inflation and the fiscal limit abstract we use a rational expectations framework to assess the implications of rising debt in an environment with a fiscal limit the fiscal limit is defined as the point where the government no longer has the ability to finance higher debt levels by increasing taxes so either an adjustment to fiscal spending or monetary policy must occur to stabilize debt we give households a joint probability distribution over the various policy adjustments that may occur as well as over the timing of when the fiscal limit is hit one policy option that stabilizes debt is a passive monetary policy which generates a burst of inflation that devalues the existing nominal debt stock the probability of this outcome places upward pressure on inflation expectations and poses a substantial challenge to a central bank pursuing an inflation target the distribution of outcomes for the path of future inflation has a fat right tail revealing that only a small set of outcomes imply dire inflationary scenarios avoiding these scenarios however requires the fiscal authority to renege on some share of future promised transfers

a positive theory of social security based on reputation we construct a general equilibrium model in which a pay as you go social security system can be adopted and sustained as a political and economic equilibrium we alalyze the welfare implictions of this system and compare general equilibrium welfare measure to the commonly used notion of actuarial fairness

secret versus public reserve price in an outcry english procurement auction experimental results abstract in a set of human experiments we analyze the impact of the buyer s reserve price policy in an online open outcry reverse auction we measure the impact of revealing or not the reserve price on the buyer s expected cost when suppliers may be risk averse results confirm that the optimal public reserve price policy dominates for the buyer when the lowest cost supplier is weakly risk averse but in contrast with theory the secret reserve price policy does not dominate when he becomes very risk averse analysis of strategic suppliers bidding behavior shows in conformity with theory that they react to the secret reserve price and are more aggressive when they are more risk averse this explains why the optimal public reserve price does not perform better in this context but is equivalent to the secret one however strongly risk averse bidders are less aggressive than predicted by theory that is why the secret reserve price policy does not strictly dominate

an empirical analysis of entrant and incumbent bidding in road construction auctions this paper explores differences in the bidding patterns of entrants and incumbents in road construction auctions we find that entrants bid more aggressively and win auctions with significantly lower bids than incumbents the differences in their bidding patterns are consistent with a model of auctions in which the distribution of an entrant s costs exhibits greater dispersion than that of an incumbent s and relations of stochastic dominance in the distributions do not persist for the entire range of estimated costs we also find that more efficient firms bid on average more aggressively and firms with greater backlogs bid less aggressively

the democracy deficit of corporate social responsibility in post neoliberal times an analysis of the argentinian and ecuadorian experiences several evaluations of contemporary left of center governments in south america suggest that natural resource governance in the region has become post neoliberal only in the sense that states augmented the appropriation and distribution of rent motivated by sustained international demand for commodities the political ecologies of mining remain characterized by increasing demands for more democratic decision making as occurred in the 1990s in order to explain this continuity most studies focus on the interactions between states and civil societies they state that a pragmatic stance on resource governance regards rent capture and distribution over the development of mechanisms for inclusion in decision making these assessments give only a partial account of the interactions involved in such dynamic they underestimate corporate behavior as a central component of emerging forms of governance we argue that companies were central actors of the production of mining conflicts during the 1990s and still exert an important degree of influence in resource governance through corporate social responsibility csr strategies our findings show that since the neoliberal legal and administrative reforms of the early 1990s argentinian and ecuadorian governments have supported a system of mining governance that regards the economic interests over the demands for more democratic decision making nevertheless even after recognizing the deleterious effects of neoliberal csr practiced by companies left of center governments have not been able to steer corporate behavior in a new direction

unfunded liabilities and uncertain fiscal financing we develop a rational expectations framework to study the consequences of alternative means to resolve the unfunded liabilities problem the projected exponential growth in federal social security medicare and medicaid spending with no known plan for financing the transfers resolution requires specifying a probability distribution for how and when monetary and fiscal policies will change as the economy evolves through the 21st century beliefs based on that distribution determine the existence of and the nature of equilibrium we consider policies that in expectation combine reaching a fiscal limit some distorting taxation modest inflation and some reneging on the government s promised transfers in the equilibrium inflation targeting monetary policy and debt targeting tax policy cannot anchor expectations on those target variables expectational effects are always present but need not have large impacts on inflation and interest rates in the short and medium runs in the economy s stationary distribution the capital stock may grow or shrink and substantial probability falls on little or no reneging

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

implications of increasing college attainment for aging in general equilibrium we develop an overlapping generations general equilibrium model of the u s economy with heterogeneous consumers who face idiosyncratic earnings and health risk to study the implications of increasing college attainment decreasing fertility and increasing longevity 2005 2100 while all three trends contribute to a higher old age dependency ratio increasing college attainment has different implications because it increases labor productivity decreasing fertility and increasing longevity require the government to increase the average labor tax rate from 33 5 to 47 1 percent increasing college attainment lowers the required tax increase by 12 0 percentage points the labor tax rate required to balance the government budget is higher under general equilibrium than in a small open economy with a constant interest rate because the reduction in the interest rate lowers capital income tax revenues

no trade in second price auctions with entry costs and secret reserve prices we consider a second price private value auction in the presence of an exogenous participation cost and a secret reserve price endogenously set by the seller we show that if the entry cost is strictly positive the only equilibrium outcome is that the seller chooses a reserve price that deters entry and no buyer enters

economic insights from internet auctions this paper surveys recent studies of internet auctions four main areas of research are summarized first we survey several studies that document and attempt to explain the frequently observed sniping or last second bidding behavior in these auctions second we summarize several methods proposed to quantify the distortions caused by asymmetric information in these markets most notably due to the winner s curse third we explore research about the role of reputation mechanisms installed to help combat these distortions finally we discuss what internet auctions have to teach us about auction design

fiscal policy effects in a heterogeneous agent olg economy with an aging population this paper incorporates the aging population projected by the u s social security administration to a heterogeneous agent olg model with idiosyncratic wage shocks and analyzes its effects on individual households the government budget and the overall economy the fiscal gap caused by the demographic change is 2 92 of gdp under the ssa s intermediate projection the effect of the aging population is large by itself and depends significantly on how the government finances the cost of the demographic change there is a strong trade off between efficiency and equity and this paper quantitatively assesses the pros and cons of stylized fiscal reform plans

mitigating america s demographic dilemma by pre funding social security abstract financing social security benefits at current levels implies significant increases in payroll taxes within the next 20 years under current us demographic developments using a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with realistic patterns of fertility and lifespan extension this study shows that future generations would be harmed during the demographic transition due to rising payroll taxes which crowd out savings and slow real wage growth below the rate of technological progress a faster rate of technological progress would mitigate only some of the payroll tax increase and its economic consequences but could not overcome them addressing the financing problem by reducing social security benefits as needed or by raising the eligibility age for benefits imposes major welfare losses on current or near term retirees by contrast a pre funding of social security financed with consumption taxes more evenly spreads the welfare losses across generations and it helps future generations especially the poor by stimulating capital formation

assessment of environmental responsibility of oil and gas companies in russia the rating method abstract the article analyzes preconditions specifics and results of the first russian environmental rating of oil and gas companies the russian oil and gas industry strategically important for the national economy is also environmentally unfriendly and opaque companies lack adequate motivation to follow best international environmental standards and practices for disclosure of information about their environmental performance and impacts environmental responsibility of the oil and gas sector has been subject to both public scrutiny and scientific discussions for many decades however these issues have been rarely if ever explored using a reliable and equitable tool which would provide for comparison between different companies this article attempts to analyze the application of such a tool environmental responsibility rating of oil and gas companies in russia the idea behind launching the rating was to provide end consumers and financial institutions an opportunity to compare the companies products and services and to evaluate corporate risks including reputation on the basis of unbiased comparison and evaluation of the companies environmental responsibility and their management s commitment the rating s rationale is premised on the assumption that an environmental rating based on publicly available data and information could be accepted by companies top management as a competitive advantage or disadvantage in obtaining access to better cheaper and long term financial resources and in improving market demand for their final value added products this study offers a complex analysis of qualitative and quantitative indicators of companies activities in three fields environmental management environmental impact and disclosure transparency the rating s results demonstrate that there are big differences among russian oil and gas companies in their levels of environmental responsibility and transparency large publicly traded companies with a strategic focus on gas have received top ratings privately held smaller oil companies are at the bottom along with the subsidiaries of major russian and international corporations transparency of subsidiary companies tends to be lower than that of parent corporations in some cases a close relationship between the company s management and population of the surrounding region plays a positive role in promoting environmental responsibility assumptions for this environmental rating have been at least partially confirmed by the positive dynamics of the associated petroleum gas apg utilization level by oil and gas companies in russia this rating is based on novel and creative approach and has already contributed to forming average quantitative impact indicators in the industry the assumptions and conclusions of this study can also be tested by comparing the first environmental rating of oil and gas companies data with the data produced in the next rating

paradoxical effects of increasing the normal retirement age a prospective evaluation abstract a life cycle model that incorporates both disability insurance di and old age insurance oai is developed to study social security reforms and is compared to an alternative model without di the model with di predicts that increasing the normal retirement age nra causes a decrease in employment and an increase in di receipt and that the decrease of payroll tax revenue and the increase of di expenses combined offset about 40 of the decrease of oai expenses these paradoxical effects of increasing the nra are absent from the model without di i employ both models to search for reforms that will balance the government budget in an economy with an aging population which has the demographics for the year 2100 and find that the required change in tax and benefit rules differ substantially across the two models

all equilibria of the vickrey auction abstract this paper characterizes the set of nash equilibria in the second price sealed bid auction with independent private values and three or more bidders in addition we show that any effective reserve price implies uniqueness

climate change accounting and the australian mining industry exploring the links between corporate disclosure and the generation of legitimacy abstract this paper explores how disclosure is used by key bodies in the australian mining industry as a means to respond to climate change and ensure their social licence to operate the study utilises a legitimacy theory framework and a multi case analysis to examine the environmental disclosure practices via a variety of media of two companies and two industry bodies within australia s mining industry it is revealed that a combination of legitimising strategies is undertaken by key bodies in the australian mining industry however to differing degrees depending on the organisation there is also support for the notion that different media plays a critical role in facilitating the legitimacy seeking behaviours of the companies and industry bodies this study extends existing literature on legitimacy theory by highlighting the value of utilising this perspective to explore contemporary phenomena such as corporate responses to climate change the findings of this study have practical significance as they are expected to have important policy ramifications one of the differentiating features of this paper compared to prior studies utilising a legitimacy theory framework is the examination of legitimising disclosure strategies at an industry level which complements a company level analysis moreover variations in legitimising disclosure strategies and communication media employed may be due to their focus on differing conferring publics and stakeholder groups

a practical approach for the management of resources and reserves in small scale mining abstract artisanal asm and small scale mining ssm are well known sources of environmental health and safety risk nonetheless due to the massive increase in the price of gold in the last few years asm and ssm units have rapidly appeared and are operating in many remote locations around the world this trend is bound to last since there are no valid alternative livelihoods for the operators in the sector and the attractiveness of the profit does not counterpoise any concern about the environment or safety the most viable solution for such activities is a shift towards responsible operations this can be done by turning an asm operation into a sustainable and profitable ssm industrial extractive unit for doing so capital investment is needed from external investors the main task therefore is to make asm attractive for investment the approach proposed in this work is based on a main differential from large scale mining the attractiveness for external investment only lies in proving in the early stages of the business a minimum mineral reserve that is able to rapidly return the investment committed to upgrade the artisanal operation into a small scale industrial one plus an attractive profit this is done by introducing the concepts of minimal reserve to be proved and replication the paper proposes a practical methodology for the evaluation of the minimal reserve to be proved based on mining and processing capex and opex a portion of the profits of the operation on such minimal reserve is to be shared between the stakeholders of the business and another is to be re invested in future exploration with this last share the process of proving the reserve can be consequently replicated to the next portion of the mineral resource this methodology is applied to prove viable a real ssm unit in ecuador the results are compared with large scale reserve estimations the order of magnitude of the volume that needs to be proved at the start to make the operation viable varies by 1 1000 in favor of ssm

the effect of shill bidding upon prices experimental evidence this paper explores through a series of experiments the effect of shill bidding upon revenues and prices in auctions we study the practice of shill bidding in a common value framework our findings are consistent with the prediction that if bidders are aware of the possibility of seller participation in an auction profits will be reduced on average we also study factors that affect bidder and seller participation decisions shill bidding can alleviate the problem of the winner s curse by lowering the price and it can thus provide benefits to bidders

how environmental regulations affect innovation in the australian oil and gas industry going beyond the porter hypothesis the impact of environmental regulation on innovation is of central interest to many industries and policy makers alike while traditional research adopts a top down view of regulation and attempts to measure the innovation response the more bottom up view of contemporary theory argues that firms produce innovations that exceed compliance levels as a competitive strategy we approach this dichotomy by investigating innovation introduced by australian oil and gas firms in light of environmental regulatory compliance burden and firm level characteristics including competitive capabilities analyses of survey responses executive level interviews and conference proceedings reveal both regulatory top down and competitive advantage bottom up perspectives explain innovation in this industry regression analyses reveal that product service and novel innovations all types are related to a high compliance burden competitive skills research and development activity and engagement in formal collaborations interview and conference data add nuance to our findings revealing collaborative compliance frameworks result in similar innovation outcomes

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

techno economic evaluation of innovative steel production technologies at current primary steel production levels the iron and steel industry will fail to meet the 80 emission reduction target without introduction of breakthrough technologies wortler et al 2013 19 the current research analyses the technical and economical long term potential of innovative primary steel production technologies in germany throughout 2100 techno economic models are used to simulate three innovative ore based steelmaking routes verses the reference blast furnace route bf bof the innovative routes in focus are blast furnace with ccs bf ccs hydrogen direct reduction h dr and iron ore electrolysis ew energy and mass flows for the production of one tonne of crude steel cs are combined with hypothetical price cost and revenue data to evaluate the production routes economically technically and environmentally this is a purely theoretical analysis and hence further external factors that may influence practical implementation or profitability are not considered different future developments are considered by using three scenarios representing an ambitious a moderate and a conservative transformation of the german energy sector in general looking into the future bares various uncertainties which should be reflected in a suitable manner according to the present scenario analysis chances are that with rising prices for coal and co2 allowances bf bof and even bf ccs become unprofitable by mid century with a high share of renewable energy sources and high prices for co2 allowances h dr and ew become economically attractive in the second half of the current century when bf based routes are long unprofitable energy and raw material efficiency is significantly higher for h dr and ew and furthermore the 80 reduction target by 2050 can be achieved in the ambitious scenario however high investment costs and high dependency on electricity prices prohibit a profitable implementation before 2030 2040 without further subsidies ew is the most energy and resource efficient production route since continuous electricity is needed for the continuous operation the electricity costs are 20 40 higher than for h dr with high capacity hydrogen storage units even though hydrogen production implies efficiency losses compared to the ew route the decoupling of hydrogen production from continuous operation of the steel plant through hydrogen storage offers the opportunity to use cheap excess renewable electricity this makes the h dr economically and environmentally the most attractive route and provides a crucial contribution to stabilize the grid and to store excess energy in a 100 renewable energy system

cradle to cradle design creating healthy emissions a strategy for eco effective product and system design eco effectiveness and cradle to cradle design present an alternative design and production concept to the strategies of zero emission and ecoefficiency where eco efficiency and zero emission seek to reduce the unintended negative consequences of processes of production and consumption eco effectiveness is a positive agenda for the conception and production of goods and services that incorporate social economic and environmental benefit enabling triple top line growth eco effectiveness moves beyond zero emission approaches by focusing on the development of products and industrial systems that maintain or enhance the quality and productivity of materials through subsequent life cycles the concept of eco effectiveness also addresses the major shortcomings of eco efficiency approaches their inability to address the necessity for fundamental redesign of material flows their inherent antagonism towards long term economic growth and innovation and their insufficiency in addressing toxicity issues a central component of the eco effectiveness concept cradle to cradle design provides a practical design framework for creating products and industrial systems in a positive relationship with ecological health and abundance and long term economic growth against this background the transition to eco effective industrial systems is a five step process beginning with an elimination of undesirable substances and ultimately calling for a reinvention of products by reconsidering how they may optimally fulfill the need or needs for which they are actually intended while simultaneously being supportive of ecological and social systems this process necessitates the creation of an eco effective system of nutrient management to coordinate the material flows amongst actors in the product system the concept of intelligent materials pooling illustrates how such a system might take shape in reality 2006 published by elsevier ltd

should we refinance unfunded social security within a continuous time overlapping generations model featuring endogenous intensive margin of the labour supply and retirement decision we analyse the issue of passing the burden of payroll revenues onto consumption or capital we find that large long run welfare gains occur when pension benefits are refinanced by consumption taxes however the transition to the new steady state is very painful for a large fraction of existing cohorts on the other hand the capital base is too small to sustain pension benefits but could be made larger if capital taxes are raised yet that would entail significant welfare losses

barriers to the development of china s shale gas industry abstract shale gas has become a promising onshore energy prospect in china as much as the country aspires for greater energy independence through the use of its shale gas reserves this process is slowed down by the combined weight of relative inexperience lack of technology geographical complexity a hostile economic environment a disincentive pipeline regime and a complex land ownership system to foster a better understanding of the current circumstances of the country s shale gas sector a panel of scholars and experts shared their perspectives and insider knowledge on china s shale gas industry it was found that some of the country s man made institutional barriers are factors that have been hindering shale gas development in china in addition to natural conditions such as water concerns and the complex geography of shale fields resolving this situation necessitates breaking the monopoly that major state owned oil companies have over high quality shale gas resources opening pipeline network access providing geological data developing the domestic oil service market creating conditions for fair competition between service providers and improving the water management system

the mining industry under the thumb of politicians the environmental consequences of the spanish coal decree abstract the so called coal decree royal decree 143 2010 and subsequent royal decree 1221 2010 have modified the historical use of coal trends in the spanish economy since 2010 the use of domestic coal in spain s electricity sector will be promoted by the royal decree until 2014 this energy strategy on the one hand and political decision on the other were advanced under the flag of energy security and the fulfillment of the 9th principle of the international council of mining and metals icmm which specified that sustainable development in mining areas should maintain among other things employment the mutual understanding between the government and the local mining industry is confronted with vast criticism at the institutional firm and social levels regarding a the disparities generated between electricity generation technologies b the increase of electricity market prices the national competition commission reported the royal decree and c subsequent environmental harm the coal decree has changed the gradual decrease of coal in the spanish energy mix since the end of the 1990s the environmental efficiency gains accumulated over the past several years would be lost as a result of this change of direction in policy in the last fifteen years the coal industry in spain has been under pressure from political decisions that have forced the dismantling of the industry a labor reconversion of mining areas and the conversion of coal fired power plants into combined cycle gas power plants this situation considerably reduced co2 emissions from coal combustion in spain improving the environmental efficiency of the entire economy for many years nevertheless the implementation of the royal decree has changed these trends this paper will examine the environmental consequences of the coal decree from 2010 to 2014 based on actual economic and energy demand requirements and actual electricity mix composition a post keynesian energy age model to forecast energy demand and the derived co2 emissions will be applied to evaluate the change in the reduction of emissions observed in the electricity sector since 2005 and in the spanish economy since 2010 the results will be compared to other alternative scenarios of co2 emissions evolution

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

social security and individual welfare precautionary saving borrowing constraints and the payroll tax this paper examines the impact of social security on national saving and individual welfare in the presence of realistic capital market imperfections market failure in the private provision of annuities and restrictions on borrowing against anticipated future wages the introduction of social security increases lifetime welfare and reduces national saving if borrowing restrictions are absent however the increase in individual welfare is reduced and in some cases eliminated when borrowing constraints are taken into consideration the substantial difference suggests the importance of reexamining the proportional payroll tax finance of social security copyright 1987 by american economic association

common values and low reserve prices i show that the benefit of a high reserve price in a common values ascending auction is lower than in the observationally equivalent private values setting put another way when bidders have common values empirical estimation based on a private values model will overstate the value of a high reserve price via numerical examples i show this same ranking typically applies to the level of the optimal reserve price as well and often to the benefit of any reserve price not just high ones with common values the optimal reserve can even be below the seller s valuation which is impossible with private values

global growth ageing and inequality across and within generations the world s leading economies both developed and developing are engaged in an ever changing economic symbiosis that is governed in large part by demographics and technological change but also by pension healthcare and other fiscal policies this interconnected economic evolution what economists call general equilibrium growth holds important implications for inequality across and within generations this paper presents such a general equilibrium model it features six goods five regions three skill groups and 91 overlapping generations each making life cycle consumption and labour supply decisions the model pays special attention to the evolution of the chinese and indian economies thanks to their rapid technological advance and vast populations these nations will play an ever more dominant role in determining the world s supplies of capital and labour particularly unskilled labour the good news for the developed world is that china and india will supply it with major amounts of capital over time thanks to their high saving rates the bad news is that these economies are also likely to bring much more unskilled relative to skilled labour into the market which will over time dramatically reduce the relative wages of unskilled workers in the us europe and japan this relative increase in the world supply of unskilled workers reflects in large part the simple fact that china and india are gradually bringing each of their skill groups up to western standards but have relatively more unskilled labour in their work forces copyright 2010 oxford university press

population aging social security and fiscal limits abstract we use an overlapping generations olg life cycle model with distortionary taxation on labor and capital to derive a threshold dependency ratio i e a point in the cross section distribution of the population beyond which tax revenues can no longer sustain the planned level of transfers to retirees we quantify the level of the threshold the distance of the economy from the threshold and the probability of reaching the threshold at some point in the future the model is calibrated on the united states and fourteen european countries which have dependency ratios among the highest in the world we examine the effects on the threshold and welfare of a number of policies often advocated to improve the sustainability of pension systems new tax data on dynamic laffer effects are provided

the message and methods of ethical investment abstract this paper examines a high profile and often provocative segment of the financial industry that of ethical or socially responsible investment by offering an ethical or sustainable product which has the potential to influence so many stakeholders the financial industry is in a unique position to guide change towards corporate sustainability however what message is ethical investment really giving to companies and the financial industry are ethical investors and their rating agencies capable of effectively influencing corporations towards more sustainable patterns of production and consumption and are their approaches consistent with the principles of cleaner production this paper first gives an overview some of the definitions ethical investment and the scale of activities under this umbrella term then the actual screening methods and their application is examined a typology of the different ethical mutual funds is given and two cases of ethical funds are described robur s environmental fund and sustainable asset management s sustainability rating tool each are analysed in terms of their potential to either reveal or conceal cleaner production innovations by the firms they assess in order to ascertain where ethical investment might lead companies the effects of ethical investment on companies and back on the asset management companies themselves is explored a reflexive model of corporate and finance sector learning based on the ethical screens is proposed

auctions and the price of art the value of most important works of art is established by public auction either directly by an actual sale or indirectly by reference to other sales how the auction system works is thus a critical determinant of how the public s preferences are translated into the evaluation of artistic work the auction system is central in the determination of the incentives for artistic work and the efficiency of the auction system is a key determinant of the cost of creating and distributing works of art this paper contains a review of the burgeoning new research of the last decade that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system actually works what it indicates about price formation and how well it performs we begin our discussion in section 2 with a short description of the mechanics of the auction system and then organize the remainder of our discussion around two major topics the first topic concerns how auction prices can be used to determine and compare overall price movements within the art market and other markets and the second topic concerns how the auction mechanism influences prices we

estimating life cycle labor supply tax effects we present an econometrically tractable life cycle labor supply model for panel data including intertemporally progressive taxes on uncertai wage and nonwge incomes our two stage fixedeffects generalized method of moments approach first extimates intretemporal and then intertemporal preferences specification testing domonstrates the value of incorporating joint progressive taxation of labor and nonlabor incomes results for prime age men emphasize the roles played by hourly wage endogeneity worker specific effects the measure of the rate of pay and intemporal budget constaint nonseparability simulations indicate that recent tax reform while not self financing stimulated made labor supplied by about 3 percent and reduced deadweight loss about 16 percent

simulating fundamental tax reform in the united states this paper uses a new large scale dynamic life cycle simulation model to compare the welfare and macroeconomic effects of transitions to five fundamental alternatives to the u s federal income tax including a proportional consumption tax and a flat tax the model incorporates intragenerational heterogeneity and a detailed specification of alternative tax systems simulation results project significant long run increases in output for some reforms for other reforms namely those that seek to insulate the poor and initial older generations from adverse welfare changes long run output gains are modest

evolution model with time lag effects for the coal industrial symbiosis system a case study of ordos china abstract industrial metabolism and symbiotic coupling has become the base paradigm of green low carbon development of coal mining in the coal industrial symbiosis system ciss stability is increasingly fragile because of its unique industrial links and growth environment referring to the classic lotka volterra population ecology model and synthesizing the periodicity and time lag effects of industrial development two entirely novel and more generalized ciss evolution models with time lag effects in the competitive and reciprocal scenarios are constructed respectively moreover the conditions of ciss stability are proven and discussed through mathematical analysis simulation and theorem validation were carried out by taking the largest chinese coal city ordos as the research object the main results are as follows first the time lag effect is an important factor leading to ciss instability the shorter the time lag within the ciss the better the collaboration between industries and the easier it is that the ciss will achieve a stable ecological balance second when the power of competition dominates the development of industries within ciss will be inhibited when the power of cooperation dominates the evolution of ciss will toward a positive direction third a certain degree of self inhibition will contribute to the stable development of the industrial symbiosis system at last the social service industry not only can boost the industrial diversity within ciss but also can promote the co evolution of original and exogenous industries which plays a positive role in the healthy and stable development of ciss

secret reserve prices in first price auctions this article offers a theoretical explanation for the use of secret reserve prices in auctions i study first price auctions with and without secret reserve price in an independent private values environment with risk neutral buyers and a seller who cares at least minimally about risk the seller can fix the auction rules either before or after she learns her reservation value fixing the rules early and keeping the right to set a secret reserve price can be strictly optimal moreover i describe the relation of using a secret reserve price to phantom bidding and non commitment to sell

tax policy and human capital formation missing from recent discussions of tax reform is any systematic analysis of the effects of various tax proposals on skill formation this gap in the literature in empirical public finance is due to the absence of any empirically based general equilibrium models with both human capital formation and physical capital formation that are consistent with observations on modern labor markets this paper is a progress report on our ongoing research on formulating and estimating dynamic general equilibrium models with endogenous heterogeneous human capital accumulation our model explains many features of rising wage inequality in the u s economy james heckman lance lochner and christopher taber 1998 in this paper we use our model to study the impacts on skill formation of proposals to switch from progressive taxes to flat income and consumption taxes for the sake of brevity we focus on steady states in this paper although we study both transitions and steady states in our research this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

macroeconomic implications of early retirement in the public sector the case of brazil abstract in brazil generous public sector pensions have induced civil servants to retire on average at age 55 in this paper we assess the efficiency gains from eliminating such policy induced early retirement in a two sector overlapping generations economy we find the adverse effects of that policy are significant specifically the generosity of public sector pensions which induces civil servants to retire 5 years prematurely at age 55 rather than at age 60 is often associated with decreases in steady state output gdp of almost 3 and welfare losses in the private sector of more than 3 of consumption

opting out of social security abstract the liability facing a pay as you go social security system can be calculated in several ways many conversions including that which took place in chile and in many plans to convert the u s system assume the largest measure known as the shutdown liability this measure pays many workers who have contributed to the public system more money than the public system is actually worth to them thereby placing a larger burden on future generations but other liability measures are hard to implement due to an information asymmetry between the government and individuals about an individual s skill level this paper demonstrates that a very simple reform plan simply letting people opt out of social security generates a truthful revelation equilibrium in which agents reveal private information about their skill levels the new assumed liability measure is much smaller since it more accurately assigns a liability to each individual a smaller liability therefore is passed onto future generations which also generates quicker transition paths it also does a better job protecting the welfare of the initial elderly when general revenue is used to pay for the transition simulation evidence is provided using a large scale lifecycle model with heterogeneous skill levels

participation costs and efficient auctions abstract suppose that risk neutral agents have independently and perhaps asymmetrically distributed private valuations for an indivisible object a mechanism assigns the object but it is costly to send messages to the coordinator in these circumstances the second price auction has an equilibrium that is classicallyex anteefficient given general opportunities to invest in information about or enhancements of own valuations in contrast the first price sealed bid auction may have no efficient equilibrium even if buyers are symmetric other properties of the first price auction are proved a semirevelation principle is established for mechanisms with participation costs journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d44 d82

on absolute auctions and secret reserve prices from a theory viewpoint the use of auctions with zero public reserve prices also called absolute auctions or of auctions with secret reserve prices is somewhat puzzling despite being common by allowing that buyers differ in their processing of past data regarding how the participation rate varies with the auction format and how reserve prices are distributed when secret we show in a competitive environment that these auction formats may endogenously emerge we also analyze how buyers with various sophistications and sellers with various costs sort into the different formats thereby offering a range of testable predictions alternative approaches are reviewed

sustainability as it pertains to minerals and energy supply and demand a new interpretative perspective for assessing progress this paper addresses the pressing research gap that demands an overarching framework to assess the progress of mining minerals and energy supply and demand networks towards sustainable development the framework proposes a hierarchy from sustainable development which begins at the global scale to operating sustainably which begins at the level of unit operations the two concepts overlap in the middle with a focus upon regional economies guidance is provided to assess the performance of both dynamic dimensions sustainable development is assessed in terms of equity and operating sustainably is assessed in terms of the changing states of maturity of the activities being monitored the papers from this special volume were the input sample to assess the extent to which these performance dimensions were being addressed in analysing the progress towards sustainable development it was found that papers were mainly focussed on equity within supply countries but they provided little attention to the other three equity conditions proposed demand met at a reasonable price future needs met and profitable transfer agents the transition towards operating sustainably was promising with results that revealed progress along the proposed four stage maturity journey which includes 1 solely profit maximising 2 efficiency focussed 3 integrating by connecting and 4 adaptable resilient a comprehensive definition for operating sustainably is proposed for discussion and refinement it is suggested that the definition proposed can be used for selecting appropriate indicators for measuring and documenting progress

finite lifetimes long term debt and the fiscal limit abstract the u s faces exponentially rising entitlement obligations i introduce a fiscal limit a point where higher taxes are no longer a feasible financing mechanism into a perpetual youth model to examine how intergenerational redistributions of wealth the average duration of government debt and entitlement reform impact the consequences of explosive government transfers three key findings emerge 1 growing government transfers cause more severe and more persistent stagflation than in representative agent models that do not capture intergenerational transfers of wealth 2 a longer average duration of government debt pushes the financing of government liabilities into the future and reduces the short run impacts of explosive transfers 3 the time it takes the economy to rebound from a period of growing transfers increases exponentially with the number of years it takes to pass entitlement reform

the impact of public information on bidding in highway procurement auctions a number of papers in the theoretical auction literature show that the release of information regarding the seller s valuation of an item can cause bidders to bid more aggressively this widely accepted result in auction theory remains largely untested in the empirical literature recent theoretical work has also shown that this effect can be more pronounced in auctions with larger common cost uncertainty we examine the impact of a policy change by the oklahoma department of transportation that led to the release of the state s internal estimate of the costs to complete highway construction projects we perform a differences in differences analysis comparing bidding in texas a state that had a uniform policy of revealing the same information all throughout the period of analysis to bidding in oklahoma our results show that in comparison to texas auctions the average bid in oklahoma fell after the change in engineers cost estimate ece policy this decline in bids was even larger for projects where the common uncertainty in costs is greater moreover the within auction standard deviation of bids fell after the change in ece policy with the most significant decline observed again in projects with greater common cost uncertainty

responsible mineral and energy futures views at the nexus societal prosperity is underpinned by access to the increasingly interdependent resources of minerals and energy in an era of mineral resource constraints and radical transition in the energy sector this paper reviews the extent to which a long term view of production and use is adopted in both fields a long term view including the mineral energy nexus is deemed to be necessary although not sufficient for managing future resource constraints and energy transitions alarmingly it identifies that the future of minerals resources and production is generally considered 5 10 years ahead rather than several decades or more as for energy additionally the sectors are generally studied independently rather than with a focus on the nexus with these findings as evidence of an unaddressed problem the paper then focusses on the current forces for change in the minerals industry namely community drivers regarding social licence to operate new technologies and consumer and government drivers on responsible minerals as discussions of sustainable development become displaced by the emerging discourse of responsible minerals what is adopted and discarded whilst responsible minerals considers chain of custody it does not adopt a long term view and overlooks the mineral energy nexus using three illustrative cases at the nexus of i rare earths renewables ii coal steel and iii uranium nuclear we extend the theoretical discussion on responsible with a range of contemporary examples from the perspectives of producing australia and consuming countries japan switzerland and propose a research agenda for an expanded notion of responsible minerals which recognises the complexity of the mineral energy nexus and connects it to progressing sustainable futures

a normative empirical analysis of state duties and corporate responsibilities related to adverse human rights impacts on the amazonian minerals energy frontier abstract the article probes the existence of a minerals energy complex mec a concept developed in south africa to describe the strong interlinkages between the mining and energy sector in the brazilian amazon within the framework of the mec the authors conduct a normative analysis based on the united nations guiding principles for business and human rights ungps of the state duties and corporate responsibilities for adverse human rights impacts in the complex the authors use a single in depth case study approach focussing on the case of the belo monte hydroelectric dam in the amazonian state of para the mec proves to be a useful framework for studying the advancement of hydroelectricity and mining projects on the amazonian frontier the analysis indicates that the brazilian minerals and energy sectors are mutually dependent and have overlapping interests and decision making structures applying the mec framework to the belo monte case serves to clarify and detangle the relationships between the various actors associated with the dam s adverse impacts this provides a foundation for the normative analysis of the responsibilities and actions required of each actor based on the internationally accepted standards in the ungps by applying the mec as an analytical research framework and drawing on the ungps for normative guidance the present study contributes to the academic literature on corporate responsibility as well as providing policy and decision makers with a normative empirical analysis that can be drawn upon to improve policy and ensure that corporate activity contributes to sustainable development

equilibria in second price auctions with participation costs abstract we investigate equilibria of sealed bid second price auctions with bidder participation costs in the independent private values environment we focus on equilibria in cutoff strategies participate and bid the valuation iff it is greater than the cutoff since if a bidder finds it optimal to participate she cannot do better than bidding her valuation when bidders are symmetric concavity strict convexity of the cumulative distribution function from which the valuations are drawn is a sufficient condition for uniqueness multiplicity within this class we also study a special case with asymmetric bidders and show that concavity convexity plays a similar role

are cleaner production innovations the solution for small mining operations in poor regions the case of padua in brazil abstract mining in santo antonio de padua a city located in the underdeveloped northeast area of the rio de janeiro state in brazil is currently the most important economic activity in the region unfortunately companies lag behind technologically and use rudimentary production methods which cause serious environmental problems social implications and poor competitiveness in order to seek sustainable solutions for the padua mining region local support organizations have created initiatives to develop endogenous cleaner production innovations to enhance the industry s sustainability performance during this process some barriers for mining companies to adopt these developed technologies have emerged this research draws on the cleaner production sustainability and innovation literature and uses a qualitative research with multiple sources of evidence to understand the dynamics behind the padua mining region more specifically this research explores how initiatives to improve the sustainability performance led by local support organizations took place analyzes their outcomes i e cleaner production innovations and identifies some of the barriers to technology adoption this paper offers three key research contributions first we claim that cleaner production approaches alone cannot create sustainable mining regions in emerging and developing countries but they are definitively a step in the right direction since they provide the base for expanding the scope towards sustainability second we argue that technology cannot be understood as the panacea for sustainability because it will never represent the complete solution for companies sustainability problems third we claim that companies can face a managerial trap if they pursue enhanced sustainability performance solely through the adoption of cleaner production innovations

reputation in an internet auction market i introduction without transmission of credible information asymmetries may lead to underproduction of goods or even market failure reputation mitigates inefficiencies associated with information asymmetries by providing an informative signal of quality 1 the difficulty in quantifying reputation means that few studies can analyze empirically the role of reputation in markets our analysis of a quantified market observed measure of reputation provides direct evidence of the effect of a seller s reputation on the terms of a onetime real world transaction thereby contributing empirical support to a fundamental economic principle this study empirically examines person to person transactions within the internet market known as ebay in this virtual market of unseen participants and products buyers and sellers face the risks of repudiation as the counter party may deny the agreement after the fact buyers assume risks associated with lack of seller integrity and asymmetric information about the particular product as the buyer is typically required to send payment before the seller ships the product in addition for many ebay transactions the cost of enforcing a contract is high relative to the transaction s value resulting in a practical absence of legal enforcement 2 by providing a history of trade execution information ebay benefits market participants by reducing information asymmetries while achieving substantial transaction cost economies market participants relate personal experiences which ebay uses to calculate a numerical reputation measure for each user market participants in turn can use this reputation measure to assess counter party risk and adjust bidding behavior accordingly in a sample of 460 auctions held between january 1998 and july 1998 we find a positive relation between prices and ebay s reputation measure higher reputation sellers experience higher auction prices ceteris paribus our findings suggest that repeat players are rewarded for building reputation consistent with the belief that the high reputation seller s value of future transactions outweighs the value of taking advantage of the buyer in the current transaction buyers are willing to pay more to a higher reputation seller this article contributes to the literature not only by providing quantitative support of long accepted reputation theories but also by illustrating the use of nontraditional markets as a natural laboratory for experiments this article is an example of how a newly formed electronic market can provide the elements necessary for analytical research we find that ebay transactions for this item exhibit characteristics similar to transactions in more conventional markets namely 1 prices are higher when there is less quantity supplied when fewer of the items are available the same day 2 prices are lower during periods of lower demand times less likely to have high traffic 3 sellers with higher shipping and handling costs receive lower prices and 4 sellers failing to provide information about shipping and handling fees i e larger information asymmetries receive fewer bids dramatic innovations in online market structure and increasing availability of online market data should enable researchers to examine directly other traditionally non quantifiable economic ideas this article is organized as follows section ii describes how reputation can be used to facilitate transactions in the presence of asymmetric information section iii describes the ebay market summarizes the listing and bidding processes and discusses the reputation mechanism for this market section iv presents the price and reputation descriptive statistics associated with a consistently auctioned item and reports the empirical findings of how this item s highest bid price varies with the level of the seller s reputation we conclude in section v with a discussion of ebay s continued attempts to add value to the market through recent structural changes

keyword search advertising and first page bid estimates a strategic analysis in using the generalized second price gsp auction to sell advertising slots a search engine faces several challenges advertisers do not truthfully bid their valuations and the valuations are uncertain furthermore advertisers are budget constrained in this paper we analyze a stylized model of the first page bid estimate fpbe mechanism first developed by google and demonstrate its advantages in dealing with these challenges we show why and when the fpbe mechanism yields higher profits for the search engine compared with the traditional gsp auction and the gsp auction with advertiser specific minimum bid in the event that a high valuation advertiser is budget constrained the search engine can use the fpbe mechanism to alter the listing order with the intent of keeping the high valuation advertiser in the auction for a longer time the resulting increase in the search engine s profits is not necessarily at the expense of the advertisers because the combined profits of the advertisers and the search engine increase this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

bidding off the wall why reserve prices may be kept secret abstract this note shows by means of an example that in a common value auction a seller with a random reservation value can increase her ex ante expected profits by following a policy of conducting an auction in which her reserve price is kept secret compared to an auction in which the reserve price is announced by keeping the reserve price secret the seller is able to encourage greater participation from the bidders and can therefore increase the linkage of the price paid to the value of the purchased object journal of economic literature classification numbers d82 d44

aging and health financing in the u s a general equilibrium analysis abstract we quantify the effects of population aging on the u s healthcare system our analysis is based on a stochastic general equilibrium overlapping generations model of endogenous health accumulation calibrated to match pre 2010 u s data we find that population aging not only leads to large increases in medical spending but also a large shift in the relative size of private vs public insurance without the affordable care act aca aging by itself leads to a 40 increase in health expenditures by 2060 and a 9 6 increase in gdp which is mainly driven by the increase of the fraction of older higher risk individuals in the economy as well as behavioral responses to aging and the subsequent expansion of the healthcare sector aging increases the premium in group based health insurance ghi markets and enrollment in ghi decreases while the individual based health insurance ihi market medicaid and medicare expand significantly the size of medicare will almost double by 2060 as the elderly dependency ratio increases additional funds equivalent to roughly 2 7 of gdp are required to finance medicare and medicaid the introduction of the aca increases the fraction of insured workers to almost 100 by 2060 compared to 82 without the aca this increase is driven by the stabilization of ghi markets and the further expansions of medicaid and the ihi market the aca mitigates the increase of healthcare costs by reducing the number of the uninsured who pay the highest market price for healthcare services overall the aca adds to the fiscal cost of population aging mainly via the medicaid expansion our findings demonstrate the importance of accounting for behavioral responses structural changes in the healthcare sector and general equilibrium adjustments when assessing the economy wide effects of aging

should pensions be progressive abstract the present paper quantitatively characterizes the consequences of rising pension progressivity in an overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic income disability and longevity risk as well as endogenous labor supply at the intensive and extensive margin focusing on the german pension system which is purely earnings related we increase the degree of progressivity and compute the optimal mix between flat and earnings related pensions we find that a flat rate pension share of roughly 30 maximizes aggregate economic efficiency since improved insurance provision dominates higher labor supply distortions disability risk significantly increases the optimal progressivity level while endogenous retirement has important macroeconomic implications since our results are robust for a wide range of parameter specifications they indicate that at least in germany a move towards more redistribution within the pension system is efficient

the winner s curse reserve prices and endogenous entry empirical insights from ebay auctions internet auctions have recently gained widespread popularity and are one of the most successful forms of electronic commerce we examine a unique data set of ebay coin auctions to explore the determinants of bidder and seller behavior we begin by documenting a number of empirical regularities in our data set of ebay auctions next we specify and estimate a structural econometric model of bidding on ebay using our parameter estimates from this model we measure the extent of the winner s curse and simulate seller revenue under different reserve prices