bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Economie des ressources naturelles non renouvelables: un survol
Authors: Souames Ahmed
Published: September 2022

Depuis la crise de l’énergie, les ressources naturelles non renouvelables retiennent une attention toute particulière. La théorie sous-jacente à leur gestion, qui connaît un certain renouveau, ne cesse de se développer.

Si cette gestion a la structure d’un puzzle, les pièces de ce dernier peuvent être considérées comme les réponses aux questions suivantes :

a)

Relativement à un objectif donné, à quel rythme faut–il exploiter la ressource?

b)

Cela étant, quel doit être le prix d’une telle ressource?

c)

Comment établir l’équité entre les générations présentes et futures?

d)

Comment prendre en compte l’incertitude et le progrès technique?

e)

Comment les différences entre les recettes provenant des ventes de la ressource et les emplois qu’on en fait vont–elles affecter la politique d’exploitation de la ressource?
Recherche d’une structure optimale du raffinage de pétrole brut en Belgique
Authors: Jomaux Franz
Published: September 2022

L’industrie belge du raffinage se caractérise actuellement (début 1978) par une capacité de traitement d’environ 56 millions de tonnes par an. Cette capacité se répartit en trois zones géographiquement distinctes: Anvers (39 millions de tonnes), Gand (10 millions de tonnes) et Feluy (7 millions de tonnes).

Comparée à la demande totale en produits pétroliers de 1977 qui s’élève approximativement à 30 millions de tonnes, la capacité actuelle de raffinage est donc largement excédentaire. Cet excédent risque de subsister durant de nombreuses années encore puisqu’en raison de la crise qui a suivi le conflit du Moyen-Orient d’octobre 73, le taux d’accroissement futur de la consommation pétrolière sera nettement inférieur à celui que nous avons connu par le passé.
Etude de la demande d’énergie globale dans le contexte d’une analyse structurelle approfondie des secteurs de la demande intermédiaire belge
Authors: Bossier F. , Duwein D.
Published: September 2022

Dans le cadre du programme national de Recherche et Développement en énergie adopté par la Belgique en 1975, le Bureau du Plan s’est vu confier l’exécution d’une partie du volet modélisation du système énergétique national. La tâche du Bureau du Plan a consisté principalement à modéliser la demande énergétique en provenance des secteurs de la demande intermédiaire (secteur transports non compris). Ce travail implique la détermination de modèles permettant de calculer la répartition optimale de la demande totale d’énergie entre les différentes formes d’énergie et d’analyser les niveaux auxquels les différentes formes d’énergie peuvent être substituées l’une à l’autre.

Les modèles d’étude de la répartition et de la substitution entre forme d’énergie constituent un des niveaux du travail entamé par le Bureau du Plan.
Weak form efficiency of the capital market: a spectral analytic approach
Authors: De Groof C.
Published: September 2022

A capital market is said to be weakly efficient whenever the time series of past information (usually past returns) do not contain any information that enables an investor to obtain higher-than-normal yields. Operationally, the definition of weak form capital market efficiency comes down to stating that statistically no patterns of dependence can be discerned in the time series of rates of return. Up till now empirical testing of the weak form hypothesis has been carried out by means of autocorrelation- and run-analysis.
Monetary Targets, Interest Rates and Exchange Rates
Authors: Brittain Bruce
Published: September 2022

Two distinct models of rational economic behaviour may be useful in explaining an apparent change in the relationship between short-term US interest rates and the US money supply. These models are implicit in the recent rational expectations literature which includes Lucas (1972), Fischer (1977), Phelps and Taylor (1977), Poole (1976) and Sargent and Wallace (1975). Yet, the two models give flatly contradictory results.

In the first model, the market is rational because it understands how policy makers, particularly the monetary authorities, behave and forecasts future monetary policy with some degree of accuracy. When the money growth rate rises above target in the United States, for example, market participants forecast a future increase in the Federal Funds rate aimed at slowing growth of the money stock in some future period. In this case the monetary authority is monetarist but the market need not be. The authorities believe that inflation is a monetary phenomenon and the money stock is controlled to achieve a desired inflation rate. The market need only understand how the monetary authority behaves.
Loisirs et salaires réels en Belgique
Authors: Pieraerts P. , Phlips L.
Published: September 2022

Une discussion des mesures utilisées pour évaluer les rémunérations en termes réels prend une importance accrue en période d’inflation. En effet, les salariés sont, alors, particulièrement sensibles à la question de savoir si la hausse de leur salaire nominal est suffisante pour compenser la hausse des prix à la consommation. En particulier, ils se demandent si l’indexation des salaires assure une protection suffisante contre l’inflation. Le grand public se demande aussi si les revendications salariales apportent bien les gains en
niveau de vie espérés. Beaucoup de gens, pensons-nous, en doutent malgré le
fait que les mesures officielles des gains en termes réels indiquent des progrès
substantiels. Nous essayerons de montrer que les lamentations au sujet de la « cherté de la vie » ont un élément de vérité, parce qu’elles émanent de mécanismes psychologiques fondamentaux. Et nous concluerons que les mesures du coût de la vie, ou alternativement des gains réels, devraient refléter ces mécanismes, qui peuvent se ramener à des phénomènes d’accoutumance au bien-être.
Fiscalité et politique industrielle en Belgique, analyse économique de quelques mesures prises (1965 - 1978)
Authors: Gerard Marcel
Published: September 2022

La récente loi de réorientation économique, ou loi anticrise, du 4 août 1978 et, précédemment, la loi du 29 novembre 1977, témoignent de la conviction des autorités publiques que les agents économiques sont sensibles au recours aux instruments fiscaux de politique industrielle. L’économiste voit en pareille conviction une invitation à analyser l’incidence des mesures prises sur le comportement des investisseurs.

Cette étude propose un examen de l’incidence de trois instruments fiscaux de politique économique et de leur maniement par les autorités publiques, sur les décisions des investisseurs quant au choix du mode de financement et au volume des investissements.
Salaires, emploi et durée du travail
Authors: Dreze J.H.
Published: September 2022

Je voudrais, cet après-midi, intervenir dans le débat sur les salaires et la réduction de la durée du travail en Belgique. Je pense, en effet, que la théorie économique et son prolongement statistique peuvent éclairer davantage ce débat, dont l’enjeu est important. Les éléments d’analyse et d’observation que j’invoquerai n’ont pas de prétention à l’originalité. Mais leur organisation m’a permis de clarifier, puis de corriger, certaines idées. Je viens vérifier auprès de vous la cohérence de mon point de vue, et sa pertinence.

Vous vous demanderez peut-ètre ce que la durée du travail vient faire dans un colloque intitulé « Inflation, Emploi et Change ». J'en suis étonné moi-mème, car je comptais présenter demain une étude réalisée avec Franco Modigliani sur la liaison entre l'emploi et les salaires dans une économie où Féquilibre extérieur a force de contrainte. Cette étude m'a conduit à regarder le marché du travail en Belgique sous un angle nouveau qui souligne l'importance de choix cohérents, en matière de salaires et de durée du travail, harmonisant nos finalités et les latitudes de notre équilibre extérieur.
Monetary Policies and Exchange Rates
Authors: Budd A.P. , Warburton P.J.
Published: September 2022

In this paper we set out to do three things. First we present a general, and somewhat simple, theory of the relationship between monetary policies and exchange rates. Second we present some evidence relating to the theory. Third we use the theory to discuss current relationships between European currencies and in particular examine the prospects for the European Monetary System and for the pound sterling.

The following account does not attempt to provide a realistic theory of short-term movements in the exchange rate but sets out a general approach which describes the longer-term tendencies of exchange rates. It has been described by a distinguished commentator as « naive instant monetarism ». « Naive », presumably, in the sense that it pays no attention to institutional problems and « instant » in the sense that the adjustments appear to occur instantaneously. The sense in which it is monetarist should become clear although we draw attention to one theoretical objection to the monetarist approach. We make no claim for originality for the theoretical framework.
Taux de change, inflation et compétitivité externe
Authors: Kervyn A.
Published: September 2022

Depuis plusieurs années, les chercheurs de l’IRES s’intéressent aux problèmes de parité de pouvoir d’achat et de compétitivité externe des économies. Cet article cherche à présenter une synthèse de leur approche en même temps qu’un ensemble de résultats concernant la période récente de changes flottants. L’analyse qui suit ne s’adresse ni aux causes de l’inflation, ni à celles des variations du taux de change, mais s’efforcera essentiellement d’en élucider les conséquences. Elle portera avant tout sur la période allant de 1970 à 77, tant pour des raisons statistiques (meilleure qualité et homogénéité des données) qu’économiques. C’est en effet pendant ces dernières années que les variations des changecettes et les différentiels d’inflation ont posé ces problèmes de façon aiguë.
An alternative Theory of Hedging and Speculation
Authors: Goss B.A.
Published: September 2022

Theoretical and empirical work on individual decision-making in the context of organized commodity markets has mostly assumed that individual economic agents behave as if they pursue the aim of maximum expected utility (e.g. Stein 1961, 1964; Johnson 1960; Ward and Fletcher 1971; Rutledge 1972). For the reader who believes that individuals do not maximize expected utility because of inadequate information, inability to distinguish local from global maxima, utility functions which do not permit maximization, or for some other reason, and for the reader who finds the aim of maximum expected utility introspectively unsatisfactory, this paper presents an alternative non-maximizing approach.

The main determinants of the individual economic agent’s market position are his expectations of the relevant variable relating to the commodity in which he is trading, his attitude toward risk and his decision rule. The paper considers first the case of an individual speculator, who is assumed risk averse in a sense to be defined, and secondly the case of a discretionary hedger who combines both hedging and speculative elements, and who may be either a carrying-charge or selective hedger in the sense of Working (1953). It will be seen that conventional results, as regards the nature of the trader’s supply and demand functions and with respect to certain parameter changes, are obtained by a route alternative to that of utility maximization, although a formal comparison between the two approaches is the subject of a separate paper. For the benefit of the non-specialist reader we begin with a brief review of the literature on speculation in commodity futures markets.
Language and the Earnings of Quebec Males in 1970 in specific Industries and Occupations
Authors: Vaillancourt F.
Published: September 2022

This paper examines the role of differences in language skills in explaining differences in the level of labour earnings of males residing in Quebec. Canada in 1970. The paper puts forward an analytical framework that could be of use for others interested in explaining earnings in bi-, tri- or multi-lingual labour markets and shows that a knowledge of English was more highly rewarded than a knowledge of French, ceteris paribus, in Quebec in 1970.

The paper is divided in four parts. The first part outlines the theoretical framework and the empirical evidence that leads to the hypothesis that English is a more highly rewarded skill in the labour market of Quebec than French in 1970. The second part describes the database, discusses the choice of the functional form and presents the independent variables and their expected signs and, when appropriate, relative magnitudes. The third part examines the results for the whole of Quebec males in 1970 with particular attention paid to returns to language skills. The fourth part examines the results for specific industries and occupations.
A Competitive Sector Depletion Allowance in the Context of an Intertemporal Dominant-firm Model
Authors: Melese d’Hospital François
Published: September 2022

It is conceivable that the reaction of a government excluded from the cartelization of a strategic exhaustible resource (and suffering from a subsequent restriction in its supply) takes the form of a depletion allowance directed at home-country extractive firms in the industry. According to federal law, a depletion allowance is a tax reduction on income proportional to the amount of reserves extracted. Presumably the aim of such a manœuver would be to speed up the rate of extraction at home (i.e. tilting the extraction profile of home-country firms towards the present) thereby relieving short-run excess demand and simultaneously reducing dependence on foreign owned and controlled reserves. (Clearly, allusion can be made to the 1973-74 OPEC oil embargo and to the subsequent policy decisions made by governments of non-OPEC oil producing countries).
The theory of labour supply and commodity demand with an endogenous marginal wage rate
Authors: Powell Alan A.
Published: September 2022

The seventies have seen a burgeoning of an empirical literature on labour-leisure choice grounded in the work on the systems approach to the estimation of demand systems which flowered in the sixties. Working with the Klein-Rubin utility function, Betancourt (1973) extended Lluch’s ELES system (1970, 1973) to include the labour-leisure choice. Abbott and Ashenfelter (1976) analysed United States data on hours worked using both the Klein-Rubin and the indirect addilog utility functions (although, unlike Betancourt, they did not endogenize savings). Kiefer (1977) used a Bayesian approach to the estimation of a 7 commodity plus leisure system which imposed only classical restrictions on a Rotterdam model written in logarithmic differentials. He also explored the use of a quadratic indirect utility function as a second order Taylor approximation to an arbitrary nested indirect utility function in which Box/Cox transformations comprise the inner nests (Kiefer, 1975). Phlips (1978) has used an extended Klein-Rubin utility function, in which the real stock of money appears, to integrate the demand for commodities and leisure with the demand for money. Barnett (1979) has imbedded the commodity and leisure demand problem into a version of the Rotterdam model under relatively weak assumptions about preferences. Finally, recent empirical work using Betancourt’s TELES model on Australian data has been reported by Tulpulé (1978).
Production as behavior toward risk
Authors: Hawawini G.A. , Michel P.A.
Published: September 2022

Recent contributions to the theory of the firm have recognized the impact of uncertainty on both the firm’s behavior and its equilibrium position. Models were developed by Baron (1970, 1971), Sandmo (1971) and Leland (1972) that explicitly incorporate a random output price as well as the firm’s attitude toward the risk associated with production under price uncertainty. These models assume that, in the absence of complete foresight, the firm seeks to maximize the expected utility of its profits, in contrast to the traditional profit-maximizing firm operating under certainty. It is then shown that a firm which displays aversion toward risky activities will produce a smaller output under price uncertainty than under certainty, and that, contrary to the firm operating in a certain world, the risk averse firm may alter its optimal level of production in response to a change in its fixed costs.

These and other comparative-statics results derived by Baron, Sandmo and Leland are based on the general principle of expected utility maximization, first developed by Arrow (1965) in his work on the theory of risk aversion. An alternative approach is based on the mean-standard deviation framework (M-SD hereafter) developed by Markowitz (1952, 1959) and extended by Tobin (1958, 1965).
L’évolution de la théorie de la valeur d’Adam Smith à David Ricardo
Authors: de Vroey Michel
Published: September 2022

Trop souvent dans l’histoire de la pensée économique, les conceptions des auteurs anciens sont présentées d’une manière définitive et figée, comme si, tout au long de leurs existences, leurs points de vue n’avaient pas changé. Les contradictions, les évolutions, les hésitations de leurs pensées sont gommées. Quel contraste alors entre la présentation de leurs idées dans les manuels et la fréquentation réelle de leurs œuvres ! L’objet de notre étude est, comme son titre l’indique, d’étudier d’une manière critique les théories de la valeur des deux principaux fondateurs de l’économie politique anglaise. Nous aimerions que cet examen contribue à une remise en cause de leurs apports respectifs. En ce qui concerne Smith, nous voudrions montrer que la présentation habituellement faite de sa théorie de la valeur n’est pas la seule possible et n’est peut-être pas celle qui correspond le plus à la logique profonde de son œuvre. Le biais serait dû au fait que l’interprétation traditionnelle est fortement tributaire de la lecture de Smith que fit Ricardo.
Government subsidies, inflation and consumers' welfare
Authors: Bental B. , Spiegel M.
Published: September 2022

There are numerous contributions to the literature on the relationship between various government intervention schemes and the rate of inflation. However, it seems that the policy of direct price support to consumer goods has not been analyzed in the professional literature, despite the fact that such policies are proposed in various countries in conjunction with anti-inflationary measures. For example, the British government proposed in July 1975 to increase food subsidies, among other measures to attrack inflation.

Economists seem to be aware of the questionable value of subsidies in the fight against inflation. Subsidies have to be financed by the government, and therefore they may cause larger deficits, thus contributing to the inflationary process. On the other hand, subsidies may affect income distribution in favor of certains groups, and be of political value.

We undertake a rigorous analysis of consumption subsidies and their relation to inflation and income distribution. The model employed for this purpose is Samuelson’s overlapping generations model (Samuelson, [1958]), in its simplest form. There is just one good, and fiat money; inflation is measured by the change of the money price of the consumption good from period to period.
The Influence of the 1974 Oil Crisis on Sectoral Growth Rates in the Belgian Economy
Authors: Bossier F. , Duwein D.
Published: September 2022

This paper briefly presents and analyses the behaviour of the different sectors of the Belgian economy during the period 1965-1978. Special attention is paid to the influence of the 1974 oil crisis on sectors of the Belgian economy. It is shown that the 1974 shock had different consequences according to the energy components of the sectors.

Measured in 1970 prices, the real production of all Belgian sectors together had an average, annual growth rate of 4.32 % between 1965 and 1978. This 13-year period, however, was marked by an important shock in 1974 and the growth rates over the period 1974-1978 were substantially lower than those observed before 1974.

Although the average growth rate was 5.5% during the period 1965-1978, it was below 2% (1.79%) between 1974 and 1978. This important reduction illustrates the set-back of activity in most sectors and especially in the industrial sector; the average growth rate of industry dropped from 6.81% between 1965 and 1974 to 0.85 % from 1974 to 1978. The energy sector was also affected by the 1974 crisis, only conserving a moderate growth rate of 1.74% during the period 1974-1978 against 6.77% previously. On the contrary, services resisted the crisis better and maintained a growth rate of about 4 % until 1978.
Rémunération des directeurs généraux : le cas de la Belgique
Authors: Heinen Jean-Paul
Published: September 2022

Ce sont Berle et Means (1962) qui furent les premiers à tenter de confirmer empiriquement et systématiquement l’idée que les fonctions de management sont dissociées de la propriété dans les grandes sociétés.

Leur vision contraste avec celle des modèles classiques et néo-classiques : ils perçoivent l’entreprise comme une organisation dont le centre de décision a cessé d’être le lieu d’un interêt commun, celui du propriétaire.

Cette séparation entre la propriété et le contrôle des grandes entreprises aboutit à l’énoncé d’une pluralité d’objectifs au sein de l’organisation ainsi redéfinie, cette pluralité n’étant que la conséquence de la confrontation d’intérêts a priori divergents.

Le modèle de maximisation du profit peut dès lors ne plus se révéler valable; dans certains cas il convient plutôt d’élaborer un modèle où le profit n’est plus considéré que comme l’un des arguments de la fonction d’objectif ou comme une contrainte minimale à respecter.
Imports as a Competitive Discipline
Authors: Geroski Paul A. , Jacquemin Alexis
Published: September 2022

The proposition that imports may constrain domestic competition and ought to be encouraged on at least monopoly welfare loss grounds is neither new nor very frequently challenged. In this paper, we should like to present several reflections on the literature — empirical and theoretical — associated with this proposition, and to sketch the outlines of two further empirical exercises which we believe capable of yielding information on some aspects of this general view.

It is becoming increasingly accepted that industry conduct ought to play an important role in our theorizing about oligopoly, and that structural indices can be poor, and occasionally quite inaccurate reflections of the more complex reality of industry performance. In this section, we should like to explore this insight in the context of competition in an open economy.
Strategic Groups : an Application to Foreign and Domestic Firms in Spain
Authors: Donsimoni M.P. , Leoz-Arguelles V.
Published: September 2022

The theory of Industrial Organization has traditionally assumed that firms in an industry are alike in all important dimensions except for their market share. In this context, a large body of the literature posits that some long run structural features on an industry such as the size distribution of sellers, the nature of the product and of technology and the existence of barriers to entry generate market power. Above normal profits are the manifestation of this market power and firms are assumed to benefit from it in proportion to their market share.

This theory of industry-wide profit determination has recently been challenged by several authors (Hunt (1972), Newman (1978), Porter (1979), Caves and Pugel (1980), Encaoua and Franck (1980), Encaoua and Jacquemin (1981)). In particular, they have emphasized differences among firms’ strategies within an industry, indicating that these differences appear to be rather stable in the long run. Hence, strategic groups, i.e., groups of firms highly symmetrical in their strategies have been introduced as an additional element of market structure. The resulting hypothesis states that industries with substantial heterogeneous strategic groups should not fit the traditional structure-performance paradigm as well as industries with homogeneous strategic groups. Empirical support for this hypothesis can be found in Newman (1978) and Encaoua and Franck (1980).
The Impact of Concentration on Wages in the Sectors of Mining and Manufacturing of West German Industry
Authors: Feldmann B.
Published: September 2022

Assuming a certain extend of labour immobility between different industrial sectors, this paper shall test empirically the effect of monopoly power on labour earnings in 40 West German industries.

This investigation has been done before by several authors for different countries, but so far only one empirical analysis exists for West Germany, where a negative effect of firms’ concentration on wages was found. This is rather surprising, considering the opposite findings for the USA, the UK, France, Belgium and Italy, where in all cases positive relationships between firms’ concentration and wages have been revealed. Therefore another test for West Germany seems justified.

In general, the analysis of links between monopoly power and labour income contributes to the research in welfare loss through monopolization, since any empirical measure of this welfare loss is understated if some fraction of monopoly profit is transferred to labour.
A Consumer with a Time-Varying B-Matrix
Authors: Lubulwa A.S.G.
Published: September 2022

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper introduces the idea of a consumer who has a time varying Lancasterian matrix of characteristics imbedded in an intertemporal Stone-Geary utility function. The thrust of the paper is theoretical, its main aim being the generalisation of the theoretical contributions of Dixon and Lluch (1977). The main contribution in Dixon and Lluch (1977) is that DELES, a system of equations is proposed which describe the consumer’s planned and actual expenditure paths for durables. In order to derive these equations they have a consumer maximising an inter-temporal Klein-Rubin utility function defined on the stocks of durables, subject to a budget integral constraint and a vector of durable goods stocks’ adjustment equations.

This paper differs from Dixon and Lluch's contribution in that we assume that utility is not derived from the stocks of durables directly. Utility is derived from the characteristics that the durables yield. For example a car yields satisfaction to a consumer indirectly through characteristics like speed, comfort, safety, reliability, economy in petrol consumption, prestige and similar characteristics associated with the car. The idea of characteristics is best known from the work of Lancaster (1966, 1971), who assumes a constant objectively known characteristics matrix. This paper differs further from Lancaster (1966, 1971) in that we assume that characteristics of a durable change over time. Take the example of a car again. Over time, though, characteristics like capacity, associated with a particular car may be time invariant, most other characteristics like car reliability, petrol consumption, comfort, speed, prestige may change with the age of the car.
On Farrell Measures of Technical Efficiency
Authors: Deprins Dominique , Simar Léopold
Published: September 2022

In this paper we consider the problem of evaluating the performance of production units in terms of their technical efficiency. Several attempts have been made to solve this problem and a number of different measures appear in the economic literature : the technical efficiency, here used, is defined to be the ability of a productive organization to operate close to, or on the boundary of its production set; the problem will be analyzed only in terms of physical input and output quantities, without any references to prices or costs structures. This concept of technical efficiency is inspired from the work by Koopmans (1951); it received a first empirical application in Farrel (1957). An interesting survey on this topic may be formed in Førsund, Lovell and Schmidt (1980). Measuring efficiency of this kind for any data set requires first to determine what the boundary of the unknown production set can be; and then, to measure the distance between any observed point and this boundary. In this paper, we concentrate on the Farrel method of estimating technical efficiencies. There the production set is typically a convex polyhedron generated from the observed data with small modifications in view of the assumptions on disposabilities of input and/or on disposibilities of outputs. The distances from the efficient frontier are then measured in a radial sense, i.e. with fixed technology.
La configuration Nord-Sud du commerce des produits alimentaires: Un essai prospectif et une expérience d’histoire économétrique.
Authors: Burniaux Jean-Marc
Published: September 2022

All the econometric studies on world food prospects lead to the picture of an increasing food trade deficit in the Third World. We discuss here this topic using a more global approach based on a general equilibrium framework covering the whole World Economy and involving disagregated rural and urban sectors. With this model, we analyses the impacts of Third World demography and debt, oil price, rural productivity and developed region growth. The model finds that the food trade in 1960 to 1995 is highly sensitive to these variables. The oil shocks and the resulting economic stagnation in the industrialized countries has broken trade patterns that were supposed to bring welfare to LDCs. These implied a North to South food trade balanced by a South to North manufactured trade. To sustain 5 percent growth in shrinking industrial world markets, the Third World, and especially the semi-industrialized countries, would be forced to « export urban hunger ». At the end of the century, food would flow from South to North, in the opposite direction from what has been unanimously predicted by other studies.
On the (In) Dependence of Interest-Rate Setting in a Small Open Economy - the Case of Belgium 1976-1983
Authors: Acx Rudi , Quintyn Marc
Published: September 2022

For a longer period than has ever been the case in the past, these last few years have been marked by historically high levels of interest rates, as well as by an inversion of the yieldcurve.

Given these extra-ordinary context, we think it right to renew our interest in the determination process of what is called the « domestic » interest rate in a small open economy. This is all the more important as the causes of interest rate volatility in the Belgian case may prove to be situated not only on an international level. They may also be found in domestic factors as e.g. the increase in the government debt (for a survey, see Fayt (1981)).

This article is another contribution to the series of studies made in the seventies by e.g. De Generale Bankmaatschappij (1971), Hernandez-Lopez (1973), Clavijo and Kervyn (1974), Vuchelen (1976 and 1977c) and a more recent contribution of Reding, Jehin and Abraham (1982).
Mineral-Taxation in a Stages-of-Production Framework
Authors: Slade Margaret
Published: September 2022

Government interference in private markets for exhaustible resources is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Each level of government — federal, state or provincial, and even local — has its own tax policy. Tax-policy instruments include royalties, depletion allowances, severance taxes, price controls and supports, environmental regulations, freight subsidies, profit taxes, and property taxes, to name only a few.

These taxes may be levied at every stage of production. For example, property and some ad valorem taxes are levied on ores in the ground, severance taxes are paid when the ore leaves the ground, royalties and depletion allowances may be collected at the first sale (after some degree of processing), and price controls may be placed on finished products.

Not only does the government intervene in private resource markets with great regularity but the size of tax effects is not small. For example, depletion allowances in the United States have been as large as thirty three and one third percent of revenues. And price controls in some periods have kept petroleum prices at less than half world prices.
Lobbying for Tariffs and the Cost of Protection
Authors: Donnenfeld S. , Weber S.
Published: September 2022

Until recently standard trade theory had ignored the fact that resources are devoted not only to production of goods and services but also to rent, revenue and tariff seeking activities. Competitive rent and revenue seeking and their impact on welfare and resource allocation have been thoroughly examined by A. Krueger [1974] and J. Bhagwati and T. Srinivasan [1980]. The studies mentioned above are based on the presumption that rent seeking and lobbying activities effect the availability of physical inputs employed in the production of goods. In this paper we argue that lobbying also affects the efficiency of firms through its impact on the allocation of managerial effort which is internal to the firm. This stems from the fact that firms can raise their profits by lobbying for tariffs which in turn raise the domestic price. Since managerial effort is an input in both production and lobbying activities, and since the likelihood of having a tariff levied depends on the lobbying effort, we expect some managerial effort to be directed to lobbying at the expense of production and thus adversely affecting the production efficiency of firms.
Volume des échanges, nature technologique des produits et efficacité économique des secteurs industriels français
Authors: Carre Denis
Published: September 2022

L’analyse des performances industrielles doit permettre de faire ressortir l’incidence, outre des formes d’organisation des marchés et du comportement des firmes, des exigences de la Division Internationale du Travail. Dans la mesure où l’on assiste à une insertion croissante des entreprises en dehors de leur espace national, l’analyse doit répercuter un tel phénomène. Parlant d’insertion croissante, il est tout d’abord fait référence à l’augmentation en termes absolus et relatifs des flux échangés, des importations, des exportations. Si ces flux sont susceptibles d’affecter le niveau des performances observées à un instant donné, dans une perspective plus dynamique, ces flux participent, avec des intensités variables, à modifier l’organisation elle-même des secteurs. Qu’il s’agisse d’une élévation du degré de concentration ou d’un déplacernent des ressources allouées vers un autre secteur, les flux d’importations s’ajoutent à des stratégies plus nationales pour modifier les structures industrielles. Par ailleurs, la pénétration des capitaux étrangers n’est pas sans effet, semble-t-il, sur les performances mêmes des secteurs ainsi concernés. Enfin, le processus d’internationalisation développé par des grandes mais aussi par de plus petites firmes ne peut pas manquer d’affecter encore la relation entre les structures telles qu’elles sont saisies à travers une série d’indicateurs de concentration et de barrières à l’entrée et le niveau des taux ou des marges de profits.
A Role for an International Institution: A One-Shot Game-Theoretic Approach
Authors: Pacheco Fernando
Published: September 2022

In this paper we use a two-country model of flexible exchange rates to analyse strategic interdependence. Values for the policy instruments are selected from discrete sets, increasing the likelihood of a non-unique Nash equilibrium. Communication between the policy makers becomes very important; we define international institutions as communication devices, since their mission in the context of our model (we are in a one-shot game) is indeed the exchange of some information, either policy proposals or recommendations. We discuss two such devices: direct communication (for instance, a telephone line), and communication through a mediator (an international parliament) that makes policy recommendations to both countries, which are not necessarily followed. The conclusion is that these devices may increase actual or expected welfare levels and ease agreement between decision makers, even in a world where Nash equilibria are efficient.
Policy Coordination in the European Economic Community
Authors: Steinherr A.
Published: September 2022

Coordination of economic policies and convergence of economic performance within the European Community are objectives already laid out in the Treaty of Rome. A number of later decisions by the Council of Ministers reaffirm and specify these principles. The 1974 Convergence Decision provides a procedural framework for review of the economic situation and policy with the aim of bringing about greater convergence of macroeconomic performance. In this process a central place is given to the setting of budgetary policy guidelines. In addition, the EMS provides a potentially strong mechanism for coordinating monetary policy under the constraint of fixed, but adjustable, exchange rates and, in principle, free capital movements.
More Efficient Economic Policies of Disinflation: The Case of Greece
Authors: Economou George E.
Published: September 2022

The high inflation rate and the increase in the unemployment rate coupled with very low growth rates, occured as a result of the second oil crisis, was confronted the policy makers of the new administration with a dilemma. They responded with a compromise of different sorts of policies aiming at achieving a gradual reduction of the inflation and unemployment rates so that they are reduced down to equilibrium over a long enough period of time.

However, the monetary and fiscal policies adopted are not considered as a single macroeconomic instrument. The growth of real output is pursued with an expansionary public and fiscal policy, while inflation is confronted with restrained monetary policy against the private sector of the economy. Moreover, the way prices and incomes policy is adopted postpones recovering of output and profits, thus creating serious fears for a further increase of unemployment and a resurgence of inflation.
Can a Real Wage Decrease Cure Unemployment? A General Equilibrium Analysis for Belgium
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor
Published: September 2022

In a series of papers (Ginsburgh and Erlich (1984), Ginsburgh and Van der Heyden (1985), Erlich, Ginsburgh and Van der Heyden (1985)), we have tried to assess by how much the real wage should be or should have been decreased in order to ensure short and/or long run full employment.

This short note describes the main ideas lying behind the general equilibrium model built to answer these questions and summarizes the main results.

The model attempts to embed a situation of short run market imperfections into a long run competitive equilibrium framework. If price rigidities and a lack of substitution between factors are acceptable assumptions in the short run, there do exist no better concepts than flexible prices, substitution possibilities and equilibrium in all markets in the long run.
Trends, Random Walks and the Expectations-Augmented Phillips-Curve- A Summary
Authors: Wasserfallen W.
Published: September 2022

In most macroeconomic models, variations in nominal variables, such as inflation or money growth, are considered to be important determinants of cyclical fluctuations in real activity. The major hypothesis in that respect is the so-called Phillips-curve. In its modern interpretation, it maintains that only unexpected changes in nominal magnitudes produce real effects. Reliable empirical evidence on these effects is therefore crucial for the building of macroeconomic models and the conduct of monetary policy.

Time series of output, industrial production or employment however contain growth and seasonal components in addition to cyclical elements. The empirical implementation of business cycle models therefore requires assumptions with respect to growth and seasonal parts as well, in order to isolate cyclical movements and to avoid misspecified equations. It has become general practice to assume that economic growth can be reasonably well approximated by a deterministic linear time trend. Seasonality is either captured through the explicit introduction of dummy variables or the use of seasonally adjusted data. Again, these procedures assume a deterministic seasonal structure. It is generally concluded in this literature, that unanticipated and possibly also expected changes in nominal magnitudes have non-negligible real effects.
A Note on the Inequality Approach of the Labour Theory of Value
Authors: Cuyvers Ludo
Published: September 2022

I. INTRODUCTION

The economic literature of the seventies shows a remarkable mathematical development of Marxian economics, especially after the publication, in 1970 and 1973 respectively, of Brody’s and Morishima books on Marx’s theory of value and growth (Brody (1970), Morishima (1973)) (it thus apparently took an entire decade for the many fruits contained in Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, in Okisio’s work (Okisio (1963)) and in the pioneering Econometrica paper of Morishima and Seton (1961) to mature). Not surprisingly, the relative abundance of mathematical papers and notes on the labour theory of value was accompanied by a lot of controversy. Steedman (1975) for instance, pointed out that joint production, when expressed in a linear system of equations, might easily give rise to negative labour values, a phenomenon already met by Morishima ((1973), pp. 182 ff.). In that case, positive surplus value is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of positive profits. Such apparent perversities and the need of introducing the concept of scrapping unprofitable capital goods and technology, lead Morishima to develop his inequality approach.
Unemployment and Labour Market Transition Probabilities
Authors: Theeuwes Jules
Published: September 2022

I. ANALYSING UNEMPLOYMENT: A RESEARCH PROGRAM

There are many kinds of unemployment. An average economist should be able to enumerate at least a dozen without forward notice. This embarrassing abundance of definitions gives a clear indication of the trouble we have pinning unemployment down.

Unemployment is generally considered to be an undesirable quantity in a market economy. Although not all of it. Part of it is unavoidable and even considered necessary for an efficient matching of jobs and workers. In this sense one could define —although this would not be easy— an optimal quantity of unemployment taking into account the institutions and stochastics of the labour market. Unemployment under and above this optimum would be inefficient. The next question is: can one avoid too much or too little unemployment through policy measures at reasonable costs? There is no definite answer to that. A lot of heated discussion in macroeconomics focusses on this subject.
Unidentified Floating Unemployment (UFU) and the Specification of the UV-Curve
Authors: de Neubourg Chris
Published: September 2022

Conceptually, unemployment may originate in various types of (temporary) imbalances on the labour market. Five types of origins are broadly to be distinguished (given the real wage level and the volume of labour supply):

Uk: unemployment originating in very short term — seasonal — fluctuations in economic activity;

Ul: unemployment originating in the underutilization of the existing physical production capacity;

Um: unemployment originating in a shortage of new investment, that fails to compensate for the loss of employment due to the ongoing scrapping of older vintages of production capacity. Two dimensions can be distinguished (a) production capacity may increase too slowly and (b) the new capacity may be too capital intensive to guarantee the absorption (utilization) of the (given) labour force;

Un: unemployment due to labour market imperfections leading to real mismatches of supply and demand. Market imperfections, in turn, originate in the behavioural reactions of workers and employers to incomplete information and in the fact that adjustments are seldom immediate and necessarily take time (see de Neubourg 1985a for details);
Trade Unions, Investment and Employment in a Small Open Economy: A Dutch Perspective
Authors: Mulder C.B. , van der Ploeg F.
Published: September 2022

1. INTRODUCTION

Like in most European countries, unemployment in Holland has increased considerably in the past ten, fifteen years. This phenomenon is of major concern and warrants explanation. This paper sets out to explain employment and unemployment in a small open economy with powerful trade unions. It provides a framework in which various essential features of a small open economy, like Holland, are imbedded. World trade is a dominating factor on the demand side, whereas unions and long-run labour supply are dominating factors on the supply side. The various instruments the government has available (tax rates, levels of benefits, investment subsidies, public sector expenditure and employment) affect both sides of the economy. The investment behaviour of firms is an important link between present and future.

The formal framework developed in this paper consists of a model with a well developed supply side and a demand side. The supply side is built around rums engaged in monopolistic competition. This provides a role for demand. The firms take the wage rates and aggregate demand as given when deciding on their labour demand and investment decisions.
The Impact of High Tariffs and Imperfect Market Structure on Plant Scale Inefficiency in Canadian Manufacturing Industries in the 1970’s
Authors: Baldwin J.R. , Gorecki P.K.
Published: September 2022

INTRODUCTION

Productivity differences between the Canadian and U.S. manufacturing sectors are commonly attributed to smaller Canadian plant scale and levels of product diversity that are too large. However, there are relatively few studies that have actually investigated the extent of suboptimal scale. And those that have done so have either concentrated on a relatively small number of industries (Eastman and Stykolt, 1967; Gorecki, 1976; Scherer et al., 1975), have been beset by missing data observations (Caves et al., 1980) or have focused on Canada without comparing it to some international standard (Gupta, 1979; Dickson, 1979).
Un cadre d’analyse pour l’étude d’un régime de double marché des changes imparfaitement cloisonné
Authors: Decaluwe B. , Bhandari J.S.
Published: September 2022

I. INTRODUCTION

Les autorités du Fonds monétaire international ont toujours dévoilé une grande préoccupation face au développement de systèmes de taux de change doubles ou multiples. Malgré ces préoccupations et l’avis généralement exprimé par les experts qu’un système de taux de change multiples est discriminatoire et moins efficace qu’un mécanisme de change unifié, de nombreux pays ont eu recours à des sytèmes de taux de change multiples ou doubles pour atténuer leurs problèmes de balance des paiements. Inventorier la nature des régimes de taux de change doubles ou multiples dépasse l’objet de notre étude. Toutefois, un examen attentif des dispositions 1égales prises par les autorités monétaires de pays utilisant de tels régimes fait apparaître qu’ils fonctionnent différemment des schémas théoriques présentés par les économistes. Selon ces derniers, un régime de double marché des changes se caractérise par un cloisonnement complet entre le marché des changes réglementé réservé aux transactions commerciales et le marché des changes libre réservé aux transactions financières. C’est en s’appuyant sur cette hypothèse que les premiers travaux de Baratieri et Ragazzi [1971], Fleming [1971], Abraham et Martin [1970], Kouri et Porter [1974] et Swoboda [1974] évaluèrent l’efficacité des instruments de la politique fiscale et monétaire en régime de double taux de change en la comparant aux régimes de taux de change fixe ou flexible.