Portuguese Economic Journal, 2010, Volume 9, Nº 1
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- Energy conservation, unemployment and the direction of technical changePublication . Kronenberg, TobiasThis paper extends the model by Smulders and de Nooij (Resour Energy Econ 25:59–79, 2003), where technical change can be biased towards labour or energy, by assuming a monopolistic union and a government which pays unemployment benefits, collects wage taxes and sells emission permits. The extended model is applied to the analysis of environmental tax reforms. A reduction in the level of energy use yields a double dividend by lowering pollution and unemployment, while temporarily inducing energy-saving technical change. It moves the economy to a new balanced growth path where unemployment is permanently lower, but long-run growth is not aff ected. A reduction in the growth rate of energy use induces a persistent bias in technical change towards labour and reduces long-run growth.
- Inefficiency caused by random matching and heterogeneityPublication . Kultti, KlausI study an economy with sellers and buyers with unit supplies and unit demands. Both parties have valuations uniformly distributed on a unit interval. I quantify the ineffi ciency, compared to the Walrasian markets, when the agents meet randomly. There are several causes of ineffi ciency that I deal with separately. First, even if there is perfect information about valuations it makes a diff erence whether all agents participate in the markets or whether only those who would trade in the Walrasian market participate. The same applies when there is private information about valuations.
- Banking firm and hedging over the business cyclePublication . Broll, Udo; Kit, Pong WongThis paper examines the behavior of a banking firm under risk. The banking firm can hedge its risk exposure by trading futures contracts. The banking firm is risk averse and possesses a utility function defined over its end-of-period income and a state variable that denotes the business cycle of the economy. We show that the banking firm optimally opts for an overhedge or an under-hedge, depending on whether the returns on the futures contracts are negatively or positively correlated with the business cycle of the economy, respectively. Thus, the business cycle of the economy is an important determinant in shaping the banking firm’s optimal hedging strategy.
- Capital services estimates in Portuguese industries, 1977–2003Publication . Silva, Ester Gomes daThis paper presents capital services estimates for 26 Portuguese industries for the 1977–2003 period. The estimation procedure follows an inte- grated approach under which the flows of capital services are approximated as a proportion of the capital stock converted into standard efficiency units. Our findings suggest a close proximity between the evolution of capital flows and the observed fluctuations of Portuguese macroeconomic growth. TFP growth estimates based on growth accounting reveal, furthermore, a very disappointing performance of the Portuguese economy during the period under study, with an average annual rate of TFP growth of 0.8% being observed. Performance varies across industries, but the bulk of activities show very modest rates of TFP growth.
- The case for the virtual strikePublication . Nicita, Antonio; Rizzolli, Matteo