the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

specialization of labor and the distribution of income abstract we analyze a model in which workers must be allocated to tasks to produce there are differences among the workers in absolute ability that are independent of the activity they perform we demonstrate a unique competitive equilibrium that determines both wages and the allocation of workers to tasks the equilibrium wage has the property that workers assigned to the lowest value added tasks will receive a premium above their identifiable contribution to value simply for filling these least valuable positions we examine how the equilibrium wage function changes as the production process becomes more specialized and the division of labor increases journal of economic literature classification numbers d31 d33 j31

a micro data approach to the identification of credit crunches this article presents a micro data approach to the identification of credit crunches using a survey among german firms which regularly queries the firms assessment of the current willingness of banks to extend credit we estimate the probability of a restrictive loan supply policy by time taking into account the creditworthiness of borrowers creditworthiness is approximated by firm specific factors e g the firms assessment of their current business situation and their business expectations after controlling for the return on the banks risk free investment alternative which is also likely to affect the supply of loans we derive a credit crunch indicator which measures that part of the shift in the loan supply that is neither explained by firm specific factors nor by the opportunity costs of providing risky loans

skills in the city this paper documents the allocation of skills across cities and estimates the impact of agglomeration on the hedonic prices of worker skills we find that large cities are more skilled than are small cities but only to a modest degree we also show that the increase in productivity associated with agglomeration as measured by the urban wage premium is larger for workers with stronger cognitive and people skills in contrast motor skills and physical strength are not rewarded to a greater degree in large cities urbanization thus enhances thinking and social interaction rather than physical abilities these results are robust to a variety of estimation strategies including using nlsy variables that control for worker quality and a worker msa fixed effect specification

spatial evolution of the computer industry in the usa abstract this paper examines the spatial evolution of computers across 317 metro areas in the usa since the introduction of the personal computer we start by examining the relative distribution of employment across cities examining how that distribution changes in 1977 1992 and how cities move through the distribution for computers transition matrices are stationary with the industry exhibiting no tendency to settle down nor any tendency of retrenchment during periods of national high tech employment decline there is no tendency of the relative size distribution of computer employment to collapse go bimodal etc overall computers exhibit some turbulence with dramatic big winners and losers among cities as well as persistence for some cities in employment shares in attracting or repelling an industry urban heterogeneity is important large well educated cities near san jose have a much greater chance of attracting high tech employment much lower mean first passage times moving up states and less chance of losing it in assessing the determinants of persistence in local employment patterns we examine sources of productivity growth we find strong evidence of significant dynamic own industry externalities for single plant firms and little evidence of urbanization jacobs knowledge type externalities corporate plants in computers seem to be self reliant and not really influenced by externalities

cities matching and the productivity gains of agglomeration abstract the striking geographical concentration of economic activities suggests that there are substantial benefits to agglomeration however the nature of those benefits remains unclear in this paper we take advantage of a new data set to quantify the role of one of the main contenders the matching of workers and jobs we show that thicker urban labor markets are associated with more assortative matching in terms of worker and firm quality when we estimate establishment level production functions we also find evidence of complementarities between worker and firm quality putting together the production and matching relationships we show that production complementarity and assortative matching is an important source of the urban productivity premium

managerial leverage is limited by the extent of the market hierarchies specialization and the utilization of lawyers human capital abstract this paper examines the role of hierarchies in the organization of human capital intensive production we develop an equilibrium model of hierarchical organization and provide empirical evidence based on confidential data on thousands of law offices the equilibrium assignment of individuals to hierarchical positions varies with the degree of field specialization which increases as the extent of the market increases as individuals knowledge becomes narrower but deeper managerial leverage the number of workers per manager optimally increases to exploit this depth consistent with our model the share of lawyers who work in hierarchies and the ratio of associates to partners increase as market size increases and lawyers field specialize other results provide evidence against alternative interpretations that emphasize unobserved differences in the distribution of demand or firm size effects and lend additional support to the view that in legal services hierarchies help exploit increasing re

competition over high income workers job growth and access to labour in atlanta access to a large labour pool labour pooling leads to local economic concentrations through agglomeration economies however these concentrations may be self limiting by reducing labour availability through competition over high skill workers this paper examines whether labour pooling and labour availability of workers with different incomes account for local job growth in the atlanta metropolitan area between 2000 and 2006 workers income is employed to account for the human capital of workers including education and skills it is found that the availability of high income workers is the only positive significant factor for job growth and the spatial size of the effect is larger than the traffic analysis zone neighbourhood scale in contrast no labour pooling indicators show a positive association with job growth the finding casts doubt on labour pooling effects at the intraregional level and suggests avenues for further research on local area agglomeration economies

current status of renewable energy in nepal opportunities and challenges abstract energy is indispensible in modern society and is one of the most important components of socio economic development nepal is one of the least developed countries with more than 80 of its population residing in rural communities per capita energy usage often viewed as a key index of the development in the country is far less than the global average per capita energy usage the energy sector is dominated by the traditional energy sources such as fuel woods crop residues and animal dung mainly for domestic usage contributing to about 86 of the national energy consumption currently 40 of the population has access to electricity and the rural electrification accounts for only 29 the majority of rural populations are meeting their energy needs by burning biomass in traditional stoves which has several environmental and public health issues nearly all fossil derived fuels consumed in the country are imported in a refined form and the perpetual increase in petroleum imports has adversely impacted the existing fragile economy of the country despite a huge potential in harnessing various renewable energy resources such as hydropower solar power wind energy and biofuels bioenergy these resources have not been sustainably captured due to geographical technical political and economical reasons this paper presents a brief account of nepal s renewable energy resources and the current status of various renewable energy technologies rets such as micro hydro solar power wind energy biofuel bioenergy improved cook stoves and improved water mill it also highlights the opportunities and barriers for the development of rets finally this paper presents some recommendations for the promotion development and implementation of rets in the country

competing for capital when labor is heterogeneous this paper investigates the impacts of capital mobility and tax competition in a setting with imperfect matching between firms and workers the small country always gains and the large country always loses from tax competition thus implying tax competition leads to redistribution from the large to the small country however the large country always attains a higher utility than does the small country these results imply that our model encapsulates both the importance of being small as well as the importance of being large we also show that tax harmonization leads to redistribution from the large to the small country

the division of labor local markets and worker organization the model developed here explains differences in the degree of the division of labor across local markets for example the typical doctor in one local market may treat a wider range of patients problems than his counterpart in another local market the extent of the division of labor depends on variables affecting the local demand for services two different forms of worker organization cooperation and noncooperation yield divergent results for example specialization increases with the local number of producers under cooperation but may decrease under noncooperation with the number of producers constant local demand variables affect individual specialization under noncooperation but not under cooperation

productivity gains from geographic concentration of human capital evidence from the cities abstract based on recent theoretical developments the argument is made that the average level of human capital is a local public good cities with higher average levels of human capital should therefore have higher wages and higher land rents after conditioning on the characteristics of individual workers and dwellings this prediction is supported by data for standard metropolitan statistical areas smsas in the united states where the smsa average levels of formal education and work experience are used as proxies for the average level of human capital the alternative explanations of omitted smsa variables and self selection are evaluated an estimate of the effect of an additional year of average education on total factor productivity is computed

labor heterogeneity wage bargaining and agglomeration economies abstract the modern economy is characterized by increasing returns to scale diverse production technology and specialized labor requirements with heterogeneous production technology increasing returns to scale and specific labor requirements we show that average productivity increases with the size of the labor market the larger the size of the market the better the matches between workers and firms resulting in lower on the job training costs through the wage bargaining between firms and workers the savings in training costs are transmitted into higher wages

wage premia in employment clusters how important is worker heterogeneity this article tests whether the correlation between wages and concentration of employment can be explained by unobserved worker productivity residential location is used as a proxy for unobserved productivity and average commute time to workplace is used to test whether location based productivity differences are compensated away by longer commutes analyses using confidential data from the 2000 decennial census find that estimates of agglomeration wage premia within metropolitan areas are robust to comparisons within residential location and that estimates do not persist after controlling for commuting costs suggesting that the productivity differences across locations are due to location not individual unobservables

a dynamic interregional theory of migration and population growth the authors attempt to bring the theory of regional amenity value determination together with a theoretical framework on migration to form a cohesive theoretical model they build on previous efforts to do this by introducing factors such as the housing market and determination of the equilibrium level of real full income the implied geographical focus is on the united states annotation

urban wages and labor market agglomeration abstract using the 5 public use micro sample of the 1990 u s census we find that observationally equivalent workers in the manufacturing sector earn higher wages when they are in urban labor markets that have a larger share of national or metropolitan employment in their same occupation and industry groups quantitatively the effect is large with an elasticity measured at the means of between 1 2 and 3 6 for these effects we interpret the willingness of firms to pay more for equivalent workers in dense markets as evidence of an agglomeration economy in urban labor

general equilibria in large economies with endogenous structure of division of labor abstract we study a general equilibrium model with specialization and division of labor the market coordinates all individuals decisions in choosing their patterns of specialization in order to utilize positive network effects of division of labor net of transaction costs we establish the equilibrium existence theorem the first and second welfare theorems and the core equivalence for a family of general equilibrium models with both possible increasing returns and transaction costs using an analytical framework with consumer producers economies of specialization and transaction costs we resurrect the spirit of the classical economics of the division of labor in a modern body of mathematical formalism

is relationship lending special evidence from credit file data in germany the german financial market is often characterized as a bank based system with strong bank customer relationships the corresponding notion of a housebank is closely related to the theoretical idea of relationship lending it is the objective of this paper to provide a direct comparison between housebanks and normal banks as to their credit policy therefore we analyze a new data set representing a random sample of borrowers drawn from the credit portfolios of five leading german banks over a period of five years we use credit file data rather than industry survey data and thus focus the analysis on information that is directly related to actual credit decisions in particular we use bank internal borrower rating data to evaluate borrower quality and the bank s own assessment of its housebank status to control for information intensive relationships the major results of our study support the view that housebanks are able to establish a distinct behavioral pattern consistent with the idea of long term commitment we find that housebanks do provide liquidity insurance in situations of unexpected deterioration of borrower ratings with respect to loan pricing we find no evidence for intra or intertemporal price differentiation related to housebanking

does the urban wage premium differ by pre employment status this paper investigates whether the density of local labour markets in germany impacts on the wage of new employment relationships and whether corresponding urbanization economies differ significan

growth and change in human capital across the canadian urban hierarchy 1996 2001 university degree holders in large cities are more prevalent and are growing at a more rapid pace than in smaller cities and rural areas this relatively high rate of growth stems from net migrator

wage competition with heterogeneous workers and firms we study imperfect competition in the labor market when both workers and firms are heterogeneous when firms cannot observe workers skill firms pay workers equal wages but workers absorb training costs when firms can identify worker types firms pay different net wages to different workers voters select the level of general education that is financed by a lump sum tax workers are on average better off when firms can observe workers skill for a given level of general human capital but the median voter prefers a higher level of general human capital when firms cannot observe worker types

in search of capital crunch supply factors behind the credit slowdown in japan the seeming failure of loose monetary policy to reactivate japan s economy has led some observers to suggest that the usual credit channels through which monetary policy affects the real economy are blocked and this is because of a pervasive shortage of bank capital that has induced a leftward shift in the supply of bank credit this is the so called capital crunch hypothesis this paper finds support for the hypothesis in the bank data for 1997 a year during which the landscape of the japanese financial system underwent some fundamental changes

the human capital stock a generalized approach this paper presents a new framework for human capital measurement the generalized framework can i substantially amplify the role of human capital in accounting for cross country income dierences and ii reconcile the existing con ict between regression and accounting evidence in assessing the wealth and poverty of nations one natural interpretation emphasizes dierences across economies in the acquisition of advanced knowledge by skilled workers

cities workers and wages a structural analysis of the urban wage premium workers earn higher wages in cities vs rural areas this gap could arise because cities make workers more productive or it could be the result of a non random selection of workers into cities based on their ability and their endogenous history of career choices to untangle these issues this paper estimates a dynamic programming model which embeds the choice of residing in a city or rural area within a model of career choices over time after controlling for all the sources of selection and endogeneity the estimates indicate that a given worker does earn more in the city for white collar work but not for blue collar work in addition city work experience is found to be worth more than rural work experience in the rural area for white collar work but not for blue collar work these results support the interpretation that cities make white collar workers more productive and suggest that workers may consider moving to the city not only in terms of locational choice but also as a form of human capital investment copyright 2007 wiley blackwell

productivity and city size a critique of the evidence a critique of two leading articles in the productivity and city size literature results in revised estimates of the productivity advantages of large cities in particular extant estimates of the elasticity of productivity with city size are revised downward by over 100 percent for the manufacturing sector and about 25 percent for the entire urban economy after revision productivity advantages of larger cities are found to be much larger for the nonmanufacturing sector than for the manufacturing sector hence revitalization policies for large cities should be focused on nonmanufacturing sectors

the geographical concentration of unemployment a male female comparison in spain alonso villar o and del rio c geographical concentration of unemployment a male female comparison in spain regional studies the aim of this paper is to analyse gender differences in the spatial distribution of unemployment specifically it is explored whether agglomeration can influence gender gaps in unemployment rates in doing so tools are used from the literature on economic geography and income distribution and they are adapted to the present case using data from spain it is shown that the advantage of living in large cities does not affect women and men equally agglomeration seems especially to favour the female population the results also suggest that the female employment premium appears only in municipalities of a certain size alonso villar o et del rio c la concentration geographique du chomage une comparaison hommes femmes en espagne regional studies cet article cherche a analyser les differences par sexe de la distribution geographique du chomage plus precisement on etudie s

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

spatial wage disparities sorting matters spatial wage disparities can result from spatial differences in the skill composition of the workforce in non human endowments and in local interactions to distinguish between these explanations we estimate a model of wage determination across local labour markets using a very large panel of french workers we control for worker characteristics worker fixed effects industry fixed effects and the characteristics of the local labour market our findings suggest that individual skills account for a large fraction of existing spatial wage disparities with strong evidence of spatial sorting by skills interaction effects are mostly driven by the local density of employment not controlling for worker heterogeneity leads to very biased estimates of interaction effects endowments only appear to play a small role

demand uncertainty mismatch and un employment we consider a finite number of firms which compete imperfectly for heterogeneous workers firms produce a homogeneous good sold on a competitive market and face demand induced price fluctuations it is then shown that unemployment may arise in equilibrium because of both uncertainty of product demand and job mismatch unemployment does not arise however when the variance of the demand shock is small enough and or the cost of mismatch is sufficiently low full employment always prevails when there is free entry hence unemployment may persist as long as the incumbent firms choose their skill requirements to protect their supernormal profits

financial crisis and credit crunch in korea evidence from firm level data abstract this paper analyzes the credit crunch following the recent financial crisis in korea using enterprise level data we find that there were big differences in the magnitude of the credit contraction across different types of firms in particular chaebol conglomerate affiliated firms appeared to have lost the preferential access to credit that they had enjoyed in the pre crisis period and credit appears to have been reallocated in favor of more efficient firms this suggests that the credit crunch suffered by certain sectors can be attributed to the adjustment by banks and enterprises to the restructuring of the financial sector rather than tight monetary policy or an external credit constraint

work contracts and earnings inequality the case of chile great social inequality has been one of the worrisome features of economic development in latin america this study focuses on chile one of latin america s fastest growing economies with one of the highest levels of income inequality during the 1990s using micro level data from the 1994 and 2000 encuestas de caracterizacion socio economica this article examines the role of work contracts in explaining male and female earnings and earnings inequality among wage and salary workers over the second half of the 1990s the analysis distinguishes between wage and salary work without a work contract referred to as informal work and wage and salary work with a work contract within the latter group the study further differentiates by the type of work contract held such as permanent and a variety of contingent work contracts the findings reveal that the majority of employees in informal and contingent wage and salary work arrangements earned significantly less than their permanent counterparts additiona

bank regulation and the credit crunch abstract this study investigates the direct link between regulatory enforcement actions and the shrinkage of bank loans to sectors likely to be bank dependent we partition the shrinkage due to loan supply into the component due to explicit regulatory enforcement actions and that due to a voluntary response by bank management to low capital to asset ratios we find that banks with formal actions shrink at a significantly faster rate than those without even after controlling for differences in capital to asset ratios furthermore much of the reduced lending has been in categories containing primarily loans to bank dependent borrowers

power couples changes in the locational choice of the college educated 1940 1990 college educated couples are increasingly located in large metropolitan areas these areas were home to 32 percent of all college educated couples in 1940 39 percent in 1970 and 50 percent in 1990 we investigate whether this trend can be explained by increasing urbanization of the college educated or the growth of dual career households and the resulting severity of the colocation problem we argue that the latter explanation is the primary one smaller cities may therefore experience reduced inflows of human capital relative to the past and thus become poorer

urban agglomeration capital augmenting technology and labor market equilibrium abstract the objective of this paper is to measure urban productivity using japanese city based cross sectional data of 1980 the results of a labor demand ols regression analysis suggest two kinds of possible model specifications capital augmenting and demand supply equilibrium each model type is considered and the average effect of population density on labor productivity is shown to be 4 3 in the capital augmenting model and 8 0 in the equilibrium model

roles and potentials of renewable energy in less developed economies the case of nepal increasing the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix remains one of the major energy policy goals across many economies this paper assesses the roles and potentials of renewable energy sources in less developed economies while citing nepal as an example renewable energy has a significant role to play in the electrification of rural areas in developing economies and contribute towards sustainable development realizing full potentials of renewable however requires addressing both the associated demand side and supply side constraints innovative subsidies and tax incentives adequate entrepreneurial support strengthening institutional arrangement and promoting local community based organizations such as the cooperatives are the necessary factors in promoting the green technologies in countries like nepal international factors such as large scale investment and adequate technology transfer are equally crucial to create a rapid spread and increase affordability of decentralized renewable energy technologies in less developed economies

low pay and income in urban and rural areas evidence from the british household panel survey this paper examines the extent of urban rural differences in low pay and the link between low pay and low incomes using data on urban and rural residents from the british household panel survey for 1991 98 the results suggest that overall urban wages were significantly less than accessible rural but significantly more than remote rural wages even after adjustments were made for differences in observed characteristics a lower percentage of urban workers who experienced low pay were also resident in low income households lower urban in employment and in self employment poverty were found relative to poor remote rural households even after differences in the characteristics across the different samples were controlled for

the attenuation of human capital spillovers abstract this paper uses 2000 census data to estimate the relationship of agglomeration and proximity to human capital to wages the paper takes a geographic approach and focuses on the attenuation of agglomeration and human capital effects differencing and instrumental variable methods are employed to address endogeneity in the wage agglomeration relationship and also to deal with measurement error in our agglomeration and human capital variables three key results are obtained first the spatial concentration of employment within five miles is positively related to wage second the benefits of spatial concentration are driven by proximity to college educated workers an instance of human capital spillovers third these effects attenuate sharply with distance

urbanisation and regional productivity in korean manufacturing as the first study for korea we estimate the effects of urbanisation and localisation economies on the productivity of 19 korean manufacturing industries in 1983 1988 and 1993 based on the observation that material inputs contributed about 60 per cent of productivity growth in korea we consider gross output productivity which is an innovation that distinguishes our study from previous ones we find that localisation economies have been dominant features of korean manufacturing industries whereas korean manufacturing industries did not benefit much from locating in large cities more interestingly there are some indications of quadratic relations between city size and urbanisation economies

cross section estimation of the matching function evidence from england and wales this paper analyses how the levels of unemployment and vacancies affect the rate at which unemployed workers find employment the worker firm matching function in particular we test the robustness of previous empirical work by checking whether we obtain the same estimated function using cross section data rather than aggregate time series data we find strong evidence of constant returns to scale similar to previous work we also find larger cities have higher wages this provides indirect support for increasing returns but where those returns are taken in the form of better quality matches

thick market effects and churning in the labor market evidence from u s cities using u s census microdata we show that on average workers change occupation and industry less in more densely populated areas the result is robust to standard demographic controls as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix analysis of the displaced worker surveys shows that this effect is present in cases of involuntary separation as well on the other hand we actually find the opposite result higher rates of occupational and industrial switching for the subsample of younger workers these results provide evidence in favor of increasing returns to scale matching in labor markets results from a back of the envelope calibration suggest that this mechanism has an important role in raising both wages and returns to experience in denser areas

generalised taylor and generalised calvo price and wage setting micro evidence with macro implications the generalised calvo and the generalised taylor models of price and wage setting are unlike the standard calvo and taylor counterparts exactly consistent with the distribution of durations observed in the data using price and wage micro data from a major euro area economy france we develop calibrated versions of these models we assess the consequences for monetary policy transmission by embedding these calibrated models in a standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model the generalised taylor model is found to help rationalise the hump shaped and persistent response of inflation without resorting to the counterfactual assumption of systematic wage and price indexation

urban effects on participation and wages are there gender differences abstract this paper estimates participation and wage equations using panel data from the united kingdom to explore gender differences in urban wage and participation premiums the results suggest a small but economically significant urban participation premium for women but none for men results from the wage estimations suggest that after controlling for sample selectivity observed and unobserved heterogeneity the urban premium is larger for women this wage premium is also larger for married or cohabiting women relative to others there is also evidence of higher urban returns to experience for men and lower urban wage depreciation for both men and women

two tales on human capital and knowledge spillovers the case of the us and brazil this article uses a quasi mincerian approach to verify whether the concentration of college educated individuals employed in the business support services sector and in the own sector contributes to increased productivity in other sectors of the economy we estimate the returns to education using data from the 2008 us current population survey march supplement and from the 2008 brazilian household survey this article finds evidence of a positive and significant human capital sectorial spillover effect which is consistent with acemoglu s 1996 conjecture the sectorial concentration of highly educated workers contributes to increase wages for all workers this study also finds evidence of increasing returns to education in brazil and diminishing returns to education in the united states this finding may be explained by differences in supply of skilled workers in both economies in addition the short supply of highly skilled workers in brazil likely explains the importance of the spillover effect fro

agglomeration economies in urban manufacturing industries a case of japanese cities abstract the effects of urban agglomeration economies on productivities in two digit manufacturing industries is estimated using the cross section data of japanese cities in 1979 urbanization and localization economies which are major forms of urban agglomeration economies are explicitly separated the estimates of these economies vary considerably among industries light industries receive more productive advantages from urbanization economies than from localization economies but heavy industries experience these economies more from localization economies than from urbanization economies

smart cafe cities testing human capital externalities in the boston metropolitan area abstract existing studies have explored only one or in some cases two mechanisms by which human capital externalities percolate at the macrogeographic levels this study however uses the 1990 massachusetts census data to test four mechanisms at the microgeographic levels in the boston metropolitan area labor market we propose that individual workers can learn from their occupational and industrial peers in the same local labor market through four channels depth of human capital stock marshallian labor market externalities jacobs labor market externalities and thickness of the local labor market we find that all types of human capital externalities are significant across census blocks different types of externalities attenuate at different speeds over distances for example the effect of human capital depth decays rapidly beyond three miles away from block centroids we conclude that knowledge spillovers are very localized within a microgeographic scope in cities that we call smart cafe cities

how resilient is the german banking system to macroeconomic shocks abstract macroeconomic stress testing studies often rely on rather short sample periods due to the limited availability of banking data they may fail to appropriately account for the cyclicality in the interaction between the banking system and macroeconomic developments in this paper we use a newly constructed data set on german banks income and loss statements over the past 39 years to model the interaction between the banking sector and the macroeconomy our var analysis indicates that the level of stress in the banking sector is strongly affected by monetary policy shocks the results rationalize the active behavior of central banks observed during periods of financial market crises

urban attributes and wage disparities in brazil a multilevel hierarchical model fontes g g simoes r f and hermeto camilo de oliveira a m urban attributes and wage disparities in brazil a multilevel hierarchical model regional studies this paper examines the effects of urban scale and productive structure on individual wage levels in brazilian cities and metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2000 the estimation through hierarchical linear models enabled the inclusion of variables in different levels individual and urban and the decomposition of total wage variance the results showed significant and huge wage disparities among workers who share similar personal attributes but live in different regions of the country in addition the disparities persisted from 1990 to 2000 finally the results provided evidence that local economic and labour market factors played an important role in wage determination

is specialization good for regional economic development kemeny t and storper m is specialization good for regional economic development regional studies debates about urban growth and change often centre on specialization however arguments linking specialization to metropolitan economic development contain diverse and sometimes conflicting claims is it better to be highly specialized or diversified does specialization refer to the absolute or relative scale of an activity in a region does specialization have static or evolutionary effects this paper investigates these questions in theoretical and empirical terms by analysing local agglomerations over time it is found that growing absolute specialization is positively linked to wages while changes in relative concentration are not significantly associated with wage dynamics

intra urban wage variation employment location and commuting times abstract theory predicts that within a metropolitan area employers located where there is difficult commuting will have to compensate their workers with appropriately higher wages this should hold whether one is comparing central city work locations with those at the fringe or simply differences between suburban edge cities in the longer run if employers are concerned primarily with labor costs firm mobility should equalize wages or else agglomeration economies must exist to sustain the differences using microdata from the 1990 census for 2 large metropolitan areas in the u s wage equations are estimated for urban workers allowing for different wage levels depending on zone of employment the results show that observationally equivalent workers have wages that vary substantially across employment zones within a metro area and that this variation is strongly and significantly correlated with the average commute time of the workers employed in that zone these results hold across several different econometric specifications wages and average travel times also are found to be highly correlated with the aggregate number of workers in each zone but are not affected by zone employment specialization thus there is inconclusive evidence as to whether wage commuting cost differences result from equilibrium agglomeration effects or from a disequilibrium distribution of employment

agglomeration economies localization or urbanization i estimate localization and urbanization economies with a methodology and data different from those of henderson and nakamura after demonstrating the problems associated with using a single agglomeration variable i present my estimates as nakamura found for japanese cities i find evidence of both localization economies and urbanization economies but i also find evidence of urbanization diseconomies in some industries as did henderson my evidence for localization and urbanization economies in american cities is stronger than henderson s evidence finally i show that the pattern of agglomeration economies by industry is consistent with observed patterns of industrial location

local labor markets job matching and urban location we present a new way of modeling local labor markets by linking the space of workers skills and the physical space of cities the key lesson of our analysis is that firms exploit workers in these two spaces by setting wages that are below the competitive level the degree of monopsony power depends on the elasticity of the firm s labor pool which is inversely related to the costs workers incur in commuting and acquiring skills our analysis thus shows how socioeconomic ghettos emerge as workers with poor skill matches are also those who incur the highest commuting costs

roles of renewable energy technologies in improving the rural energy situation in nepal gaps and opportunities abstract nepal is one of the least developed countries with the lowest per capita energy consumption in the world traditional solid biomass plays a significant role in meeting the primary energy demand in the country which represents about 87 of the total primary energy mix till date only 50 of the population has access to electricity and disparity between the urban and rural areas in terms of access to energy is prevalent in order to improve the energy situation in rural areas the government of nepal initiated the promotion and development of renewable energy technologies rets through subsidies nepal has the potential to generate energy through renewable sources like mini microhydro schemes solar power biogas and wind it is estimated that more than 50 mw of electricity can be generated from the micro hydro schemes 2100 mw from solar and 3000 mw from wind moreover the country has the capacity to develop about 1 1 million domestic biogas plants rets may provide ample opportunity to improve the vulnerable rural energy system in nepal if the available renewable resources are optimally utilized

labor specialization and the extent of the market this paper presents an analytical model of labor specialization workers make human capital investment decisions on the depth and the breadth of their skill given that firms have diverse job requirements and increasing returns to scale workers invest more for the depth of their human capital and less for the breadth as the size of the labor market increases also the larger the size of the market the more varieties of job requirements are used so that the average match between a worker and a firm improves

the benefits of lending relationships evidence from small business data this paper empirically examines how ties between a firm and its creditors affect the availability and cost of funds to the firm we analyze data collected in a survey of small firms by the small business administration the primary benefit of building close ties with an institutional creditor is that the availability of financing increases we find smaller effects on the price of credit attempts to widen the circle of relationships by borrowing from multiple lenders increases the price and reduces the availability of credit in sum relationships are valuable and appear to operate more through quantities rather than prices

shocks to bank capital evidence from uk banks at home and away this article assesses how shocks to bank capital may influence a bank s portfolio behaviour using novel evidence from a uk bank panel data set from a period that predates the recent financial crisis focusing on the behaviour of bank loans we extract the dynamic response of a bank to innovations in its capital and in its regulatory capital buffer we find that innovations in a bank s capital in this precrisis sample period were coupled with a loan response that lasted up to 3 years the international presence of uk banks allows us to identify a specific driver of capital shocks in our data independent of bank lending to uk residents specifically we use write offs on loans to nonresidents to instrument bank capital s impact on uk resident lending a fall in capital brought about a significant drop in lending in particular to private nonfinancial corporations pnfc in contrast household lending increased when capital fell which may indicate that in this precrisis period banks substituted into l

the diagnosis of an electricity crisis and alternative energy development in pakistan abstract the electricity sector in pakistan is currently facing the formidable challenges of an insufficient installed capacity a suboptimal infrastructure circular debt and revenue shortage all of these problems hamper socioeconomic activities this paper diagnoses the overall condition of the electricity sector as well as the potential and recent progress in the implementation of alternative energy projects in the context of the targets set in the national energy security plan nesp the assessment reveals the unsatisfactory overall progress of the implementation of the nesp in general and alternative energy in particular we assess that if the short term measures contained in the nesp have been adequately executed were enough to bridge the existing electricity supply demand gap and the country might not be facing an ongoing electricity crisis further we investigated the specific alternative energy policy issues that hinder this sector s development in pakistan we conclude that fuel diversification by means of the maximum utilisation of alternative energy resources would help in solving the crisis and would also furnish the long term energy needs of the country finally we recommend a comprehensive strategy for revamping the electricity sector and developing the alternative energy resources needed to tackle the ongoing electricity crisis in pakistan

new firms and labor market entrants is there a wage penalty for employment in new firms in this paper we explore the role of new firms as an entry point to the labor market because the vast majority of new firms are short lived it is a risky decision to accept employment in a new venture it can be argued that individuals with little or no labor market experience are more willing to accept the high risks associated with employment in new firms hence new firms may work as an entry point to the labor market nevertheless some research concludes that one disadvantage of employment in a new firm is that new firms pay less shane in small bus econ 33 141 149 2009 however this empirical conclusion is primarily based on literature on the wage penalty of small firms in this paper we study whether the wage penalty of employment in a new firm persists if we focus solely on labor market entrants in the empirical analysis we employ an employer employee matched dataset that covers the swedish population during the period from 1998 to 2008 we use the propensity score matching method to study the wage differences between labor market entrants employed in new and incumbent firms we find an average wage penalty of 2 9 for labor market entrants employed in new firms over the studied period

selection in initial and return migration evidence from moves across spanish cities this paper investigates the sorting of more productive workers into denser cities using administrative data for spain that fol low individuals continuously throughout their working lives migrants who move to denser cities are positively selected in terms of educa tion occupational skills and individual productivity as proxied by pre migration position in the local earnings distribution however not everyone is able to benefit equally from denser cities and this leads to a second round of sorting returnees are not only ex ante less productive than permanent migrants but are also those who following the first move have least boosted up their earnings in denser cities