intraurban residential mobility the role of transactions costs market imperfections and household disequilibrium abstract this paper presents a model of household residential search and mobility that focuses on microeconomic elements of household behavior and incorporates housing market features the model is cast explicitly in terms of a rigorous model of housing demand allowing the benefits from moving to be measured as the compensating income variation of the potential change in consumption the empirical results indicate that large changes in economic variables such as income and prices produce only small potential gains from moving and that a major factor in the moving decision is the magnitude of search and moving costs

the effects of devaluation on the trade balance a critical view and re examination of mile s new results abstract in a often cited article miles 1979 claims to have shown empirically the validity of the global monetarist proposition that devaluations do not affect the balance of trade this paper first uses mile s own framework of analysis to reveal serious deficiencies in his methodology and tests that cast doubt on the validity of his results in a respecified trade balance equation we show that devaluations do affect the trade balance in the traditionally predicted direction the pivotal difference between the two specifications arises from our inclusion of relative price effects and longer lag structure for the exchange rate variable

the canadian border and the us dollar the impact of exchange rate changes on us retailers this paper provides a micro level investigation into the impact of changes in the uscanada nominal exchange rate on retailers in us regions lying close to the uscanada border using a large data set on product level retail prices and sales in the united states over a nine year period we explore the links between changes in exchange rates cross border travel and the price and quantity responses of us retailers this allows us to assess the importance of geography and distance in affecting the pass through of exchange rate changes into prices and quantities at the level of the consumer we develop a two stage theoretical model of cross border travel and industry equilibrium for retail sales at the border our empirical results accord well with the implications of the model

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 cost of fear shadow pricing the intangible costs of crime this study employs a cross sectional crime survey of uk residents to estimate the shadow price of victimization with respect to fear of crime particular attention is paid to the relationship between household income and fear of crime and potential mediating variables such as neighbourhood deprivation and neighbourhood crime rates a robust relationship between fear of crime and income is demonstrated having controlled for deprivation and crime rate further analyses suggest that a substantial increase in household income is required to offset the threat of physical violence however actual victimization burglary physical violence and car crime do not significantly influence fear of crime

price gaps at the border evidence from multi country household scanner data abstract studies employing micro price data to examine the extent of international goods market integration tend to find that borders imply arbitrage impeding transaction costs inducing market segmentation within monetary unions these effects are found to be very minor though at least when online prices are considered however analyzing household scanner price data from three euro area member states belgium germany and the netherlands we document that households face and pay significantly different prices for identical goods across these countries in the vast majority around 75 of cases considered for regions within countries as a counterfactual however no evidence for such effects exists employing cross border shopping information we are able to draw direct conclusions about the question of integration of markets for a substantial number of goods in addition we can also derive a measure of border costs for most of them for goods for which no cross border shopping take place we provide a lower bound for border costs in the majority of cases in line with existing evidence our findings suggest considerable heterogeneities in border costs median values generally range between 15 and 20 of the price of a good for exact border cost estimates and between 18 and 20 for the derived lower bounds considering the distribution of values obtained suggests that most values lie in a range of 40 since our data set comprises purchase information from all major retailers present in a given market we are also able to examine the role of retailer heterogeneity for cross border price gap estimates differences in retailer composition turn out to be fairly small however grouping goods by various characteristics reveals that goods purchased more often tend to exhibit somewhat bigger border estimates considering the price or the goods category however does not yield any conclusive insights

north american migration returns to skill border effects and mobility costs utilizing a utility maximizing roy type discrete choice model of worker location in canadian provinces and u s states that incorporates returns to skill amenities fixed costs distance langua

do state borders matter for u s intranational trade the role of history and internal migration empirical evidence of the impact of borders on international trade flows using the gravity equation approach abounds this paper examines the empirical relevance of state borders in u s interstate trade for various specifications of the gravity equation we find a large and economically significant subnational border effect for some specifications however two model specifications drastically reduce if not eliminate the border effect i dynamic panel specifications controlling for past levels of trade and ii models conditioning on internal migration les resultats empiriques de l analyse des impacts des frontieres sur les flux de commerce international en utilisant les modeles de gravite sont devenus monnaie courante ce texte examine l impact des frontieres entre etats a l aide de cette technique il s avere que les effets de frontieres infranationales sont grands et significatifs pour certaines specifications du modele cependant deux specifications du modele reduisent dramatiquement s ils n eliminent pas l effet de frontiere i des specifications qui prennent en compte les niveaux anterieurs de commerce et ii des specifications qui dependent de la migration interne

the extensive margin and monetary policy abstract the creation of new firms referred to as the extensive margin is a significant but overlooked dimension of monetary policy a monetary var documents that monetary policy has significant effects on firm creation an analytically tractable model combining sticky prices and firm entry shows that entry alters the transmission of monetary policy innovations acting much like a type of investment in more standard models monetary policy rules that offset the uncertainty of productivity shocks can raise the mean level of entry and thereby welfare suggesting a new motivation for stabilization policy

an asymmetric analysis of the j curve effect in the commodity trade between china and the us this paper follows a non linear ardl error correction approach to examine the presence of the j curve in the commodity level trade between the united states and china the analysis disaggregates the us china trade flows by commodities and separately examines the trade balance responses of 97 commodities to the changes in the real yuan us exchange rates the analysis at the commodity level alleviates potential aggregation bias that is present in earlier studies offering little evidence for long run asymmetric effects of exchange rate on the china us trade balance we find strong support for short run asymmetric effects in the case of two third of the commodities whereas significant long run asymmetric effects are present in the case of one third of the commodities including those commodities which command large shares in the china us trade

import content of exports and j curve effect this article investigates how the response to devaluation of trade balance is affected compared to j curve hypothesis by the presence of imported inputs in the production of exports using first the almon lag technique and then the cointegration and the generalized impulse response function analysis the j curve effect is examined in two sectors of turkish economy manufacturing and mining which use imported inputs at different rates based on the data covering the period from the first quarter of 1986 to the third quarter of 1998 our results indicate that in neither sector j curve exists and that the violation of the j curve effect is more severe in the sector with higher import content

towards a new trade policy between the usa and middle east countries estimating trade resistance and export potential at the time of the conclusion of free trade areas ftas between the usa and middle east and north african mena countries there is a lack of literature concerning the measurement of the current us export position with regards to these countries and the us export potential in this area from recent developments of gravity models this paper derives an estimable equation which includes various trade resistance variables notably border effects multilateral resistance as well as specific bilateral effects the model is tested in order to scrutinise the impact of these variables on us exports to mena countries as well as the us export potential in this area to that end a selection of panel data specifications is proposed mainly hausman and taylor models as well as arellano and bond dynamic models results unambiguously indicate that as compared to the other oecd countries the usa suffers from a substantial trade integration deficit with mena countries this is reflected by the strongly negative values of the us mena bilateral fixed effects as well as the high bilateral border effects in addition the estimated actual potential us export ratio to these countries is only 0 76 therefore implementing an fta between the usa and mena countries may allow the former to progressively improve its export position in this area this would also help mena countries diversify their supplying sources

the minimum wage restaurant prices and labor market structure using store level and aggregated consumer price index data we show that restaurant prices rise in response to minimum wage increases under several sources of identifying variation we introduce a general model of employment determination that implies minimum wage hikes cause prices to rise in competitive labor markets but potentially fall in monopsonistic environments furthermore the model implies employment and prices are always negatively related therefore our empirical results provide evidence against the importance of monopsony power for understanding small observed employment responses to minimum wage changes our estimated price responses challenge other explanations of the small employment response too

international prices costs and markup differences relative cross border retail prices in a common currency comove closely with the nominal exchange rate using product level prices and wholesale costs from a grocery chain operating in the united states and canada we decompose this variation into relative costs and markup components the high correlation of nominal and real exchange rates is driven mainly by changes in relative costs national borders segment markets retail prices respond to changes in costs in neighboring stores within the same country but not across the border prices have a median discontinuous change of 24 percent at the border and 0 percent at state boundaries jel f31 l11 l81

obesity and happiness this article provides insight on the relationship between individual obesity and happiness levels using the latest available panel data from germany german socio economic panel gsoep uk british household panel survey bhps and australia household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda we examine whether there is statistical evidence on the impact of overweight on subjective well being instrumental variable iv analysis is utilized under the presence of endogeneity stemming from several explanatory variables results indicate that in all three countries obesity has a negative effect on the subjective well being of individuals the results also have important implications for the effect of other socio demographic economic and individual characteristics on well being

sticky price models of the business cycle can the contract multiplier solve the persistence problem we construct a quantitative equilibrium model with firms setting prices in a staggered fashion and use it to ask whether monetary shocks can generate business cycle fluctuations these fluctuations include persistent movements in output along with the other defining features of business cycles like volatile investment and smooth consumption we assume that prices are exogenously sticky for a short time persistent output fluctuations require endogenous price stickiness in the sense that firms choose not to change prices much when they can do so we find that for a wide range of parameter values the amount of endogenous stickiness is small thus we find that in a standard quantitative model staggered price setting alone does not generate business cycle fluctuations

new directions for stochastic open economy models the paper develops a simple stochastic new open economy macroeconomic model based on sticky nominal wages explicit solution of the wage setting problem under uncertainty allows one to analyze the effects of the monetary regime on welfare expected output and the expected terms of trade despite the potential interplay between imperfections due to sticky wages and monopoly the optimal monetary policy rule has a closed form solution to motivate our model we show that observed correlations between terms of trade and exchange rates are more consistent with our traditional assumptions about nominal rigidities than with a popular alternative based on local currency pricing 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

demand and distance evidence on cross border shopping while many studies have documented deviations from the law of one price in international settings evidence is scarce on the extent to which consumers take advantage of price differentials and engage in cross border shopping we use data from 287 swedish municipalities to estimate how responsive alcohol sales are to foreign prices and relate the sensitivity to the location s distance to the border typical results suggest that the elasticity with respect to the foreign price is around 0 4 in the border region moving 200 400 kilometers inland reduces it to 0 2 0 1 given that cross country price differences for alcohol and other products are often caused by taxes our evidence has implications for the debate on tax competition harmonization

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

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

changes in health related quality of life a compensating income variation approach this paper investigates the relationship between negative changes in health and life satisfaction using a sample from the household income and labour dynamics of australia survey we use panel da

the economics of cross border travel abstract we model the decision to travel across an international border as a trade off between benefits derived from buying a range of products at lower prices and the costs of travel we estimate the model using microdata on canada united states travel price differences motivate cross border travel a 10 home appreciation raises the propensity to cross by 8 to 26 the larger elasticity arises when the home currency is strong a result predicted by the model distance to the border strongly inhibits crossings with an implied cost of 87 cents per mile geographic differences can partially explain why american travel is less exchange rate responsive

imports я us retail chains as platforms for developing country imports wal mart toys r us and other large retail chains are often identified with cheap imports we use data from the census of retail trade and the international trade commission over the period 1997 2002 to test whether big chains serve as platforms for imports from ldcs using difference in difference specifications we show that chinese and other ldc imports have increased disproportionately in retail sectors with the sharpest consolidation into chains to quantify the importance of chain growth to import growth we apply a numerical algorithm that generates marginal propensities to import by firm size the largest retail firms propensity to import from china is 17 percentage points higher than that of smaller retailers the corresponding difference in import propensities from ldcs as a whole is 27 points the disproportionate growth of large retailers between 1997 and 2002 explains 5 of the overall growth in consumer goods imports 20 of the growth in consumer goods imports from china and 22 of the growth in consumer goods imports from ldcs

the j curve revisited an empirical examination for the united states abstract this paper examines empirical evidence for trade prices and quantities for the united states to determine whether j curve effects have occurred in recent history empirical estimates of exchnage rate pass through and trade volume responses to exchange rate changes for the 1967 to 1987 period indicate that the often told tale of trade balance deterioration and then improvement the j shaped adjustment path has not typically been experienced by the united states expenditures on imports have typically increased following dollar depreciations primarily as a result of relatively inelastic import volume responses export earnings have been seen to rise only marginally during these same dollar depreciations due to increases in export prices and the subsequent reductions induced in export volume the long run merchandise trade balance adjustment path is seen to resemble a sine wave rather the a j

measuring internal trade distances a new method applied to estimate provincial border effects in canada in this paper we suggest an improved methodology for comparing the intensity of trade across and within national and provincial boundaries earlier efforts to assess border effects for provinces or for countries without internal trade statistics made fairly arbitrary assumptions about average distances for internal trade flows we improve on earlier efforts by taking more complete account of the distribution of population within each province or country internal distance is estimated as a population weighted average of intra city and intercity distances as well as distances to and within rural areas we find higher estimates of internal distances and hence border effects than found in previous studies

competition in large markets this paper develops a simple and robust implication of free entry followed by competition without substantial strategic interactions increasing the number of consumers leaves the distributions of producers prices and other choices unchanged in many models featuring non trivial strategic considerations producers prices fall as their numbers increase hence examining the relationship between market size and producers actions provides a nonparametric tool for empirically discriminating between these distinct approaches to competition to illustrate its application i examine observations of restaurants seating capacities exit decisions and prices from 224 u s cities given factor prices and demographic variables increasing a city s size increases restaurants capacities decreases their exit rate and decreases their prices these results suggest that strategic considerations lie at the heart of restaurant pricing and turnover

staggering and synchronization in price setting evidence from multiproduct firms theoretical work on price setting behavior focuses on the single product case while in reality a single price setter sells many products the authors use retail store level multiproduct pricing data to learn about price dynamics they find that while the timing of a product s price changes is staggered across stores selling the same product the timing of the price changes of different products sold within the same store is highly synchronized this finding validates the usual assumption that decisions are staggered across price setters and suggests that price rigidity is due mostly to mechanical reasons and not to informational asymmetries copyright 1996 by american economic association

review 1 obesity unhappiness and the challenge of affluence theory and evidence is affluence a good thing the book the challenge of affluence by avner offer 2006 argues that economic prosperity weakens self control and undermines human well being consistent with a pessimistic view we show that psychological distress has been rising through time in modern great britain taking over eating as an example our data reveal that half the british population view themselves as overweight and that happiness and mental health are worse among fatter people in britain and germany comparisons also matter we discuss problems of inference and argue that longitudinal data are needed we suggest a theory of obesity imitation where utility depends on relative weight copyright 2007 the author s journal compilation royal economic society 2007

how far for a buck tax differences and the location of retail gasoline activity in southeast chicagoland abstract we exploit variation in gasoline and cigarettes taxes in adjacent political jurisdictions for northern illinois and indiana to examine consumers trade off between prices and travel we develop a model that relates activity in the retail gasoline industry around the tax borders to consumer locations our results indicate that the willingness of a typical chicagoland consumer to travel an additional mile to buy gasoline corresponds to about 0 065 to 0 084 per gallon according to our estimates the observed area of chicago the jurisdiction with the highest taxes is missing approximately 40 of the capacity that would exist were taxes equalized

real exchange rate fluctuations and the dynamics of retail trade industries on the u s canada border consumers living near the u s canada border can shift their expenditures between the two countries so real exchange rate fluctuations can act as demand shocks to border areas retail trade industries using annual county level data we estimate the effects of real exchange rates on the number of establishments and their average payroll in border counties for four retail industries in three of the four industries we consider the number of operating establishments responds either contemporaneously or with a lag of one year to real exchange rate movements for these industries the response of retailers average size is less pronounced the rapid response of net entry is inconsistent with any model of persistent deviations from purchasing power parity that depends on retailers costs of changing nominal prices

national borders and international trade evidence from the european union in this paper the impact of national borders on international trade within the european union is considered using a gravity model i find that averaged over all eu countries intranational trade is about ten times as high as international trade with an eu partner country of similar size and distance this relatively strong home bias suggests that even within the european union national borders still have a decisive impact on trade patterns jel classification f02 f14 f15 o52 ce memoire examine l impact des frontieres nationales sur le commerce international a l interieur de l union europeenne on montre que en moyenne pour tous les pays de l union europeenne le commerce intranational est a peu pres dix fois plus important que le commerce international avec un pays partenaire de l union europeenne de meme taille et a meme distance ce degre relativement important de preference nationale suggere que meme dans le cadre de l union europeenne les frontieres nationales ont encore un impact determinant sur les patterns de commerce

the value of normal body weight evidence from iceland calculations of societal costs of underweight overweight and obesity have generally failed to include the value of the utility reductions associated with deviations from normal weight to remedy

the rigidity of prices this paper uses evidence on individual transaction prices to analyze price behavior the evidence shows that for many transactions pricesremain rigid for periods exceeding one year the rigidity of price ispositively correlated with industry concentration for several productsthe correlation of price changes across buyers is low the paper alsoinvestigates the relationship between price rigidity price change andthe length of time a buyer and seller have been doing business together the author interprets the evidence as emphasizing the importance of nonprice rationing and the inadequacy of models in whichprice movements alone clear markets copyright 1986 by american economic association

has exchange rate pass through really declined evidence from canada several empirical studies suggest that exchange rate pass through has declined in recent years among industrialized countries results for canada also indicate that import and consumer prices have become less responsive to exchange rate movements in the 1990s these findings are based on reduced form regressions that are typically motivated by partial equilibrium models of pricing this paper uses instead a structural general equilibrium approach to test the premise that exchange rate pass through has decreased in canada our approach consists in estimating a dynamic stochastic generalequilibrium model for canada over two sub samples which cover the periods before and after the adoption of inflation targeting by the bank of canada we then use impulseresponse analysis to assess the stability of exchange rate pass through across the two sub samples our results indicate that pass through to canadian import prices has been rather stable while pass through to canadian consumer prices has declined in recent years counterfactual experiments reveal that the change in monetary policy regime is largely responsible for this decline

the j curve evidence from commodity trade between uk and china in testing the short run j curve effect and the long run effects of currency depreciation on the trade balance many researchers have used either trade data between one country and the rest of the world or between one country and another trading partner both groups are said to suffer from aggregation bias to reduce the bias in this article we consider trade data between one country the us and her trading partner china disaggregated by commodity we use imports and exports of 88 industries 2 digit and 3 digit classifications and cointegration analysis to show that the trade balance of at least 34 of the industries react favourably to real depreciation of the dollar the j curve effect is detected in 22 industries furthermore most of these industries that are sensitive to currency depreciation are durable commodity groupings

accounting for u s real exchange rate changes this study measures the proportion of u s real exchange rate movements that can be accounted for by movements in the relative prices of nontraded goods the decomposition is done at all possible h

the cleansing effect of recessions the authors investigate industry response to cyclical variations in demand production units that embody the newest process and product innovations are continuously being created and outdated units are being destroyed although outdated units are the most likely to turn unprofitable and be scrapped in a recession they can be insulated from the fall in demand by a reduction in creation the structure of adjustment costs plays a determinant role in the responsiveness of those two margins the calibrated model matches the relative volatilities of the observed manufacturing job creation and destruction series and their asymmetries over the cycle copyright 1994 by american economic association