labor market with formal and informal search in an rbc model even in a model with exogenous search effort the interaction between formal and informal network search methods can help in generating more volatility in unemployment

a strategic model of social and economic networks we study the stability and efficiency of social and economic networks when self interested individuals can form or sever links first for two stylized models we characterize the stable and efficient networks there does not always exist a stable network that is efficient next we show that this tension persists generally to assure that there exists a stable network that is efficient one is forced to allocate resources to nodes that are not responsible for any of the production we characterize one such allocation rule the equal split rule and another rule that arises naturally from bargaining of the players

competing for attention in social communication markets we investigate the incentives for social communication in the new social media technologies three features of online social communication are represented in the model first new social media platforms allow for increased connectivity i e they enable sending messages to many more receivers for the same fixed cost compared to traditional word of mouth second users contribute content because they derive status or image based utility from being listened to by their peers third we capture the role of social differentiation or how social distance between people affects their preferences for messages in the model agents endogenously decide whether to be a sender of information and then compete for the attention of receivers an important point of this paper is that social communication incentives diminish even as the reach or the span of communication increases as the span of communication increases competition between senders for receiver attention becomes more intense resulting in senders com

currency unions and international integration this paper characterizes the integration patterns of international currency unions such as the cfa franc zone we empirically explore different features of currency unions and compare them to countries with sovereign monies by examining the criteria for mundellos concept of an optimum currency area we find that members of currency unions are more integrated than countries with their own currencies for instance we find that currency union members have more trade and less volatile real exchange rates than countries with their own monies business cycles are more highly synchronized across currency union countries than across countries with sovereign monies

formal and informal job search i develop a model where workers decide how hard to look for a job via formal and informal search channels the intensity of formal search determines an individual s arrival rate of offers the strength of investment in informal search translates into a job contact network in which job offers are transmitted there are two equilibria one with high formal search and one with high informal search the former pareto dominates the latter