Commodity Booms and Busts Carter, Colin A.; Rausser, Gordon C.; Smith, Aaron
Annual review of resource economics,
01/2011, Letnik:
3, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Periodically, the global economy experiences great commodity booms and busts, characterized by a broad and sharp comovement of commodity prices. There have been two such episodes since the Korean ...War. The first event peaked in 1974 and the second in 2008, 34 years apart. Both created major economic and political shocks, including fallen governments and human suffering due to high food prices. Each occurrence raised serious concerns over food and energy security and led to more government intervention in the commodity markets. Although there is no simple explanation for what causes such complex events, they do share similar characteristics. We find at the core of these cycles a set of contemporaneous supply and demand surprises that coincided with low inventories and that were magnified by macroeconomic shocks and policy responses. In the next few decades, the world faces the prospect of continued increases in the demand for commodities and greater uncertainty about supply. However, because market participants are likely to respond by increasing inventory holdings and investing in new technologies, we see no reason to expect an increase in the frequency of dramatic commodity booms and busts.
This paper constructs a dynamic general-equilibrium model with production and capital accumulation to examine the magnitude of the energy price effect. The paper adapts the putty-clay model developed ...by Simon Gilchrist and John C. Williams (2000) to include energy as a factor of production. It takes the production technology ex ante to be Cobb-Douglass with constant returns to scale, but for capital goods already installed, production possibilities take the Leontief form: there is no substitutability of capital, energy, and labor ex post.
THE RESOURCES OF ECONOMICS Mitchell, Timothy
Journal of cultural economy,
07/2010, Letnik:
3, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The 1973-1974 oil crisis has been called a textbook case of the law of supply and demand. This article examines the work that had to be done to make such a description viable. The work included ...bringing together a series of conflicts into a single field of political concern known as the 'energy crisis'. It also included forms of confrontation and acts of sabotage in the Middle East that made it possible to transform the networks that transported oil supplies into a political instrument. This instrument served a dual purpose: redirecting the flow of profits from oil, and attempting to the settle the Palestine question. Parties to the crisis used market devices in an attempt to frame its causes and possible solutions.
However, the events of 1973-1974 exceeded the attempts to contain them as a matter of market forces. The question of supply opened up new fields of doubt about the possible limits to reserves of oil; the increasing difficulty of forecasting future demand and prices opened up new ways of mapping the future; and the inability to prevent catastrophic oil spills helped trigger the emergence of new matters of concern, in particular the preservation of the environment. Yet the events of 1973-1974 also triggered the unraveling of Keynesian economics, attacked by market technologies developed from the mid-1970s.
The Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the first oil price shock, and France's transition from Gaullist to centrist rule in 1974 coincided with the United States' attempt to redefine transatlantic relations. ...As the author argues, this was an important moment in which the French political elite responded with an unprecedented effort to construct an internationally influential and internally cohesive European entity. Based on extensive multi-archival research, this study combines analysis of French policy making with an inquiry into the evolution of political language, highlighting the significance of the new concept of a political European identity.
The Netherlands played a remarkable role during the October War and the oil crisis of 1973. In secret, the Dutch government sent a substantial amount of ammunition and spare parts to Israel. The ...Dutch supported Israel also politically. Within the EC they vetoed a more pro-Arab policy. The Arab oil producing countries punished The Netherlands by imposing an oil embargo. The embargo against the Netherlands was intimidating. The Netherlands was dependent on Arab oil. The embargo seemed to threaten the Dutch position in the international oil sector. The government introduced several measures to reduce oil consumption. However, within two months it became clear that oil continued to arrive in Rotterdam. There was in fact no oil shortage in the Netherlands. The Netherlands even profited from the oil crisis. The energy situation in The Netherlands was much better than in other West European countries. The Dutch, therefore, rejected French plans for a more interventionist energy policy. Atlanticism and liberalism were the key words of the Dutch policy during the oil crisis. This book is the result of intensive research in all relevant Dutch archives. The authors had free access to all the files they wanted to see. They also used resources from other countries involved. Many politicians were interviewed. The result is a surprising analysis of the oil crisis of 1973, and of the Dutch role in particular. This title is available in the OAPEN Library - http://www.oapen.org.
This study investigates the relationship between birth intervals and childhood mortality, using longitudinal data from rural Bangladesh known to be of exceptional accuracy and completeness. Results ...demonstrate significant but very distinctive effects of the previous and subsequent birth intervals on mortality, with the former concentrated in the neonatal period and the latter during early childhood. The impact of short birth intervals on mortality, however, is substantially less than that found in many previous studies of this issue, particularly for the previous birth interval. The findings are discussed in terms of the potential for family planning programs to contribute to improved child survival in settings such as Bangladesh.
Στιγμιότυπο από την συναυλιακή παρουσίαση αποσπασμάτων της όπερας του Παύλου Καρρέρ Δέσπω, μαζί με χορογραφημένους Ελληνικούς χορούς του Νίκου Σκαλκώτα, στο Θέατρο Ολύμπια, τον Μάρτιο του 1974.
Photo ...from the concert presentation of extracts from Pavlos Carrer's opera Despo, along with choreographed Greek dances by Nikos Skalkottas, at Olympia Theater, in March 1974.
Στιγμιότυπο από την συναυλιακή παρουσίαση αποσπασμάτων της όπερας του Παύλου Καρρέρ Δέσπω, μαζί με χορογραφημένους Ελληνικούς χορούς του Νίκου Σκαλκώτα, στο Θέατρο Ολύμπια, τον Μάρτιο του 1974. Στο ...κέντρο της πρώτης σειράς ο βαρύτονος Ανδρέας Κουλουμπής (Οπλαρχηγός Λάμπρος), η μεσόφωνος Γιολάντα ντι Τάσο (Κώστας, γιός του Λάμπρου), Μαρία Λεοντοπούλου (Δέσπω) και ο τενόρος Δημήτρης Στεφάνου (Μάρκος).
Photo from the concert presentation of extracts from Pavlos Carrer's opera Despo, along with choreographed Greek dances by Nikos Skalkottas, at Olympia Theater, in March 1974. In the center of the first row are: baritone Andreas Kouloumbis (Commander Lampros), mezzo-soprano Yolanda di Tasso (Kostas, son of Lampros), Maria Leontopoulou (Despo) and tenor Dimitris Stefanou (Markos).
This paper develops a vintage model of capital accumulation to identify the structural linkage between shocks to input or output prices and a firm's stock-market value. The model accounts for a ...substantial part of the sample variation in excess returns, thus providing evidence for a systematic link between the stock-market valuation of firms and the economic factors that affect their profitability. The 1973-1974 oil shock is shown to have had a strong impact on excess returns; firms whose capital consisted of vintages built when energy was relatively cheap were hit the hardest in value.
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