international trade of scarce water abstract recent analyses of the evolution and structure of trade in virtual water revealed that the number of trade connections and volume of virtual water trade have more than doubled over the past two decades and that developed countries increasingly import water embodied in goods from the rest of the world to alleviate pressure on domestic water resources at the same time as demand continues to increase and climate change threatens to alter hydrological cycles water scarcity is a growing problem does research into virtual water trade need to consider water scarcity and differentiate flows out of water scarce regions from flows out of water abundant regions previous studies sum and compare virtual water volumes originating in countries experiencing vastly different degrees of water scarcity we therefore incorporate water scarcity into an assessment of global virtual water flows we use input output analysis to include indirect virtual water flows we find that the structure of global virtual water networks changes significantly after adjusting for water scarcity

the big push natural resource booms and growth a simple application of big push reasoning suggests that natural resource booms can be important catalysts for development in poorer countries in this paper we present evidence from seven latin american countries that natural resource booms are sometimes accompa nied by declining per capita gdp we present a model with natural resources increasing returns in the spirit of big push models and expectations to clarify some of the reasons this may happen q 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

network perspective of embodied pm2 5 a case study abstract economic growth due to social activities such as industrialization urbanization population growth and transportation in countries like india is coupling with an increase in pm 2 5 emissions which are main contributors to air pollution in this paper the embodied pm 2 5 emissions generated from economic activities in india were investigated we quantified the pm 2 5 emissions from each economic sector based on input output analysis ioa also the control relations within these economic sectors were identified based on ecological network analysis ena to determine the dominance and dependency of each sector the results showed that 86 4858 kt of total pm 2 5 emissions were direct and 14 812 kt were indirect in 2010 furthermore ena based results represented the pairwise control relationships among sectors by finding that sale maintenance and repair of motor vehicles retail sale of fuel chemicals and chemical products smelting of nonmetal mineral products and ordinary special machinery equipment were the dominant sectors that controlled the flow of embodied pm 2 5 emissions from other sectors such as construction agriculture mining and dressing catering services and waste manufacturing and recycling it is suggested that ena be adopted as a more systematic approach to uncover pm 2 5 flow pattern among the economic sectors as compared to traditional methods

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

natural gas overview for world economy from primary supply to final demand via global supply chains abstract as the world is smoothing the transition towards a low carbon energy structure natural gas has occupied a critical position in global energy supply also globalization has catalyzed ever increasing indirect energy flows in international trade in order to present a comprehensive overview of natural gas use in globalized economy this paper applies the systems multi regional input output mrio analysis to track natural gas use from primary suppliers to final consumers via the links by producers in the world economy supported by typical statistics for the year of 2011 natural gas embodied in international trade is revealed amounting to 2722 1 bcm in magnitude up to 90 of total gas extraction for energy use indicating the intensive relocation of gas use by trade 83 of traded embodied natural gas is associated with intermediate trade mainly from leading primary suppliers including russia usa and western asia to dominant final consumers like usa eu27 and east asia significant differences are found between direct and embodied natural gas flows consumption based resource efficiency can break the illusion of efficiency improvements and trade imbalance in terms of gas use can be opposite to the trade imbalance in conventional monetary terms this paper has constructed a comprehensive analytical framework to trace natural gas flows in globalized economy for the first time aiming to provide new insights for policy making

global overview for energy use of the world economy household consumption based accounting based on the world input output database wiod abstract globalization has integrated nations into a world economy based on the world input output database wiod this paper explored the energy use of the world economy under a household consumption based mrio multi region input output accounting scheme pertaining to normative economics the household consumption based mrio accounting scheme corresponds to the value judgement of household consumption being the ultimate driver of the economy which complements existing accounting methods based on different viewpoints the energy use associated with the internationally traded products is calculated to be around one fifth of the global total energy consumption for china as the largest exporter and also the biggest deficit economy in terms of energy use its trade imbalance is nearly the summation of that of the united states the united kingdom japan and germany energy self sufficiency rates by supply and by demand are respectively proposed while the united states economy as the largest importer maintains the majority of the energy welfare denoted by the onsite energy use at home china exports large quantities of energy use abroad for economies like germany south korea and taiwan they could be regarded as hubs that export a considerable amount of energy use abroad and absorb massive energy use from outside simultaneously for sustainable use of energy resources economies are suggested to carefully identify their roles in the global trading network of energy use

technical efficiency unions and decentralized labor contracts abstract this paper explores the link between the presence of unions in the workplace the adoption of decentralized labor agreements and technical efficiency using a large sample of italian manufacturing firms we apply the data envelopment analysis and its robust version based on bootstrap theory to get reliable estimates of technical efficiency at the firm level in a standard first stage we devote particular attention to the specific technology adopted by distinguishing 20 different sector frontiers as well as to the presence of outliers the obtained efficiency scores are analyzed in a second stage applying a truncated regression model estimated via maximum likelihood following the simar and wilson 2007 2011 methodology our results highlight that the presence of workplace unionization decreases the level of technical efficiency while aspects limiting the unions power such as a strong exposure to international markets high debt levels or the prevalence of flexible assets partially reduce the negative effect however when firms adopt decentralized labor contracts agreements the effect on efficiency is positive and partially compensates the negative unions effect

specialization and human capital incentives for specialization trade and the production of comparative advantage through investment are shown to arise from increasing returns to utilization of human capital indivisibilities imply fixed cost elements of investment that are independent of subsequent utilization hence the rate of return is increasing in utilization and is maximized by utilizing specialized skills as intensively as possible identically endowed individuals have incentives to specialize their investments in skills and trade with each other for this reason even if production technology exhibits constant returns to scale

economic developments in the west bank and gaza since oslo the performance of the palestinian economy in 1994 2000 was uneven but for the period as a whole real per capita income declined despite the mobilisation of substantial amounts of foreign aid and despite considerable progress in establishing a basic institutional framework this paper argues that economic growth and private investment in particular have been adversely affected by closures by uncertainties about political developments and the direction of policies and policy reforms by problems of governance and by the excessive transportation and transaction costs related to the intensification of the permits system

uncovering resource losses and gains in china s foreign trade abstract natural resource storages and flows play an important role in economic and social processes in this paper we explore the trade of primary commodities between china and its main trade partners during the years 2000 and 2008 emergy accounting is used to assess the environmental support associated with the resources exchanged mass emergy and financial capital export to import ratios confirm that economy level trade advantages should not just rely on capital flow a holistic evaluation of the trade process including resource environmental value should be performed to identify trade balance and stability results show that while china s imports monetary value is much larger than exports monetary value china receives more emergy environmental support in trade than it gives benefiting from the ability of primary resources to drive its economy developed economies characterized by a low emergy to money ratio gain more from trade of primary commodities with china developing and underdeveloped economies with higher emergy to money ratio lose in the environmental support balance to china indicating the existence of a potentially unsustainable trade imbalance

optimal embodied energy abatement strategy for beijing economy based on a three scale input output analysis abstract energy strategies in china s 11th and 12thzfive year plan failed to reduce the total energy consumption and misled the implementation of energy saving measures as they were focused towards the direct energy input as well as formulated based on incomplete energy consumption information therefore an optimal energy abatement strategy built on comprehensive information on overall embodied energy consumption is in urgent need adopting the three scale input output analysis this study uses beijing as a case to depict a specific urban economy s overall energy consumption impacted by local direct energy use domestic and foreign trade the results show that energy embodied in domestic trade dominated beijing s energy consumption while local direct energy is accounting for less than 1 3 of beijing s total embodied energy consumption the quantity of energy embodied in imports far exceeds that embodied in exports making the city a net embodied energy importer and indicating that policies considering direct energy use only will cause energy leakage problem these findings suggest that the current measures such as displacing energy intensive sectors to other regions lead to local reduction but overall rise moreover analysis for five abatement scenarios average intensity share absolute share discriminatory absolute and discriminatory intensity was carried out to figure out the optimal abatement strategy for beijing due to less loss of potential output it is found that intensity share scenario is the optimal one among all the scenarios concerned analysis in this study suggests that each region should break limits of self centered perceptions and multi scale governance for more appropriate responsibility assignment is recommended for overall energy abatement

the precious bane abstract are natural resources harmful to growth we address this question using a two sector endogenous growth model in which human capital is the engine of growth by increasing the rewards to unskilled labor natural resources make schooling more expensive as long as the intertemporal elasticity of consumption substitution is not too high this slows down human capital accumulation and growth the presence of production spillovers from human capital however implies that a planner could react to a resource boom by increasing human capital accumulation even though the decentralized solution yields the exact opposite the paper also shows that as the production complementarity between natural resources and unskilled labor declines the growth effects of natural resources become increasingly sensitive to whether or not there is free trade in goods the empirical evidence lends support to the main channel natural resources to human capital to growth that is suggested in the paper

ghg emissions embodied in macao s internal energy consumption and external trade driving forces via decomposition analysis abstract as a member of the kyoto protocol macao faces the enormous challenge to tackle with energy conservation and greenhouse gas ghg emission reduction though many studies have been devoted to understanding macao s ghg emissions from energy consumption and external trade an investigation of the underlying driving forces is still absent therefore this study decomposed the energy related emissions change and imbalance in embodied emissions of external trade during 2000 2011 respectively by using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method the economic scale effect and energy structure change were identified as the main driving factors of macao s increasing energy related emissions while trade structure and embodied emission intensity contributed to make macao a net importer of embodied emissions however some variations can be seen during the period concerned then the underlying reasons for the two decomposition results were further investigated on account of the results and analysis instructive policy implications can be put forward for macao to better proceed with energy conservation and emissions reduction

embodied carbon dioxide emission at supra national scale a coalition analysis for g7 bric and the rest of the world abstract presented in this study is an empirical analysis of embodied carbon dioxide emissions induced by fossil fuel combustion for the world divided into three supra national coalitions i e g7 bric and the rest of the world row via the application of a multi region input output modeling for 2004 embodied emission intensities for the three coalitions are calculated and compared with market exchange rate and purchase power parity separately used to investigate the difference between nominal and real production efficiencies emissions embodied in different economic activities such as production consumption import and export are calculated and analyzed accordingly and remarkable carbon trade imbalances associated with g7 surplus of 1 53 billion tons or 36 its traded emissions and bric deficit of 1 37 billion tons or 51 its traded emissions and approximate balance with row deficit of 0 16 billion tons or 3 its traded emissions are concretely revealed carbon leakages associated with industry transfer and international trades are illustrated in terms of impacts on global climate policies the last but not least per capita consumption based emissions for g7 bric and row are determined as 12 95 1 53 and 2 22 tons respectively and flexible abatement policies as well as equity on per capita entitlement are discussed

marriage specialization and the gender division of labor we consider why the gender division of labor is so often enforced by custom and why customary gender divisions of labor generally involve both direction and prohibition in our formal model agents first learn skills and then enter the marriage market we show that wasteful behavior may emerge due to strategic incentives in specialization choice and human capital acquisition and that both problems may be mitigated through a customary gender division of labor this division is not pareto improving both the distributional effects and welfare gains of a customary gender division of labor decrease as opportunities for market exchange increase

parental leave a policy evaluation of the swedish daddy month reform abstract many governments are making attempts to increase fathers share of parental leave in order to correct for unequal labor market outcomes using swedish data we ask whether fathers can be encouraged to take more parental leave in order to mitigate the negative consequences of mothers career interruptions the unique data stem from a reform of parental leave resulting in a clean natural experiment data comprise all children born before control group and after treatment group the date of implementation of the reform in cohorts of up to 27 000 newborns mothers and fathers we find strong short term effects of the incentives on male parental leave but no behavioral effects in the household fathers in the treatment group do not take larger shares of the leave taken for care of sick children which is our measure for household work we also investigate a second data set on fathers and mothers long term wages and employment without finding evidence for substantial effects of the reform

e commerce productivity and fluctuation abstract this paper studies simultaneous adoption of e commerce and its impact on productivity and economic structure in a general equilibrium model it is found that the lower the fixed cost for establishing and maintaining e commerce and or the higher the degree of improvement in unit transaction efficiency through e commerce the more likely it is that producers will adopt e commerce in addition the adoption of e commerce can increase productivity and trade dependency due to the benefits of fixed cost sharing over a higher trade level and economies of specialization in production reduction in unit transaction cost through e commerce can also increase the level of division of labor and promote structural changes in the economy however as the development of the it sector may reduce fixed cost for e commerce while improving unit transaction efficiency further developments of the it sector can generate fluctuations in economic structure and productivity through e commerce

understanding the wage patterns of canadian less skilled workers the role of implicit contracts understanding the wage patterns of canadian less skilled workers we examine the wage patterns of canadian less skilled male workers over the last quarter century by organizing workers into job entry cohorts we find entry wages for successive cohorts declined until 1997 and then began to recover wage profiles steepened for cohorts entering after 1997 but not for cohorts entering in the 1980s a period when startwageswere relatively high we argue that these patterns are consistent with a model of implicit contracts with recontracting inwhich aworker s currentwage is determined by the best labour market conditions experienced during the current job spell comprendre les patterns de salaires des travailleurs canadiens moins qualifi es le r ole des contrats implicites on examine les patterns de salaires des travailleurs masculins moins qualifi es au cours du dernier quart de si ecle en d epartageant les travailleurs en cohortes diff erentes selon le moment d entr ee dans le monde du travail on d ecouvre que les salaires a l entr ee des cohortes successives ont d eclin e jusqu en 1997 et qu ensuite ils ont commenc e a cro itre les profils de salaires se sont raffermis pour les cohortes entrant dans le monde du travail apr es 1997 mais pas pour les cohortes qui sont entr ees dans le monde du travail dans les ann ees 1980 une p eriode o u les salaires de d epart etaient relativement elev es on sugg ere que ces patterns sont consistants avec un mod ele de contrats implicites de ren egociation qui implique que le salaire courant des travailleurs est d etermin e par les meilleures conditions du march e du travail dont on a fait l exp erience dans la p eriode r ecente de travail

the effect of unionization on productivity evidence from a long panel of coal mines the author measures the effect of unionization on productivity based on a panel of west virginia coal mines from 1897 to 1928 output and inputs are measured in physical terms and most of the mine

coal use for world economy provision and transfer network by multi region input output analysis concerns surrounding climate change and environmental challenge make the coal utilization network essential not only for understanding the pattern of energy provision and transfer but also for illustrating the interaction between anthropogenic activities and ecological systems at global level this paper fills the research gap by dint of multi regional input output model to outline coal embodied routes from natural boundaries to economic activities and to identify the central hubs in the global coal supply chain based on the most recent available statistics for 2011 as the economic value and environmental influences of different kinds of coals could be remarkably diverse the separation of coal categories in systematic analysis could provide fundamental information regarding the displacement and teleconnection of coal utilization in the world the estimation shows that in weight 64 99 of coal direct supply is ultimately embodied in international trade indicating the crucial roles of trade interlinks in global coal utilization apart from this the findings pertinent to sectoral structure regional supply chain and per capita characteristics of coal embodied utilization could be valuable to identify the global energy routes driven by international trade as well as to facilitate energy and environmental policy

immigrants and the dynamics of high wage jobs the authors exploit immigrant identifiers in the canadian labour force survey lfs and the longitudinal dimension of these data to compare the labor force and job dynamics of immigrants and native born workers they examine the role of job as opposed to worker heterogeneity in driving immigrant wage disparities and investigate how the paths into and out of jobs of varying quality compare between immigrant and native born workers they find that the disparity in immigrant job quality which does not appear to diminish with years since arrival reflects a combination of relatively low transitions into high wage jobs and high transitions out of these jobs the former result appears to be due equally to difficulties obtaining high wage jobs directly out of unemployment and to using low wage jobs as stepping stones the authors find little or no evidence however that immigrant job seekers face barriers to low wage jobs

the firm strikes back non compete agreements and the mobility of technical professionals this study explores how firms shape labor markets and career paths using employee non compete agreements the sociology of work has overlooked non competes but data indicate that nearly half of technical professionals in the united states are asked to sign such employment contracts fearing loss of investments in talent and trade secrets firms use non competes to strike back against technical professionals increased mobility following the decline of internal labor markets in depth interviews with 52 randomly sampled patent holders in a single industry coupled with a survey of 1 029 engineers across a variety of industries reveal that ex employees subject to non competes are more likely to take career detours that is they involuntarily leave their technical field to avoid a potential lawsuit moreover firms strategically manage the process of getting workers to sign such contracts waiting for workers bargaining position to weaken these findings inform our understanding of the social organizati

unions and the economy what we know what we should know the wages and working conditions of about one in three canadian workers are determined by collective bargaining in this paper current knowledge about the economic effects of collective bargaining is surveyed unions raise wages by about 15 percent on average and reduce wage dispersion for their members while also reducing profits unions do not seem to reduce employment levels in affected firms or cause nonunion wages to fall efficiency losses due to sectoral misallocation of labor and to strikes are small but some evidence suggests lowered investment in unionized firms union effects on total factor productivity need more careful study using firm level data

an overview of energy consumption of the globalized world economy abstract for the globalized world economy with intensive international trade an overview of energy consumption is presented by an embodied energy analysis to track both direct and indirect energy uses based on a systems input output simulation in 2004 the total amounts of energy embodied in household consumption government consumption and investment are 7749 874 and 2009 mtoe million tons of oil equivalent respectively the united states is shown as the world s biggest embodied energy importer 683 mtoe and embodied energy surplus receiver 290 mtoe in contrast to china as the biggest exporter 662 mtoe and deficit receiver 274 mtoe energy embodied in consumption per capita varies from 0 05 uganda to 19 54 toe rest of north america based on a forecast for 2005 2035 china is to replace the united states as the world s leading embodied energy consumer in 2027 when its per capita energy consumption will be one quarter of that of the united states

union effects in low wage services evidence from canadian childcare empirical evidence presented in this paper based on survey data for canadian childcare workers in 1991 contradicts most stereotypes of the childcare labor market although childcare labor was low wage the authors find that the union impact on wages 15 and fringe benefits was in line with union effects found in other better compensated work and they find substantial returns to education occupational level and firm specific experience the returns to the skill related attributes were blunted somewhat in the union sector except where such returns stood to benefit the median union voter the findings suggest that monetary incentives can be used to encourage improvements in the education experience and skill acquisition of childcare workers unions can improve wages and benefits for childcare workers just as they can for most other workers suggesting the viability of union organizing in this sector despite the traditional barriers to organizing low wage service sector workers in small firms u nion organizing in the growing lowwage female dominated service sector is often regarded as key to offsetting the decline in union membership that is occurring in the areas of traditional union strength the recent success of the service

austrian and neoclassical economics any gains from trade austrian economics has been important to the development of modern economics but its role in current practice is much diminished the neoclassical approach dominates today s thinking many austrians bemoan this state of affairs most neoclassical economists just ignore it but austrian and neoclassical economics aren t mutually exclusive each represents a distinctive point of view although with little meaningful intellectual exchange between them these days this is unfortunate many different concepts are associated with both austrian and neoclassical economics to concentrate on where the most exchange of ideas might occur i am concerned about those aspects of austrian economics primarily dealing with the process of competition and that portion of neoclassical economics primarily dealing with the determination of economic equilibrium this in a nutshell is the main intellectual difference between them some consequences of this difference are discussed in what follows i hope to show that mutually advantageous gains from trade exist austrian economics offers a valuable perspective of the economy as an evolutionary process akin to biological evolution with entrepreneurial activities representing the main instruments of change it is primarily a macroeconomic theory of the economy as a whole with keen insights on the nature of decentralization and the process of competition that deserve more attention neoclassical economics offers a microeconomic theory of economic behavior that is especially useful for analyzing specific economic problems and for orienting analysis around more sharply described empirical phenomena and data

natural resources education and economic development economic growth since 1965 has varied inversely with the share of natural capital in national wealth across countries four main channels of transmission from abundant natural resources to stunted economic development are discussed a the dutch disease b rent seeking c overconfidence and d neglect of education public expenditure on education relative to national income expected years of schooling for girls and gross secondary school enrolment are all shown to be inversely related to the share of natural capital in national wealth across countries natural capital appears to crowd out human capital thereby slowing down the pace of economic development

understanding the wage patterns of canadian less skilled workers the role of implicit contracts we examine the wage patterns of canadian less skilled male workers over the last quarter century by organizing workers into job entry cohorts we find entry wages for successive cohorts declined until 1997 and then began to recover wage profiles steepened for cohorts entering after 1997 but not for cohorts entering in the 1980s a period when start wages were relatively high we argue that these patterns are consistent with a model of implicit contracts with recontracting in which a worker s current wage is determined by the best labour market conditions experienced during the current job spell on examine les patterns de salaires des travailleurs masculins moins qualifies au cours du dernier quart de siecle en departageant les travailleurs en cohortes differentes selon le moment d entree dans le monde du travail on decouvre que les salaires a l entree des cohortes successives ont decline jusqu en 1997 et qu ensuite ils ont commencea croitre les profils de salaires se sont raffermis pour les cohortes entrant dans le monde du travail apres 1997 mais pas pour les cohortes qui sont entrees dans le monde du travail dans les annees 1980 une periode ou les salaires de depart etaient relativement eleves on suggere que ces patterns sont consistants avec un modele de contrats implicites de renegociation qui implique que le salaire courant des travailleurs est determine par les meilleures conditions du marche du travail dont on a fait l experience dans la periode recente de travail

global primary energy use associated with production consumption and international trade presented in this study is a comprehensive analysis for energy use of different economic entities in global supply chains including the exploiter producer consumer intermediate trader and final trader the systems input output analysis method is adopted to trace the direct and indirect energy use associated with both intermediate production and final consumption activities in the economic system in the world economy 15 of the energy use embodied in trade turns out to be induced by final consumption and 85 is attributed to intermediate production different trading patterns for different economies are identified with the separation between energy trade for intermediate production and that for final consumption for japan with a production oriented trading pattern intermediate trade should be a top priority in local trade structure adjustment while final trade needs more attention for the government in the united states as the country is in a consumption oriented trade pattern this analysis aims to provide an in depth insight into energy sustainability as well as a sound scientific reference for policy making at the regional national and global scale

unionization and plant closure in canada this paper examines for the first time the role of unionization as a determinant of plant closings in canada using the 1999 to 2001 canadian workplace and employee survey the paper contributes to the north american evidence by showing that the share of a plant s workers covered by collective bargaining has a robust positive partial correlation with the probability of larger plants closing for smaller plants the extent of unionization tends to be much lower and its variation plays no role in plant closure the study highlights the theoretical and statistical importance of examining closure separately for large and small plants ce memoire examine pour la premiere fois le role de la syndicalisation en tant que determinant de la fermeture d usines au canada a l aide des resultats de l enquete sur le milieu de travail et les employes de 1999 et de 2001 emte le texte contribue a enrichir le dossier qui montre qu il y a correlation positive partielle robuste entre la portion des travailleurs d usines couverts par une convention collective et la probabilite de fermeture des grandes usines pour les plus petites usines le degre de syndicalisation tend aetre plus faible et sa variation ne joue pas de role dans le processus de fermeture d usines cette etude montre l importance theorique et pratique qu il y a aetudier separement les fermetures des grandes et des petites usines

development structural changes and urbanization abstract this paper constructs an equilibrium model by formalizing a trade off between the gains from trade based on increasing returns to specialization and transaction costs the relationship between development structural changes and urbanization is investigated in addition the function of a free market in searching for the efficient market structure is explored

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

growth deceleration and transaction costs a note abstract the basic hypothesis of this essay is that the bureaucratic nature of the planned economies of east europe meant that they were more vulnerable to the rising transaction costs associated with economic development than market economics if true this suggests that these nations revealed a greater deceleration of economic growth than in the market economies of the west empirical evidence is provided to demonstrated that such a phenomenon did in fact occur

the comparative advantages of firms markets and contracts a unified theory the most efficient labour market mechanism depends on the advantages of specialization workers costs of switching between entrepreneurs and the frequency with which needs change multilateral mechanisms are more efficient when specialization is more advantageous when it is cheap for workers to switch between entrepreneurs and when individual entrepreneurs cannot occupy a worker on a full time basis given a bilateral mechanism employment a firm is more efficient than contracts when in process adjustments arise more frequently there exist three regions in which firms markets and sequences of bilateral contracts are weakly more efficient than all other mechanisms in a big class

productive efficiency and growth policies for the caribbean productive economic efficiency and factors affecting it was evaluated in the caribbean between 1983 to 1992 results from non parametric programming indicated that efficiency i e pure technical allocative and economic measures were lower and more variable in caribbean than in other western hemisphere countries i e north america and latin america tobit regression analysis indicated higher levels of private and foreign investments productive infrastructure credit availability education level and consumption of domestically produced goods had positive impacts on the efficiency measures on the other hand higher levels of public expenditure income tax and export taxes and higher inflation rates had negative effects these results support the current trend towards advocating more open economies i e letting the free market work and encouraging governments to confine their functions to facilitative regulatory type roles and to undertaking tasks that are not generally undertaken by the privat

a microeconomic mechanism for economic growth this paper constructs a dynamic general equilibrium model in which economic growth is explained by the evolution of the division of labor the relationships among the accumulation of human capital the evolution of the division of labor endogenous comparative advantage trade dependence the market structure and economic growth are investigated

education matching and the allocative value of romance societies are characterized by customs governing the allocation of non market goods such as marital partnerships we explore how such customs affect the educational investment decisions of young singles and the subsequent joint labour supply decisions of partnered couples we consider two separate matching paradigms for agents with heterogeneous abilities one where partners marry for money and the other where partners marry for romantic reasons orthogonal to productivity or debt these generate different investment incentives and therefore have a real impact on the market economy while marrying for money generates greater investment efficiency romantic matching generates greater allocative efficiency since more high ability individuals participate in the labour market the analysis offers the possibility of explaining cross country differences in educational investments and labour force participation based on matching regimes

an overview of mercury emissions by global fuel combustion the impact of international trade abstract this study provides an overview of mercury emissions by global fuel combustion by compiling the detailed inventory as well as elaborating the impact of international trade based on the global fuel related mercury emissions inventory covering 26 sectors in 186 economies for the year of 2010 systems multi region input output analysis is employed for the first time to investigate international trade s impact on mercury emissions induced by each economy the estimated mercury emissions mainly contributed by coal burning are 859 12 t approximately 30 of which are embodied in commodities transported to consumers in other economies via international trade the emerging economies such as mainland china and india are the prominent net exporters of embodied mercury emissions while developed economies like japan germany and the usa are the net importers indicating that developed economies avoided a large amount of direct mercury emissions by transferring the production of emission intensive commodities to developing economies by integrating the direct emissions and the net trade effect mainland china has the largest embodied mercury emissions followed by the usa and india this study verifies the significant role of international trade in drawing a holistic picture of global fuel related mercury emissions the findings also suggest that focusing on the atmospheric mercury pollution directly emitted by local producers in isolation may result in an absurd situation of regional reduction at the cost of global rise it is anticipated that the current study provides insights for forming a reasonable emission responsibility sharing mechanism and facilitating comprehensive abatement strategies

do highly unionized companies compensate their ceos less in periods of financial distress evidence from canada in this article the author studies the strategic interaction between employee stakeholders in particular labor unions and top management and he evaluates the effect of the two parties inherent competitive rent seeking behavior on ceo pay using a panel of firms listed on the s p tsx composite index the author shows that ceo compensation withstood the financial crisis 2008 2011 despite lower and even negative corporate performance further highly unionized companies were associated with higher ceo pay in terms of non equity elements such as salary and pension allocations the presence of unions had no observed effect in reducing bonuses stock options and restricted stock units these findings have implications for the debate on income inequality and the power of unions to bring about change

push or pull the relationship between development trade and primary resource endowment abstract we develop a model to capture the interaction between transaction efficiency and primary resource endowment for specialization and development this interaction leads to four broad patterns of development countries with low primary resource endowment can be pushed into development so long as their institutions exhibit sufficient transaction efficiency otherwise development may fail to occur similarly a country may fail to develop because it is cursed by abundant natural resources if however that country has sufficiently high transaction efficiency it can overcome the curse and develop but the threshold level of transaction efficiency for development rises as natural resources become more abundant in this sense the institutional hurdle for development increases as natural resources become more abundant we consider the welfare effects of different development paths and also consider how technological development may aid or hinder development

energy perspective of sino us trade imbalance in global supply chains abstract the unprecedented global supply chain fragmentation brings an ever increasing trade imbalance in terms of monetary flows between china and the united states associated with the bilateral trade imbalance is the reallocation of resources utilization and environmental stress in this regard this study presents an embodied energy model to investigate impacts of sino us trade imbalance on global energy use during 2000 2014 distinguished from previous studies that only evaluate the sino us trade based on specific bilateral perspective this study probes into overall impacts of the sino us trade on global primary energy use pattern from the perspective of global supply chains for the first time a boost to eastbound trade and distinct export industrial structures fuel the unprecedented growth of sino us embodied energy trade imbalance accounting for more than half of the total energy transfers embodied in sino us trade such imbalance firstly increases sharply from 1956 0 pj in 2000 to 5265 3 pj in 2006 followed by a short term decrease to hit a low point at 3267 7 pj in 2009 because of financial crisis and then a gradual resuscitation with a slower pace in the following years the exported energy embodied in manufacturing products dominates eastbound flows whereas energy embodied in agricultural products technology intensive products and primary energy commodities constitute majority of westbound flows due to the dispersed production process in global value chains more than half of primary energy use embodied in the bilateral trade is geographically exploited in other economies along the supply chain i e europe the middle east and south asia furthermore security of energy supply is evaluated for the two economies the results can help predict potential influences of trade conflicts on global energy extraction illustrating policy implications to make sino us trade in line with global energy conservation goals considering sino us trade s impacts along complex supply chains distinctive domestic energy conservation measures should give way to global collective and inclusive governance

firms boundaries and the division of labor empirical strategies a large theoretical literature focuses on the question what determines firms boundaries recently garicano and santos and holmstrom and milgrom have proposed theories in which firms boundaries reflect the division of labor across individuals this paper discusses strategies for generating and testing empirical propositions from this emerging class of theories we propose that variation in the returns to specialization is extremely useful to test and quantify the effect of the division of labor on firms boundaries we discuss the use of two shifters to the returns to specialization and relate how we exploit one of these market size in preliminary work on the determinants of law firms boundaries in the united states jel l14 l22 l24 l84

on induced economic change in precapitalist societies abstract this essay explores a number of properties of a general growth model of induced economic change in precapitalist societies which incorporates both the insights of ester boserup and thomas malthus responses to diminishing returns include changes in work intensity and population growth some important variants of the model are also examined which focus on the transfer of production to non producers and on alternative processes by which change is induced the results are used to generate some parameters influencing the political stability of non working elites to criticize some previous less general growth models and to suggest some fruitful lines fot future empirical research on economic development in the long run

history and the sizes of cities abstract we contrast evidence of urban path dependence with efforts to analyze calibrated models of city sizes recent evidence of persistent city sizes following the obsolescence of historical adv

the division of labor coordination costs and knowledge this paper considers specialization and the division of labor a more extensive division of labor raises productivity because returns to the time spent on tasks are usually greater to workers who concentrate on a narrower range of skills the traditional discussion of the division of labor emphasizes the limitations to specialization imposed by the extent of the market we claim that the degree of specialization is more often determined by other considerations especially emphasized are various costs of coordinating specialized workers who perform complementary tasks and the amount of general knowledge available