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Economic Fluctuations (economic + fluctuation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting75%

Selected Abstracts

Fiscal Policy, Business Cycles and Economic Stabilisation: Evidence from Industrialised and Developing Countries,

FISCAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2007
Young Lee
This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and subsidies & transfers move counter-cyclically, whereas taxes and capital expenditures move pro-cyclically. Using economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries as an instrumental variable, we show that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates understate the responsiveness of fiscal policy to economic fluctuations. We also find that fiscal policy responds asymmetrically over economic fluctuations. In investigating the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations, we mitigate omitted variable bias by adding four important factors - military expenditures, oil production, economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries and fiscal policy responsiveness to business cycles. The results of effectiveness regressions are consistent with the responsiveness regressions, highlighting the importance of current expenditures, especially subsidies and transfers, in responding to business cycles and stabilising the economy. [source]

Modelling aviation fuel demand: the case of the United States and China

OPEC ENERGY REVIEW, Issue 4 2008
Dr. Mohammad Mazraati
The aviation sector's contribution to the world economy is 8 per cent, while using 5.8 per cent of total world oil demand. Within the transportation sector, aviation consumes about 12.7 per cent of the total oil demanded by the transportation sector, with a growth rate of 2.32 per cent per annum in recent years, confirming the importance of aviation in the future energy market and economy. This paper considers modelling fuel demand in aviation sectors of two different markets. Jet fuel demand is modelled in the United States as a matured market and China as a fast growing market. A constant elasticity log-log model using recent data of passenger aviation traffic, freight aviation traffic and airline load factors for both countries. Economic growth and fuel prices were also considered as determinants in the model. A system of three equations was developed for each country to forecast long-term jet fuel consumption levels to 2025. The mature US aviation sector was found to react better to price and short-term economic fluctuations, in contrast with the fast growing Chinese aviation sector, where the hike in prices did not seem to have much effect. [source]

Oil and macroeconomic fluctuations in Ecuador

OPEC ENERGY REVIEW, Issue 2 2001
François Boye
This paper sets out to test the conventional contention that the Ecuadorian economy has been totally dependent on fluctuations in the international oil market since the 1970s. It does this through the use of univariate statistical techniques in the first part, while it resorts to the econometric structural break test and impulse response analysis respectively in the final two parts. Its findings take issue with intuition and conventional wisdom, in that: first, they do not establish the international oil market as the prime mover of the economy; secondly, they provide no evidence that the real and trade sectors evolve necessarily in accordance with fluctuations in the oil sector; and thirdly, they call for a multicausal view of economic fluctuations in Ecuador. [source]

BLASTING OUT: EXPLOSIVES PRACTICES IN QUEENSLAND METALLIFEROUS MINES, 1870,1920

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 2 2010
Jan Helen Wegner
explosives; mining; Queensland; technology The use of explosives in mines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was notoriously unsafe. In Queensland's underground metalliferous mines, explosive practices could be dangerous not only because of the attitudes of miners and managers, but because of problems inherent to the technology, conditions underground, economic fluctuations, and the persistence of outmoded practices. Some limited specialisation of labour occurred in the interests of safety, and although newer technology had the potential to deskill the work of miners, these developments were quite dissimilar to the highly specialised work practices that were adopted for large-scale mining in the United States during the same period. [source]