The demand for small cars in the United States: Implications for energy conservation strategies

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the impact of household characteristics and preferences for Japanese cars on the demand for small cars in the United States. Two stage probit analysis was used to examine the impact of various explanatory variables on the purchase decision. The results indicated that preferences for Japanese cars, income, price and several household characteristics had a significant impact on the probability of purchasing a small car. The results of this study provide support for freer trade in automobiles and higher gasoline taxes as energy conservation strategies.

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Zusammenfassung Die Nachfrage nach Kleinwagen in USA: Implikationen für Strategien zur Energieeinsparung. Diese Untersuchung wollte herausfinden, wie sich Haushaltseigenschaften und Präferenzen für japanische Autos auf die Nachfrage nach Kleinwagen in den Vereinigten Staaten auswirken. Die Stichprobe umfa\te 367 Haushalte, die im Jahr 1986 ein neues Auto kauften. Davon kauften 141 Haushalte amerikanische Kleinwagen, 84 japanische Kleinwagen und 142 Haushalte kauften gro\e amerikanische Wagen. Eine zweistufige Probit-Analyse prüfte den Einflu\ der verschiedenen Erklärungsvariablen auf die Kaufentscheidung. Die Ergebnisse besagen im wesentlichen, da\ es die Präferenzen für japanische Autos, das Einkommen, der Preis und einige Haushaltseigenschaften sind, die einen signifikanten Einflu\ auf die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Kleinwagenkaufs haben. Die Autoren sehen in den Ergebnissen eine Unterstützung für die Forderung nach Freihandel im Automobilsektor und nach höherer Besteuerung von Kraftstoffen als Strategien zur Energieeinsparung.

     

Direct and Spillover Effects of Unconventional Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies

This paper explores the direct effects and spillovers of unconventional monetary and exchange rate policies. We find that official purchases of foreign assets have a large positive effect on a country’s current account that diminishes considerably as capital mobility rises. There is an important additional effect through the lagged stock of official assets. Official purchases of domestic assets, or quantitative easing (QE), appear to have no significant effect on a country’s current account when capital mobility is high, but there is a modest positive impact when capital mobility is low. The effects of purchases of foreign assets spill over to other countries in proportion to their degree of international financial integration. We also find that increases in US bond yields are associated with increases in foreign bond yields and in stock prices, as well as with depreciations of foreign currencies, but that all of these effects are smaller on days of US unconventional monetary policy announcements. We develop a theoretical model that is broadly consistent with our empirical results and that highlights the potential usefulness of domestic unconventional policies as responses to the effects of foreign policies of a similar type.     

Income and Wealth Inequality in OECD Countries

This paper summarises some of the key findings and policy recommendations of the latest OECD report on income inequality - “In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All”. In particular, the paper presents new findings regarding the trade-off between inequality and growth, as well as with regard to the impact of the economic crisis and of female employment on the distribution of income and the distribution of wealth. Key policy recommendations derived from these findings are the need to promote employment and good quality jobs, to further improve female participation, to invest in education and skills, and to foster well-designed redistribution policies.     

Quantitative properties of sovereign default models: Solution methods matter

We study the sovereign default model that has been used to account for the cyclical behavior of interest rates in emerging market economies. This model is often solved using the discrete state space technique with evenly spaced grid points. We show that this method necessitates a large number of grid points to avoid generating spurious interest rate movements. This makes the discrete state technique significantly more inefficient than using Chebyshev polynomials or cubic spline interpolation to approximate the value functions. We show that the inefficiency of the discrete state space technique is more severe for parameterizations that feature a high sensitivity of the bond price to the borrowing level for the borrowing levels that are observed more frequently in the simulations. In addition, we find that the efficiency of the discrete state space technique can be greatly improved by (i) finding the equilibrium as the limit of the equilibrium of the finite-horizon version of the model, instead of iterating separately on the value and bond price functions and (ii) concentrating grid points in asset levels at which the bond price is more sensitive to the borrowing level and in levels that are observed more often in the model simulations. Our analysis is also relevant for the study of other credit markets.     

Can integrated infrastructure investment plans contribute to more effective public spending? The case of Mozambique

All countries, especially developing countries with limited financial resources, face difficult decisions in prioritising public funds for investment projects in the face of multiple demands in order to achieve strategic public goals. Effective investment often requires coordination between different institutions and the management of political pressure to divert investment in support of private interests. It also requires the identification of appropriate sources of funds for different purposes. The preparation of an integrated infrastructure investment plan (IIIP) that uses structured approaches to review investment proposals has been suggested, and adopted in some cases, as an instrument to address these challenges and bridge the gap between national planning and sectoral budgeting. This article considers the experience of Mozambique in deploying an IIIP as well as some recent events and concludes that the instrument may be helpful as part of a system of investment planning and allocation but that it has significant limitations.     

Inflation and Innovation in a Schumpeterian Economy with North–South Technology Transfer

This study analyzes how inflation affects innovation and international technology transfer via cash‐in‐advance constraints on R&D. We consider a North–South quality‐ladder model that features innovative Northern R&D and adaptive Southern R&D. We find that higher Southern inflation causes a permanent decrease in technology transfer, a permanent increase in the North–South wage gap, and a temporary decrease in the Northern innovation rate. Higher Northern inflation causes a temporary decrease in the Northern innovation rate, a permanent decrease in the North–South wage gap, and ambiguous effects on technology transfer. Finally, we calibrate the model to China–U.S. data to perform a quantitative analysis.     

Trend Inflation, Taylor Principle, and Indeterminacy

Positive trend inflation shrinks the determinacy region of a basic New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model when monetary policy is conducted by a contemporaneous interest rate rule. Neither the Taylor principle, which requires the inflation coefficient to be greater than one, nor the generalized Taylor principle, which requires that the nominal interest rate to be raised by more than the increase in inflation in the long run, is a sufficient condition for local determinacy of equilibrium. This finding holds for different types of Taylor rules, inertial policy rules, and price indexation schemes. Therefore, regardless of the theoretical setup, the monetary literature on interest rate rules cannot disregard average inflation in both theoretical and empirical analyses.     

Determinants of Regular and Occasional Consumers' Intentions to Buy Organic Food

This study analyzes the impact of ethical motivations, food safety and health‐related concerns on purchasing intentions of habitual and less frequent consumers of organic food. A sample of 291 subjects was surveyed through a paper‐and‐pencil questionnaire and classified either as “regular” or “occasional” purchasers of organic food according to their buying frequency. Results show different determinants of intention for the two groups of subjects: ethical motivations affect the purchase intentions of regular consumers, whereas food safety concerns influence the purchase intentions of occasional consumers. Implications are discussed.