power systems expansion planning with time varying co2 tax abstract this article analyzes the effects of implementing a two stage carbon tax on a ten year power expansion planning model the timing effect of the tax is analyzed by studying the costs capacity investments economic dispatch and co 2 emissions in fixed flat and two stage tax schemes results show that under the absence of political economy constraints the most cost effective solution is to have a low co 2 tax in the first stage and an optimal higher tax in the final stage however early actions can be justified depending on how relevant the policy maker considers the beneficial economic and not economic outcomes of a higher first stage tax consequently focusing on a final period goal may not be the best way of facing the global warming problem if emissions saved early have an important value when preventing the consequences of climate change

the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

securitization of taxes implicit in payg pensions to preserve solvency a pay as you go payg pension system needs to adjust contribution rates and pension promises over time currently it is not possible to hedge in the financial market against politically determined uncertainty as regards these parameters i consider a policy reform whereby property rights are established on the implicit lifetime tax levied by payg finance and are assigned to the pension institution these property rights are well defined if the reform also features rule based allocation of aggregate risk in the form of defined contribution or defined benefit schemes i show that a payg pension system may indeed be instantly restructured so as to minimize political risk and allow financial market diversification of risk a side benefit is securitization of human capital flows which are not traded in existing financial markets the new securities if traded in appropriately competitive financial markets are complementary to the notional account reforms of the 1990s however fiscal instability can increase if securitization is implemented in the absence of initial solvency and credible adoption of rule based methods to allocate aggregate risk salvador valdes prieto

why does the combination of the european union emissions trading scheme and a renewable energy target makes economic sense abstract the european climate and energy mix of targets and policies has been criticised by many economists in particular it is often argued that the renewable energy targets do not make economic sense because they represent an expensive option to reduce co2 emissions within a cap and trade scheme such as the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets in addition it has also been claimed that support for renewable electricity deployment negatively interacts with the eu ets having a dampening effect on the co2 price which favours the dirtiest technologies and is detrimental for the greener ones in this article we argue that this mainstream economic view is short sighted and that a multidisciplinary economic analysis of the climate and energy policy mix is required mainstream economic analysis is based on a narrow approach for the assessment of instrument combinations and neglects relevant insights from several economic disciplines including innovation economics and political economy approaches in reality economic theory supports the combination of an ets and renewable energy targets the existence of different policy goals and market failures the demand pull influence of renewable energy policies on innovation a political economy approach and the different risk exposure of renewable energy technologies call for a policy mix although policy combinations are not a panacea and bring problems on their own the aforementioned negative interaction between renewable energy deployment and the carbon price in the eu ets can be mitigated through appropriate coordination and or instrument choice and design

macroeconomic effects of anticipated devaluations with informal financial markets abstract the paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of devaluation in a general equilibrium model of a developing country in which controls on interest rates and foreign exchange restrictions lead to the emergence of informal financial markets the complexity of the model precludes an analytical treatment a simulation approach based on parameters derived from estimates in the existing literature is used to explore how the existence of informal financial markets causes the effects of an official devaluation to be felt before the devaluation itself occurs

the case for gdp indexed bonds gds indexed bonds this paper seeks to revive the case for countries to insure against economic growth slowdowns by issuing bonds indexed to the rate of growth of gdp we show that gdp indexed bonds could provide substantial benefits in reducing the likelihood of default crises and allowing countries to avoid pro cyclical fiscal policies we simulate the effects of gdp indexed bonds under different assumptions about fiscal policy reaction functions and their output effects and find that they could substantially reduce the likelihood of debt gdp paths becoming explosive the insurance premium would likely be small because cross country comovement of gdp growth rates is low and cross country gdp growth risk is thus largely diversifiable for an investor holding a portfolio of gdp indexed bonds potential obstacles to the emergence of a market for these bonds include the verifiability of gdp data the trade off between insurance and moral hazard and the need for liquidity theory and past experience suggest that financial innovation often requires official intervention and its timing and form are difficult to predict we discuss institutional fixes and suggest an approach for attempting to start up a market eduardo borensztein and paolo mauro

the family and the state the immaturity of children sometimes precludes efficient arrangements between children and parents or others responsible for child care the difficulty in establishing efficient relations within families provides the point of departure for our interpretation of the heavy state involvement in the family the authors believe that a surprising number of state interventions mimic the agreements that would occur if children were capable of arranging for their care many regulations of the family improve the efficiency of family activities these interventions include subsidies to education and training social security and other old age support subsidies to births laws that limit access to divorce and the sale of children and laws that require parents permission for early marriage and other choices of children families that leave bequests can force children to repay parents for investments in human capital by reducing bequests therefore these families do not underinvest in childrens human capital by contrast families that do not leave bequests often poorer families do underinvest in children the state may subsidize schools and other training facilities to raise investments in children by poorer families to efficient levels authors modified

political internalization of economic externalities and environmental policy abstract this paper derives the characteristics of endogenous environmental policy in a common agency model of politics and proceeds to show that competition between lobby groups is an important source of internalization of economic externalities our analysis generalizes bhagwati s principle of targeting to the case of distorted political markets moreover we show that the politically optimal structure of environmental taxes incorporates a pigouvian adjustment however since lobby groups care about the distribution of income as well as about efficiency the equilibrium structure of taxes differs considerably from the pigouvian rule

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan a panel cointegration analysis abstract this paper examines the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan at the aggregate and sectoral levels over the period 1978 2012 panel cointegration test and fully modified ordinary least squares method is employed to determine the long run relationship between electricity consumption real income real price of electricity and domestic price of non energy products the results reveal that electricity demand is more responsive to changes in income than changes in prices at the aggregate and disaggregate levels short run and long run income elasticities are positive and statistically significant supporting the conservation hypothesis it appears from the results that long run price elasticities are negative and significant at the aggregate level and for the agriculture commercial residential sectors and public utilities the short run price elasticities are significant but low in magnitude which implies that changes in electricity price exert minimal effect on the electricity consumption in pakistan the domestic price of non energy products is positive and significant for aggregate sample in the short run the domestic price of non energy products exert significant negative positive impact on electricity demand in the agriculture industrial sectors the results thus provide important information to the agents operating in the electricity market regarding the income and pricing policies and helps in planning the future strategy of electricity demand management

a ricardian equivalence theorem on the taxation of pension funds abstract we compare the three main alternative ways of taxing pension funds of the defined contribution variety specifically the alternatives considered are equal yield taxes on contributions earnings and benefits analogous to the ricardian equivalence theorem the contributor s after tax benefit will be the same in each case

inflation and the financing of government expenditure an introductory analysis with an application to turkey this article presents a simple framework to assess the consistency of appropriately defined fiscal deficits with other macroeconomic targets such as inflation it also considers the relation of fiscal deficits to output growth real exchange rate developments and management of internal and external debt finally it considers the implications of relying on interest bearing government debt to postpone the adjustment necessary to restore consistency with inflation targets it demonstrates how the intertemporal budget constraint of the government creates a tradeoff between current and future adjustment real interest rates and output growth rates are shown to determine the terms at which this tradeoff takes place the usefulness of this framework is demonstrated through an analysis of fiscal policy options in turkey in 1985

population age structure intergenerational transfer and wealth a new approach with applications to the united states this paper focuses upon intergenerational transfers overlapping generation models generational accounting and life cycle saving while assuming golden rule steady states and stable age profiles of transfers and economic activity using 1987 us data synthetic cohort methods were employed to explore how resource allocation over the life cycle generates real wealth and transfer wealth through the family public sector and financial markets while data problems assumption violations and accounting framework shortcomings would not permit firm conclusions transfer wealth in the us nonetheless seems to be about 2 3 greater than real wealth social security wealth medicare wealth and government debt are the main positive forms of wealth and together have greater value than real wealth transfer wealth must therefore displace holdings of physical capital and lead to lower labor productivity and higher interest rates

intergenerational risk sharing and risk taking of a pension fund abstract by using their financial reserves efficiently pension funds can smooth shocks on their asset returns and can thus facilitate intergenerational risk sharing in addition to the primary benefit of improved time diversification this form of risk allocation affords the additional benefit of allowing these funds to take better advantage of the equity premium which also favors the consumers in this paper our aim is twofold first we characterize the socially efficient policy rules of a collective pension plan in terms of portfolio management capital payments to retirees and dividend payments to shareholders we examine both the first best rules and the second best rules where in the latter case the fund is constrained by a solvency constraint and by a guaranteed minimum return to workers contributions second we measure the social surplus of the system compared to a situation in which each generation would save and invest in isolation for its own retirement we estimate that the certainty equivalent return of the pension saving scheme goes from 3 23 per year to 3 76 when intergenerational risk sharing is introduced one of the main results of the paper is that better intergenerational risk sharing does not reduce the risk born by each generation rather it increases the expected return to the workers contributions

after the big bang obstacles to the emergence of the rule of law in post communist societies when russia launched mass privatization it was widely believed that it would create a powerful constituency for the rule of law that didn t happen we present a dynamic equilibrium model of the political demand for the rule of law and show that beneficiaries of mass privatization may fail to demand the rule of law even if it is the pareto efficient rule of the game the reason is that uncertainty about the legal regime can lead to asset stripping and stripping can give agents an interest in prolonging the absence of the rule of law this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

devaluation stabilization policies and the developing countries a macroeconomic analysis abstract this paper analyzes the short run effects of traditional balance of payments policies for a small developing country the country is assumed to be running persistent payments deficits under a fixed exchange rate regime this paper illustrates how conventional results are affected by the presence of a imported intermediate inputs b partial wage indexation and c a large initial trade deficit stagflationary effects of a currency devaluation are particularly noteworthy a tariff subsidy policy that leaves the price of imported inputs unaffected is shown to be likely to achieve the payments objectives without creating significant adverse supply side effects

the future of pensions in europe rescuing unfunded pensions suitably amended unfunded schemes remain a good idea unfunded state pension schemes are projected to become financially unsustainable this is usually attributed to demographic trends yet trends in unemployment and in female labour force participation are quantitatively as important improvements in either or both might be sufficient to rescue existing state schemes especially if combined with an end to the practice of allowing even after retirement the value of a pension to rise with national earnings rather than prices attempts at piecemeal reform are important because nothing in economic theory suggests a switch to the alternative fully funded pensions is desirable not only would such a transition be costly and therefore politically difficult it also neglects the fact that it makes sense to diversify the retirement portfolio holding claims both on labour productivity and on capital assets one can even view pensions as part of a more sophisticated system of intergenerational transfers through which workers finance their earlier education and subsequent retirement michele boldrin juan j dolado juan f jimeno and franco peracchi

intergenerational risk sharing abstract in this paper we examine government debt and tax transfer policies that can be improve the allocation of risk between generations markets cannot allocate risk efficiently between two generations whenever the two generations are not both alive prior to the occurence of a stochastic event this implies that government policies transferring risk between generations have the potential to create first order welfare improvements our model provides a non keynesian justification for the debt finance of wars and recessions as well as an added rationale for social security type tax transfer schemes which aid unlucky generations e g the depression generation at the expense of luckier generations

the politics of intergenerational redistribution this paper studies the political economic equilibrium of a two period model with overlapping generations in each period the policy is chosen under majority rule by the generations currently alive the paper identifies a politically viable set of values for public debt any amount of debt within this set is fully repaid in equilibrium even without commitments by issuing debt within this set the first generation redistributes revenue in its favor and away from the second generation the paper characterizes the determinants of the equilibrium intergenerational redistribution and identifies a difference between debt and social security as instruments of redistribution

efficiency effectiveness and implementation feasibility of energy efficiency rebates the renove plan in spain abstract state sponsored incentive policies frequently include subsidies or rebates for the purchase of more efficient appliances however more research is required into the effects of this tool in isolation a case in point is the so called renove plan in spain first the inefficiency losses dead weight losses associated with energy efficiency rebates must be taken into account such a policy may also encourage the large scale purchasing of energy efficient appliances which may finally result in an increase in electricity consumption rebound effect furthermore although a subsidy is more widely accepted than other tools from social and political viewpoints especially than taxes the fiscal consolidation challenge faced by many countries reduces the scope for environmental policy measures on the expenditure side of the budget and strengthens the need to use taxes to meet the agreed policy objectives this paper shows that the current application of the spanish renove plan with rebates on the dishwasher market for energy efficient appliances generates some welfare losses a rebound effect and a considerable deficit in public budgets the paper examines and assesses the effect of different combinations of taxes and rebates in the case of dishwashers in spain based on their performance in terms of economic efficiency environmental effectiveness and implementation feasibility

tax incentives to promote green electricity an overview of eu 27 countries this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the main tax incentives used in the eu 27 member states mss to promote green electricity sixteen mss use tax incentives to promote green electricity simultaneously with other promotion measures especially quota obligations and price regulation however not all available technologies are promoted for example six mss germany romania slovak republic denmark sweden and poland have included an exemption on the payments of excise duties for electricity when the electricity is generated from renewable energy sources res this tax incentive is the most widely used limited tax incentives in personal income tax are available in belgium france czech republic and luxembourg in corporate tax tax incentives consist mainly of a deduction in the taxable profit belgium greece czech republic and spain lower tax rates in vat are applied in three mss france italy and portugal only spain and italy use effective tax incentives in property tax as a great diversity of tax incentives has been used to promote green electricity this adds another difficulty to the eu objective of providing a renewable energy policy framework but also it offers a useful set of case studies which can be used to inform eu policy development

the political economy of an energy tax the united kingdom s climate change levy energy taxes designed to control energy consumption and to assist the achievement of climate change control targets under the kyoto protocol are fairly common in european union countries yet many of these taxes bear little resemblance to the design guidance that is given in economics textbooks political economy analysis in which the interaction of economics and political reality is emphasised explains the gap between theoretical ideals and practical reality a closer look at the factors that influence real world policy design should help policy oriented economists in designing measures that have a greater chance of adoption the end result may well be nth best solutions which simply have to be lived with but there may also be room for design improvements that still honour the political constraints of policy design this paper illustrates these issues in the context of one tax the uk climate change levy

compiling the actuarial balance for pay as you go pension systems is it better to use the hidden asset or the contribution asset the aim of this article is twofold to establish the connection between the contribution asset ca and the hidden asset ha and to determine whether using either of them to compile the actuarial balance ab sheet in the pay as you go payg pension system will provide a reliable solvency indicator with these aims in mind we develop a model based on those first put forward by settergren and mikula 2005 and boado penas et al 2008 to obtain the analytical properties of the ca and to confirm its soundness as a measure of the assets of a payg scheme our model also enables us to explore whether and to what extent the ha can be considered a second alternative measure of the assets for payg schemes the main theoretical finding is that despite their very different natures the ha and the ca may nearly coincide at the limit when the interest rate of the financial market approaches the growth of the covered wage bill from above but the ha supplies a solvency indicator which is not always consiste

the importance of the design of market based instruments for co2 mitigation an age analysis for spain in the past few decades economists have defended the use of market based instruments mbi in environmental and climate policy there have been many papers which have compared the costs of attaining environmental objectives with mbis and with command and control instruments however very few have compared different mbis in examining these costs this paper seeks to analyse various mbis for co2 mitigation from the viewpoint of cost effectiveness using an age applied general equilibrium model for the case of spain a distinction is drawn between 1 quantity instruments which represent different extents of a market for emission permits and 2 price instruments which represent different types of tax each instrument can affect different segments of the emission sources and therefore can have very different effects on the economy as a whole we show how mbi can help to minimise mitigation costs but also how taxes and tradable emission permits that are limited or constrained by many exemptions and distortions can raise costs considerably

financial repression the new structuralists and stabilization policy in semi industrialized economies abstract this paper examines the short and long run effects of a variety of macroeconomic policies in a simple model where the curb market plays a pivotal role as the marginal supplier of loanable funds it is found that financial liberalization may fail in the short run and contrary to the claims of the new structuralists that the financial market repercussions of devaluation may be favorable in evaluating any policy the time horizon is critical short and long run multipliers may differ in sign in all cases save that of a contraction in the stock of bank credit

jointly determined saving and fertility behaviour theory and estimates for germany italy uk and usa abstract the comparative statics predictions of models of the joint determination of household saving and fertility are derived under various hypotheses self interest altruism of parents towards children altruism of children towards parents etc and compared with those of models which determine saving under the assumption of exogenous fertility country specific saving and fertility equations are then estimated using time series data for germany italy uk and usa for each of the countries considered the estimates are consistent with the hypothesis that saving and fertility are jointly determined by self interested parents and reject the alternative hypotheses the data also show that a self financing expansion of social security discourages fertility and generally raises household saving

energy taxation in a small open economy social efficiency gains versus industrial concerns welfare analyses of energy taxes typically show that systems with uniform rates perform better than differentiated systems especially if revenue can be recycled by cutting taxes that are more distortionary however in practical policy efficiency gains must be traded off against industrial concerns presumably energy dependent industries of small open economies will suffer relatively more if taxed this computable general equilibrium cge study examines the social costs of compensating the energy intensive export industries in norway for their profit losses from imposing the same electricity tax on all industries the costs are surprisingly modest this is explained by the role of the nordic electricity market which is still limited enough to respond to national energy tax reforms thus an electricity price reduction partly neutralizes the direct impact of the tax on profits in addition we examine the effects of different compensation schemes and find significantly lower compensation costs when the scheme is designed to release productivity gains

lessons for an aging society the political sustainability of social security systems what is the future of social systems in oecd countries in our view the answer belongs to the realm of politics we evaluate how political constraints shape the social security system in six countries france germany italy spain the uk and the us under population aging two main aspects of the aging process are relevant to the analysis first the increase in the dependency ratio the ratio of retirees of workers reduces the average profitability of the unfunded social security system thereby inducing the agents to reduce the size of the system by substituting their claims towards future pensions with more private savings second an aging electorate leads to larger systems since it increases the relevance of pension spending on the policy makers agenda the overall assessment from our simulations is that the political aspect dominates in all countries albeit with some differences spain the fastest aging country faces the largest increase in the social security contribution rate when labor market considerations are introduced the political effect still dominates but it is less sizeable country specific characteristics not accounted for in our simulations such as the degree of redistribution in the pension system and the existence of family ties in the society may also matter our simulations deliver a strong policy implication an increase in the effective retirement age always decreases the size of the system chosen by the voters while often increasing its generosity finally delegation of pension policy to the ec may reduce political accountability and hence help to reform the systems

energy savings obligations in the uk a history of change this paper looks at energy savings obligations in the uk more specifically it discusses how the policy instrument changed over time and what the drivers of that change were the uk was the first country in europe that introduced obligations on suppliers to save energy at the customer end in 1994 since then this policy changed rapidly and is now the principal instrument to deliver energy savings in the housing stock the paper aims to answer three questions first how did the policy instrument change over time second what were the key drivers of that change third how did those pressures filter through the policy process and affect the energy savings obligations

the financial stability of notional account pensions a number of european countries are reforming their pension benefit formulas by adopting notional accounts these accounts are used to determine individual benefits but pay as you go financing is retained this paper addresses the belief that by choosing adjustment rules cleverly notional accounts can provide automatic financial equilibrium in the short run if this were true it would be a valuable advantage in terms of insulating the government budget from demographic pressures while insulating the pension budget from fiscal pressures it is shown that notional account benefit formulas cannot provide automatic financial equilibrium in the short run the paper also suggests that if indexing rules are chosen in a particular way and shocks revert rapidly to a mean the pension institution may achieve financial stability in the long run however long run stability is unlikely to be valuable because political interference occurs in the short run

macro economic effects of changes in bank interest rates simulation results for south korea abstract we use an empirical macro econometric model of korea to simulate the impact of bank interest rate changes this model includes a very detailed sub model of the financial sector plus in addition to the usual demand side transmission channels of monetary policy a link between the financial sector and the supply side of the real part of the economy via the cost of financing working capital cavallo effect increases in time deposit rate are shown to be contractionary in the short run because the portfolio shifts they trigger tighten credit conditions and cause higher costs of financing working capital people shift out of the curbmarket rather than out of cash the higher cost of financing working capital also pushes up inflation in the first quarter after the change making the increase in td rates stagflationary this effect dies out quickly however the persistence of the loss in output is shown to depend on whether the commercial banks are allowed to play their intermediary role or not if credit limits prevent the passing through into bank loans of the influx of time deposits caused by the higher rates substantial and persistent real output losses and decreased private investment were shown to result

white certificates for energy efficiency improvement with energy taxes a theoretical economic model in this paper we analyze interactions of two energy policy instruments namely a white certificates whc scheme as an innovative policy instrument for energy efficiency improvement and energy taxation these policy instruments differ in terms of objectives and final impacts on the price of electricity we examine the effect of these policy instruments in the electricity sector focusing on electricity producers and suppliers in a competitive market using microeconomic theory we identify synergies between market players and demonstrate the total effect on the electricity price when suppliers internalize the behaviour of producers in their decisions this model refers to an ideal market situation of full liberalization the cases we examine consist of electricity producers with and without a carbon tax electricity suppliers with and without an electricity tax and with whc obligations furthermore we present a parallel implementation of whc for electricity suppliers with carbon tax on electricity producers and an electricity tax with whc obligations to electricity suppliers we demonstrate differences in optimization behaviour of producers and suppliers based on a couple of cases of whc with carbon and electricity taxes various positive and negative effects of both schemes in terms of target achievement and efficiency are present which can lead to an added value of such schemes in the policy mix although uncertainties of outcomes are quite high a basic finding is that in a merit order several parameters can increase final electricity price after the implementation of different policies demand for electricity and electricity supply cost at a large scale and then follow the level of level of obligation for energy saving level of penalty and price of whc representing the marginal costs of energy saving projects the impact magnitude of parameters depends on the values chosen and on the initial position of suppliers i e if their actual behaviour deviates from full compliance with targets

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

comment on s valdes prieto the financial stability of notional account pensions in an important contribution to this journal valdes prieto 2000 has shown that the recently popular concept of notional accounts cannot guarantee short run financial stability of pay as you go financed public pension schemes in the sense of automatic budget equality for any given time path of the contribution rate in result 2 p 406 he states that notional accounts do not provide automatic financial balance in the short run when the credited notional interest rate is the growth rate of contribution revenue except for the steady state growth case in the proof he uses a table p 408 table 1 in which the maximum value of the ratio of expenditures to revenues of the pension plan is calculated for the case of a rising growth rate of contribution revenue this maximum ratio is always above 1 the author explains his finding as follows when the growth rate of contribution revenue is used as the notional interest rate which is credited to the stock of notional capital of those members reaching age 65 the rise in expenditure is greater than the rise in revenue generating a deficit ibid the following simple example confirms result 2 but shows that the ratio of expenditures to revenues behaves in the opposite way to that asserted by valdes prieto a rise in the growth rate of revenues leads to a temporary surplus of the plan whereas a fall in the growth rate implies a temporary deficit the example is based on a discrete time 3 olg model in which individuals work the first two periods of their three period life earning 1 dollar each and the contribution rate 0 is fixed at 20 percent contributions are credited to the notional account in the period in which they are paid and earn an interest equal to the growth rate of contribution revenue which is credited to the account at the beginning of the next period at the beginning of the third period the account balance is paid out as a one shot retirement benefit in panel a of table 1 it is assumed that there are 100 workers in each of the cohorts entering the labor market in period t 2 and that this number

economic ideas for a complex climate policy regime abstract the parsimony of economic theory provides general insights into an otherwise complex world however the most straightforward organizing principles from theory have not often taken hold in environmental policy or in the decentralized climate policy regime that is unfolding one reason is inadequate recognition of a variety of institutions this paper addresses three ways that the standard model may inadequately anticipate the role of institutions in the actual implementation of climate policy with a u s focus multilayered authority across jurisdictions the impressionistic rather than deterministic influence of prices through subsidiary jurisdictions and the complementary role of prices and regulation in this context the economic approach is built on the premise that incentives affect behavior we suggest that an important pathway of influence for economic theory is to infuse incentive based thinking into the conventional regulatory framework in a complex policy regime incentives can be shaped by shadow prices as well as market prices

intergenerational effects of a green tax reform for a more sustainable social security system abstract green tax reforms are popular in some circles not only because of their direct effect on reducing pollution but also because their revenue capacity may allow to reduce other more distortionary taxes despite their potential benefits the political implementation of green tax reforms is not straightforward changes in environmental taxes have different intergenerational effects which need to be taken into account when considering their political support among a country s population in this paper we analyze the economic and intergenerational welfare effects of introducing a green tax reform to ameliorate the spanish social security system we consider two types of energy taxes an energy consumption tax and an energy input tax we find that both types of reforms are favored by young individuals but rejected by older generations the number of generations supporting the reform depends crucially on the disutility that individuals derive from pollution suggesting that an increase in environmental awareness may be needed for green tax reforms to be politically viable

the structure of the climate debate first best climate policy is a uniform carbon tax which gradually rises over time civil servants have complicated climate policy to expand bureaucracies politicians to create rents environmentalists have exaggerated climate change to gain influence other activists have joined the climate bandwagon opponents to climate policy have attacked the weaknesses in climate research the climate debate is convoluted and polarized as a result and climate policy complex climate policy should become easier and more rational as the paris agreement has shifted climate policy back towards national governments changing political priorities austerity and a maturing bureaucracy should lead to a more constructive climate debate

how to deal with the rebound effect a policy oriented approach policy makers and environmental agencies have echoed concerns brought forward by academics about the need to address the rebound effect for achieving absolute energy and environmental decoupling however such concerns have generally not been translated into tangible policy action the reasons behind this inaction are not fully understood and much remains unknown about the status of the rebound effect issue on the policy agenda and policy pathways available such knowledge gaps may hamper the development of effective policies to address this issue in this paper we examine the extent to and ways in which the rebound effect is considered in policy documents and analyse thirteen specific policy pathways for rebound mitigation the effectiveness of the pathways is scrutinised and conclusions are offered to mitigate rebound effects the main policy conclusions of the paper are that an appropriate policy design and policy mix are key to avoiding undesired outcomes such as the creation of additional rebound effects and environmental trade offs from the discussion economy wide cap and trade systems as well as energy and carbon taxes when designed appropriately emerge as the most effective policies in setting a ceiling for emissions and addressing energy use across the economy

a portfolio approach to the optimal funding of pensions abstract fully funded pension systems are advocated for their higher rate of return but this return is typically risky using a simple mean variance model we find that mixed funded unfunded systems are desirable in this setting because they enable risk diversification

stagflationary effects of monetary stabilization policies a quantitative analysis of south korea this paper presents a macro model of the korean economy that focuses on short run macro economic adjustment and more in particular on the transmission channels of monetary policy between the financial and the real sector of the economy in addition to the usual link between monetary policy and aggregate demand via investment the link between monetary policy and the supply side of the economy via the financing of working capital with borrowed funds is incorporated this link can potentially reverse the short run impact of tight money on inflation and aggregate the impact on output both export prices and domestic prices show a significant sensitivity to cost of financing working capital this credit supply side link gives a stagflationary bias to restrictive credit policies the empirical relevance of this phenomenon is strongly supported by the simulation results derived with the model structurally section 2 of the paper focuses on the real sector part of the model section 3 discusses the financial sector in section 4 different monetary stabilization packages are simulated using the model presented in sections 2 and 3 and alternative policy measures are discussed the simulation runs show strong short run stagflationary effects of tight money policies