market share and price rigidity abstract survey evidence shows that the main reason why firms keep prices stable is that they are concerned about losing customers or market share we construct a general equilibrium model in which firms care about the size of their customer base firms and customers form long term relationships because consumers incur costs to switch sellers in an environment with sectoral productivity shocks we show that cost pass through is a non monotonic function of the size of switching costs specifically prices tend to become more stable as the fraction of repeat customers increases and the elasticity of the customer base falls

income dispersion and counter cyclical markups recent advances in measuring cyclical changes in the income distribution raise new questions how might these distributional changes affect the business cycle itself we show how counter cyclical income dispersion can generate counter cyclical markups in the goods market without any preference shocks or price setting frictions in recessions idiosyncratic labor productivity shocks raise income dispersion lower the price elasticity of demand and increase imperfectly competitive firms optimal markups the calibrated model explains not only many cyclical features of markups but also cyclical and long run patterns of standard business cycle aggregates

bureaucracy and growth a cross national analysis of the effects of weberian state structures on economic growth the role of bureaucratic authority structures in facilitating economic growth has been a sociological concern since max weber s classic contributions almost 100 years ago using a recent and original data set we examine the characteristics of core state economic agencies and the growth records of a sample of 35 developing countries for the 1970 1990 period our weberianness scale offers a simple measure of the degree to which these agencies employ meritocratic recruitment and offer predictable rewarding long term careers we find that these weberian characteristics significantly enhance prospects for economic growth even when we control for initial levels of gdp per capita and human capital our results imply that weberianness should be included as a factor in general models of economic growth they also suggest the need for more attention by policymakers to building better bureaucracies and more research by social scientists on variations in how state bureaucracies are organized

sustainable supply chain management in emerging economies environmental turbulence institutional voids and sustainability trajectories abstract although research on supply chain management has made many valuable contributions there is a dearth of empirical evidence and theoretical reflection on the characteristics of supply chains that operate mainly in developing and emerging economies the aim of this paper is to help to fill this gap by exploring how supply chain sustainability can be implemented and managed in these settings an in depth case study of the upstream oil and gas industry supply chain in brazil was used to develop propositions about supply chains that operate in developing settings drawing from institutional theory evolutionary theory complexity theory and from the organizational learning innovation and strategy literatures this paper offers four key findings and contributions to the supply chain literature first it shows that becoming a sustainable supply chain is not a destination but a journey where trajectory and time matter given the evolutionary nature of supply chain sustainability trajectories this paper highlights that supply chains learn and evolve just as organizations do second this research indicates that although globalization is a trend natural resource based supply chains are often more geographically bounded and susceptible to local social demands than other supply chains third this paper extends the supply chain literature by arguing that supply chains face additional barriers to sustainability in developing and emerging economies which contribute to a higher degree of complexity and uncertainty due to the existence of highly turbulent business environments and institutional voids these factors in turn hinder supply chain learning and innovation and reduce the slope of supply chains sustainability trajectories finally this research contributes to the literature by claiming that due to the highly complex and uncertain business environments in these settings focal companies play an even more important role in managing the escalating ambiguity stimulating supply chain learning and promoting innovation towards supply chains enhanced sustainability performance

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in customer markets a growing body of evidence suggests that ongoing relationships between consumers and firms may be important for understanding price dynamics we investigate whether the existence of such customer relationships has important consequences for the conduct of both long run and short run policy our central result is that when consumers and firms are engaged in long term relationships the optimal rate of price inflation volatility is very low even though all prices are completely flexible this finding is in contrast to those obtained in first generation ramsey models of optimal fiscal and monetary policy which are based on walrasian markets echoing the basic intuition of models based on sticky prices unanticipated inflation in our environment causes a type of relative price distortion across markets such distortions stem from fundamental trading frictions that give rise to long lived customer relationships and makes pursuing inflation stability optimal

fuel efficiency improvements feedback mechanisms and distributional effects in the oil market we study the interactions between fuel efficiency improvements in the transport sector and the oil market where the efficiency improvements are policy induced in certain regions of the world we are especially interested in feedback mechanisms of fuel efficiency such as the rebound effect carbon leakage and the green paradox but also the distributional effects for oil producers an intertemporal numerical model of the international oil market is introduced where opec core producers have market power we find that the rebound effect has a noticeable effect on the transport sector with the magnitude depending on the oil demand elasticity in the benchmark simulations we calculate that almost half of the energy savings may be lost to a direct rebound effect and an additional 10 to oil price adjustments in addition there is substantial intersectoral leakage to other sectors through lower oil prices in the regions that introduce the policy there is a small green paradox effect in the sense that oil consumption increases initially when the fuel efficiency measures are gradually implemented finally international carbon leakage will be significant if policies are not implemented in all regions we estimate leakage rates of 35 or higher when only major consuming regions implement fuel economy policies non opec producers will to a larger degree than opec producers cut back on its oil supply as a response to fuel efficiency policies due to high production costs

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

oil exploration under climate treaties abstract in this paper we focus on how an international climate treaty will influence the exploration of oil in non opec countries we present a numerical intertemporal global equilibrium model for the fossil fuel markets the international oil market is modelled with a cartel opec and a competitive fringe on the supply side following a nash cournot approach an initial resource base for oil is given in the non opec region however the resource base changes over time due to depletion exploration and discovery when studying the effects of different climate treaties on oil exploration two contrasting incentives apply if an international carbon tax is introduced the producer price of oil will drop compared to the reference case this gives an incentive to reduce oil production and exploration however the oil price may increase less rapidly over time which gives an incentive to expedite production and exploration in fact in the case of a rising carbon tax we find the last incentive to be the strongest which means that an international climate treaty may increase oil exploration in non opec countries for the coming decades and reduce opec s market share

is there really a green paradox abstract in the absence of a co2 tax the anticipation of a cheaper renewable backstop increases current emissions of co2 since the date at which renewables are phased in is brought forward and more generally future emissions of co2 will decrease the effect on global warming is unclear green welfare falls if the backstop is relatively expensive and full exhaustion of fossil fuels is optimal but may increase if the backstop is sufficiently cheap relative to the cost of extracting the last drop of fossil fuels plus marginal global warming damages as then it is attractive to leave more fossil fuels unexploited and thus limit co2 emissions we establish these results by analyzing depletion of non renewable fossil fuels followed by a switch to a clean renewable backstop paying attention to timing of the switch and the amount of fossil fuels remaining unexploited we also discuss the potential for limit pricing when the non renewable resource is owned by a monopolist finally we show that if backstops are already used and more backstops become economically viable as the price of fossil fuels rises a lower cost of the backstop will either postpone fossil fuel exhaustion or leave more fossil fuel in situ thus boosting green welfare however if a market economy does not internalize global warming externalities and renewables have not kicked in yet full exhaustion of fossil fuel will occur in finite time and a backstop subsidy always curbs green welfare

the role of product market regulations in the process of structural change abstract the sectoral allocation of labor differs considerably across developed economies even in the presence of similar patterns of structural change a general equilibrium model that captures the stylized facts of structural change is presented in this framework economy wide product market regulations hinder the development of dynamic sectors such as service industries this is consistent with the negative cross country relationship between product market regulations and the service employment share discussed in the paper additionally the model suggests that higher service prices and rents in regulated economies reduce labor supply providing a rationale for the negative association between product market regulations and the employment rate previously found in the literature

job matching and propagation in the u s labor market the vacancy unemployment ratio and employment react sluggishly to productivity shocks we show that the job matching model in its standard form cannot reproduce these patterns due to excessively rapid vacancy responses extending the model to incorporate sunk costs for vacancy creation yields highly realistic dynamics creation costs induce entrant firms to smooth the adjustment of new openings following a shock leading the stock of vacancies to react sluggishly

determinants of the environmental kuznets curve considering economic activity sector diversification in the opec countries abstract sectors contribute differently to the total level of co2 emissions per capita since they are heterogeneous in terms of gdp structure this work investigates the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis considering a set of twelve of the fourteen opec countries it contributes to previous literature exploring the environmental kuznets curve relationship by analysing how economic activity sector diversification impacts the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions addressing an important identified gap to address this gap annual data from 1992 to 2015 is used a panel cross section analysis is provided between countries and for the seven considered sectors is estimated through panel corrected standard errors and convergence estimations are presented conclusions point to the relocation of pollution intensive sectors to almost all of the opec countries for all countries a u shaped relationship is evidenced implying that economic growth in oil producing and exporting countries increases environmental degradation while energy consumption increases environmental damage trade openness seems to have a significant and negative effect over emissions leading to environmental improvements this study points out that opec countries will have increased challenges facing them in terms of environmental degradation and only a few economic activity sectors can conduct environmental improvements through growth the inclusion of oil prices increased coefficients magnitude probably these sectors are already allocating more labour and capital in projects and investments on renewable energy energy efficiency and energy savings substituting fossil fuels like oil

optimal monetary policy in a model of the credit channel we study a simple extension of the basic new keynesian set up in which we relax the assumption of frictionless financial markets due to asymmetric information and default risk bank lending rates incorporate a spread over the deposit rate we demonstrate that financial frictions affect aggregate dynamics mainly through their impact on firms financing costs which increase in both the deposit rate and in the spread between lending and deposit rates welfare includes a concern for smoothing these two financial market variables our numerical simulations suggest that an aggressive easing of policy is optimal in response to adverse financial market shocks

the shift in global crude oil market structure a model based analysis of the period 2013 2017 abstract this paper analyzes the recent developments in the global oil market investigating how the 2014 2016 price collapse and the following opec agreement affected the crude oil market structure and the behavior of major suppliers to this end we develop a partial equilibrium model with a spatial structure for the global crude oil market and simulate the market for the period between 2013 and 2017 under different market structure setups the simulation results reveal that although the oligopolistic market structures fit overall well to the realized market outcomes they are not successful at explaining the low prices during 2015 and 2016 which instead are closer to estimated competitive levels we further suggest that from 2014 onward the market power potential of major suppliers has shrunk considerably supporting the view that the market has become more competitive we also analyze the saudi arabia and russia led opec agreement and find that planned production cuts in 2017 particularly of saudi arabia and russia were below the levels of estimated non competitive market structure setups

market structure and cyclical fluctuations in u s manufacturing the relevance of imperfect competition for models of economic fluctuations has received increased attention from researchers in both macroeconomics and industrial organization the authors outline a new methodology for estimating industry markups of price over marginal cost and the influence of market structure on cyclical movements in total factor productivity measures of industry concentration import competition and unionization are important for explaining markups in some industry groups much of the estimated markup of price over marginal cost is accounted for by noncapital fixed costs finally the authors show that their estimated margins fluctuate substantially over the cycle in particular markups are countercyclical especially in concentrated durable goods industries copyright 1988 by mit press

an economic capital model integrating credit and interest rate risk in the banking book banks often measure credit and interest rate risk in the banking book separately and then add the risk measures to determine economic capital this approach misses complex interactions between the two risk types we develop a framework where these risks are analysed jointly since banking book positions are generally not marked to market our model is based on book value accounting our simulations show that interactions matter and that ignoring them leads to risk overstatement the magnitude of the errors depends on the structure of the balance sheet and on the repricing characteristics of assets and liabilities

evaluating the performance of the search and matching model abstract does the search and matching model fit aggregate u s labor market data while the model has become an important tool of macroeconomic analysis recent literature pointed to some significant failures in accounting for the data this paper aims to answer two questions i does the model fit the data and if so on what dimensions ii does the data fit the model i e what are the data which are relevant to be explained by the model the analysis shows that the model fits certain specifications of the data on many dimensions though not on all this includes capturing the high persistence and high volatility of most of the key variables the negative co variation of unemployment and vacancies and the behavior of the worker job finding rate a key role in this fit is played by the convexity of hiring costs and the stochastic properties of the separation rate the latter is a major component of the rate discounting the future value of the job worker match the paper offers a workable empirically grounded version of the model for the analysis of aggregate u s labor market dynamics

understanding the differences in korean and u s executives strategic orientations competitive positioning in a global market requires an understanding of the decision processes and behavioral attributes of executives from different countries these attributes reflect the executives cultural background the national policies under which they have worked and their home country s level of economic development institutional context the current research compared strategic decision models of u s and korean executives and the results suggest that criteria employed by the executives from the two countries differ differences in institutional context between korea and the u s a were reflected in the weightings of objective criteria used by the executives korean executives emphasized industry attractiveness sales and market share because of policies that encourage growth and u s executives emphasized projected demand discounted cash flow and roi because of policies and institutions that focus on profitability the results suggest the importance of understanding the strategic orientations of international competitors partners in international strategic alliances and managers of international subsidiaries or divisions 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

macroeconomic effects of regulation and deregulation in goods and labor markets product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution it typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects to study these effects we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions monopolistic competition in the goods market which determines the size of rents and bargaining in the labor market which determines the distribution of rents product market regulation determines entry costs and the degree of competition labor market regulation determines the bargaining power of workers we show the effects of deregulation we then use our results to discuss the political economy of deregulation and recent macroeconomic evolutions in europe

a hard nut to crack implementing supply chain sustainability in an emerging economy abstract in the last decade sustainable supply chain management has become a key topic in the sustainability literature as well as a buzzword in industry and policy circles although research has made substantial contributions there is a lack of understanding on how focal companies operating in emerging economies can lead the implementation of sustainability into their supply chains this research connects and advances the constructs of cleaner production sustainability and supply chains by exploring a classic case of a focal company operating in an emerging economy that even facing considerable challenges has been able to succeed in transforming its entire supply chain drawing from stakeholder theory and contingency theory this research offers four key contributions to the sustainability and supply chain discourses as follows 1 it proposes an innovation centered approach to sustainable supply chain management by adapting and extending the tcos uncertainty framework 2 it suggests that the way a focal company manages and is influenced by its established network of relationships shape the evolution of the supply chain sustainability trajectories 3 it argues that supply chains are dynamic entities and should then be considered and understood through the lenses of evolutionary approaches and 4 it suggests that the implementation and management of sustainable supply chains are context specific challenges and therefore theoretical managerial and policy generalizations are difficult to be achieved

international evidence on aggregate short run and long run interfuel substitution in this paper we build on recent work by serletis et al 2010 in press and report short and long run estimates of aggregate interfuel substitution for a number of oecd and non oecd countries in doing so we use recent pooled intercountry data since 1980 and state of the art advances in microeconometrics including duality theory and flexible functional forms also motivated by the widespread practice in the empirical energy demand literature of ignoring theoretical regularity we estimate our model subject to global curvature but not monotonicity using methods developed by diewert and wales 1987 we provide inference and also a policy perspective using parameter estimates that are consistent with the theoretical regularity conditions of neoclassical microeconomic theory

international deviations from the law of one price the role of search frictions and market share this article examines the size and persistence of international deviations from the law of one price in an industry with search frictions cost differences lead foreign and domestic firms to price differently within countries when local firms are more common in each country there are large and persistent price differences across countries large and persistent changes in international relative costs lead to large and persistent changes in international relative prices dynamic considerations imply that the amount of a cost shock firms pass through to prices is u shaped in the market share of firms receiving the shock

energy price reform in saudi arabia modeling the economic and environmental impacts and understanding the demand response abstract saudi arabia has regulated domestic energy prices for decades setting them below international market levels energy subsidies in saudi arabia are generally implicit because they lead to foregone revenues for the government low energy prices also encourage rapid energy demand growth and wasteful consumption while limiting incentives to invest in energy efficiency saudi arabia recently started to reform energy prices leading to large increases in gasoline and residential electricity prices in 2018 to measure the economic and environmental impacts of energy price reform we econometrically model gasoline and residential electricity demand using harvey s 1990 structural time series model our estimated equations reveal that gasoline demand and residential electricity demand in saudi arabia are strongly price and income inelastic despite the major reforms that were recently implemented our welfare analysis also shows that the energy price reforms in 2018 in gasoline and residential electricity respectively delivered welfare gains of 8 8 and 3 8 billion sar annually 2 3 and 1 0 billion us additionally our decomposition analysis reveals that these energy price reforms were the largest contributors to the observed decreases in gasoline and residential electricity consumption in 2018

the relation between price and marginal cost in u s industry an examination of data on output and labor input reveals that some u s industries have marginal cost well below price the conclusion rests on the finding that cyclical variations in labor input are small compared with variations in output in booms firms produce substantially more output and sell it for a price that exceeds the costs of the added inputs the paper documents the disparity between price and marginal cost where marginal cost is estimated from annual variations in cost it considers a variety of explanations of the findings that are consistent with competition but none is found to be completely plausible

search in the product market and the real business cycle empirical evidence suggests that most firms operate in imperfectly competitivemarkets we develop a search matching model between wholesalers and retailers firms face search costs and form long term relationships price bargain results in both wholesaler and retailer markups depending on firms relative bargaining power we simulate the model to explore the role of product market search frictions in business cycles we show that the way search costs are modelled is crucial to provide a realistic picture of firms business environment and improve the cyclical properties of an otherwise standard real business cycle model

strategic experimentation understanding change and performance in new ventures abstract this research was motivated by an interest in understanding more about the extent to which entrepreneurs initiate changes along various dimensions of strategy the nature of those changes and their implications for firm performance our interest in this topic began with the observation that within the large body of strategic change literature the research effort has focused almost exclusively on large and established firms moreover a fundamental assumption underlying much of this work is that strategic change involves movement from one dominant strategic approach to another this premise does little to motivate or contribute to the understanding of change and strategy in new ventures where it is less likely that a dominant approach exists thus we drew upon the literature in managerial cognition to develop the idea of strategic experimentation as the conceptual foundation for studying change and strategy in new ventures our basic premise is that in new ventures changes along dimensions of strategy are reflective of a process of trial and error learning whereby the entrepreneur seeks to develop an understanding of the competitive situation and determine how to compete within that context further we suggest that some aspects of the firm s strategy are more likely to be the focus of experimentation than others building on these premises we developed a series of research hypotheses which propose that the greater the level of perceived environmental hostility the higher the level of strategic experimentation that will be undertaken we also propose that experimentation will always be greater along some dimensions of strategy than others and that the degree of environmental hostility will influence the extent to which there are performance benefits associated with strategic experimentation our hypotheses are tested using data from a three year study of over 400 young businesses overall we find support for our assertions for entrepreneurs and their advisors this study has several important implications first it suggests that strategic experimentation is a normal part of the process by which entrepreneurs seek to position their businesses although the present study does not empirically address the linkage between formal planning and experimentation the learning and cognition literature upon which the construct of strategic experimentation is based suggests that no matter how much attention to detail is involved in the preparation of the business plan the actual formation and development of the business will involve considerable adjustment to and or deviation from that plan this is because the process of new business development involves iterative changes in the way the entrepreneur positions his her firm as he she develops an understanding about what does and does not work the results of this study further suggest that some dimensions of the firm s strategy are more likely to change than others specifically it appears that peripheral changes competitive emphasis and time allocation are more likely to be the focus of such learning and adaptation efforts than core features product scope and partnership status this in part is because the former dimensions are easier to change than the latter moreover our results show that ventures in more hostile environments clearly face difficult dilemmas although poor performance may stimulate experimentation along various dimensions of strategy the complexity of learning within a hostile environment suggests that entrepreneurs will have a particularly difficult time determining the type of changes that will make a difference

unilateral co2 reductions and carbon leakage the consequences of international trade in oil and basic materials a recursively dynamic general equilibrium model featuring six world regions with trade in energy and non energy goods is used to simulate the period from 1990 through 2100 in 10 year intervals the simulations explore the effect of unilateral action by the oecd to curb global co2 emissions unilateral cuts create incentives for free riding by non participating regions so that global emissions are reduced by less than the amount that the oecd cuts back its regional emissions carbon leakage occurs through two channels first basic materials production increases in unconstrained regions resulting in increased carbon intensity of gdp second reductions in oecd oil imports cause the world oil price to fall leading to an increased energy intensity in the non participant regions in this paper we use a general equilibrium model to assess the extent to which these two mechanisms reduce the effectiveness of oecd reductions in curbing global co2 concentrations

consumer search price dispersion and international relative price fluctuations this article develops a model of consumer search consistent with the evidence of substantial price dispersion and time spent shopping within countries to study international deviations from the law of one price lop and relative price fluctuations search frictions lead firms to price discriminate across markets based on the opportunity cost of search which depends on the local wage with productivity and taste shocks estimated from the data deviations from the lop are as volatile and persistent as in the data fluctuations in relative wages real exchange rates and the terms of trade are also consistent with the data

entrepreneurship in and around institutional voids a case study from bangladesh abstract in many developing countries those living in poverty are unable to participate in markets due to the weakness or complete absence of supportive institutions this study examines in microcosm such institutional voids and illustrates the activities of an entrepreneurial actor in rural bangladesh aimed at addressing them the findings enable us to better understand why institutional voids originate and to unpack institutional processes in a setting characterized by extreme resource constraints and an institutional fabric that is rich but often at odds with market development we depict the crafting of new institutional arrangements as an ongoing process of bricolage and unveil its political nature as well as its potentially negative consequences

microeconomic uncertainty and macroeconomic indeterminacy we propose a stylized intertemporal macroeconomic model wherein the combination of decentralized trading and microeconomic uncertainty taking the form of privately observed and uninsured idiosyncratic shocks creates an information problem between agents and generates indeterminacy of the macroeconomic equilibrium for a given value of the economic fundamentals the economy admits a continuum of equilibria that can be indexed by the sales expectations of firms at the time of investment the walrasian equilibrium is one of these possible equilibria but it is reached only if firms are optimistic enough with a weaker degree of optimism equilibrium output employment and real wages will be lower than in the walrasian equilibrium moreover the range of possible equilibria will depend positively on the wage elasticity of the labour supply and on the magnitude of the information problem between buyers and sellers in our case the variance of the idiosyncratic shocks stochastic simulations performed on a calibrated version of the model show that pure demand expectation shocks may generate business cycle statistics that are not inconsistent with the observed ones 2006 elsevier b v all rights reserved

how to promote clusters policy experiences from latin america abstract in this paper we propose to differentiate between three types of clusters when it comes to formulating cluster oriented policies in latin america survival clusters of micro and small scale enterprises owe their existence more to unfavorable macroeconomic conditions and less to entrepreneurial competence and dynamism their competitive potential is limited support measures should mainly aim at improving the conditions for survival since these clusters are important in creating employment opportunities the impetus should be to break through the low skills low investment vicious circle more advanced and differentiated mass producers have been flourishing in the import substitution era but are coming under enormous pressure with the transition to open economies in these clusters the main challenge is to create an environment that stimulates and supports learning innovation and constant upgrading clusters of transnational corporations are typically dominated by foreign firms not only at the final assembly stage but also in parts production these clusters often are showcases of best practice manufacturing this can be used to stimulate the upgrading of domestic firms notably by involving them in the supply chain of transnationals

divergence and convergence in international development a decomposition analysis of inequality in the world system the convergence hypothesis of conventional modernization theory suggests that the nations of the world are becoming more similar critics have argued that nations are diverging and becoming dissimilar over time this paper brings unique data analytic procedures and a world system perspective to bear on this debate we suggest that world system theory provides a framework for explaining the simultaneous occurrence of both convergence and divergence specifically the logic of world system theory suggests that divergence occurs between the three zones of nations core semiperiphery and periphery whereas convergence occurs within them with respect to economic development our analyses indicate that predictions concerning divergence were partially supported and predictions concerning convergence held only for the core trends within the periphery and semiperiphery question the utility of world system theory

assessing the impact of formal and informal regulations on environmental and economic performance of brazilian manufacturing firms this study investigates the impact of formal and informal regulations on environmental and economic performance of brazilian manufacturing firms we adopt a dual approach where production technology is represented by a cost function approximated by a translog form pollution is considered as a negative by product that can be modified trough using either formal regulation inspections or sanctions or informal regulation community pressure a simultaneous equation model is estimated by three stage least squares on a sample of 404 industrial establishments located in the state of sao paulo brazil we show that pollution abatement costs for the brazilian manufacturing sector are different from zero which suggests that pollution emissions are affected by environmental regulation we also demonstrate that environmental performance of firms is jointly affected by formal and informal regulation lastly formal regulation is largely influenced by informal regulation and more specifically by community pressure

determinants of opec production implications for opec behavior we estimate models that identify the economic and organizational determinants of crude oil production by individual opec nations to clarify the interpretation of econometric results we model production with specifications that resolve the statistical ordering of variables and estimate models with techniques that can cope with stochastic trends in the time series we also analyze the short run dynamics for asymmetries that may carry important insights about opec behavior results indicate that quotas are an important determinant of production and their effects generally are symmetric which implies that opec is an organization that influences production and ultimately prices real prices generally have a positive effect on production and the size of this effect may depend on spare capacity which implies that opec behaviors also embody competitive elements finally all nations other than saudi arabia show some form of production sharing behavior which may imply that opec shares mismatches between the call for opec production and opec quotas

the market power of opec 1973 2001 we apply a multi equation dynamic econometric model on monthly data to test if the behaviour of opec as a whole or different sub groups of the cartel is consistent with the characteristics of dominant producers on the world crude oil market in the period 1973 2001 our results indicate that the producers outside opec can be described as competitive producers taking the oil price as given and maximizing profits the opec members do not fit the behaviour of price taking producers our findings of low residual demand price elasticities for opec underpin the potential market power of the producer group and are in line with the results in some recent energy studies on the other hand our findings indicate that neither opec nor different sub groups of the cartel can be characterized as a dominant producer in the period 1973 1994 however we find that the characteristics of a dominant producer to some extent fit opec core as from 1994 thus although opec clearly has affected the market price the producer g

business cycles and labor market search the quantitative implications of labor market search for economic fluctuations are evaluated in the context of a real business cycle model incorporating labor market search into the model is found to improve its empirical performance along several dimensions in particular hours now fluctuate substantially more than wages and the contemporaneous correlation between hours and productivity falls in addition the model replicates the observation that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons overall the empirical results suggest that the labor market search environment embodies a quantitatively important propagation mechanism copyright 1996 by american economic association

microfoundations of macroeconomic price adjustment survey evidence from swedish firms this paper presents the results of a survey on price setting behavior conducted on a large random sample of swedish firms the median firm adjusts the price once a year state and time dependent price setting are about equally important the four highest ranked explanations for price rigidity in this study implicit contracts sluggish costs explicit contracts and the kinked demand curve have close correspondents among the top five places in two similar large scale surveys carried out in the uk and the u s the results point to the importance of the long term relations with customers for the rigidity of prices the estimated share of sales that go to regular customers is more than 80

aggregate demand idle time and unemployment this paper develops a model of unemployment fluctuations the model keeps the architecture of the barro and grossman 1971 general disequilibrium model but replaces the disequilibrium framework on the labor and product markets by a matching framework on the product and labor markets both price and tightness adjust to equalize supply and demand there is one more variable than equilibrium condition on each market so we consider various price mechanisms to close the model from completely flexible to completely rigid with some price rigidity aggregate demand influences unemployment through a simple mechanism higher aggregate demand raises the probability that firms find customers which reduces idle time for firms employees and thus increases labor demand which in turn reduces unemployment we use the comparative statics predictions of the model together with empirical measures of quantities and tightnesses to re examine the origins of labor market fluctuations we conclude that 1 price and real wage are not fully flexible because product and labor market tightness fluctuate significantly 2 fluctuations are mostly caused by labor demand and not labor supply shocks because employment is positively correlated with labor market tightness and 3 labor demand shocks mostly reflect aggregate demand and not technology shocks because output is positively correlated with product market tightness

oil consumption subsidy removal in opec and other non oecd countries oil market impacts and welfare effects abstract this paper studies the oil market effects of phasing out oil consumption subsidies in the transport sector welfare effects in different countries are also examined the paper further investigates potential feedback mechanisms of oil subsidy removal via lower oil prices in the global oil market which may stimulate oil consumption in other regions an intertemporal numerical model of the international oil market is applied where opec core producers have market power the major subsidisers of oil are opec countries and the effects of subsidy removal here are quite pronounced consumption of oil in the transport sector of opec countries declines significantly as a result the global oil price falls slightly and other regions increase their oil consumption to some degree although opec consumers are worse off by the subsidy removal total welfare in opec increases due to higher profits from oil production

financial shocks and the us business cycle employing the financial accelerator fa model of bernanke gertler and gilchrist 1999 enhanced to include a shock to the fa mechanism we construct and study shocks to the efficiency of the financial sector in post war us business cycles we find that financial shocks are very tightly linked with the onset of recessions more so than tfp or monetary shocks the financial shock invariably remains contractionary for sometime after recessions have ended the shock accounts for a large part of the variance of gdp and is strongly negatively correlated with the external finance premium second moments comparisons across variants of the model with and without a stochastic fa mechanism suggests the stochastic fa model helps us understand the data

input output models for the analysis of a local global supply chain abstract a supply chain can be analysed as a network of production processes which can be localised within and outside a given geographic area each process can be defined as a system that produces output flows in consequence of input flows in this paper an input output approach based on production processes is used to develop specific models that investigate flows among production processes either of a whole global supply chain or of a part of the supply chain localised within a given area local by product and waste outputs are also considered the developed models can help improve design and management of supply chains also in terms of sustainable development of a local area in fact this use of the input output analysis entails a deeper understanding of the relationships among the processes and the environment

corporate environmental investments a cross national study on managerial decision making abstract what drives developing country managers to raise their environmental investments using theoretical arguments set forth by the convergence and divergence hypotheses in industrial economics this study develops a series of hypotheses about the effects of country consumer pressure community pressure and resource availability on managers environmental investment decisions using a random assignment factorial survey experiment fse that combines vignettes and questionnaires it compares responses from managers in developing countries 349 managers from brazil china and india and those from developed countries 377 managers from germany and usa results suggest that given the same situation developing country managers raise their investments to a lesser extent in response to consumer pressures when compared to developed country managers when community pressure moderates consumer pressure developing country managers make notably larger investments greater availability of resources does not affect developing country managers investment level contrary to developed country managers

small firms and their helpers lessons on demand abstract small enterprise se programs are currently the rage because of their potential to create employment they are typically supply driven providing standardized training technical assistance credit but most cases of se based growth have involved demand driven support provided by large customers firms traders government agencies state enterprises this article argues that such inherently customized support constitutes a better way to deliver services to ses and is more likely to stimulate sustained se growth with respect to se favoring procurement by government in particular we show that this can be done without running up against the problems of similar attempts in the past and in a way that also reduces the costs of running government we draw for illustration from a successful case of se favoring procurement in the brazilian state of ceara

leaders and laggards the influence of competing logics on corporate environmental action we study the sources of resistance to change among firms in the canadian petroleum industry in response to a shift in societal level logics related to corporate environmental performance despite challenges to its legitimacy as a result of poor environmental performance the canadian petroleum industry was divided as to how to respond with some members ignoring the concerns and resisting change i e laggards while others took action to ensure continued legitimacy i e leaders we examine why organizations within the same institutional field responded differently delaying the industry response we found that one population of firms was aligned with increasing pressures from its stakeholders for improved environmental performance and the other was influenced by local cultural political and economic ideals less demanding of environmental actions our results reveal that several factors both at the institutional field level and the organizational level affected how these two populations reacted to a changing societal logic implications for theory practice and future research are discussed

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd