Evaluating Projects and Assessing Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies

We are interested in three related questions:(1) How should accounting prices be estimated?(2) How should we evaluate policy change in animperfect economy? (3) How can we check whetherintergenerational well-being will be sustainedalong a projected economic programme? We do notpresume that the economy is convex, nor do weassume that the government optimizes on behalfof its citizens. We show that the same set ofaccounting prices should be used both forpolicy evaluation and for assessing whether ornot intergenerational welfare along a giveneconomic path will be sustained. We also showthat a comprehensive measure of wealth,computed in terms of the accounting prices, canbe used as an index for problems (2) and (3)above. The remainder of the paper is concernedwith rules for estimating the accounting pricesof several specific environmental naturalresources, transacted in a few well knowneconomic institutions.     

Labor‐Market Institutions and Long‐Term Effects of Youth Unemployment

Graduating from a school during a time of adverse economic conditions has a persistent, harmful effect on workers’ subsequent employment opportunities. An analysis of panel data from OECD countries during the 1960–2010 periods reveals that a worker who experiences a 1 percentage point higher unemployment rate while the worker is 16–24 years old has a 0.14 percentage point higher unemployment rate at ages 25–29 years and 0.03 percentage points higher at ages 30–34 years. The persistence of this negative effect is stronger in countries with stricter employment protection legislation. A composite index for labor‐market rigidity is constructed and the index is shown to have positive correlation with the persistence. Moderating macroeconomic fluctuations is more important in countries that have more persistent labor‐market entry effects on subsequent outcomes.     

HYSTERESIS IN UNEMPLOYMENT REVISITED: EVIDENCE FROM PANEL LM UNIT ROOT TESTS WITH HETEROGENEOUS STRUCTURAL BREAKS

This paper applies the panel LM unit root tests with heterogeneous structural breaks in level by Im  et al. ( Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics , 67 (2005), pp. 393–419) to re-examine the validity of hysteresis in the unemployment rates of 19 OECD countries. Our empirical findings are favourable to the stationarity of the unemployment rates, i.e., the unemployment hysteresis hypothesis is strongly rejected. Our results suggest that shocks to unemployment rates are temporary and soon converge when we control for breaks. A major policy implication of the study is that a fiscal or monetary stabilization policy would not have permanent effects on the unemployment rates of the 19 OECD countries.     

Policy matters. The long run effects of aggregate demand and mark-up shocks on the Italian unemployment rate

This paper estimates a VAR including labor productivity, real wage and unemployment rate, to identify the dynamic effects of technology, demand, and mark-up shocks, respectively, on the Italian labor market. Identification is achieved by imposing recursive restrictions on the matrix of long run multipliers. Our results show that both mark up and aggregate demand shocks permanently reduce the unemployment rate. Finally, technology shocks do not significantly affect the unemployment rate in the long run. These findings convey important policy implications: expansionary aggregate demand and deregulation policies reducing the mark up permanently decrease the Italian unemployment rate.Jel classification: C32, E32, J29This paper has been produced as part of a CEPR Research Network on New Approaches to the Study of Economic Fluctuations. We would like to thank Marcello DAmato, Mario Forni, Marco Lippi and Antonio Ribba for useful comments. We are also grateful to Bernd Sussmuth for pointing out to us several significant improvements to the paper.First version received: November 2001/Final version received: October 2002     

Modelling economic hysteresis losses caused by sunk adjustment costs

Transition from one economic equilibrium to another as a consequence of shocks is often associated with sunk adjustment costs. Firm-specific sunk market entry investments (or sunk market exit costs) in case of a reaction to price shocks are an example. These adjustment costs lead to a dynamic supply pattern similar to hysteresis. In analogy to “hysteresis losses” in ferromagnetism, the authors explicitly model dynamic adjustment losses in the course of market entry and exit cycles. They start from the micro level of a single firm and use explicit aggregation tools from hysteresis theory in mathematics and physics to calculate dynamic losses. The authors show that strong market fluctuations generate disproportionately large hysteresis losses for producers. This could give a reason for the implementation of stabilizing measures and policies to prevent strong (price) variations or, alternatively, to reduce the sunk entry and exit costs.     

Futures beyond dystopia

The speculative imagination is an higher-order human capacity that can productively explore the not-here and the not-yet. To some extent it is already doing so. But these explorations are limited by prevailing cultural assumptions. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that there are other arenas to explore that, were they taken seriously, could exert sufficient symbolic ‘pull' to qualify as desirable images of futures. They could then begin to act as ‘magnets' for the realisation of possibilities that are presently obscured.     

失业呆滞、失业持续性与货币政策——一个包含失业呆滞的NK-DSGE模型分析

将内部人协议引起的失业呆滞引入NK-DSGE模型,分析失业呆滞对我国失业及其持续性的动态影响,研究发现,失业呆滞不仅影响了外生冲击下失业的动态反应及其持续性,并且对宏观经济及劳动力市场造成了永久性伤害。进一步分析失业呆滞显著存在背景下不同货币政策机制的效应,结果显示：失业呆滞几乎不能影响最优货币政策机制对失业的稳定作用;而在Evans规则下,失业呆滞显著影响了货币政策对外生冲击下失业动态的影响,失业问题在短期中难以有效缓解,但相比基准货币政策机制,Evans规则仍实现了社会福利的相对改进。因此,通过劳动力市场结构性改革,打破行政性用人体制,促进劳动力的自由流动,进而消除失业呆滞的制度性诱因,将有利于发挥Evans规则对劳动力市场的稳定作用。     

Real Impacts of Intra-European Exchange Rate Variability: A Case for EMU?

Intra-European exchange rate variability has significant economic costs. VAR causality tests show that higher short-run variability of exchange rates against other EU currencies was associated with higher unemployment, less employment, and lower investment for most EU member countries. Robustness tests show that this result holds up in the presence of both policy instruments that might have had an impact on exchange rate variability and cyclical variables that might have influenced labor demand. A model that incorporates the option value of waiting suggests that even short-term spikes in volatility exert a strong impact on investment and labor markets.