Reorienting the Economy to the Rhythms of Nature: Learning to Live with Intermittent Energy Supply

In much current thinking about the necessary and rapid transition to a carbon-emissions-free energy system, there is implicit acceptance of the high-tech, high-energy nature of the current economy. But by asking deeper questions about this economy, we reveal new opportunities as well as new challenges. First, throughout most of history, both production and consumption were dramatically influenced by the weather, and activities were undertaken or curtailed according to varying availability of energy. In the future, if we again adjust energy demand to such intermittent supplies wherever and whenever possible, we can nevertheless benefit from many scientific and technological advantages that our ancestors did not have centuries ago. Second, in the pursuit of highly energy-efficient machines that might become new sources of highly concentrated energy, we have begun to rely on “clean energy” machinery made in significant part from non-recyclable materials. With our current generation of wind turbines, for example, we have sacrificed sustainability in the pursuit of a supposedly renewable-energy system. By contrast, if we reduce our need for always-on energy sources by adjusting energy demand to intermittent energy supply, we can greatly reduce the overall energy infrastructure needed, and we will face less pressure to sacrifice sustainability.     

Do (Fe)Male Auditors Impair Audit Quality? Evidence from Going-Concern Opinions

Recent research indicates that there may be a relationship between the characteristics of the audit engagement partner and audit quality. In this paper, we examine the relationship between audit quality and the presence of a female or male audit engagement partner. We use the likelihood that an auditor issues a going-concern opinion (GCO), conditional on the client's financial situation, as an indicator of audit quality. Using a sample of 7105 financially distressed, private Belgian companies, we find that female auditors are, ceteris paribus, more likely to issue GCOs than male auditors. Our results also show that this effect is stronger when clients are either important (i.e. represent a material portion of the auditor's revenues) or high-risk (i.e. associated with increased uncertainties and risks). Collectively, these results indicate higher audit quality by female auditors.     

Peer‐group dependence in salary benchmarking: a statistical model

Although salary benchmarking is widely used to help set compensation, there has been a lack of attention to the statistical implications of this practice on compensation patterns of peer institutions. We adapt some empirical tools from spatial econometrics to analyze compensation decisions exhibiting peer‐group dependence, and apply the methods to compensation of administrators in Texas nursing facilities. We find evidence that this leads to dependence of administrators pay on average pay of administrators in ‘peer’ facilities, defined here as those having similar outlays on nursing services. This leads to a situation where changes in facility characteristics, such as the occupancy rate and the revenue received from Medicaid and from private‐pay residents, impact compensation of own‐institution administrators as well as that of administrators from other peer facilities. Our peer‐group model appears applicable to other areas of organizational, regulatory and behavioral research and can easily be implemented using publicly available software. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trade policy and industrial development: iron and steel in a small open economy, 1870−1913

In this paper we argue that effective tariff protection associated with the 1879 National Policy and the 1887 Tupper tariffs triggered investment in new, technologically advanced blast furnaces that were capable of accommodating rapid output expansion. This conclusion is based on an appreciation of the timing of late nineteenth‐century investments in Canada and their connection to changes in government policy and other demand determinants. In our empirical investigation we use new information on westbound transatlantic freight rates, intra‐continental transport costs, and furnace‐specific micro‐data, and we acknowledge the endogenous relationships linking investment to domestic demand, labour costs, and tariffs.     

Coordinating unions,wages and employment

Summary In this paper we consider a two-sector economy in which individual unions are affiliated into a federation of unions. We analyze the consequences of two different types of wage setting. Firstly, individual unions set wages in their own sector without taking into account the effect of their wages on the employment level in the other sector. There may be positive as well as negative externalities. A positive (negative) externality may exist if a higher (lower) wage in one sector implies a higher level of employment in the other sector. Both cases may occur in our model. Secondly, wages in the two sectors are set by the federation of unions. We show that in this case higher (lower) wages result than in the first case if a positive (negative) externality exists.Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at seminars at the University of Oldenburg and the University of Groningen and the Fourth Annual Congress of the European Economic Association, Augsburg, September 2–4, 1989. The authors would like to thank W.H. Buiter, H. van Ees, J. Hartog, Th. v.d. Klundert, S.K. Kuipers, Chr. Mulder and T. van Veen for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

A putty-clay vintage model for sectors of industry in the Netherlands

Summary A putty-clay vintage model has been estimated for five industrial sectors: food, beverages and tobacco manufacturing; textiles, clothing and footwear manufacturing; chemical industry and oil refineries; metal manufacturing, and total manufacturing. Substitutabilityex ante between labour and capital appeared to be small in the first four sectors, with textiles, clothing and footwear manufacturing as an exception. Substitutabilityex ante in total manufacturing industry is rather high: an elasticity of substitution of –0.74. Embodied technical progress is strong in all industrial sectors. In textiles, clothing and footwear manufacturing and in total manufacturing it is both labour- and capital-augmenting in nature. In the other sectors it is mainly of the labour-augmenting variety.This research has partly been made possible by a grant of the National Programme of Labour Market Research (NPAO). Advice by Professor Th. van de Klundert and Mr. A.H. van Zon is gratefully acknowledged.     

Modeling data revisions: Measurement error and dynamics of “true” values

Policy makers must base their decisions on preliminary and partially revised data of varying reliability. Realistic modeling of data revisions is required to guide decision makers in their assessment of current and future conditions. This paper provides a new framework with which to model data revisions.Recent empirical work suggests that measurement errors typically have much more complex dynamics than existing models of data revisions allow. This paper describes a state-space model that allows for richer dynamics in these measurement errors, including the noise, news and spillover effects documented in this literature. We also show how to relax the common assumption that “true” values are observed after a few revisions.The result is a unified and flexible framework that allows for more realistic data revision properties, and allows the use of standard methods for optimal real-time estimation of trends and cycles. We illustrate the application of this framework with real-time data on US real output growth.