capacity utilization under regulatory constraints this paper presents a methodology for predicting the effect of quota type regulatory constraints on capacity utilization for a multiproduct profit maximizing firm the approach builds on recent advances in the use of virtual prices to model the effects of rationing this allows the effects of regulatory constraints to be examined ex ante the methodol ogy is illustrated through a case study of the imposition of output quotas in an open access marine fishing industry on the pacific coast of the united states the results suggest that for certain species output quotas can cause strong disinvestment incentives have been used for many years to analyze the current status of the economy the expansion ary or contractionary forces on investment and inflation and productivity movements tradi tional cu measures were based on the notion of maximum possible output recently economists have developed measures derived from the eco nomic theory of the firm and based instead on a notion of optimal output berndt and fuss 1986 hickman 1964 klein 1960 morrison 1985 1988 segerson and squires 1990a these measures assume that some inputs are quasi fixed and that capacity utilization is determined by the level of the quasi fixed input s relative to the level of output previous studies of theory based cu measures have generally assumed that the industry under study was free from regulatory constraints an exception is morrison s 1988 study which ana lyzed among other things the effect of pollution control regulations on capacity utiliza tion in the u s and canadian steel industries the analysis is retrospective however since it studied the impacts of regulations that were al ready in effect in many cases it would be useful to be able to predict the effect of proposed regulations on ca pacity utilization such prospective or ex ante analysis would provide regulators with useful information regarding the likely effect of alterna tive policies on investment incentives for exam ple regulatory production limits on a single product such as quotas may cause multiproduct firms to change the volume and mix of their production which could in turn change invest ment incentives 1 likewise input use restrictions could affect both output supplies and the de mands for unregulated inputs thereby altering investment incentives predictions of these changes would contribute to designing more ef fective public policies regulating capacity and in vestment

interest rate arbitrage in currency baskets forecasting weights and measuring risk we use a time series modeling approach to address two related questions of interest to foreign exchange market participants and policy makers dealing with basket currencies first how are unknown weights appropriately extracted from basket currencies second how does one correctly account for the risk in terms of conditional variance of expected profits that time varying weights add to the standard basket hedge position we suggest a methodology that can provide answers to these questions and apply it to the heavily traded thai baht currency basket

interaction between the seasonal and business cycles in this paper shows that in several u s manufacturing industries the seasonal variability of production and inventories varied with the state of the business cycle the authors present a simple model which implies that if firms reduce the seasonal variability of their production as the economy strengthens and they either hold constant or increase the stock of inventories they bring into the high production seasons of the year then they must be facing upward sloping and convex marginal cost curves the authors conclude that firms in a number of industries face upward sloping and convex marginal production cost curves copyright 1997 by american economic association

the price of pollution a dual approach to valuing so2 allowances under the 1990 clean air act amendments a market based scheme to reduce u s sulfur dioxide emissions takes effect in 1995 indications are that participation in the market will be light and allowance prices will be lower than was once expected using an output distance function approach for wisconsin coal burning utility plants we estimate the shadow price of so2abatement which should approximate the allowance price the estimated average shadow price is above the prices at which the few observed allowance trades have occurred wisconsin s stringent state so2legislation may explain a portion of this divergence

will business cycles in the euro area converge a critical survey of empirical research this survey of business cycle synchronization in the european monetary union focuses on two issues have business cycles become more similar and which factors drive business cycle synchronization we conclude that business cycles in the euro area have gone through periods of both convergence and divergence still there is quite some evidence that during the 1990s business cycle synchronization in the euro area has increased higher trade intensity is found to lead to more synchronization but the point estimates vary widely the evidence for other factors affecting business cycle synchronization is very mixed

similarities and convergence in g 7 cycles this paper examines the properties of g 7 cycles using a multicountry bayesian panel var model with time variations unit specific dynamics and cross country interdependences we demonstrate the presence of a significant world cycle and show that country specific indicators play a much smaller role we detect di erences across business cycle phases but apart from an increase in synchronicity in the late 1990s find little evidence of major structural changes we also find no evidence of the existence of an euro area specific cycle or of its emergence in the 1990s

identifying the common component of international economic fluctuations a new approach in this paper we develop an aggregation procedure using time varying weights for constructing the common component of international economic fluctuations the methodology for deriving time varying weights is based on some stylised features of the data documented in the paper the model allows for a unified treatment of cyclical and seasonal fluctuations and also accommodates the dynamic propagation of shocks across countries we find evidence for a world business cycle as well as evidence for a distinct european common component we also find some evidence that macroeconomic fluctuations have become more closely linked across industrial economies in the period after 1973 the world economy has become more closely integrated in recent years due to increasing trade and financial flows across countries this has spurred interest in the question of how the ongoing phenomenon of globalisation has affected the transmission and propagation of business cycle fluctuations across national borders an important question in this context is whether a substantial fraction of economic fluctuations are country specific or if there exists a world business cycle which might be defined as fluctuations that are common across all countries more generally the comovement of macroeconomic aggregates across different countries has become a topic of increasing interest in both academic and policy circles these issues have implications in a number of dimensions an empirical analysis of the relative importance of country specific versus common international fluctuations is of relevance for determining the structure of certain classes of international business cycle models from a policy perspective strong comovement of output across countries at business cycle frequencies implies that external trade would be unlikely to play a significant role in dampening fluctuations domestic policies aimed at affecting the real exchange rate and thereby attempting to boost net exports in the short run would then tend to have limited impact the degree of synchronisation of business cycles across countries also has important implications for short run international policy coordination and for assessing the feasibility of monetary unions therefore identifying and analysing the common component of international economic fluctuations is relevant from a number of different perspectives

budget constrained frontier measures of fiscal equality and efficiency in schooling equality and efficiency are key issues in educational reform here the authors analyze the efficiency and equality consequences of various school finance reforms using a cost indirect output distance function this function readily models multiple output production under conditions of budgetary constraint and provides a natural measure of performance that is closely related to farrell type measures of efficiency the analysis suggests that despite school district inefficiency finance reforms can affect student achievement however any potential gains in output from redistribution are dwarfed by the potential gains from increased efficiency more strikingly the analysis demonstrates that budgetary reforms designed to equalize expenditures could actually increase the inequality of student achievement

an evolutionary approach to norms iorms provide a powerful mechanism for regulating conflict in groups even when there are more than two people and no central authority this paper investigates the emergence and stability of behavioral norms in the context of a game played by people of limited rationality the dynamics of this new norms game are analyzed with a computer simulation based upon the evolutionary principle that strategies shown to be relatively effective will be used more in the future than less effective strategies the results show the conditions under which norms can evolve and prove stable one interesting possibility is the employment of metanorms the willingness to punish someone who did not enforce a norm many historical examples of domestic and international norms are used to illustrate the wide variety of mechanisms that can support norms including metanorms dominance internalization deterrence social proof membership in groups law and reputation

common and uncommon trends and cycles abstract the paper discusses the concepts of co movements of macro variables in the short run and the long run when different trend cycle decompositions are considered moreover it specifies a model for the trend where identification is achieved by imposing restrictions on the shape of the impulse response function to the permanent shock this is a multivariate generalization of lippi and reichlin 1994 where the trend and the cyclical components are easily derived from the estimation of a var model an empirical section illustrates differences in implications between our suggested decomposition and other decompositions widely used in the literature for a bivariate case of cointegrated variables

policy evaluation with combined actual and contingent response data the city of marietta georgia experimentally switched from flat fee financing to volume based pricing for its trash services in january 1994 both before and during the experiment detailed data on individuals observed responses to the actual introduction and contingent behavioral responses to a hypothetical introduction of volume based pricing were collected this study applies these data and investigates the methodology of collecting contingent behavior data and their use in policy analysis in particular this study empirically evaluates the effect of experience with the policy on responses to contingent behavior questions and tests for potential bias in the contingent behavior data

price level convergence and regional phillips curves in the us and emu abstract we use panel estimates of regional phillips curves of the hybrid new keynesian type to study price level convergence within the us and emu regional inflation rates tend to eliminate ppp deviations in both monetary unions with average half lives around 3 years the start of emu did not greatly affect ppp reversion in the euro area where changes in nominal exchange rates accounted for the bulk of the adjustment process before 1999 this role was largely taken over by regional inflation differences since notwithstanding clear evidence of forward lookingness in the us inflation persistence is substantial in both monetary unions

combining contingent valuation and travel cost data for the valuation of non market goods the travel cost method tcm has long been used to infer the economic value of nonmarket resources and public goods more recently contingent valuation cvm survey methods have gained popularity for eliciting these values here cvm survey responses are combined with tcm data on actual market behavior to estimate jointly both the parameters of the underlying utility function and its corresponding ordinary demand function this is a prototypical empirical example of a new modeling strategy variants of which should prove useful in many applications especially where reliance on a single valuation method is undesirable

are european business cycles close enough to be just one abstract we propose a comprehensive methodology to characterize the business cycle comovements across european economies and some industrialized countries without imposing any given model but trying to leave the data speak we develop a novel method to show that there is no evidence of a european economy that acts as an attractor to the other economies of the area we show that the establishment of the monetary union has not significantly increased the level of comovements across euro area economies finally we are able to explain an important proportion of the distances across their business cycles using macrovariables related to the structure of the economy to the directions of trade and to the size of the public sector

measuring business cycles a modern perspective in the first half of this century special attention was given to two features of the business cycle 1 the comovement of many individual economic series and 2 the different behavior of the economy during expansions and contractions both of these attributes were ignored in many subsequent business cycle models which were often linear representations of a single macroeconomic aggregate however recent theoretical and empirical research has revived interest in each attribute separately notably dynamic factor models have been used to obtain a single common factor from a set of macroeconomic variables and nonlinear models have been used to describe the regime switching nature of aggregate output we survey these two strands of research and then provide some suggestive empirical analysis in an effort to unite the two literatures and to assess their usefulness in a statistical characterization of business cycle dynamics

trade integration and business cycle convergence is the relation robust across time and space in this paper we investigate the relationship between trade intensity and the business cycle correlation using a panel data set taken from 24 countries over the period 1959 2003 most previous studies did not account for the possibility that the business cycle correlation may be influenced by unobservable country pair specific effects our estimates using both fixed and random effects methodologies suggest that trade intensity and the business cycle correlation are positively related to one another however detailed investigation shows that this relationship exists mainly for the european countries

garbage recycling and illicit burning or dumping abstract with garbage and recycling as the only two disposal options we confirm prior results that the optimal curbside fee for garbage collection equals the direct resource cost plus external environment cost when illicit burning or dumping is a third disposal option that cannot be taxed directly the optimal curbside tax on garbage changes sign the optimal fee structure is a deposit refund system a tax on all output plus a rebate on proper disposal through either recycling or garbage collection the output tax helps achieve the first best allocation even though it affects the choice between consumption and untaxed leisure

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

bond market and stock market integration in europe a smooth transition approach this article investigates whether there has been a structural increase in financial market integration in nine european countries and the us in the period 1980 to 2003 we employ a garch model with a smoothly time varying correlation to estimate the date of change and the speed of the transition between the low and high correlation regimes our test produces strong evidence of greater comovement across the board for both stock markets and government bond markets dates of change and speeds of adjustment vary widely across country linkages stock market integration is a more gradual process than bond market integration the impact of european monetary union emu is rather limited as it has mainly affected the timing of bond market correlation gains but hardly their size and has had little discernible effect on stock market integration

output movements in east asia is there a regional factor using lumsdaine and prasad s 2003 methodology to construct a measure of the common component of industrial output fluctuations with time varying weights this study finds that there is a significant regional factor that explains the movement in industrial production output across countries in east asia asean 5 3 the cumulated common component for east asia has very distinct peaks and troughs with turning points occurring about every three years shocks in 2000 2001 coinciding with the bursting of the it bubble appear to be very important as there is a very large decline in the common component of industrial production output larger than that experienced during the 1997 asian financial crisis similar to mckinnon and schnabl s 2003 findings the japanese economy is important for the region as its industrial production output cycle has the largest weight in the construction of the cumulated common component for the region and appears to be the most similar to it nevertheless china s asymmetry with the cumulated component for the region appears to have been beneficial for the region especially in the most recent period

international evidence on the historical properties of business cycles we contrast properties of real quantities with those of price levels and stocks of money for ten countries over the last century although the magnitude of output fluctuations has varied across countries and periods relations among real quantities have been remarkably uniform properties of price levels however exhibit striking differences between periods inflation rates are more persistent after world war ii than before and price level fluctuations are typically procyclical before world war ii and countercyclical afterward fluctuations in money are less highly correlated with output in the postwar period but are no more persistent than in earlier periods jel e32 e31

world business cycles under fixed and flexible exchange rates this paper studies the behavior of monthly industrial production indices during the recent periods of fixed and flexible exchange rate s the central conclusions are as follows industrial production indices are subject to stochastic trend growth the variances of the monthly growth rates are higher in the flexible exchange rate period than in the fixed exchange rate period and are related to the degree of openness and to national income more open economies tend to experience more variability while richer more diversified economies experience less and output movements have been correlated across countries under both exchange rate regimes and there is evidence of a world business cycle copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

interconnections between eurozone and us booms and busts using a bayesian panel markov switching var model summary the proposed panel markov switching var model accommodates changes in low and high data frequencies and incorporates endogenous time varying transition matrices of country specific markov chains allowing for interconnections an efficient multi move sampling algorithm draws time varying markov switching chains using industrial production growth and credit spread data several important data features are obtained three regimes appear with slow growth becoming persistent in the eurozone turning point analysis indicates the usa leading the eurozone cycle amplification effects influence recession probabilities for eurozone countries a credit shock results in temporary negative industrial production growth in germany spain and the usa core and peripheral countries exist in the eurozone copyright 2016 john wiley sons ltd

business cycles indicators and forecasting acknowledgments introduction james h stock and mark w watson 1 twenty two years of the nber asa quarterly economic outlook surveys aspects and comparisons of forecasting performance victor zarnowitz and phillip braun comment allen sinai 2 a procedure for predicting recessions with leading indicators econometric issues and recent experience james h stock and mark w watson comment kenneth f wallis 3 estimating event probabilities from macroeconometric models using stochastic simulation ray c fair comment james d hamilton 4 a nine variable probabilistic macroeconomic forecasting model christopher a sims comment pierre perron 5 why does the paper bill spread predict real economic activity benjamin m friedman and kenneth n kuttner comment ben s bernanke 6 further evidence on business cycle duration dependence francis x diebold glenn d rudebusch and daniel e sichel comment bruce e hansen 7 dynamic index models for large cross sections danny quah and thomas j sargent comment john geweke 8 modelling non linearity over the business cycle clive w j granger timo terdsvirta and heather anderson comment andrew harvey contributors author index subject index

the case for methodological pluralism abstract ecology and economics share the same greek root both address complex systems ecology consists of numerous approaches to understanding natural systems energetics population biology food web models hierarchy theory to mention just a few within ecology field knowledge and the reporting of new observations are well respected economics on the other hand is dominated by one pattern of thinking and standard of proof the market model and econometrics within economics field knowledge and observations per se are little valued agreement on a correct method is frequently taken as an indication of the maturity of a science the argument is developed in this paper that all the aspects of complex systems can only be understood through multiple methodologies the agreement on method within economics however seems to reflect stronger pressures within the discipline for conformity than for truth relative to ecology since ecological economics seeks to understand a larger system than either economics or ecology seeks to understand a diversity of methodologies is appropriate and pressures to eliminate methodologies for the sake of conformity should be avoided

linking common property resource management to human capital outcomes in regions where common pool resources provide significant support to their surrounding communities any climate change related shock could produce multiple livelihood repercussions in this paper a model explores how the health of common pool resources could impact upon human capital outcomes for communities that struggle to find alternate livelihood options when traditional means such as agriculture become unsustainable the management of common pool resources is modeled as a strategic interaction process between two heterogeneous communities that are directly or indirectly dependent upon it an unconstrained harvesting of common resources such as forestry not only depletes its stocks but it also indirectly affects crop output through soil degradation a number of situations are constructed where communities are able to successfully finance human capital accumulation through proper management of their common pool resources however results also warn that communities that are faced with limited opportunities towards accumulating human capital must plan ahead to prevent the depletion of their common resources below critical levels when non linear feedbacks to soil degradation emanate from low levels of common pool stocks human capital outcomes as well as future livelihoods of such communities are threatened

international business cycles world region and country specific factors the paper investigates the common dynamic properties of business cycle fluctuations across countries regions and the world we employ a bayesian dynamic latent factor model to estimate common components in macroeconomic aggregates output consumption and investment in a 60 country sample covering seven regions of the world the results indicate that a common world factor is an important source of volatility for aggregates in most countries providing evidence for a world business cycle we find that region specific factors play only a minor role in explaining fluctuations in economic activity we also document similarities and differences across regions countries and aggregates jel f41 e32 c11 c32

business cycle transmission from the us to germany a structural factor approach abstract this paper investigates the transmission of us macroeconomic shocks to germany using a large dimensional structural dynamic factor model this framework allows us to investigate many transmission channels simultaneously including new channels such as stock markets foreign direct investment bank lending and the confidence channel we find that us shocks affect the us and germany largely symmetrically trade seems to be the most relevant transmission channel monetary policy reactions to strong price movements seem to play a role as well no clear conclusion can be drawn yet on the role of financial markets and the confidence channel negative domestic influences apparently more than offset positive us influences in the german economy between 1995 and 2000 but the us recession in 2001 appeared to be the main culprit in the german slump

augmenting travel cost models with contingent behavior data this paper proposes contingent behavior survey questions as a valuable supplement to observed data in travel cost models of non market demand for recreational resources a set of observed and contingent behavior results for each survey respondent allows the researcher to control for individual heterogeneity by taking advantage of panel data methods when exploring the nature of respondent demands the contingent scenarios also provide opportunities to a test for differences between observed and contingent preferences and or b assess likely demands under conditionsbeyond the domain of observed variation in costs or resource attributes most importantly contingent scenarios allow the researcher to imposeexogenously varying travel costs exogenous imposition of travel costs together with panel methods reduces the omitted variables bias that plagues observed data travel cost models of recreational demand using a convenience sample of data for illustrative purposes we show how to estimate the demand for recreational angling by combining observed and contingent behavior data we begin with simple naive pooled poisson models and progress to more theoretically appropriate fixed effects panel poisson specifications

production quota in multiproduct pacific fisheries abstract assessing the individual firm s technology and costs in a multispecies fishery allows design of a more effective output quota prior to regulation by anticipating and controlling for the firm s regulation induced responses an empirical study of a pacific coast trawl fishery indicates that the firm s flexibility of product decision is tightly constrained by its technology and cost structure hence as the resource stock for the regulated species sablefish deteriorates and the trip quota progressively tightens the firm cannot sufficiently reorganize its product bundle to preclude increasingly large sablefish disposal this defeats the purpose of the production quota

country size aggregate fluctuations and international risk sharing country size measured by either population or gross domestic product gdp is shown to be negatively related to the variances of aggregate output consumption and in vestment and positively related to the contemporaneous correlations of consumption and investment with output in a sample of fifty six countries these results however hold pri marily for the high income countries of the sample a subsample consisting of the twenty countries with the lowest per capita gdp exhibits a significant negative relationship only between investment volatility and country size these empirical regularities are shown to be consistent with the implications of international risk sharing among countries of asymmetric sizes in an international real business cycle model shocks in relatively large countries con stitute world wide risk to a greater extent than do similar shocks in smaller countries thus foreign shocks have a greater impact on small countries causing their aggregates to fluc tuate more and their consumption and investment to be less highly correlated with domestic output

a dynamic approach to forest regimes in developing economies abstract in the developing economies optimal forest regimes should incorporate the socio economic characteristics of the user groups and since socio economic factors will change with time optimal forest regimes will also follow a dynamic path the two most important socio economic factors are the heterogeneity of the user group with respect to forest management and the direct dependence of the user group on forest normally the heterogeneity will increase and dependence will decrease with economic growth of user group an optimal control model is used to integrate the dynamics of natural system such as joint product of forests and its growth function and the dynamics of the two socio economic factors heterogeneity and dependence the model demonstrates that the dynamics of optimal forest regimes will depend upon the change in natural factors socio economic factors and on the interactions between natural and socio economic factors hence optimal forest management strategies would require a continuous refinement in forest management regimes instead of static state regimes as local communities in developing economies pass through different phases of economic growth

an economic analysis of household recycling of solid wastes the case of portland oregon abstract solid waste is one of the residuals generated by economic activities faced with rising disposal costs communities are implementing programs to encourage recycling activities this paper investigates the role of price incentives and other socio economic factors in household recycling participation in recycling is modeled as an ordered probit choice using a large sample of households from the portland oregon metropolitan area demand for solid waste collection is estimated using two stage least squares results indicate that increases in disposal fees encourage recycling although demand for solid waste collection services is not reduced substantially

business cycles synchronicity and income levels has globalisation brought us closer than ever research on business cycle linkages shows a tendency to model countries of relatively the same income levels jointly however the issue of whether these countries move along the same business cycles has not been formally investigated in the literature in this paper we take this approach and investigate whether each group of countries follows its own dynamics and is therefore subjected to the same business cycle and whether these cycles are independent of each other across income groups results indicate that high income per capita countries hics tend to be guided by stronger similarity in business cycles than countries in the middle mics and low income lics groups in search for an explanation of the business cycles synchronicity observed panel data analysis was explored the results from the robust fixed effects estimation show neither trade openness nor shocks to consumption underlie international business cycle synchronization but rather shocks to oil prices

how does globalization affect the synchronization of business cycles this paper examines the impact of rising trade and financial integration on international business cycle comovement among a large group of industrial and developing countries the results provide at best limited support for the conventional wisdom that globalization has increased the degree of synchronization of business cycles the evidence that trade and financial integration enhance global spillovers of macroeconomic fluctuations is mostly limited to industrial countries one striking result is that on average cross country consumption correlations have not increased in the 1990s precisely when financial integration would have been expected to result in better risk sharing opportunities especially for developing countries this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a more general dynamic economic model of the optimal rotation of multiple use forests abstract a deterministic optimal control model is presented for a multiple use forest with specific consideration given to provision and maintenance costs associated with a flow of nontimber values a relatively simple relationship is found which determines the optimal rotation length for such a forest

heterogeneity and collective management evidence from common forests in himachal pradesh india summary this paper conducts a statistical investigation into the impact of differences in economic benefits wealth and social classes within the community on collective management of forests there are two key results first social parochialism is not a pre requisite for collective management of forests moderate levels of social diversity are associated with low collective management but at high levels of social diversity collective management is high second moderate wealth heterogeneity is beneficial however at high levels and in the presence of benefit heterogeneity it decreases collective management similarly benefit heterogeneity reduces collective management if wealth heterogeneity also exists these results run counter to the dominant understanding of heterogeneity but may be seen as alternate explanations under a specific socioeconomic context

rural forest management in sierra leone the role of economic in equality in facilitating collective action while significant theoretical developments have been made in the research on common pool resources heterogeneity remains a contested issue focusing on economic inequality one particular aspect o

determinants of business cycle comovement a robust analysis abstract this paper investigates the determinants of business cycle comovement between countries our dataset includes over 100 countries both developed and developing we search for variables that are robust in explaining comovement using the approach of leamer amer econom rev 73 1983 31 variables considered are i bilateral trade between countries ii total trade in each country iii sectoral structure iv similarity in export and import baskets v factor endowments and vi gravity variables we find that bilateral trade is robust however two variables that the literature has argued are important for business cycles industrial structure and currency unions are found not to be robust

cyclical dynamics of industrial production and employment markov chain based estimates and tests abstract the purpose of this paper is to understand differences in cyclical phenomena across a broad range of developed and emerging countries based on the behavior of two key economic times series industrial production and employment the paper characterizes the series in question as a recurring markov chain univariate processes are estimated for each series individually and a composite indicator is constructed by using information on both series based on tests of equality of the estimated markov chains across countries as well as the expected times to switch between different states we find evidence that i the developed and emerging economies are de coupled from each other in terms of their cyclical dynamics and ii the behavior of industrial production and employment growth are de coupled for the emerging economies our results suggest new directions for the analysis of emerging economy cyclical fluctuations

the economics of household solid waste generation and disposal abstract we develop a household production model of waste management that explicitly incorporates many of the technical and behavioral elements germane to current regulatory and non regulatory solid waste policy initiatives examination of first order conditions shows the interaction among household preferences these production options and external prices and fees a simplified simulation of our model illustrates these relationships showing that household response elasticities can vary widely over common price ranges and that relatively large household welfare gains may be obtained by adopting curbside recycling and unit pricing programs

the role of international factors in the business cycle a multi country study abstract empirical research has been conducted on the various theories of the business cycle over many countries however very little research has attempted to undertake a multi country disaggregate investigation into the sources of output change this paper decomposes fluctuations in industry output in a particular country into 1 a nation specific shock 2 an industry specific shock 3 a common shock and 4 an idiosyncratic factor using a dynamic factor analysis state space approach the paper finds that the industry specific impulse explains a significant but small part of the variance of the forecast error this provides limited support for the disaggregated real business cycle paradigm

business cycles and the exchange rate system some international evidence this paper investigates the differences in time series behavior of key economic aggregates under alternative exchange rate systems we use a postwar sample of 49 countries to compare the behavior of output consumption trade flows government consumption spending and real exchange rates under alternative exchange rate systems pegged floating and cooperative systems such as the ems we then examine evidence from two particular episodes involving canada and ireland of changes in the exchange rate system aside from greater variability of real exchange rates under flexible than under pegged nominal exchange rate systems we find little evidence of systematic differences in the behavior of macroeconomic aggregates or international trade flows under alternative exchange rate systems these results are of interest because a large class of theoretical models implies that the nominal exchange rate system has important effects on a number of macroeconomic quantities

common property and collective action in economic development abstract a fundamental issue in many ldcs is the degree to which natural resource mismanagement is caused by common property arrangements this view has led to widespread attempts to privatize forests rangelands and water resources many of these efforts have failed to stop overuse and have contributed to inequality in resource distribution this paper seriously questions this approach and describes a number of reasons why common property may continue to be both efficient and equitable complementing and combining with private rights in a way consistent with the resource endowments of village economies a theoretical approach is outlined showing that the tragedy of the commons is an unsatisfactory model of common property an alternative model is presented together with a call for research into institutional alternatives in resource management

willingness to pay for curbside recycling with detection and mitigation of hypothetical bias in this article we estimate willingness to pay for curbside recycling using a unique data set we also test for and detect significant hypothetical bias using stated and revealed preference data a short scripted cheap talk statement is used to mitigate the bias and provide more efficient estimates of the welfare impacts of curbside recycling programs copyright 2003 oxford university press

spurious deterministic seasonality it is sometimes assumed that the r2 of a regression of a first order differenced time series on seasonal dummy variables reflects the amount of seasonal fluctuations that can be explained by deterministic variation in the series in this paper we show that neglecting the presence of seasonal unit roots may yield spuriously high values of this coefficient

combining farrell frontier and hedonic travel cost models for valuing estuarine quality a 1992 survey of tennessee anglers was used to determine who is fishing and how often the species they fish for and how anglers perceive the regulatory structure the results are based on telephone interviews with 450 active licensed an glers nearly 81 of the anglers visited a tennessee reservoir in 1992 while 41 fished warm water streams 28 farm ponds and 22 trout streams over 60 pre ferred separate regulations for reservoirs active reservoir fishermen were more likely to support individual regulations the participants were evenly split on whether a proposed regulation which has public support should be imposed even if the manage ment agency does not feel the fishery would benefit eighty percent of the anglers indicated that existing fishing regulations were not complicated proc annu conf southeast assoc fish and wildl agencies 47 767 774 proper administration of fishery resources requires management authorities to have knowledge of the angler population served by the management agency specifically authorities should be aware of the type and intensity of angler activi ties and understand angler preferences concerning existing and proposed management alternatives to the degree that certain types of fishermen are less likely to support management policies authorities should target educational pro grams specifically at non supportiv e anglers to gain greater public support for biologically viable management strategies this study uses data gathered from a survey of tennessee anglers to deter mine who is fishing and how often the species they are targeting and how anglers perceive the regulatory structure we report the demographic factors of anglers which exhibit statistically significant relationships to angler support for the current

why do countries and industries with large seasonal cycles also have large business cycles we show that there is a strong positive correlation across countries and industries between the standard deviation of the seasonal component and the standard deviation of the nonseasonal component of aggregate variables after documenting this stylized fact we discuss possible explanations and develop a model that generates our empirical finding the main feature of the model is that firms endogenously choose their degree of technological flexibility as a function of the amounts of seasonal and nonseasonal variation in demand although this model is intended to be illustrative we find evidence supporting one of its key empirical implications

measuring the world economy this paper provides an empirical assessment of whether the world economy has become smaller in terms of economic distance over the last decades we adopt a cross sectional spatial econometric approach relating domestic output volatility to distance weighted averages of other countries output volatility using a sample of 135 countries and rolling 10 year time windows over the period 1955 to 2006 using descriptive measures test statistics and spatial econometric estimates we find that cross country interdependence was virtually insignificant in the early post war period but has increased strongly from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s and remained at a high level since then results for the most recent period suggest that common shocks to output volatility have a magnified impact and roughly quadruplicate through international spillover effects which are transmitted through both trade and financial openness

decentralization and participation the governance of common pool resources in nepal s terai summary decentralization has emerged as an important instrument of environmental and development policy in the last two decades presumed benefits of environmental policy decentralization depend in significant measure on broad participation in the programs that governments create to decentralize decision making related to resource management this paper uses data from protected areas in nepal s terai to examine who participates in environmental decentralization programs on the basis of our statistical analysis we highlight the fact that the likelihood of participation in community level user groups is greater for those who are economically and socially better off we also find that individuals who have greater access to and who visit government offices related to decentralization policies more often are also more likely to participate in user groups created by state officials finally we find a negative correlation between education and levels of participation our study and analysis support the argument that for decentralization policies to be successful on equity issues it is important to build institutional mechanisms that encourage poorer and more marginal households to access government officials improve access to educational opportunities and create incentives to promote more interactions between less powerful rural residents and government officials 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

comovements and heterogeneity in the euro area analyzed in a non stationary dynamic factor model this paper establishes stylized facts on comovements and heterogeneity of individual euro area countries output and price developments in the past two decades for this purpose a non stationary structural dynamic factor model is fitted to a large dataset of euro area macroeconomic variables the main results are as follows both common factors and idiosyncratic components are important in explaining individual countries output and price developments in the euro area and are also both very persistent idiosyncratic shocks and adjustments to these shocks are mainly responsible for cross country heterogeneity the asymmetric transmission of common shocks plays a minor role finally there is no strong evidence that some common shocks lead to greater heterogeneity than others copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

a cross country comparison of seasonal cycles and business cycles in a recent paper barsky and miron 1989 examine the seasonal fluctuations in the u s economy they show that the key stylized facts about the business cycle characterize the seasonal cycle as well and they suggest that the interpretation of many of these stylized facts over the seasonal cycle is easier than interpretation over the business cycle the reason is that the ultimate sources of seasonal cycles are more readily identifiable than those of business cycles this paper uses the cross country variation in seasonal patterns to pin down the ultimate sources of seasonal variation more precisely than is possible from examination of u s data alone we conclude that a christmas shift in preferences and synergies across agents are the key determinants of the seasonal patterns around the world the paper also establishes that across developed countries the key observations about aggregate variables that characterize the business cycle also characterize the seasonal cycle thus the similarity of the seasonal cycle and the business cycle demonstrated by barsky and miron 1989 for the united states is a robust stylized fact this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

application of the distance function to nonmarket valuation of environmental goods and services an illustrative example abstract this paper develops and implements a unique formulation of a household production model in that technology is characterized as a distance function the properties of the distance function allow for the derivation of shadow prices for the inputs and outputs associated with household production which can be applied to the problem of valuing nonmarket goods or activities the approach requires only one input to or output of household production to bear a price the derivation of shadow prices for all other household inputs outputs follows from the properties of the distance function i demonstrate the approach using data on the waste management activities of a sample of households from marietta georgia and by calculating shadow prices for the nonmarket activity of recycling

changes in seasonal patterns are they cyclical this paper explores the hypothesis that the seasonal patterns of macroeconomic variables vary with expansions and contractions graphical techniques and generalized predictive tests for structural stability are used to identify and test patterns of changing seasonality a monte carlo exercise shows the power of the tests against interesting alternatives the empirical results suggest that seasonal patterns are unstable and that in many cases changes are linked to the stages of the business cycle the forecasting costs incurred by treating seasonality as constant are discussed and evaluated

exchange rate volatility and the time varying effects of aggregate shocks abstract this paper investigates the dynamics of the real exchange rate and relative output among the us and five of its top six trading partners since the collapse of bretton woods it employs long run restrictions to identify the usual suspect macroeconomic shocks and their relative importance for exchange rate fluctuations an improvement of the econometric application is that it allows for the contribution of each shock to the real exchange rate and relative output to vary over time while the volatility of us output both total and relative to that of the uk or canada is estimated to have substantially reduced since the mid 1980s consistent with the great moderation findings of many others the volatility of real exchange rates has experienced a gradual and continuous increase over the same period monetary shocks account for only a small fraction of these dynamics although they do track well the increase in volatility of us output during the great inflation period it is supply type shocks that seem to be more important for the relative output volatility reductions of the mid 1980s conversely demand shocks seem to account for the largest portion of the volatility increases in the real exchange rate perhaps unsurprisingly both volatilities increase during the 2007 financial crisis and the ensuing 2008 2009 great recession periods associated with higher economic uncertainty

understanding the evolution of world business cycles abstract this paper studies the changes in world business cycles during the period 1960 2003 we employ a bayesian dynamic latent factor model to estimate common and country specific components in the main macroeconomic aggregates output consumption and investment of the g 7 countries we then quantify the relative importance of the common and country components in explaining comovement in each observable aggregate over three distinct time periods the bretton woods bw period 1960 1 1972 2 the period of common shocks 1972 3 1986 2 and the globalization period 1986 3 2003 4 the results indicate that the common g 7 factor explains on average a larger fraction of output consumption and investment volatility in the globalization period than it does in the bw period

the evolution of social norms in common property resource use the problem of extracting commonly owned renewable resources is examined within an evolutionary game theoretic framework it is shown that cooperative behavior guided by norms of restraint and punishment may be stable in a well defined sense against invasion by narrowly self interested behavior the resource stock dynamics are integrated with the evolutionary game dynamics effects of changes in prices technology and social cohesion on extraction behavior and the long run stock are analyzed when threshold values of the parameters are crossed social norms can break down leading generally to the lowering of the long run stock and possibly to its extinction copyright 1996 by american economic association

variation in employment growth in canada the role of external national regional and industrial factors this article investigates the effect of external national and sectoral shocks on canadian employment fluctuations at the national industrial and provincial levels we assume that employment growth in each industry province pair depends on u s growth lagged canadian growth at the national industrial and provincial levels an aggregate shock and shocks specific to each industry province and industry province pair we estimate that the u s and canadian shocks account for two thirds and a quarter respectively of aggregate variation sectoral shocks account for only one tenth of aggregate variation but represent 30 of the variation from canadian sources

a cross country financial accelerator evidence from north america and europe a growing literature has examined the importance of credit market imperfections for macroeconomic fluctuations the so called financial accelerator a related literature has provided evidence of international and regional co movements in macroeconomic fluctuations we tie together these strands of the literature in that we investigate the importance of both cross country and country specific credit cycles in explaining output fluctuations using data for four major economies and two world regions from 1973 to 2001 we find that both regional and country specific components of indicators of credit availability are powerful in explaining output movements this research provides the first empirical evidence of a cross country financial accelerator