decoupling of industrial energy consumption and co2 emissions in energy intensive industries in scandinavia as methodology the ex post analysis deserves more attention as a device to calibrate energy sector models this paper studies the impact of energy prices and taxes on energy efficiency and carbon emissions of ten industrial sectors in the three scandinavian countries a database with sector specific energy prices and taxes has been established which allows the analysis to take various price reductions and tax exemptions better into account a translog factor demand system estimation for a cross industry pooled model is explored and fixed effects across industries and time is estimated the findings here confirm recent analyses which indicate higher long term elasicities for industries than normally assumed in scandinavian energy sector models with the observations on differences in energy intensities among sectors and countries the findings allow for some optimism as to the opportunities for further decoupling between trends in gross value added carbon emissions and energy consumption

natural resources national income and economic growth in africa abstract because standard measures of aggregate income such as gross domestic product gdp do not account for natural resource depletion their use as gauges of economic performance tends to exaggerate the benefits of resource extraction accounting for natural resource depletion in 18 african countries indicates different patterns of growth than those suggested by gdp figures use of the revised measures in analyses of the link between exports and growth suggests that export expansion may generate increases in measured gdp without stimulating increased production in contrast real exchange rate alignment is correlated with growth in both conventional gdp and the revised accounts

allocative inefficiency and the capital energy controversy abstract the purpose of the paper is to estimate a system of input demands for greek manufacturing deviating from the standard practice of assuming strict cost minimization the study allows for the presence of price distortions and allocative inefficiency in the decision process this assumption affects parameter estimates and estimated elasticities materially and throws new light on the capital energy controversy in greek manufacturing

conceptualization of energy security in resource poor economies the role of the nature of economy abstract this paper studies how energy security is conceptualized in four resource poor advanced island economies singapore south korea japan and taiwan it is found that the energy security conceptualization of the four economies in effect returns to the very original and conventional one stable and reliable energy supply however these economies are different in the level of stability and reliability demanded why are they similar in energy security conceptualization whereas different in the level of stability and reliability demanded adopting documentation analysis comparative study and the varieties of capitalism theory we find that the nature of economy constitutes the decisive factor that shapes energy security conceptualization the coordinated market economies cmes are more concerned about energy supply disruption than the liberalized market economies lmes the paper demonstrates that despite numerous energy security concepts in the literature resource poor economies still adopt the original and conventional one in practice the findings suggest that security of supply is the top measure for resource poor economies to improve their energy security and creating a joint petroleum and lng market would be desirable for the four economies in this study

global impact of uncertainties in china s gas market abstract this paper examines the uncertainties in chinese gas markets analyze the reasons and quantify their impact on the world gas market a literature review found significant variability among the outlooks on china s gas sector further assessment found that uncertainties in economic growth structural change in markets environmental regulations price and institutional changes contribute to the uncertainties the analysis of china s demand and supply uncertainties with a world gas trading model found significant changes in global production trade patterns and spot prices with pipeline exporters being most affected china s domestic production and pipeline imports from central asia are the major buffers that can offset much of the uncertainties the study finds an asymmetric phenomenon pipeline imports are responding to china s uncertainties in both low and high demand scenarios while lng imports are only responding to high demand scenario the major reasons are higher top levels and the current practice of import only up to the minimum top levels for lng as well as a lack of liberalized gas markets the study shows that it is necessary to create lng markets that can respond to market dynamics through either a reduction of top levels or change of pricing mechanisms to hub indexation

the asia pacific natural gas market large enough for all abstract among natural gas producing nations there has been some concern about how the asia pacific will meet future demand for energy we argue that natural gas both regional and global will play a vital role estimates of potential gas consumption in the region are analyzed and used to develop consensus projections to 2030 these consumption profiles are compared with gas supply estimates including indigenous pipeline and lng for the asia pacific market from this analytical framework we find that demand will be sufficiently large to accommodate supplies from diverse sources including north america the middle east central asia russia and the asia pacific itself an important policy implication is that gas producing and consuming nations should benefit from promoting gas trade and not be concerned about a situation of potential lack of demand coupled with oversupply

the effects of environmental fiscal reform in germany a simulation study this paper presents the first comprehensive model based impact analysis of the german environmental fiscal reform addressing the effects on co2 emissions economic growth employment and personal income distribution both an econometric input output model and a dynamic computable general equilibrium model are applied in order to enhance the credibility of our results the macroeconomic results are linked with a micro simulation model of the household sector so that detailed household data can be used to determine the effect of the environmental fiscal reform on personal income distribution we find a small double dividend in that energy consumption and co2 emissions decrease while employment rises the impact on economic growth is found to be minimal the fear that the environmental fiscal reform might interfere with the goals of social and income distribution policy is found to be largely unjustified

the employment effects of sustainable development policies abstract this paper argues that it is time for ecological economists to bring the employment impacts of sustainable development policies to the forefront of the research agenda important conservation efforts continue to founder because of their perceived employment effects the paper examines the evidence on the employment impacts of sustainable development policies and argues that maintaining or even increasing employment depends critically on appropriate policy design and attention to the political economy of implementation of policies the paper concludes that a better understanding of these issues fair labour market and structural adjustment programs and especially forward planning to anticipate problem areas must replace the piecemeal knee jerk reactions to environmental issues such as were evident in australia during the last federal election

export led growth and structural change evidence from malaysia many studies have tried to establish the causal link between export expansion and economic growth this contribution is to recognize that structural changes will change the sources of growth and this will affect the export growth relationship a country case study approach is used focusing on malaysia a country with one of the world s highest sustained growth rates and a long history of commodity trade we use var analysis of malaysian quarterly trade and gdp growth from 1965 to 1996 trade data are disaggregated into primary and manufactures exports and causality tests are applied to the entire period as well as two subperiods 150 the 1965 1501980 period when policy emphasis was on import substitution and the 1981 1501996 period when policies favoured export led growth statistical tests confirm export led growth for the full period and for the period to 1980 but tests on the 1981 1501996 period show growth causing exports primary exports had a stronger direct impact on economic growth than manufactu

exports and growth is the export led growth hypothesis valid for provincial economies this paper re examines the export led growth hypothesis using provincial data unlike other studies that concentrate on country level data this study investigates the validity of the hypothesis for four largest provinces in korea seoul kyunggee kyungnam and pusan the causal implication of the export led growth hypothesis is generally supported for all provinces in the sample the framework of analysis is two and four variable autoregressive models that include provincial exports provincial output terms of trade and national output shocks granger causal orderings from exports to output growth are generally supported in bivariate causal models in multivariate models variance decompositions and impulse response functions further indicate that export growth has a significant impact on output growth for all provinces although a feedback effect from output to export growth appears in seoul and the kyungnam province

exports investment efficiency and economic growth in ldc an empirical investigation this study seeks to analyse the relationship between exports and growth for 19 less developed countries it utilizes multivariate causality analysis based on the error correction model to address several important hypotheses the results indicate that when exports have a causal influence in the development process that in general this is the result of their effect on both efficiency and accumulation in addition improvements in output and capital accumulation in an economy seem to have just as much of an influence on exports as exports have on output and capital accumulation finally the growth process in east asia seems to be quite different from that in southeast asia

take or pay contract robustness a three step story told by the brazil bolivia gas case abstract neo institutional economics nei has long shown that take or pay top long term contracts provide a robust framework for safeguarding the interests of both upstream and downstream parties in the gas industry the case of gas trade between brazil and bolivia presents an opportunity to re examine empirically and to review the robust nature of the top framework over time this case reveals that the positions of the contractors actually change giving rise to a veritable lifecycle of the contractual arrangement such a contract can be seen to span three successive phases the first phase of the contract cycle begins when it is signed allowing the investments to begin the second phase starts when investments have been completed and the actual trade in gas begins the third phase of the contract cycle comes when the increasing flow of gas comes close to saturating capacity and the volume levels for downstream market volume have been reached these three contract phases are thus distinguished by how robust the alignment of the parties interests is the added value of the paper is then both empirical and analytical the case study provides a brand new lifecycle analysis of the performance of top long term contracting into an nei framework

endogenous technological change and emissions the case of the german steel industry abstract the paper starts from the observation that innovation and technical progress are only portrayed superficially in the predominant environmental economic top down models and that the assumption of perfect factor substitution does not correctly mirror actual production conditions in many energy intensive production sectors bottom up models on the other hand neglect macroeconomic interdependencies between the modelled sector and the general economy this paper presents a new modelling approach in an integrated bottom up top down approach based on the example of crude steel production in germany it is demonstrated how technological progress can be portrayed as process related and policy induced and how the technology choice between limitational processes can be explicitly modelled and implemented in the econometric input output model panta rhei the new modelling approach presented permits a process specific analysis of the impacts of changed frame conditions the effects of which on the choice of technology on the one hand and the technological progress on the other can be described endogenous to the model these features are demonstrated in a co2 tax simulation results show that policy induced technological change is besides a switch in production processes the major source of co2 reduction for the steel sector

what can be learned from the free destination option in the lng imbroglio we examine the profitability of flexible routing by lng cargoes for a single supplier taking into account uncertainty in the medium term dynamics of gas markets first we model the trajectory of natural gas prices in asia northern america and europe using a threshold vector autoregression representation tvar in which the system s dynamics switches back and forth between high and low regimes of oil price volatility we then use the generalized impulse response functions girf obtained from the estimated threshold model to analyze the effects of volatility shocks on the regional gas markets dynamics lastly the valuation of destination flexibility in lng supplies is conducted using a real option approach we generate a sample of possible future regional price trajectories using monte carlo simulations of our empirical model and determine for each trajectory the optimal shipping decisions and their profitability our results portend a substantial source of profit for the industry and reveal future movements of vessels we discuss the conditional impact of destination flexibility on the globalization of natural gas markets

oil indexation market fundamentals and natural gas prices an investigation of the asian premium in natural gas trade abstract a heated debate has arisen over whether the asian premium i e higher prices in asia than elsewhere in natural gas trade is due to price discrimination or different market fundamentals determining the origin of this premium can help to guide the gas industries and policy makers in asia especially when the traditional oil indexed price mechanism fades away using a new systemic time series approach this paper explores the extent to which oil prices and market fundamentals contribute to variations in gas prices in japan the united states and germany we find clear cross country differences and time varying patterns gas prices are much less affected by supply and demand factors than oil prices in japan and germany whereas these factors are more important than oil prices in the us market which has a pricing hub through rolling windows and subsample analysis we discover that oil prices were important in japan and germany but the level of importance has declined significantly in recent years though the contribution of fundamentals does not change much the results show that asian gas prices are determined more by oil prices than by the market fundamentals thus the asian premium is more likely due to this oil indexed pricing mechanism rather than market fundamentals this suggests that developing asia s benchmark prices through trading hubs with a better reflection of regional specific fundamentals can lead to a more efficient allocation of gas resources

ecological tax reform in germany handling two hot potatoes at the same time combining environmental with employment objectives ecological tax reform etr envisages a double dividend while research has mainly focused on the socio economic and environmental impacts of etr there is less literature on the social responses this paper gives an overview and history of german etr as well as investigating the understanding of perceptions and attitudes towards etr of those being subject to tax the research is based on qualitative social research methods as with the other petras papers interviews were conducted with policy makers and business leaders and focus groups were formed with lay persons the results show that responses of policy makers and business leaders are modest although some criticisms about the specific design of the german etr remain complaints towards etr are settled attitudes appear influenced by more fundamental convictions such as economic interest or altruistic views in contrast etr appears to politicise common people attitudes are influenced by the overall comprehension of the etr concept the expected impacts perceived information deficits as well as a general distrust in politics our data show that the linking of environmental and employment objectives is not understood and not welcomed in order to increase social acceptance the paper discusses refocusing etr on environmental objectives modestly increasing the share of etr revenue spent for environmental purposes removing inconsistencies in the etr design and improving information policy

trade liberalization and productivity growth new evidence from the turkish rubber industry this paper empirically examines the effects of a change in foreign trade regime on productivity growth based on a generalized leontief factor demand function system total factor productivity growth tfpg rates are calculated for the turkish rubber industry during a substantial trade liberalization in the 1980s tfpg was significantly higher following trade liberalization technological change was the major contributor to this growth when a panel data estimation technique is used to explain technological change the effects of trade liberalization become clearer a one percentage point increase in the protection level led to more than a one percentage point 1 27 decline in the technological change rate

causality between export growth and industrial development empirical evidence from the nics a comment abstract in a recent article chow 1987 argued that his empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that export growth causes industrial development in this comment i point out several serious shortcomings of chow s analysis

export instability and the domestic economy questions of causality the conventional view concerning the impact of export instability on the domestic economies of developing countries is one of pessimism export instability is thought to adversely affect the short run stability and longer run growth of income empirical evidence on these matters is however inconclusive this article applies a granger sims reduced form approach to examining whether export instability generates short run instability in domestic income for each of a sample of 20 trade dependent countries the results obtained strongly support the contention that export instability induces short run macroeconomic instability

exports investments and economic development of pre accession countries of the european union an empirical investigation of bulgaria and romania this paper attempts to analyse the relationship between exports investments and economic development in two pre accession countries of the european union bulgaria and romania for investigation of this relationship a multivariate autoregressive var model is used the results of cointegration analysis showed that there is one cointegrated vector among exports investments and economic growth for the two countries granger causality tests based on error correction models ecm indicated that there is a strong granger causal relation between economic growth and exports as well as between investments and exports for the two countries in addition economic development and capital accumulation in an economy seem to have just as much of an influence on exports as exports have on capital accumulation and economic development

the effect of the german and british environmental taxation reforms a simple assessment abstract this article implements a simple econometric approach to assess the effect of the environmental tax reforms introduced in germany and the uk despite the very simple econometric approach adopted in this paper in the case of the energy demand our results do not differ markedly from those obtained from complicated multi sectoral econometric models in the case of the labour demand our results differ from the estimates obtained from econometric models where the employment level is not directly influenced by the energy price on the other hand our results are more similar to those obtained from models where the level of employment is directly influenced by the energy price confirming the findings of bosquet 2000 environmental tax reform does it work a survey of the empirical evidence ecological economics 34 19 32 and oecd 2004 environment and employment an assessment working party on national environmental policy oecd paris we conclude that environmental tax reforms can deliver substantial reductions in energy consumption while having small effects on the level of employment effect which can be positive depending on the size of the reduction in the labour costs and the value of cross price elasticities

causal analyses between exports and economic growth in developing countries this study investigates the prima facie causal relationship between the exports and output growth in 30 developing countries over the period from 1960 to 1988 in a multivariate framework the information set considered for the output and exports models are domestic output exports labour and capital and exports domestic output exchange rate and foreign output respectively this study indentities a feedback prima facie causal relationship between exports and output growth in five countries export growth prima facie causes output growth in another six countries output growth prima facie causes export growth in a further eight countries and no causal relationship was observed between export growth and output growth in the remaining 11 countries we also found that in 15 countries the foreign exchange rate prima facie caused export growth and that in 12 countries world output caused export growth

testing functional forms in energy modeling an application of the bayesian approach to u s electricity demand abstract in the estimation of demand functions for energy resources linear log linear translog or aids functional forms are commonly assumed it is frequently debated which is the best functional forms to employ in order to accurately represent the underlying relationships between the consumption of various energy resources and explanatory variables such as energy prices weather variables income and other factors in an example analysis of residential energy demand employing cross sectional household level data we find that the aids model is slightly better than the translog model which is superior to the log linear model and which in turn is better than the linear model this is in sharp contrast to previous findings in this context

is the export led growth hypothesis valid for australia the relationship between exports and output is examined using australian annual data over the period 1900 1993 cointegration and causality testing fails to detect the existence of a long run or short run relationship between the two variables these results are explained by restoring to the structural time series modelling approach which shows that while the output series exhibits cyclical variation the exports series does not have this property it is concluded that the export led growth hypothesis is not valid for australia

atheoretical macroeconometrics a critique abstract the spurious nature of the restrictions used to identify many macroeconometric models has led some researchers to advocate a style of econometric inquiry that is less dependent on prior theoretical restrictions of the sort that were central to the approach of the cowles commission this development which we call atheoretical macroeconometrics is summarized and evaluated in the current paper it is contrasted with an updated version of the cowles commission approach we conclude that while some of the exercises of atheoretical macroeconometrics are valid those that have attracted the most attention and appear the most innovative exogeneity testing impulse response analysis and policy analysis using estimated vector autoregressions are based on incorrect analysis

binding constraint on economic growth under export oriented industrialization and globalization the two gap model of economic growth implies that different constraints on economic growth namely the savings and the foreign exchange availability are binding at different times this article estimates these varying binding constraints in 16 countries in east and southeast asia and latin america and explores their differences across countries regions and periods i show that the east and southeast asian countries which are recognized to be successful in export oriented industrialization are less constrained by the foreign exchange availability with reinforced export capacity than the latin american countries which had carried some inertia of import substituting industrialization policy until the 1980s in addition the economic growth turns out to be more constrained by the domestic savings in recent years which can be a reflection of capital account liberalization policies typically implemented in the late 1980s and 1990s and or a diminishing return to export led growth in either case this mi

exports imports and economic growth in south korea and japan a tale of two economies this article investigates the relationship between exports imports and economic growth for south korea and japan by constructing a vector autoregression var model causality is examined between real gross domestic product gdp real exports and real imports several principal results emerge from the empirical work first the three variables are cointegrated for both countries implying that a long run steady state exists second there is evidence of bidirectional causality between imports and economic growth for both countries finally japan seems to experience export led growth while gdp growth in south korea has a negative effect on export growth these contrasting findings could result from export goods in japan exhibiting greater nonprice competitive aspects although their success fails to trigger a virtuous circle since growth fails to lead to increased exports while for south korea output growth leads to a decrease in export growth suggesting a strong domestic market

the role of exports fdi and imports in development evidence from sub saharan african countries the disappointing economic performance of sub saharan african ssa economies in the late 1980s prompted reforms in foreign trade and foreign direct investment fdi in the early 1990s using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach and pedroni panel estimation procedures that allow for heterogeneity this study found that exports and fdi have a significant impact on economic growth granger type causality tests show the interrelatedness of exports fdi imports and income variables the results also provide evidence of a two stage causal chain of exports imports and income this article calls for more market oriented policy reforms in ssa countries

the long run impact of foreign shocks to the austrian economy an analysis at a sectoral level this paper investigates the long run impact of foreign shocks on the austrian economy which is an example of a small open economy with a fixed echange rate regime the analysis is done in a multisectoral vector autoregression framework foreign shocks involve inovations in gnp of european oecd countries oil prices effective echange rate and interest rates sectoral responses appear to be very different in particular shocks to european oecd gnp have a high long run impact on sectoral output especially in export dependent sectors this supports the hypothesis of export led growth

interrelated factor demands from dynamic cost functions an application to the non energy business sector of the uk economy in this paper we propose a dynamic cost function which allows us consistently to derive a set of dynamic interrelated factor demand equations in the general error correction form introduced by anderson and blundell 1982 this paper expands results recently published in urga 1996 it shows that the derivation of an effective underlying cost function allows us to identify the full set of parameters of the underlying process this does not happen in the standard anderson blundell formulation we report an empirical exercise used to model the so called supply side of the london busines school large scale economic model where we estimate both the set of factor demands and the underlying dynamic cost function for the non energy business sector of the uk economy

the validity of the elg hypothesis in the mena region cointegration and error correction model analysis the export led growth elg hypothesis is examined for nine middle east and north africa mena countries in three variable vector autoregressive and error correction models when considering total exports the results reject the elg hypothesis in almost all of these countries when only manufactured exports are examined no support is found for elg in countries with relatively low shares of manufactured exports in total merchandise exports but strong support in countries with relatively high shares these findings suggest that promoting exports may contribute to economic growth only after a certain threshold of manufactured exports has been reached

risk transmission mechanism between energy markets a var for var approach abstract the global financial crisis gfc of 2007 2009 that originated in the us has revealed the need for measuring and monitoring the transmission of extreme downside market risk this paper investigates the risk transmission mechanism between the oil and natural gas markets we apply the recently introduced test statistics based on cross quantilogram function and the multivariate quantile regression model var for var to the us oil and natural gas prices which are independently formed our results show two asymmetric patterns first the shocks in the oil market substantially increase the value at risk var in the natural gas market but the reverse impact does not exist second we highlight the significant asymmetric response of gains and losses transmission in energy markets cautioning about the underlying weakness of adopting volatility to measure risk in the energy market moreover an extreme market risk is more easily transmitted across markets than moderate risks our results are in general robust in application to other regional energy markets such as europe and asia but the heterogeneities in responses are underpinned by the different role of natural gas in regions the findings in this paper have important implications for academic researchers policy makers in gas dependent economies and business practitioners in light of projected increases in the use of natural gas worldwide as well as the development of independent gas on gas competitive hub prices in asia and europe

unit roots and cointegration in estimating causality between exports and economic growth empirical evidence from the asean countries abstract this paper utilizes cointegration and error correction representation methodology in estimating the long run behavioral relationship between exports and economic growth in the asean countries

international gas pricing in europe and asia a crisis of fundamentals abstract in continental europe and lng importing asia international gas prices reflect the market fundamentals of the 1970s 1990s when gas was replacing oil products and crude oil in energy balances by the end of the 2000s fundamentals in both these regions had changed significantly but gas price formation mechanisms had not this created major problems for buyers locked into long term contracts indexed to crude oil and oil product prices which had risen to levels far above gas market fundamentals by 2013 the transition to hub based pricing was well advanced in europe and dominant in the large markets in the north west of the continent in asia the crisis of fundamentals was only just starting to be addressed with a transition to market pricing an urgent imperative but still a distant prospect

is china s natural gas market globally connected abstract the rise of the shale gas industry and the need for clean low carbon energy transformation in china has meant that the relationship between domestic and foreign natural gas markets has become closer therefore identifying the changing relationships between the major global natural gas markets and china s natural gas market has important practical value for the current chinese domestic natural gas pricing system this paper used the dcc garch nardl ardl ecm as the analytical framework to study these relationships from which it was found that there was no unified global natural gas market and that china s natural gas market was not yet aligned with this market it was shown that there was no significant asymmetry in the impact of international gas prices on china s gas prices as no flexible adjustment measures were found in china s imported natural gas pricing mechanism moreover while international natural gas prices were found to have a significant impact on china s natural gas prices over the long term there were obvious regional differences over the short term accordingly new pricing policies should be designed to promote market oriented natural gas pricing reforms in acknowledging features such as asymmetry the difference between imported gas sources and the periodicity of price adjustment

an empirical investigation of the causal relationship between openness and economic growth in china this study investigates the causal relationship between openness and economic growth in china the integration and cointegration properties of the data are analysed and the models of granger sims geweke and hsiao are used to identify a bi directional causal relationship between gnp and exports plus imports this bi directional causation is consistent with china s development strategy of protected export promotion

substitution and price elasticity estimates using inter country pooled data in a translog cost model pooled data across several developing countries and the u s were used to estimate long run substitution and price elasticities ina translog framework for the paper iron and steel and aggregatemanufacturing industries while the quality of the estimates variesacross the several industry specific models the results suggest highervalues for these elasticities than appear commonly used in integratedassessment models estimates of own price elasticities of energy rangefrom 0 80 to 1 76 and are comparable to estimates from previouseconometric studies in the context of developed countries 0 77 to 0 87 substitution elasticities show wider variation across countriesand industries for energy and capital they range from 1 96 to 9 80 forlabor and energy from 2 61 to 7 11 and for energy and material from 0 26 to 2 07

the economic case for international labour standards this paper explores the economic case for international labour standards granting workers rights of free association and collective bargaining confers both static and dynamic economic efficiencies static efficiencies refer to one time gains from improvements in economic practice dynamic efficiencies refer to gains from improvements to the growth path resulting from a shift away from a low road development path to a high road path these efficiencies raise wages employment and output in developing countries and they can also benefit workers in developed countries labour standards are an institutional mechanism for raising the quality of growth in both developing and developed countries in this sense they are a win win institution

carbon taxes and carbon emissions trading this paper surveys the literature on and examples of current implementation of carbon taxes and carbon emission permits it sets out the theoretical basis for these instruments with special reference to the revenue recycling and tax interaction effects this theoretical work concludes that instruments which raise revenue which can be recycled so as to reduce pre existing distortionary taxes are significantly less costly than those which do not the paper then reviews the sizable literature on the distributional effects of these instruments especially with regard to industrial competitiveness and regressive effects on low income groups evaluating attempts to mitigate these where they are perceived as unacceptable the paper concludes that such efforts at mitigation while possible can substantially reduce the efficiency benefits of the instruments the projected costs of carbon taxes depend on a wide range of assumptions this is still a contested area but the paper concludes that on a range of plausible assumptions these costs need not be high finally the paper notes that early evaluations of the environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes have been generally positive this suggests that if concern about anthropogenic climate change continues to increase more countries will introduce carbon taxes and emission permits with the latter increasingly auctioned

history and social responses to environmental tax reform in the united kingdom abstract this paper gives a short history of fuel taxation and the climate change levy in the uk the research described was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them interviews were conducted with selected policy makers and companies focus groups were conducted with quota samples of the general public the research shows that the problem that etr faces in terms of public acceptance is not so much outright hostility to environmental taxation as conceptual problems with the design similar conceptual problems were also found in the interviews with business people these can be summarised as lack of trust about use of the revenues difficulty in understanding the purpose of a tax shift and a desire for incentives for good behaviour as well as perceived penalties for bad behaviour

real option valuation of free destination in long term liquefied natural gas supplies this paper presents a real option model for the valuation of destination flexibility in long term lng supplies stochastic price dynamics in the different markets is modelled through geometric brownian motion processes mean reversion is considered as well as correlation between markets but instead of the usual correlation in return shocks a price convergence term is introduced representing the arbitrage streams between markets model parameters are estimated from market data on lng prices by maximum log likelihood the goodness of the fit for the proposed model is tested as well as for two alternative models confidence intervals for the parameters are given results for the model are calculated by monte carlo simulation frequency distributions for the main results are plotted the effect of the main parameters of the model is studied i e price volatilities price convergence initial prices in the markets mean reversion extra transportation costs number of alternative markets the value of destination flexibility is found to be an important share of the value of lng

financialization fundamentals and the time varying determinants of us natural gas prices abstract increasing empirical evidence shows that natural gas prices have decoupled from oil prices yet there remains an open question as to what are the determining factors of natural gas prices following the demise of oil indexation this paper aims to address this question using a dynamic model averaging dma approach dma can help identify key important price determinants and importantly does so within a time varying framework allowing us to document how the set of determinants has evolved in response to key market changes using time series data between 2001 and 2018 we demonstrate a clear declining role of oil prices in the natural gas pricing mechanism verifying the demise of indexation market or fundamental factors such as weather demand and supply conditions have at the same time become more important in addition our results illustrate an increasing role from financial markets captured by speculation related variables providing empirical evidence to support the recent literature on commodity market financialization the rising impact of speculation to natural gas prices introduces questions over how to balance market efficiency and risk management in the post indexation regime

causality between export growth and industrial development empirial evidence from the nics abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between export growth and industrial development in eight newly industrializing countries nics results of sims causality test show that for most of the nics there is a strong bidirectional causality between the growth of exports and industrial development these findings support the export led growth strategy in that expansion in exports not only promote the growth of national income but also lead to structural transformation of the developing countries

the impact of the shale gas revolution on the u s and japanese natural gas markets we investigated whether the increase in the us shale gas production changed the structures of the us and japanese natural gas markets using market data for the period 2002 5 2012 5 our analysis consists of a structural break test and market integration analysis the bai and perron structural break test detected a break point of natural gas prices and consumption in 2005 as well as other external shocks hurricane katrina and the lehman shock that are irrelevant to shale gas development we eliminated the impact of these shocks by separating the data set using the breaks identified in our analysis we found the breaks skewed the estimation a market linkage existed between the us and japanese markets in the original data set while it did not in the separated data the vector autoregressive var model also indicated a significant change before and after the break point the us market had a one side influence on the japanese market before 2005 but the influence disappeared after 2005 our results implied that the shale gas revolution triggered by the increase in shale gas production in 2005 caused the change in the relationship between the us and japanese natural gas markets

exports growth and causality in developing countries abstract previous empirical studies have interpreted results in regressions of output variables on export variables as providing support for an export promotion development strategy such an interpretation is questionable since these regressions provide no means of determining the direction of causality this paper performs causality tests between exports and growth for 37 developing countries the results cast considerable doubt on the validity of the export promotion hypothesis

the effect of fossil energy and other environmental taxes on profit incentives for change in an open economy evidence from the uk this paper argues that the underlying supply and demand analysis of fossil energy and other environmental taxes needs further elaboration when a country a introduces national fossil energy or environmental taxes and b is open to international trade at given world prices we provide evidence that such conditions are plausible for many sectors in the uk a key implication is that the short run effects of such taxes should not be felt in final good prices since these are determined in world markets but in terms of underlying profitability these changes in underlying profits provide two key incentives for producers to change to more environmentally friendly production techniques and to switch resources to production of less environmentally harmful goods using input output techniques we provide evidence for the uk to show how existing fossil energy and other green taxes have affected underlying profitability the evidence shows quite strong profit incentives to shift resources from a small number of energy intensive industries to others

exports growth and causality in ldcs abstract using akaike s optimal lag criterion in a granger causality test the causal relationship between export growth and economic growth and vice versa is re examined for 20 countries it is argued that earlier analyses which ignore optimal lags in granger or sims causality tests suffer from certain shortcomings which are overcome by the present approach the results suggest some support for the export promotion hypothesis especially in the case of well known nics and thus differ from previous applications of granger test which did not adopt an optimum lag criterion and which showed no causality from export growth to economic growth in such cases however they are inconclusive in evaluating competing hypotheses

exports export composition and growth cointegration and causality evidence for malaysia this paper comprehensively tests the export led growth elg hypothesis for malaysia for the period 1955 90 using cointegration and causality testing based on hsiao s synthesis of the granger test and akaike s minimum final prediction error criterion the results provide support for the elg hypothesis aggregate exports granger cause real gdp and non export gdp this relationship is found to be driven by manufactured exports rather than by traditional exports

natural gas prices lng transport costs and the dynamics of lng imports according to the u s energy information administration lng is projected to become a much larger share of u s natural gas consumption rising from current levels of around 2 5 of total natural gas consumption to 12 4 by 2030 because natural gas and lng are substitutes natural gas prices are expected to be an important determinant of lng imports furthermore an increasing share of lng is traded under short term contracts with spot shipments being diverted to markets offering the highest returns netbacks relative natural gas prices as well as lng transportation costs are important determinants of lng netbacks this paper examines the empirical relationship between u s lng imports the henry hub price of natural gas relative to u k and asia gas prices and a proxy for lng transportation costs using monthly data from 1997 to 2007 granger causality tests error variance decomposition and impulse response analyses using a var model are employed to establish granger causality as well as the dynamics of natural gas prices and lng transportation innovations on lng imports

exports and economic growth in industrialized countries the prima facie causal relationships between growth exports and factor inputs capital and labour are investigated in five industrialized countries germany itlay japan united kingdom and united states over the period 1960 87 by analysing a four variable vector autoregressive var model for each country our results indicate that germany and japan experienced export led growth reverse causality between exports and growth is found in the case of the us and uk while to causal relationship between exports and output is found for itlay

labor demand effects of rising electricity prices evidence for germany abstract germany continues to play a pioneering role in replacing conventional power plants with renewable energy sources while this might be beneficial with respect to environmental quality it also implies increasing electricity prices the extent to which this is associated with negative impacts on employment depends on the interrelationship between labor and electricity as input factors in the production process in this paper we estimate cross price elasticities between electricity and heterogeneous labor for the german manufacturing sector we use administrative linked employer employee micro data combined with information on sector level electricity prices and usage over the period 2003 2007 we find positive but small conditional cross price elasticities of labor demand with respect to electricity prices which means that electricity as an input factor can be replaced by labor to a limited extent when the production level is held constant in the case of adjustable output we find negative unconditional cross price elasticities implying that higher electricity prices lead to output reductions and to lower labor demand with low and high skilled workers being affected more than medium skilled resulting adverse distributional effects and potential overall job losses may pose challenges for policy makers in securing public support for the german energy turnaround

green fiscal reform in sweden econometric assessment of the carbon and energy taxation scheme abstract empirical econometric assessment of environmental policy effectiveness is capable of demonstrating which tools have been helping to achieve the desired effect of reducing harmful emissions or stimulating technological change this paper employs an econometric approach to analyse the effectiveness of energy and carbon taxes in sweden the country which was one of the first to introduce a co2 tax as well as an extensive environmental tax reform the results showed that taken in isolation a co2 tax was not sufficient to result in a significant change in co2 emissions in sweden except in the case of petrol on the other hand energy taxes for coal and lpg have been statistically significantly effective it was also clear that a technological innovation in the form of development of nuclear and hydro energy played a significant role in reducing co2 emissions and higher oil price was also important in reducing national co2 emissions in sweden at the same time renewable energy excluding hydro a more recent innovation has not been a statistically significant driver of co2 emissions reduction perhaps due to the fact that wind and solar play a much lesser role in sweden at the moment the net electricity imports from other countries have contributed positively towards reducing co2 emissions in sweden while the use of coal and biomass tended to increase co2 emissions compared to the ex ante modelling results from the literature review the findings confirm the role of environmental taxation as a viable policy instrument effective in reducing co2 emissions in sweden although point towards a more nuanced picture the paper raises important policy questions focused on the effectiveness of environmental policy tools

what does europe pay for clean energy review of macroeconomic simulation studies this paper analyses the macroeconomic costs of environmental regulation in european energy markets on the basis of existing macroeconomic simulation studies the analysis comprises the european emssion trading scheme energy taxes measures in the transport sector and the promotion of renewable energy sources we find that these instruments affect the european economy in particular the energy intensive industries and the industries that produce internationally tradeable goods from a macroeconomic point of view however the costs of environmental regulation appear to be modest the underlying environmental targets and the efficient design of regulation are key determinants for the cost burden

assessing a disaggregated energy input using confidence intervals around translog elasticity estimates the role of energy in the production of manufacturing output has been debated extensively in the literature particularly its relationship with capital and labor in an attempt to provide some clarification in this debate a two step methodology was used first under the assumption of a five factor production function specification we distinguished between electric and non electric energy and assessed each component s relationship with capital and labor second we calculated both the allen and price elasticities and constructed 95 confidence intervals around these values our approach led to the following conclusions that the disaggregation of the energy input into electric and non electric energy is justified that capital and electric energy and capital and non electric energy are substitutes while labor and electric energy and labor and non electric energy are complements in production and that capital and energy are substitutes while labor and energy are complements

agricultural exports and economic growth in less developed countries this article examines the contribution of agricultural exports to economic growth in less developed countries ldcs a sources of growth equation is developed from a dual economy model where agricultural and nonagricultural sectors are both divided into export and nonexport subsectors this is then estimated using panel data for 62 ldcs for 1974 1995 results provide evidence that there are significant structural differences in economic growth between low lower middle and upper income ldcs investment in the agricultural export subsector has a statistically identical impact on economic growth as investment in the nonagricultural export subsector the marginal productivities in nonexport subsectors are over 30 lower than those in respective export subsectors from a policy perspective the results suggest that export promotion policies should be balanced

export expansion and economic growth testing for cointegration and causality this paper develops a multivariate error correction model to test the causality between exports and growth in 15 asian countries 1967 91 the underlying series are tested as non stationary in levels but stationary in first differences the causal factors are cointegrated in five of these countries only causality test results indicate that export expansion causes growth in two third of these countries corrected for simultaneity between the causal factors a country with a large public sector higher level of economic development and which is less vulnerable to external economic shocks is more likely to reap the benefits of export promotion strategies the causal inferences are fairly stable over the sample period

further evidence on the debate of oil gas price decoupling a long memory approach abstract the long run oil gas price relationship has been challenged more often in recent years as these two prices have shown evidence of decoupling from each other this paper proposes the use of a long memory approach and a rolling windows method to model the time varying oil gas price relationship in three markets namely the united states europe and japan the results extend existing research conclusions on the oil gas price relationship and answer the question of whether it is a temporary phenomenon or a permanent market change our findings indicate that the us oil gas relationship remains nonstationary at almost all windows and illustrate strong evidence of decoupling conversely the european and asian oil gas prices exhibit temporary decoupling over time although the overall relationship still favours the oil indexation hypothesis the us experience suggests that oil and gas do not share the same fundamentals and a pricing hub can better reflect the true value of natural gas policy makers in europe and asia should reinforce their efforts towards a market based pricing mechanism for gas

money growth volatility and the macroeconomy this study analyzes the effects of variability in money growth on the macroeconomy for the period 1961 1 1984 4 within the context of a vector autoregressive model that contains variables typically included in a small macro model variance decompositions and historical decompositions are used to assess the impact of money growth variability the variance decompositions suggest substantial effects of money growth variability on the long term interest rate output and the price level historical decompositions for 1979 4 1984 4 suggest substantial effects of money growth variability on the interest rate and output but smaller effects on the price level are found copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

what drives natural gas prices in the united states a directed acyclic graph approach abstract this study investigates the impacts of driving factors for natural gas prices during the period from 1999 to 2017 a data driven approach namely the directed acyclic graph dag is first employed to disclose the contemporaneous relations among natural gas crude oil and various factors the main results indicate that there is a stable contemporaneous causal flow from crude oil to natural gas unlike most of the previous research we found a long term equilibrium relationship between crude oil and natural gas returns when additional factors were taken into account however the impact of oil price returns on natural gas price volatility has decreased after the 2008 global financial crisis finally storage and seasonality factors can never be ignored when analysing natural gas prices while the impact of speculative activity on natural gas volatility is relatively weak

terms of trade fluctuations and economic growth in developing economies abstract the effect of terms of trade fluctuations on capital accumulation is investigated in a simple open economy stochastic growth model imported inputs make domestic capital more productive but export prices are uncertain the model s output process has a random walk component so even transient price shocks have permanent effects on output levels the size of the random walk component depends on the country s trade share the supply response of exports and other structural parameters also more variable export prices generally reduce expected domestic investment these results are consistent with the estimated variance ratios and impulse response functions for a number of ldcs

trade liberalization and environmental degradation in china being aware that trade liberalization affects the environment by scale technique and composition effects this study uses provincial data from 1993 to 2002 in china to empirically investigate how they affect the environment adopting the methodology provided by antweiler et al 2001 and slightly modifying their model this study examines whether the composition effects arising from increasing trade originate due to differences in capital labour endowment factor endowment hypothesis and or differences in environmental regulations accompanied by income growth pollution haven hypothesis in china the results indicate that the evidence of factor endowment hypothesis is found in most of the pollutants studied in this article whilst there seems no evidence of pollution haven hypothesis combining with all the estimated elasticities of scale and technique effects composition effects and trade intensity on emissions i find that increasing international trade has opposite impacts on the environment due t

gas and lng trading hubs hub indexation and destination flexibility in east asia abstract in the east asian gas markets issues like gas trading hubs hub indexed pricing and destination flexibility are being debated this paper examines the impact of a change in east asia s pricing benchmark and contract flexibility on the regional and global gas markets the paper uses the nexant world gas model a linear program with global cost minimization as the objective to our knowledge this study on hub competition price benchmark change and contract flexibility improvement in east asia will be the first in the literature and have real policy relevance the results show that both price benchmark change and contract flexibility improvements will create an overall benefit for the world and east asia importers but the impacts are different among exporters and importers however there is no evidence of competition among different benchmark hubs and no evidence that destination restrictions cause the asia premium it implies that removal of destination clauses has higher priority than the change to hub indexation for japan korea and chinese taipei but both should be treated equally in china the study also suggests that east asian importers should cooperate among themselves and with exporters to facilitate the hub creation and contract changes in east asia