Luck or insight? The Simon–Ehrlich bet re-examined

After a long argument about the effect of population growth on the availability of resources, Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich undertook a $1,000 bet in October1980. The wager concerned the inflation-adjusted prices of five metals. If, over ten years, prices rose, Simon would pay Ehrlich. If they fell, Ehrlich would pay Simon. In October 1990 Ehrlich mailed Simon a cheque, as the real price of the five-metal basket of commodities had fallen by 36 per cent. Since then, some researchers have argued that Simon ‘got lucky’; over other periods the result would have been different. We review data from 1900–2019 and find that, if war years are excluded, Simon would have won the bet 69.9 per cent of the time. During this 119-year period, the time price of the five-metal basket fell by 87.2 per cent despite both US and world populations having grown substantially.     

Forecast Summary

Little has happened in the three months since our post-election forecast to undermine the view that the economy has entered a period of sustainable recovery. We expect output to grow by 21/4 per cent (at 1975 prices - faster on a 1980 price basis) this year and in the 2–21/2 per cent range in both 1984 and 1985. We expect inflation to rise from its recent low point as special factors unwind, but to settle at around 6 per cent in 1984 and 1985.     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing

Output has stagnated in the main industrialised countries this year but we expect the benefits of lower oil prices to show up in rapid growth from now on. The present weakness in the world economy stems from tighter US fiscal policy and the oil price shock itself. These have combined to reduce domestic demand in the United States, and hence to cut the market for Japanese exports in particular, and also to reduce expenditure by energydependent countries and companies. A further factor is that, with prices of oil-based products falling, there is an incentive to delay expenditure. We expect this impact effect of OPEC III to be short-lived and to give way to its positive effects in the second half of this year. Specifically, we expect consumer spending to lead the recovery as real incomes will be boosted by the terms of trade gain from lower oil prices - equivalent to 3 per cent of GNP in the OECD area as a whole. On the basis of oil prices holding at $15. we forecast OECD output growth of 3 per cent this year, rising to 41/2 per cent in 1987. Additionally, we expect lower oil prices to produce a significant reduction in world inflation. Zero growth of producer prices is forecast on average this year arid consumer price inflation is expected to fall to wards 2 per cent in the course of the year.     

Forecast Summary

The economy is in the throes of its biggest downturn in ten years. Output has been falling and unemployment rising for nearly a year and business confidence indicators suggest no early letup. In the last 12 months total output has fallen 2 per cent with manufacturing 5 per cent lower. This, we believe, is the trough of the recession and we expect signs of recovery to be evident in the late spring. Even so, output is likely to fall by nearly 1 per cent this year and unemployment should rise well above 2 million. The benefits of recession have been slow to appear, though the trade gap is narrowing sharply. The downward pressure on prices from falling demand is balanced by rising costs as industry struggles to pass on high unit labour and interest costs. Helped by some reduction in mortgage rates and a severe squeeze on profits, we expect retail price inflation to fall to Sper cent by the end of the year and to 3–4 per cent over the medium term.     

Issues in measuring a monthly house price index in New Zealand

The sale price appraisal ratio (SPAR) method, which takes the ratios of the current house prices and their previous assessed values to construct an index, has been applied in New Zealand since the 1960s. This paper uses housing market transaction data for 12 cities in New Zealand (1994–2004) to develop monthly SPAR house price indices. These indices were subjected to a variety of statistical tests and benchmarked against the comparable monthly quality controlled weighted repeat sales indices. Finally, the paper provides some useful suggestions for future research based on the SPAR index and other alternative house price indices, such as the assessed value (AV) method.     

Additivity of Deflated Input–Output Tables in National Accounts

Input–output tables deflated by chained prices indices are not additive over product rows. This paper discusses the reasons and suggests a remedy. The new method proposed is based on a distinction, in concept, between ‘real value’, on the one hand, and variation in ‘volume’, on the other. The first corrects for the monetary variation of the unit of account resulting from inflation, while the latter isolates the variation of one product price relative to the other products, caused by the forces of supply and demand on each individual commodity market. An example of the resulting growth analysis is compiled for the Dutch economy between years 1990 and 2000.     

Do house prices impact business starts?

At the national level, business starts and housing prices both fell dramatically over the 2007–2009 period. Using a proprietary database of business starts this paper quantitatively models the interaction between house price and business starts from 2005 to 2009. We identify the impact by exploiting the cross-sectional variation in house price changes during the period. Controlling for observable and unobservable city characteristics, we find the significance of a robust relationship between house prices and business starts depends on the size of the business starts; a robust link exists between house prices and very small business, whereas, no significant robust link is seen for large business starts.     

Forecast Summary

The economy is now in the middle of a sustained cyclical upswing in demand, but because of interruptions to supply caused by the miners' strike we expect output growth of only 21/4per cent this year, accelerating to 2% next year. (This assumes that the strike does not affect output significantly in the second half of this year.) The relatively rapid growth of output over the past two years has caused some acceleration of inflation from the low point last June, but we see these pressures subsiding, with consumer prices growing at 5% per cent this year and 5 per cent or less thereafter. Over the medium term, on the usual assumption that the economy is not subjected to any severe shocks, we expect output growth to settle at a sustainable 2 per cent p.a. against a background of slowly declining price inflation.     

Forecast Summary

The January crisis, which occurred despite (or perhaps because of) signs of accelerating recovery, will not, we believe, prevent output from rising by over 3 1/2 per cent this year and by over 2 per cent p.a. over the medium term. Although the recent fall in sterling will put up prices - especially of traded manufactures - we expect retail price inflation to fall below 5 per cent after reaching almost 6 per cent this spring.     

WORLD OUTLOOK

The world recovery, now three years old, has proved more resilient than many expected and will be sustained in 1986 by lower oil prices. Fears that the early-1985 slowdown would turn into renewed recession have proved unfounded, as output in both the United States and Europe picked up in the second half of the year. The improvement stemmed from lower interest rates, falling inflation and weak commodity prices and was further helped by the sharp correction to the value of the dollar following September's G5 agreement. To these factors, which will remain supportive this year, is now added a lower oil price. The recovery in world output has not produced an increase in oil demand and, as the oil price rise of 1979-80 gave a further boost to supply from non-OPEC sources, a severe imbalance has emerged in the oil market. To maintain a £26 marker price (itself cut from £29 last July) has required a cutback in production of ever-increasing magnitude from Saudi Arabia in its role as OPEC's swing producer. Now that Saudi Arabia has abandoned this role in favour of stabilising its market share, oil prices have fallen sharply. We assume that the oil price will fall to £20 by the end of this year, a fall in real terms of 30 per cent. As a result the world recovery is given renewed impetus and output accelerates over the next twelve months. A cyclical peak in activity emerges in 1987, after which output growth settles at 2%-3 per cent and inflation at 4–5 per cent.     

House Prices, Housing Investment and Demography Forecasts from the LBS/Abbey National Model of the UK Housing Market

A new housing sector has been incorporated into the London Business School model. This article outlines the new housing model, summarizes the research which has gone into its construction, and presents a forecast of the UK housing market. Using the new housing model, we forecast a moderate recovery in the housing market in the later part of 1991 and 1992. This recovery is however short-lived and does not result in such high rates of house price increase as previous house price booms (Chart 1).
Cuts in interest rates following entry to the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS prompt a recovery in house prices from the middle of 1991. House price inflation then peaks with an increase in average UK house prices in 1992 of 11 per cent over the previous year. Increases in real personal disposable income are modest, by the standards of the 1980s, and for this reason the recovery does not develop the momentum of previous house price booms. House price inflation moderates again in 1993 falling back to around 7 per cent. Housing starts and housing investment recover only slightly from their present depressed levels.
the recovery in house prices is weaker than that foreseen in our April Forecast Release. This is because real personal disposable income is now forecast to grow more slowly during 1991. Sterling's membership of the ERM is followed by a fall in interest rates, but it is the timing of interest rate cuts rather than their magnitude which differs from the earlier forecast. The changed profile of interest rates has altered the house price forecast only marginally.     

WORLD OUTLOOK

Events in the Gulf have finally brought an end to the world economic boom of the last eight years. The oil price shock itself is only partly responsible for the downturn. The previous tightening of monetary policy in the face of inflationary pressures and the end of a rapid period of credit and asset price expansion had severely weakened the ability of some economies to respond to the shock. This is reflected in the diversity of response, most obviously in the United States where Fed fine tuning and the credit crunch have already weakened the economy. The rise in oil prices has led to a sudden collapse in consumer confidence and a swift cutback in output. Although we do not expect the recession to be deep, the financial problems will delay recovery. The Japanese economy was already in financial difficulties before the shock, although the real economy was stronger and here we expect a sharp deceleration from almost 6 per cent growth last year to around 3.5 per cent. In contrast the German economy, partly shielded by the substantial appreciation of the DM over the last year, has been affected less by the oil price shock and we expect the consumer and investment boom to continue this year as the economies merge. This provides a welcome boost to other European economies.     

Increasing the price variation in a repeated cross section

Insufficient price variation seriously hampers many applications of consumer demand models. This paper examines the empirical performance of a potential remedy for this problem that was suggested by [Lewbel, A., 1989. Identification and estimation of equivalence scales under weak separability. Review of Economic Studies 56, 311–316], the construction of individual specific price indices for bundles of goods. These individual specific price indices allow for a population with heterogeneity in preferences for goods within a given bundle of goods. We confine ourselves to heterogeneous Cobb Douglas within bundle preferences, while between bundles, we allow for several parametric and even general nonparametric specifications. In a variety of settings, we show that such prices produce superior empirical results than the ones obtained through the traditional practice of using aggregate price indices. Our empirical analysis is based on the British Family Expenditure Survey data, and uses several categories of food. Both in parametric as well as nonparametric models, we obtain higher precision of estimates for parameters or functions, as well as economically more plausible results.     

Estimating the effect of a gasoline tax on carbon emissions

Recently the proposal has been made to raise gasoline taxes in the United States to curb carbon emissions. The existing literature on the sensitivity of gasoline consumption to changes in price may not be appropriate for evaluating the effectiveness of such a tax. First, most of these studies fail to address the endogeneity of gasoline prices. Second, the responsiveness of gasoline consumption to a change in tax may differ from the responsiveness of consumption to an average change in price. We address these challenges using a variety of methods including traditional single‐equation regression models, estimated by least squares or instrumental variables methods, and structural vector autoregressions. Our preferred approach exploits the historical variation in US federal and state gasoline taxes. Our most credible estimates imply that a 10‐cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax would reduce carbon emissions from vehicles in the United States by about 1.5%. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Between groups and total income inequality indices; U.S. 19601

The study contains a theoretical analysis on the behavior of a between groups Lorenz Index. The variables affecting this index are utilized to construct between groups indices for white-non-white; rural-urban; above 65 yr old-younger; population groups by state for 1960. The constructed indices were then used as explanatory variables for the state total Lorenz Index. It was found that they explained over 80 per cent of the variance. Adding other socio-economic variables enabled us to explain over 90 per cent of the variance of state Lorenz indices.     

WORLD OUTLOOK

In the course of 1984 growth rates in the major economies came together. This reflects a slowdown in the United States, and to a lesser extent Japan, from the middle of the year and continuing recovery in Europe. This convergence is expected to continue in 1985 when total output in the OECD area is forecast to increase by 3 per cent. Within this total it is likely that the US, West Germany and the UK all achieve about 3 per cent; Japan should grow more quickly, France more slowly. In spite of a rapid recovery in output from the late-1982 trough, inflationary pressures remain weak. Measured in dollar terms, non-oil commodity prices have fallen and the oil price is under considerable down wards pressure. We expect inflation to stay at about its preset level in the US, West Germany, Japan and the UK and decline further in France, Italy and other countries where policy reaction to the 1979-80 oil price shock was delayed. In the medium term we expect the world economy to experience steady growth combined with a constant or slightly increasing inflation rate. This reflects a stable policy environment and falling real oil prices. After the excesses of the 1970s and early 1980s it is possible that the rest of the decade will experience u greater stability than at any time since the 1960s.     

A POST-KEYNESIAN AGE MODEL TO FORECAST ENERGY DEMAND IN SPAIN

This paper develops an extended input–output model for the estimation of energy demand and related issues. It is built on the last Spanish Symmetric Input–Output Table (IOT, 2005). It has been tested for the period 2005–2008 and used for forecasting energy demand for the years 2009–2012 under different economic scenarios. The model shares some traits of the computable and applied general equilibrium models where quantity and price systems are interwoven. The differences lie in the theories explaining output and prices. Our quantity system is based on Keynes’ principle of effective demand (broad energy multipliers are derived). The price system is based on the classical (Sraffian) theory of prices of production, akin to post-Keynesian full-cost prices. The general price system can be manipulated to account for the specificities of energy prices. Historical trends of energy coefficients are computed by extrapolation of past IOTs and calibration.     

Seasonality, consumer heterogeneity and price indexes: the case of prepackaged software

This paper measures constant-quality price change for prepackaged software in the US using detailed and comprehensive scanner data. Because there is a large sales surge over the winter-holiday, it is important to account for seasonal variation. Using a novel approach to constructing a seasonally-adjusted cost-of-living price index that explicitly accounts for consumer heterogeneity, I find that from 1997 to 2003 constant-quality software prices declined at an average 15.9% at an annual rate. As a point of comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports average annual price declines of only 7.7% for prepackaged software.     

The New Economic Sociology of Prices: An Analysis Inspired by the Austrian School of Economics

The new economic sociology includes some reference studies on the sociology of prices. They have not until now been studied by economists, and this article attempts to fill that gap by offering a detailed analysis, inspired by the Austrian School of Economics, of their object and approach. We first show that, from a theoretical point of view, the explanations advanced by these sociologists are based implicitly on basic models of economics, such as the “law of supply and demand” and the “law of costs,” and that they cannot therefore replace economic explanations of prices. Secondly, from a methodological point of view, these studies are based on field surveys that provide concrete information on certain markets but they lose sight of an aspect that is fundamental to the Austrian School, the interdependence of prices in different markets. And when this interdependence is taken into account, namely, in the case of the relationship between cost and price, the causal link postulated by sociologists goes from cost to price when Austrian economists argue that it goes in the opposite direction.     

WORLD OUTLOOK

Relative to what we expected following the collapse in the oil price, growth in the OECD economy was disappointing last year and, with activity still not registering a convincing pick-up, we have lowered our forecast for 1987–88. Previously we argued that the sharp drop in oil prices from around 27 a barrel in 1985 to an average of 15-16 last year represented a significant boost to real incomes in the oil-consuming countries. Notwithstanding the corresponding real income loss to the oil producers, we expected OECD demand to rise sharply in the course of last year, with clear benefits to output becoming apparent by the end of the year. In the event this analysis, though correct in outline, has apparently underestimated the negative elements - tighter fiscal policy, the failure of consumers in some countries to obtain the terms of trade gains from lower oil prices and/or currency appreciation, the offset to domestic demand from falling exports. Consequently, we now expect OECD output to rise by only 3 per cent p. a. over the next two years. The corollary of this is that inflation is also unlikely to record a marked increase and this enhances the prospect of sustained output growth in the medium term. The forecast combines steady output growth of around 3 per cent p. a. with inflation stable in the 3–4 per cent range.