global energy use decoupling or convergence we examine the key factors driving change in energy use globally over the past four decades we test for both strong decoupling where economic growth has less effect on energy use as income increases and weak decoupling where energy use declines overtime in richer countries ceteris paribus our econometric approach is robust to the presence of unit roots unobserved time effects and spatial effects our key findings are that the growth of per capita energy use has been primarily driven by economic growth convergence in energy intensity and weak decoupling there is no sign of strong decoupling

the econometrics of the environmental kuznets curve an illustration using australian co2 emissions four econometric issues associated with the estimation and testing of the environmental kuznets curve ekc are considered i model specification with respect to the order of the polynomial ii

between estimates of the emissions income elasticity abstract recent papers by wagner and vollebergh et al point out some fundamental econometric problems with traditional methods of estimating the environmental kuznets curve ekc and propose alternative approaches that avoid these issues wagner notes that traditional methods do not take into account the presence of powers of unit root variables and cross sectional dependence in the data while vollebergh et al point out that the time effects are not uniquely identified in the ekc model the between estimator is a simple estimator that also addresses the concerns of these authors it makes no a priori assumption about the nature of the time effects and is likely to provide consistent estimates of long run relationships in real world data situations i apply several common panel data estimators including the between estimator to oecd and global carbon and sulfur emissions datasets the between estimates of the sulfur income elasticity are 0 732 in the oecd and 1 067 in the global data set and the estimated carbon income elasticity is 1 612 in the oecd and 1 509 globally

economic development and co2 emissions a nonparametric panel approach we examine the empirical relation between co2 emissions per capita and gdp per capita during the period 1960 1996 using a panel of 100 countries relying on the nonparametric poolability test of baltagi et al baltagi b h hidalgo j li q 1996 a nonparametric test for poolability using panel data journal of econometrics 75 345 367 we find evidence of structural stability of the relationship we then specify a nonparametric panel data model with country specific effects estimation results show that this relationship is upward sloping nonparametric specification tests do not reject monotonicity but do reject the polynomial functional form which leads to the environmental kuznets curve in several studies

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

identifying reduced form relations with panel data the case of pollution and income abstract in this paper we propose a solution to the non robustness that plagues the estimation of inverted u shaped relationships using panel data such as the relation between pollution and income when dependent and independent variable like pollution and income are both time related separating the effect of the independent variable from time effects brings about a fundamental identification dilemma the imposition of restrictions on the controls might drive the shape of the relationship between the dependent pollution and independent income variables our solution consists of imposing the very weak constraint that arbitrary cross sectional units have the same relationship we apply our methodology to two widely studied cases namely so 2 and co 2 emissions interestingly our estimates are insensitive to the required subjective choices but also strongly differ from the literature so far we find consistent positive income effects for both cases and time effect estimates with a clear u shaped trend for so 2 emissions but only slightly so for co 2 emissions

reexamining the empirical evidence for an environmental kuznets curve this paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities worldwide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between national income and pollution we test the sensitivity of the pollution income relationship to functional forms to additional covariates and to changes in the nations cities and years sampled we find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes and conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted u shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data

energy efficiency rebound effects and the environmental kuznets curve technological change is one factor used to justify the existence of an environmental kuznets curve and technological improvements have been argued to be a key factor in mitigating the impacts of economic growth on environmental quality in this paper we use a cge model of the scottish economy to consider the factors influencing the impacts of one form of technological change improvements in energy efficiency on absolute levels of co2 emissions on the carbon intensity of the economy co2 emissions relative to real gdp and the per capita ekc relationship these factors include the elasticity of substitution between energy and non energy inputs responses in the labour market and the structure of the economy our results demonstrate the key role played by the general equilibrium price elasticity of demand for energy and the relative influence of different factors on this parameter

a test for parameter homogeneity in co2panel ekc estimations this paper casts doubt on empirical results based on panel estimations of an inverted u relationship between per capita gdp and pollution using a new dataset for oecd countries on carbon dioxide emissions for the period 1960 1997 we find that the crucial assumption of homogeneity across countries is problematic decisively rejected are model specifications that feature even weaker homogeneity assumptions than are commonly used furthermore our results challenge the existence of an overall environmental kuznets curve for carbon dioxide emissions

internal and international migration in mexico 1995 2000 using micro data from mexico and us 2000 population censuses and following a multi choice variant of roy s 1951 model this article pools into one model the determinants of internal and international migration in mexico while paying explicit attention to the potential problem of self selection the results reveal that ignoring multiple destinations in the migration decision might lead to erroneous inferences about the determinants of migration and the type of selection after controlling for wage differences the results suggest that single adult men with low schooling levels tend to migrate to the us while married women and men with higher levels of schooling tend to migrate within mexico we also found that there are strong differences between domestic and international social networks

impacts of regional productivity growth decoupling and pollution leakage abstractimpacts of regional productivity growth decoupling and pollution leakage regional studies this paper examines the issues of decoupling regional economic growth and pollution and the extent to which pollution effects spillover regional national borders specifically a uk regionally disaggregated computable general equilibrium cge model is used to investigate the relationship between economic growth and the level of co2 emissions posited by the environmental kuznets curve ekc conjecture using production accounting principle pap and consumption accounting principle cap environmental accounting methods the simulation results suggest that at the regional level the existence of an ekc relationship depends on the source of regional growth and the how this relationship is specified

decoupling analysis and environmental kuznets curve modelling of provincial level co2 emissions and economic growth in china a case study abstract guangdong is one of the most representative provinces of china in terms of reflecting how the provincial level co2 emissions dynamically evolve with economic development during the process of industrialisation and urbanisation the present study combines decoupling analysis with environmental kuznets curve ekc modelling to systematically explore the interactions between co2 emissions and economic growth in guangdong from the short to long terms aiming to provide the referential significance of low carbon development to other chinese provinces empirical results indicate that co2 economy interactions in guangdong dynamically changed with time performing an effect of expansive weak decoupling during 1995 2014 and having a potential to achieve a strong decoupling in the long run the decoupling states of various sectors and their contributions to the provincial overall decoupling differed greatly and varied by time and household and service sectors played increasingly important roles overall the decoupling effect of provincial co2 emissions is distinctly affected by the stage of industrialisation and urbanisation renewable energy utilisation as well as low carbon technical progress therefore promoting co2 economy decoupling at the provincial level should be specific to the feature and development reality of various provinces

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

estimating country specific environmental kuznets curves from panel data a bayesian shrinkage approach designing an efficient global climate policy turns out to be a difficult yet crucial task since there are noteworthy cross country differences in energy and carbon intensities in this article the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for carbon dioxide co2 emissions and as a modelling technique the iterative bayesian shrinkage procedure is employed to handle the cross country differences the results suggest that first the ekc hypothesis is rejected for 47 out of the 51 countries considered when the heterogeneity in countries energy efficiencies and cross country differences in the co2 emissions trajectories are accounted for second a classification of the results with respect to the development levels of the countries concerned reveals that the emergence of an overall inverted u shaped curve is due to the fact that in high income countries increase in gross domestic product gdp decreases emissions while in low income countries emissions and gdp are positively correlated

asymmetric information and adverse selection in mauritian slave auctions information asymmetry is a necessary prerequisite for testing adverse selection this paper applies this sequence of tests to mauritian slave auctions the theory of dynamic auctions with private and common values suggests that when an informed participant is known to be active uninformed bidders will be more aggressive and the selling price will be higher we conjecture that observable family links between buyer and seller entailed superior information and find a strong price premium when a related buyer purchased a slave indicative of information asymmetry we then test for adverse selection using sale motivation our results indicate large discounts on voluntary as compared to involuntary sales consistent with adverse selection the market anticipated that predominantly low productivity slaves would be brought to the market in voluntary sales copyright 2009 wiley blackwell

causal parameters and policy analysis in economics a twentieth century retrospective the major contributions of twentieth century econometrics to knowledge were the definition of causal parameters within well defined economic models in which agents are constrained by resources and markets and causes are interrelated the analysis of what is required to recover causal parameters from data the identification problem and clarification of the role of causal parameters in policy evaluation and in forecasting the effects of policies never previously experienced this paper summarizes the development of these ideas by the cowles commission the response to their work by structural econometricians and var econometricians and the response to structural and var econometrics by calibrators advocates of natural and social experiments and by nonparametric econometricians and statisticians this paper considers the definition and identification of causal parameters in economics and their role in econometric policy analysis it assesses different research programs designed to recover causal parameters from data at the beginning of this century economic theory was mainly intuitive and empirical support for it was largely anecdotal at the end of the century economics has a rich array of formal models and a high quality database empirical regularities motivate theory in many areas of economics and data are routinely used to test theory many economic theories have been developed as measurement frameworks to suggest what data should be collected and how they should be interpreted econometric theory was developed to analyze and interpret economic data most econometric theory adapts methods originally developed in statistics the major exception to this rule is the econometric analysis of the identification problem and the companion analyses of structural equations causality and economic policy evaluation although an economist did not invent the phrase correlation does not imply causation 1 economists clari

literature survey on the relationships between energy environment and economic growth abstract the aim of this study is to exhibit an exhaustive survey which is related to the great flight of the literature of energy environment growth nexus at the individual and regional scale studies covering the period from 1978 to 2014 the survey takes into consideration the sample country region etc periods covering econometric strategies and conclusions our survey is based on the causality direction among i the energy use variables electricity nuclear renewable and non renewable and output growth ii between economic growth and environment and between the three variables at the same time globally these surveys provide paradoxical and not conclusive results which energy consumption can boost economic growth through the productivity enhancement and it can boost also the environmental damages through the enhancement of pollutant emissions our survey sheds more the lights on the energy environment growth literature by giving an extensive listing 1978 2014 of these causal linkages among the energy use variables environment and economic growth for both individual and collective cases there is a unanimous consensus about the importance of dealing with such dynamic relationship which is seems to be a cornerstone element in setting any ambition strategies energy ecological and economics

pooled mean group estimation of an environmental kuznets curve for co2 abstract we apply the pooled mean group estimator to test for the existence of an environmental kuznets curve for co2 in 22 oecd countries this approach allows for more flexible assumptions in a panel data framework the period goes from 1975 to 1998

an empirical study of the impact of corruption on environmental performance evidence from panel data this paper extends the empirical debate on the effects of corruption on environmental degradation by considering a recently available measure of environmental quality the environmental performance index this indicator is more comprehensive than the measures of air pollutant emissions commonly used in the literature and in particular can also capture the impact of pollution on human health this allows for a better understanding of the actual effects of a wide range of human activities on the ecosystem from a panel data analysis two regularities emerge first corruption deteriorates the overall environmental quality this effect is robust and persistent second our findings highlight the improvement of environmental quality as income rises even at an initial level of development this is not in contradiction with the ekc hypothesis because an increase in income levels provides positive externalities on the whole environmental quality by compensating the mere negative effects induced by industrialization on the emission levels as a consequence in emerging economies policies fighting corruption and enhancing development are very likely to improve the environmental performances

drivers of industrial and non industrial greenhouse gas emissions abstract though there has been extensive analysis of the drivers of aggregate carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production there has been much less analysis of the drivers of greenhouse gases in general and especially of aggregate emissions of greenhouse gases from agriculture forestry and other land uses which we call non industrial emissions in this paper we statistically analyze the relationship between both industrial and non industrial greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth and other potential drivers for 129 countries over the period from 1971 to 2010 our analysis combines the three main approaches in the literature into a single framework for investigating the evolution of emissions and income we find that economic growth is a driver of both industrial and non industrial emissions though economic growth has twice the effect on industrial emissions the time effect is negative for both sources of emissions though this effect is larger for non industrial emissions there is also convergence in emissions intensity for both types of emissions but given these other effects there is no evidence for an environmental kuznets curve

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related