The Unassuming Economist

From a paper by Guilherme Spinato Morlin, Marco Stamegna, and Simone D’Alessandro:

“The surge in energy prices following the Russian-Ukrainian conflict triggered the most significant inflation in advanced economies in recent decades. Using the Eurogreen model for the Italian economy, we examine the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of rising energy prices alongside two policy measures: wage indexation and a temporary housing rent cap. We compare policy scenarios with a baseline reflecting the observed price shocks. We find that: i) energy price shocks disproportionately affect lower-income individuals due to the larger share of energy goods in their consumption baskets; ii) wage indexation results in higher average real wages compared to the baseline scenario, without triggering inflation acceleration, while temporarily boosting output and employment by supporting aggregate demand; iii) a temporary housing rent cap improves distribution in workers’ favor while reducing inflation; iv) both policies have a more substantial effect for low-skilled workers; and v) best outcomes appear when these policies are jointly implemented.”

From a paper by Oussama Ritahi, and Abdellah Echaoui:

“This study examines the impact of Brent oil price shocks on key economic variables—namely inflation, GDP, exchange rate, trade openness, and unemployment rate using annual data from 1990 to 2022. The results of the study show that the variables considered under this study are cointegrated in the long-run which means that there is a relationship between these variables in the long-run. By employing a vector error correction model (VECM), we analyze the impulse response functions to understand the short- and long-term effects of oil price fluctuations on these economic indicators. Our findings reveal that Brent oil price increases lead to higher inflation and depreciation of the exchange rate, with both effects persisting in the short and long run. Conversely, GDP experiences a consistent negative impact from oil price hikes, suggesting a detrimental effect on economic growth over time. Trade openness shows a positive response, indicating increased trade activity due to rising oil prices. Additionally, the unemployment rate decreases in response to higher oil prices, reflecting a potential reduction in joblessness.”

From a paper by Jinfang Pu, and Fangzhou Xia:

“As global climate change intensifies and urbanization accelerates, research on urban climate change has become a global concern. Urban decision-makers must determine optimal city sizes to achieve net-zero emissions. However, previous studies have mainly focused on average relationships between city size and carbon emissions, overlooking non-linear dynamics. This study used urban scaling laws to investigate relationships between city size and carbon emissions from population and land perspective across 294 Chinese cities. Results showed a sub-linear relationship between urban population size (UPS) and carbon emissions and a super-linear relationship between urban land size (ULS) and carbon emissions. Regionally, cities in central regions demonstrated higher carbon emission performance than those in western and eastern regions. The land perspective indicated lower carbon emission performance compared to the population perspective. Both perspectives revealed non-linear relationships between city size and urban scaling exponent for carbon emissions, characterized by multiple minima. Multiple city sizes can achieve optimal carbon emissions; however, only one ULS is ideal for a specific city size to ensure environmental sustainability. This study provides valuable policy insights for decision-makers in formulating reasonable low-carbon strategies.”

From a paper by Dario Guarascio, Jelena Reljic, and Francesco Zezza:

“This paper analyses energy vulnerability and resilience in the EU. First, a comprehensive review of the relevant literature is carried out, discussing key concepts and indicators used to assess countries’ relative positioning vis-à-vis energy shocks. Second, we rely on a large set of indicators (i.e., share of energy intensive industries, import dependency and market concentration, productive and technological capabilities in the renewables domain, policy efforts to increase energy resilience) to provide a thorough mapping of EU Member States’ positioning in terms of energy vulnerability and resilience. Third, we assess industrial and energy policy actions put in place at both the EU and the national level, highlighting relevant heterogeneities and discussing whether policy efforts are consistent with the degree of vulnerability of Member States.”

From a paper by Amit Roy, Pu Chen, and Willi Semmler Sr:

“In European countries carbon pricing is often viewed as a primary strategy to combat climate change and climate risks by reducing carbon emissions and driving investment into cleaner energy sources. Decarbonization has also been suggested by directed technical change, which implements innovative renewable energy technology. We study the eectiveness of both policies for selected Northern EU countries. In a model-based investigation we rst compare optimizing and behavioral drivers of decarbonization with a focus on the two decarboniza-tion policies. Econometrically we employ Local Projection and the VAR method to explore the eects of both policies, carbon tax and directed technical change on GDP and emission reduction. Our results show that though both policies are needed signicant technology-oriented policy actions on the supply side of renewable energy appear to be required to accelerate the decarbonization of the economies. We want to thank Tato Khundadze for extensive research assistance. We also want to thank two reviewers of the article and the editors of the journal for extensive comments.”