a quantile regression analysis of china s provincial co2 emissions where does the difference lie abstract china is already the largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world this paper adopts provincial panel data from 1990 to 2014 and employs quantile regression model to investigate the influencing factors of china s co 2 emissions the results show that economic growth plays a dominant role in the growth of co 2 emissions due to massive fixed asset investment and export trade the influences of energy intensity on the lower 10th and upper 90th quantile provinces are stronger than those in the 25th 50th quantile provinces because of big differences in r d expenditure and human resources distribution the impact of urbanization increases continuously from the lower 10th quantile provinces to the 10th 25th 25th 50th 50th 75th 75th 90th and upper 90th quantile provinces owing to the differences in r d personnel real estate development and motor vehicle ownership the effect of industrialization on the upper 90th quantile provinces is greater than those on other quantile provinces on account of the differences in the industrial scale and the development of the building industry thus the heterogeneity effects of influencing factors on different quantile provinces should be taken into consideration when discussing the mitigation of co 2 emissions in china

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

the impact of fair trade certification for coffee farmers in peru smallholder farmers producing for fair trade market outlets are usually considered to benefit from better prices and stable market outlets however many empirical studies verifying this impact suffer from strong selection bias this study uses a balanced sample of fair trade farmers and likewise nonfair trade producers of organic and conventional coffee from peru to compare the net effects on production income and expenditures wealth and investments and attitudes and perceptions after careful matching we find only modest direct income and production effects but significant changes in organization input use wealth and assets and risk attitudes moreover important differences between farmers with early and more recent ft affiliation are registered

profits and poverty certification s troubled link for nicaragua s organic and fairtrade coffee producers abstract governments donors and ngos have promoted environmental and social certification schemes for coffee producers as certified market channels are assumed to offer higher prices and better incomes additionally it is presumed that these certifications contribute to poverty reduction of smallholders yet gross margins profits and poverty levels of certified smallholder coffee producers have not yet been quantitatively analyzed applying random sampling techniques our quantitative household survey of 327 randomly selected members of conventional organic and organic fairtrade certified cooperatives in nicaragua is complemented by over a hundred qualitative in depth interviews the results show that although farm gate prices of certified coffees are higher than of conventional coffees the profitability of certified coffee production and its subsequent effect on poverty levels is not clear cut per capita net coffee incomes are insufficient to cover basic needs of all coffee producing households certified producers are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers over a period of ten years our analysis shows that organic and organic fairtrade farmers have become poorer relative to conventional producers we conclude that coffee yield levels profitability and efficiency need to be increased because prices for certified coffee cannot compensate for low productivity land or labor constraints

measuring the incentives to learn in colombia using new quantile regression approaches abstract this paper employs newly developed quantile regression techniques to investigate a policy that could differentially affect students performance the colombian vouchers were assigned using lotteries and were renewable as long as the students maintained satisfactory academic progress this second aspect of the program may provide incentives for low attainment students to work harder the evidence supports the hypothesis that incentives could account for the impact of the vouchers including lower repetition rate the effect of the vouchers is largest in the lower tail of the educational attainment distribution a possibility that was conjectured by others but has not yet been confirmed empirically the evidence suggests that the incentive effect of the program increases weak students test scores by at least 0 1 standard deviations roughly the score gain associated to a half year of school learning

which fiscal multipliers are regime dependent a meta regression analysis we analyse whether estimated multiplier effects are systematically higher if the economy suffers a downturn for that purpose we conduct a meta regression analysis on a unique data set of 98 empirical studies with more than 1800 observations on multiplier effects and control for regime dependence of the multiplier we find that spending multipliers are much higher by about 0 7 0 9 units during a downturn tax multipliers are not sensitive to the economic regime and generally lower than spending multipliers finally for all spending categories other than government consumption the multiplier significantly exceeds one during downturns

how to improve the performance of carbon tax in china abstract the chinese government committed to controlling carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and promoting development of non fossil fuels thus it becomes a top priority for the government to develop effective climate policies against such background this paper develops a new multi country computable general equilibrium cge model with detailed energy disaggregation this study evaluates the impact of single policy instrument carbon tax and combined policy mixes in order to investigate driving factors affecting the policy performance the main findings are as follows firstly the driving factors can be classified into two types the first type of factors affects cost effectiveness significantly while the second type generates considerable effect on emission performance secondly cross border externalities function as important barriers to the co 2 emission reduction since they imply extra competitiveness loss and result in considerable carbon leakage finally this paper considers two integrated policy mixes wherein carbon tax revenue is recycled to reduce capital tax or support clean energy subsidy these policy mixes can improve both cost effectiveness and emission performance and thus perform better than carbon tax alone in this way carbon tax revenue can be used to improve the performance looking ahead complicated policy mixes are preferred to improve the performance of china s carbon tax

the economics of smallholder organic contract farming in tropical africa summary the paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming for smallholders and of adoption of organic agricultural farming methods in a tropical african context the comparison in both cases is with farming systems that are organic by default survey data from a large organic coffee contract farming scheme in uganda are reported and analyzed using a standard ols regression and a full information maximum likelihood fiml estimate of the heckman selection model the analysis finds that controlling for a range of factors there are positive revenue effects both from participation in the scheme and more modestly from applying organic farming techniques

do farmers benefit from participating in specialty markets and cooperatives the case of coffee marketing in costa rica1 historically low prices in the conventional coffee market have caused financial and social hardship among coffee farmers in the face of this crisis specialty markets have attracted the attention of the international donor community these market segments have shown consistent growth over the last decade and exhibit price premiums in international markets therefore if higher prices are passed on to farmers access to specialty markets could help to alleviate the crisis brought on by low prices in the conventional sector the present study attempts to identify the factors that determine farmers participation in specialized markets and whether participation in these markets leads to higher prices for farmers a two stage model is used to analyze farmers marketing decisions and their effect on the prices received this procedure allows us to control for the endogeneity bias introduced by the marketing choice our results indicate that farmers participating in the specialty coffee segment do in fact receive higher prices than those participating in conventional channels additionally we find that participation in cooperatives has a positive impact on the probability that a farmer chooses to grow specialty coffee and analogously on the prices that they receive based on these results it seems that efforts to increase participation in the specialty coffee segment and in cooperatives would help to lessen some of the hardships brought on by low prices in the conventional coffee sector

the low carbon technology characteristics of china s ferrous metal industry abstract the ferrous metal industry is the largest energy consuming industrial sector in china this paper examines the low carbon production characteristics of this industry during the period 1980 2013 we employ the duality theory of the weighted russell directional distance function to propose a general procedure for modeling production characteristics with carbon emissions being considered the undesirable output using the weighted russell directional distance function model we measure the carbon adjusted technical efficiency and environmental regulatory costs for this industry to investigate policy effects we test the porter hypothesis using the granger causality between regulatory cost and technical efficiency by using the dual model of weighted russell directional distance function we estimate the carbon shadow pricing and inter factor substitution possibilities results show that the carbon adjusted technical efficiency and environmental regulation costs of the chinese ferrous metal industry have significantly increased in recent decades however the latter does not significantly cause the improvement of former the indirect morishima elasticities of substitution reflect that the increase of fixed assets will effectively improve the carbon emissions performance of the chinese ferrous metal industry finally some policy implications are suggested

why is electricity consumption inconsistent with economic growth in china studies have indicated that there exists a relatively stable and positive correlation between electricity consumption and economic growth and there should not be a large deviation between them however the deviation between electricity consumption and economic growth in china during the asian financial crisis and global economic crisis sparks intense debates we attempt to explain the deviation from the perspective of inventory investment adjustment in the business cycle using the svar model in this paper the results show that the effects of inventory investment adjustment shock and electricity consumption structure shock on the deviation are positive but tend to be negative for electricity efficiency shock the results of historical decomposition of these shocks also show that the inventory investment adjustment shock is the main factor that influences the deviation during the global economic crisis economic fluctuation in the short term can not change the economic development pattern and the characteristics of electricity demand once the economy returns to stable growth the deviation between electricity consumption and economic growth will shrink and disappear soon

do the eu countries import at the same price the case of coffee the establishment of the economic and monetary union was expected to determine price convergence in the market of the european union leading to the equilibrium theorized by the law of one price this article investigates prices convergence in the coffee market among european importers coffee is not only a tradable and traded good but also one of the most valuable traded commodities we account for different qualities of coffee in a hedonic regression model which isolate and remove the effects of factors that might affect price dispersion adjusted import prices result to be significantly different between european member states and do not support the hypothesis of a deepening european market integration

estimating the marginal abatement cost curve of co2 emissions in china provincial panel data analysis abstract this paper estimates the marginal abatement cost curve macc of co2 emissions in china based on a provincial panel for the period of 2001 2010 the provincial marginal abatement cost mac of co2 emissions is estimated using a parameterized directional output distance function four types of model specifications are applied to fit the mac carbon intensity pairs the optimal specification controlling for various covariates is identified econometrically a scenario simulation of china s 40 45 carbon intensity reduction based on our macc is illustrated our simulation results show that china would incur a 559 623 yuan t roughly 51 57 increase in marginal abatement cost to achieve a corresponding 40 45 reduction in carbon intensity compared to its 2005 level

price determinants in top quality e auctioned specialty coffees we analyze the price determinants of specialty coffees traded at e auctions we hypothesize that since specialty coffees are a highly differentiated product prices will be determined by both sensory and reputation attributes to test our hypotheses we estimate a hedonic price function using data from central and south american e auctions and calculate the implicit prices of sensory and reputation attributes the results show that market clearing prices are a function of sensory characteristics and reputation variables including third party quality ranking country of origin coffee variety and quantity the additional attribute information disclosed at e auctions results in substantially higher prices relative to conventional commodity coffee market prices

a linguistic group decision making framework for bid evaluation in mega public projects considering carbon dioxide emissions reduction green construction is to conserve the resources and reduce the negative impact of construction activities on the environment to the maximum extent with scientific management and technological progress under the premise of ensuring the quality safety and other basic requirements recent years accompanied by the rapid development of construction industry a considerable proportion of energy and resources particularly high carbon materials is consumed in the construction activities emitting mass greenhouse gases which have a damaging impact on the environment this is especially for the mega public projects therefore under the green and sustainable perspective actions to control carbon dioxide co2 emissions in the construction industry are imperative in this case if co2 emissions reduction can be considered beforehand during the bid evaluation stage contractors will be guided by bid evaluation indicators and therefore improve their construction schemes enabling the construction phase to be green energy saving and sustainable this is because bid evaluation indicators can serve as guiding effect on the contractors given that co2 emissions are rarely given sufficient consideration in traditional bid evaluation this study conducts a systematic analysis to identify major sources of co2 in construction phase and attempts to develop a conceptual computational model in terms of co2 emission then a linguistic group decision making framework for bid evaluation in mega public projects considering co2 emissions reduction is developed in this framework entropy relative entropy the standard deviation method and weighted aggregation operators are applied to determine the indicator weights the expert weights and the information aggregation in bid evaluation decision making finally a scenario comparison between the proposed linguistic group decision making bid evaluation framework and the traditional framework is made through a case study and the scientific basis and reliability of this new framework are validated the establishment of this framework can enrich the decision making methods in construction management field and it can provide meaningful reference for owners to choose the most qualified contractors and spur contractors to improve their construction schemes enabling construction phase to be green energy saving and sustainable

hedonic cost models and the pricing of milk components to assess likely producer response to milk price reform we examine the technology of protein butterfat and fluid carrier production on 1 924 u s dairy farms a variant of a hedonic cost model is proposed in which the output aggregator is expressed as a function of total output and of the percentage concentrations of its components dairy farmers have responded rationally to artificially low protein prices due to the cow s appetite limit farmers operate in stage i of feed to milk production functions yet protein s marginal cost rises sharply with protein output only modest substitutability is evident among feed inputs or milk component outputs

linking local business with global growth opportunities the role of infrastructure infrastructure is instrumental when it comes to linking local businesses with their global growth opportunities this paper shows that by making this link the transport network can act as a catalyst for regional economic growth using a novel approach we find that firms in regions with a more developed transport infrastructure are better placed to benefit from positive growth opportunities than those in regions with a less well developed transport network this advantage is most pronounced in times of economic slack making a better transport network a key ingredient for economic recovery it is against this background that the recent slowdown in infrastructure investment in europe is worrisome but it is through this channel among others that the substantial ramp up of activity by the european investment bank is expected to foster growth and enhance competitiveness in europe

hedonic wages and labor market search this article investigates the consequences of labor market search for the theory of hedonic wages we find that the introduction of search has surprising consequences for the theory of hedonic wages in particular we demonstrate that the equilibrium distribution of wage and nonwage amenity bundles generally bears little resemblance to workers underlying preferences a consequence of this analysis is that estimates of workers marginal willingness to pay derived from the conventional hedonic wage methodology are biased in addition we demonstrate that search generates differences between firm level and employee level data that can cause substantial deviations in the estimates of hedonic wage equations

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

measuring the impact of fiscal policy in the face of anticipation a structural var approach empirical estimates of the impact of government spending shocks disagree on central issues such as the size of output multipliers and the responses of consumption and the real wage one explanation for the disagreement is that fiscal shocks are often anticipated due to misspecification of the information set anticipation effects may invalidate svar estimates of impulse responses we use economic theory to derive a fiscal svar estimator that is applicable when fiscal shocks are anticipated we study its properties and apply it to us data we fail to find evidence that anticipation effects overturn the existing findings from the fiscal svar literature despite years of intensive research the empirical literature on fiscal policy has yet to reach consensus on the macroeconomic impact of fiscal policy shocks disagreements concern central issues such as the size of output multipliers and the impact of government spending shocks on consumption and the real wage clearly such level of disagreement constrains our ability to give simple guidelines for the operation of one of the most important stabilisation policies a key empirical obstacle is the measurement of innovations to fiscal policy one strand of the literature employs structural vector autoregressive svar methods and achieves identification based on the presence of decision lags or sign restrictions

how large is the government spending multiplier evidence from world bank lending this paper proposes a novel method of isolating fluctuations in public spending that are likely to be uncorrelated with contemporaneous macroeconomic shocks and can be used to estimate government spending multipliers the approach relies on two features unique to many low income countries 1 borrowing from the world bank finances a substantial fraction of public spending and 2 actual spending on world bank financed projects is typically spread out over several years following the original approval of the project these two features imply that fluctuations in spending on world bank projects in a given year are in large part determined by fluctuations in project approval decisions made in previous years and so are unlikely to be correlated with shocks to output in the current year world bank project level disbursement data are used to isolate the component of public spending associated with project approvals from previous years which in turn can be used to estimate government spending multipliers in a sample of 29 aid dependent low income countries the estimated multipliers are small reasonably precisely estimated and rarely significantly different from zero

cost based modelling of optimal emission quota allocation abstract given that a fixed national emission reduction target could be achieved by imposing emission quotas among multiple decision making units under administration a novel nonlinear programming approach is proposed in this paper to obtain an optimal emission quota allocation in a least cost way marginal emission abatement cost curves are simulated based on the environmental performance and marginal emission abatement costs measured in a set of parametric directional output distance functions with multi inputs and multi outputs further the proposed model is applied to empirically investigate the optimal carbon emission quota allocation for china s building construction industry among thirty three provinces in three different regions the results indicate that the relatively developed eastern region in china has higher marginal emission abatement cost and can be imposed with more emission quotas while the central and western regions can undertake more emission reduction approximately 74 million rmb can be saved by implementing the optimal emission allocation proposed in this paper as compared to a uniform emission quota allocation the findings are of great theoretical methodological and practical significance for policymakers and social science researchers in terms of climate change mitigation

the economics of quality in the specialty coffee industry insights from the cup of excellence auction programs this study estimates price determinants for specialty green coffee auctions using records from the 2004 2010 cup of excellence programs hosted by the alliance for coffee excellence while some literature on coffee has focused on certifications and sustainability labels the discussion of price determinants has been limited this article replicates one of the first publications on price determinants and formulates a new model to more accurately describe the market we include the necessary additional variables and estimate the model using a truncated maximum likelihood estimation technique while sensory quality has a strong effect on price the highest premiums stem from obtaining a top rank compared to other coffees from the same country and north american buyers are more responsive to sensory quality than buyers in asian and european markets jel classifications c24 d44 q13

using an extended lmdi model to explore techno economic drivers of energy related industrial co2 emission changes a case study for shanghai china although investment and r d activities can exert significant effects on energy related industrial co2 emissions eice related factors have not been fairly uncovered in the existing index decomposition studies this paper extends the previous logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition model by introducing three novel factors r d intensity investment intensity and r d efficiency the extended model not only considers the conventional drivers of eice but also reflects the microeconomic effects of investment and r d behaviors on eice furthermore taking shanghai as an example which is the economic center and leading co2 emitter in china we use the extended model to decompose and explain eice changes also we incorporate renewable energy sources into the proposed model to carry out an alternative decomposition analysis at shanghai s entire industrial level the results show that among conventional macroeconomic factors expanding output scale is mainly responsible for the increase in eice and industrial structure adjustment is the most significant factor in mitigating eice regardless of renewable energy sources the emission reduction effect of energy intensity focused on by the chinese government is less than the expected due to the rebound effect but the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies its mitigating effect partly resulting from the transmission from the abating effect of industrial structure adjustment the effect of energy structure is the weakest although all the three novel factors exert significant effects on eice they are more sensitive to policy interventions than conventional factors r d intensity presents an obvious mitigating effect while investment intensity and r d efficiency display an overall promotion effect with some volatility the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies the promotion effect of r d efficiency as a result of the green paradox effect finally we propose that co2 mitigation efforts should be made by considering both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors in order to achieve a desirable emission reduction effect

regional energy efficiency carbon emission performance and technology gaps in china a meta frontier non radial directional distance function analysis abstract at present china is the largest primary energy consumer and carbon emitter in the world meantime china is a large transitional economy with significant regional gaps against such backgrounds the calculated results of energy and carbon performance indicators may be biased without considering heterogeneity across regions to this end after incorporating region heterogeneity this paper provides detailed information regarding energy efficiency carbon emission performance and the potential of carbon emission reductions from regional perspectives which may be important and useful for policy makers our main findings are as follows firstly there is significant group heterogeneity across regions in china in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance secondly there are no considerable differences between total factor and single factor performance indices since there is limited substitutability between energy inputs and other production inputs finally significant carbon emission reductions can be made by catching up for regions with low energy efficiency and carbon emission performance looking ahead the chinese government should adopt measures to promote improvements in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance in the short term

the latte revolution regulation markets and consumption in the global coffee chain abstract coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries the global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation new consumption patterns and evolving corporate strategies from a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations a relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal unstable and unequal through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances

the credibility revolution in empirical economics how better research design is taking the con out of econometrics since edward leamer s memorable 1983 paper let s take the con out of econometrics empirical microeconomics has experienced a credibility revolution while leamer s suggested remedy sensitivity analysis has played a role in this we argue that the primary engine driving improvement has been a focus on the quality of empirical research designs the advantages of a good research design are perhaps most easily apparent in research using random assignment we begin with an overview of leamer s 1983 critique and his proposed remedies we then turn to the key factors we see contributing to improved empirical work including the availability of more and better data along with advances in theoretical econometric understanding but especially the fact that research design has moved front and center in much of empirical micro we offer a brief digression into macroeconomics and industrial organization where progress by our lights is less dramatic although there is work in both fields that we find encouraging finally we discuss the view that the design pendulum has swung too far critics of design driven studies argue that in pursuit of clean and credible research designs researchers seek good answers instead of good questions we briefly respond to this concern which worries us little

an analysis of the implications of china s urbanization policy for economic growth and energy consumption abstract china intends to rely on urbanization policies to increase its economic growth even against the backdrop of new constraints on energy consumption this paper investigates the impact of urbanization on economic growth and energy consumption using data from china s 266 prefecture level cities over the 2000 2010 period and examines the heterogeneity of this impact across income and urbanization groups the main results of our empirical estimation indicate that 1 the effect of urbanization on economic growth is positive and significant for the entire sample although it is positive and significant only for high and middle income groups and not the low income group 2 the impact of urbanization on energy consumption is positive and significant for all groups when the sample is divided into three urbanization groups based on the northam curve indicating that urbanization will lead to large increases in energy consumption in summary our empirical results show that urbanization targets will be difficult to achieve in terms of increasing gdp per capita under energy consumption constraints

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

nonseparable preferences fiscal policy puzzles and inferior goods nonseparable preferences over consumption and leisure can generate an increase in private consumption in response to government spending as found in the data in a frictionless business cycle model however the conditions on preferences required for these result to obtain hold if and only if the consumption good is inferior similarly positive co movement of consumption and hours worked occurs if and only if either consumption or leisure is inferior

macroeconomic effects from government purchases and taxes for u s annual data that include world war ii the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0 4 0 5 contemporaneously and 0 6 0 7 over 2 years if the change in defense spending is permanent gauged by ramey s defense news variable the multipliers are higher by 0 1 0 2 since all estimated multipliers are significantly less than 1 greater spending crowds out other components of gdp particularly investment the lack of good instruments prevents estimation of reliable multipliers for nondefense purchases multipliers in the literature of two or more likely reflect reverse causation from gdp to nondefense purchases increases in average marginal income tax rates measured by a newly constructed time series have significantly negative effects on gdp when interpreted as a tax multiplier the magnitude is around 1 1 the combination of the estimated spending and tax multipliers implies that the balanced budget multiplier for defense spending is negative we have some evidence that tax changes affect gdp mainly through substitution effects rather than wealth effects

energy efficiency evolution of china s paper industry abstract china s paper industry accounts for a larger proportion of the global paper industry and consumes large amounts of energy energy conservation and pollution reduction of the industry have become the focus of china s national development strategy energy efficiency is an important index which directly determines the amounts of energy consumption and pollution emissions to understand the energy efficiency evolution of china s paper industry this paper establishes an input output data of the paper industry for 29 provinces in china and applies dea method and econometric models to estimate and comprehensively discuss the energy efficiency issues based on the framework of total factor efficiency our results indicate that china s paper industry has a large energy saving potential even though its energy efficiency has improved during the period 1990 2013 the saving potential is about 65 under the meta frontier and 44 under the group frontier moreover there are significant differences between different regions in production technology and energy efficiency the performance of eastern china is better than other regions but the technology gaps between the different regions are shrinking and converging over time finally some policy recommendations are proposed to improve the energy efficiency of the industry

using stock returns to identify government spending shocks this article explores a new approach to identifying government spending shocks which avoids many of the shortcomings of existing approaches the new approach is to identify government spending shocks with statistical innovations to the accumulated excess returns of large us military contractors this strategy is used to estimate the dynamic responses of output hours consumption and real wages to a government spending shock we find that positive government spending shocks are associated with increases in output hours and consumption real wages initially decline after a government spending shock and then rise after a year we estimate the government spending multiplier associated with increases in military spending to be about 1 5 over a horizon of 5 years

analysis of energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors abstract because industrial sectors in china are energy intensive improving energy efficiency and promoting energy savings in these sectors are of great importance for the further sustainable development of china s economy using a proposed meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper analyzes the total factor energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors for the years 2000 2014 from three perspectives namely the technology gap management and scale the results indicate that 1 driven by technological progress energy efficiency during the sample period was greatly improved though the expansion of technology gaps between regions and the decline in scale efficiency represented two significant handicaps 2 the current energy efficiency in china s industrial sectors remains extremely low indicating that there is considerable potential for energy efficiency improvement and energy savings and 3 the sources of energy inefficiency and energy savings potential in china s industrial sectors exhibit spatially distinct characteristics accordingly it is determined that most of china s eastern provinces should focus on improving scale and management efficiency whereas most of its central and western provinces should concentrate on three factors narrowing the regional technology gap improving management efficiency and optimizing the industrial scale

demographic variables in demand analysis in this paper the authors discuss five procedures for incorporating demographic variables into theoretically plausible demand systems translating scaling and the gorman reverse gorman and implicit prais houthakker procedures these five procedures are used to incorporate a single demographic variable the number of children in a household into the generalized ces demand system using household budget data for the united kingdom for the period 1966 1972 excerpt

estimating the impact of welfare programs on agricultural output evidence from india rural welfare programs are implemented for a variety of reasons however of key importance is to understand how government spending under such programs affects local agricultural output which is a key measure of economic activity in developing economies this article estimates the local multiplicative effects of transfer spending by the government using a novel data set of state level expenditure under rural welfare programs in india using government records as narrative evidence i use the motivation to implement new programs at the national level to construct changes in transfer spending that are largely exogenous to fluctuations in agricultural output at the state level i estimate local multipliers using this narrative shock series and find government transfers to be quite consequential for local economic activity

competitive selection and market data the mixed index problem if prices have an allocational role then in addition to their economic signalling they may act as a statistical signal for the existence of selection bias in cross sectional studies with some form of price wages rental yield etc as dependent variable elements of competitive selection appear in the pricing theory of real or financial assets and in the determination of wage rates where prices correlate the characteristics of the asset or job with those of the individuals under the equilibrium allocation if prices achieve such an allocation then regressions with price as dependent variable are prima facie mixed index in character with adverse bias or consistency properties no matter that the right hand regressors are apparently exogenous we set up a paradigm for competitive selection and use the concepts so generated to codify the conditions under which mixed index bias will occur the problem may be regarded as one of selection bias but does not necessarily derive from classical simultaneity and is a problem of data generation structures rather than sample selection most economists would take it as self evident that one function of a price system is to allocate objects goods assets jobs etc among purchasers according to their tastes or capacity to pay and likewise to allocate sales as between sellers according to their endowments reservation prices or capacities to produce in this paper we shall study the empirical consequences of the allocative functions of a price system specifically we shall investigate the consequences of postulating any statistical dependence relationship regression analysis of variance etc in which some form of price interpreted broadly to include wages rents and yields as well as commodity or asset prices appears as a dependent variable in a cross sectional context if prices do fulfil an allocative function then in the process they also create a correlation structure between the characteristics of the purchaser and those of the object or the seller giving rise to what we have called a mixed index problem in turn this gives rise to the possibility if not the presumption of selection bias which may arise even when the right hand variables appear to be formally exogenous as far as prices are concerned important elements of the mixed index problem occur in a wide variety of empirical contexts consider for instance cross sectional studies of the demand for housing which relate the price paid for housing services to characteristics of the house and of the owner if we ask what it is that correlates these two sets of characteristics the answer must run in terms of some actual or implicit allocation process in which the observed prices are responsible for that allocation similarly studies that attempt to relate wage rates to worker characteristics implicitly assume an underlying programme according to which those wage rates are offered by employers for specific job slots to workers with the characteristics under consideration in both cases the relevant price is explained in terms of two index sets of characteristics which are put into equilibrium correspondence by

decomposition of the environmental inefficiency of the meta frontier with undesirable output abstract in this paper we present an alternative analysis framework to evaluate the effects of technology heterogeneities and undesirable output on environmental efficiency measurement the proposed framework combines the directional distance function and a meta frontier analysis it can be used to measure efficiency improvements brought about by enhanced technical management and technological advances for demonstration purposes we used the framework to measure the environmental efficiency in 90 countries worldwide for the 2003 2007 period the results showed that when the meta technology set is used as the evaluation basis the average environmental efficiency of high competitiveness countries is greater than that of lower middle low and upper middle competitiveness countries the upper middle competitiveness countries perform worse than the lower middle and low competitiveness countries because of the excessive labor force usage and carbon dioxide emissions in these countries we also found that the environmental inefficiency of the meta frontier for high competitiveness countries can be attributed to managerial failure in the production process whereas that for upper middle lower middle and low competitiveness countries can be attributed to technological differences

examining the influencing factors of co2 emissions at city level via panel quantile regression evidence from 102 chinese cities ascertaining the influencing factors of carbon dioxide emissions in chinese cities is an important issue for policy makers this paper investigates the effect of several determinants on carbon emis

the economic effects of public financing evidence from municipal bond ratings recalibration we show that the supply of local public financing can have important effects on local economies we identify these effects by exploiting exogenous variation on municipal bond ratings due to moody s recalibration of its scale in 2010 we find that local governments increase expenditures and employment due to an expansion of their debt capacity following an upgrade these increases in local government spending lead to multiplier effects on non tradable employment and income our findings suggest that debt financed increases in government spending can improve economic conditions during recessions

natural disasters growth and institutions a tale of two earthquakes abstract we examine the impact of natural disasters on gdp per capita by applying the synthetic control approach and using a within country perspective our analysis encompasses two large scale earthquakes that occurred in two different italian regions in 1976 and 1980 we show that the short term effects are negligible in both regions though they become negative if we simulate the gdp that would have been observed in absence of financial aid in the long term our findings indicate a positive effect in one case and a negative effect in the other largely reflecting divergent patterns of the tfp consistent with these findings we offer further evidence suggesting that a quake and related financial aid might either increase technical efficiency via a disruptive creation mechanism or reduce it by stimulating corruption distorting the markets and deteriorating social capital finally we show that the bad outcome is more likely to occur in regions with lower pre quake institutional quality as a result our evidence suggests that unanticipated local shocks are likely to change long run growth rates exacerbating territorial disparities

job creation in tight and slack labor markets abstract does investment create more jobs in slack than in tight labor markets we study this question using data from a photovoltaic investment scheme comparing counties with high and low unemployment over time and across space we find that 100 000 of investment created 1 2 job years in slack markets and fewer than 0 5 job years in tight markets this corresponds to labor earnings multipliers of 1 1 and below 0 5 respectively these differences are not driven by changes in investment composition capital labor substitution or regional migration consistent with crowding out as a mechanism investment leads to higher wage growth in tight than in slack markets

the savers spenders theory of fiscal policy the macroeconomic analysis of fiscal policy is usually based on one of two canonical models the barro ramsey model of infinitely lived families or the diamond samuelson model of overlapping generations this paper argues that neither model is satisfactory and suggests an alternative in the proposed model some consumers plan ahead for themselves and their descendants while others live paycheck to paycheck this model is easier to reconcile with the essential facts about consumer behavior and wealth accumulation and it yields some new and surprising conclusions about fiscal policy

economic growth regional disparities and energy demand in china abstract using the panel data of 27 provinces between 1978 and 2008 we employed a instrumental regression technique to examine the relationship between economic growth energy demand production and the related policies in china the empirical results show that forming a cross province integrated energy market will in general reduce the response of equilibrium user costs of energy products to their local demand and production through cross regional energy transfer including both energy trade and cross regional reallocation in particular reducing transportation costs and improving marketization level are identified as two important policy instruments to enhance the role of energy market integration the findings support the argument for a more competitive cross province energy transfer policies and calls for more developed energy connectivity and associate institutional arrangements within china these policy implications may also be extended to the east asia summit region where energy market integration is being actively promoted

will carbon motivated border tax adjustments function as a threat abstract due to large incremental carbon emissions china might become an important target country of cbta carbon motivated border tax adjustments to levy cbta could reduce china s emissions meanwhile china s emissions reduction could also be achieved by china s climate policies termed as cbta emissions equivalent policies this paper contributes to the discussion on cbta by comparing the potential regional effects of cbta and cbta emissions equivalent policies the main findings are as follows 1 cbta and cbta emissions equivalent policies would result in relocations of outputs across regions and countries affect the structure of economy and contribute to world s emissions reduction 2 there would be significant differences in the regional effects between cbta and cbta emissions equivalent policies 3 compared to carbon tax cbta would be a costly and inefficient policy instrument to reduce emissions but could function as an effective coercion strategy 4 these policies would result in competitiveness issue and rebound effects wherein different countries would be affected differently china is a large economy and energy consumer with high openness to international trade looking ahead the chinese government should consider the potential interactions between china and other economies when designing tax reforms

hedonic prices and implicit markets estimating demand and supply functions for differentiated products in choosing the level of quality to purchase the buyer of a differentiated product also chooses a point on the marginal price schedule for that product hence in general the demand functions for product characteristics cannot be consistently estimated by ordinary least squares market equilibrium results in a matching of characteristics of demanders and suppliers this matching restricts the use of buyer and seller characteristics as instruments when estimating demand and supply functions for product characteristics the paper develops these issues a stochastic structure for hedonic equilibrium models is then proposed identification results are presented and estimation procedures are outlined

characteristic supplies and demands in a hedonic framework u s market for cotton fiber attributes hedonic price analysis has frequently been used to determine agricultural commodity characteristics values while hedonic price theory consists of a two stage process second stage commodity characteristics equations have not been successfully estimated until now the estimated system consisted of 11 first stage equations to determine cotton characteristics values the second stage consisted of 24 characteristic demand and 20 characteristic supply equations to model the underlying characteristic market structure cotton characteristic values were shown to vary across regions and over time as characteristic supplies and demands varied

mafia and public spending evidence on the fiscal multiplier from a quasi experiment a law issued to combat political corruption and mafia infiltration of city councils in italy has resulted in episodes of large unanticipated temporary contractions in local public spending using these episodes as instruments we estimate the output multiplier of spending cuts at provincial level controlling for national monetary and fiscal policy and holding the tax burden of local residents constant to be 1 5 assuming that lagged spending is exogenous to current output brings the estimate of the overall multiplier up to 1 9 these results suggest that local spending adjustment may be quite consequential for local activity jel d72 e62 h71 k42 the widespread resort to fiscal stimulus at the onset of the global crisis and more recently the emerging need to consolidate deficits in response to rising fiscal imbalances have revitalized the empirical debate on the transmission of fiscal policy the multiplier while the literature has mostly focused on aggregate effects at a national level several recent contributions reviewed below have called attention to the local dimension this shift in focus is motivated by specific policy questions combined with the opportunity to exploit institutional information to address econometric issues in identification 1

fiscal stimulus with spending reversals abstract the short run effects of fiscal policy depend not only on current tax and spending choices but also on expectations about future policy adjustment while general equilibrium models typically restrict medium term adjustment to taxation we highlight the importance of government spending dynamics first we provide time series evidence for the united states suggesting that an exogenous increase in government spending prompts a rise in public debt followed over time by a reduction in spending below trend second we show how expected spending reversals alter the short run impact of fiscal policy in a new keynesian model bringing it closer in line with the evidence

accomplice witnesses and organized crime theory and evidence from italy we develop an agency model of organized crime accounting for the main trade offs involved in the introduction of an accomplice witness program we characterize the optimal policy and identify its main determinants in a framework where public officials can be dishonest our predictions are tested by using data for italy before and after the introduction of the 1991 accomplice witness program as predicted by the model and the earlier antitrust literature the program appears to have strengthened deterrence and enhanced prosecution moreover consistent with a novel prediction of our theory the evidence suggests that the program efficacy is affected by the judicial system efficiency

el nino la nina and world coffee price dynamics coffee is produced in equatorial and subequatorial regions of the world which are also most affected by el ni no southern oscillation enso enso events have a tendency to amplify weather conditions such as droughts or excess precipitation in the affected regions resulting in production shortage or excess supply subsequently impacting agricultural commodity prices in this research we assess effects of enso events on world coffee price dynamics using the monthly data between march 1989 and december 2010 we employ smooth transition autoregression framework to examine nonlinear dynamics of enso and coffee prices and illustrate the results of this research using generalized impulse response functions we find that enso events indeed have short term impacts on coffee prices the research findings are of interest to coffee producers and intermediaries in the coffee markets as well as researchers in the fields of environmental and development economics jel classifications c32 q11 q54

towards a differentiated modelling of origin effects in hedonic analysis an application to auction prices of specialty coffee abstract origin matters this has been shown by numerous studies using either discrete choice or hedonic approaches to derive implicit prices for origin as a product attribute in most of the hedonic studies intercept dummies were introduced for specific regional origins and statistically significant coefficients of those variables were seen as an indication of either a superior or inferior reputation compared to products from other origins we argue that hedonic pricing models of this type may be too simple to detect the true origin effects if assessments of a product s sensory quality are available and interact with prior beliefs about reputation based on a supply and demand framework to explain auction prices a reduced form hedonic pricing model is suggested that includes intercept as well as slope dummy effects of the regional origin because reputation and the objective product quality are particularly important for markets of differentiated high quality foods and beverages we analyze electronic auction markets for specialty coffees the findings for the cup of excellence data reveal that it is important to distinguish reputation sensory quality and their interaction as determinants of coffee auction prices as well as varying origin impacts across market segments

a fiscal stimulus and jobless recovery we analyze the effects of a government spending expansion in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with mortensen pissarides labor market frictions deep habits in private and public consumption investment adjustment costs a constant elasticity of substitution ces production function and adjustments in employment at both intensive and extensive margins the combination of deep habits and ces technology is crucial the presence of deep habits magnifies the responses of macroeconomic variables to a fiscal stimulus while an elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in the range of available estimates allows the model to produce a scenario compatible with the observed jobless recovery

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

confronting the coffee crisis can fair trade organic and specialty coffees reduce small scale farmer vulnerability in northern nicaragua summary this paper links changing global coffee markets to opportunities and vulnerabilities for sustaining small scale farmer livelihoods in northern nicaragua changing governance structures corporate concentration oversupply interchangeable commodity grade beans and low farm gate prices characterize the crisis in conventional coffee markets in contrast certified fair trade and organic are two alternative forms of specialty coffee trade and production that may offer opportunities for small scale producers a research team surveyed 228 farmers to measure the impact of sales on organic and fair trade markets the results suggest that participation in organic and fair trade networks reduces farmers livelihood vulnerability 2004 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

does local financial development matter we study the effects of differences in local financial development within an integrated financial market we construct a new indicator of financial development by estimating a regional effect on the probability that ceteris paribus a household is shut off from the credit market by using this indicator we find that financial development enhances the probability an individual starts his own business favors entry of new firms increases competition and promotes growth as predicted by theory these effects are weaker for larger firms which can more easily raise funds outside of the local area these effects are present even when we instrument our indicator with the structure of the local banking markets in 1936 which because of regulatory reasons affected the supply of credit in the following 50 years overall the results suggest local financial development is an important determinant of the economic success of an area even in an environment where there are no frictions to capital movements

fiscal policy pricing frictions and monetary accommodation this paper empirically investigates whether the theoretical conditions for government expenditure expansions to be effective hold for the data we ask whether the necessary conditions for fiscal effectiveness are relevant on average and in special circumstances that capture features of the recent crisis fiscal policy can be an effective countercyclical tool if monetary policy accommodates the fiscal expansion if expectations about future output growth and inflation are constant and if structural relationships are invariant to the policy change recent expansions are unlikely to produce large output multipliers or have important debt or inflation effects credible deficit and debt reduction schemes can produce sizeable output multipliers fabio canova and evi pappa

a numerical simulation analysis of hukou labour mobility restrictions in china abstract we use numerical simulation methods to analyze the hukou system of permanent registration in china which many believe has supported growing relative inequality over the last 20 years by restraining labour migration both between the countryside and urban areas and between regions and cities our aim is to inject economic modelling into the debate on sources of inequality in china which thus far has been largely statistical we first use a model with homogeneous labour in which wage inequality across various geographical divides in china is supported solely by quantity based migration restrictions urban rural areas rich poor regions eastern central and western non coastal zones eastern and central western development zones eastern central western zones more disaggregated 6 regional classifications and an all 31 provincial classification we calibrate this model to base case data and when we remove migration restrictions all wage and most income inequality disappears results from this model structure points to a significant role for hukou restrictions in supporting inequality in china we then present a further model extension in which urban house price rises retard rural urban migration the impacts of removing hukou restrictions on migration are smaller but are still significant finally we modify the model to capture labour productivity differences across regions calibrating the modified model to estimates of both national and regional gini coefficients removal of migration barriers is again inequality improving but less so