Competition under revenue-cap regulation with efficiency benchmarking: tariff related incentives for gas transmission system operators in merged markets

Journal of Regulatory Economics - In Europe, gas market mergers aim at reducing restrictions on gas wholesale markets. Market mergers also allow network users to book transport capacity at...     

The powers that are: central bank independence in the Greenspan era

This paper investigates political pressure from incumbent Presidents and Congress on US monetary policy during the period that Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve. We propose an expectations-augmented Taylor rule in which we replace realized values with expectations, and use the unemployment gap instead of the output gap. We apply a state-space framework that allows the use of mixed frequency data. Our findings suggest that the Federal Reserve under Greenspan did not create election driven cycles, but also did not strictly follow the Taylor rule. The deviations from the Taylor rule are not driven by partisan politics, but are rooted in the expected economic conditions.     

Segmented trend modelling of the US GNP series

Structural changes in economic time series are modelled as piecewise linear trends. A statistical method is considered to estimate and select the number and location of trend-breakks simultaneously. The method is applied to the GNP series of the US.     

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.     

The Olympic 500‐m speed skating; the inner–outer lane difference

In 1998, the International Skating Union and the International Olympic Committee decided to skate the 500‐m twice during World Single Distances Championships, Olympic Games, and World Cups. The decision was based on a study by the Norwegian statistician N. L. Hjort, who showed that in the period 1984–1994, there was a significant difference between 500‐m times skated with a start in the inner and outer lanes. Since the introduction of the clap skate in the season 1997–1998, however, there has been a general feeling that this difference is no longer significant. In this article we show that this is, in fact, the case.     

Sovereign Debt Crises in Latin America: A Market Pressure Approach

ABSTRACT

We construct a continuous sovereign debt crisis index for four large Latin American countries for the period 1870?2012. To obtain the optimal set of indicators and the optimal value of the threshold for dating crises we apply the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Our sovereign debt crisis index is a weighted average of three indicators: the debt-to-GDP ratio, the external interest rate spread, and the exports-to-imports ratio. The continuous index allows a more advanced analysis of sovereign debt crises as illustrated with an investigation of the relationship between sovereign debt crises and business cycles in Latin America.     

Social protection for people with disabilities in Africa and Asia: a review of programmes for low- and middle-income countries

Despite a greater need for social protection among people with disabilities, there is limited evidence of their inclusion into social protection programmes in low- and middle-income countries. This paper presents the findings from a review of regional and global data sources for Asia-Pacific and Africa to identify social protection programmes that aim to include people with disabilities. It finds a substantial number of programmes in both regions, although there is considerable variation in the quantity and types of programmes within and between regions and countries, as well as between low- and middle-income countries. Further, the quality of data is not sufficient to assess the degree to which these programmes are genuinely inclusive of people with disabilities. As such, it highlights important limitations in the way data is currently being collected that require further attention in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals and the commitment to ‘Leave No-one Behind’     

Social protection for people with disabilities in Tanzania: a mixed methods study

People with disabilities are more vulnerable than others to poverty and exclusion from key services, such as health and education. Consequently, they particularly need social protection, yet may have difficulties accessing these programmes. This study aims to assess the need for, and inclusion in, social protection programmes among people with disabilities compared to those without, in three districts in Tanzania. Using a mixed methods approach, our study finds that although the need for social protection programmes was higher among people with disabilities compared to the general population, this was not matched by higher enrolment. People with disabilities were aware of social protection programmes in their area but were not targeted specifically, and benefit packages offered by the programmes were not adapted to their needs. Modifying mainstream social protection schemes to be inclusive of people with disabilities may therefore be an important step towards addressing poverty alleviation goals, including those set out in the recently adopted sustainable development goals (Goal 1, target 3).