Studies of compensating discrimination (known in the U.S. as affirmative action) have not accounted for the role of envy. Yet envy affects utility. I consider the compensatingdiscrimination policies that individuals acknowledging envy would choose when behind a veil of ignorance. The...

Academic macroeconomics and the research department of central banks have come to be dominated by Dynamic, Stochastic, General Equilibrium (DSGE) models based on micro-foundations of optimising representative agents with rational expectations. We argue that the dominance of this particular sort...

This paper quantitatively explores high-level links between power sector reforms and wider institutional reforms in the economy for a set of 27 diverse countries in rapid political and economic transition since 1990. Panel-data econometrics based on bias corrected dynamic fixed effect analysis...

A sustainable energy policy needs to balance between the reduction of carbon emissions and protection of vulnerable households and avoid a widening of the existing "energy gap" among the consumers. This study investigates energy spending for different consumer groups, in particular focussing on...

This paper considers the problem of aggregation in the case of large linear dynamic panels, where each micro unit is potentially related to all other micro units, and where micro innovations are allowed to be cross sectionally dependent. Following Pesaran (2003), an optimal aggregate function is...

This paper tests the hypothesis that the extension of the voting franchise was caused by the threat of revolution, as suggested by Acemoglu and Robinson [Quarterly Journal of Economics 115, 1167-1199, 2000]. We approximate the threat of revolution in a given country by revolutionary events...

In recent years there has been increasing concern about the identification of parameters in dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Given the structure of DSGE models it may be difficult to determine whether a parameter is identified. For the researcher using Bayesian methods, a...

This paper studies the impact of the level and volatility of commodity terms of trade on economic growth, as well as on the three main growth channels: total factor productivity, physical capital accumulation, and human capital acquisition. We argue that volatility, rather than abundance per se,...

Instrumental variable estimators can be severely biased in finite samples when the degree of overidentification is high or when the instruments are weakly correlated with the endogenous regressors. This paper proposes an estimator based on the use of the principal components of the instruments...

In this paper, we postulate that some of the best opportunities for reducing energy demand and carbon emissions are through stronger involvement and leadership from local government. We show that local government can and do have a significant impact on both energy production and energy...