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This chapter builds monthly time-series of Divisia monetary aggregates for the Gulf area for the period of June 2004 to December 2011, using area-wide data. We also offer an “economic stability” indicator for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) area by analyzing the dynamics pertaining to certain variables such as the dual price aggregates, aggregate interest rates, and the Divisia aggregate user-cost growth rates. Our findings unfold the superiority of the Divisia indexes over the officially published simple-sum monetary aggregates in monitoring the business cycles. There is also direct evidence on higher economic harmonization between GCC countries – especially in terms of their financial markets and the monetary policy. Monetary policy often uses interest rate rules, when the economy is subject only to technology shocks. In that case, money is nevertheless relevant as an endogenous indicator (Woodford, M. (2003). Interest and prices: Foundations of a theory of monetary policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.). Properly weighted monetary aggregates provide critical information to policy-makers regarding inside liquidity created by financial intermediaries. In addition, policy rules should include money as well as interest rates, when the economy is subject to monetary shocks as well as technology shocks. The data show narrow aggregates growing while broad aggregates collapsed following the financial crises. This information clearly signals problems with the financial system's ability to create liquidity during the crises.

Empirical studies show that years of schooling are positively correlated with good health. The implication may go from education to health, from health to education, or from factors that influence both variables. We formalize a model that determines an individual’s demand for knowledge and health based on the causal effects, and study the impacts on the individual’s decisions of policy instruments such as subsidies on medical care, subsidizing schooling, income tax reduction, lump-sum transfers, and improving health at young age. Our results indicate that income redistribution policies may be the best instrument to improve welfare, while a medical care subsidy is the best instrument for longevity. Subsidies to medical care or education would require large imperfections in these markets to be more welfare improving than distributional policies.

Josef Alois Schumpeter indicated in his monumental work that economic science, if it is to be a science, must be bereft of all shades of value judgements. He defined “scientific economics” to mean “the sum total of the historical, statistical and theoretical techniques, together with the results they produce”. The impingement of all shades of value judgements was to be considered outside the pale of economic theory, because, as Schumpeter claimed, such judgements leave economic analysis unaffected. Notwithstanding this claim, the statement could not be sustained in the body of Schumpeter's work.

The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively examine if varying household consumption activities at different income levels drove CO₂ emissions to different degrees in Mexico from 1990 to 2014.

The paper applied a simple expenditure-CO₂ emissions elasticity model – a top-down approach – using data from consumption-based CO₂ emission inventories and the “Household Income and Expenditure Survey” and assuming a range of 0.7-1.0 elasticity values.

The paper results show a large carbon inequality among income groups in Mexico throughout the period. The household consumption patterns at the highest income levels are related to significantly more total CO₂ emissions (direct + indirect) than the household consumption patterns at the lowest income levels, in absolute terms, per household and per capita. In 2014, for example, the poorest household decile emitted 1.6 tCO₂ per capita on average, while the wealthiest decile reached 8.6 tCO₂ per capita.

The results suggest that it is necessary to rethink the effect of consumption patterns on climate change and the allocation of mitigation responsibilities, thus opening up complementary options for designing mitigation strategies and policies.

The paper represents an alternative approach for studying CO₂ emissions responsibility in Mexico from the demand side, which has been practically absent in previous studies. The paper thereby opens a way for studying and discussing climate change in terms of consumption and equity in the country.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a critique of government intervention in the production of biofuel in northern Sweden and Finland, highlighting some of the welfare consequences.

After a short review of government interventions, including laws, taxes and subsidies, Austrian economic principles are applied, which lead to universal statements about the impacts of government intervention.

Government intervention on behalf of the biofuel production industry leads to the emergence of an investment bubble, with consequential negative impacts on welfare.

The paper informs about the true costs of intervention in biofuel production, which suggests that policy makers may abstain from justifying interventions for the sake of increasing people's welfare.

The paper contributes to the research of the production impacts of a new energy technology in the form of biofuel in particular and of governmental intervention in production in general. The paper, furthermore, enhances the use of the method and theory of the Austrian school of economic science.

In the competitive e-marketplace today, sellers are using an increasing number of signals to entice customers to make online purchases. However, how differential these signals are in terms of their capacity to improve sales performance has not yet been investigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Drawing on signaling theory and grounded in the context of China’s largest e-marketplace, Taobao, this study investigated the different effects of five commonly used signals on the sales performance of e-marketplace sellers.

The authors find that warranty has the highest effect on sales performance, followed by overall rating, mean detailed seller rating, percent of positives, and web site quality.

First, this study builds on signaling theory and contributes to the e-marketplace literature by providing new insights into how specific signals differentially affect sales performance in the e-marketplace (with evidence from a large-scale empirical analysis). Second, the study extends the applicability of signaling theory to the e-marketplace domain by incorporating distinctive features of the e-marketplace into the original signaling theory. Finally, the findings lend practical support to e-marketplace sellers’ investment decisions on signals and provide guidelines for deployment of such signals.