the policy preferences of the us federal reserve in this paper we model and explain us macroeconomic outcomes subject to the discipline that monetary policy is set optimally exploiting the restrictions that come from optimal policymaking we estimate the parameters in the federal reserve s policy objective function together with the parameters in its optimization constraints for the period following volcker s appointment as chairman we estimate the implicit inflation target to be around 1 4 and show that policymakers assigned a significant weight to interest rate smoothing we show that the estimated optimal policy provides a good description of us data for the 1980s and 1990s

estimates of inter fuel substitution possibilities in chinese chemical industry abstract the chemical sector is a key driver of china s remarkable growth record and accounts for about 10 of the country s gdp this has made the industry energy intensive and consequently a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions ghg and other pollutants this study has attempted to investigate the potential for inter fuel substitution between coal oil natural gas and electricity in chinese chemical sector by employing a translog production and cost function ridge regression procedure was adopted to estimate the parameters of the function estimation results show that all energy inputs are substitutes in addition the study produces evidence that the significant role of coal in the chinese chemical fuel mix converges over time albeit slowly these results suggest that price based policies coupled with capital subsidy programs can be adopted to redirect technology use towards cleaner energy sources like electricity and natural gas hence retaining the ability to fuel the chemical sector while also mitigating ghg emissions notwithstanding one must understand that the extent to which substituting electricity for coal will be effective depends on the extent to which coal or oil is used in generating electricity the findings of this study provide general insights and underscore the importance of chinese government policies that focus on installed capacity of renewable electricity energy intensity targets as well as merger of enterprises

assessing nominal income rules for monetary policy with model and data uncertainty nominal income rules for monetary policy have long been debated but two issues are of particular recent interest first there are questions about the performance of such rules over a range of plausible empirical models especially models with and without explicit rational inflation expectations second there are questions about the performance of these rules in real time using the type of data that is actually available contemporaneously to policy makers rather than final revised data this paper determines optimal monetary policy rules in the presence of such model uncertainty and real time data uncertainty and finds only a limited role for nominal output growth

a real options valuation of chinese wind energy technologies for power generation do benefits from the feed in tariffs outweigh costs abstract in order to assess the viability of wind energy projects in china this paper takes a real options approach by accounting for flexibility over deployment of the technology in response to a stochastic non renewable energy cost the difference between the latter and the r d enhanced cost of renewable energy operation may be thought of as a benefit from using wind on the other hand the chinese government provides feed in tariffs to encourage further adoption of wind which should be included as a cost this work thus shows that there is substantial options value to china s wind energy program which is bolstered if the cost of carbon dioxide emissions is internalized moreover by varying the rate of feed in tariffs the model may be used to show plausible ranges for the feed in tariffs which could be a useful policy insight furthermore the study hypothesizes that with the likelihood of renewable energy to replace non renewable energy wind power in china can potentially reduce co2 emissions by approximately 6 4 by 2020 comparing to the 2005 level and highlights the significant role of wind power in china s emission targets and energy security this is a relevant paper especially given the importance of a sustainable energy transition for china more generally using the real options approach from a policy perspective could provide insights about the viability of renewable energy programs and robustness of feed in tariffs rates

endogenous monetary policy with unobserved potential output this paper characterizes monetary policy when policymakers are uncertain about the extent to which fluctuations in output and inflation are due to changes in potential output or to cyclical demand and cost shocks our results suggest an explanation for the inflation of the 1970s and the price stability of the 1990s it is shown that 1 policy is likely to be excessively loose for some time when there is a large decrease in potential output in comparison to a full information benchmark 2 retrospective policy errors and errors in forecasting potential output and the output gap are generally serially correlated 3 the increase in the fed s conservativeness between the 1970s and the 1990s implies that the information problem had greater consequences in the former period

what should we expect from innovation a model based assessment of the environmental and mitigation cost implications of climate related r d abstract this paper addresses two basic issues related to technological innovation and climate stabilization objectives can innovation policies be effective in stabilizing climate to what extent can innovation policies complement carbon pricing taxes or permit trading and improve the economic efficiency of a mitigation policy package to answer these questions we use an integrated assessment model with multiple externalities and an endogenous representation of the technical progress in the energy sector we evaluate a range of innovation policies both as stand alone and in combination with other mitigation policies our analysis indicates that innovation policies alone are unlikely to stabilize global concentration and temperature as for the benefits of combining climate and innovation policies we find efficiency gains of 10 6 usd trillions in net present value terms for a stringent climate policy and 30 3 usd trillions for a milder one however such gains are reduced when more plausible sub optimal global innovation policy arrangements are considered

refined oil import subsidies removal in ghana a triple win abstract in this study claims and counterclaims that fossil fuel subsidies removal yields benefits in terms of budget deficits energy efficiency and mitigation are assessed in order to do this a global computable general equilibrium cge model has been estimated to evaluate the impact of subsidies removal on imported refined oil in ghana on prices carbon dioxide co 2 emissions households demand firm s production and real gdp the simulation experiment points to evidence that subsidy removal raises prices increases the rate of co 2 emissions reduces households demand reduces aggregate output and affects various sectors differently the increased rate of co 2 emissions due to the removal of subsidies is indicative of the existence of the so called green paradox these results underscore the fact that a removal of subsidies on fossil fuels may win in some regards but fail in others a general implication from the applied model therefore is one which supports the assertion that removal of subsidies on fossil fuels removal on energy should be implemented along with policies aimed at stimulating economic activities and reducing the level of co 2 emissions especially where there is evidence of the green paradox

a method for taking models to the data abstract this paper develops a method for combining the power of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with the flexibility of a vector autoregressive time series model to obtain a hybrid that can be taken directly to the data it estimates this hybrid model via maximum likelihood and uses the results to address a number of issues concerning the ability of a prototypical real business cycle model to explain movements in aggregate output and employment in the postwar us economy the stability of the real business cycle model s structural parameters and the performance of the hybrid model s out of sample forecasts

nominal price rigidity money supply endogeneity and business cycles abstract this paper investigates the ability of nominal price rigidity to explain the co movement of inflation with the cyclical component of output observed in the post war u s data a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed with the introduction of monopolistic competition and nominal price rigidity in a standard real business cycle model allowing for an endogenous money supply rule it is then demonstrated that sticky price models can explain the observed associations between movements in inflation and output much better than flexible price models this result depends little on whether money supply is assumed to be endogenous or not

optimal carbon taxes for china and implications for power generation welfare and the environment abstract china is expected to constitute about half of the world s emissions between 2010 and 2040 as concerns about climate change intensify the chinese government is poised to commit to a low carbon economy these conditions make china a suitable case in which to study how emission policies impact on energy supply welfare and the environment to achieve this purpose we incorporate abatement technologies into the gtap computable general equilibrium model and show that optimal taxes range between 0 03 for services and 2 02 for manufacturing in most cases simulated tax rates are by far higher than pollution taxes stipulated in the new chinese environmental tax law furthermore despite a decline in output of many sectors including the electricity sector overall welfare gains exist from introducing carbon taxes moreover these taxes reduce environmental pollution by approximately 62 5 in general carbon taxes are insufficient for mitigation in china and due to a coal dominant energy structure implementing these taxes leads to a decline in power generation hence the chinese aggressive investment strategy for renewable electricity technologies as stipulated in its 13th five year plan is understandable

carbon tax subsidy policy choice and its effects in the presence of interest groups abstract interest groups such as industry organization public finance and environmental group may exert influences on policy makers when they are choosing environmental policies considering the situation that two countries where a domestic country suffers equal influence and a foreign country suffers different influences from these groups can choose carbon tax policy or carbon subsidy policy then this paper constructs a two staged game model to study how interest groups make differences to environmental policy choices and their impacts on policy level production carbon emission profit and welfare between countries results show that the domestic country will definitely choose carbon tax policy but the foreign country may make different choices furthermore if the foreign country chooses carbon subsidy policy the domestic country will set higher tax rate than the foreign country does but production carbon emission profit and welfare of the domestic country will be lower than those of the foreign country if the foreign country chooses carbon tax policy carbon tax rate production carbon emission profit and welfare are ambiguous between countries

how important is precommitment for monetary policy we quantify the welfare differential between precommitment and discretionary monetary policy in three estimated models of the u s economy by calculating the permanent deviation of inflation from target that in welfare terms is equivalent to moving from discretion to precommitment using a range of reasonable central bank preference parameters this inflation equivalent ranges from 0 05 to 3 6 percentage points with a mid point of either 0 15 or 1 1 5 percentage points depending on the model in addition to the degree of forward looking behavior we show that the existence of transmission lags and or information lags is crucial for determining the welfare gain from precommitment

estimating new keynesian phillips curves a full information maximum likelihood approach abstract the new keynesian phillips curve has recently become an important ingredient in monetary policy models however using limited information methods the empirical support for the new keynesian phillips curve appear to be mixed this paper argues by means of monte carlo simulations with a simple new keynesian sticky price model that single equations methods e g gmm are likely to produce imprecise and biased estimates then it is argued that estimating the model with full information maximum likelihood fiml is a useful way of obtaining better estimates finally a version of the model used in the monte carlo simulations is estimated on u s data with fiml and although the pure forward looking new keynesian phillips curve is rejected a version with both forward and backward looking components provides a reasonable approximation of u s inflation dynamics

introduction funding gaps theoretical and empirical foundations of government policies to plug alleged business funding gaps are highly controversial but rarely subject to wide ranging in depth debate this symposium from major scholars in the field provides a counterbalance topics addressed cover the theory of lending under asymmetric information its implications for overlending relationship lending as a market solution to information asymmetries government emulation of private sector decision making to eliminate underprovision of high tech equity and theoretically based empirical work testing for funding deficiencies in the high tech sector despite the very different and potentially contradictory contributions the result is surprisingly a set of mutually agreed policy conclusions

indicator variables for optimal policy the optimal weights on indicators in models with partial information about the state of the economy and forward looking variables are derived and interpreted both for equilibria under discretion and under commitment an example of optimal monetary policy with a partially observable potential output and a forward looking indicator is examined the optimal response to the optimal estimate of potential output displays certainty equivalence whereas the optimal response to the imperfect observation of output depends on the noise in this observation

carbon prices and ccs investment a comparative study between the european union and china abstract carbon capture and storage is considered as a key option for climate change mitigation policy makers and investors need to know when ccs becomes economically attractive integrating ccs in a power plant adds significant costs which can be offset by a sufficient co 2 price however most markets have failed currently the weak carbon price threatens ccs deployment in the european union eu in china a carbon regulation is appearing and ccs encounters a rising interest this study investigates two questions how much is the extra cost of a ccs plant in the eu in comparison with china second what is the co 2 price beyond which ccs plants become more profitable than reference plants in the eu and in china to address these issues i conducted a literature review on public studies about ccs costs to objectively assess the profitability of ccs plants i constructed a net present value model to calculate the levelised cost of electricity and the breakeven co 2 price ccs plants become the most profitable plant type beyond 115 tco 2 in the eu vs 45 tco 2 in china offshore transport and storage costs i advise on the optimal plant type choice depending on the co 2 price in both countries

should a monetary policymaker look at money abstract this paper examines whether monetary indicators are useful in implementing optimal discretionary monetary policy when the policymaker has incomplete information about the environment we find that money does not contain useful information for the policymaker if we calibrate the model to the u s economy if money demand were to be appreciably less variable observations on money could be useful in response to productivity shocks but would be harmful in response to money demand shocks we provide an incomplete information example where equilibrium welfare declines when the money demand volatility decreases

environmental policy and double dividend in a transitional economy abstract although the environmental benefit from implementing a climate tax is usually realized the economic dividend still remains a controversial issue warranting further research this is because the impact of an environmental policy on an economy wide system will depend on factors that differ from one region to the next in this paper we develop a static cge model for liberia that is capable of analyzing both a uniform and a partial carbon tax policy under the uniform policy instituted to ensure mitigation in the range of 20 50 an economic dividend is found for energy employment and welfare in particular energy consumption increases by between 5 and 15 5 respectively interestingly under a second best policy which exempts economically strategic sectors from the tax no economic dividend is found for all three variables this time energy use declines by between 2 and 9 these suggest that a uniform environmental tax policy is a more viable option for liberia in particular as it does not only generate economic dividend for employment and welfare it also incentivizes liberia s adoption and use of renewable energy technologies in general based on the results obtained further conditions for the feasibility of a double dividend are proposed

options for mitigating the adverse effects of fossil fuel subsidies removal in ghana abstract conventional wisdom holds that without environmental benefits and revenue recycling fossil fuel subsidies removal would lead to welfare losses first this study tests the usefulness of general equilibrium theory for validating these claims and draws similar conclusion subsequently the model is readjusted to reflect simulation with two non traditional policy options this time the results suggest that removing subsidies on fossil fuels would create opportunities provided that such is done in tandem with complementary policies in particular we show that a mix of agricultural productivity improvement and a reduction in trade transaction costs at 15 in each case would provide benefits for fossil fuel subsidies removal in ghana these results underscore the need for structural reforms in ghanaian agricultural sector especially those aimed at promoting mechanized agriculture

money and inflation in the euro area a case for monetary indicators abstract this paper examines inflation indicators for the euro area by studying the relationship between inflation output money and interest rates using data spanning 1980 2001 the central finding is that both the output gap and the real money gap the difference between the real money stock and the long run equilibrium real money stock contain considerable information regarding future inflation in contrast the eurosystem s money growth indicator the difference between nominal money growth and a reference value the prominent first pillar in its monetary strategy contains little information about future inflation and no information beyond that contained in the output and real money gaps the predictive performance of the output gap has improved compared to that in a previous version of this paper most likely because of better estimation methods

combining price and quantity controls to mitigate global climate change abstract uncertainty about compliance costs causes otherwise equivalent price and quantity controls to behave differently and leads to divergent welfare consequences although most of the debate on global climate change policy has focused on quantity controls due to their political appeal this paper argues that price controls are more efficient simulations based on a stochastic computable general equilibrium model indicate that the expected welfare gain from the optimal price policy is five times higher than the expected gain from the optimal quantity policy an alternative hybrid policy combines both the political appeal of quantity controls with the efficiency of prices using an initial distribution of tradeable permits to set a quantitative target but allowing additional permits to be purchased at a fixed trigger price even sub optimal hybrid policies offer dramatic efficiency improvements over otherwise standard quantity controls for example a 50 trigger price per ton of carbon converts the 3 trillion expected loss associated with a simple 1990 emission target to a 150 billion gain these results suggest that a hybrid policy is an attractive alternative to either a pure price or quantity system

the macroeconomic effects of distortionary taxation abstract prescott 1986 estimates that technology shocks account for 75 of the fluctuations in the postwar u s economy this paper reestimates the contribution of technological change for a standard business cycle model that includes a public sector and fiscal disturbances i find that a significant fraction of the variance of aggregate consumption investment output capital stock and hours of work can be explained by disturbances in labor and capital tax rates and government consumption i also use the model to quantify the welfare costs of capital and labor taxation for both the time series and welfare calculations maximum likelihood estimates of taste technology and policy parameters are used

estimating potential output as a latent variable this article proposes a new method for estimating potential output in which potential real gross domestic product gdp is modeled as an unobserved stochastic trend and deviations of gdp from potential affect inflation through an aggregate supply relationship the output and inflation equations together form a bivariate unobserved components model which is estimated via maximum likelihood through the use of the kalman filter algorithm the procedure yields a measure of potential output and its standard error and an estimate of the quantitative response of inflation to real growth and the output gap

changes in the federal reserve s inflation target causes and consequences this paper estimates a new keynesian model to draw inferences about the behavior of the federal reserve s unobserved inflation target the results indicate that the target rose from 1 1 4 percent in 1959 to over 8 percent in the mid to late 1970s before falling back below 2 1 2 percent in 2004 the results also provide some support for the hypothesis that over the entire postwar period federal reserve policy has systematically translated short run price pressures set off by supply side shocks into more persistent movements in inflation itself although considerable uncertainty remains about the true source of shifts in the inflation target jel e31 e32 e52

effects of the internalization of the social cost of global and local air pollutants in chile abstract in 2017 environmental taxes on global pollutants co2 and local air pollutants so2 nox and pm began to be collected to reduce emissions in chile however large emitting sources only are subject to environmental taxes and the tax rates are much lower than the social cost of these pollutants which does not allow to fully internalize the generated damages for the above this study uses the environmental extension of the leontief price model and microsimulations to estimate the economic environmental distributive and poverty short term effects associated with the application of pigouvian taxes on all emissions generated by productive activities the results show that currently there are too many resources allocated to activities that generate strong negative externalities mainly in the electricity and transport sectors specifically the emissions are reduced almost 10 times more than in the current tax scenario if environmental taxes equal to social costs are applied but relevant negative indirect effects are generated that make the practical application of a tax of these characteristics unrealistic for example there is a fall between 1 2 and 2 9 in employment slightly worsening the income distribution and increases the poverty rate between 0 9 and 2 3 percentage points

after kyoto alternative mechanisms to control global warming after more than a decade of negotiations and planning under the framework convention on climate change fccc the first binding international agreement to control the emissions of greenhouse gases has come into effect in the kyoto protocol the first budget period of 2008 2012 is at hand moreover the scientific evidence on greenhouse warming strengthens steadily as observational evidence of warming accumulates the institutional framework of the protocol has taken hold solidly in the european union s emissions trading scheme ets which covers almost half of europe s carbon dioxide emissions notwithstanding this apparent success the kyoto protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal early troubles came with the failure to include the major developing countries along with lack of an agreedupon mechanism to include new countries and extend the agreement to new periods the major blow came when the united states withdrew from the treaty in 2001 by 2002 the protocol covered only 30 percent of global emissions while the hard enforcement mechanism in the ets accounts for about 8 percent of global emissions even if the current protocol is extended models indicate that it will have little impact on global temperature change unless there is a dramatic breakthrough or a new design the protocol threatens to be seen as a monument to institutional overreach nations are now beginning to consider the structure of climate change policies for the period after 2008 to 2012 some countries states cities companies and even universities are adopting their own climate change policies are there in fact alternatives to the scheme of tradable emissions permits embodied in the protocol the fact is that alternative approaches have not had a serious hearing among natural scientists or among policymakers what are some alternatives for global public goods there are three potential approaches command and control regulation quantity oriented market approaches and taxor price based regimes of these only the tradable quantity and the price like regimes have any hope of being reasonably efficient under a tradable quantity approach an agreement proceeds by setting limits on emissions by different countries the limits are partially or wholly transferable among countries this is the approach taken under the kyoto protocol this approach has very limited international experience under existing protocols such as the cfc chlorofluorocarbon mechanisms and somewhat broader experience under national trading regimes such as the u s sulfur dioxide regime a radically different approach is to use harmonized prices fees or taxes as a method of coordinating policies among countries this approach has no international experience in the environmental area although it has modest experience nationally in such areas as the u s tax on ozone depleting chemicals on the other hand the use of harmonized price type measures has extensive international experience in fiscal and trade policies such as with the harmonization of taxes in the european union and harmonized tariffs in international trade these thoughts on the structure of international agreements to control global warming should not be regarded as negotiating strategies

on the economics of carbon pricing insights from econometric modeling with industry level data abstract the literature which tests the porter hypothesis by studying the role of environmental policies on innovation is not only fragmented but mostly employs broad measures of environmental regulations in order to draw consensus in this literature and sufficiently incentivize the pursuit of environmental policy objectives further contributions on the economics of environmental regulations utilizing alternative methods and data are needed therefore our analysis takes the chinese national emission trading scheme ets as specific example of such a policy in the econometric analysis chinese carbon prices from this market are used and their impact on innovation is estimated using a dynamic panel data regression the main findings are that while a carbon price appears to stimulate r d intensity innovation input the boost in r d does not result into increased sales and profits for industries innovation output high energy consuming industries have higher tendencies to innovate but this takes place at the distribution and marketing stages of the value chain however since the energy requirement at these levels is less relative to the actual production stage the energy costs saving may be limited therefore to better the economics of carbon pricing in a competitive world in which risk aversion is a possibility policies which encourage energy intensive industries to innovate at the production stage would present opportunities in general these findings contribute to our understanding of innovation behavior and have the potential to stimulate new debates in the literature

inflation zone targeting abstract we study optimal monetary policy design in a simple model that deviates from the linear quadratic paradigm and provides a rationale for the practice of inflation zone targeting we show that the presence of either zone quadratic preferences or a zone linear relationship between inflation and economic activity provides strong incentives to deviate from conventional linear policies we calibrate the model based on parameters for the united states and the euro area and employ a numerical dynamic programming algorithm to derive the optimal policies with this algorithm we examine the role of uncertainty model structure and relative preference towards economic stability in determining the width of the implied targeted inflation zone

money s role in the monetary business cycle a small structural model of the monetary business cycle implies that real money balances enter into a correctly specified forward looking is curve if and only if they enter into a correctly specified forward looking phillips curve the model also implies that empirical measures of real balances must be adjusted for shifts in money demand to accurately isolate and quantify the dynamic effects of money on output and inflation maximum likelihood estimates of the modelos parameters take both these considerations into account but still suggest that money plays a minimal role in the monetary business cycle

carbon pricing and general equilibrium under leontief production technology abstract comparing temperature and emissions data does not clearly show a relationship between the two variables going further this study combines leontief production technology with a computable general equilibrium model of global trade in order to quantitatively test the implications of mitigation policies for welfare and the environment we compute optimal emissions taxes and show that administering carbon fees reduces environmental damages by nearly 50 however there is a tradeoff effect on production which calls for caution when implementing environmental policies in general environmental benefits and resources shifting due to carbon taxes lead to welfare gains

information variables for monetary policy in an estimated structural model of the euro area a small scale new keynesian model for the euro area is estimated with maximum likelihood under the assumptions of imperfect information and discretionary monetary policy the estimated parametrization of this widely used dynamic stochastic model unveils the monetary authorities objectives and the information content of two indicator variables monetary aggregates and real unit labour costs the results highlight a significant policy concern about interest rate smoothing and inflation almost no concern for output gap stabilization emerges regarding indicator variables unit labour costs provide information on potential output that is helpful for stabilization policy no useful information role emerges for monetary aggregates

oil price fluctuation volatility spillover and the ghanaian equity market implication for portfolio management and hedging effectiveness abstract this study attempts to contribute to the literature on stock markets and energy prices by examining the dynamic volatility and volatility transmission between oil and ghanaian stock market returns in a multivariate setting using the recently developed var garch var agarch and dcc garch frameworks in turn the models results are used to compute and analyze the optimal weights and hedge ratios for oil stock portfolio holdings for comparison purposes and to put the paper more in the perspective of west africa the nigerian stock market is also included in the analysis our findings point to the existence of significant volatility spillover and interdependence between oil and the two stock market returns while spillover effects are stronger for nigeria the transmission of volatility is much more apparent from oil to stock than from stock to oil in the case of ghana also the study demonstrates evidence of short term predictability in oil and stock price changes through time and reveals that conditional volatility changes more rapidly as result of substantial effects of past volatility rather than past news shocks for all market returns moreover we show that there is a slightly more effective hedge in the two stock markets under the dcc garch framework our preferred model compared to the other two models although hedging effectiveness is much greater for ghana on the whole our findings for optimal hedge ratios are consistent with other studies and particularly the view that oil assets should be an integral part of a diversified portfolio of stocks and suggest that a better understanding of volatility links is crucial for portfolio management in the presence of oil price risk finally the existence of multivariate asymmetric effects and dynamic conditional correlations as revealed by the var agarch and dcc garch models make it clear that the assumptions of symmetric effects and constant conditional correlations are not supported empirically

carbon pricing versus emissions trading a supply chain planning perspective abstract carbon pricing taxes and carbon emissions trading are two globally practiced carbon regulatory policy schemes this paper presents an analytical supply chain planning model that can be used to examine the supply chain performance at the tactical operational planning level under these two policy schemes model implementation and analyses are completed using actual data from a company operating in australia where these environmental regulatory policies are practiced numerical results provide important managerial and practical implications and policy insights in particular the results show that there are inflection points where both carbon pricing and trading schemes could influence costs or emissions reductions an erratic nonlinear emissions reduction trend is observed in a carbon pricing scheme as the carbon price increases steadily whereas emissions reduction in a carbon trading scheme follows a relatively linear trend with a nonlinear cost increase overall a carbon trading mechanism although imperfect appears to result in better supply chain performance in terms of emissions generation cost and service level even though a carbon tax may be more worthwhile from an uncertainty perspective as emissions trading costs depend on numerous uncertain market conditions

targeting nominal income growth or inflation within a simple new keynesian model emphasizing forward looking behavior of private agents i evaluate optimal nominal income growth targeting versus optimal inflation targeting when the economy is mainly subject to shocks that do not involve monetary policy trade offs for society inflation targeting is preferable otherwise nominal income growth targeting may be superior because it induces inertial policy making which improves the inflation output gap trade off somewhat paradoxically inflation targeting may be relatively less favorable the more society dislikes inflation and the more persistent are the effects of inflation generating shocks jel e42 e52 f58

can carbon taxes be progressive abstract most studies have assessed the distributional impact of carbon taxes through their effects on commodity prices alone while ignoring their impact on individual welfare brought about by changes in factor prices yet the remunerations of capital and labor are not affected by these taxes similarly and their shares in earned incomes are not uniform across households this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the incidence of carbon taxes on inequality by considering simultaneously the commodity and the income channels we propose a decomposition of the change in individual welfare metrics then we develop a general equilibrium model to assess the impact of carbon taxes on factor and commodity prices and subsequently their distributional impact on households using the lorenz and concentration curves and the gini index our results suggest that changes in factor prices and changes in commodity prices especially those of energy commodities have opposing effects on inequality carbon taxes tend to reduce inequality through the changes in factor prices and tend to increase inequality through the changes in commodity prices hence we find a non monotonic u shaped relationship between carbon taxes and inequality our results suggest that the traditional approach of assessing the impact of carbon taxes on inequality through changes in commodity prices alone may be misleading the findings cast light on the desirability of using both channels in the assessment of carbon taxes on inequality

money reform and the eurozone crisis panacea utopia or grassroots alternative the economic crisis that broke out in 2007 2008 and the ongoing crisis in the eurozone has given a new urgency to discussions about alternatives to capitalism and a new salience to proposals for monetary reform and for grassroots economic alternatives using marx and engel s concept of utopianism as an analytical tool to distinguish between what is the work of cranks and what of brave heretics the paper examines four monetary responses to the crisis 1 positive money s call for a state monopoly on money issuance 2 the reintroduction of national currencies in particular the drachma 3 proposals for state issued parallel currencies and 4 grassroots or subaltern money networks of various types the paper argues that the dominance of neoliberal ideology at a european union level means that proposals for monetary reform at the international and national level are unlikely to be taken seriously by elites and consequently seem utopian in marxian terms there seems to be little political will to engage with the complexities of and potential opportunities of a more diverse monetary architecture within the eurozone and a perceived need to discipline potentially irresponsible governments like greece s syriza although responsible actors in the north of the eurozone get more leeway the potential of grassroots alternatives is also too often overstated while alternative currency networks developed as part of the greek crisis are not particularly well developed alternative currency networks could work as sites of innovation normalising the idea that there are progressive alternatives to eurozone breakup

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

uncertain potential output implications for monetary policy abstract a small forward looking model of the euro area economy is used to investigate the implications of incomplete information about potential output for the conduct of monetary policy three results emerge first under optimal monetary policy output gap uncertainty leads to persistent deviations between the actual and the perceived output gap in response to supply and cost push shocks second in first difference form a simple policy rule such as the taylor rule continues to perform relatively well as long as the output gap is optimally estimated third incomplete information implies that it is optimal to appoint a more hawkish central bank

endogenous technological change in climate change modelling this article investigates the impact on optimal co2 abatement and carbon tax levels of introducing endogenous technological change in a macroeconomic model of climate change we analyse technological change as a function of cumulative capacity as incorporated recently in energy systems models our calculations confirm that including endogenous innovation implies earlier emission reduction to meet atmospheric carbon concentration constraints however the effect is stronger than suggested in the literature moreover the development of non fossil energy technologies constitutes the most important opportunity for emission reductions optimal carbon tax levels reducing fossil energy use are lower than usually advocated