distinguished lecture on economics in government lessons from past productivity booms the u s economy has been enjoying substantially faster productivity growth for the past eight years than it did over the preceding two decades from 1995 to 2003 labor productivity rose at an average annual rate of about 3 percent up from an average annual rate of around 1 5 percent between 1973 and 1995 in both 2002 and 2003 output per hour increased more than 4 percent the significance of the improvement since 1995 can hardly be overstated even after one takes into account the possibility that the increases of the past two years in part reflect cyclical influences and thus overstate the underlying trend if productivity were to continue to rise at an average annual rate of 3 percent the standard of living in the united states would double roughly every 24 years if on the other hand productivity growth were to revert to an average annual pace of 1 5 percent a doubling in the standard of living would occur every 47 years a number of observers argue that the present era of robust trend productivity growth will soon come to an end others contend that the potential gains to productivity from the technological advances associated with the computer revolu

the use of parametric and non parametric frontier methods to measure the productive efficiency in the industrial sector a comparative study abstract parametric frontier models and non parametric methods have monopolised the recent literature on productive efficiency measurement empirical applications have usually dealt with either one or the other group of techniques this paper applies a range of both types of approaches to an industrial organisation setup the joint use can improve the accuracy of both although some methodological difficulties can arise the robustness of different methods in ranking productive units allows us to make a comparative analysis of them empirical results concern productive and market demand structure returns to scale and productive inefficiency sources the techniques are illustrated using data from the us electric power industry

the turning black tide energy prices and the canadian dollar the authors revisit the relationship between energy prices and the canadian dollar in the amano and van norden 1995 equation which shows a negative relationship such that higher real energy prices lead to a depreciation of the canadian dollar

the structure of unemployment we test for a unit root in postwar unemployment rates for sixteen oecd countries when a one time structural break is incorporated the unit root hypothesis can be rejected for most of the countries and the measured persistence of unemployment falls dramatically we then test for multiple structural changes and find evidence of one or two breaks for those countries for which the unit root hypothesis could be rejected almost all of the breaks are positive reflecting the sustained rise in european unemployment the major exception is the united states where long term unemployment rose in the 1970s and fell in the 1980s

the tale of two research communities the diffusion of research on productive efficiency abstract the field of theoretical and applied efficiency analysis is pursued both by economists and people from operational research and management science each group tends to cite a different paper as the seminal one recent availability of extensive electronically accessible databases of journal articles makes studies of the diffusion of papers through citations possible research strands inspired by the seminal paper within economics are identified and followed by citation analysis during the 20 year period before the operations research paper was published the first decade of the operations research paper is studied in a similar way and emerging differences in diffusion patterns are pointed out main factors influencing citations apart from the quality of the research contribution are reputation of journal reputation of author number of close followers colleagues cadres of proteges ph d students and extent of network invisible college such factors are revealed by the citing papers in spite of increasing cross contacts between economics and operations research the last decades co citation analysis reveals a relative constant tendency to stick to own camp references

inflation persistence in central and eastern european countries this article studies inflation persistence with time varying coefficient autoregressions for 12 central european countries in comparison with the united states and the euro area we find that inflation persistence tends to be higher in times of high inflation since the oil price shocks inflation persistence has declined both in the united states and the euro area in most central and eastern european countries for which our study covers 1993 2012 inflation persistence has also declined with the main exceptions of the czech republic slovakia and slovenia where persistence seems to be rather stable our findings have implications for the conduct of monetary policy and for a possible membership in the euro area among the two time varying coefficient methods we use our results favour the flexible least squares smoother over the kalman smoother we also conclude that the ols estimate of an autoregression is likely upward biased relative to the time average of time varying parameters when the paramete

tracking the new economy using growth theory to detect changes in trend productivity abstract the acceleration of productivity after 1995 prompted a debate over whether the economy s underlying growth rate would remain high in this paper we draw on growth theory to identify variables other than productivity namely consumption and labor compensation to help estimate trend productivity growth we treat that trend as a common factor with two regimes high and low growth our analysis picks up striking evidence of a return in 1997 to the high growth regime nearly 25 years after a switch from high to low growth we find that both the common factor and regime switching aspects of the model are important for identifying changes in trend productivity and also show that the trend breaks are more difficult to detect with per capita as opposed to per hour based data because of persistent labor supply shifts finally we argue that our methodology is effective in detecting changes in trend in real time in the case of the 1990s the methodology would have signaled the regime switch by 1999 or within roughly six quarters of when it occurred according to the full sample

dare to care shipment consolidation reduces not only costs but also environmental damage abstract companies interested in greening their supply chains quickly realize that carbon and energy waste represents an expense and thus minimizing this expense not only brings in truckloads of money but also helps save the environment this paper demonstrates that shipment consolidation a powerful logistics strategy that combines two or more small shipments into an aggregate load to be dispatched on the same vehicle can help mitigate carbon and energy waste specifically a discrete time based shipment consolidation dtb scl policy and a new method to calculate co2 emissions associated with the dispatch of a vehicle are introduced in addition an optimization model with the objective of maximizing combined economic and environmental savings is developed in this study it is shown that among other benefits the higher use of transportation capacity decreases environmental damage one goal of the dtb scl policy the mechanics of the mathematical models are illustrated by numerical examples and sensitivity analyses are conducted to provide managerial insights that might help companies come to better decisions that are environmentally responsible

on the transfer of technology from universities the impact of the bayh dole act of 1980 on the institutionalization of university research abstract while the academic and policy literature has focused on patent counts and patent quality as possible outcome measures to evaluate the impact of the u s bayh dole act of 1980 we argue that the impact of the act on university effort to transfer its technology to the private sector might be seen more accurately by examining the trend in the initial establishment of technology transfer offices ttos using an econometric framework to identify the presence of multiple structural breaks in data on the annual number of university ttos we find multiple break dates over the period 1925 to 2014 one break date was in the late 1960s and a second break date occurred about 1982 we suggest in contrast to previous findings in the literature that the act did have an impact on the formal internal transfer of technology from universities through patenting by providing an incentive for universities to invest in a tto research infrastructure we also suggest that our empirical methodology is applicable to an assessment of the impact of legislation similar to the bayh dole act in the many countries with such legislation

energy consumption synchronization between europe united states and japan a spectral analysis assessment abstract this paper aims to advance a model able to explain the synchronization tendency in energy consumption under the impact of international technology transfers the key argument is related to the differences in energy consumption efficiency of local and foreign technologies one direct testable consequence of the model is that there might be a certain correlation between the energy consumption between countries and or economic areas where a free movement of capital goods and technologies takes place hence it is further tested in the framework of a multivariate spectrum analysis the case of energy consumption synchronization between europe and respectively united states and japan for a time span between 1981 and 2011 based on the data provided by u s energy information administration there are evidences of a leading behavior of energy consumption in united states and japan in respect to europe as well as of short run phase delays of 2 up to 5 months

common trends and shocks to top incomes a structural breaks approach we use newly compiled top income data and structural breaks techniques to estimate common trends and breaks in inequality across countries over the twentieth century our results both confirm earli

trust and the welfare state the twin peaks curve we show the existence of a twin peaks relation between trust and the size of the welfare state that stems from two opposing forces uncivic people support large welfare states because they expect to benefit from them without bearing their costs but civic individuals support generous benefits and high taxes only when they are surrounded by trustworthy individuals we provide empirical evidence for these behaviors and this twin peaks relation in the oecd countries

change point analysis of the growth effects of state banking deregulation this article uses recent developments in change point analysis to demonstrate thatstronger income growth rates previously associated with state bank branch deregu lation were in all cases temporary rather than permanent in addition patterns oftemporal ordering across regions suggest that in many states deregulation was a re sponse to economic conditions rather than the reverse jel e44 g28

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

accounting for change in national systems of innovation a friendly critique based on the u s case abstract this paper advances a friendly critique of the national systems of innovation approach and offers some suggestions for its future development i argue that the approach has difficulty accounting for bounded change in national systems i review three recent changes in the u s innovation system the internet boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s the response to the terrorist attacks of september 11 2001 and the acceleration of productivity growth since the mid 1990s in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the framework in this respect future research might be enriched at least in the case of large national innovation systems by absorbing concepts developed in other strands of institutionalist literature such as intercurrence and embeddedness

inference in nonlinear econometric models with structural change this paper extends the classical test for structural change in linear regression models see chow 1960 to a wide variety of nonlinear models estimated by a variety of different procedures wald lagrange multiplier like and likelihood ratio like test statistics are introduced the results allow for heterogeneity and temporal dependence of the observations in the process of developing the above tests the paper also provides a compact presentation of general unifying results for estimation and testing in nonlinear parametric econometric models

perspectives on the u s current account deficit and sustainability this essay considers the underpinnings of the large u s current account deficit it then tackles the question of whether the u s current account deficit is sustainable a current account deficit is sustainable at a point in time if neither it nor the associated foreign capital inflows nor the negative net international investment position are large enough to induce significant changes in economic variables such as consumption or investment or interest rates or exchange rates even if the current account deficit is sustainable by this definition today its trajectory could still be creating future risks for the u s and global economy

a retrospective look at the u s productivity growth resurgence it is widely recognized that information technology was critical to the dramatic acceleration of u s labor productivity growth in the mid 1990s this paper traces the evolution of productivity estimates to document how and when this perception emerged early studies concluded that information technology was relatively unimportant only after the massive information technology investment boom of the late 1990s did this investment and underlying productivity increases in the information technology producing sectors come to be identified as important sources of growth although information technology has diminished in significance since the dot com crash of 2000 and observed growth rates have slowed recently we project that private sector productivity growth will average around 2 4 percent per year for the next decade only moderately below the average of the post 1995 period

a wavelet analysis of capital markets integration in latin america the continuous wavelet transform analysis may provide a rich and flexible framework for the analysis of time series which exhibit less stable statistical properties such as the ones describing the dynamic trajectory of capital markets in contrast to the fourier analysis wavelet transform preserves information on both time and frequency we provide a summary of the most important features of this framework by involving the concept of coherence as well as its partial and multiple forms we analyse the connections between santiago stock exchange mexican stock exchange and bm fbovespa sao paulo stock exchange for a time span which covers the 23 september 2003 12 march 2014 period we highlight the existence of several significant forces of regional integration and of a short to medium run synchronization process between these markets we conclude that deeper structural and institutional reforms are required in order to enhance the sustainable development and more profound integration of these markets

the portfolio of euro area fund investors and ecb monetary policy announcements abstract this paper studies the impact of major ecb monetary policy announcements on the portfolio allocation of euro area fund investors using daily data between 2012 and mid 2016 a period that includes a variety of unconventional measures we distinguish between active portfolio reallocation driven by redemptions or injections of investors and passive portfolio rebalancing triggered by valuation effects related to changes in asset prices and exchange rates we find that for this class of fund investors policy announcements work mainly through valuation effects the signalling channel rather than via active reallocation the portfolio balance channel notably since the autumn of 2014 monetary policy shocks triggered large asset price and exchange rate effects and prompted a passive shift of euro area investors into riskier assets in particular european and emerging market equity funds and out of bond funds

the lazarus drug the impact of antiretroviral therapy on economic growth abstract does better population health lead to growth in per capita income theory is ambiguous and empirical evidence is very limited in 2001 a steep fall in antiretroviral arv drug prices triggered rapid and massive expansion of arv therapy coverage in lower income countries exploiting the sharp resultant changes in population health i show that arv therapy coverage expansion led to growth in gdp per capita the positive effects on growth most likely persist for around four years arv therapy coverage expansion could explain around a third of the sub saharan african growth miracle

the impact of economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the economic growth and co2 emissions in azerbaijan a cointegration analysis is conducted over the period 1992 2013 for getting more robust results johansen ardlbt dols fmols and ccr methods are employed to explore cointegration and estimate long run coefficients we use cubic quadratic and linear specifications and conclude that the last one is an adequate representation for the impact of the economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan the results from the different cointegration methods are consistent with each other and show that the economic growth has a positive and statistically significant impact on the emissions in the long run implying that the ekc hypothesis does not hold for azerbaijan the income elasticity of co2 emissions using different methods is found to be between 0 7 and 0 8 moreover we find that any short run imbalance can be adjusted towards the long run equilibrium path within less than one year the paper concludes that measures to increase energy efficiency carbon pricing instruments in production and international domestic trade activities and nationwide social awareness programs to instruct about the negative consequences of pollution can be considered as relevant environmental policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions

optimal delivery strategies considering carbon emissions time dependent demands and demand supply interactions abstract the study addresses a distributor s delivery strategy problem with consideration of carbon emissions retailers time dependent demands and demand supply interactions a mathematical programming model is formulated for solving optimal number and time window of service cycles a case study is presented the results show that the distributor would adopt a frequent delivery strategy if carbon taxes are insufficiently high providing the retailers with price discounts does not work out since retailers would value the delays in receiving their ordered products more than the compensations of less frequent delivery given by the distributor in response to carbon taxes models with demand supply interactions can result in larger profit and market share than those without demand supply interactions this study sheds new light to the distributors the retailers and the regulators in greening the logistics transport

information shocks and cigarette addiction views from dynamic panels with common structural changes in this article we attempt to evaluate the impact of various information shocks on cigarette consumption in contrast to the existing studies we do not impose any break points a priori we use recently developed techniques for sample splitting in the data on us cigarette demand and find that using a time index as a transition variable can cluster cigarette demand into four distinct regimes in the past four decades a myopic to rational switch in cigarette consumption behaviour was observed in response to various anti smoking information events in particular we find strong evidence in support of the rational addiction model in the 1980s and 1990s moreover in line with the theoretical prediction our estimate of the long run elasticity is twice as large as the short run elasticity our empirical framework should improve policy makers understanding of the dynamics of cigarette consumption in response to various anti smoking campaigns and stress the role of sound policy making in improving smoking con

not only nokia what finland tells us about new economy growth new economy growth is there a relation between information technologies and the growth rate of productivity is this relation mainly due to the efficiency enhancing effects of few leading industries or rather to the pervasive spreading of it throughout the economy our country study on finland in the 1990s is a contribution to shed light on these issues we find that nokia the world leader in cellular phone production directly and substantially contributed to enhance productivity growth in finland productivity growth gains outside nokia and few other it related service industries have been small temporary or non existent at all though we also provide two pieces of evidence against the existence of technological spillovers between nokia and the other fast growing industries in the finnish economy as shown by the finnish input output table the thinness of the inter industry linkages between the nokia industry and the rest of the economy indicates that productivity gains of the size recorded in the few other fast growing service industries can be associated to nokia s productivity boom only to a very small extent parallel statistical analysis also shows a striking association between the timing and the industry distribution of productivity gains and the declining pace of the price of machinery and equipment investment goods in those industries this is evidence that tfp growth increases in those industries should be mostly attributed to the decline in the world price of computing power altogether we interpret our findings as showing that even in a country endowed with a world class national champion and a policy environment commonly thought of as conducive to growth a new economy takes a long time to show up unlike commonly held tenets it diffusion has shown a limited potential in speeding up this process in finland francesco daveri and olmo silva

integration and consolidation in air freight shipment planning an economic and environmental perspective abstract measuring carbon footprint and controlling carbon emissions across a supply chain have gained considerable attention this study investigates the effects of carbon emissions within the framework of air freight integrator shipment planning with integration and consolidation a mixed 0 1 linear programming lp model is formulated to examine the effects of operational adjustments on carbon emissions and cost performance as well as the effects of carbon emissions regulations on operational decisions sensitivity analysis is performed to examine different carbon emissions policies and operational environments reducing carbon emissions through operational adjustments is feasible at the expense of some increase in cost thus reducing carbon emissions may be considered an alternative or a supplement to more costly carbon reducing technologies policies implemented to control carbon emissions can affect operational decisions when carbon tax price is high enough

the v factor distribution timing and correlates of the great indian growth turnaround we analyze a panel of output series for india disaggregated by 15 states and 14 broad industry groups using principal components bai 2004 bai and ng 2004 we find that a single common v factor captures well the significant shift in the cross sectional distribution of state sectoral output growth rates since the 2nd half of the 1980s the timing of the turnaround implied by the v factor is more closely related to the pattern of policy reforms than has been found in previous research regression based analysis also provides some insights into the uneven distribution of the turnaround across indian states

how technically efficient are singapore s manufacturing industries this study attempts to understand the technical efficiency performance i e how well resources and given technology are being used in 28 manufacturing industries in singapore from 1975 1994 using an improved version of the stochastic frontier model in addition an analytical model is used to investigate the causes of technical inefficiency in these industries to help policy formulation the efficiency performance of foreign and local dominated industries is also closely examined

breaking trends and the money output correlation this paper examines the impact on the money output correla tion of a univariate specification that allows time series to be characterized as stationary around a broken trend function though pretesting suggests that u s real output industrial production can be described as broken trend stationary this result has only limited impact on the money output correlation before 1985 there is a strong granger causal relationship between money and broken detrended output but not first differenced output even when different short term interest rates are used as regres sors however after 1985 this relationship weakens significantly whether or not one determines that output has a unit root

drift and breaks in labor productivity abstract we use endogenous break tests and the stock watson tvp mub methodology to investigate changes in the equilibrium rate of growth of labor productivity in the u s the eurozone the u k australia and japan since wwii results for the u s well capture the conventional wisdom of a golden era of high productivity growth the 1950s and 1960s a marked deceleration starting from the beginning of the 1970s and a strong growth resurgence starting from mid 1990s results for the eurozone point towards a deceleration since the early 1980s with the equilibrium rate of growth of output per hour falling to 0 9 in 2004 4

r d and the growth of firms empirical analysis of a panel of italian firms abstract this paper deals with the growth of firms and with their innovative activities the main hypothesis of the paper maintains that firms with a strong commitment to r d have a higher rate of growth because they succeed in the product market after a review of the related literature the paper presents an econometric analysis of the r d growth of firms relation based on a database of italian firms data on a sample of 500 firms with time series in the range 1989 1997 were drawn from the mediocredito survey of italian manufacturing descriptive analysis shows that the sales growth rate of firms with r d is higher than that of firms without r d econometric analysis is performed in two steps first we apply a panel unit root test im k pesaran h shin y 1997 testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels dae university of cambridge mimeo to verify whether the firm size significantly affects firm growth the test confirms gibrat s law that firm size has a stochastic trend second we explore whether there are variables with stochastic trends that could account for firm size according to our estimates the growth rate of firms is positively correlated with research intensity in these estimates a further interesting result is that investment in ict is not significant or shows a parameter with negative sign

the new econometrics of structural change dating breaks in u s labor productivity we have seen the emergence of three major innovations in the econometrics of structural change in the past fifteen years 1 tests for a structural break of unknown timing 2 estimation of the timing of a structural break and 3 tests to distinguish unit roots from broken time trends these three innovations have dramatically altered the face of applied time series econometrics in this paper we review these three innovations and illustrate their application through an empirical assessment of u s labor productivity in the manufacturing durables sector

the effect of joint custody on family outcomes since the 1970s almost all us states have introduced a form of joint custody after divorce i analyze the causal effect of these custody law reforms on different family outcomes my identification strategy exploits the different timing of reforms across the us states estimations based on state panel data suggest that the introduction of joint custody led to an increase in marriage rates an increase in overall fertility including a shift from nonmarital to marital fertility and an increase in divorce rates for older couples accordingly female labor market participation decreased further male suicide rates and domestic violence fell in treated states the empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that joint custody increased the relative bargaining power of men within marriage

distinguished lecture on economics in government the new economy post mortem or second wind there was an acceleration of u s productivity after 1995 investment in information technology hardware and software contributed importantly to this but was not its sole cause in part heavy it investment perhaps overinvestment was the result of the booming economy and cheap capital besides it the expansion of productive firms boosted productivity together with the competitive pressure this put on other firms to innovate and improve productivity growth has been surprisingly strong in 2001 and the likely trend for the future is in the range of 2 2 to 2 7 percent a year the economy should get a second wind

tipping and the dynamics of segregation schelling dynamic models of segregation journal of mathematical sociology 1 1971 143 186 showed that extreme segregation can arise from social interactions in white preferences once the minority share in a neighborhood exceeds a tipping point all the whites leave we use regression discontinuity methods and census tract data from 1970 through 2000 to test for discontinuities in the dynamics of neighborhood racial composition we find strong evidence that white population flows exhibit tipping like behavior in most cities with a distribution of tipping points ranging from 5 to 20 minority share tipping is prevalent both in the suburbs and near existing minority enclaves in contrast to white population flows there is little evidence of nonlinearities in rents or housing prices around the tipping point tipping points are higher in cities where whites have more tolerant racial attitudes

firm specific knowledge and technical efficiency of watch and clock manufacturing firms in china abstract this paper tests whether firm specific knowledge in terms of capital intensity product differentiation and research and development contribute to an improvement in firm efficiency based on a representative dataset from the watch and clock industry in southern china the technical efficiency is estimated using a non parametric data envelopment analysis approach through a tobit model we investigate whether a firm s specific knowledge influences its efficiency the results suggest that capital intensity and research and development have a positive effect on the efficiency of the sample firms and identify their roles of firm specific knowledge in explaining inter firm variation in efficiency however sample firms with high level of product differentiation were found to have no obvious advantages in efficiency performance

another pass through bites the dust oil prices and inflation el presente articulo presenta evidencia de que el traspaso de los movimientos del precio del petroleo al nivel general de precios ha disminuido en forma importante en las ultimas decadas se encuentra que tal disminucion es generalizada para un amplio conjunto de paises luego de documentar correlaciones entre el indice de precios al consumidor y el precio del petroleo se utilizan dos estrategias de estimacion en un intento por identificar adecuadamente el efecto inflacionario de los shocks del petroleo primero se estima la curva de phillips tradicional para 34 paises aumentada de modo de incluir el petroleo y testear si existe quiebre estructural esta metodologia muestra una caida en el traspaso medio estimado para los paises industrializados y en menor medida para las economias emergentes segundo se estiman vectores autorregresivos en ventanas moviles para una submuestra de paises para los que existen datos suficientes se derivan funciones de impulso respuesta de la inflacion a los shocks petroleros y se interpretan las integrales como estimaciones del traspaso se encuentra que el efecto de los shocks petroleros sobre la inflacion se ha reducido en la mayoria de los doce paises de la muestra entre los factores que podrian explicar esta caida en nuestra opinion los mas importantes son que la intensidad economica del petroleo se ha reducido en el mundo que tambien ha disminuido el traspaso del tipo de cambio que el ambiente inflacionario es mas favorable y que el actual shock del precio del petroleo es el resultado de una solida demanda mundial estos factores ayudan a entender no solo por que el actual shock ha tenido efectos inflacionarios limitados sino asimismo por que sus consecuencias en el producto tambien han sido limitadas

searching for a break in gnp it has been suggested that existing estimates of the long run impact of a surprise move in income may have a substantial upward bias due to the presence of a trend break in postwar u s gross national product data this article shows that the statistical evidence does not warrant abandoning the no trend break null hypothesis a key part of the argument is that conventionally computed p values overstate the likelihood of the trend break alternative hypothesis this is because they do not take into account that in practice the date is chosen based on pretest examination of the data

outlook vs futures three decades of evidence in hog and cattle markets the accuracy of hog and cattle price forecasts from four outlook programs is compared with forecasts derived from futures markets most of the series begin in the mid to late 1970s and end in 2007 root mean squared error rmse comparisons indicate the difference between outlook and futures rmse is relatively small in most cases in directional terms outlook forecasts beat futures prices only 2 out of 11 times in hogs and 1 out of 7 times in cattle however the null hypothesis that futures encompasses outlook is rejected in 5 of 11 cases for hogs and 4 of 7 cases for cattle

structural change and growth in india this paper examines the link between structural change and growth in india it constructs indices of structural change and performs a time series analysis of the data it finds that 1988 marks a break in the time series of growth and structural change there is one way causality from structural change to growth in the period 1988 2007 whereas there is no evidence for this linkage before 1988

an empirical analysis of information in the yield spread on future recessions in japan this article examines whether the yield spread contains information on the likelihood of future economic recessions using a probit model by taking the stability of the relationship between the yield spread and future recessions into account we also compare the accuracy of information in the yield spread with stock returns and money supply we find the following results in this article first a structural change in the relationship between the yield spread and future recessions occur at the end of 1996 second whereas the japanese yield spread contains more precise information on future recessions than stock returns and nominal money supply before the structural break we cannot predict future recessions using the yield spread after the break third the money supply does not forecast future recessions for the entire sample period

oil and the macroeconomy since the 1970s economists have long been intrigued by empirical evidence that suggests that oil price shocks may be closely related to macroeconomic performance this interest dates back to the 1970s the 1970s were a period of growing dependence on imported oil unprecedented disruptions in the global oil market and poor macroeconomic performance in the united states thus it was natural to suspect a causal relationship from oil prices to u s macroeconomic aggregates since then a large body of work has accumulated that purports to establish this link on theoretical grounds and to provide empirical evidence in its support we do not attempt a comprehensive survey of this literature but rather provide an idiosyncratic synthesis of what we view as the key issues in this debate and the insights gained over the last 30 years the timing seems right for such an account although the experience of the 1970s continues to play an important role in discussions of the link between oil and the macroeconomy there have been a number of new oil price shocks since the 1970s notably the 1986 collapse of oil prices and the 2000 boom in oil prices as well as the oil price increases associated with the 1990 1991 gulf war and the 2003 iraq war given this richer case history we are arguably in a better position than two decades ago to distinguish the idiosyncratic features of each oil crisis from the systematic effects increases in oil prices have been held responsible for recessions periods of excessive inflation reduced productivity and lower economic growth in this paper we review the arguments supporting such views first we highlight some of the conceptual difficulties in assigning a central role to oil price shocks in explaining

technology utilization and inflation what drives the new keynesian phillips curve we argue that the new keynesian phillips curve literature has failed to deliver a convincing measure of real marginal costs we start from a careful modeling of optimal price setting allowing for nonunitary factor substitution nonneutral technical change and time varying factor utilization rates this ensures the resulting real marginal cost measures match volatility reductions and level changes witnessed in many u s time series the cost measure comprises conventional countercyclical cost elements plus procyclical and covarying utilization rates although procyclical elements seem to dominate the components of real marginal cost components are becoming less cyclical over time incorporating this richer driving variable produces more plausible price stickiness estimates than otherwise and suggests a more balanced weight of backward and forward looking inflation expectations than commonly found our results challenge existing views of inflation determinants and have important implications for modeling inflation in new keynesian models

managing carbon footprints in inventory management abstract there is a broad consensus that mankind must reduce carbon emissions to mitigate global warming it is generally accepted that carbon emission trading is one of the most effective market based mechanisms to curb the amount of carbon emissions this paper investigates how firms manage carbon footprints in inventory management under the carbon emission trading mechanism we derive the optimal order quantity and analytically and numerically examine the impacts of carbon trade carbon price and carbon cap on order decisions carbon emissions and total cost we make interesting observations from the numerical examples and provide managerial insights from the analytical results

money output and inflation in the longer term major industrial countries 1880 2001 i introduction the empirical role of money growth in the macroeconomy has been studied by many researchers using different data and methods the most prominent studies focusing on the quantity theory of money are those of friedman and schwartz 1963 1982 using data averaged over the phases of the business cycle in order to capture longer run movements with u s and u k data back to 1867 the study by mccandless and weber 2001 is a representative example for a different approach for 110 countries in the post wwii period longer run growth rates are approximated by growth of a variable over a 30 year period average growth rates 1 the problem with phase averaging is that it does not deal with possible nonstationarity of the data 2 the problem with growth averages over long periods while informative to a degree is that they have limitations too it is impossible to assess the timing of movements in these variables 3 in the frequency domain the long run is associated with frequency zero which in our terminology is the long run trend previous studies in the frequency domain on the long run neutrality of money at zero frequency include the studies of lucas 1980 and geweke 1986 the theory of spectral analysis provides a rigorous framework for extracting specific frequency bands from the data instead of considering only frequency zero stock and watson 1998 applied the band pass filter of baxter and king 1999 to extract cycles frequency bands for u s data and focused on the business cycle and on mostly the post wwii period christiano and fitzgerald 2003 proposed an improved band pass filter and provided an application to the longer run relation of money and inflation for bands of 8 20 years and 20 40 years in the united states from 1900 to 1997 4 the usefulness of monetary aggregates for conducting monetary policy has been seriously called into question because of the instability of money demand a prominent empirical study is that of estrella and mishkin 1997 recent mainstream new keynesian models have no explicit role for money woodford 2008 a contrasting view is that the longer term role of money is still of relevance for monetary policy the european central bank explicitly emphasizes a supporting role that monetary aggregates should play in order to provide an anchor for inflation expectations hafer haslag and jones 2007 issing 2006 king 2002 nelson 2003 christiano motto and rostagno 2007 provided a theoretical new keynesian model where inflation expectations lose their anchor unless money is monitored and reacted to also beck and wieland 2008 presented a new keynesian model where cross checking with money growth movements improves inflation control similarly assenmacher wesche and gerlach 2006 2007 found a significant role for a low frequency low pass filtered component of money in the empirical new keynesian phillips curve equation 5 in the spirit of friedman 1961 we use long time spans so that our results are unlikely to be because of a specific policy rule in place in a given period we have 122 years of annual data from 1880 to 2001 before the introduction of the euro in 2002 we have real gross domestic product gdp money and consumer price indices cpis with no gaps for 11 industrialized countries 6 the countries included in our study differ in such terms as their institutions fiscal and monetary policies and economic growth rates nonetheless at least in peace time they were similar in generally having comparatively free markets in which prices and interest rates were determined our aim is to apply analytic methods that are free from economic and statistical models as much as possible in order to explore empirical regularities or stylized facts in the data also the focus of our research is the longer run we employ band pass filters to pick out cycles from each time series that last 8 40 years that is the longer term component

multiple regimes in u s monetary policy a nonparametric approach we use two different nonparametric methods to determine whether there were multiple regimes in u s monetary policy over the period 1955 2003 we model monetary policy using two different versions of taylor s rule for the nominal interest rate target by contrast with parametric tests for regime changes the nonparametric methods we use allow the data to determine the dimensions on which to split the sample for purposes of estimating the coefficients of the taylor rule we find evidence for a few structural breaks and consistent agreement between our two nonparametric methods on the dating of those breaks

firm size age and efficiency evidence from kenyan manufacturing firms translog stochastic frontier production functions are estimated using an unbalanced panel of 235 kenyan manufacturing firms in the food wood textile and metal sectors the sectors are estimated individually in order to investigate whether technical efficiency is systematically related to the size and age of firms the evidence suggests that firm size has a positive and significant effect in the wood and textile sectors the age effect is less systematic but is insignificant in all sectors except textiles

specialization and diversification in agricultural transformation the case of west punjab 1903 92 in this article the role of crop specialization and diversification in agricultural transformation is investigated empirically changes in aggregate land productivity are associated structurally with inter crop and inter district reallocation of land use results from a region with the oldest history of agricultural commercialization in developing countries show that cropping patterns of subsistence agriculture changed substantially with rising concentration of crop acreage in districts with higher and growing productivity rapid specialization in crop production was observed at the district level recently after a phase with sporadic specialization these changes reflected comparative advantage and contributed to the improvement in aggregate land productivity

factor proportions openness and factor prices in kenya 1965 2000 this study analyses how changes in factor abundance and openness have affected relative factor prices in kenya since 1965 using cointegration analysis and error correction models of relative factor prices we find that factor proportions determined relative factor prices in the long run while openness measured by three different proxies possibly had a short run effect on relative factor returns the only deviation from this pattern occurred during the latter half of the 1990s when there was rapid wage growth mainly due to labour market deregulation

bidirectional causality in oil and gas markets abstract do events in the natural gas market cause repercussions in the crude oil market this paper studies linkages between the two markets using high frequency intraday oil and gas futures prices by analyzing the effect of weekly oil and gas inventory announcements on price volatility we show a bidirectional causal relationship both inventory gluts and shortages have a cross commodity effect on price volatility not only for the next month nearby futures contract but also for the following six months contracts

the sensitivity of productivity growth measures to alternative structural and behavioral assumptions an application to electric utilities 1951 1984 this article examines the sensitivity of three alternative multifactor productivity growth estimates for the electric utility industry during the 1951 1984 period the results indicate that multifactor productivity growth estimates are quite sensitive to the relaxation of various structural and behavioral assumptions first a benchmark measure is constructed along the lines suggested by solow 1957 this residual approach produces estimates that suggest a substantial decline in firm level productivity growth after the mid 1960s prior to obtaining the second and third estimates empirical tests of the structural and behavioral assumptions underlying a firm s operation are conducted first the structural assumption of constant returns to scale is rejected and the resulting long run scale adjusted multifactor productivity growth estimates are found to be consistently less than the residual estimates second the behavioral assumption of long run equilibrium is rejected comparing the long run scale ad

monitoring structural change in dynamic econometric models the classical approach to testing for structural change employs retrospective tests using a historical data set of a given length here we consider a wide array of fluctuation type tests in a monitoring situation given a history period for which a regression relationship is known to be stable we test whether incoming data are consistent with the previously established relationship procedures based on estimates of the regression coefficients are extended in three directions we introduce a procedures based on ols residuals b rescaled statistics and c alternative asymptotic boundaries compared to the existing tests our extensions offer better power against certain alternatives improved size in finite samples for dynamic models and ease of computation respectively we apply our methods to two data sets german m1 money demand and u s labor productivity

housing and the great depression this article considers the structural stability of the relationship between the real housing price and real gdp per capita for an annual sample that includes the great depression we test for structural change in parameter values using a sample of annual us data from 1890 to 1952 the article examines the long run and short run dynamic relationships between the real housing price and real gdp per capita to determine whether these relationships experienced structural change over the sample period we find that temporal granger causality exists between these two variables only for subsamples that include the great depression for the other subsample periods as well as for the entire sample period no relationship exists between these variables

the decline in u s output volatility explanations for the decline in u s output volatility since the mid 1980s include better policy good luck and technological change our multiple break estimates suggest that reductions in volatility since the mid 1980s extend not only to manufacturing inventories but also to sales this finding along with a concentration of the reduction in the volatility of inventories in materials and supplies and the lack of a significant break in the inventory sales covariance imply that new inventory technology cannot account for most of the decline in output volatility

declining output volatility in germany impulses propagation and the role of monetary policy the decline in output volatility in germany is analysed a lower level of variance in an autoregressive model of output growth can be either due to a change in the structure of the economy a change in the propagation mechanism or a reduced error term variance reduced impulses in germany the decline output volatility is due to a decline in the persistence of the growth process this is in contrast to the us results where a break in the variance seems to dominate the decline in persistence a change in the conduct of monetary policy the establishment of another monetary policy regime could be part of an explanation for the change in propagation stochastic simulations with a new keynesian dsge model support the hypothesis

recent trends and structural breaks in us and eu15 labour productivity growth this article examines shifts in labour productivity growth in the us and in europe between 1970 and 2007 based on econometric tests of structural breaks additionally it makes use of time series based projections of labour productivity growth up to 2009 in order to detect breaks depending on confidence intervals of the projections the identification of structural breaks in the us labour productivity growth is far from obvious a statistically significant break is found in the late 1990s only if at least the 97 5th percentile of forecasts materializes in the future which means that despite a clear pick up in productivity growth in the second half of the 1990s the size of the hump is not large enough compared with past variations to make this change a statistically significant break however a significant break point is detected in the mid 1990s for the difference in labour productivity growth between the us and the eu15 even when controlling for the convergence of europe towards the us productivity l

the measurement and sources of technical inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry production function models are estimated with a time series of cross section data on indonesian weaving establishments the sources of technical inefficiency are investigated three firm attributes are identified as being potentially related to firm efhciency tbey are firm ownership age and size the importance of these attributes as sources of inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry is investigated and the implications of the find ings discussed

are revisions to usda crop production forecasts smoothed this article uses nordhaus framework to determine the efficiency of the revision process for usda corn and soybean production forecasts over the 1970 1971 through 2004 2005 marketing years positive autocorrelation and consistency of directional changes in forecast revisions suggest these forecasts are smoothed evidence is provided that the loss in forecast accuracy due to smoothing is statistically and economically significant in several cases a conservative bias in farm operators assessments of yield potential and in the procedure for translating enumerator s information about plant fruit counts into objective yield estimates are identified as plausible sources of smoothing

a non parametric analysis of productivity the case of u s and japanese manufacturing a nonparametric analysis of technology technical change and productivity is presented in the context of cost minimizing behavior a number of nonparametric tests concerning the existence and nature of technical change are applied to u s and japanese manufacturing data nonparametric measures of technical change are presented copyright 1990 by american economic association

the maturity structure of corporate debt we provide an empirical examination of the determinants of corporate debt maturity our evidence offers strong support for the contracting cost hypothesis firms that have few growth options are large or are regulated have more long term debt in their capital structure we find little evidence that firms use the maturity structure of their debt to signal information to the market the evidence is consistent however with the hypothesis that firms with larger information asymmetries issue more short term debt we find no evidence that taxes affect debt maturity

upstream merger in a successive oligopoly who pays the price abstract this study applies a successive oligopoly model with an unobservable non linear tariff between upstream and downstream firms to analyze the possible anti competitive effects of an upstream merger in the norwegian food sector specifically the market for eggs the theoretical predictions are that an upstream merger may lead to higher average prices paid by downstream firms and at the same time no changes in the prices paid by consumers consistent with the theoretical predictions it is found that the merger had no effect on consumer prices but led to higher average prices paid by the downstream firms to the merged firm

elasticity of substitution and technical efficiency evidence from the us electricity generation abstractthe implications of national or regional energy policies for technical efficiency and environmental outcomes in electricity generation depend on fossil fuel input substitution this study u