cleaner energy for sustainable future this special issue of the journal of cleaner production focuses on energy for sustainable future it is designed to mirror the increasing relevance of renewable energy sources and improved efficiency as crucial topics for practitioners in industry for governmental policy makers as well as for civic service providers researchers and educators the purpose of this special issue is to serve as a catalyst for dialogue the global warming related to co2 emissions coupled with steeply rising energy prices and the recent global financial institutional melt down are causing massive societal concerns and give rise to increasing demand for ways to improve societal and individual energy efficiency and for ways to shift increasingly to alternative low or non carbon based energy systems until recently industrial energy efficiency improvements have focused on improvements on efficiency rather than on the integration of renewable sources the aim of this special issue is the identification of policies to support the development and implementation of technologies and management approaches we can employ to make the transition to more sustainable societies the collection of papers in this special issue provide a foundation for students researchers scholars practitioners and policy makers interested in making sustainable development more than a metaphor the papers include focus upon ways for a improving industrial process to achieve improvements in energy efficiency b minimising waste disposals and reducing their impact through better management c reducing co2 emissions by making progress toward lower carbon renewable energy based systems d improving production of biofuels and hydrogen production systems facilitated by employing cleaner production and novel lca tools e improving integration of advanced materials and energy efficient equipment in different industrial sectors current and future developments in national and world economies are closely connected to sustainable efficient and safe usage of raw materials and upon energy based on cleaner production concepts and approaches that are ecologically and economically appropriate for the short and for the long term future of society these challenges have received considerable attention in the media and scientific journals over the last several years the idea of developing a specialised conference focussed upon them was put forward on various occasions focus upon them became reality on the 5th and 6th may 2008 in the historic castle of veszprem hungary the current premises of the hungarian academy of science which hosted the workshop the workshop was a stimulating event and an overwhelming success with nearly 100 contributors from africa north america asia and europe representing 28 countries after a comprehensive selection and thorough reviewing procedure 11 papers were selected for this special issue

universal coverage with supply side reform the impact on medical expenditure risk and utilization in thailand abstract we estimate the impact on out of pocket oop medical expenditure of a major reform in thailand that greatly extended health insurance coverage to achieve universality while implementing supply side measures intended to deliver cost effective care from an increased but modest public health budget difference in differences comparison of groups to whom coverage was extended or deepened with those whose coverage did not change indicates that the reform reduced oop expenditure by 28 on average and by 42 at the 95th percentile of the conditional distribution simulations suggest that exposure to medical expenditure risk was reduced by three fifths on average generating a social welfare gain equivalent to 80 200 of the approximate deadweight loss from financing the reform estimated effects on health care access suggest that the policy managed to reduce households medical expenses while also raising their utilization of both inpatient and ambulatory care

effects of universal health insurance on health care utilization and supply side responses evidence from japan abstract we investigate the effects of a massive expansion in health insurance coverage on health care utilization and supply side responses by focusing on universal health insurance introduced in japan in 1961 there are two major findings first health care utilization measured in terms of admissions inpatient days and outpatient visits to hospitals increased significantly second we also find a supply response but the size of the supply response differs across service types while the number of beds increases effects on the number of medical institutions physicians and nurses are either negligible or inconclusive our results suggest that countries planning a large expansion in health insurance coverage would need to generate sufficient financial resources to cover the surge in health care expenditures both in the short and long run our results also indicate that any slowdown in the supply side response may constrain the ability of the health care system to meet increased demand

guidelines for exploiting natural resource wealth the principles of how best to manage the various components of national wealth are outlined where the permanent income hypothesis the hotelling rule and the hartwick rule play a prominent role as far as managing natural resource wealth is concerned a case is made to use an intergenerational sovereign wealth fund to smooth consumption across generations a liquidity fund for the precautionary buffers to deal with commodity price volatility and an investment fund to park part of the windfall until the country is ready to absorb extra spending on domestic investment capital scarcity implies that a positive part of the windfall should be spent on domestic investment the conclusions highlight the political economy problems that will have to be tackled with these normative proposals for managing wealth the author 2014 published by oxford university press

using economic analysis in health workforce policy making the health workforce is an essential component in building responsive and efficient health care systems yet despite its importance it remains in many countries the weakest building block of the health system and a major constraint to achieving universal health coverage goals most countries face either absolute shortages not enough health workers or relative shortages skills imbalances sometimes both countries also face maldistribution inadequate training capacity and a weak knowledge base negative work environments weak human resources management systems poor working conditions and inadequate financial and non financial incentives there is growing consensus among researchers practitioners and the research community that many of these problems have labour market roots this paper reviews the main economic issues around key health workforce challenges and discusses the contributions that economic analysis can make to health workforce policy making it adopts a labour market framework to address the service delivery challenges countries face due to health workforce bottlenecks and discusses the importance and contribution of the health workforce to general employment and economic growth the use of an explicit economic framework helps to define policy responses that go beyond scaling up health workers training highlighting the importance also of the roles of incentives preferences and market failures

historical wealth accounts for britain progress and puzzles in measuring the sustainability of economic growth we thank the leverhulme trust for funding this research under the project history and the future

economic evaluation of healthcare interventions old and new directions the techniques of economic evaluation have been increasingly widely applied in the health sector over recent decades with hundreds of published evaluations performed in many countries and ranging across prevention programmes diagnostics treatment interventions and the organization of health care this paper examines the main methods in current use and describes the gradual systematization of economic evaluation methodologies and the increasing importance of reimbursement agencies with explicit technical requirements it reviews controversies in areas such as discounting analytic perspective identifying a cost effectiveness threshold differential treatment of particular disease areas or treatment groups and the valuation of outcomes it then considers in more detail the development of the world health organization s generalized cost effectiveness framework and the emergence of an international reference case commissioned by the bill melinda gates foundation as a way of increasing the generalizability and comparability of such studies finally the paper discusses some current controversies and possible future developments in this field

technological change and retirement decisions of older workers according to human capital theory technological change will influence the retirement decisions of older workers in two ways first workers in industries with high rates of technological change will retire later if there is a net positive correlation between technological change and on the job training second an unexpected change in the rate of technological change will induce older workers to retire sooner because the required amount of retraining will be an unattractive investment we matched industry data on productivity growth and occupational data on required training with data from the national longitudinal surveys of older men to test these hypotheses our results support both hypotheses

trans boundary commons in infectious diseases emerging threats to global health including drug resistant pathogens emerging pandemics and outbreaks represent global trans boundary commons problems where the actions of individual countries have consequences for other countries here we review what economic analysis can offer in countering these problems through the design of interventions that modify the behaviour of institutions and nations in the direction of greatest global good

equity and equality in health and health care this paper explores four definitions of equity in health care equality of utilization distribution according to need equality of access and equality of health we argue that the definitions of need in the literature are inadequate and propose a new definition we also argue that irrespective of how need and access are defined the four definitions of equity are in general mutually incompatible in contrast to previous authors we suggest that equality of health should be the dominant principle and that equity in health care should therefore entail distributing care in such a way as to get as close as is feasible to an equal distribution of health

can the mortensen pissarides model with productivity changes explain u s wage inequality this article examines whether the mortensen pissarides matching model with productivity changes can explain the time pattern of wage inequality the main finding is that the model produces counterfactual results the main source of failure seems to be the exogenous matching function and or the exogenous surplus share neither of which allows firms to use wage policies to direct workers searches

measurement of inequity in health care with heterogeneous response of use to need we propose a method of measuring and decomposing inequity in health care utilisation that allows for heterogeneity in the use need relationship this makes explicit inequity that derives from unequal treatment response to variation in need as well as that due to differential effects of non need determinants under plausible conditions concerning heterogeneity in the use need relationship and the distribution of need existing methods that impose homogeneity will underestimate pro rich inequity this prediction is confirmed for four middle income asian countries in those countries around one half of the observed socioeconomic inequality is due to utilisation being more responsive to need among the higher wealth and urban dwelling individuals

a multiple objective decision support model for the selection of remote load control strategies utilities frequently use remote load control as an effective means to achieve suitable network operational conditions this procedure usually designated load management lm is a part of the resources considered under the general designation of demand side management dsm however the use of lm in electric distribution network management is a problem that involves different conflicting aspects such as reducing peak demand maximizing utility profits and minimizing discomfort caused to consumers hence the problem is multiobjective in nature economical technical and quality of service aspects must all be explicitly accounted for in mathematical models this paper presents a multiobjective decision support model which allows the consideration of the main concerns that have an important role in lm minimize peak demand as perceived by the distribution network dispatch center maximize utility profit corresponding to the energy services delivered by the controlled loads maximize quality of service in the context of lm

technology and the wage structure this article reports direct evidence on how technological change is related to changes in wage gaps by schooling experience and gender wage gaps by schooling increased the most in industries with rising r d intensity and accelerating growth in the capital labor ratio estimates of their relationship to high tech capital are inconclusive contrary to popular notions that technological change harms older workers wage growth of experienced workers is much greater in r d intensive industries than in industries with little r d activity the gender gap narrowed more in industries that most intensively used high tech capital in 1979

dynamic governance of clean energy markets how technical innovation could accelerate climate policies abstract this article explores the governmental means to accelerate technical progress in climate protection it is based on selected best practice cases in which the diffusion of low carbon technologies has been accelerated by ambitious policies the empirical cases involve not just renewable energies but also energy efficiency the latter being considered more difficult in terms of governance the examples are taken from advanced oecd countries as well as from emerging economies this article will explore which factors have caused this dynamic development the conclusion reached will show that the interaction of positive feedback mechanisms which has already been described as virtuous cycle provides only a plausible theoretical explanation if the policy cycle is added to the market cycle and the innovation cycle climate policy should not only define ambitious targets but also address all three feedback mechanisms

wealth and sustainability for economists in 1974 it was a live question whether the exhaustion of natural resources such as oil would necessarily lead to the decline of economic activity solow showed that constant levels of consumption could be sustained in the face of exhaustibility if there is sufficient substitutability between produced and natural factors of production hartwick then proved that underpinning this result is a saving rule set investment in produced capital equal to the value of resource depletion at each point in time a large literature has shown that a comprehensive measure of the change in real wealth net saving plays a central role in determining whether current well being can be sustained in particular current declines in real wealth signal that future well being will also decline a result that has been confirmed empirically using data for developing countries changes in wealth and sustainability are therefore joined at the hip the current composition of wealth serves to define the policy challenges that countries face in achieving sustainable development if substitution possibilities are limited between natural and other factors of production as one might expect then technical progress is a necessary complement to policies for sustainability

development of supersmart grids for a more efficient utilisation of electricity from renewable sources abstract if europe is serious about reaching its target to keep global mean temperature increase below 2 c it must strive for a 100 renewable electricity system by 2050 the supersmart grid approach combines what is often perceived as two exclusive alternatives wide area power generation and decentralised power generation we argue that by combining these in fact complementary measures it is possible to address the crucial issue of renewable generation fluctuating supply in a comprehensive as well as in a technologically and economically viable manner thus the supersmart grid simultaneously can contribute to energy security climate security social security and national security

multi objective optimization of a simplified factory model acting as a prosumer on the electricity market abstract this paper presents multi objective optimization for minimization of both the operating and the investment costs for a hypothetical factory acting as a prosumer on the electricity market operating costs are related to the costs of energy supply of factory and investment costs are related to size and the capacity of the available thermal storage warehouse as well as pv power import and power export unit operating and investment costs are opposing in the objective function since costs associated with the increase in the capacity of the structures enable the reduction of the operating costs the procedure presented in this paper shows the importance of multi objective optimization and weighting between the two types of costs results are presenting the developed pareto fronts overall optimum and the annual values of all costs depending on the volatility of market clearing prices and price of fuel analysis shows that thermal storage and warehouse capacity have crucial role in offsetting the high prices of the energy supply

real time pricing to assist in load frequency control we study the use of real time prices to assist in the control of frequency and tie line deviations in electric power systems the role of such prices if any would yield the practical limit to the trend in electric power systems of varying prices on ever faster time scales the application of prices in electric power systems to increase the efficient use of resources is an established technique the pricing schemes can be classified by time scales energy adjustment charges vary seasonally or monthly while time of day rates vary two or three times per day the power brokering system of 18 florida utilities operates on an hourly time scale in a spot price market of buyers and sellers of electric power prices adapt to system operation conditions such as changes in system lambda the effect of generation shortages and the effect of line overloads the fastest spot price that has been implemented to date is 30 minutes most implementations involve 1 hour time steps which may be prespecified 24 hours in advance on a five minute time scale is system lambda a shadow price used internally by electric utilities for economic dispatch a key assumption of spot pricing and economic dispatch is that the power system is in quasi steady state i e power system dynamics involving frequency voltage etc are ignored and only kirchoff s laws for network are considered the paper explores pricing at time scales where the quasi steady state assumption is no longer valid

the determinants of mortality mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time starting in a few countries in the 18th century and continuing to fall today in just the past century life expectancy has increased by over 30 years at the same time mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries with a difference in life expectancy between rich and poor countries of also about 30 years this difference persists despite the remarkable progress in health improvement in the last half century at least until the hiv aids pandemic in both the time series and the cross section data there is a strong correlation between income per capita and mortality rates a correlation that also exists within countries where richer better educated people live longer we review the determinants of these patterns over history over countries and across groups within countries while there is no consensus about the causal mechanisms we tentatively identify the application of scientific advance and technical progress some of which is induced by income and facilitated by education as the ultimate determinant of health such an explanation allows a consistent interpretation of the historical cross country and within country evidence we downplay direct causal mechanisms running from income to health

wages employment structure and employer size wage premia their relationship to advanced technology usage at us manufacturing establishments a common theme in the labour econiomics literature is that use of advanced technology in production requires a skilled and educated workforce using a new survey of production processes at us manufacturing plants we ask whether plants that employ advanced technology require a skilled workforce we find that plants that use the most advanced technology pay the highest wages and employ the greatest fraction of non production workers who are generally regarded as more skilled than production workers the inclusion in standard wage regressions of variables that indicate the use of advanced technology reduces the size wage premia by as much as 60 for some size categories

computers skills and wages computer technology is most prominently used by skilled high wage workers this suggests that computer use requires skills to take full advantage of the possibilities which are particularly present among relatively skilled workers this article develops a simple technology adoption model showing that the decision to adopt computer technology depends on i the tasks to be performed ii the level of skill or education and iii the level of wages applying this model to british data it is shown that the effect of wages and particular tasks on computer adoption is larger than the effect of skills on adoption the estimates suggest that in britain computer use is likely to be a matter of cost efficiency and not so much of workers skills

genuine savings and sustainability genuine savings gs has emerged as the leading economic indicator of sustainable economic development at the country level it derives from the literatures on weak sustainability wealth accounting and national income accounting we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of gs focusing on the relationship between changes in a nation s extended capital stock and the future path of consumption the indicator has entered widespread use propelled by the world bank s publications despite its varying performance as a predictor for future consumption notwithstanding the extensive body of literature reviewed promising future research avenues are identified

the economics of health system design there has been much rhetoric in global health about the need to consider the health sector as a system defined by the world health organization as all the activities whose primary purpose is to improve health the need to adopt a system wide perspective arises from the complexity of the processes for delivering effective health services and the important interdependencies between elements of the health system however there have hitherto been very few contributions from an economic perspective that explicitly address these issues this paper argues that an economic paradigm of constrained optimization adapted to the systemic nature of the health sector could provide an analytical and practical approach to policy makers in assessing their health systems and deriving solutions the paper therefore discusses the objectives of the health system the factors that constrain optimization and the decision variables in the form of policy levers economic approaches that could contribute to the associated research agenda include institutional economics micro simulation and option pricing theory the important feature of such methods is that they offer the possibility of developing tractable methods for addressing the complexity and interconnectedness of the health system

human capital tangible wealth and the intangible capital residual since income is the return on wealth the total wealth of any given country should be on the order of 20 times its gdp instead the average observed ratio from the balance sheet accounts of the system of national accounts sna is a factor of 2 6 to 6 6 depending on whether natural resource stocks are included in the balance sheet the clear implication is that the sna wealth accounts are incomplete with the most obvious omission being human capital estimating the value of human capital using the lifetime income approach for a sample of thirteen mostly high income countries yields a mean share of human capital in total wealth of 62 four times the value of produced capital and 15 times the value of natural capital but for selected high income countries in the sample there is still an average of 25 of total wealth which is unaccounted it is neither produced nor natural nor human capital this residual intangible wealth is arguably the stock equivalent of total factor productivity the value of assets such as institutional quality and social capital which augment the capacity of produced natural and human capital to support a stream of consumption into the future

equity in the finance and delivery of health care some tentative cross country comparisons textabstractequity is widely acknowledged to be an important goal in the field of health care indeed mclachlan and maynard 1982 have gone so far as to suggest that the vast majority of the population would elect for equity to be the prime consideration p 556 a view endorsed by mooney 1986 p 145 several researchers have investigated how successful their own country s delivery and or financing system is in achieving its stated equity goals in general the strategy of these studies is to compare the current situation with some ideal or target situation le grand 1978 for example in what has become a classic study in the field compares the distributions across socio economic groups of illness and public expenditure on health care in britain in 1972 and concludes that the national health service nhs has failed to achieve equity in the delivery of health care

comprehensive versus inclusive wealth accounting and the assessment of sustainable development an empirical comparison abstract this paper compares alternative wealth estimates reported by the world bank and in the inclusive wealth reports although theoretical limitations and shortcomings are widely acknowledged in the literature the extent to which the alternative approaches to wealth accounting matter empirically is not well known comparing the alternative data in levels shares growth rates and monetary sustainability indices derived from them major differences emerge between oecd and non oecd countries for the former the alternative wealth estimates seem complementary but only if a key assumption made in the derivation of inclusive wealth is violated for the latter the data seem much less useful for example depending on which data source is used for the group of low income countries the share of natural capital in total wealth is either 36 8 or 60 4 suggesting that extreme care must be taken if the composition of wealth were to be used to inform policy making neither wealth data set provides a definite guide to economic sustainability but a combination of indices derived from both might be useful in a holistic assessment of sustainability

the oregon health insurance experiment evidence from the first year in 2008 a group of uninsured low income adults in oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for medicaid this lottery provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use financial strain and health of low income adults using a randomized controlled design in the year after random assignment the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that was not selected we find that in this first year the treatment group had substantively and statistically significantly higher health care utilization including primary and preventive care as well as hospitalizations lower out of pocket medical expenditures and medical debt including fewer bills sent to collection and better self reported physical and mental health than the control group

does unmeasured ability explain the higher wages of new technology workers abstract we study the impact on new technologies nt on wages using a unique data set that matches data on individuals and on their firms in his important article on the same topic krueger 1993 did not give a definitive answer to the following question if workers who use nt are better paid is it because they are abler or because nt increases their productivity we try to provide a precise answer to this question comparing cross section estimates firm effect estimates and person effect estimates we show that computer based new technologies are used by abler workers these workers appear to become more productive when they get more experienced with these nt in terms of wage differentials the introduction of computer based nt contributes to the increase but less than supposed before each year experience with computer based nt adds around 1 to the wage of workers using such techniques

demand responses of korean commercial and industrial businesses to critical peak pricing of electricity abstract dynamic pricing of electricity is receiving growing attention as a key enabler of the smart grid and a solution for promoting grid resilience to increasing penetration of renewable sources despite various dynamic pricing programs are contemplated and actively implemented by utilities in many developed economies corporate decision makers are not aware of the extent to which their businesses can adapt to the programs and its associated risks and opportunities this study investigates the demand response of commercial and industrial businesses to the korean critical peak pricing pilot which was implemented in the winter of 2013 the demand responses of 802 businesses covering 34 commercial and industrial categories are evaluated and characterized by constructing their individual baseline loads the results resoundingly confirm substantial differences in demand response across and within the segments with the magnitude of response closely correlated with the firms expenditure shares of electricity it is thus suggested that conventional business classification is not sufficient enough to characterize firms demand response to dynamic pricing plans calling for firm level data based approaches to consumer segmentation and electricity services this study also identifies two important types of response behavior to which due attention has not been paid shortterm learning effect that is the demand responsiveness increasing with cpp event experiences and seemingly inefficient behavior of preparatory and recovering reductions in off peak hours neighboring critical peak hours

the economics of global health an assessment the international community through the millennium development goals and now the sustainable development goals has long recognized the critical role of improved global health in achieving social and economic development this edition of the oxford review of economic policy explores whether this importance has been mirrored in the field of economics it does so by bringing together the voices of 28 economists working on widely varying aspects of global health economics to confront three key policy questions how do we build better more equitable health systems how are global commons health problems to be overcome and how might we improve evaluation and priority setting in global health this assessment considers the degree to which these questions have been answered and extracts the key thrusts of a research agenda it suggests that as in global health itself while much has been achieved many challenges and potential achievements await in the field of global health economics

green growth degrowth and the commons the concepts of green growth and degrowth occupy central positions in the public debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment while proponents of the former approach claim that environmental measures can promote growth by for example more efficient use of natural resources proponents of the latter maintain that environmental integrity can only be upheld by slowing down growth this paper argues that both approaches constitute inadequate foundations for public policy as they fail to appropriately conceptualize social welfare we show how policy aimed at social welfare can be understood as managing a portfolio of capital stocks some of which exhibit the characteristics of commons i e common pool resources and public goods we then propose a programme of welfare diagnostics which aims at establishing minimum thresholds for capital stocks essential to welfare as a guide for real world policy formulation and discuss the role of appropriation of natural resource rents for its practical implementation we conclude by highlighting the central role of scientific policy advice in determining how different conceptions of welfare would be reflected in setting targets and choosing the means to achieve them

how renewables will change electricity markets in the next five years photovoltaic pv cells onshore wind turbines internet technologies and storage technologies have the potential to fundamentally change electricity markets in the years ahead photovoltaic cells are the most disruptive energy technology as they allow consumers of all sizes to produce power by themselves new actors in the power market can begin operating with a new bottom up control logic unsubsidised pv markets may start to take off in 2013 fuelling substantial growth where pv power is getting cheaper than grid or diesel backup electricity for commercial consumers managing loads and achieving a good match between power consumption and weather dependent power production will likely become a key issue this consumption production balance may trigger massive innovation and investment in energy management technologies involving different kinds of storage and controls increasing autonomy and flexibility of consumers challenges the top down control logic of traditional power supply and pushes for a more decentralised and multi layered system how rapidly and smoothly this transformation occurs depends to a large extent on the adaptation speed of the regulatory framework and on the ability of market players to develop appropriate business models the paper discusses conflicts of interest hurdles and drivers opportunities and traps for this perspective

simple rule for management of thermal loads with real time prices abstract the integration of renewable energies and therefore the generation of a clean and sustainable energy is a current demand by society the use of real time pricing offers advantages for integrating renewable resources into the electrical grid this is because users enhance the flexibility of their own energy demand thanks to planning loads with accumulation capacity the aim of the present work is to equip users to manage their energy demands with simple planning systems for this a simple rule is proposed to help a greater number of users to gain the capacity to manage their demand the new rule based on a geometric progression of real time pricing of energy and intrinsic characteristics of the load provides valuable information for the user to decide whether or not to accumulate energy in the load this rule provides good results by the simulation of a simple thermal load

green growth an assessment green growth is almost tautologically required for global welfare to rise in the long run economic growth is desirable not least because over 1 billion people still live in conditions of poverty undermining the ecological basis for human civilization will damage human welfare and further undermine economic growth there are large adverse environmental externalities from economic activity that affect human welfare directly and indirectly through lower measured output finding ways to tackle these externalities will enhance wellbeing and allow continued growth of gdp while preserving aggregate natural capital however achieving this goal presents societies with major challenges the composition of gdp is likely to have to change significantly with more emphasis on new ideas and less on increased material throughputs the role of the state in a green growth transition will have to go beyond internalizing externalities to get prices right the necessary transformation will be large system wide and structural so the state must also provide at the least overall strategic direction innovation will be central to any successful strategy as will be dealing with the distributional consequences of stronger environmental policies particularly in developing countries organizing the appropriate collective action at the right levels in the face of inadequate information while ensuring that the appropriate governance arrangements are in place will not be easy policy experimentation is needed with more rigorous ex post evaluation and where successful rapid dissemination of the results

specifying human capital a review of the measures of the stock of human capital used in empiricalgrowth research including adult literacy rates school enrollmentratios and average years of schooling of the working age population reveals that human capital is mostly poorly proxied the simple use ofthe most common proxy average years of schooling misspecifies therelationship between education and the stock of human capital based onhuman capital theory the specification of human capital is extended toallow for decreasing returns to education and for differences in thequality of a year of education the different specifications give riseto hugely differing measures of the stock of human capital acrosscountries and development accounting results show that misspecifiedhuman capital measures can lead to severe underestimation of thedevelopment effect of human capital

the returns to computer use revisited have pencils changed the wage structure too are the large measured wage differentials for on the job computer use a true return to computer skills or do they just reflect that higher wage workers use computers on their jobs we examine this issue with three large cross sectional surveys from germany first we confirm that the estimated wage differential associated with computer use in germany is very similar to the u s differential second we also measure large differentials for on the job use of calculators telephones pens or pencils or for those who work while sitting down we argue that these findings cast some doubt on the literal interpretation of the computer use wage differential as reflecting true returns to computer use or skill

the diffusion of computers and the distribution of wages abstract when the costs are decreasing workers adopt technology at the point where the costs equal the increased productivity output per worker increases immediately while productivity benefits increase only gradually if costs continue to fall as a result workers in computer adopting labor market groups experience an immediate fall in wages due to increased supply on the other hand adopting workers experience wage increases with some delay this model explains why increased computer use does not immediately lead to higher wage inequality more specifically the results of the model are shown to be consistent with the question why within group wage inequality among skilled workers as a result of computer technology adoption in the united states increased in the 1970s while between group wage inequality and within group wage inequality among the unskilled did not start to increase until the 1980s the model also predicts that the more compressed german wage structure leads to a lagged diffusion of computer technology along with smaller changes in wage inequality our empirical analysis suggests that this is consistent with the actual developments in germany since the 1980s finally the theoretical predictions seem to be of the right magnitude to explain the empirical quantities observed in the data

ethics of the discount rate in the stern review on the economics of climate change any comparison of the costs and benefits of climate change is dominated by the chosen discount rate but although the stern review emphasises the ethical nature of the parameters entering into its choice of a relatively low discount rate its discussion of the pure time preference parameter is unbalanced in particular no consideration is given to the role of agent relative ethics which i has a wellestablished philosophical pedigree going back to david hume ii is likely to correspond closely to world wide public attitudes towards intergenerational welfare and iii would entail discounting a unit of welfare accruing to future generations compared to an equal unit accruing to people alive today at a positive rate the authors also discuss the other ethical parameter upon which the discount rate depends namely the elasticity of marginal utility with respect to consumption in the conventional model this simultaneously reflects different aspects of inequality aversion as well as risk aversion which complicates its interpretation finally they discuss the divergence between market rates of discount and the low rate chosen in the review and the limitations on the one hand on the normative significance of market rates as well as the danger on the other hand of relying on rates chosen by elites or philosopher kings

europe and central asia s great post communist social health insurance experiment aggregate impacts on health sector outcomes abstract the post communist transition to social health insurance in many of the central and eastern european and central asian countries provides a unique opportunity to try to answer some of the unresolved issues in the debate over the relative merits of social health insurance and tax financed health systems this paper employs regression based generalizations of the difference in differences method on panel data from 28 countries for the period 1990 2004 we find that controlling for any concurrent provider payment reforms adoption of social health insurance increased national health spending and hospital activity rates but did not lead to better health outcomes

investing exhaustible resource rents and the path of consumption we set out dollar valued net national product for an economy with a wasting essential stock oil deposit we take up maintaining capital intact and locally unchan ging consumption the percentage change in net investment or genuine savings relative to the market rate of interest denotes whether current consumption is rising

measuring progress towards universal health coverage with an application to 24 developing countries the last few years have seen a growing commitment worldwide to universal health coverage uhc yet there is a lack of clarity on how to measure progress towards uhc this paper proposes a mashup index that captures both aspects of uhc that everyone irrespective of their ability to pay gets the health services they need and that nobody suffers undue financial hardship as a result of receiving care service coverage is broken down into prevention and treatment and financial protection into impoverishment and catastrophic spending nationally representative household survey data are used to adjust population averages to capture inequalities between the poor and better off nonlinear tradeoffs are allowed between and within the two dimensions of the uhc index and all indicators are expressed such that scores run from 0 to 100 and higher scores are better in a sample of 24 countries for which there are detailed information on uhc inspired reforms a cluster of high performing countries emerges with uhc scores of between 79 and 84 brazil colombia costa rica mexico and south africa and a cluster of low performing countries emerges with uhc scores in the range 35 57 ethiopia guatemala india indonesia and vietnam countries have mostly improved their uhc scores between the earliest and latest years for which there are data by about 5 points on average however the improvement has come from increases in receipt of key health interventions not from reductions in the incidence of out of pocket payments on welfare