exchange rate pass through and the welfare effects of the euro this article explores the implications of the european single currency within a simple sticky price intertemporal model we focus on the question of how the euro may change the sensitivity of consumer prices in europe to exchangerate changes our central conjecture is that the acceptance of the euro will lead european prices to become more insulated from exchange rate volatility we find that this affects both the volatility and levels of macroeconomic aggregates in both the u s and europe we find that european welfare is enhanced and the u s shares in europe s good fortune

how do fiscal and technology shocks affect real exchange rates new evidence for the united states abstract using vector autoregressions on u s time series relative to an aggregate of industrialized countries this paper provides new evidence on the dynamic effects of government spending and technology shocks on the real exchange rate and the terms of trade to achieve identification we derive robust restrictions on the sign of several impulse responses from a two country general equilibrium model we find that both the real exchange rate and the terms of trade whose responses are left unrestricted depreciate in response to expansionary government spending shocks and appreciate in response to positive technology shocks

tastes and technology in a two country model of the business cycle explaining international trade on international financial markets allows people to insure country specific risk and smooth consumption intertemporally equilibrium models of business cycles with trade on global financial markets typically yield international consumption correlations near one and excessive volatility of investment the authors incorporate nontraded goods in the model and find that the implications for aggregate consumption investment and the trade balance are consistent with business cycle properties of industrialized countries however the model driven by technology shocks alone yields counterfactual implications for comovements between consumption and prices at the sectoral level taste shocks produce price quantity relationships more consistent with the data copyright 1995 by american economic association

trying to explain home bias in equities and consumption investors hold a substantially larger proportion of their wealth portfolios in domestic assets than standard portfolio theory would suggest a phenomenon called equity home bias in the absence of this bias investors would optimally diversify domestic output risk using foreign equities therefore consumption growth rates would tend to co move across countries even when output growth rates do not empirically however consumption growth rates tend to have a lower correlation across countries than do output growth rates a phenomenon i call consumption home bias in this paper i discuss these two biases and their potential relationship as suggested by the literature

the exchange rate pass through to import and export prices the role of nominal rigidities and currency choice abstract using both regression and var based estimates the paper finds that the exchange rate pass through to import prices for a large number of countries is incomplete and larger than the pass through to export prices previous studies have reported similar results which give rise to the puzzle that while local currency pricing is needed to account for incomplete import price pass through it would not imply a lower export price pass through recent explanations of this puzzle have emphasized markup adjustment in response to exchange rate changes this paper suggests an alternative explanation based on the presence of both producer and local currency pricing using a dynamic general equilibrium model the paper shows that a mix of producer and local currency pricing can explain the pass through evidence even with a constant markup the model can also explain the observed variability of key variables as well as the fact that the regression and var estimates tend to be similar

optimal monetary policy responses to relative price changes abstract an optimizing model with a flexible price sector and a sticky price sector is presented to analyze the effects of relative price changes on inflation fluctuations the relative price of the flexible price good represents a shift parameter of the new keynesian phillips curve the optimal monetary policy is to target sticky price inflation rather than a broad inflation measure although stabilizing the relative price around its efficient value is one of the appropriate goals of the central bank stabilizing sticky price inflation is sufficient for achieving this goal an optimal monetary policy for a small open economy is also discussed

openness and optimal monetary policy abstract we show that the composition of international trade has important implications for the optimal volatility of the exchange rate above and beyond the size of trade flows using an analytically tractable small open economy model we characterize the impact of the trade composition on the policy trade off and on the role played by the exchange rate in correcting for price misalignments contrary to models where openness can be summarized by the degree of home bias we find that openness can be a poor proxy of the welfare impact of alternative monetary policies using input output data for 25 countries we document substantial differences in the import and non tradable content of final demand components and in the role played by imported inputs in domestic production the estimates are used in a richer small open economy dsge model to quantify the loss from an exchange rate peg relative to the ramsey policy conditional on the composition of imports we find that the main determinant of the losses is the share of non traded goods in final demand

the effects of urban agglomeration economies on carbon emissions evidence from chinese cities abstract this study expounded the mechanism of the effects of urban agglomeration economies on carbon emissions based on the theory of agglomeration economies based on the stirpat model we built an econometric model we then used the method of spatial econometrics to estimate the effects of urban agglomeration economies on carbon emissions through matching the firm level data and panel data of 283 prefecture level and above cities from 2003 to 2010 in china the results reveal that both specialization and diversification agglomeration can significantly promote carbon emission reduction in local and neighboring cities through the agglomeration externalities specifically specialization agglomeration of low end technology industry has significant reduction effects on carbon emission of local and neighboring cities in most cases while the diversification agglomeration has increased it the specialization and diversification agglomeration of midrange technology industry have increased the carbon emissions of the local and neighboring cities furthermore the specialization and diversification agglomeration of high end technology industry have significant carbon emission reduction effects in varying degrees for the local and neighboring cities

international portfolio nondiversification and exchange rate variability abstract incomplete international portfolio diversification is implied by an equilibrium models of exchange rates with nontraded goods the model can also explain the greater correlation between consumption and income within a country than between consumption across countries nontraded goods make more stringent the elasticity conditions required to explain exchange rate variability resulting from current productivity disturbances though not from disturbances to fiscal policies or the prospective return to investment the model is also consistent with international real interest rate differentials changes over time in the current account and relative wealth across nations and observed time series properties of exchange rates

the home bias in equities and distribution costs we show that incorporating distribution costs into a general equilibrium model of international portfolio choice helps to explain the home bias in international equity investment our model is able to replicate observed investment positions for a wide range of parameter values even if agents have an incentive to hedge labor income risk by purchasing foreign equity this is because the existence of a retail sector affects both the correlation of domestic returns with the domestic price level and the correlation between financial and non financial income

price stability in open economies this paper studies the conditions under which price stability is the optimal policy in a two country open economy model with imperfect competition and price stickiness special conditions on the levels of country specific distortionary taxation and the intratemporal and intertemporal elasticities of substitution need to be satisfied these restrictions apply to both cooperative and non cooperative settings most importantly we show that cooperative and non cooperative solutions do not coincide despite market completeness and producer currency pricing in this framework our analysis suggests a role for international policy coordination

uncertainty and monetary policy in a wage bargaining model in a wage bargaining model increased uncertainty concerning monetary and real aggregates is shown to give rise to a higher equilibrium unemployment rate moreover the equilibrium unemployment rate is found to depend on the choice of monetary policy regime as this choice affects the uncertainty wage setters face when setting the nominal wage rate it is also shown that the equilibrium inflation rate may depend on uncertainty in such a way that increased uncertainty gives rise to a higher equilibrium unemployment rate as well as a higher equilibrium inflation rate or what has been called stagflation

spurious welfare reversals in international business cycle models several papers have documented spurious welfare reversals incompletemarkets economy produces a higher level of welfare than the completemarkets economy this paper first demonstrates how conventional linearization can generate approximation errors that can result in welfare reversals using a two country production economy we argue that spurious welfare reversals are not only possible but also plausible under reasonable values for model parameters this paper then proposes an approximation method that modifies the conventional linearization by a bias correction this method can be easily implemented and approximates welfare as accurately as a second order perturbation method

commodity trade and international risk sharing how much do financial markets matter abstract this paper evaluates the social gains from international risk sharing in some simple general equilibrium models with output uncertainty a simulation model calibrated to selected moments of u s and japanese data estimates the incremental loss from a ban on international portfolio diversification to be on the order of 0 20 percent of output per year even the theoretical gains from asset trade may disappear under alternative sets of assumptions on preferences and technology the paper argues that the small magnitude of potential trade gains may help explain the apparently inconsistent findings of empirical studies on the degree of international capital mobility

testing mixed strategy equilibria when players are heterogeneous the case of penalty kicks in soccer the concept of mixed strategy is a fundamental component of game theory and its normative importance is undisputed however its empirical relevance has sometimes been viewed with skepticism the main concern over the practical usefulness of mixed strategies relates to the indifference property of a mixedstrategy equilibrium in order to be willing to play a mixed strategy an agent must be indifferent between each of the pure strategies that are played with positive probability in the mixed strategy as well as any combination of those strategies given that the agent is indifferent across these many strategies there is no bene t to selecting precisely the strategy that induces the opponent to be indifferent as required for equilibrium why an agent would in the absence of communication between players choose exactly one particular randomization is not clear of course whether agents in real life actually play nash equilibrium mixed strategies is ultimately an empirical question the evidence to date on this issue is based almost exclusively on laboratory experiments e g barry o neill 1987 amnon rapoport and richard b boebel 1992 dilip mookherjee and barry sopher 1994 jack ochs 1995 kevin a mccabe et al 2000 the results of these experiments are mixed o neill 1987 concludes that his experimental evidence is consistent with nash mixed strategies but that conclusion was contested by james n brown and robert w rosenthal 1990 with the exception of mccabe et al 2000 which looks at a three person game the other papers generally reject the nash mixedstrategy equilibrium while much has been learned in the laboratory there are inherent limitations to such studies it is sometimes argued that behavior in the simpli ed arti cial setting of games played in such experiments need not mimic real life behavior in addition even if individuals behave in ways that are inconsistent with optimizing behavior in the lab market forces may discipline such behavior in the real world finally interpretation of experiments rely on the assumption that the subjects are maximizing the monetary outcome of the game whereas there may be other preferences at work among subjects e g attempting to avoid looking foolish that distort the results tests of mixed strategies in nonexperimental data are quite scarce in real life the games played are typically quite complex with large strategy spaces that are not fully speci ed ex ante in addition preferences of the actors may not be perfectly known we are aware of only one paper in a similar spirit to our own research using data from classic tennis matches mark walker and john wooders 2001 test whether the probability the player who serves the ball wins the point is equal for serves to the right and chiappori department of economics university of chicago 1126 east 59th street chicago il 60637 levitt department of economics university of chicago groseclose graduate school of business stanford university 518 memorial way stanford ca 94305 the paper was presented at games 2000 in bilbao and at seminars in paris and chicago we thank d braun j m conterno r guesnerie d heller d mengual p reny b salanie and especially j l ettori for comments and suggestions and m mazzocco and f bos for excellent research assistance any errors are ours 1 the theoretical arguments given in defense of the concept of mixed strategy equilibria relate either to puri cation john c harsanyi 1973 or to the minimax property of the equilibrium strategy in zero sum games for recent elaborations on these ideas see authur j robson 1994 and phil reny and robson 2001 2 the ultimatum game is one instance in which experimental play of subjects diverges substantially from the predicted nash equilibrium robert slonim and alvin e roth 1998 demonstrate that raising the monetary payoffs to experiment participants induces behavior closer to that predicted by theory although some disparity persists

price discrimination by u s and german exporters the insensitivity of the u s trade balance to the sharp depreciation of the dollar in the past three years has revived interest in the relationship between exchange rates and the trade balance a central issue in most analyses of the relation between the current account and the exchange rate concerns the price adjustment process the simple integrated competitive market model predicts that local currency prices should change in proportion to the nominal exchange rate for a country too small to influence world prices the relationship between local currency import prices and exchange rates has been referred to as the pass through relationship in the empirical literature in international economics if the proportional relationship between import prices and exchange rates holds pass through is said to be complete accounts of recent u s experience cite the failure of dollar prices of imported goods to rise in proportion to exchange rates i e incomplete pass through as an important factor in explaining the persistence of the trade deficit unfortunately observations on pass through alone provide limited insight into the behavior of markets since incomplete pass through is consistent with at least two fundamentally different paradigms one is the standard competitive model of trade in which the law of one price holds but exchange rate fluctuations are associated with large changes in import demand due to other factors for example if dollar appreciation is correlated with increases in world demand and industry marginal cost is increasing then pass through will be less than complete the other is an imperfectly competitive model in which exporters are capable of price discriminating across destination markets a phenomenon paul krugman 1987 has labeled pricing to market in this model incomplete pass through is typically associated with fluctuations in the markup of price over marginal cost on exports 2 these fluctuations in markups are believed to be countryspecific they do not reflect the behavior of prices to other export destinations both models are plausible explanations of recent u s experience unfortunately it is impossible to distinguish between these competing models using only information on import prices and exchange rates for a single country in order to distinguish between the competing models an empirical analysis of goods prices and exchange rates must be capable of measuring either marginal cost or the markup over marginal cost either of these tasks poses formidable empirical problems much of the empirical literature in industrial organization has been concerned with precisely these issues since markups are an important measure of the competitiveness of industries

country size and exchange rates this paper studies how country size affects the role of the exchange rate in external adjustment first the impact of country size on the sensitivity of relative prices to external imbalances is explored in a two country neoclassical model second at the empirical level a significant effect of external imbalances on relative prices is found in particular a trade surplus is associated with a depreciation of the real exchange rate our estimations reveal a systematic pattern in the sensitivity of the real exchange rate to external imbalances larger countries are characterized by a higher absolute trade elasticity of the exchange rate

optimal monetary policy in open versus closed economies an integrated approach in clarida et al 1999 hereafter cgg we presented a normative analysis of monetary policy within a simple optimization based closedeconomy framework we derived the optimal policy rule and among other things characterized the gains from commitment also we made precise the implications for the kind of instrument feedback rule that a central bank should follow in practice in this paper we show how our analysis extends to the case of a small open economy openness complicates the problem of monetary management to the extent the central bank must take into account the impact of the exchange rate on real activity and inflation how to factor the exchange rate into the overall design of monetary policy accordingly becomes a central consideration here we show that under certain conditions the monetary policy design problem for the small open economy is isomorphic to the problem of the closed economy that we considered earlier hence all our qualitative results for the closed economy carry over to this case openness does affect the parameters of the model suggesting quantitative implications though the general form of the optimal interest rate feedback rule remains the same as in the closedeconomy case for example how aggressively a central bank should adjust the interest rate in response to inflationary pressures depends on the degree of openness in addition openness gives rise to an important distinction between domestic inflation and consumer price inflation as defined by the cpi to the extent that there is perfect exchange rate pass through we find that the central bank should target domestic inflation and allow the exchange rate to float despite the impact of the resulting exchangerate variability on the cpi kosuki aoki 1999 gali and tommaso monacelli 2000

high exchange rate volatility and low pass through abstract two specifications of an open economy model are shown to generate high exchange rate volatility and low exchange rate pass through erpt in the model price discrimination causes erpt to be incomplete in both the short and the long run in the short run a small amount of nominal rigidities is enough to reduce erpt sharply still exchange rate depreciation worsens the terms of trade consistent with the evidence possible biases from omitted variables and measurement error in the erpt empirical literature due to data limitations are investigated using model generated time series estimates of erpt coefficients can be quite different from true parameters and are sensitive to the shocks driving the economies estimates can nonetheless detect key structural features of the models

openness imperfect exchange rate pass through and monetary policy abstract this paper analyses the implications of imperfect exchange rate pass through for optimal monetary policy in a linearised open economy dynamic general equilibrium model calibrated to euro area data imperfect exchange rate pass through is modelled by assuming sticky import price behaviour the degree of domestic and import price stickiness is estimated by reproducing the empirical identified impulse response of a monetary policy and exchange rate shock conditional on the response of output net trade and the exchange rate it is shown that a central bank that wants to minimise the resource costs of staggered price setting will aim at minimising a weighted average of domestic and import price inflation

low inflation pass through and the pricing power of firms abstract recently there has been a significant decline in the degree to which firms pass through changes in costs to prices a decline that is frequently characterized as a reduction in the pricing power of firms the decline appears to be associated with the decline in inflation in many countries the decline has important implications for monetary policy because it affects both forecasts of inflation and the effects of changes in monetary policy on inflation some have argued that the decline in pricing power helped to keep inflation low in the face of apparently strong demand pressures in the united states in the late 1990s this paper puts forth the view that the decline in pass through or pricing power is due to the low inflation environment that has recently been achieved in many countries first a microeconomic model of price setting is used to show that lower pass through is caused by lower perceived persistence of cost changes evidence is then presented showing that inflation is positively correlated with persistence of inflation suggesting that the low inflation itself has caused the low pass through an economy wide model consistent with the micromodel is then presented to illustrate how such changes in pricing power affect output and inflation dynamics in favorable ways but can disappear quickly if monetary policy and expectations change

new directions for stochastic open economy models the paper develops a simple stochastic new open economy macroeconomic model based on sticky nominal wages explicit solution of the wage setting problem under uncertainty allows one to analyze the effects of the monetary regime on welfare expected output and the expected terms of trade despite the potential interplay between imperfections due to sticky wages and monopoly the optimal monetary policy rule has a closed form solution to motivate our model we show that observed correlations between terms of trade and exchange rates are more consistent with our traditional assumptions about nominal rigidities than with a popular alternative based on local currency pricing 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

inflation targeting as a monetary policy rule the purpose of the paper is to survey and discuss in ation targeting in the context of monetary policy rules the paper provides a general conceptual discussion of monetary policy rules attempts to clarify the essential characteristics of in ation targeting compares in ation targeting to other monetary policy rules and draws some conclusions for the monetary policy of the european system of central banks jel classi cation e42 e52

professionals play minimax the implications of the minimax theorem are tested using natural data the tests use a unique data set from penalty kicks in professional soccer games in this natural setting experts play a one shot two person zero sum game the results of the tests are remarkably consistent with equilibrium play in every respect i winning probabilities are statistically identical across strategies for players ii players choices are serially independent the tests have substantial power to distinguish equilibrium play from disequilibrium alternatives these results represent the first time that both implications of von neumann s minimax theorem are supported under natural conditions during the last few decades game theory has contributed to a reshaping of important aspects of the methodology of economics and other social sciences in a large part this is because the language concepts and techniques of non cooperative game theory have become central to many areas of the discipline undoubtedly studying the interaction of ideally rational players greatly aids our understanding of the behaviour of real individuals firms and other agents moreover as kreps 1991 remarks studying the former should aim at understanding the latter the point of game theory is to help economists understand and predict what will happen in economic social and political contexts theoretical contributions should thus feed back to empirical analysis however testing the implications of the theory has proven extremely difficult in the literature the primary reason is that many predictions often hinge on properties of the utility functions and the values of the rewards used even when predictions are invariant over classes of preferences data on rewards are seldom available in natural settings moreover there is often great difficulty in determining strategy sets and in measuring individuals choices effort levels and the incentive structures they face as a result even the most fundamental predictions of game theoretical models have not yet been supported empirically in real situations in view of the substantial problems associated with testing theoretical predictions using natural data many authors have been compelled to test them in experimental settings interestingly enough despite the controlled structure of experiments the results of many experiments during the last few decades typically reject the assumption that subjects are playing according to the theoretical implications of equilibrium play for instance a number of experiments have evaluated the empirical validity of von neumann s minimax theory for two person zero sum games a theory that occupies a central position in our understanding of strategic situations the results have been mixed and are often rather negative see for instance brown and rosenthal 1990 rapoport and boebel 1992 camerer 2003 and the references therein

do trade costs in goods market lead to home bias in equities abstract two of the main puzzles in international economics are the consumption and the portfolio home biases we solve for international equity portfolios in a two country two good stochastic equilibrium model with trade costs in goods markets we show that introducing trade costs as suggested by obstfeld and rogoff obstfeld m rogoff k 2000a the six major puzzles in international macroeconomics is there a common cause nber macroeconomics annual 15 is not sufficient to explain these two puzzles simultaneously on the contrary we find that trade costs create a foreign bias in portfolios for reasonable parameter values this result is robust to the addition of non tradable goods for standard calibrations of the preferences

racial integration as an innovation empirical evidence from sports leagues this paper treats racial integration as an innovation in economic process in which economic entities find it advantageous to utilize potentially more productive inputs previously unavailable due to law custom or managerial discretion data on the racial integration of major league baseball and atlantic coast conference basketball are employed to address this issue the central question examined is which type of team integrated first losers or winners the results strongly support the idea that entrepreneurship trumps competitive rivalry that is winning teams led the process of racial integration jel li j7 one of the watershed events in u s history is the struggle to achieve a racially integrated society while the civil rights laws and court rulings in the 195o s 196o s and 197o s are among the major changes in public policy that gradually led to a breakdown of jim crow rule in the american south other changes in law and custom also motivated the process of racial integration across time and place indeed segregation was not limited to the south but was a prominent feature of many national organizations and markets despite the extensive commentary on these events from various perspectives there has been very little economic analysis of the actual process of racial integration economists have focused their efforts on the economics of discriminatio n while the actual process by which individuals firms and

high rise living in singapore public housing in recent years amid the debates of sustainable development and urban compactness there has been a widening interest to reintroduce high rise living in cities several european cities including l

global implications of self oriented national monetary rules author s obstfeld maurice rogoff kenneth abstract it is well known that if international linkages are relatively small the potential gains to international monetary policy coordination are typically quite limited but what if goods and financial markets are tightly linked is it then problematic if countries unilaterally design their institutions for monetary stabilization are the stabilization gains from having separate currencies largely squandered in the absence of effective international monetary coordination we argue that under plausible assumptions the answer is no unless risk aversion is very high lack of coordination in rule setting is a second order problem compared to the overall gains from monetary policy stabilization

nominal rigidity and monetary uncertainty abstract a stochastic macromodel with dynamically optimising wage setting households is used to examine the effect on current macroeconomic variables of an anticipated increase in variability of the money stock there is a nominal rigidity in the form of a money wage set one period in advance in whose absence monetary uncertainty has no effect on current variables we show that for plausible parameterisations monetary uncertainty combined with nominal rigidity raises the nominal interest rate depressing aggregate demand and hence current price and output it also causes the wage to be set higher increasing the natural rate of unemployment

the real exchange rate abstract this essay concerns the real value of the u s relative to the g 10 i what are the dynamics of the fundamental determinants of the real exchange rate and its steady state value ii to what extent are the observed movements in the exchange rate from 1973 to 1988 due to the fundamentals iii how integrated are international capital markets iv how does the real exchange rate respond to a changes in the cyclically adjusted government budget deficit and to b changes in the marginal efficiency of investment

inflation targeting and exchange rate pass through this paper analyzes how endogenous imperfect exchange rate pass through affects inflation targeting optimal monetary policies in a new keynesian small open economy the paper shows that an inverse relation exists between the pass through and the insulation of the economy from foreign and monetary policy shocks and that imperfect pass through tends to decrease the variability of the terms of trade furthermore with cpi inflation targeting in the short run delayed pass through constrains monetary policy more than incomplete pass through and interest rate smoothing amplifies this effect when the pass through decreases the variability in economic activity tends to rise and the trade off between the stabilization of cpi inflation and output worsens in direct relation to how strictly the central bank is targeting cpi inflation in contrast with domestic inflation targeting optimal monetary policy is not constrained and opposite results occur consequently imperfect pass through favors the choice of domestic to cpi inflation targeting

equity home bias a review essay this paper reviews the relatively more recent literature on equity home bias the empirical finding that people overinvest in domestic stocks relative to the optimal investment portfolio implied by the modern portfolio theory it reviews six broad classes of explanation of this puzzling phenomenon 1 hedging home risks 2 barriers to foreign investments 3 information asymmetries and 4 behavioral factors the consensus is that none of the explanations can account for the full extent of the bias by itself thus the home bias should be explained by a combination of rational and behavioral factors

nontraded goods nontraded factors and international non diversification abstract can the presence of nontraded consumption goods or nontraded factors of production explain the high degree of home bias displayed by investor portfolios we find that the answer is no so long as individuals have access to free international trade in financial assets in particular it is never optimal to exhibit home bias with respect to domestic traded good equities by contrast holdings of nontraded good equities in an optimal portfolio will depend sensitively on the elasticity of substitution between traded and nontraded goods

densification what does it mean for fuel poverty and energy justice an empirical analysis energy is increasingly at the forefront of the global political agenda while there is a longstanding literature relating to fuel poverty and increasingly energy justice there remains little evidence which explores its link with the urban form specifically the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the urban consolidation hypothesis and the cultivation of energy justice in australia this study uses data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey years 2007 2014 a national probability sample and indefinite life panel the substantive findings of this study demonstrate that for low income and renting households greater urban density corresponds to a higher likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty further for households with a dwelling type described as an apartment two or three storeys there is a separate and quite generalisable indication that this type of dwelling is associated with a lower likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty this study connects the debate regarding urban consolidation and energy consumption to the fuel poverty and energy justice literature alongside this contribution this study also provides policymakers and planners with new evidence to inform remediation policies that are directed at supporting the fuel poor

home bias in open economy financial macroeconomics standard theory would predict that investors hold a well diversified portfolio of equities across the world but despite the process of financial globalization investors still hold a disproportionate share of local equities in their portfolio the equity home bias french and poterba 1991 we review the various explanations of this puzzling phenomenon in the context of recent developments in macroeconomic modelling that have allowed to incorporate sophisticated international portfolio choices in standard two country general equilibrium models we refer to this literature as open economy financial macroeconomics we focus on three broad classes of explanations i hedging motives in frictionless financial markets real exchange rate and non tradable income risk ii asset trade costs in international financial markets such as transaction costs differences in tax treatments between national and foreign assets iii informational frictions and behavioural biases these recent developments raise the need for new portfolio facts beyond the equity home bias and we will present some new evidence on cross border asset holdings across different types of assets equities bonds and bank lending we also present some new micro data on institutional holdings of equity at the fund level these data should inform macroeconomic modelling of the open economy and a growing literature of models of delegated investment

examining the multiple impacts of technological progress on co2 emissions in china a panel quantile regression approach abstract whilst a plethora of literature has viewed technological progress as one of the critical influencing factors in relation to energy consumption and co2 emissions little effort has been made to identify the sectoral differences in the relationship between technological progress and co2 emissions thereby this paper remedies the inadequacies in the extant literature by empirically investigating the impact of technological progress on co2 emissions specifically taking into account its heterogeneous effect in various economic sectors this paper first decomposes the effect of technological progress as taking place in heavy industry in light industry in construction industry and in service industry a panel quantile regression approach and a balanced city panel data model are then applied covering the period 2001 2013 in china the empirical results show that technological progress in heavy industry and light industry surprisingly facilitates a higher level of co2 emissions despite its prominent contribution to energy efficiency improvement meanwhile as distinct from the effect it shows in the heavy and light industries technological progress in construction and service industries exerts a negative effect on co2 emissions additionally this paper further discovers that the strength of the multiple impacts of technological progress also varies with the level of emitters by studying the heterogeneous effect brought about by technological progress in different economic sectors and emitters this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between co2 emissions and technological progress

the effect of urbanization on co2 emissions in emerging economies the theories of ecological modernization and urban environmental transition both recognize that urbanization can have positive and negative impacts on the natural environment with the net effect being hard to determine a priori this study uses recently developed panel regression techniques that allow for heterogeneous slope coefficients and cross section dependence to model the impact that urbanization has on co2 emissions for a panel of emerging economies the estimated contemporaneous coefficients on the energy intensity and affluence variables are positive statistically significant and fairly similar across different estimation techniques by comparison the estimated contemporaneous coefficient on the urbanization variable is sensitive to the estimation technique in most specifications the estimated coefficient on the urbanization variable is positive but statistically insignificant the implications of these results for sustainable development policy are discussed

batter up moral hazard and the effects of the designated hitter rule on hit batsmen i introduction despite its relatively recent appearance in the literature the theory of moral hazard has proved to be rich in empirical implications it has been applied fruitfully in a wide variety of settings including medical insurance property and casualty insurance labor contracts savings and loan failures and credit rationing 1 perhaps the most frequently cited application of this idea is sam peltzman s 1975 study of mandatory seat belt laws he reported evidence suggesting that drivers respond rationally to such laws which reduce the risk of injury or death in automobile accidents by driving more recklessly hence while mandatory seat belt laws have resulted in fewer automobile fatalities they have increased the number of non fatal accidents and accidents involving damage to property and pedestrians in this paper we argue that the introduction of the designated hitter dh rule in the american league but not the national league of major league baseball in 1973 created the potential for a classic moral hazard problem because they are not required to appear at the plate american league pitchers can throw at opposing hitters with greater impunity i e at a lower cost than national league pitchers who must take their turn at bat the economic theory of moral hazard clearly predicts that more batters will be hit in the american league under such circumstances an implication which is supported by the empirical evidence reported herein after controlling for other relevant factors we find that american league batters have been hit by pitches at rates 10 to 15 higher than their national league counterparts in the typical post dh rule season ii the simple economics of hitting batters we model pitchers as the ultimate decision makers with regard to behavior that leads to hit batters in making this assumption we ignore the principal agent relation between pitchers and managers as well as any externalities arising among players that may influence the number of batters hit by pitches managers sometimes instruct pitchers to throw at a batter presumably to cool off opponent s bats or to retaliate for opposing pitchers throwing at his team on occasion a pitcher may view his own personal interests in terms of runs and income as diverging from the manager s interests so that he would not carry out such instructions to the letter 2 in any case a batter may be hit when the pitcher makes a deliberate attempt to do so or when the pitcher has not expended much effort to avoid hitting him while the distinction between the two causes of hit batsmen may be important in its own right we treat them as being observationally equivalent both amount to the pitcher altering the probability of hitting a batter by changing the intended location and speed of his pitches in our elementary approach a pitcher s decision to raise or lower this probability hinges on a marginal decision making calculus of weighing the expected benefits against the expected costs of hitting a batter these benefits and costs would ultimately affect the pitcher s expected utility by influencing his lifetime income and consumption possibilities his utility from the indulgence of personal preferences or both increasing the probability of hitting a batter can potentially benefit the pitcher in several ways hit batsmen may become more reluctant now and in future games to lean over the plate thereby reducing their effectiveness against pitches low and outside they may become more susceptible to being fooled by curve balls that give the illusion of being inside or they may dig in less and thereby reduce their power all of these effects lower the probability of runs being scored against the pitcher in present and future appearances additionally the pitcher may alter the probability of hitting batters in order to retaliate against similar tactics being used by opposing pitchers this may be a means of neutralizing an opponent s strategy of throwing at batters and hence help increase run production by the pitcher s own team

welfare and macroeconomic interdependence we develop a baseline model of monetary and fiscal transmission in interdependent economies the welfare effects of expansionary policies are related to monopolistic supply in production and monopoly power of a country in trade an unanticipated exchange rate depreciation can be beggar thyself rather than beggar thy neighbor as gains in domestic output are offset by deteriorating terms of trade smaller and more open economies are more prone to suffer from inflationary shocks larger economies benefit from moderate demand led expansions but may be worse off if policy makers attempt to close the output gap fiscal shocks are generally beggar thy neighbor in the long run in the short run they raise domestic demand at given terms of trade thus reducing the welfare benefits from monetary expansions analytical tractability makes our model uniquely suitable as a starting point to approach the recent new open economy macroeconomic literature

dynamics of the trade balance and the terms of trade the j curve the authors provide a theoretical interpretation of two features of international data the countercyclical movements in net exports and the tendency for the trade balance to be negatively correlated with current and future movements in terms of trade but positively correlated with past movements they document the same properties in a two country stochastic growth model in which trade fluctuations reflect in large part the dynamics of capital formation the authors find that their general equilibrium perspective is essential the relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade depends critically on the source of fluctuations copyright 1994 by american economic association

consumption and real exchange rates in dynamic economies with non traded goods abstract we examine the possibility that non traded goods may account for several striking features of international macroeconomic data large persistent deviations from purchasing power parity small correlations of aggregate consumption fluctuations across countries and substantial international real interest rate differentials a dynamic exchange economy is used to show that non traded goods in principle can account for each of these phenomena in the theory there is a close relation between fluctuations in consumption ratios and those in bilateral real exchange rates but we find little evidence for this relation in time series data for eight oecd countries

does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower co2 emissions a cross country analysis despite the relationship between urbanization energy use and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to differences in development stages or income levels most previous studies have implicitly assumed that the impact of urbanization is homogenous for all countries this assumption can be questionable as there are many characteristic differences among countries of different levels of affluence this paper investigates empirically the effects of urbanization on energy use and co2 emissions with consideration of the different development stages using the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model and a balanced panel dataset of 99 countries over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that the impact of urbanization on energy use and emissions varies across the stages of development surprisingly urbanization decreases energy use in the low income group while it increases energy use in the middle and high income groups the impact of urbanization on emissions is positive for all the income groups but it is more pronounced in the middle income group than in the other income groups these novel findings not only help advance the existing literature but also can be of special interest to policy makers and urban planners

a semi parametric panel data analysis on the urbanisation carbon emissions nexus for the mena countries abstract this study seeks to examine the impacts of urbanisation on carbon emissions through the investigation of the existence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc within the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat framework this is the first study in the mena region to explore the urbanisation and carbon emissions nexus using panel data together with a semi parametric panel fixed effects regression the data set refers to a panel of 20 countries in the mena region spanning the period 1980 2014 according to the results there is little evidence to support an inverted u shaped relationship between urbanisation and carbon emissions in the region more specifically it was found in the region and with the continuation of the urbanisation process carbon emissions per capita decreased in addition the results suggest that energy use and economic growth are the main sources of carbon emissions in the region the results imply that policies to reduce carbon emissions in the countries with relatively higher carbon emissions should concentrate more on energy use and the pattern of economic growth and not the urbanisation issue

policy driven productivity in chile and mexico in the 1980 s and 1990 s abstract both chile and mexico experienced severe economic crises in the early 1980s but chilerecovered much faster than did mexico using growth accounting and a calibrated dynamicgeneral equilibrium model we conclude that the crucial determinant of this difference betweenthe two countries was the faster productivity growth in chile rather than higher investment oremployment our hypothesis is that this difference in productivity was driven by ealier policyreforms in chile the most crucial of which were in banking and bankruptcy procedures wepropose a theoretical framework in which government policy affects both the allocation ofresources and the composition of firms journal of economic literature classification codes e52 n6 o40 key words chile mexico growth accounting total factor productivity depression centro de economia aplicada universidad de chile santiago chile research department federal reserve bank of minneapolis minneapolis mn 55480 department of economics university of minnesota and national bureau of economic research department ofeconomics university of minnesota minneapolis mn 55455 and research department federal reserve bank of minneapolis and instituto de economia pontificia universidadcatolica de chile santiago chile respectively we thank the participants in the minneapolisfed s great depressions of the twentieth century project especially ed prescott for usefuldiscussions jim macgee provided invaluable research assistance bergoeing thanks the hewlettfoundation and kehoe and kehoe thank the national science foundation for research support the views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the federalreserve bank of minneapolis or the federal reserve system

goods prices and exchange rates what have we learned import prices typically change by a smaller proportion than the exchange rate between the exporting and importing country recent research indicates that common currency relative prices for similar goods exported to different markets are highly correlated with exchange rates between those markets this evidence suggests that incomplete pass through is a consequence of third degree price discrimination while distance matters for market segmentation borders have independent effects the source of the border effect has not been clearly identified furthermore there is little evidence yet to suggest substantial market power is implied by the observed price discrimination

does urbanization affect energy intensities across provinces in china long run elasticities estimation using dynamic panels with heterogeneous slopes abstract although there has been extensive debate in the literature that addresses the impact of urbanization on total energy use the relative magnitude of each impact channel has not been empirically examined and urbanization s effects on energy transition dynamics in china remains unknown using panel datasets at the provincial level from 1986 to 2011 this paper employs dynamic models to investigate both the long run and short run elasticities of urbanization on energy intensities and the most significant impact channel is identified coal intensity and electricity intensity are also modeled to reveal energy transition dynamics driven by urbanization a set of newly developed regression techniques namely well performed common correlated effects mean group ccemg and augmented mean group amg estimators are used to treat residual cross sectional dependence nonstationary residuals and unlikely to hold homogeneous slope assumptions the results obtained verify that the net effects of urbanization on overall energy intensity and electricity intensity are statistically positive with long run elasticities of 0 14 to 0 37 and 0 23 to 0 29 respectively whereas china s urbanization does not significantly increase coal intensity the fact that short run elasticities account for a majority of corresponding long run values indicates that the short run effect that is indirect energy use induced by urban infrastructures is the most significant impact channel of urbanization on energy use in china an energy transition from high pollution coal to clean electricity is also present in china although the fundamental transition to renewable energy is still in its infancy from a regional perspective urbanization exerts asymmetric impacts on provincial energy use so that energy policies associated with urbanization should be province specific the findings also illustrate that for a panel dataset on regional dimension within large and fast growing economies such as china error cross sectional dependence and residual nonstationarity must be tested and properly treated to avoid size distortion and biased estimators

the new open economy macroeconomics a survey since the 1995 publication of obsteld and rogoff s redux model there has been an outpouring of research on open economy dynamic general equilibrium models that incorporate imperfect competition and nominal rigidities this paper offers an interim survey of this recent literature 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

incomplete pass through and the welfare effects of exchange rate variability abstract this paper considers the implications of incomplete exchange rate pass through for optimal monetary and exchange rate policy a two country model is presented which allows an explicit derivation of welfare functions in terms of a weighted sum of the second moments of producer prices and the nominal exchange rate from a single country perspective the optimal exchange rate variance depends on the degree of pass through the size and openness of the economy the elasticity of labour supply and the volatility of foreign producer prices welfare may be decreasing or increasing in the volatility of the exchange rate

the compact city just or just compact a preliminary analysis the aim of the research described in this paper is to examine the validity of the claims that higher density urban form promotes social equity that is promotes benefits for the life chances of low income groups overall the evidence suggests that for medium sized english cities higher urban densities may be positive for some aspects of social equity and negative for others more specifically likely benefits include improved public transport reduced social segregation and better access to facilities while the main problems are likely to be reduced living space and a lack of affordable housing investigations of different aspects of density show that the cities that most support social equity appear to be those that have a large proportion of high density housing

does exchange rate stability increase trade and welfare we develop a simple general equilibrium framework to study the effect of the exchange rate system on trade and welfare an important feature of the model is deviations from purchasing power parity caused by rigid price setting in buyers currency we find the following first exchange rate stability is not necessarily associated with more trade in a simple benchmark model with separable preferences and only monetary shocks trade is unaffected by the exchange rate system consistent with most evidence second both trade and welfare can be higher under either exchange rate system depending on preferences and on the monetary policy rules followed under each system finally in general there is no one to one relationship between the levels of trade and welfare across exchange rate systems

on the international transmission of technology shocks abstract using vector autoregressions on u s time series and an aggregate of industrialized countries we find that technology shocks appreciate the terms of trade and lower the trade balance they induce an s shaped cross correlation function for both variables the s curve in calibrating a prototypical international business cycle model under complete and incomplete financial markets we find two distinct sets of parameter values while both model specifications deliver the s curve the underlying transmission mechanism of technology shocks is fundamentally different most importantly only in the incomplete markets economy the terms of trade appreciate and thus amplify the relative wealth effects of technology shocks as suggested by the evidence

excess capacity monopolistic competition and international transmission of monetary disturbances analyzes the excess capacity monopolistic competition and international transmission of monetary policy disturbances in the united states sheds light on the international impact of monetary policy emphasis on the spillover effects of monetary disturbances similarity of framework used with open economy macroeconomics

revisiting the pass through of exchange rate in the transition economies new evidence from new eu member states abstract this paper revisits the exchange rate pass through erpt for a set of transition economies namely for 10 new eu member states nms over the period 1996 2015 as the transition process has entailed a deep transformation in their economies and institutions the extent of pass through is expected to be regime dependent on this changing macroeconomic environment we propose to implement a nonlinear panel smooth transition regression pstr approach where transitional factors related to eu accession are captured properly from the data our empirical results suggest that the inflation regime is the main macroeconomic driver of the extent of erpt when inflation levels exceed the threshold of 4 56 i e within a high inflation environment the degree of pass through is higher and reaches a full erpt however with the shift towards a stable and low inflation regime i e when inflation levels are below a threshold of 4 56 the extent of pass through significantly declines in the nms group our findings shed further light on how the credibility gained through the commitment to euro area membership is beneficial and would ensure better control of inflation

country portfolios in open economy macro models this paper develops a simple approximation method for computing equilibrium portfolios in dynamic general equilibrium open economy macro models the method is widely applicable simple to implement and gives analytical solutions for equilibrium portfolio positions in any combination or types of asset it can be used in models with any number of assets whether markets are complete or incomplete and can be applied to stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models of any dimension so long as the model is amenable to a solution using standard approximation methods we first illustrate the approach using a simple two asset endowment economy model and then show how the results extend to the case of any number of assets and general economic structure

the international diversification puzzle is not as bad as you think the international diversification puzzle is the fact that country portfolios are on average biased toward domestic assets while one good international macro models with nondiversifiable labor income risk predict the opposite pattern of diversification this paper embeds a portfolio choice decision in a two good international business cycle model and provides a closed form solution for equilibrium country portfolios equilibrium portfolios are biased toward domestic assets because endogenous international relative price fluctuations make domestic assets a good hedge against labor income risk evidence from developed economies in recent years is qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the mechanisms highlighted by the theory

international financial market integration asset compositions and the falling exchange rate pass through this paper provides an explanation for the observed decline of the exchange rate pass through into import prices by modeling the effects of nancial market integration on the optimal choice of the pricing currency in the context of rigid nominal goods prices contrary to previous literature the interdependence of this choice with the optimal portfolio choice of internationally traded nancial assets is explicitly taken into account in particular price setters move towards more local currency pricing while the debt portfolio includes more foreign assets following increased nancial integration both predictions are in line with novel empirical evidence

accounting for u s real exchange rate changes this study measures the proportion of u s real exchange rate movements that can be accounted for by movements in the relative prices of nontraded goods the decomposition is done at all possible h

crime and punishment in major league baseball the case of the designated hitter and hit batters i introduction are you seriously going to throw at somebody when you re facing randy johnson curt schilling 1 in 1973 amid waning fan interest in baseball the american league al of major league baseball mlb instituted the designated hitter rule as an experiment the stated goal of this rule change was to boost offensive output by increasing the talent pool of batters in the lineup traditionally the competing teams field nine players who must play defense in the field and bat because of the importance of the pitcher who is responsible for putting every ball in play teams rely on pitching ability and ignore the hitting ability when choosing the pitcher in the lineup therefore pitchers tend to be very poor hitters by allowing teams to substitute a player of greater hitting ability known as the designated hitter dh to bat for the pitcher the total offensive output increases the experiment has since grown into an institution in the al that differentiates it from the national league nl where all players must bat and play in the field the dh succeeded in turning the al into the power league as intended but an unintended consequence of the rule change is that the al now has more batters hit by pitches than the nl traditional baseball lore holds that the lack of retaliatory punishment in the al for hitting batters is the cause of this phenomenon veteran nl manager dusty baker describes the deterrent impact from a pitcher s point of view you can be bold in the american league and get away with hitting batters it s different in our league where you have to hit 2 pitchers who do not have to bat where they might face retaliation are more willing to risk hitting batters than pitchers who do bat given that the rules of the game in both leagues are identical except for the use of the dh mlb created ideal conditions for a natural experiment to examine the impact of the dh on hit batters in a controlled setting 3 several economists have looked at the issue and found that there is a statistically significant relationship between the dh and hit batters however the reason for this difference is subject to much debate it is possible for the hit batter differential to exist without the deterrent effect of retaliation the rulebook punishment for hitting a batter awarding the hit batter first base makes retaliatory enforcement costly for teams to employ pitchers are typically poor hitters who rarely reach base via hitting while batters who are dhs are typically good hitters the fewer hit batters in the nl may reflect the lineup composition in which the pitcher must bat nl teams will try to avoid plunking pitchers because they are relatively less likely to reach base than non pitchers while al teams do not have this easy out in their batting lineups a problem with previous studies of the subject is their reliance on yearly aggregate data hit batters are rare events approximately 1 of all plate appearances result in a hit batter that occur in the course of game where other incentives are quite relevant this means that identifying small changes in pitcher behavior from specific factors will be difficult to identify with aggregate data differentiating between the two competing explanations for the hit batter differential between leagues deterrence and lineup composition requires micro level data where we can control for in game strategic incentives for hitting batters using a unique play by play data set that allows us to control for specific factors that affect hit batters we find that pitchers are still more likely to hit batters with a dh in the lineup than without and though pitchers are hit more rarely than other players pitchers do experience retaliation for hitting batters retaliation against pitchers who plunk batters which was not found in earlier studies is needed to generate an effective deterrent for pitchers in the nl

pass or run an empirical test of the matching pennies game using data from the national football league this article examines play calling in the national football league nfl it finds that a mixed strategy equilibrium game explains nfl play calling better than standard optimization techniques when a quarterback is injured and replaced with a less capable backup standard optimization theory suggests that the offense will run more often passing less our game theoretic model predicts that the offense will not change its play calling because the defense will play against the run more often using every first half play from the 11 teams that had a starting quarterback miss action because of injury in the 2006 season we find that the injury did not alter the likelihood that the offense would pass we also find that coaches randomly mix passing and running plays as the mixed strategy games predict

do new major league ballparks pay for themselves in recent decades local governments have allocated billions of dollars to subsidizing construction of facilities for major league baseball we use panel data that cover all major league baseball teams from 1989 2001 to estimate the impact of ballpark construction on team revenue our estimates imply that a typical new ballpark generates additional revenue sufficient to cover most or all of its capital cost it follows that any external benefits of ballpark construction are likely to be inframarginal and that continuance of large public subsidies cannot be justified on economic grounds

and a hockey game broke out crime and punishment in the nhl i introduction the economic theory of crime predicts that an increase in policing resources will lead to a decrease in the crime rate empirically determining the magnitude of this effect has proved difficult however because of an endogeneity problem although variations in the allocation of policing resources are expected to affect crime rates the reverse may also hold true cornwell and trumbull 1994 levitt 1997 the endogeneity problem can be avoided to a large degree by studying situations in which changes in the allocation of policing resources occur independent from crime rates in an innovative and influential study mccormick and tollison 1984 apply the economic theory of crime to rules infractions in a sports contest they analyze a policy change in the atlantic coast conference acc basketball tournaments in 1979 the acc increased the number of referees in the tournament games mccormick and tollison analyze the effect of increasing the number of referees on the number of fouls called their approach is unlikely to suffer from a severe endogeneity bias because the policy change occurred only once and furthermore occurred between tournament seasons on the other hand insofar as rules infractions in sports contests are analogous to criminal activity mccormick and tollison measure arrests rather than crimes the effect of an increase in policing resources on arrests cannot be resolved by theory for a given crime rate increases in police budgets and forces enable greater monitoring of criminal activity and consequently lead to more arrests the crime rate however is itself a function of the level of policing resources rational criminals realize that greater monitoring increases the probability that their actions will result in arrest and may be deterred from committing crimes this decreases the crime rate the net effect on the total number of arrests is ambiguous because it depends on whether the monitoring or deterrent effect dominates mccormick and tollison find that increasing the number of referees leads to a reduction in the number of fouls called this suggests that the deterrent effect dominates the monitoring effect shortly after their study was published it was recognized in surveys of both sports economics by cairns et al 1985 and crime by cameron 1988 we examine a natural experiment in sports to further understand the monitoring and deterrent effects in the 1999 2000 season the national hockey league nhl games had either one or two referees 1 we find that games with two referees have more penalties called suggesting that the monitoring effect dominates the deterrent effect we then use an instrumental variables technique to determine the effect of the number of referees on the number of infractions actually committed by players in the game we find that the number of referees does not significantly affect the number of infractions committed this is direct evidence that the deterrent effect is inconsequential in this context our results are unlikely to suffer from an endogeneity bias because the variation in the number of referees is independent of the rate of infractions in the individual games ii the nhl experiment enforcement of the rules in an nhl game is done by referees and linesmen the nhl has historically utilized one referee and two linesmen the linesmen are responsible for identifying infractions that result in a stoppage of play such as icing sending the puck from one end of the rink to the other and off sides entering the offensive zone before the puck the referee is responsible for identifying more severe infractions such as slashing swinging a stick at an opponent hooking using a stick to impede the progress of an opponent and fighting fisticuffs when one of these infractions is identified by the referee a penalty is called and the offending player is removed from the ice for a period of time depending on the severity of the penalty

international comparisons of pricing to market behavior this paper measures the degree of price discrimination across export destinations that is associated with exchange rate changes using u s u k german and japanese industry level data given the industries sampled more price discrimination across destinations is observed in the u k german and japanese data for industries that match across source countries however behavior is very similar across source countries furthermore destination specific price adjustment on exports to the united states from germany and japan is similar to price adjustment observed on shipments to other destinations most variation in the data appears to be related to industry copyright 1993 by american economic association