no matter how it is measured income declines with global warming abstract the contemporaneous relationship between temperature and income is important because it enables economists to estimate the economic impact of global warming without assuming a structural model until recently empirical evidence generally suggests that there is a negative relationship between temperature and income and therefore global warming has an adverse impact on economic activity however nordhaus 2006 argues that the temperature income relationship depends on how income is measured we show in this paper that the results of nordhaus 2006 may be due to an omitted variable problem based on a well motivated temperature income model we find that the relationship between temperature and income is not dependent on income measurement our regression results show that the adverse impact of an increase of 1 c in temperature can be as much as a 3 decrease in total income for the g 7 nations therefore our results suggest an aggressive climate mitigation policy

optimal strategic oil stockpiling and import tariffs the case of china abstract as two of the most important instruments for dealing with the issues of energy supply security strategic petroleum reserves sprs and oil import tariffs have been proven effective in developed countries while china is currently building up its strategic oil reserves to ensure energy security it is of great importance to investigate china s optimal oil stockpiling policies while taking into account the possibility of imposing an import tariff or quota which can also be used for alleviating the energy insecurity of an oil importing country employing a dynamic programming framework this paper examines the optimal spr policies and oil import tariffs or quotas for china and the interactions between the two instruments under different scenarios for the world oil market the results show that the combination of optimal tariffs and spr policies can substantially reduce the expected oil insecurity cost for china the effect is larger when the probability that a disruption will continue is higher

the estimation of x inefficiency in eighteen countries we hypothesize that the substitution mechanism tends to break down in low income countries as a result the input output relationship in low income countries is largely explained by their x inefficiency while the same relationship in high income countries generally reflects their factor prices this hypothesis is consistent with the empirical results calculated from census data for eighteen countries at various stages of development

the organizational foundations of x inefficiency a game theoretic interpretation of argyris model of organizational learning abstract this paper addresses the issue why does x inefficiency persist in many organizations when its existence nature and causes are known and when everyone stands to gain from correcting the errors that cause it and why are some organizations able to learn while others appear not to we construct a model of persisting x inefficiency based on argyris concepts of organizational learning it is argued that organizations succeed in eliminating x inefficiency by achieving a critical mass of individuals willing to admit and correct error once achieved this critical mass may lead to a new stable and efficient equilibrium

tropics and economic development an empirical investigation abstract following kamarck s 1976 reasoning crosscountry regressions of income life expectancy schooling human development population increase capital accumulation and economic growth are estimated with the country s distance from the equator as an explanatory variable the distance parameter shows high statistical significance and is quantitatively substantial in all cases several versions of the solow models formulated by mankiw et al 1992 are also reestimated after including the distance variable which shows high significance in these cases too some implications of the regression estimates are noted

the outlook for us oil dependence abstract oil dependence is defined as a dynamic problem of short and long run market power the potential monopoly power of an oil cartel depends on its market share and the elasticities of oil supply and demand while the economic vulnerability of oil consuming states depends most directly on the quantity of oil imported and the oil cost share of gross domestic product gdp of these factors only the market share of the organization of petroleum exporting countries opec cartel and the rate of growth of world oil demand are clearly different than they were 25 years ago opec still holds the majority of world oil and in the future will regain market share a hypothetical 2 year supply reduction in 2005 2006 similar in size to those of 1973 1974 or 1979 1980 illustrates the potential benefits to opec and harm to the us economy of a future oil price shock opec s revenues are estimated to increase by roughly 0 7 trillion while the us economy loses about 0 5 trillion strategic petroleum reserves seem ineffective against a determined multi year supply curtailment increasing the market s price responsiveness by improving the technologies of oil supply and oil demand can greatly reduce the costs of oil dependence each element of this interpretation of the oil dependence problem is well supported by previous studies this paper s contribution is to unite these elements into a coherent explanation and to point out the enormously important implications for energy policy

a model based on stochastic dynamic programming for determining china s optimal strategic petroleum reserve policy china s strategic petroleum reserve spr is currently being prepared but how large the optimal stockpile size for china should be what the best acquisition strategies are how to release the reserve if a disruption occurs and other related issues still need to be studied in detail in this paper we develop a stochastic dynamic programming model based on a total potential cost function of establishing sprs to evaluate the optimal spr policy for china using this model empirical results are presented for the optimal size of china s spr and the best acquisition and drawdown strategies for a few specific cases the results show that with comprehensive consideration the optimal spr size for china is around 320 million barrels this size is equivalent to about 90 days of net oil import amount in 2006 and should be reached in the year 2017 three years earlier than the national goal which implies that the need for china to fill the spr is probably more pressing the best stockpile release action in a disruption is related to the disruption levels and expected continuation probabilities the information provided by the results will be useful for decision makers

optimal strategic petroleum reserve policies a steady state analysis a simple model is presented which allows us to determine the optimal size fillup and drawdown rates for a strategic petroleum reserve spr under a variety of supply and demand conditions the optimal policy variables are determined by minimizing an analytic expression which we derive for the expected insecurity cost rate to the u s due to uncertainty in supply of imported oil the oil market is modeled in terms of an elastic demand curve and two levels of supply which alternate according to a stationary continuous time markov process the spr policy is characterized by a fixed fillup rate up to the reserve s capacity when supply is at its normal level and a fixed drawdown rate during shortages the insecurity cost rate being minimized includes consumer welfare loss due to price hikes reserve holding cost and capital appreciation of the reserve base case results and sensitivity analysis are presented and compared to results obtained by previous approaches these comparisons suggest that the proposed model can reasonably approximate the more computationally demanding stochastic dynamic programming formulation the main advantage of the new approach is that it permits extensive sensitivity analysis which is important given the quality of the data

optimal path for china s strategic petroleum reserve a dynamic programming analysis abstract this paper proposes a dynamic programming model to explore the optimal stockpiling path for china s strategic petroleum reserve before 2020 the optimal oil acquisition sizes in 2008 2020 under different scenarios are estimated the effects of oil price risks and elasticity value on inventory size are further investigated it is found that the optimal stockpile acquisition strategies are mainly determined by oil price and total inventory costs while oil supply disruption is not considered china s optimal stockpile acquisition rate increases from 19 2 to 52 million barrels from 2008 to 2020 if an oil supply disruption occurs the oil acquisition rate will be reduced significantly however it may not be a good strategy to interrupt oil reserve activities in order to minimize the total costs for the entire planning period

an empirical analysis of the dynamic programming model of stockpile acquisition strategies for china s strategic petroleum reserve abstract the world s future oil price is affected by many factors the challenge therefore is how to select optimal stockpile acquisition strategies to minimize the cost of maintaining a reserve this paper provides a new method for analyzing this problem using an uncertain dynamic programming model to analyze stockpile acquisition strategies for strategic petroleum reserve using this model we quantify the impact of uncertain world oil price on optimal stockpile acquisition strategies of china s strategic petroleum reserve for the period 2007 2010 and 2011 2020 our results show that the future stockpile acquisition is related to oil prices and their probability and if not considering the occurrence of oil supply shortage china should at least purchase 25 million barrels when world oil price is at an optimal level the optimal price of stockpile acquisition of every year has a stronger relationship with the probability of high price and the optimal expected price and size of stockpile acquisition is different in each year

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

oil stockpiles and import reductions a dynamic programming approach this paper analyzes oil stockpiling policies using models in which u s policy choices are restricted to just two instruments stockpiles and disruption tariffs the model considers the influence of u s and in general oecd import demands upon the opec price for oil and the duration and severity of oil disruptions induced by disturbances among the opec nations our development is based upon a probabilistic view of disruptions analyzed by applying dynamic programming

empirical analysis of optimal strategic petroleum reserve in china abstract the chinese government began to prepare for the establishment of strategic petroleum reserve in march 2004 therefore answering the question of what level of strategic petroleum reserve would be suitable for china s future economic development becomes essential using a decision tree model based on a cost function this paper quantifies china s optimal strategic petroleum reserve for the period 2005 2020 this approach provides a methodology reference for further quantified discussion on china s spr our results show that for economic development and security of the energy supply the strategic petroleum reserve should be the equivalent of 30 60 days of net oil import for an optimal solution when the oil price is 50 bbl with a reserve of an equivalent of 60 90 days of net oil import to have an optimal solution when oil price is 20 35 bbl

does china factor matter an econometric analysis of international crude oil prices abstract whether china s crude oil imports are the culprit of oil price volatility these years has not been quantitatively confirmed therefore this paper empirically investigates the role of china s crude oil net imports in brent price changes from october 2005 to november 2013 based on an econometric analysis the results indicate that during the sample period china s crude oil imports do not significantly affect brent price changes no matter in the long run or short run therefore the blame for china s crude oil imports to cause the dramatic fluctuations of international oil price has no solid evidence also there exists significant uni directional causality running from the brent price to china s crude oil imports at the 5 level besides the response of the brent price to china s crude oil imports is found positive but slight and the brent price responds more significantly to us dollar exchange rate and oecd commercial inventory than to china s crude oil imports in the short run finally the contribution of china s crude oil imports to brent price movement is about 10 which is less than that of us dollar exchange rate but larger than that of indian crude oil imports or oecd commercial inventory

strategic oil stockpiling for energy security the case of china and india abstract compared with the developed countries the developing countries could be more vulnerable to oil supply disruptions due to their lack of strategic petroleum reserves sprs several developing countries including china and india are establishing their sprs to ensure energy security in the common world oil market one country s spr decisions can be affected by the decisions of other countries this paper investigates the spr policies of china and india two of the largest developing countries in a game theoretic framework where the interactions between the two countries are taken into account the results show that players equilibrium stockpiling strategies and total expected costs could vary significantly with the initial oil market state stockpile acquisition capacity and the probabilities for disruptions to persist

what determines china s crude oil importing trade patterns empirical evidences from 55 countries between 1992 and 2015 abstract this study develops a conceptual framework that synthesizes the supply demand price and openness of crude oil trade along with a list of traditional economic political and geographical factors to investigate the determinants of crude oil imports in emerging markets we test the framework using china s crude oil imports from 55 countries for the period from 1992 to 2015 using both static and dynamic panel data models we find that china s crude oil import is associated with exporting country s supply demand and price as well as its bilateral trade relationships these factors were found to affect china s import of crude oil from the middle east however only bilateral trade relationships affect its imports of crude oil from the asia pacific furthermore we do not find substantial evidence in this research to indicate that china s direct investment increases crude oil imports from those countries this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled comparing sustainable energy policies in northeast asia toward the harmonized public private partnership

a dynamic programming model of china s strategic petroleum reserve general strategy and the effect of emergencies abstract to protect the security of energy supply china is building national strategic petroleum reserve spr we present a dynamic programming model to determine the optimal stockpiling and drawdown strategies for china s spr under various scenarios focusing on minimizing the total cost of reserves in contrast to previous research the oil price given in our model is exogenous on a monthly instead of annual basis with a view to more realistic simulation of optimal strategies each year our model results show that in the case where stockpiling affects oil prices a given spr size will be achieved earlier than when stockpiling does not affect oil prices in different emergency conditions the optimal stockpiling and drawdown strategies of china s spr are very different when an emergency occurs the shock of stockpiling on the oil price per barrel could range 0 49 6 35 while the impact of drawdown on the oil price per barrel could range 6 22 to 0 48

overexploitation of renewable resources the role of misperceptions abstract numerous renewable resources have been exploited beyond limits for sustainable and economic development at times over exploitation has been observed even in cases where management regimes have been in place thus it seems pertinent to search for explanations beyond the theory of the commons an experiment is performed where subjects set reindeer quotas in a district where lichen has been severely depleted by preceding overgrazing all subjects err on the side of over exploitation behavior seems to be dominated by inappropriate static mental models and inefficient heuristics hence a subtle information problem is revealed

a stochastic dynamic nash game analysis of policies for managing the strategic petroleum reserves of consuming nations in this paper we present a nash dynamic game model of interactions among oil inventory and tariff policies for oil importing countries the inventory policies consist of the rates for building up and drawing down strategic oil reserves while the tariff policies consist of setting tariffs as a function of the state of the world oil market the model represents a stochastic game in which countries are grouped into two players where each player in the game chooses its individual policies to maximize expected social welfare we use the model to present empirical results about the sizes of the stockpiles as a function of disruption probabilities tariff policies and cooperation versus noncooperation between nations in addition to results regarding the build up and draw down rates as a function of the amount of disruption or probability of future disruption our central conclusion is that build up and drawdown policies are essentially the same with or without international cooperation due to the current inventory limits on u s and foreign strategic petroleum reserves

china s optimal stockpiling policies in the context of new oil price trend abstract optimizing the size of oil stockpiling plays a fundamental role in the process of making national strategic petroleum reserve spr policies there have been extensive studies on the operating strategies of spr however previous literatures have paid more attention to a booming or stable international oil market while few studies analyzed the impact of a long term low oil price on spr policy as a supplement this paper extends a static model to study china s optimal stockpiling policy under different oil price trends and in response to different current oil prices a new variable fc which demonstrates the appreciation and depreciation of the reserved oil economic value has been taken into account to assess the optimal size of spr in this paper a more multi perspective of view is provided to consider the policies of china s spr especially under the different trend of international oil price fluctuations

an optimization model for renewable energy generation and its application in china a perspective of maximum utilization in response to climate change china s power industry is undertaking the task of reducing carbon emissions renewable energy generation has become an important option for the government and state grid companies it is important to know the maximum possible capacities of renewable energy generation from its different sources in order to plan the construction of the power grid in the future in this paper several important factors affecting the development of renewable energy generation are identified through a review of the existing literature such as cost technical maturity and so on and analyzed combined with the learning curve model the technology diffusion model and expectations about future economic development in china a new model the renewable energy optimization model reom is developed to analyze the development of three renewable energy sources wind power solar power and biomass power from 2009 to 2020 results show that 1 the maximum installed capacities of wind power solar power and biomass power will reach 233321 26680 and 35506 mw in 2020 2 from 2009 to 2020 biomass power will develop rapidly at the early stage while wind power is developed massively at the final stage and solar power has relatively stable growth 3 due to the added capacity in the early periods the unit investment cost of solar power shows a large decline which is good for its following scale development 4 the investment ratio constraint has a large effect on the development of wind power while the constraint of on grid proportion of renewable energy generation has a significant effect on the development of wind power and solar power the results have important policy implications for long term energy planning in developing countries such as china and india

organizational economics and institutions as missing elements in economic development analysis abstract the main objective of this paper is to apply x efficiency theory to the analysis of organizations and state enterprises with special reference to developing countries in particular the black box relating to the internal operation of organizations is opened up to understand better the decision mechanisms operating within firms and institutions intrafirm conventions are explored as they relate to the impact of external and internal pressures on the decision making process implications are drawn to improve the internal efficiency of institutions in developing countries

applying real options analysis to assess cleaner energy development strategies abstract the energy industry accounts for the largest portion of co 2 emissions is facing the issue of compliance with the national clean energy policy the methodology for evaluating the energy mix policy is crucial because of the characteristics of lead time embedded with the power generation facilities investment and the uncertainty of future electricity demand in this paper a modified binomial model based on sequential compound options which may account for the lead time and uncertainty as a whole is established and a numerical example on evaluating the optional strategies and the strategic value of the cleaner energy policy is also presented it is found that the optimal decision at some nodes in the binomial tree is path dependent which is different from the standard sequential compound option model with lead time or time lag concept the proposed modified binomial sequential compound real options model can be generalized and extensively applied to solve the general decision problems that deal with the long lead time of many government policies as well as capital intensive investments

on categorical variables and non parametric statistical inference in the pursuit of causal explanations this paper proposes a pragmatic alliance between critical realism and non parametric statistical techniques in pursuit of causal explanations of economic phenomena by retroductive means the alliance depends on clarifying the interpretive requirements for forming categories within nominal or classificatory scales or as ordinal or ranking scales it also depends on establishing the scope of demiregularities as something to be explained and as something that allows a rough and ready extension of experimental conditions the roughness and readiness of demiregularities is matched by the assumptions and conditions of non parametric analysis

a dynamic nash game model of oil market disruptions and strategic stockpiling in this paper we present and analyze a nash dynamic game model for investigating public and private sector oil inventory policies in unstable world oil markets conceptual results about the model include simple verifiable conditions for uniqueness and stability of solutions along with characterizations of optimal policies we also present results and discuss computational issues that arise in determining subgame perfect infinite horizon equilibria using a steady state policy iteration approach

temperature and income reconciling new cross sectional and panel estimates this paper presents novel evidence and analysis of the relationship between temperature and income first using sub national data from 12 countries in the americas we provide new evidence that the negative cross country relationship between temperature and income also exists within countries and even within states second we provide a theoretical framework for reconciling the substantial negative association between temperature and income in the cross section with the even stronger short run effects of temperature estimated by panel models the theoretical framework suggests that half of the negative short term effects of temperature may be offset in the long run through adaptation this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

energy security coping with multiple supply risks this study starts from the observation that today s western trading nations are exposed to multiple risks of energy supplies eg simultaneous shortage of oil and gas supplies to cope with these risks both oil and gas can be stockpiled adopting the viewpoint of a policy maker who aims at minimizing the expected cost of security of supply optimal simultaneous adjustments of oil and gas stocks to exogenous changes such as an increase in the probability of supply disruption are derived against this benchmark one dimensional rules such as oil reserves for 90 days turn out to be not only suboptimal but also to suggest adjustments exacerbating suboptimality

on the optimal level of a small country s strategic petroleum reserve abstract decisions relating to a country s strategic petroleum reserve must take into account the level of risk inherent in its petroleum imports the cost resulting from any shortfall in the import level the cost of storage and finally the effects of stockpiling transactions on the sensitive spot oil markets of course small countries need not take into account their effect on the global market a fact that drastically simplifies their decision problem we present such a simple decision model for a small country s petroleum reserve which in addition to the above factors take into account the uncertainty of the country s refining capacity a complete analytical treatment is feasible for this model and a specific numerical example is presented for the case of greece

the income temperature relationship in a cross section of countries and its implications for predicting the effects of global warming hotter countries are poorer on average this paper attempts to separate the historical and contemporaneous components of this income temperature relationship following ideas by acemoglu et al am econ rev 91 5 1369 1401 2001 we use colonial mortality data to account for the historical role of temperature since colonial mortality was highly correlated with countries average temperatures the remaining income temperature gradient after colonial mortality is accounted for is most likely contemporaneous this contemporaneous effect can be used to estimate the consequences of global warming we predict that a 1 c temperature increase across all countries will cause a decrease of 3 8 in world gdp this prediction is robust across functional forms and an alternative method for separating historical effects

using stockpile delegation to improve china s strategic oil policy a multi dimension stochastic dynamic programming approach abstract there has been much attention paid to oil security in china in recent years although china has begun to establish its own strategic petroleum reserve spr to prevent potential losses caused by oil supply interruptions the system aiming to ensure china s oil security is still incomplete this paper describes and provides evidence for the benefits of an auxiliary strategic oil policy choice which aims to strengthen china s oil supply security and offer a solution for strategic oil operations with different holding costs in this paper we develop a multi dimension stochastic dynamic programming model to analyze the oil stockpile delegation policy which is an intermediate policy between public and private oil stockpiles and is appropriate for the chinese immature private oil stockpile sector the model examines the effects of the oil stockpile delegation policy in the context of several distinct situations including normal world oil market conditions slight oil supply interruption and serious oil supply interruption operating strategies that respond to different oil supply situations for both the spr and the delegated oil stockpile were obtained different time horizons interruption times and holding costs of delegated oil stockpiles were examined the construction process of china s spr was also taken into account

a branch of economics is missing micro micro theory jn the life history of most sciences there are movements toward the study of larger aggregates or toward the detailed study of smaller and more fundamental units my impression is that in most fields the movement toward the study of more micro units has predominated yet in economics in the 1930 s the movement was in the macro direction both physics and biology in the last three decades have made great strides by studying smaller and smaller entitiesphysics by studying more minute fundamental particles and biology by studying the fundamental elements determining genetics in a general sense economics has not been moving in this direction although some work of this nature exists the purpose of this paper is to review some samples of the work that exists and to argue that this area must become a major field of economic research and study the question of how individuals in multiperson firms influence firm decisions seems like such a natural question to ask that it is amazing that it is not part of the formal agenda of economists as a profession of course it has been asked but not by present day economists in their professional capacity in other words micromicroeconomics has never become an established field for the most part theorists have not only not raised this question but they have continued to develop micro theory in such a way as to discourage economists from raising this question part of the reason for this lies in the maximizing and optimizing biases of conventional micro theory and part can be ascribed to the consequences of the long period required to refine the theory so that elements that did not fit the basic model were discarded

structure organizational behavior and technical efficiency the case of an indian industry abstract the differences in certain aspects of organizational behavior across large and small firms could be explained as a response mechanism to structural conditions like capital market imperfections and high market transaction costs this in turn could explain the relative production efficiency of large and small firms this paper examines the issue on the basis of firm level survey data for an indian industry

stockpile strategy for china s emergency oil reserve a dynamic programming approach abstract china is currently accelerating construction of its strategic petroleum reserves how should china fill the spr in a cost effective manner in the short run how might this affect world oil prices using a dynamic programming model to answer these questions the objective of this paper is to minimize the stockpiling costs including consumer surplus as well as crude acquisition and holding costs the crude oil acquisition price in the model is determined by global equilibrium between supply and demand demand in turn depends on world market conditions including china s stockpile filling rate our empirical study under different market conditions shows that china s optimal stockpile acquisition rate varies from 9 to 19 million barrels per month and the optimal stockpiling drives up the world oil price by 3 7 the endogenous price increase accounts for 52 of total stockpiling costs in the base case when the market is tighter or the demand function is more inelastic the stockpiling affects the market more significantly and pushes prices even higher alternatively in a disruption drawdown from the stockpile can effectively dampen soaring prices though the shortage is likely to leave the price higher than before the disruption