transition towards a low carbon economy a computable general equilibrium analysis for poland in the transition to sustainable economic structures the european union assumes a leading role with its climate and energy package which sets ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by 2020 among eu member states poland with its heavy energy system reliance on coal is particularly worried on the pending trade offs between emission regulation and economic growth in our computable general equilibrium analysis of the eu climate and energy package we show that economic adjustment cost for poland hinge crucially on restrictions to where flexibility of emission abatement revenue recycling and technological options in the power system we conclude that more comprehensive flexibility provisions at the eu level and a diligent policy implementation at the national level could achieve the transition towards a low carbon economy at little cost thereby broadening societal support

an overview of hofstede inspired country level culture research in international business since 2006 kirkman lowe gibson s 2006 jibs article summarized and critiqued international business research inspired by the most cited book in the field hofstede s 1980 culture s consequences international differences in work related values hofstede 1980 2001 they identified a number of issues in this research and offered several recommendations for improving it in the future thus laying a strong foundation for hofstede related work since 2006 in this commentary we assess kirkman et al s 2006 impact on the field our review shows that their ideas have informed and inspired their own and other scholars work and have led to significant progress in the way in which hofstede s framework has been used in international business in the last decade here we specifically focus on the country level culture studies and assess how research has implemented kirkman et al s three main recommendations to explore cultural dimensions beyond those introduced by hofstede to distinguish between country effects and cultural effects and to show not only if culture matters but also how much it matters in addition to the overview we provide a comprehensive test of these recommendations showing how they can be put into research practice underscoring the theoretical and empirical relevance of the original 2006 article our commentary concludes with additional ideas on further strengthening hofstede inspired research at the country level of analysis

sense and no n sense of energy security indicators energy security ranks high on the policy agenda of many countries to improve on energy security governments undertake regulatory measures for promoting renewable energy increasing energy efficiency or curbing carbon dioxide emissions the impacts of such measures on energy security are typically monitored by means of so called energy security indicators in this paper we show that the common use of wide spread energy security indicators falls short of providing a meaningful metric regulatory measures to improve on energy security trigger ambiguous effects across energy security indicators we conclude that a major pitfall of energy security indicators is the lack of a rigorous microeconomic foundation

estimating dynamics of us demand for major fossil fuels long run demand relationships among fossil fuels in the united states were investigated using annual data covering 1918 through 2013 due to the endogeneity problem among the variables of interest as indicated by the findings from the granger causality test weak exogeneity test and directed acyclic graphs the use of the seemingly unrelated regression sur method was deemed appropriate the sur model demonstrated that there was low level of substitutability among fossil fuels but the small magnitude of the estimated coefficient indicates that natural gas oil and coal are more properly classified as independent goods than as substitutes of each other within the us market income elasticities for all three fossil fuels indicate that they are normal goods several external shocks have significant impact on demand for each of the fossil fuels slightly lower explanatory power of oil demand equation may be explained with the fact that the model did not include us oil imports although the us economy has been dependent to some degree on imported oil

fossil fuel supply leakage and the effectiveness of border measures in climate policy abstract understanding fossil fuel supply behaviour is crucial for interpreting carbon leakage and assessing the potential effectiveness of border measures in climate policy in most computable general equilibrium models this fossil fuel supply is derived from a constant elasticity of substitution production function in which a natural resource is treated as a fixed factor we show that this leads to endogenously decreasing supply elasticities and sharply increasing marginal leakage rates for large coalitions that have ambitious emissions targets particularly when fuel exporters participate in the coalition we propose an alternative production function that has a constant elasticity of fuel supply which results in more stable leakage rates and a different share of trade related leakage the role of this model variation for the assessment of border measures in climate policy turns out to be limited in those cases where the model versions differ most i e large coalition ambitious targets border measures have a small effect anyway

who pays and who gains from fuel policies in brazil abstract brazil has pursued a mix of policy interventions in the fuel sector to achieve multiple objectives of economic and social development promoting biofuels and reducing dependence on oil we develop an economic framework to provide insight on the fuel policy choices in brazil and to analyze the trade offs they have engendered in the fuel and sugar sectors we also examine their distributional impacts on producers and consumers in the sugar oil and biofuel sectors and on government revenues additionally we undertake a normative analysis for the purpose of comparing the welfare and environmental impacts of existing policies with those justified by the goal of maximizing social welfare and addressing market failure the ex post analysis of the outcomes for different stakeholders in the fuel and sugar sectors provides insights on the likely political economic factors guiding policy choices we find that the status quo policies are likely to have been motivated by the objectives of increasing oil exports raising government revenue and promoting rural development through the sugarcane sector and have had a significant adverse effect on fuel and sugar consumers aggregate social welfare and greenhouse gas emissions in brazil

how does increased corn ethanol production affect us natural gas prices abstract in recent years there has been a push to increase biofuel production in the united states the biofuel of choice so far has been ethanol produced from corn the effects of increased corn ethanol production on the consumer prices of food and energy continue to be studied and debated this study examines in particular the effects of increased corn ethanol production on us natural gas prices a structural model of the natural gas market is developed and estimated using two stage least squares a baseline projection for the period 2007 2018 is determined and two scenarios are simulated in the first scenario current biofuel policies including eisa mandates tariffs and tax credits are removed in the second scenario we hold ethanol production to the level required only for largely obligatory additive use the results indicate that the increased level of corn ethanol production occurring as a result of the current us biofuel policies may lead to natural gas prices that are as much as 0 25 higher on average than if no biofuel policies were in place a similar comparison between the baseline and second scenario indicates natural gas prices could be as much as 0 5 higher on average for the same period

time series analysis applied to construct us natural gas price functions for groups of states the study of natural gas markets took a considerably new direction after the liberalization of the natural gas markets during the early 1990s as a result several problems and research opportunities arose for those studying the natural gas supply chain particularly the marketing operations consequently various studies have been undertaken about the econometrics of natural gas several models have been developed and used for different purposes from descriptive analysis to practical applications such as price and consumption forecasting in this work we address the problem of finding a pooled regression formula relating the monthly figures of price and consumption volumes for each state of the united states during the last twenty years the model thus obtained is used as the basis for the development of two methods aimed at classifying the states into groups sharing a similar price consumption relationship a dendrogram application and an heuristic algorithm the details and further applications of these grouping techniques are discussed along with the ultimate purpose of using this pooled regression model to validate data employed in the stochastic optimization problem studied by the authors

conceptualizing and measuring cultures and their consequences a comparative review of globe s and hofstede s approaches this paper explains why globe used a set of cultural values and practices to measure national cultures we show why there is no theoretical or empirical basis for hofstede s criticism that globe measures of values are too abstract or for his contention that national and organizational cultures are phenomena of different order we also show why hofstede has a limited understanding of the relationship between national wealth and culture furthermore we explain why hofstede s reanalysis of the globe data is inappropriate and produces incomprehensible results we also show the validity of managerial samples in studying leadership finally we explain why hofstede s claim that globe instruments reflect researchers psycho logic reveals ignorance of psychometric methodologies designed to ensure scale reliability and construct validity

good things do not always come in threes on the excess cost of overlapping regulation in eu climate policy since the mid 1990 s the european union eu aims at pushing global climate policy the objective is to promote international cooperation by the adoption of substantial eu wide greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and their least cost implementation our quantitative impact assessment of the eu climate and energy package shows that the myriad of instruments used in the eu to curb greenhouse gas emissions is doomed to generate substantial excess cost we conclude that eu climate and energy policy should better disentangle its choices of objectives targets and policy instruments on rigorous economic grounds in order to improve the coherence and overall cost effectiveness of policy initiatives

does energy consumption respond to price shocks evidence from a regression discontinuity design this paper exploits unique features of a recently introduced tariff schedule for natural gas in buenos aires to estimate the short run impact of price shocks on residential energy utilization the schedule induces a nonlinear and non monotonic relationship between households accumulated consumption and unit prices thus generating exogenous price variation which is exploited in a regression discontinuity design the results reveal that a price increase causes a prompt and significant decline in gas consumption they also indicate that consumers respond more to recent past bills than to expected prices which argues against the assumption that consumers have perfect awareness of complex price schedules

are green hopes too rosy employment and welfare impacts of renewable energy promotion in view of pressing unemployment problems policy makers across all parties jump on the prospects of renewable energy promotion as a job creation engine which can boost economic well being our analytical model shows that initial labor market rigidities in theory provide some scope for such a double dividend however the practical outcome of renewable energy promotion might be sobering our computable general equilibrium analysis of subsidized electricity production from renewable energy sources res e in germany suggests that the prospects for employment and welfare gains are quite limited and hinge crucially on the level of the subsidy rate and the financing mechanism if res e subsidies are financed by labor taxes welfare and employment effects are strictly negative for a broad range of subsidy rates the use of an electricity tax to fund res e subsidies generates minor benefits for small subsidy rates but these benefits quickly turn into significant losses as the subsidy rate exceeds some threshold value

physical market determinants of the price of crude oil and the market premium abstract we analyze the determinants of the real price of crude oil by means of an equilibrium correction model over the last two decades where we focus on the aspects of the physical market that impact on the clearing price we find that two cointegrating relations affect the changes in prices one refers to opec s behavior attempting to control prices using its market power and quotas the other to the coverage rate of oecd expected future demand using inventory behaviors we derive a forecasting equation for the change in oil prices which we use to assess the speculative elements of the price increases of the period 2000 05 we show that worries alien to the physical markets were the causes of the increase in oil prices and we quantify their overall impact

short and long run elasticities in energy demand a cointegration approach abstract short and long run energy demand elasticities are estimated on danish annual data for 1948 1990 energy consumption the real price of energy and real gdp appear to be non stationary variables cointegration and error correction methods are therefore applied all estimated parameters have the expected signs and magnitudes and no evidence is found of a structural break in energy demand caused by the increases in real energy prices since 1973 74

short run and long run elasticities of import demand for crude oil in turkey abstract the aim of this study is to attempt to estimate the short run and the long run elasticities of demand for crude oil in turkey by the recent autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration as a developing country turkey meets its growing demand for oil principally by foreign suppliers thus the study focuses on modelling the demand for imported crude oil using annual data covering the period 1980 2005 the bounds test results reveal that a long run cointegration relationship exists between the crude oil import and the explanatory variables nominal price and income but not in the model that includes real price in domestic currency the long run parameters are estimated through a long run static solution of the estimated ardl model and then the short run dynamics are estimated by the error correction model the estimated models pass the diagnostic tests successfully the findings reveal that the income and price elasticities of import demand for crude oil are inelastic both in the short run and in the long run

the globe debate back to relevance this is a critical summary review of the debate about the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe study in jibs and other journals between november 2006 and the present issue several contributors did not realize that globe used three essential constructs taken from my publications in a sense entirely different from mine values practices and organizational culture not recognizing the ensuing confusion they had no answer for the question in my 2006 review what did globe really measure if you do not know what you are talking about you can continue arguing for ever beyond the fuzziness of what is measured the debate leaves us with an even more fundamental question what is the use of the globe dimensions

the past is prologue moving on from culture s consequences in this article we examine the theoretical and empirical understanding of culture within the international business discipline post the publication of kirkman lowe gibson 2006 in their paper kirkman et al 2006 provide a comprehensive retrospective on the impact of hofstede s seminal publication culture s consequences in addition to looking at what followed on from hofstede they laid out a research program they believed was necessary to move the study of culture forward unfortunately in their current review published in this issue they outlined how little if any of their thoughtful guidance was taken to heart in our perspective we believe that this signals that the study and use of culture in the international business field has become stuck in a theoretical and methodological rut and more radical thinking is necessary if we are going to advance beyond more of the same science that simply reiterates repeatedly that that culture matters without any coherent advancement of the key role that it plays in the international arena

long term oil prices abstract in this paper we propose a model to estimate and simulate long term oil prices our model is based on properties of demand and supply for oil and it is able to reproduce historical real oil prices well we use the model to estimate and simulate future real oil price scenarios the results show that if we are not able to significantly increase demand elasticity the yearly real oil price change can reach 12 in the years following the peak production level without taking a scarcity rent into account until peak production level is reached the long term real oil price changes stemming from fundamental supply and demand changes are expected to be negative our simulation results based on an expected peak production year of 2020 and a scarcity rent of 3 suggest an expected real crude oil price of 169 bbl in 2040 for comparison the eia outlook predicts a real oil price of 141 bbl for the same year we also provide an on line appendix that allows the readers to change the assumptions underlying our analysis and see the results immediately

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

price elasticity block tariffs and equity of natural gas demand in china investigation based on household level survey data abstract on the basis of a newly established database from the chinese residential energy consumption survey this paper estimates the price elasticity of natural gas demand for the households and investigates the factors that affect residential natural gas consumption in china to address the endogeneity problems the non residential natural gas price has been adopted as the instrumental variable for residential natural gas price results demonstrate that the natural gas demand of chinese households respond significantly to price change with an overall price elasticity coefficient of 0 898 in the meanwhile 1 increase in family members would cause 0 159 rise in natural gas demand and household in the south consumes 28 8 more natural gas than that in the north recognizing the heterogeneity of residential natural gas price elasticity for different households quantile regression technique has further been applied to analyze the distributional effect of natural gas consumption the simulation suggests that the gini coefficient drops from 0 49 to 0 40 after introducing an increasing block tariff scheme to replace the original flat tariff system confirming a price reform has potential to improve the energy equity situation by reshaping the energy consumption pattern

what drives volatility in natural gas prices abstract we examine the primary drivers of u s natural gas price volatility to do so we apply a structural heterogeneous autoregressive var shvar model accommodating structural breaks in both the coefficient and volatility to monthly time series data on natural gas supply demand and price between january 1978 and july 2018 we detect several structural changes in coefficients and shock volatility in the natural gas market our findings indicate that the response of natural gas prices differs significantly depending on the regime and type of shock in the natural gas market while demand shocks specific to the natural gas market are the primary drivers of natural gas price volatility structural supply shocks also play a significant role in explaining movements in natural gas prices our results suggest that failure to consider structural breaks in the coefficient and volatility may result in biased estimates and distorted impulse responses of the impact of shocks on natural gas price volatility

oil price stabilization and global welfare abstract oil price stabilization polices are adopted extensively in developing countries some argue that developed economies especially the us may gain from these policies through trade this paper studies this issue in a two country model with dollar currency pricing we find that the optimal level of oil price stabilization chosen by developing countries and its implications for global welfare depend critically on whether monetary policy can effectively respond to oil shocks in an environment without monetary shocks when optimal monetary policies are considered there is no role for oil price stabilization in developing countries however to make the oil price stabilization policy redundant optimal monetary policy is not necessary some non optimal endogenous monetary policies satisfying certain conditions can also make the developing countries choose zero oil price stabilization the results change when there are monetary shocks even with optimal monetary policies the developing countries will choose a positive level of oil price stabilization however due to dollar currency pricing the us actually loses from the stabilization policy our results are well supported by the quantitative analysis in a full fledged dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model

doing business in the 21st century with the new generation of chinese managers a study of generational shifts in work values in china our goal is to develop a profile of chinese managers and in particular a profile of the new generation of chinese managers the purpose for developing this profile is primarily to provide relevant information for non chinese business people especially westerners who plan to engage in business in china this profile is based on measures of individual values individualism collectivism and confucianism relevant to china and business our findings suggest that the new generation manager is more individualistic and more likely to act independently while taking risks in the pursuit of profits however these new managers are likewise not forsaking their confucian values thus they may be viewed as crossverging their eastern and western influences while on the road of modernization

can deployment of renewable energy put downward pressure on natural gas prices abstract high and volatile natural gas prices have increasingly led to calls for investments in renewable energy one line of argument is that deployment of these resources may lead to reductions in the demand for and price of natural gas many recent us based modeling studies have demonstrated that this effect could provide significant consumer savings in this article we evaluate these studies and benchmark their findings against economic theory other modeling results and a limited empirical literature we find that many uncertainties remain regarding the absolute magnitude of this effect and that the reduction in natural gas prices may not represent an increase in aggregate economic wealth nonetheless we conclude that many of the studies of the impact of renewable energy on natural gas prices appear to have represented this effect within reason given current knowledge these studies specifically suggest that a 1 reduction in us natural gas demand could lead to long term average wellhead price reductions of 0 8 2 and that each megawatt hour of renewable energy may benefit natural gas consumers to the tune of at least 7 5 20

unconventional energy taxation and interstate welfare an analysis of pennsylvania s severance tax policy abstract natural gas production from unconventional sources has increased over the past decade a significant portion of this increase has come from output in the marcellus region of pennsylvania this output has altered gas markets and repositioned pennsylvania as a major gas exporter it has also put pennsylvania at odds with other states as it is one of a few without a formal severance tax on extractive resources in this paper we combine results from a structural demand model with a two sector trade model to analyze the interstate welfare impacts of pennsylvania s current severance tax proposal our results demonstrate that most of the welfare losses from this proposed policy are likely to be shifted to residents in other states we also demonstrate how fluctuations in gas prices can substantially reduce tax revenue these findings have important implications for both pennsylvania and u s energy policy given the significant rise in energy production from new sources throughout the u s

a model for energy pricing with stochastic emission costs we use a supply demand approach to value energy products exposed to emission cost uncertainty we find closed form solutions for a number of popularly traded energy derivatives such as forwards european call options written on spot prices and european call options written on forward contracts our modeling approach is to first construct noisy supply and demand processes and then equate them to find an equilibrium price this approach is very general while still allowing for sensitivity analysis within a valuation setting our assumption is that in the presence of emission costs traditional supply growth will slow down causing output prices of energy products to become more costly over time however emission costs do not immediately cause output price appreciation but instead expose individual projects particularly those with high emission outputs to much more extreme risks through the cost side of their profit stream our results have implications for hedging and pricing for producers operating in areas facing a stochastic emission cost environment

globe practices and values a case of diminishing marginal utility the globe study of national cultures identified nine dimensions of culture these nine dimensions were measured in the form of societal practices as things are and societal values as things should be the correlations between practices and values for societies surprisingly were found to be significantly negative for seven dimensions apparently people s values are contrary to their practices a note which appeared in a recent issue of this journal proposes that these anomalous correlations result from diminishing marginal utility the note argues that marginal utility theory applies to cultural dimensions and that the globe values measure societies marginal preferences for most of the dimensions rather than total preference weights through close analysis of the questionnaire items used by the globe team we show that this is not the case we demonstrate that the globe questions as asked do not elicit marginal preferences in fact they elicit values as claimed by globe but recognizing that values may well be shaped in part by existing practices we call for further study into the globe scores as it is likely that different explanations apply to practices values relationships across different dimensions

the effect of used markets with endogenous replacement of durable goods the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of used asset markets for a particular class of durable goods markets where replacement and trading ages are endogenous and where the imperfect substitutability between new and used goods results from the heterogeneity of buyers durable goods are assumed to be like automobiles the quality of the service declines with the age of the durable but the time at which the durable is traded and replaced with a new one is a choice variable for the owner as in my earlier work on heterogeneous buyers 3 it is assumed that the decline in service value with age is lower for some buyers so that these buyers will specialize in used assets in the presence of used markets however this paper departs from previous work by allowing the retirement age and the age at which goods are traded in the used market to be endogenously determined this extension has important implications because it will be shown that retirement age durability will be affected by the presence of used asset markets this paper examines the question of whether a competitive industry will favor a ban on used markets previous authors 2 6 8 have examined this question in markets where durable goods are like textbooks the used asset markets exist because the length of the demand for services by the purchaser is less than the lifetime of the durable in these models the presence of a used asset market is equivalent to a lengthening of the lifetime of the good however in the model of this paper the opening of a used asset market results in uniformity of the lifetime of the durable good since all of the oldest durables will be held by the user type that places the highest value on old durables this uniform retirement age with the used market will be shown to lie between the retirement ages adopted by the two user types when there are no used markets thus the average age of the stock of durables could rise or fall with the introduction of used markets second the model of this paper allows for the analysis of restrictions on used markets that raise the cost of used market transactions but do not eliminate trading it will be shown that the effects of a per unit tax on used market transactions will differ from that of an ad valorem tax because of the greater incentive created by an ad valorem tax to postpone used market transactions this result is in the spirit of barzel s 1 result that the form of the tax is important because different types of taxes may affect characteristics of the good in different ways in the present context goods

avoiding uncertainty in hofstede and globe this paper compares the uncertainty avoidance ua dimension of national culture across the hofstede and globe models looking at relationships in both data and analysis rather than mutual support we detail major differences and anomalies across the studies we show how these anomalies are resulting in contradictory explanations in research on national differences across a range of individual firm and country level phenomena we clarify the ua measurement in both hofstede and globe and find that the two models are measuring different components of the ua construct we propose a two component model of ua namely ua stress and ua rule orientation and confirm its validity with national culture data from the hofstede and globe studies and economic data from the world bank we also explain the negative globe ua practices values relationship using motivational theories a way forward in future ua related research is suggested the hofstede ua index the globe ua practices scores and the globe ua values scores should be used within the specific domains that they represent that is stress rule orientation practices and rule orientation aspirations respectively resolving the contradictions in ua between and within hofstede and globe will help cross cultural researchers develop more robust theories and more practical recommendations for international business management

a retrospective on culture s consequences the 35 year journey abstract our 2006 journal of international business studies article a quarter century of culture s consequences a review of the empirical research incorporating hofstede s cultural values framework provided a comprehensive review of 180 empirical journal articles and edited volume chapters published between 1980 and june 2002 that incorporated hofstede s cross cultural values framework we examined empirical research that positioned culture as either a main or moderating effect the review attempted to make sense of the almost quarter century of research examining the impact of culture at the individual group organization and country levels in the present commentary we provide a a summary of the progress that has been made in the intervening decade and most importantly b a new set of recommendations for the next decade to guide those wishing to study the role of national culture in organizations

clean development investments an incentive compatible cge modeling framework the clean development mechanism established under the kyoto protocol allows industrialized annex i countries to offset part of their domestic emissions by investing in emissions reduction projects in developing non annex i countries computable general equilibrium analysis of the clean development mechanism s impacts so far mimics the clean development mechanism as a sector emissions trading scheme thereby overstating its potential to save climate change mitigation costs this study develops a novel approach that represents the clean development mechanism more realistically by compensating clean development mechanism implementing sectors for additional abatement cost and by endogenizing clean development mechanism credits as a function of investment compared with previous representations the proposed approach is more consistent in its incentive structure and investment characteristics at the sector level an empirical application of the new methodology demonstrates that the economy wide cost savings from the clean development mechanism tend to be lower than suggested by conventional modeling approaches while clean development mechanism implementing sectors do not lose in output

values and marginal preferences in international business in a recent paper in this journal maseland and van hoorn argued that values surveys tend to conflate values and marginal preferences this assertion has been challenged by brewer and venaik who claim that the wording of most survey items does not suggest that these elicit marginal preferences this commentary responds to their claim and restates our original argument we stress that the distinction between values and marginal preferences is a conceptual rather than a semantic issue conflation of the two is a problem of stated preferences methods in general regardless of question formats what is more we argue that support for the marginal preferences interpretation of values survey data does not come from the specific wording of questions used in surveys but from a growing number of paradoxical relations between values ratings and outcomes in values research implications are twofold first we argue that in order to measure values we need to look at alternatives to the stated preferences approach such as revealed preferences and experienced preferences of which the latter seems most promising second we find that values surveys eliciting marginal preferences are useful for understanding and predicting differences in behavior in a given context

clean energy and international oil oil has been the world s dominant fuel for more than 50 years substitution of oil for power generation and heating has progressed since the 1970s but substitution of oil in transport remains elusive this paper examines the progress of clean energy and compares the unfolding co evolution of technologies markets and institutions with what we know about substitution of oil and technological paradigm shifts while the rhetoric in favour of clean energy is strong technologies policies and supportive infrastructure investments are still in a formative stage the transformative process will evolve over the next 10 20 years and change irreversibly the demand dynamics for oil although decline in the demand for oil is not imminent the impact of the clean energy transition on international oil is evident even now high oil prices accelerate commitment policies and market prospects for clean energy options and speed up the market readiness of substitutes for oil while 20 years appears a long time for the development and scale up of alternatives to oil it is a short period in the context of the required paradigm shift for international oil it is well within the time frame for resource rent optimization strategic planning and investment decisions high cost resource developers need to be aware copyright 2011 oxford university press

us climate policy a critical assessment of intensity standards intensity standards have gained substantial momentum as a regulatory instrument in us climate policy energy intensive and trade exposed industries are traditionally opposed to initiatives for domestic carbon pricing as they are particularly vulnerable to competitiveness losses and refer to counterproductive emission leakage in a unilateral climate policy context this has led to policy proposals where intensity standards on energy and carbon might at least in part substitute for explicit carbon pricing via taxes or emission allowances in this paper we study the economic efficiency properties of intensity standards as an instrument of unilateral climate policy we first develop a theoretical partial equilibrium framework and show that standards can have an ambiguous effect on carbon leakage we then use an applied computable general equilibrium model of the global economy to gain quantitative insights into the effects of intensity standards for the case of the us our numerical results show that intensity standards may rather increase than decrease carbon leakage moreover standards can lead to considerable welfare losses compared to uniform emission taxing the tradability of standards across industries is a mechanism that can reduce these negative effects

validating energy oriented cge models although cge models have received heavy usage they are often criticized as being insufficiently validated key parameters are often not econometrically estimated and the performance of the model as a whole is rarely checked against historical outcomes as a consequence questions frequently arise as to how much faith one can put in cge results in this paper we employ a novel approach to the validation of a widely utilized global cge model gtap e by comparing the variance of model generated petroleum price distributions driven by historical demand and supply shocks to the model with observed five year moving average price distributions we conclude that energy demand in gtap e is far too price elastic over this time frame after incorporating the latest econometric estimates of energy demand and supply elasticities we revisit the validation question and find the model to perform more satisfactorily as a further check we compare a deterministic global general equilibrium simulation based on historical realizations over the 2001 2006 period during which petroleum prices rose sharply along with growing global energy demands as anticipated by the stochastic simulations the revised model parameters perform much better than the original gtap e parameters in this global general equilibrium context

import demand of crude oil and economic growth evidence from india abstract this study establishes a long run equilibrium relationship among quantity of crude oil import income and price of the imported crude in india for the time span 1970 1971 to 2005 2006 using autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach of cointegration empirical results show that the long term income elasticity of imported crude in india is 1 97 and there exists a unidirectional long run causality running from economic growth to crude oil import so reduction of crude oil import will not affect the future economic growth in india in the long run india should take various energy efficiency and demand side management measures in transport sector along with other measures like expanding and strengthening indigenous resource base substituting imported fuels by domestic fuels and de controlling the price of petroleum products to reduce its import dependence

embodied carbon tariffs in a world where the prospects of a global agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions are bleak the idea of using trade policy as an implicit regulation of foreign emission sources has gained many supporters in countries contemplating unilateral climate policies embodied carbon tariffs tax the direct and indirect carbon emissions embodied in imported goods the appeal seems obvious as oecd countries are on average large net importers of embodied emissions from non oecd countries carbon tariffs could substantially extend the reach of oecd climate policies we investigate this claim by simulating the effects of embodied carbon tariffs with a computable general equilibrium model of global trade and energy use we find that embodied carbon tariffs do effectively reduce carbon leakage however the scope for improvements in the global cost effectiveness of unilateral climate policy is limited the main welfare effect of the tariffs is to shift the burden of oecd climate policy to the developing world

cross country differences in the effects of oil shocks abstract we compare the macroeconomic consequences of several types of oil shocks across a set of industrialized countries that are structurally very diverse with respect to the role of oil and other forms of energy in the economy the results crucially depend on the underlying source of the oil price shift when a rise in oil prices is caused by increased global economic activity or a rise in oil specific demand almost all countries experience respectively a temporary increase and transitory decline of real gdp the role of oil and other forms of energy cannot explain the differences in the effects of both shocks across countries in contrast this role is very important to explain asymmetries in the effects of exogenous oil supply shocks whereas net oil and energy importing countries typically face a permanent fall in economic activity the impact is insignificant or even positive in net energy exporting countries in addition countries that improved their net energy position the most over time became less vulnerable to oil supply shocks relative to other countries

measurement of natural and cyclical excess capacity in china s coal industry abstract overcapacity is a persistent problem in china s economy previous de capacity measures based on the quantity of the total excess capacity have failed to prevent the recurrence of increasingly worse overcapacity to solve this problem we attempt to quantitatively analyze china s excess coal capacity by dividing it into the long term natural excess capacity and short term cyclical excess capacity using the state space model and kalman filter algorithm the results show that china s excess coal capacity can indeed be divided into natural excess capacity and cyclical excess capacity and they have different causes fluctuations roles and effects on the price in 1995 2001 cyclical excess capacity was the main factor of overcapacity but in 2002 2015 natural excess capacity played a key role cyclical excess capacity has a negative effect on the price whereas natural excess capacity has little effect on it therefore policy makers should focus on the causes the fluctuations and the roles of natural excess and cyclical excess in addition to those of the total excess capacity they should also consider the relationship between the capacity and price based on the different effects of the natural excess capacity and cyclical excess capacity on the price

innovation in the energy sector the role of fossil fuels and developing economies abstract this paper analyzes the effects of fossil fuel rents on r d expenditures and patent grants in the field of energy related technology we argue that an increasing share of fossil fuel rents lessens the innovation of new energy technologies we consider a sample of countries beyond the common selection of oecd members and investigate innovation efforts in the energy sector of 116 countries from 1980 to 2012 we observe the gradually growing influence of resource abundant countries on global r d expenditures and find that increasing fossil fuel rents have a negative effect on patent grants this study contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the potential effects of resource abundance more importantly it increases our understanding of innovation activities within the energy sector and further underscores the need to extend future research to countries that have not been taken into account thus far

an econometrics view of worldwide fossil fuel consumption and the role of us crude oil coal and gas known as fossil fuels play a crucial role in the global economy this paper proposes new econometrics modelling to demonstrate the trend of fossil fuels consumption the main variables affecting consumption trends are world reserves the price of fossil fuels us production and us net imports all variables have been analysed individually for more than half a century the research found that while the consumption of fossil fuels worldwide has increased trends in the us production and net imports have been dependent on the type of fossil fuels most of the us coal and gas production has been for domestic use which is why it does not have a strong influence on worldwide fossil fuel prices moreover the reserves of fossil fuels have not shown any diminution during the last couple of decades and predictions that they were about to run out are not substantiated the nominal and real price of fossil fuels was found to change depending on the type finally estimates of three econometric models for the consumption of fossil fuels from 1949 to 2006 are presented which identify the effects of significant variables

the impact of the shale gas revolution on the u s and japanese natural gas markets we investigated whether the increase in the us shale gas production changed the structures of the us and japanese natural gas markets using market data for the period 2002 5 2012 5 our analysis consists of a structural break test and market integration analysis the bai and perron structural break test detected a break point of natural gas prices and consumption in 2005 as well as other external shocks hurricane katrina and the lehman shock that are irrelevant to shale gas development we eliminated the impact of these shocks by separating the data set using the breaks identified in our analysis we found the breaks skewed the estimation a market linkage existed between the us and japanese markets in the original data set while it did not in the separated data the vector autoregressive var model also indicated a significant change before and after the break point the us market had a one side influence on the japanese market before 2005 but the influence disappeared after 2005 our results implied that the shale gas revolution triggered by the increase in shale gas production in 2005 caused the change in the relationship between the us and japanese natural gas markets

how do oil producers respond to oil demand shocks abstract this paper analyzes the response of international oil producers to demand induced changes in the price of crude oil during 1975 2011 focusing on potential differences between opec and non opec countries the goal is to derive consistent estimates of the short run price elasticity of crude oil supply at the country level i find that oil producers hardly respond to demand shocks within the same month and that the corresponding impact price elasticities of supply are statistically indistinguishable from zero while there is little evidence of differences in the dynamic responses to a typical flow demand shock on average over the sample period opec members seem to curtail production in response to a speculative demand shock whereas non opec production expands significantly flow and speculative demand shocks account for a nontrivial fraction of the total variability in country level crude oil supply

optimal oil production and the world supply of oil abstract we study the optimal oil extraction strategy and the value of an oil field using a multiple real option approach the numerical method is flexible enough to solve a model with several state variables to discuss the effect of risk aversion and to take into account uncertainty in the size of reserves optimal extraction in the baseline model is found to be volatile if the oil producer is risk averse production is more stable but spare capacity is much higher than what is typically observed we show that decisions are very sensitive to expectations on the equilibrium oil price using a mean reverting model of the oil price where the equilibrium price is also a random variable oil production was cut during the 2008 2009 crisis and we find that the cut in production was larger for opec members for countries facing a lower discount rate and for countries whose governments finances are less dependent on oil revenues however the net present value of a country s oil reserves would be increased significantly by 100 in the most extreme case if production was cut completely when prices fall below the country s threshold price if several producers were to adopt such strategies world oil prices would be higher but more stable

optimal emission pricing in the presence of international spillovers decomposing leakage and terms of trade motives abstract carbon leakage provides an efficiency argument for differentiated emission prices in favor of emission intensive and trade exposed sectors under unilateral climate policy however differential emission pricing can be used as a beggar thy neighbor policy to exploit terms of trade adopting an optimal tax framework we propose a method to decompose the leakage and terms of trade motives for emission price differentiation we employ our method for the quantitative impact assessment of unilateral climate policy based on empirical data we find that the leakage motive yields only small efficiency gains compared to uniform emission pricing likewise the terms of trade motive has rather limited potential for strategic burden shifting we conclude that in many cases the simple first best rule of uniform emission pricing remains a practical guideline for unilateral climate policy design

clustering in crude oil prices and the target pricing zone hypothesis abstract this paper studies the target pricing zone tpz hypothesis for crude oil by examining price clustering in the dollar digit it is hypothesized that price clustering occurs within an established tpz if opec is able to defend the upper and lower bounds through output changes the results show that prices strongly cluster around the dollar digit value of 9 within the tpz sub periods but not outside the sub periods furthermore the degree of clustering declines when production capacity utilization is high and when production significantly exceeds quotas consistent with opec s inability to defend the zone nine centered clustering also results in lower contemporaneous and next day volatility these results support the target pricing zone hypothesis of crude oil

does energy consumption respond to price shocks evidence from a regression discontinuity design does energy consumption respond to price shocks this paper exploits unique features of a recently introduced tariff schedule for natural gas in buenos aires to estimate the short run impact of price shocks on residential energy utilization the schedule induces a non linear and non monotonic relationship between households accumulated consumption and unit prices thus generating an exogenous source of variation in perceived prices which is exploited in a regression discontinuity design the estimates reveal that a price increase in the utility bill received by consumers causes a substantial and prompt decline in gas consumption hence they suggest that policy interventions via the price mechanism such as price caps and subsidies are powerful instruments to influence residential energy utilization patterns even within a short time span

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

food energy and environment is bioenergy the missing link abstract we study price linkages between the food energy and bioenergy markets a vertically integrated multi input multi output market model allows us to derive testable hypothesis which we test by applying time series analytical mechanisms to nine major traded food commodity prices along with one weighted average world crude oil price the data consists of 939 weekly observations from january 1993 to december 2010 the empirical findings confirm the theoretical hypothesis that the prices for crude oil and food commodities are interdependent a usd 1 barrel increase in oil prices and food commodity prices increase by between usd 0 09 tonne and usd 1 65 tonne

trends in world energy prices the correct identification of the time series path of non renewable energy resources has far reaching consequences for economists and policymakers alike this study builds on the existing literature by employing a data series that includes a sample period of institutional change and recently developed unit root testing procedures besides crude oil natural gas and coal prices are also examined aiming to further the knowledge of non renewable energy resource time paths in order to inform future research and update the conclusions of past studies the unit root tests allow for structural breaks and are based on the procedures developed by zivot and andrews 1992 lumsdaine and papell 1997 and lee and strazicich 2003 finally we investigate whether the trend changes signs in the regimes which are bounded by the structural breaks and quantify the prevalence of the trends over the sample period considered the results show that the trend is not well represented by a single positive or negative trend the variability of the trend suggests that forecasting energy prices should not typically occur about a single trend

values schemas and norms in the culture behavior nexus a situated dynamics framework international business ib research has predominantly relied on value constructs to account for the influence of societal culture notably hofstede s cultural dimensions while parsimonious the value approach s assumptions about the consensus of values within nations and the generality and stability of cultural patterns of behavior are increasingly challenged we review two promising alternatives the constructivist approach centering on schemas and the intersubjectivist approach centering on norms and the evidence that demonstrates their usefulness in accounting for international differences in the behavior of managers employees and consumers we propose a situated dynamics framework specifying the role of values schemas and norms in accounting for cultural differences and delineating conditions under which each causal mechanism is operative values play a more important role in accounting for cultural differences in weak situations where fewer constraints are perceived schemas play a more important role when situational cues increase their accessibility and relevance and norms play a more important role when social evaluation is salient directions for future research based on this integrative framework and its implications for the measurement of culture and application in ib are discussed

new estimates of the security costs of u s oil consumption abstract in recent years the united states has become much more self reliant in producing oil and a newer economics literature suggests that oil demand may be more elastic and u s gdp may be less sensitive to world oil price shocks than was previously estimated these developments suggest somewhat lower security costs may be associated with u s oil consumption this analysis provides updated estimates of the security premiums for u s consumption of imported oil u s consumption of domestically produced oil and the substitution of imported oil for domestically produced oil estimates of the expected security costs of u s oil consumption are provided over the time horizon from 2015 to 2040 while taking into account projected world oil market conditions the probabilities and sizes of world oil supply disruptions the response of world oil prices to those supply disruptions and the response of u s real gdp to those oil price shocks the estimated oil security premiums suggest that u s oil security has become less of a policy concern

effects of us biofuel policies on us and world petroleum product markets with consequences for greenhouse gas emissions abstract us biofuel policy includes greenhouse gas reduction targets regulators do not address the potential that biofuel policy can have indirect impacts on greenhouse gases through its impacts on petroleum product markets and scientific research only partially addresses this question we use economic models of us biofuel and agricultural markets and us and world petroleum and petroleum product markets to show that discontinuing biofuel tax credits and ethanol tariff lower biofuel use could lead to increased us petroleum product use and a reduction in petroleum product use in other parts of the world the net effect is lower greenhouse gas emissions under certain assumptions we show that biofuel use mandate elimination can have positive or negative impacts on greenhouse gas emissions the magnitude and the direction of effects depend on how us biofuel trade affects biofuel in other countries with different emissions context that determines how important use mandates are in the first place who pays mandate costs and the price responsiveness of global petroleum supplies and uses however our results show that counter intuitive effects are possible and discourage broad conclusions about the greenhouse gas impacts of removing these elements of us biofuel policy

are biofuels the culprit opec food and fuel the food commodity price boom of 2003 2008 was the most notable in the past several decades having a substantial impact on global economic activity it affected developing nations by impacting real output the balance of payments government budgetary positions and most important the well being of the very poor high commodity prices also affected developed countries by transmitting business cycle disturbances and creating inflationary pressures several recent studies tried to identify and quantify the factors that caused the food commodity price boom of 2003 2008 see for instance isabel vansteenkiste 2009 these studies suggest that one key factor is growth in demand which since the 1980s has outpaced growth in supply other studies argued that biofuel is the culprit since it increases demand for staple crops see for instance donald mitchell 2008 all these studies however assumed competitive markets and did not consider the impact of biofuel on energy costs to farmers moreover they ignored the organization of petroleum exporting countries opec these studies leave us perplexed regarding the true impact of biofuel on food commodity prices was it or was it not an important contributor to the recent food commodity boom we believe that to answer this question the interactions between energy and food must be modeled and opec introduced and the impact of biofuels compared with other factors that are argued by the literature to be important this paper aims to analyze the multiple contributions of energy and biofuels to the increase are biofuels the culprit opec food and fuel

opec and demand response to crude oil prices abstract this paper investigates demand response to crude oil price movements before and after the recent global financial and economic crisis it employs several market power indices to structurally estimate price elasticities a newly developed market power index for crude oil markets is implemented in this approach opec is the central player and acts as a dominant producer in the global oil market we quantify how a change in market structure such as changes in marginal cost of production would contribute to market power exercise of opec and have an ultimate impact on price elasticity of demand for oil our price elasticity predictions fall in a range reported in the literature however estimates for pre crisis deviate from the post crisis ones in fact demand response to crude oil prices has almost doubled during the crisis this severe change in price response can be associated with record price levels caused by supply shortages and surge in alternative renewable energy resources the key advantages of this methodology over the existing literature are that it is simple to use and estimates price elasticity using a competition framework without specifying demand supply function s and utilizes commonly observable market variables that can be applied to any admissible data frequency

what did globe really measure researchers minds versus respondents minds the globe research program expanded the hofstede model of five dimensions of national cultures to 18 a re analysis based on globe s 2004 summary book produced five meta factors one was significantly correlated with gnp capita and from the hofstede dimensions primarily with power distance three more correlated significantly with hofstede s individualism uncertainty avoidance and long term orientation the fifth included the few globe questions that related to hofstede s dimension of masculinity versus femininity globe s respondents minds classified the questions in a way that the researchers minds did not account for and which closely resembles the original hofstede model

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

jump spillovers in energy futures markets implications for diversification benefits abstract in this paper we investigate jump spillover effects of five energy petroleum futures and their implications for diversification benefits in order to identify the latent historical jumps for each of these energy futures we use a bayesian mcmc approach to estimate a jump diffusion model for each we examine the simultaneous jump intensities of pairs of energy futures and the probabilities that jumps in crude oil and natural gas cause jumps or usually large returns in other energy futures in all cases we find significant evidence that the diffusion jump process is a better characterization for energy futures prices we further find that jump spillovers significantly reduce the diversification benefits of an energy futures portfolio in a tranquil rather than crisis period

trade in used equipment with heterogeneous firms this paper examines the pattern of trade in used asset markets where firms have differing factor prices and utilization rates of capital goods depreciation is modeled as an increase in down time as machines age and a measure of comparative advantage is derived that will explain the pattern of trade when there are two types of firms it is shown that with heterogeneous firms the price of used machines will reflect the characteristics of firms as well as the productivity of used machines and the implications of this result for the study of depreciation are discussed finally the relationship between firm characteristics and choice between purchasing new and used truck tractors is presented as an illustration of the predictions of the model

the carbon rent economics of climate policy abstract by reducing the demand for fossil fuels climate policy can reduce scarcity rents for fossil resource owners as mitigation policies ultimately aim to limit emissions a new scarcity for space in the atmosphere to deposit emissions is created the associated scarcity rent or climate rent that is for example directly visible in permit prices under an emission trading scheme can be higher or lower than the original fossil resource rent in this paper we analyze analytically and numerically the impact of mitigation targets resource availability backstop costs discount rates and demand parameters on fossil resource rents and the climate rent we assess whether and how owners of oil gas and coal can be compensated by a carbon permit grandfathering rule one important finding is that reducing cumulative fossil resource use could actually increase scarcity rents and benefit fossil resource owners under a permit grandfathering rule for our standard parameter setting overall scarcity rents under climate policy increase slightly while low discount rates of resource owners imply higher rent losses due to climate policies new developments of reserves or energy efficiency improvements could more than double scarcity rents under climate policy another important implication is that agents receiving the climate rent regulating institutions or owners of grandfathered permits could influence the climate target such that rents are maximized rather than to limit global warming to a socially desirable level for our basic parameter setting rents would be maximized at approximately 650 gtc emissions 50 of business as usual emissions implying a virtual certainty of exceeding a 2 c target and a likelihood of 4 c warming

individualism collectivism in hofstede and globe this paper examines the individualism collectivism i c dimension of national culture in the hofstede and globe models we identify major contradictions between the two culture models which result in contradictory relationships with external variables such as economic prosperity we critically evaluate the content validity of the items used to measure this construct in both models based on our analysis we suggest that hofstede s individualism collectivism index be relabelled as self orientation vs work orientation and globe s in group collectivism as family collectivism we demonstrate how the proposed alternative conceptualizations of the individualism collectivism dimensions in both the hofstede and globe models can help reconcile the anomalous relationships between these two models of national culture and between their dimension scores and other external variables of interest to researchers we recommend a way forward for future research incorporating the collectivism dimensions that identifies which of the hofstede globe scores is appropriate for differing purposes this will help to make future research findings clearer and to reduce contradictions and anomalies implications drawn from such research should also be clearer as a result

the nature of oil shocks and the global economy abstract this paper identifies the main driving force behind oil price shocks in 1970 2006 by applying a simple identification strategy of supply driven and demand driven price shocks the identification hypothesis states that supply driven oil price shocks have a negative impact on the macroeconomic activity of countries which are net consumers of oil while demand driven oil price shocks do not have negative effects in order to identify global demand driven shocks a weighted aggregate gdp series of countries which are net consumers of oil is constructed over 1970 2006 the key result is that the main driving force behind oil price shocks has changed from supply driven shocks in 1970 1992 to demand driven shocks in 1992 2006

explaining the negative correlation between values and practices a note on the hofstede globe debate this note provides an explanation for the presumably counterintuitive negative correlations between values and practices reported by the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness project we argue that such results are compatible with basic microeconomic insights concerning diminishing marginal utility this explanation implies that values surveys as they are generally elicit marginal preferences rather than underlying values therefore they are a problematic instrument for the measurement of cultures and need to be improved so as to discriminate between the importance attached to an objective in general and that attached to it given current levels of satiation

durability market structure and new used goods models focuses on the relationship between market structure and monopoly power durability models new used goods model durability and monopoly in the new used model interdependence between market structure and durability ebsco

conceptualizing and measuring culture in international business and management from challenges to potential solutions understanding the influence of culture on business operations has been one of the most enduring components of international business ib and international management im theorizing and empirical investigation while several critiques and debates questioned the significant progress made in this domain the special issue we introduce here is meant to demonstrate that further advancement on how we conceptualize and measure culture is not only needed but also possible we provide an overview of past and current approaches in the measurement of culture in ib im and the challenges associated with these approaches and emphasize the important yet insufficiently acknowledged link between the theoretical conceptualization of culture and its measurement we then introduce the four articles included in the special issue and highlight how they break away from the addiction to approaches that have been very useful in getting where we are today but that might not always be useful in advancing knowledge beyond what we already know last but not the least we offer our own perspective on promising directions in conceptually and methodologically rethinking the study of culture in ib and im

unit root properties of crude oil spot and futures prices in this article we examine whether wti and brent crude oil spot and futures prices at 1 3 and 6 months to maturity contain a unit root with one and two structural breaks employing weekly data over the period 1991 2004 to realise this objective we employ lagrange multiplier lm unit root tests with one and two endogenous structural breaks proposed by lee and strazicich 2003 minimum lagrange multiplier unit root test with two structural breaks review of economics and statistics 85 1082 1089 2004 minimum lm unit root test with one structural break working paper no 04 17 department of economics appalachian state university we find that each of the oil price series can be characterised as a random walk process and that the endogenous structural breaks are significant and meaningful in terms of events that have impacted on world oil markets

world crude oil and natural gas a demand and supply model abstract this paper examines world markets for crude oil and natural gas over the period 1918 1999 it analyzes the time series properties of output and prices and estimates demand and supply elasticities during 1918 1973 and 1973 1999 oil and gas prices were stable during the first period they became volatile afterwards reflecting deep changes in the market structure following the oil shock in 1973 demand price elasticities were too low however demand income elasticities were high supply price elasticities were also too low the elasticity estimates help to explain the market power of the oil producers and price volatility in response to shocks and corroborate elasticity estimates in energy studies

measuring oil supply disruptions a historical perspective abstract an oil supply disruption in opec member countries or in the persian gulf region may have unusually large effects on crude oil prices because such a disruption may escalate into wider disruptions within these volatile regions this analysis reviews and updates several past studies to identify specific events that can be linked to oil supply shocks that remove oil production while increasing world oil prices using historical data it finds that a 10 cut in world oil supplies arising from abrupt and large monthly disruptions of opec and persian gulf crude oil production correlates with a 35 43 increase in inflation adjusted crude oil prices the data also reveal that almost all sudden and large oil supply disruptions occurred prior to 2004 which raises some interesting issues about how to interpret the evidence from studies evaluating the impact of future oil disruptions on either prices or the economy

negative practice value correlations in the globe data unexpected findings questionnaire limitations and research directions the study of culture and cultural values continues to be hotly debated among cross cultural researchers worldwide starting with the seminal work of kluckhohn and strodtbeck and hofstede and continuing with more recent efforts researchers have continued to develop and empirically examine cultural value frameworks in an attempt to understand how cultural differences affect work related behaviors and attitudes the purpose of this commentary is to briefly describe the interesting and counterintuitive findings from the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe project summarize the different interpretations of these findings offered by maseland and van hoorn and by brewer and venaik provide a critique of their arguments and finally offer a list of possible alternative interpretations and explanations for the conflicting findings in the globe study