exchange rate sensitivity of u s trade flows evidence from industry data 1 introductionin an effort to boost employment a country could stimulate its exports and discourage its imports and thereby improve its trade balance one policy that has received a great deal of attention in the literature is currency devaluation by making exports cheaper and imports expensive devaluation is said to improve the trade balance the only condition required is that the sum of import and export demand price elasticities exceed unity that condition known as the marshall lerner condition is derived under the assumption of perfectly elastic supply of trade most previous studies that attempted to assess the marshall lerner condition relied on price elasticities that were obtained by estimating aggregate import and export demand functions these studies provided mixed conclusions as far as the effectiveness of devaluation or depreciation is concerned examples include houthakker and magee 1969 khan 1974 goldstein and khan 1976 1978 wilson and takacs 1979 haynes and stone 1983a 1983b warner and krienin 1983 bahmani oskooee 1986 1998 and bahmani oskooee and niroomand 1998 the mixed conclusion could be related to aggregation bias when aggregate trade data are employed in import and export demand functions significant price elasticity with one trading partner could be more than offset by an insignificant price elasticity with another trading partner yielding an insignificant price elasticity because of aggregation bias another body of the literature has emerged in recent years that concentrates on using trade data at the bilateral level examples in this latter group include rose and yellen 1989 cushman 1987 1990 summary 1989 marquez 1990 haynes hutchison and mikesell 1986 eaton 1994 bahmani oskooee and brooks 1999 nadenichek 2000 and bahmani oskooee and goswami 2004 except bahmani oskooee and goswami 2004 all other studies in this second group have estimated bilateral trade elasticities between the united states and her major trading partners and concluded that the real bilateral exchange rate is a significant determinant of bilateral trade balance at least in some cases bahmani oskooee and goswami 2004 who considered the bilateral trade flows between japan and her nine major trading partners found that in most cases japanese exports are not sensitive to the real bilateral exchange rate but her imports are these studies as well as those in the first group estimate price elasticities in demand under the assumption that supply is perfectly elastic and then evaluate the marshall lerner condition involving own price coefficients in demand thus evidence in these studies is limited because it assumes perfectly elastic supply of trade for both exports and imports although there is additional room to expand the literature in the second group by considering the experiences of countries other than the united states and japan in this paper we would like to open another avenue of research by investigating the impact of real depreciation of the dollar on imports and exports of 66 american industries a disaggregation by industry rather than by country disaggregation by industry will avoid problems associated with petroleum imports as does disaggregation by country rose and yellen 1989 1 for this purpose in section 2 we outline the import and export demand functions for each commodity group along with the estimation method in section 3 we present the empirical results section 4 provides our summary and conclusion data definitions and sources are cited in an appendix 2 the models and the methodin formulating any import and export demand function it is a common practice to relate the volume of imports and exports to a measure of income and relative prices the main purpose is to obtain estimates of import and export demand elasticities so that we can better judge the effectiveness of currency devaluation in increasing a country s inpayments and reducing outpayments

why do some emerging economies proactively accelerate the adoption of renewable energy abstract this article analyses the determinants of renewable energy consumption in a panel of six major emerging economies namely brazil china india indonesia philippines and turkey that are proactively accelerating the adoption of renewable energy using fully modified ordinary least square fmols dynamic ordinary least square dols and granger causality methods this paper finds that in the long run renewable energy consumption is significantly determined by income and pollutant emission in brazil china india and indonesia while mainly by income in philippines and turkey causal link between renewable energy and income and between renewable energy and pollutant emission are found to be bidirectional in the short run these results suggest that the appropriateness of the efforts undertaken by emerging countries to reduce the carbon intensity by increasing the energy efficiency and substantially increasing the share of renewable in the overall energy mix

on the optimal design of place based policies a structural evaluation of eu regional transfers we quantify general equilibrium effects of place based policies in a multi region framework with population mobility trade and agglomeration economies using detailed data on eu transfers we infer the local effects of different transfer types on productivity income and transportation cost based on these estimates and the general equilibrium model we derive the spatial distribution of economic activity and the resulting aggregate welfare effects if i no transfers were paid and taxes set to zero ii transfers were distributed uniformly iii transfers were welfare optimally distributed characterizing the optimal distributions we reveal complementarities between transfer types and between transfers and local endowments

devaluation and the j curve some evidence from ldcs within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance it is argued that the flows of goods respond only with time lags to changes in the exchange rate the j curve terrn is used to describe the movement over time of the trade balance it may deteriorate at first and improvement may come later this paper presents a method by which one could detect the existence of the j curve the method is applied to four developing countries the empirical evidence supports the pattern of movemnent described by the j curve a major policy option for a country facing a persistent balance of payments deficit is said to be devaluation of its currency within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance or the balance of payments for example proponents of the elasticities approach describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for an improvement in the trade balance in terms of elasticities of demand and supply referred to as the marshall lerner condition while there is abundant empirical evidence to suggest that these conditions are indeed met at least for industrial countries there have been circumstances under which 2 devaluation has not been successful for example one might wonder why the u s trade balance deteriorated so much in 1972 despite the devaluation of the dollar in 1971 this unfavorable effect of devaluation on the trade balance is termed the j curve phenomenon received for publication august 23 1984 revision accepted for publication november 26 1984 the university of wisconsin milwaukee i would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the initial draft of this paper 1 proponents of the absorption approach e g alexander 1952 describe how devaluation may change the terms of trade increase production and switch expenditures from foreign to domestic goods thus improving the trade balance international monetarists argue that devaluation reduces the real value of cash balances and or changes the relative price of traded and nontraded goods thus improving both the trade balance and the balance of payments 2 for an cstimate of the elasticities see houthakker and magee 1969 and warner and kreinin 1983 the former study provides the elasticities estimates under fixed exchange rates and the latter under floating rates this content downloaded from 157 55 39 17 on wed 31 aug 2016 04 39 37 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms

the effect of legislature size on public spending evidence from a regression discontinuity design what is the effect of legislature size on public spending an answer to this question is provided by weingast et al j polit econ 89 4 642 664 1981 whose law of 1 n posits that an increase in the number of elected representatives always leads to an increase in public spending because elected politicians regard the tax base as a common pool from which they can finance specific projects for their constituencies and these specific constituencies internalize the full benefits of the projects but only bear a fraction of the costs projects are financed from the common tax base fiscal inefficiency will increase with the number of representatives in this paper i test the validity of the law of 1 n using a dataset of 9325 german municipalities between 2008 and 2010 through the application of a regression discontinuity design many of the methodological pitfalls of previous studies can be avoided and a valid estimation of the causal effect of legislature size on public spending for german municipalities can be determined the results do not corroborate the positive findings of previous studies which generally supported the implications of the law of 1 n for the years 2008 2010 i find a negative effect of legislature size on public spending in german municipal councils

using maimonides rule to estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement the twelfth century rabbinic scholar maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40 this same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in israeli public schools today maimonides rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores the resulting identiecation strategy can be viewed as an application of donald campbell s regression discontinuity design to the class size question the estimates show that reducing class size induces a signiecant and substantial increase in test scores for fourth and efth graders although not for third graders when asked about their views on class size in surveys parents and teachers generally report that they prefer smaller classes this may be because those involved with teaching believe that smaller classes promote student learning or simply because smaller classes offer a more pleasant environment for the pupils and teachers who are in them mueller chase and walden 1988 social scientists and school administrators also have a longstanding interest in the class size question class size is often thought to be easier to manipulate than other school inputs and it is a variable at the heart of policy debates on school quality and the allocation of school resources in many countries see e g robinson 1990 for the united states ofsted 1995 for the united kingdom and moshel ravid 1995 for israel this broad interest in the consequences of changing class size

levelized cost of electricity lcoe of renewable energies and required subsidies in china newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1305 18257 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10 jbg 013

rebound effect in china evidence from the power generation sector abstract when talking about energy conservation rebound effect re is always concerned which defined as the increasing energy consumption relative to the counterfactual predicted by technological progress because of efficiency induced decrease in the real price of energy services in this paper we try to find a way to figure out the re through calculating the substitution relations accord with the definition based on the trans log cost function and considering the asymmetric impact on energy cost share equation the paper applies allen uzawa substitution elasticity to establish the price oriented analysis diagram of fossil energy consumption re using time series data applying the joint method of the dynamic ols dols and the seemingly unrelated regressions sur the re in china s electricity generation sector is estimated the results showed that the re is 11 6 in china s electricity generation sector if allowing for asymmetric price effects which indicates that china s power generation sector generally displays a feature of energy saving

financial integration capital mobility and income convergence recent studies have found that capital moves uphill from poor to rich countries and brings little or no growth dividend when it does flow into poor economies we show that europe does not conform to this paradigm in the european experience of financial integration capital has flown from rich to poor countries and such inflows have been associated with significant acceleration of income convergence analysing broader samples of countries we find that downhill capital flows tend to be observed above certain thresholds in institutional quality and financial integration but europe remains different even when allowing for such threshold effects and its experience is similar to that of interstate flows within the united states our findings are consistent with the notion that financial diversification reduces countries incentives to save in order to self insure against specific shocks abdul abiad daniel leigh and ashoka mody

depressing dependence transfers and economic growth in the german states 1975 2005 abstractdepressing dependence transfers and economic growth in the german states 1975 2005 regional studies most countries pay substantial intergovernmental transfers to poor regions with the aim of achieving regional convergence consequently transfers should have a positive effect on economic growth however it is equally possible that transfers perpetuate underdevelopment this paper studies empirically the effect of intergovernmental transfers on economic growth with a panel of west german states over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that transfers do not foster economic growth presumably because the recipients use them to subsidize declining industries

do institutions matter for regional development rodriguez pose a do institutions matter for regional development regional studies this paper discusses whether institutions matter for regional development and how to integrate them in regional development strategies it is found that while institutions are crucial for economic development generating an institution based regional development strategy is likely to be undermined by the lack of definition of what are efficient institutions problems related to the measurement of institutions to their space and time variability to the difficulties in establishing the right mix of formal and informal institutions and to the endogeneity between institutions and economic development make one size fits all approaches to operationalizing institutions difficult the paper posits that in order to overcome these problems it is crucial to distinguish between the institutional environment and institutional arrangements that is to target not the institutions which shape the unique character of any territ

active labour market policies and the efficiency of the european social fund in spanish regions abstractactive labour market policies and the efficiency of the european social fund in spanish regions regional studies this paper estimates the determinants of public expenditure on active labour market policies almps at the regional level using panel data from a sample of the 17 spanish regions 1989 2010 the estimations take into account endogeneity dynamics and spatial dependence among regions estimations outcome is interpreted with the help of a simple theoretical model of intergovernmental grants results reveal that the european social fund is not effective in its aim of promoting almp expenditure and show that rent seeking when regions compete to attract funds from a common pool provokes the opposite effect which is exacerbated in the presence of imitation

globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions affuso a capello r and fratesi u globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions regional studies this paper highlights the role played by structural economic features and industrial competitive strategies in the performance of a group of european regions defined as vulnerable because of their specialization in industries particularly exposed to international trade different growth patterns emerge among them the most successful regions are those with a strong presence of high value added functions of best performing vulnerable sectors but also with high structural funds expenditure on human resources moreover among the industrial strategies analysed it is found that the only winning strategy explaining higher productivity gains is industrial reconversion at the expense of employment growth affuso a capello r et fratesi u la mondialisation et les strategies competitives des regions europeennes vulnerables regional studies cet article cherche a souligner le rol

a tale of an unwanted outcome transfers and local endowments of trust and cooperation abstract transfers can do good however they can also result in massive failures this paper presents a model that highlights the ambiguous nature of the impact of transfers on local endowments of social capital it then describes an empirical investigation that illustrates that the receipt of eu structural funds causes a deterioration of the endowments of trust and cooperation in the subsidized regions

going nuts the effect of eu structural funds on regional performance the european union eu provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the eu average under the objective 1 scheme nuts2 regions with a per capita gdp level below 75 of the eu average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central eu budget this rule gives rise to a regression discontinuity design that exploits the discrete jump in the probability of eu transfer receipt at the 75 threshold for identification of causal effects of objective 1 treatment on outcome such as economic growth of eu regions we find positive per capita gdp growth effects of objective 1 transfers but no employment growth effects

measuring unified efficiency of chinese fossil fuel power plants intermediate approach combined with group heterogeneity and window analysis abstract as a newly proposed method intermediate approach has several unique features relative to conventional radial and non radial approaches this study contributes to the dea literature by combining intermediate approach with group heterogeneity in a time horizon this extended methodology has two important advantages since it can separate inefficiency related to different production frontiers originated from heterogeneity issue and provide steady results of time effects across periods empirically this method is used to examine unified efficiency of chinese fossil fuel power plants at provincial levels from 2005 to 2015 all provinces are classified into two regional groups our main findings are as follows first there exists significant group heterogeneity between coastal and inland provinces where coastal provinces outperform inland provinces second there are considerable differences in unified efficiency measures across provinces for most observations best practice gap ratio is the most important driving factor furthermore the relative importance of three decomposed indicators varies sharply across provinces finally the concept of managerial disposability should attract sufficient attention when designing environmental policies thus there should be more combined contributions from eco technology advancements along with managerial efficiency improvements by corporate leaders and policy makers this can a new direction for china s environmental policy

complementing emu rethinking cohesion policy under emu the less competitive regions of the eu usually assumed to be peripheral have been widely expected to lose ground yet it is the core of the eu that so far has appeared to have suffered from the advent of the euro this paper looks at the processes behind regional divergence in the eu and presents evidence on recent and prospective trends as emu is consolidated bearing in mind that the imminent enlargement of the eu will radically change the political economy of the eu s efforts to assure cohesion policy issues are then discussed looking forward to the next renegotiation of the structural funds it is argued that difficult decisions have to be taken about the extent and character of eu policy the option of an open method of coordination for cohesion policy is put forward as a means of resolving some of the hard choices

does service fdi locate differently to manufacturing fdi a regional analysis for great britain jones j and wren c does service fdi locate differently to manufacturing fdi a regional analysis for great britain regional studies this paper analyses the location of foreign direct investment fdi in services at the nuts 2 region level for great britain over 1996 2005 covering the period of growth in fdi it finds strong differences in service fdi location compared with manufacturing fdi unlike manufacturing service fdi location is determined at no higher than the nuts 2 region level while it is more dynamic and converging to the larger markets a similar pattern is found for the services that are most forward linked to manufacturing industries the paper concludes that access to final consumer demand is important for service fdi with implications for uk regional policy

regional transfer multipliers a series of discontinuities in the allocation mechanism of federal transfers to municipal governments in brazil allow us to identify the causal effect of public spending on local labour markets using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design rdd our estimates imply a cost per job of about 8 000 us dollars per year and a local income multiplier around two the effect comes mostly from employment in services and is more pronounced among less financially developed municipalities

the public sector and convergence with spatial interdependence empirical evidence from spain abstractwe propose a framework to analyse convergence between regions incorporating the public sector and technological knowledge spillovers in the context of a neoclassical growth model second we apply novel estimation methods pertaining to the spatial econometrics literature introducing a spatial durbin panel data model based on instrumental variables and maximum likelihood estimation our model makes it possible to analyse in terms of convergence the results obtained in spanish regions with the policies implemented during the period 1980 2011 the results support the idea that education and fiscal policies have a positive effect on regional development and cohesion therefore we can conclude that it is possible to obtain better results for regional convergence with higher rates of public investment in education and tax revenues we also obtain interesting results that confirm the existence of spillover effects in economic growth and public policies identifying their magnitude and significance

technological learning and renewable energy costs implications for us renewable energy policy abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between current renewable energy technology costs and cumulative production research development and demonstration expenditures and other institutional influences combining the theoretical framework of learning by doing and developments in learning by searching with the fields of organizational learning and institutional economics offers a complete methodological framework to examine the underlying capital cost trajectory when developing electricity cost estimates used in energy policy planning models sensitivities of the learning rates for global wind and solar photovoltaic technologies to changes in the model parameters are tested the implications of the results indicate that institutional policy instruments play an important role for these technologies to achieve cost reductions and further market adoption

undermining the principle of concentration european union regional policy and the socio economic disadvantage of european regions crescenzi r undermining the principle of concentration european union regional policy and the socio economic disadvantage of european regions regional studies this paper sets out to analyse the regional policy of the european union by assessing whether the actual distribution of funds to the regions undermines the principle of territorial concentration the empirical analysis shows that due to either political equilibriums or inaccurate assumptions about the most cost effective allocation of the funds the sources of structural disadvantage are more spatially concentrated than the funds devoted to compensating this disadvantage and reveals a weak association between socio economic disadvantage and european union funding corrections in allocation mechanisms are recommended in order to increase fund concentration and earmark resources more adequately to disadvantaged regions crescenzi r saper le principe de la concentration la politique regionale de l union europeenne et le desavantage socio econom

determinants of international trade flows the case of developing countries abstract the question of magnitude and the time path of the trade flows to changes in the exchange rates and to changes in the price level is of emitent practical importance to assess the above proposition a distributed lag structure is imposed on the relative prices and on the effective exchange rate as the determinants of trade flows then import and export demand functions are estimated for a sample of developing countries using the almon procedure the empirical findings appeared to sustain orcutt s early conjecture that trade flows adjust differently to different price stimuli more precisely it was found that imports and exports reactions were quicker and the total response time was shorter when an exchange rate rather than relative prices caused a change in international prices

asymmetric j curve evidence from industry trade between u s and u k previous research that assessed the impact of exchange rate changes on the trade balance between the u s and u k assumed the effects are symmetric in this paper we add to the literature on the

the impact of structural and cohesion funds on eurozone convergence 1990 2010 maynou l saez m kyriacou a and bacaria j the impact of structural and cohesion funds on eurozone convergence 1990 2010 regional studies ever since the launch of the european integration process and in particular in the context of economic and monetary union the european union has endeavoured to facilitate economic convergence across europe by providing funds to its poorer regions and countries the main objective of this paper is to analyse whether the structural and cohesion funds have contributed towards convergence between the eurozone countries during the past two decades 1990 2010 the results of the spatio temporal econometric model specified in this paper illustrate that these funds have positively contributed to the gross domestic product per inhabitant gdppc growth of receiving regions thus allowing them to reach conditional convergence

is there a j curve abstract if the response of the value of the trade balance to movements in the real exchange rate is described by a j curve then a real depreciation initially worsens a balance of trade deficit only improving it over time this paper investigates whether a j curve can be detected in the last twenty five years of american data no statistically reliable evidence of a stable j curve is detected the model is checked extensively to support this finding

impact of industrialisation on co2 emissions in nigeria abstract developing countries including nigeria aim to achieve industrialisation and sustainable development however there are few empirical studies that examined the impact of industrialisation led economic transformation on carbon emissions in developing countries this is the focus of this study the paper investigates the impact of industrial value added on co2 emissions in nigeria using the kaya identity framework and augmented dickey fuller adf johansen s cointegration technique and vector error correction model vecm the data spans from 1980 to 2011 the result of the adf test indicates that continual long term policies that exert permanent shocks on the variables are required to achieve economic development industrialisation and co2 reduction the result of the analysis shows that industrial value added has an inverse and significant relationship with co2 emissions which suggests that there is no evidence that industrialisation increases carbon emissions in nigeria gdp per capita and population has positive and significant impacts on co2 emission energy intensity and carbon intensity has positive but very weak significant impact at 10 level on co2 emission the paper recommends that policy makers in nigeria should pursue pragmatic industrialisation policies coupled with modest decarbonisation and energy efficiency measures in order to ensure long term industrial economic and sustainable development

regional tax coordination and foreign direct investment this paper analyses the effects of a regionally coordinated profit tax or location subsidy in a model with three active countries one of which is not part of the union and a globally mobile firm we show that regional coordination can lead to two types of welfare gain first for investments that would take place in the union in the absence of coordination a coordinated tax increase can transfer location rents from the firm to the union second by internalising all of the union s benefits from foreign direct investment a coordinated tax reduction can attract more welfare enhancing investment than when member states act in isolation depending on which motive dominates tax levels may thus rise or fall under regional coordination

transforming european regional policy a results driven agenda and smart specialization the paper examines the nature rationale and logic of the reforms to eu cohesion policy a particular focus of the paper is on the concept of smart specialization and the use of this concept to help facilitate a results oriented policy agenda on the one hand the arguments underpinning the reforms in part relate to modern thinking regarding the role of industrial policy on the other hand they also partly relate to advances in our understanding of the relationships between economic geography technology and institutions at the same time the specific features of the eu context also heavily influence the nature and logic of the changes whereby legal and institutional matters linking cohesion policy to other eu policies all play an important role

do devaluations improve the trade balance the evidence revisited do devaluations improve the trade balance the evidence revisited this paper reexamines the effectiveness of devaluation in trade balance adjustment the question is addressed in a framework which improves the previous empirical literature in several respects the evidence indicates that devaluations have been a successful tool in inducing trade balance adjustment in particular nominal devaluations are found to result in significant real devaluations that last for at least three years and the real devaluation induces significant trade flows that are distributed over a two to three year period the evidence comes from two different samples 1953 73 and 1975 84 involving twenty seven countries and sixty devaluation episodes 1 introduction do devaluations affect real magnitudes in particular the trade balance a devaluation may effect the trade balance through two channels devaluation of the real exchange rate and a direct effect on domestic absorption the traditional approach stresses the first channel a nominal devaluation is assumed to change the real exchange rate a relative price and thus improve competitiveness in turn if relative prices the terms of trade in a two country two good model affect the trade balance devaluation will be successful in the sense of improving the trade balance ceteris paribus the absorption effect becomes the sole or most important channel in the monetary approach in a world in which all goods and assets are perfect substitutes prices are exogenously given for the small country and wages and prices are flexible in both nominal and real terms a devaluation increases the price level by the same percentage the increase in the price level reduces real balances and thus domestic absorption dornbusch 1973 883 has argued that if such a real balance effect is not present then it might stand to reason that the effects of devaluation are negligible not that there must be other powerful avenues through which it exerts its effects emphasis added the controversy over the effects of devaluation on the trade balance arises because according to frenkel and johnson 1976 42 the monetary approach rejects the emphasis given to the role of relative prices in the analysis of devaluation global monetarists argue that neither of the links in the chain postulated by the traditional approach is likely to hold in practice see laffer 1977 the major disagreement centers on the question of the effectiveness of nominal devaluation to affect the real exchange rate and the importance of the latter in influencing trade flows theoretical arguments have not settled the issue the question is as strongly debated today as it was forty years ago see for example branson 1983 katseli 1983 kaldor 1983 nashashibi 1983 and mckinnon 1981 nor does it seem that the available empirical evidence leads to a consistent answer the best known studies cooper 1971 laffer 1977 salant 1977 miles 1979 gylfason and risager 1984 reach contradictory conclusions 1 cooper and gylfason and risager find that devaluations improve the trade balance or current account while laffer and miles conclude exactly the opposite salant finds that devaluations improve the trade balance but not as often as the overall balance of payments in the face of such diverse findings frenkel 1984 suggests that a reexamination of the issue would be useful indeed himarios 1985 shows that a close examination of miles s widely quoted study reveals serious deficiencies that once addressed lead to opposite results this paper provides new evidence concerning the effectiveness of devaluation in trade balance adjustment the approach differs from past studies in several respects it differs from cooper s laffer s and salant s studies in that it accounts for the effects of other variables that affect the trade balance

technical change dynamics evidence from the emerging renewable energy technologies abstract this paper explores the respective contributions of the effects of learning and returns to scale in the capital costs reduction pattern experienced by renewables causality analysis and econometric estimation of learning curves are performed on two emerging renewable energy technologies namely pv and wind learning effects appear as an essential driving force a result which concurs with the widely acknowledged importance of experience in technical progress inherent to economic growth the existence of non constant and flexible returns to scale are further highlighted their effect on diffusion dynamics is shown to be potentially considerable particularly at the outset of innovation deployment however returns to scale are suggested to be constant in the long term institutional commitment in supporting innovation therefore seems justified both on the basis of the occurrence of learning effects and diseconomies of scale these findings appear to be essential to the dynamics of innovation diffusion and market structure

public capital and total factor productivity new evidence from the italian regions 1970 98 destefanis s and sena v 2005 public capital and total factor productivity new evidence from the italian regions 1970 98 regional studies 39 603 618 this paper analyses the relationship between industrial total factor productivity and public capital across the 20 italian administrative regions it adds upon the existing literature in a number of ways it analyses a longer period 1970 98 it allows for the role of human capital accumulation it tests for the existence of a long run relationship between total factor productivity and public capital through previously suggested panel techniques and for weak exogeneity of public capital and it assesses the significance of public capital within a non parametric set up based on the free disposal hull the results confirm that public capital has a significant impact on the evolution of total factor productivity particularly in the southern regions this impact is mainly ascribed to the core infrastructures road and airports harbours railroads w

inequality and convergence in europe s regions reconsidering european regional policies europe s regions income disparities and regional policies in this paper we take a critical look at current european regional policies first we document the motivation for such policies that is the large income disparities across the regions of the eu15 large disparities are certainly present second we illustrate the various instruments adopted and discuss their underpinnings in established economic theories next we look at available data searching for three kinds of evidence 1 if disparities are either growing or decreasing we conclude they are neither 2 which are the major factors explaining such disparities and in particular if they are the factors predicted by the economic models adopted by the commission to justify current policies we conclude this is most certainly not the case 3 if there are clear signs that eu policies as opposed to other social and economic factors are actually reducing such disparities we cannot find any clear sign of such desired impact our conclusion is that regional and structural policies serve mostly a redistributional purpose motivated by the nature of the political equilibria upon which the european union is built they have little relationship with fostering economic growth this casts a serious doubt on their social value and furthermore strongly questions extending such policies to future members of the european union a successful eu enlargement in our view calls for an immediate and drastic revision of regional economic policies michele boldrin and fabio canova

economic impacts of new unionization on private sector employers 1984 2001 economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large representative data on establishments with union status information estimates are also confounded by selection bias because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more likely to grow and pay higher wages using multiple establishment level data sets that represent establishments that faced organizing drives in the united states during 1984 1999 this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of unionization on business survival employment output productivity and wages essentially outcomes for employers where unions barely won the election e g by one vote are compared with those where the unions barely lost the analysis finds small impacts on all outcomes that we examine estimates for wages are close to zero the evidence suggests that at least in recent decades the legal mandate that requires the employer to bargain with a certified union has had little economic impact on employers because unions have been somewhat unsuccessful at securing significant wage gains

aid policies and growth the authors of this paper use a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid economic policies and growth of per capita gdp in panel growth regressions for 56 developing countries and 6 four year periods 1970 93 they find that the policies that have a great effect on growth are those related to fiscal surplus inflation and trade openness they construct an index for those three policies and have that index interact with foreign aid they have instruments for both aid and aid interacting with policies they find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal monetary and trade policies in the presence of poor policies aid has no positive effect on growth this result is robust in a variety of specifications which include or exclude middle income countries include or exclude outliers and treat policies as exogenous or endogenous they examine the determinants of policy and find no evidence that aid has systematically affected policies either for good or for ill they estimate an aid allocation equation and show that any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donors pursuit of their own strategic interests in a counterfactual they reallocate aid reduce the role of donor interests and increasing the importance of policy such a reallocation would have a large positive effect on developing countries growth rates

do place based tax incentives create jobs abstract in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of place based payroll taxes in stimulating local employment by exploiting a unique policy setting in norway where a system of geographically differentiated payroll taxes was suddenly abolished due to an eu regulation the reform was enforced independently of the regional labor market developments creating arguably exogenous variation in the payroll tax rates that firms in different local labor markets faced over time we find evidence of partial shifting of payroll tax increases on to worker wages as well as a significant decline in local employment these findings suggest that in settings with some degrees of wage rigidity place based payroll tax incentives can be effective in stimulating local employment

convergence in the trends and cycles of euro zone income multivariate unobserved components structural time series models are fitted to annual post war observations on real income per capita in countries in the euro zone the aim is to establish stylized facts about convergence as it relates both to long run and short run movements a new model in which convergence components are combined with a common trend and similar cycles is proposed the convergence components are formulated as a second order error correction mechanism this ensures that the extracted components change smoothly thereby enabling them to be separated from transitory cycles copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

is there a long run relation between the trade balance and the real effective exchange rate of ldcs abstract using quarterly data over 1973 1988 period the cointegration analysis is used and it is shown that the trade balance and the real effective exchange rate of some ldcs are cointegrated in the long run this approach is argued to be a close substitute for testing the marshall lerner condition

analyzing cost of grid connection of renewable energy development in china abstract renewable energy is believed to be the central issue in sustainable development literatures on renewables costs are rather sparse especially on costs of integration and system balancing the objective of this paper is to fill the research gap by providing an assessment for the cost of china s grid connected renewable energy development and analyze its sharing between different stakeholders due to china s pricing mechanism of renewable energy and their cost decreasing potential the pricing model of feed in tariff and dynamic technological learning processes are employed in the estimation of purchasing cost the positive bias is overcome by considering china s energy saving dispatching policy the results suggest that purchasing cost would be 32 57 40 80 billion yuan over 2012 2020 and peak in 2017 grid integration costs which further involve costs of grid infrastructure and system balancing are also investigated we find that grid infrastructure will cost 27 88 billion yuan by 2015 and soar to 45 32 billion by 2020 while system balancing will cost 31 49 billion yuan in 2015 and 63 97 billion yuan in 2020 among which a substantial part over 60 comes from electricity loss in energy transfer the different parts of these costs are underwritten by disparate participants due to china s renewable energy policies and its institutional arrangement purchasing cost is shared by power consumers through res the cost of grid infrastructure is mainly covered by grid enterprises and there is no mechanism to specify how to share the cost electricity loss during system balancing which might become a major obstacle for system balancing

do businessmen make good governors this paper evaluates the economic performance of u s state governors with a business background chief executive officer ceo governors applying a matching method i find first that businesspeople tend to take office in times of economic and fiscal strain second the tenures of ceo governors are associated with a 0 5 percentage points pp higher annual income growth rate a 0 4 pp higher growth rate of the private capital stock and a 0 6 pp lower unemployment rate than are the tenures of non ceo governors state level income inequality is not affected by ceo governors holding office indicating that low income households benefit from the economic upswing

cost of long distance electricity transmission in china abstract china s energy resources reserves are concentrated on the central and western regions meanwhile the major energy demand is distributed in the eastern region large scale of cross regional electricity transmission is implemented to guarantee the power supply the long distance electricity transmission ldet cost is an essential component of the final detail price this paper proposes a new method to evaluate the real cost of ldet which mainly focuses on the price mark up between the electricity exporter and importer a weighted least square regression model is applied to evaluate the influence of the factors that could impact the real operating cost of the ldet furthermore we apply the ldet cost model to evaluate the synthesize cost of renewable energy and find the current renewable policy of china is inefficient

regional mobility in the european union regional mobility in the spatial distribution of per capita income in the european union is examined over the period 1977 to 1999 the methodology used to investigate this issue combines a series of measures taken from the literature devoted to the dynamic study of personal income distribution with a non parametric analysis the results show limited mobility in the distribution considered and a decline in mobility over time the empirical evidence presented indicates moreover that mobility patterns vary as a function of regional development levels additionally the analysis carried out investigates the role played in explaining intra distribution mobility by variables such as per capita income population density per capita expenditure in investment market potential and the share in total employment of agriculture advanced services and non market services

how does the implementation of the policy of electricity substitution influence green economic growth in china abstract to promote the level of electrification reduce environmental pollution and achieve the goal of clean energy usage and green economic growth in china the national development and reform commission and other eight departments jointly issued and implemented the policy of electricity substitution in 2016 electricity substitution aims to replace traditional fossil fuels such as coal and fuel oil with clean electric energy in different fields e g industry transportation and construction and deal with the pollutants at power generation however we still need to find out the exact impact of the policy of electricity substitution on energy saving and emission reduction in this paper we estimate the economically feasible increment of electricity demand according to different classifications in electricity substitution technology furthermore based on the input output model we discuss the relative influence of the policy of lectricity substitution the main conclusions are first the policy of electricity substitution alone is not adequate to reduce the dependence on fossil energy and environmental pollution under china s current power generation structure we should also increase the use of renewable energy second the power sector plays a leading role in stimulating economic output and the increasing electricity consumption due to the policy of electricity substitution can boost the green development of china s economy

between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions rodriguez pose a and fratesi u 2004 between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions reg studies 38 97 113 european regional support has grown in parallel with european integration the funds targeted at achieving greater economic and social cohesion and reducing disparities within the european union eu have more than doubled in relative terms since the end of the 1980s making development policies the second most important policy area in the eu the majority of the development funds have been earmarked for objective 1 regions i e regions where gdp per capita is below the 75 threshold of the eu average however the european development policies have come under increasing criticism based on two facts the lack of upward mobility of assisted regions and the absence of regional convergence this paper assesses using cross sectional and panel data analyses the failure so far of european development policies to fulfil their objective of de

analysis of the eu policy package on climate change and renewables abstract in 2009 the eu decided to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least by 20 in 2020 compared to 1990 and to supply 20 of energy needs by 2020 from renewable energy sources this paper uses an energy model coupled with a non co 2 greenhouse gas model to assess the range of policy options that were debated to meet both targets policy options include trading of renewable targets carbon trading in power plants and industry and the use of the clean development mechanism to improve cost efficiency the models also examined fairness by analysing the distribution of emission reduction in the non emission trading sector the distribution of co 2 allowances in the emission trading sector and the reallocation of renewable targets across member states the overall costs of meeting both targets range from 0 4 to 0 6 of gdp in 2020 for the eu as a whole the redistribution mechanisms employed significantly improve fairness compared to a cost effective solution

too much of a good thing on the growth effects of the eu s regional policy the european union eu provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states from two pools the structural funds and the cohesion fund the main goal of the associated transfers is to facilitate convergence of poor regions in terms of per capita income to the eu average we use data at the nuts3 level from the last two eu budgetary periods 1994 1999 and 2000 2006 and generalized propensity score estimation to analyze to which extent the goal of fostering growth in the target regions was achieved with the funds provided and whether or not more transfers generated stronger growth effects we find that overall eu transfers enable faster growth in the recipient regions as intended but we estimate that in 36 of the recipient regions the transfer intensity exceeds the aggregate efficiency maximizing level and in 18 of the regions a reduction of transfers would not even reduce their growth we conclude that some reallocation of the funds across target regions would lead to higher aggregate growth in the eu and could generate even faster convergence than the current scheme does

estimating the effect of financial aid offers on college enrollment a regression discontinuity approach an important problem faced by colleges and universities that of evaluating the effect of their financial aid offers on student enrollment decisions is complicated by the likely endogeneity of the aid offer variable in a student enrollment equation this article shows how discontinuities in an east coast college s aid assignment rule can be exploited to obtain credible estimates of the aid effect without having to rely on arbitrary exclusion restrictions and functional form assumptions semiparametric estimates based on a regression discontinuity rd approach affirm the importance of financial aid as an effective instrument in competing with other colleges for students

the role of exchange rates in a popular model of international trade abstract this paper examines the empirical relationship between the real effective exchange rate and the aggregate real trade balance for five major oecd countries in the post bretton woods era a variety of parametric and non parametric techniques are used there is little evidence that the exchange rate significantly affects the trade balance

quality of life and economic convergence across spanish regions 1980 2001 marchante a j and ortega b 2006 quality of life and economic convergence across spanish regions 1980 2001 regional studies 40 471 483 evaluations of regional welfare conventionally rely on gross value added gva per capita as an indicator of living standards this paper attempts to readdress the regional welfare issue by using alternative composite indicators in the context of the united nations development programme undp human development indices evidence is presented regarding to what extent such alternative measures of living standards are converging with this aim a database for the spanish regions nuts ii was constructed for 1980 2001 and an augmented version of the human development index ahdi was estimated incorporating sub indices of health education and the resources required for a decent standard of living including an indicator of social exclusion the regional convergence of three per capita income measures and the raw data of seven indicators of quality of life were also

centralized fiscal spending by supranational unions we study fiscal spending by supranational unions where participation is voluntary and countries bargain over contributions to and the allocation of a central budget since decisions are made by unanimity bargaining power over the allocation becomes a function of contributions which generically causes inefficiency in the presence of income asymmetry between member nations this link between the budget allocation and contributions explains patterns of inefficient spending in the eu e g why resources are diverted to low productivity projects in high income countries the option of veto creates a trade off between efficiency on the contributions margin and efficiency on the allocation margin

the dilemma of enlargement for the european union s regional policy or more than three decades the european union and formerly the european community and the european economic community has pursued a regional policy but the biggest challenge in the short history of this policy field is now under way this is the enlargement process of the european union which will include the former communist countries in eastern and central europe into the eu s existing policy framework we show below that integration of these countries into the eu creates a dilemma for the eu s regional policy the eu currently has two distinct regional policies one active and the other reactive in analysing the differences between them it becomes obvious that a shift from active to reactive regional policy is needed for the eastern enlargement otherwise the existing member states will jeopardise the enlargement process by refusing to finance the enormous increase in expenditures that would be required to continue an active regional policy but a shift to the reactive policy changes dramatically the incentives to the accession countries for eu membership and makes them more resistant to accepting fully the existing set of eu policies hence the dilemma continuing an active regional policy makes enlargement unattractive to the existing members switching to the reactive policy makes the eu membership less attractive to the accession countries to understand this dilemma of enlargement one must understand the forces that have driven the development of the eu s regional policy until today since

is biomass power a good choice for governments in china abstract to fulfill the target of emissions reduction the chinese government has made many efforts to develop renewable energy biomass power can provide stable power supply avoid wasting straw resources and protect rural environment at the same time however the development of renewable power requires subsidies from the government but increased subsidies placed heavy burden on the governments whereas these governments want to develop renewable energy with minimum costs this paper attempts to answer the question that whether the development of biomass power is a good choice for local governments in china for this purpose the goal of emissions reduction and subsidies of renewable energy powers were discussed the main conclusion is that although the subsidies for biomass power were slightly higher than those for wind power biomass power is a good choice for governments considering other benefits especially for regions with rich agricultural and forest residues in the future regional and local conditions should be considered in the planning of biomass power development

impacts of increasing renewable energy subsidies and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in china abstract subsidies to fossil fuel consumption have made china s energy system fragile and unsustainable it is necessary for china to reform fossil fuel subsidies and reflect the resource cost and environmental cost in energy prices considering the life cycle external costs this paper estimates the scale of fossil fuel subsidy and the true cost of renewable energy in 2010 and evaluates impacts of increasing renewable energy subsidies and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies on macro economy and energy system in china based on scenario analysis simulation results show that the negative impacts on economic growth can be reduced from 4 460 to 0 432 if only 10 of fossil fuel subsidies were removed increasing subsidies for renewable energy has positive impacts on macroeconomic variables although the economic benefits per unit of subsidies for renewable energy are lower than those for fossil fuels by 0 06 0 19 cny the revenue gap can be narrowed by shifting more subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables increasing subsidies for renewable energy helps optimize china s energy system in three ways the first is making energy consumption structure cleaner the second is improving energy efficiency and the third is addressing the problem of imbalanced distribution and consumption of energy

valuing chinese feed in tariffs program for solar power generation a real options analysis newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1305 18257 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013

eu regional policy and tax competition the european union eu provides coordination and financing of trans european transport infrastructures i e roads and railways which link the eu member states and reduce the cost of transport and mobility this raises the question of whether eu involvement in this area is justified by inefficiencies of national infrastructure policies moreover an often expressed concern is that policies enhancing mobility may boost tax competition we analyze these questions using a model where countries compete for the location of profitable firms we show that a coordination of investment in transport cost reducing infrastructures within union countries enhances welfare and mitigates tax competition in contrast with regard to union periphery infrastructure the union has an interest in a coordinated reduction of investment expenditures here the effects on tax competition are ambiguous our results provide a rationale for eu level regional policy that supports the development of intra union infrastructure

the roles of inter fuel substitution and inter market contagion in driving energy prices evidences from china s coal market abstract coal has been dominating energy supply and consumption in china with the country becoming the largest energy supplier and consumer worldwide due to inter fuel substitution of crude oil and inter market contagion of international coal market china s coal price might be interrelated with crude oil price and international coal price however the precise roles of these two effects in determining china s coal price are unknown this paper contributes to previous literature by investigating this issue we find that co movements between china s coal price and crude oil price largely hinge on the shares of oil and coal in china s energy mix while its co movements with international coal price depend on scales of coal trade inter fuel substitution dominated the interaction of china s coal market with other energy types but the importance of inter market contagion has been increasing we also find that china might have become an originator for driving the returns of crude oil and international coal in particular after 2008 furthermore china s coal market is still a net volatility recipient for shocks from both crude oil market and international coal market given the increased integration of global energy markets we anticipate this paper to provide a better understanding on the dynamic changes in china s coal prices

income and employment disparities across european regions the role of national and spatial factors meliciani v 2006 income and employment disparities across european regions the role of national and spatial factors regional studies 40 75 91 the paper analyses the impact of trends in employment rates on income convergence across european regions looking at the evolution of entire distributions between 1988 and 1996 european regions have been characterized by a very slow process of income convergence across countries and by a lack of income convergence within countries while trends in labour productivity have contributed to income convergence trends in employment rates have had a diverging impact polarization in employment rates also appears to be the result of national factors and of the negative performance of objective 1 regions more than the consequence of the emergence of geographical clusters that go beyond national borders regional convergence unemployment spatial correlation non parametric estimation meliciani v 2006 les ecarts de revenu et d emploi a travers les regions d euro

opportunities and challenges for renewable energy policy in china renewable energy is the inevitable choice for sustainable economic growth for the harmonious coexistence of human and environment as well as for the sustainable development government support is the key and initial power for developing renewable energy in this article an overall review has been conducted on renewable energy development policy including laws and regulations economic encouragement technical research and development industrialized support and government model projects etc in china on this basis a systematic analysis has been conducted on the disadvantages of renewable energy development policy on the point of long term effective system for renewable energy development a series of policy advice has been offered such as strengthening the policy coordination enhancing regional policy innovation echoing with clean development mechanism implementing process management constructing market investment and financing system it is expected that the above advices could be helpful to ever improvement of renewable energy development policy c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved