The European Emissions Trading Scheme for CO2 established in 2005 is the world's largest emissions trading scheme. Since it covers only some sectors of the European economies it can nevertheless not ensure that the Kyoto targets are reached at minimal cost. This paper first analyzes the...

This paper investigates both the effects of domestic monetary policy and external shocks on fundamental macroeconomic variables in six fast growing emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Turkey - denoted hereafter as BRICS_T. The authors adopt a structural VAR model...

This paper explores the link between exports and total factor productivity (TFP) for Brazilian manufacturing firms over the period 2000-2008, both under the assumption of an exogenous or an endogenous law of motion for productivity. The authors first obtain TFP estimates under each alternative...

The efficiency of the Pigouvian tax suggests that price-based regulation is the proper benchmark for efficient regulation. However, results due to Carlton and Loury (1980, 1986) question this; when harm depends on scale effects a pure Pigou tax is inefficient regulation in the long run. In this...

The most important economic measures are monetary. They have many different names, are derived in different theories and employ different formulas; yet, they all attempt to do basically the same thing : to separate a change in nominal value into a ?real part? due to the changes in quantities and...

This paper derives analytically the growth rate of the social cost of carbon (SSC) on an optimal balanced growth path. More specifically, the paper examines a deterministic Ramsey model of optimal economic growth with carbon emissions. In this model, restrictions on technology and preferences...

Empirical evidence indicates that lay-off costs consist of two elements, namely firing costs and severance payments. This paper investigates business cycle and steady state effects of firing costs and severance payments and discusses the differences. We find that severance payments imply a lower...

Focusing on intra-household allocation, we investigate the effects of coffee market liberalisation in Uganda. As coffee has traditionally been a male domain, higher income from this activity might increase gender disparities. In addition, gender-related inefficiency in household production might...

Last year the German Parliament exempted biofuels from the gasoline tax. The promotion of biofuels is being justified by allegedly positive effects on climate, energy, and agricultural policy goals. The paper takes a closer look at bio-ethanol as a substitute for gasoline. We analyze the basic...

In this paper the author proves that the Expected Net Future Value (ENFV) criterion can lead a risk neutral social planner to reject projects that increase expected utility. By contrast, the Expected Net Present Value (ENPV) rule correctly identifies the economic value of the project. While the...