Michelle Gilmartin

Regional Employment Impacts of Marine Energy in the Scottish Economy: A General Equilibrium Approach

Gilmartin M. and Allan G. Regional employment impacts of marine energy in the Scottish economy: a general equilibrium approach, Regional Studies. One aspect of the case for policy support for renewable energy developments is the wider economic benefits that are expected to be generated. Within Scotland, as with other regions of the UK, there is a focus on encouraging domestically based renewable technologies. This paper uses a regional computable general equilibrium framework to model the impact on the Scottish economy of expenditures relating to marine energy installations. The results illustrate the potential for (considerable) ‘legacy’ effects after expenditures cease. In identifying the specific sectoral expenditures with the largest impact on (lifetime) regional employment, this approach offers important policy guidance.

Modelling the Economy-wide Rebound Effect

In this chapter we address the question: how large are the system-wide rebound effects likely to be for general improvements in energy efficiency in production activities in a developed economy? Most studies focus on the direct rebound effects, often in the context of the demand for consumer services (Greening et al., 2000; Sorrell, 2007). This restricts the analysis solely to the energy required to provide the consumer services to which the efficiency improvement directly applies. There is, to date, comparatively little evidence on the scale of non-direct or system-wide effects that reflect the relative price, output and income changes induced by improvements in energy efficiency (Greening et al., 2000).

Regional policy spillovers: the national impact of demand-side policy in an interregional model of the UK economy

UK regional policy has been advocated as a means of reducing regional disparities and stimulating national growth. However, there is limited understanding of the interregional and national effects of such a policy. This paper uses an interregional computable general equilibrium model to identify the national impact of a policy-induced regional demand shock under alternative labour market closures. Our simulation results suggest that regional policy operating solely on the demand side has significant national impacts. Furthermore, the effects on the nontarget region are particularly sensitive to the treatment of the regional labour market.

The Dynamic Effects of U.S. Monetary Policy on State Unemployment

This paper studies the transmission of monetary shocks to state unemployment rates, within a novel structural factor-augmented VAR framework with a time-varying propagation mechanism. We find evidence of large heterogeneity over time in the responses of state unemployment rates to monetary policy shocks, which do not necessarily comply with the response of the national unemployment rate. We also find evidence of heterogeneity over the spatial dimension, although geographical proximity seems to play an important role in the transmission of monetary shocks.