Carbon Emission Policies in Key Economies

The Australian Government asked the Productivity Commission to undertake a study on the ‘effective’ carbon prices that result from emissions and energy reduction policies in Australia and other key economies (the UK, USA, Germany, New Zealand, China, India, Japan and South Korea). The Commissions research report, released 9 June 2011, provides a stocktake of the large number of policy measures in the electricity generation and road transport sectors of the countries studied. And it provides estimates of the burdens associated with these policies in each country and the abatement achieved. While the results are based on a robust methodology, data limitations have meant that some estimates could only be indicative. More than 1000 carbon policy measures were identified in the nine countries studied, ranging from (limited) emissions trading schemes to policies that support particular types of abatement technology. While these disparate measures cannot be expressed as an equivalent single price on greenhouse gas emissions, all policies impose costs that someone must pay. The Commission has interpreted ‘effective’ carbon prices broadly to mean the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — the ‘price’ of abatement achieved by particular policies. The estimated cost per unit of abatement achieved varied widely, both across programs within each country and in aggregate across countries. The relative cost effectiveness of price-based approaches is illustrated for Australia by stylised modelling that suggests that the abatement from existing policies for electricity could have been achieved at a fraction of the cost. The estimated price effects of supply-side policies have generally been modest, other than for electricity in Germany and the UK. Such price uplifts are of some relevance to assessing carbon leakage and competitiveness impacts, but are very preliminary and substantially more information would be required.carbon pricing; cost abatement; greenhouse gas emissions; abatement technology; carbon policy; energy reduction policy; emissions trading scheme; carbon leakage

STOCK PRICES AND EXCHANGE RATES IN AUSTRALIA: ARE COMMODITY PRICES THE MISSING LINK?

The relationship between stock prices and exchange rates is an important topic of long standing. But there are still significant gaps in our knowledge of this area, not least, the ambiguity about the sign of the effect of a change in one of these variables on the other. While there are many possible reasons for this ambiguity, one which we explore in the Australian context in this paper is the omission of commodity prices. We show that a bivariate relationship which omits commodity prices performs badly but that once commodity prices are added to the relationship, our results are plausible and robust. We also throw light on the commodity-currency issue and show that the link from the exchange rate to commodity prices is stronger and more consistent than that in the opposite direction.

Prices, 1985

Includes prices received by farmers for hogs and cattle, soybeans and corn, 1983-85; price indexes and price ratios, by month, 1975-84; field crop and hay prices, by month, 1975-84; district crop prices, 1975-84; livestock prices, by month, 1975-84; milk and milk cow and egg prices, by month, 1975-84; prices paid by Illinois farmers, 1982-84; farm production expenditures, 1984.published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Prices, 1980

Includes prices received by farmers; index numbers by months; price ratios, field crop prices, and hay prices by months; field crop and hay prices by district; livestock prices, milk and milk cow prices, and poultry and egg prices by months; and prices paid by Illinois farmers.published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Energy Prices Jump While Food Prices Show Modest Increases

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. Produced monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the CPI uses a “market basket,” or a sample of goods and services that consumers purchase for day-to-day living, and weighs each item on the basis of the amount of spending reported by a sample of families and individuals. Widely used as a measure of inflation, the CPI provides information about price changes in the nation’s economy and can be used by government, business, labor, and private individuals as a guide to making economic decisions. Over the last 12 months, the index for all items less food and energy has slowly accelerated. In contrast, the all-items index has decelerated since a 12-month increase of 3.9 percent in September 2011. The September 2011 increase capped a run of steady acceleration in the all-items index that began in December 2010. Despite the contrast, the all-items index increased at a higher rate than the index for all items less food and energy in the first quarter of 2012. This summary compares price changes in the CPI for detailed categories of goods and services over the first quarter of 2012 with those in 2011

Do producer prices lead consumer prices?

From early 1994 to early 1995, inflation surged in the producer price indexes for crude materials and intermediate goods. For example, inflation in intermediate goods prices rose from 2.6 percent annually in the first half of 1994 to 7.1 percent over the next nine months. At the same time, however, inflation in the consumer price index remained low, at slightly less than 3 percent. Many analysts are concerned that recent increases in the prices of crude and intermediate goods may be passed through to consumers. If such pass-through occurs, the Federal Reserve's progress in moving toward price stability over time would be jeopardized.> Clark examines whether price increases at the early stages of production should be expected to move through the production chain, leading to increases in consumer prices. A review of basic economic theory suggests there should be a pass-through effect--that is, producer prices should lead and thereby help predict consumer prices. A more sophisticated analysis, though, suggests the pass-through effect may be weak. Clark examines the empirical evidence, which indicates that producer prices are not always good predictors of consumer prices. He concludes that the recent increases in some producer prices do not necessarily signal higher inflation.Consumer price indexes ; Production (Economic theory) ; Prices

Adjusted Closing Prices

Historical returns depend on historical closing prices and distributions. We describe how to compute adjusted closing prices from closing price/distribution data with an emphasis on spreadsheet implementation. Then the growth of a security from one date to another (1 + total return) is just the ratio of the corresponding adjusted closing prices

Reference Distorted Prices

I show that when consumers (mis)perceive prices relative to reference prices, budgets turn out to be soft, prices tend to be lower and the average quality of goods sold decreases. These observations provide explanations for decentralized purchase decisions, for people being happy with a purchase even when they have paid their evaluation, and for why trade might affect high quality local firms 'unfairly'