Regional Price Levels Research Articles

Techno-economics of multi-stage reverse electrodialysis for blue energy harvesting

Multi-stage reverse electrodialysis (MSRED) offers a promising way for efficient salinity gradient energy harvesting. Here, an improved model of the MSRED system under serial control strategy is proposed. The technical–economic analysis is conducted with considering discount, depreciation and different regional tax and electricity price levels under the maximum net power output conditions. Results reveal that net power output and energy efficiency both increase first with increasing stage numbers, reach their maximum values, and then decrease. For 5 M/0.05 M solutions, the optimal net power output of 4.98 kW is obtained at the stage number n = 12. The optimal stage number corresponding to the maximum net power increases with increasing feed solution concentrations. Due to the compromise between net power generation and capital cost, there exist optimal stage numbers leading to the lowest LCOE and largest NPV, respectively. Higher feed solution concentration can significantly decrease the system LCOE and increase the NPV. The optimal stage number corresponding to the maximum NPV increases with increasing feed solution concentrations. In Germany, for 5 M/0.05 M solutions, the lowest LCOE of 0.061 €·kWh−1 is achieved at n = 3 while the highest NPV over the system lifecycle of 52,005 € is obtained at n = 8. Lower tax, higher electricity price, appropriate membrane price and stage numbers, and high salinity gradient sources can significantly accelerate the commercial completeness of the MSRED systems.

Estimating regional house price levels

While quality‐adjusted indices tracing the evolutions of regional house prices are increasingly available, this is less the case for data on regional house price levels. Yet, such information is fundamental to assess housing affordability and barriers to labour mobility. This article puts forward a method to compile regional house price levels that are consistent with the evolutions given by house price indices, representative of the underlying stock of dwellings, and based on the information on house price levels that is available at all dates rather than in a single reference period. Results for Spain show that the decline in house prices following the 2008–2009 crisis initially reduced the dispersion in house prices across Spanish regions, but this dispersion has increased again afterwards. Moreover, the relative housing affordability of Madrid deteriorated compared to all other Spanish regions in the last decade. Monitoring whether COVID‐19 will reverse this trend will be key.

ПОДАРОК НОВОРОЖДЕННОМУ КАК ИНСТРУМЕНТ ПОДДЕРЖКИ СЕМЬИ ПРИ РОЖДЕНИИ РЕБЕНКА

Since the demographic problems that have been observed call for the development of appropriate measures to support families with children and to encourage families to bear children, an analysis of the measures already in place in the regions seems relevant. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the practice of providing a gift to a newborn as one of the important measures of state support for a family at the birth of a child and an attempt to scientifically evaluate the implementation of this measure in the regions of Russia. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the development of an approach to calculate the cost of the optimal composition of the gift, which contains a list of items necessary for the care of a newborn child, and its quantitative assessment for each subject of the Russian Federation, taking into account the regional price level. The value of the gift is estimated both in absolute terms and in relation to the average per capita income of families with children, calculated according to the Statistical Survey of Income and Participation in Social Programs-2023 for each region. Based on the research results and calculations, the best regional practices for providing a gift to a newborn were identified and recommendations on possible ways to improve this measure were developed.

The relationship between regional inequalities in the provision of emergency health services and other health services.

In this research, it was aimed to examine relationship between regional inequalities in the provision of emergency health services and other health services in Turkey. The values of the number of emergency services and the population per emergency service for the years 2002-2021 were taken from the most up-to-date database published by the Ministry of Health in 2022 and were chosen as the dependent variables of the study. The "regional price level indices for consumption expenditures (PLI)" and "gross domestic product per capita, Statistical Regions Level 2 (PcGDP)" data compiled by TURKSTAT were used as independent variables. Number of emergency stations were significantly correlated with TR31 (İzmir) (r = 0.903; P < .01), TR32 (Aydin, Denizli, Muğla) (r = 0.771; P < .01), TR42 (Kocaeli, Sakarya, Düzce, Bolu, Yalova) (r = -0.798; P < .01), TR62 (Adana, Mersin) (r = 0.837; P < .01), TR63 (Hatay, K.Maraş, Osmaniye) (r = -0.749; P < .01), TR72 (Kayseri, Sivas, Yozgat) (r = -0.719; P < .01), TR83 (Samsun, Tokat, Çorum, Amasya) (r = 0.873; P < .01), TRA2 (Ağri, Kars, Iğdir, Ardahan) (r = -0.873; P < .01), TRB2 (Van, Muş, Bitlis, Hakkari) (r = -0.736; P < .01), TRC2 (Şanliurfa, Diyarbakir) (r = 0.697; P < .01), and TRC3 (Mardin, Batman, Şirnak, Siirt) (r = 0.574; P < .01). In total, 11 of 26 were significantly correlated with inequalities. Although the number of emergency services has increased since 2002 and the population density per emergency room has tended to decrease, regional inequalities also have an impact on the delivery of emergency services today.

Staple Food Pricing and Food Security in Ogan Ilir Regency: AHP-Based Recommendations

This study examines food security in the Ogan Ilir Regency by assessing the affordability and accessibility of staple foods based on regional price levels. Using the Participation Rural Appraisal (PRA) method for qualitative data analysis, the study further employs the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine priority areas for policy intervention. AHP results underscore the significance of stabilizing food supply and leveraging local resources for food availability. In terms of affordability, the pivotal roles of enhancing purchasing power and stabilizing staple food prices are highlighted. As for staple food pricing, aligning production with market demands and optimizing the food trade system chain emerge as key considerations. The study culminates in policy recommendations, suggesting strategies like boosting production capacity, increasing food reserves and imports, and ensuring a stable food supply. It also emphasizes the importance of tailoring interventions to address specific challenges faced by vulnerable rural households in Ogan Ilir. This research offers actionable insights for local government programs aimed at ameliorating food insecurity in the region.

Analysis on the difference of regional carbon emission trading price level in China

Analysis on the difference of regional carbon emission trading price level in China

Analysis on the difference of regional carbon emission trading price level from China

Analysis on the difference of regional carbon emission trading price level from China

Towards a global perspective on early modern slave trade: prices of the enslaved in the Indian Ocean, Indonesian Archipelago and Atlantic worlds

AbstractDespite the growth of studies on slavery and slave trade outside the Atlantic world in recent years, especially in the early modern Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago worlds, our knowledge of regional price levels and their development remains surprisingly underdeveloped. This article questions how the price of enslaved people developed in the multi-directional and multi-faceted Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago slave trade, how this compared to the Atlantic world and what this tells us about slave trade and slavery in different parts of the world. Drawing on evidence from a large variety of sources, mainly from the Dutch Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago world, this article expands the body of data significantly and provides for the first time a reconstruction of the level of slave trade prices and their development in several important supplying and demanding slave trade regions in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago world and compares these to the development of slave prices in the Atlantic slave trade.

Regional inequality in Russia: Anatomy of convergence

During the last 15–20 years, inequality between Russian regions in terms of real personal incomes per capita was decreasing. This paper aims at revealing the “anatomy” of this phenomenon. To do so, time series of every regional income per capita is tested for catching-up with the national income per capita. Nonlinear asymptotically subsiding trends model the processes of convergence. The data cover 2002–2018 with a monthly frequency. Real incomes are estimated by adjusting nominal incomes to regional price levels. The results obtained suggest that 54.4% of the Russian regions exhibit convergence, and 20.3% of regions retain (approximately) stable income gap. At the same time, there is a significant proportion of deterministically diverging regions, equaling 22.8%. Random walks are detected in two regions only.

Regional and Sectoral Varieties of VAT Pass Through in Japan

This paper investigates the contemporaneous (short-run) and dynamic (long-run) responses of regional and sectoral price level change in consumption tax rate (VAT) hike (i.e. pass through of VAT) in Japanese monthly, 10 regional and 10 sectoral (commodity category) data. We show the effects not only contemporaneous but also pre-reform (from 12 month ago to one month) and post-reform (from one month ahead to 12 month) similar to Benedek et al.(2019). We obtain some remarkable results. First, aggregate pass through is incomplete, but case in 5% in 1997 and 8% in 2014 increase are complete (or overshifting) pass-through. Second, sectoral difference is large (e.g. the long-run pass through range from -0.25 to 1.42), while regional difference is small.

Cash vs. in-kind transfers: the role of self-targeting in reforming the Indian food subsidy program

Historically, India has relied on subsidizing staple food as a major instrument in improving food security. Recently, however, cash transfers have entered the debate as an alternative, as they are associated with lower market distortions, leakages and fiscal costs. This study contributes to this debate by analyzing India’s Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS). Our main objective was to explain the under-purchase, or low take-up, from the TPDS, which is typically attributed to ‘leakage’, i.e. the diversion of food grains from eligible consumers. We provide an alternative solution based on self-targeting; while poorer households increase their consumption from the TPDS, wealthier households restrain from consuming subsidized commodities. Using a large household dataset, we estimated that such a voluntary opt-out system, based on income, would save a minimum of 6.5% of grains released through the TPDS. Besides these demand-driven aspects, our analysis indicates that poor regions perform better at lowering the diversion of grains and that large targeting errors exist among female-led households. Finally, we find substantial regional price differences that would benefit the poor and rural population under a uniform cash-transfer system that does not correct for regional price levels.

Anatomy of Regional Price Differentials: Evidence from Micro Price Data

Over the last three decades the supply of economic statistics has vastly improved. Unfortunately, statistics on regional price levels (sub- national purchasing power parities) have been exempt from this positive trend, even though they are indispensable for meaningful spatial comparisons of regional output, income, wages, productivity, standards of living, and poverty. To improve the situation, our paper demonstrates that a highly disaggregated and reliable regional price index can be compiled from data that already exist. We use the micro price data that have been collected for Germany’s Consumer Price Index in May 2016. For the computation we introduce a multi-stage version of the Country-Product-Dummy method. The unique quality of our price data set allows us to depart from previous spatial price comparisons and to compare only exactly identical products. We find that the price levels of the 402 counties and cities of Germany are largely driven by the cost of housing and to a much lesser degree by the prices of goods and services. The overall price level in the most expensive region, Munich, is about 27 percent higher than in the cheapest region. Our results also reveal strong spatial autocorrelation.

Regional Relative Price Disparities and Their Driving Forces

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)I.INTRODUCTIONThis paper studies relative price level convergence by utilizing panels of major cities in Korea. While substantial research continues to evaluate price level disparities in international context, there have been relatively lack of successful empirical studies investigating the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP) within a single currency area. To gain further insight for the sources of considerable and persistent price level dispersion, we employ formal statistical techniques to test whether intranational price level differentials tend to shrink over time with a special emphasis on their heterogeneous transitional behavior. Our empirical analysis explores potential explanations for why there is substantial deviation from PPP or markedly slow convergence by considering disaggregated CPI data classified according to consumption expenditure in addition to extant factors that are attributable to the PPP deviations, such as transportation costs, income, and input prices.The importance of understanding both time-series and cross-sectional properties of price dispersion measures has been underscored by researchers as well as policymakers. Since PPP has been a key building block of most open-economy macroeconomic models as the link between exchange rate and relative price levels, empirical validity of PPP is a long-standing issue. Ever since Rogoff (1996) articulated the PPP puzzle, a large number of papers have studied price level convergence with international data and potential sources of PPP deviation or slow price level convergence.1 This has also brought about interest in testing convergence in relative city price within a country to better understand difference in prices across locations, Beck, Hubrich, and Marcellino (2009), Cecchetti, Mark, and Sonora (2002), Parsley and Wei (1996), and Sonora (2008), to name a few. Unlike international data, it may be reasonable to conjecture that major cities of a country share relatively similar characteristics, and thus relative price dispersion is unlikely to be substantial. However, the conclusion regarding long-run patterns of price disparities across cities is somewhat mixed, whereas PPP clearly is violated in the short run in those studies. Interestingly, some studies argue that price level convergence rates within a country are somewhat longer than those estimated with international data (Cecchetti, Mark, and Sonora, 2002).Despite the fact that the deviation from PPP is well documented in international data and even within a country, there has not been an extensive study rigorously investigating the possibility of PPP among major cities in Korea.2 This motivates us to examine the long-run behavior of relative price level dispersion with a special emphasis on heterogeneous transition dynamics of individual prices. In addition, with disaggregated CPI data, the paper scrutinizes dynamic patterns of price disparities for consumption expenditure categories classified according to purpose.3 Our research has primarily three goals. First, we investigate whether there exist persistent regional price level disparities, and, if so, assess the extent of deviations from PPP. In addition, their dynamic patterns are also examined. Second, and more importantly, this paper aims to provide a better understanding of main factors that drive substantial price level disparities across cities. Third, as overall price divergence does not necessarily exclude the possibility of club convergence, we explore whether there is a subgroup of cities that share similar aspects in terms of socioeconomic variables and exhibit price level convergence among the member cities.To draw attention to the importance of regional price level dispersion, we first document some salient features of intercity price differentials.4 Some basic descriptive statistics of price differential variability and mean absolute log price differential indicate that there is little evidence of price level convergence. …

Regional Relative Price Disparities and Their Driving Forces

This paper studies the long-run behavior of relative price dispersion among cities in Korea with a special emphasis on heterogeneous transitional patterns of price level dynamics. Formal statistical tests indicate considerable evidence for rejecting the null of relative price level convergence among the majority of cities over the sample period of 1985-2015. The analysis of gravity model suggests that the effect of transportation costs on intercity price level differentials is limited, while other socioeconomic factors, such as income, input factor prices, demographic structure, and housing price growth, play key roles in accounting for persistent regional price level disparities. Individual price levels are found to be better explained by a multiple-component model, and the deviations from PPP may be attributed to distinct stochastic common trends that are characterized by income and demographic structure.

(Analysis of Inflation Processes in Russian Regions)

Russian Abstract: В представленной работе исследованы инфляционные различия в российских регионах, а также причины, их вызывающие. Было установлено, что на протяжении 2000-2016 годов отклонения темпов региональной инфляции устойчиво снижались. Общие факторы, одинаковые для всех российских регионов, объясняют в среднем 22% вариации региональных темпов инфляции. Остальную долю объясняют региональные, специфические, факторы. Среди региональных факторов значимо влияют на инфляционные отклонения в регионах структура региональной экономики, темпы роста реальных заработных плат, а также доля социальных выплат в совокупных денежных доходах региона. Помимо этого, в данной работе показано, что в российских регионах существует внутренний механизм синхронизации уровней цен в регионах (эффект конвергенции); и выравнивание региональных уровней цен происходит за счет различных темпов региональной инфляции. English Abstract: This paper is studied the inflation differentiations in Russian regions, and their causes. It was found, that deviations of the rates of regional inflation were declined steadily during 2000-2016. Common factors, which are the same for all Russian regions, explain on average 22% of the variation in regional inflation rates. The other part of the variation is explained by regional, specific, factors. Among the regional factors such factors, as structure of the regional economy, growth rate of real wages, and the share of social payments in the total monetary incomes of the region significantly affect inflationary deviations in Russian regions. In addition, this paper shows there is an internal mechanism for synchronizing price levels in the regions (the convergence effect) in the Russian regions. According to this effect, the leveling of regional price levels occurs at the expense of different rates of regional inflation.

Regional differences in price levels across the European Union and their implications for its regional policy

Although regional price levels should be accounted for in any analysis of well-being in regions, the European Union fails to reflect them because they are not currently available for most EU member states. To fill this gap, we estimate regional price levels for all EU regions on the basis of available regional price level data from six EU countries. Once socio-economic indicators are recalculated using our estimates, substantially higher differences in living standards emerge. These results also have important implications for the European cohesion policy, with 9% of regions currently misclassified as a consequence of regional price levels not being used.

Price Levels Across Russian Regions

Based on price levels (cost-of-living indices) across Russian cities that are published by the Russian Statistical Agency, regional price levels relative to the national average are computed over 2009–2015. Results obtained are compared with approximate estimates of regional price levels that are based on the cost of the fixed basket of goods and services for cross-region comparison of population’s purchasing capacity (many publications use such estimates). This comparison makes it possible to conclude that the crude method provides an acceptable accuracy. Regional price levels obtained are applied to estimating real (i.e. comparable between regions) incomes per capita relative to the national average.

Nominal or Real? The Impact of Regional Price Levels on Satisfaction with Life

According to economic theory, real income, i.e., nominal income adjusted for purchasing power, should be the relevant source of life satisfaction. Previous work, however, has only studied the impact of inflation adjusted nominal income and not taken into account regional differences in purchasing power. Therefore, we use a novel data set to study how regional price levels affect satisfaction with life. The data set comprises about 7 million data points that are used to construct a price level for each of the 428 administrative districts in Germany. We estimate pooled OLS and ordered probit models that include a comprehensive set of individual level, time-varying and time-invariant control variables as well as control variables that capture district heterogeneity other than the price level. Our results show that higher price levels significantly reduce life satisfaction. Furthermore, we find that a higher price level tends to induce a larger loss in life satisfaction than a corresponding decrease in nominal income. A formal test of neutrality of money, however, does not reject neutrality of money. Our results provide an argument in favor of regional indexation of government transfer payments such as social welfare benefits.

Nominal or Real? The Impact of Regional Price Levels on Satisfaction with Life

Abstract According to economic theory, real income, i. e., nominal income adjusted for purchasing power, should be the relevant source of life satisfaction. Previous work, however, has studied the impact of inflation-adjusted nominal income and hardly taken into account regional differences in purchasing power. We use novel data to study how regional price levels affect life satisfaction. The data set comprises a price level for each of the 428 administrative districts in Germany. Controlling for district heterogeneity other than the price level, our results show that higher price levels significantly reduce life satisfaction.

Skutečná kupní síla v krajích České republiky: zohlednění regionální cenové hladiny a struktury pracovní síly

Price levels affect real incomes across countries and regions. We compare real incomes of workers and pensioners across 14 regions of the Czech Republic. We find that taking into account regional differences in price levels compresses the income differences between regions for private sector employees, but increases them for pensioners and some groups of public-sector employees. This result is strengthened when we employ microeconomic data to refl ect the education, occupations, age and gender of workers. Private-sector wages in Prague are 43% higher than in the rest of the country, but one half of this difference can be explained by Prague's higher price level and the other half by workers' characteristics. When we take these two factors into account, public-sector wages and pensions are the lowest in Prague. We discuss the benefi ts and costs of the government refl ecting the regional price levels in setting public-sector wages or pensions.