Monday, January 02, 2012

Picks from The Latest NBER Research (2012-01-02)

The Competitiveness Impacts of Climate Change Mitigation Policies
by Joseph E. Aldy, William A. Pizer  -  #17705 (EEE ITI)
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W17705

Abstract:

In order to clarify ongoing debates over the competitiveness impacts of climate change regulation, we develop a precise definition that can be estimated with available domestic production, trade, and energy price data.  We use this definition and a 20+ year panel of 400+ U.S. manufacturing industries to estimate and predict the effects a U.S.-only $15 per ton CO2 price.  We find competitiveness effects on the order of a 1.0 to 1.3 percent decline in production among energy-intensive manufacturing industries, representing about one-third of the policy's impacts on these firms' output.

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Organization of Disaster Aid Delivery: Spending Your Donations
by J. Vernon Henderson, Yong Suk Lee  -  #17707 (PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W17707

Abstract:

This paper analyzes how different organizational structures between funding and implementing agencies affect the quality of aid delivered and social agendas pursued across neighboring villages in a set disaster context.  We model the implied objective functions and trade-offs concerning aid quality, aid quantity, and social agendas of different types of agencies.  We analyze three waves of survey data on fishermen and fishing villages in Aceh, Indonesia from 2005-2009, following the tsunami.  Different organizational structures result in significantly different qualities of hard aid, differential willingness to share aid delivery with other NGOs in a village, and differential promotion of public good objectives and maintenance of village religious and occupational traditions.  This is the first time these aspects have been modeled and quantified in the literature.  Some well known international NGOs delivered housing with relatively low rates of reported faults such as leaky roofs and cracked walls; others had relatively high rates.  For boats, some had very high rates of boat "failure", boats that sank upon launch, were not seaworthy, or fell apart within a month or two.  We also document how a social agenda of particular agencies to promote greater equality can be thwarted and distorted by village leaders, potentially increasing inequality.

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Trade And Industrialisation After Globalisation's 2nd Unbundling: How Building And Joining A Supply Chain Are Different And
Why It Matters
by Richard Baldwin  -  #17716 (ITI)
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W17716

Abstract:

Revolutionary transformations of industry and trade occurred from 1985 to the late-1990s - the regionalisation of supply chains. Before 1985, successful industrialisation meant building a domestic supply chain.  Today, industrialisers join supply chains and grow rapidly because offshored production brings elements that took Korea and Taiwan decades to develop domestically.  These changes have not been fully reflected in "high development theory" - a lacuna that may lead to misinterpretation of data and inattention to important policy questions.

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