substitution in the electric power industry an interregional comparison in the eastern us abstract the electric power industry is restructuring as regulations move from states to regional and national levels estimates of regional fuel and input substitution are essential for practitioners and policy makers this paper estimates substitution under static and dynamic scenarios examining changes in technology and total factor productivity from 2001 to 2008 two stage estimation reveals regional characteristics and underlying elements in fuel and factor choice processes substitution varies widely depending on the region coal technology capital investment and r d activities

the role of capital and labour in shaping the environmental effects of fiscal stimulus abstract although the macroeconomic consequences of short term fiscal stimulation packages have been thoroughly analysed in the literature still relatively little is known about their environmental effects we discuss an important channel through which short run expansionary fiscal policy influences greenhouse gas emissions we show that fiscal policy exerts its impact not only by increasing general level of economic activity but also by changing the composition of factors of production capital and labour using the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of economy we demonstrate that fiscal expansion results in a shift from capital intensive to more labour intensive technologies our panel study proves that the latter tends to be associated with lower emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of production hence our analysis demonstrates that an extensive use of fiscal stimulus during recessions can significantly reduce the environmental burden of the additional units of gdp

are macroeconomic policies better in curbing air pollution than environmental policies a dsge approach with carbon dependent fiscal and monetary policies abstract the environmental impacts of macroeconomic policies and their interaction with climate policies are under researched in the existing literature this paper compares the effectiveness of standard macroeconomic tools fiscal and monetary policies with carbon taxation in curbing air pollution by using an environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium e dsge model we show how government expenditure interest rate and carbon tax rate should vary over time in order to stabilize carbon emission levels we find that i while all the aforementioned policies could stabilize carbon emissions their underlying mechanisms are different fiscal monetary and carbon tax policies uniquely and respectively lead to a reduction in abatement effort income tax revenue and general price level ii with economic expansions driven by total factor productivity tfp shocks fiscal policy is the only policy that could maintain the emission levels and simultaneously improve household welfare in term of consumption and labor iii regarding the interaction between carbon and macroeconomic policies carbon taxation should complement monetary policy while it should not respond to fiscal policy

democracy comes to europe franchise extension and fiscal outcomes 1830 1938 abstract this paper examines the relation between public spending and the spread of democracy in western europe during the period 1830 1938 our data set includes measures of the size of the electorate the election rule and electoral participation as well as measures of the size and composition of central government expenditures for 12 countries we estimate panel regressions and find that 1 the gradual lifting of socio economic restrictions on the voting franchise contributed to growth in government spending mainly by increasing spending on infrastructure and internal security 2 the female suffrage had a weak positive effect through spending on health education and welfare 3 the change from majority to proportional rule which took place in 10 of the countries did not contribute to growth in government spending and held back spending on health education and welfare 4 there exists weak complementarity between economic development and the spread of democracy

pollution control and the ramsey problem pollution is an inevitable by product of production and is only gradually dissolved by the environment it can be reduced by producing less and by cleaning up the environment but neither occur when they are left to the market cleaning activities and the optimal emission charges increase with the stock of pollutants when one allows for pollution of the environment in the classical ramsey problem the capital stock is less than in the market outcome and a fortiori less than under the golden rule the analysis distinguishes between stock and flow externalities arising from pollution an increase in impatience can lead to more capital accumulation even though this leaves less room for current consumption

energy consumption and the influencing factors in china a nonlinear perspective abstract different from many studies on energy kuznets curve this paper does not directly consider income factor but conducts a nonlinear study on per capita primary energy consumption and electricity consumption in china whose economic development is considered investment driven in which government macroeconomic policies especially government expenditure plays a very important role in particular this paper attempts to compare the different impacts of government expenditures and the other influencing factors on energy consumption based on the results of the threshold regression in the future with the further development of the economy the driving force of labor population growth will slow down comparing with primary energy the relationship between electricity consumption and its influencing factors will change later and the difference in the effects of the influencing factors is mainly reflected in the formation of capital stock investment and the development of urbanization government expenditure on private goods may not be always as inefficient in energy consumption and cleaner production as previously thought in the literature meanwhile the growth of government expenditure on public goods will become a powerful driving factor which indicates that the government needs to assess its overall impact on energy consumption and energy efficiency when participating in the provision of public goods the paper also found that when studying the issue of energy consumption and regional differences in china the geographic classification of eastern central and western regions may not be appropriate grouping according to energy consumption levels may be one of the better options and the distribution of energy consumption levels in china s provinces is consistent with the distribution of government expenditure levels the estimation results also provide us with important policy implications the government expenditure in education is of great importance and it can produce a strong energy saving effect through technological progress

relationship between forest resources and economic growth empirical evidence from china abstract natural resources especially forests are critical to china s sustainable development in recent years effective utilization of forest resources has become a significant concern in china in this study on the basis of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis the relationship between forest resources and economic growth is examined using panel data from 30 provinces in china for the period 2002 2015 and the generalized method of moments gmm approach to control for potential endogeneity the empirical results indicate that with continuous economic growth the timber output and area of afforestation would at first increase and then decrease after reaching the corresponding turning points given the considerable regional gap in economic and social development three regions of china were investigated to perform a more in depth analysis evidence observed for the country and the three regions suggests an ekc for forest resources these findings indicate positive effects of china s pursuit of a more balanced growth path where forest resources would be less consumed and more actively protected

effects of public and private expenditures on environmental pollution a dynamic heterogeneous panel data analysis abstract this paper examined the impact of expenditures of household firm and government on aggregate and sectoral carbon emissions in the world economies during 1990 2015 the modified heterogeneous panel data technique was used to estimate both carbon emission and income models from which both the direct and indirect effects of expenditure categories were estimated along with long run and short run analyses empirical results indicate that in the long run the negative direct effect of government expenditure was reduced by the positive indirect effects leading to positive total effect on aggregate carbon emission however in the short run the negative direct effect was enhanced by the negative indirect effect culminating into negative total effect further in the long run the positive direct effect of investment expenditure was reduced by the negative indirect effects resulting into negative total effect on aggregate carbon emissions however the negative short run direct effect was reduced by the positive indirect effect leading to marginal positive total effect the total direct effect of household consumption spending was negative in the long run and could be relatively large in the short run the effect of the household expenditure on sectoral carbon emissions was negative while that of private investment was positive and that of public spending was diverse the policy lessons include the need to conduct value chain environmental pollution implications of any expenditure policy

fiscal spending and green economic growth evidence from china abstract the green economy is considered as an efficient way for sustainability but the connection between fiscal spending and green economic growth has not been systematically explained this paper attempts to fill this research gap based on the panel data of 282 prefecture level cities from 2005 to 2016 we first construct the green economic growth index by using the non radial direction distance function then by employing the system gmm estimation we further evaluate the effect of fiscal education spending and r d spending on green economic growth finally we explore the potential mechanism and discuss our findings we obtain the following conclusions 1 the green economic growth index fluctuated in the study period we attribute it to the political tournament of local governments 2 the system gmm estimation results confirm the existence of composition effect and technique effect in the full sample but the sub sample analysis suggests that there is a heterogeneous effect in different areas with different resources abundant degree 3 mechanism analysis illustrates that fiscal r d spending and education spending foster the green economic growth through technological activities and human capital intensive activities respectively but they exhibit distinct roles in different areas based on these findings we propose some targeted policy suggestions for promoting green economic growth

sulfur dioxide so2 emissions and government spending on environmental protection in china evidence from spatial econometric analysis abstract this study pays attention to a rarely discussed but important issue regarding the influence of the government s environmental protection expenditure on sulfur dioxide so2 emissions in china under consideration of the potentially spatial dependence of so2 emissions a panel dataset of 30 provinces from 2008 to 2013 is utilized to estimate the panel spatial durbin models the main findings of this study are that so2 emissions can be effectively reduced by government spending on environmental protection and that the relationship between so2 emissions and gross regional product grp per capita in china is cubic polynomial n shaped in addition as direct investment from foreign countries toward china increases so2 emissions will be reduced the trade factor also plays an important and negative role in so2 emissions provinces with higher shares of secondary industries to total grp will have more so2 emissions the investment completed in the treatment of industrial pollution in the private sector can effectively reduce so2 emissions and a higher population density causes a reduction in so2 emissions the coefficient of spatial autocorrelation is statistically positive confirming a positive spatial correlation also meaning a spatial competition of so2 emissions among provinces in china all these conclusions are consistent with those in previous works and with our expectations and remain the same while a two stage procedure is applied to cope with the potential endogeneity problem of grp with the exception of the effect of population density

the effects of fiscal policy on co2 emissions evidence from the u s a abstract this paper examines the effects of fiscal policy on co2 emissions using vector autoregressions on u s quarterly data from 1973 to 2013 in particular we analyze the short and mid term interactions between fiscal policy and emissions by using sign restrictions to identify the policy shocks we construct the impulse responses to linear combinations of fiscal shocks corresponding to the scenarios of deficit financed spending and deficit financed tax cuts to consider possible variations of the effect of fiscal policy according to the sources of pollution we distinguish between production and consumption generated co2 emissions the results point out that the implementation of expansionary fiscal spending provides an alleviating effect on emissions from both sources of the pollutant whereas deficit financed tax cuts are associated with an increase on consumption generated co2 emissions the exact pattern of the effects depends on the source of emissions the scenario of fiscal policy that is implemented and the functional class of government expenditure being increased

does government expenditure affect environmental quality empirical evidence using chinese city level data abstract with rapid economic development the chinese government expenditures at various levels have increased sufficiently at the same time the environmental pollution in china has deteriorated significantly in this study the city level panel data of 106 chinese cities over the 2002 2014 period are utilized to investigate the impacts of government expenditure on the emissions of three typical pollutants specifically the total effects are divided into two types direct effects through which government expenditure affects pollution directly and indirect effects which refer to the indirect influences of government expenditure on environmental pollution through its impacts on gdp per capita to control for potential endogeneity and introduce dynamics the generalized method of moments gmm method is utilized the estimation results indicate that the total effects of government expenditure on these three pollutants are very different for sulfur dioxide so 2 soot and chemical oxygen demand cod the total effects are decreasing inverted u and u shaped respectively furthermore the indirect effects dominate the direct effects

substitution between clean and dirty energy inputs a macroeconomic perspective in macroeconomic models the elasticity of substitution between clean and dirty energy inputs within the energy aggregate is a central parameter in assessing the necessary conditions for long run green growth using new sectoral data in a panel of 26 countries we formulate specifications of nested constant elasticity of substitution production functions that allow estimating this parameter for the first time we present evidence that it significantly exceeds unity a favorable condition for promoting green growth

is there really a green paradox abstract in the absence of a co2 tax the anticipation of a cheaper renewable backstop increases current emissions of co2 since the date at which renewables are phased in is brought forward and more generally future emissions of co2 will decrease the effect on global warming is unclear green welfare falls if the backstop is relatively expensive and full exhaustion of fossil fuels is optimal but may increase if the backstop is sufficiently cheap relative to the cost of extracting the last drop of fossil fuels plus marginal global warming damages as then it is attractive to leave more fossil fuels unexploited and thus limit co2 emissions we establish these results by analyzing depletion of non renewable fossil fuels followed by a switch to a clean renewable backstop paying attention to timing of the switch and the amount of fossil fuels remaining unexploited we also discuss the potential for limit pricing when the non renewable resource is owned by a monopolist finally we show that if backstops are already used and more backstops become economically viable as the price of fossil fuels rises a lower cost of the backstop will either postpone fossil fuel exhaustion or leave more fossil fuel in situ thus boosting green welfare however if a market economy does not internalize global warming externalities and renewables have not kicked in yet full exhaustion of fossil fuel will occur in finite time and a backstop subsidy always curbs green welfare

ordering the extraction of polluting nonrenewable resources energy markets are often characterized by the use of multiple nonrenewable resources such as coal and natural gas with different pollution characteristics the same resource may have different qualities as when high and low sulfur coal is used to generate electricity multiple resources are used in providing transportation services such as cars running on gasoline or plug in hybrids that may be fueled by electricity produced from coal when these nonrenewable resources contribute differentially to pollution what is the opti mal sequence of extraction over time harold hotelling 1931 developed the classical theory of extraction of a nonrenewable resource orris c herfindahl 1967 extended the hotelling model by considering many resources with different unit costs of extraction and proposed the least cost first principle extraction must be ordered by cost with the cheapest resource used first others have examined whether herfindahl s model remains valid in a variety of situations in a general equilibrium setting see murray kemp and ngo v long 1980 tracy r lewis 1982 in the presence of setup costs g rard gaudet moreaux and stephen w salant 2001 under het erogeneous demands chakravorty and darrell l krulce 1994 and when the extraction rate is constrained jean pierre amigues et al 1998 stephen p holland 2003 in these studies following hotelling and herfindahl resources were differentiated by cost alone in this paper we abstract from cost considerations and focus on how the sequence of extraction may be affected when resources are differentiated only by their pollution character istics we consider two resources one more polluting than the other without loss of generality consider coal to be the dirty resource and natural gas the clean one both may be used to generate electricity environmental regulation is imposed through a cap on the stock of pollution this may be a stylized approximation of an international agreement such as the kyoto protocol which aims to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere 1 with heterogeneity in pollution the results are nonintuitive and do not depend on the emis sion rates of the resources when the economy is already at its allowable stock of pollution the clean natural gas is used first and use of the dirty coal is postponed to the future this is what one would expect armed with insights from the herfindahl model however when the economy starts from below the ceiling and accumulates pollution coal may be used first and use of the clean natural gas is postponed the optimal strategy is to benefit from natural dilution by build ing the stock of pollution as quickly as possible this is done by burning coal rather than natural

fuel consumption in road transport a comparative study of china and oecd countries abstract energy conservation and emissions reduction have been the focus of the road transport sector due to its energy intensive and air pollution intensive nature it also embodies the imprints of human technological progress this paper compares the energy consumption of the road transport sector in china and oecd countries we used time series and panel data co integration analysis error correction model and dynamic model to study the impacts of the major influencing factors such as income income structure urbanization price and technological advancement on gasoline and diesel consumption in road transport overall china s fuel consumption is influenced mainly by investment government expenditure and demographic changes such as urbanization while the fuel consumption of oecd countries is mainly driven by household final consumption expenditure in the short run and from a dynamic perspective china s fuel consumption is less influenced by its historical consumption than current influencing factors while that of oecd countries is more affected by historical fuel consumption based on the analysis and findings of this study some policy implications are proposed

abatement r d and growth with a pollution ceiling abstract the consequences of the 2 c climate target and the implicitly imposed ceiling on co2 have been analyzed in several studies we use an endogenous growth model with a ceiling and an abatement option to study the effect of the ceiling on the allocation of limited funds for r d abatement and capital accumulation it is found that the advantagenousness of abatement rises with the cost advantage of fossil fuel versus backstop if the cost advantage is sufficiently large at some point in time it outweighs the costs of abatement and the gains of r d and capital accumulation the reallocation of production towards abatement may cause an increase or decrease in long run consumption in the latter case abatement allows an intertemporal consumption trade off which may even justify the disregard of everlasting growth in case of stock dependent fossil fuel costs an abatement induced speed up of technology development may cause an increase in fossil fuel stock left in situ

the environmental kuznets curve for pm2 5 pollution in beijing tianjin hebei region of china a spatial panel data approach abstract the purpose of this study is to exam the existence of environmental kuznets curve ekc of pm2 5 pollution in the beijing tianjin hebei bth region of china as one of the most important economic growth poles in china bth region has long been suffering from air pollution especially pm2 5 pollution thus in this study we utilized satellite observations of pm2 5 pollution and panel data of 13 cities in bth region from 1998 to 2016 to investigate the relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 pollution after verifying the spatial effect of pm2 5 pollution by spatial statistical analysis the spatial econometric model spatial durbin model sdm was chosen over the non spatial model in the examination of ekc the results showed that 1 the relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 pollution presented a significant inverted u shaped pattern though bth region is still in the upward section there is a hope that it will cross the point and enter the downward section in the future 2 the turning points of ekc would happen later with spatial effect considered compared to the result of non spatial model 3 the turning point of ekc would not happen until the region enter the post industrial economy stage moreover though some of the cities in bth region have entered post industrial stage none of them has cross the turning point of ekc results of this study indicate a promising future in the control of pm2 5 pollution as well as provide suggestions to put more emphasis on regional cooperative governance in air pollution control for the policy makers

the effect of deregulation on us fossil fuel substitution in the generation of electricity a comment on dahl and ko the effect of deregulation on us fossil fuel substitution in the generation of electricity a comment on dahl and ko

environmental performance corruption and economic growth global evidence using a new data set abstractthis study investigates the relationship between environmental performance corruption and economic growth using panel data of 87 countries covering the period from 2002 to 2012 the environmental performance index is used for the first time to evaluate the environmental quality on economic growth by employing both static and dynamic panel models we find that environmental performance is positively related to economic growth and is more significant in non organization for economic cooperation development oecd countries moreover when corruption is incorporated the empirical estimation results indicate that although lower corruption helps economic growth in non oecd countries the negative coefficients of the three interactive terms show that the positive effect of environment performance on economic growth will drop while greater environmental performance combined with natural resource abundance inevitably leads to inefficient bureaucracies and hence disadvantageous economic growth as

optimal timing of ccs policies with heterogeneous energy consumption sectors using the chakravorty et al j econ dyn control 30 2875 2904 2006 ceiling model we characterize the optimal consumption paths of three energy resources dirty oil which is non renewable and carbon emitting clean oil which is also non renewable but carbon free thanks to an abatement technology and solar energy which is renewable and carbon free the resulting energy mix can supply the energy needs of two sectors these sectors differ in the additional abatement cost they have to pay for consuming clean rather than dirty oil as sector 1 industry can abate its emissions at a lower cost than sector 2 transport we show that it is optimal to begin by fully capturing sector 1 s emissions before the ceiling is reached also there may be optimal paths along which the capture devices of both sectors must be activated in this case sector s 1 emissions are fully abated first before sector 2 abates partially finally we discuss the way heterogeneity of abatement costs causes sectoral energy price paths to differ

environmental keynesian macroeconomics some further discussion abstract this paper extends the is lm ee framework first formulated by heyes heyes a 2000 a proposal for the greening of textbook macro is lm ee ecol econ 32 1 7 in his model exogenous fiscal or monetary shocks are needed so that the intersection of all three schedules is reached such independent adjustments are circumvented in this paper which argues that a naturally adjusting process exists and formalizes this mechanism for the is lm ee framework

the economics of ccs why have ccs technologies not had an international breakthrough abstract eleven years on since the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change was awarded the nobel peace prize in recognition of its efforts in combating climate change fossil fuels remain the most dominant global energy source as the total replacement of fossil fuel energy is not expected to take place immediately in the near future the international energy agency has repeatedly declared carbon capture and sequestration ccs as a key technology for mitigating climate change however ccs lacks the scale required for substantial reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power generation even though ccs is one of the key technologies for mitigating climate change why has this technology not had an international breakthrough to shed light on this question this paper employs a simple model of energy generation scrutinizes the economic drivers of ccs based on the analytical results and discusses the possible obstacles that can prevent a widespread rollout of the technology this is followed by a state of the art in literature pertaining to the economics of ccs and a discussion that points to a dichotomy between the economic theory and reality the study concludes with some policy suggestions and directions for future research

the effects of government spending on deforestation due to agricultural land expansion and co2 related emissions this paper examines the effect of changes in government spending level and composition on deforestation due to agricultural land expansion and related carbon dioxide emissions our theoretical model shows an unintended consequence from increased government spending and widening social safety nets in developing countries where agricultural land expansion significantly affects forest cover there is an increase in deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions from land use change our empirical tests show that an increase in total government spending significantly increases forest land clearing for agricultural production in the short run leading to more carbon dioxide emissions however there is no long run statistically significant effect on the steady state forest cover and carbon dioxide emissions

should governments stop subsidies to private goods evidence from rural latin america abstract this paper empirically documents the effects of subsidizing private goods to the detriment of the government s supply of public goods we use a new data set from the rural sector in fifteen latin american countries over the period 1985 2001 collected using a methodology that allows us to separate government subsidies to private goods from expenditures in the provision of public goods the econometric evidence shows that the government s decision to subsidize either private or public goods has dramatic consequences for economic development reducing the share of subsidies to private goods or equivalently increasing the share of public goods in the government s budget has ceteris paribus a large and significant positive impact on rural per capita income reduces certain undesirable environmental effects associated with output expansion and contributes to poverty reduction

the effect of government expenditure on the environment an empirical investigation abstract this paper examines the impact of government spending on the environment using a panel of 77 countries for the time period 1980 2000 we estimate both the direct and indirect effects of government spending on pollution the indirect effect in particular operates through the impact of government spending on income and the subsequent effect of the income level on pollution to take into account the dynamic nature and the potential endogeneity in the relationships examined appropriate econometric methods are used for so2 government spending is estimated to have a negative direct impact on per capita emissions while the direct effect is insignificant on co2 pollution the indirect effect on so2 is negative for low income levels and becomes positive as income increases while it remains negative for co2 for the most part of the sample range the resultant total effects follow the patterns of the indirect effects which dominate their respective direct ones for each pollutant policy implications from the results vary depending on the income level of the considered countries

corruption and the environmental kuznets curve empirical evidence for sulfur abstract we investigate how corruption influences the income level at the turning point of the relationship between sulfur emissions and income using a wide cross national panel of countries at different levels of development and with different degrees of corruption our results support the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for sulfur we find evidence that the higher the country s degree of corruption the higher the per capita income at the turning point suggesting different income pollution paths across countries due to corruption we build upon a new specification for the ekc developed by bradford et al 2005 that avoids using nonlinear transformations of potentially nonstationary regressors in panel estimation also we account for the indirect impact of corruption on emissions through its impact on per capita income our main findings remain unchanged when we investigate additional heterogeneity allowing for different income slopes across richer and poorer countries

the cyclical behaviour of fiscal policy evidence from the oecd this paper addresses the topic of cyclicality in scal policy in particular we show that the level of cyclicality varies across spending categories and across oecd countries in line with leading theories of scal cyclicality we show that countries with volatile output and dispersed political power are the most likely to run procyclical scal policies wage government consumption is highlighted as the most important channel by which these variables affect scal cyclicality

government expenditure corruption and total factor productivity abstract this paper classifies government expenditures into three types and constructs a theoretical framework to explore the influences of government expenditures and corruption on total factor productivity it then establishes a dynamic spatial autoregressive model and a panel threshold model to test the theoretical hypotheses based on provincial panel data from 2007 to 2014 the results illustrate that u shape curve relationships exist between government expenditures of administrative service investment development safeguard governance and total factor productivity and that the relationship between the government expenditure structure and total factor productivity follows an inverted u shape curve in addition the findings suggest that increased corruption levels can directly reduce regional total factor productivity and that the effects of the proportions of administrative service expenditures investment development expenditures and safeguard governance expenditures on total factor productivity have a single corruption threshold increasing the proportions of government expenditures could improve the total factor productivity up until the threshold value

the environmental consequences of domestic and foreign investment evidence from china abstract fixed asset investment fai and foreign indirect investment fdi have important influences on economic development and environmental quality because environmental performance is related with economic development fai and fdi may affect environment indirectly through their impacts on economic growth in this study the direct and indirect effects of both fai and fdi on china s environmental quality are distinguished and separately estimated for the first time with a carefully designed framework of a two equation model because most economic activities and environmental pollutions occur in the urban areas a panel data of 112 chinese cities for the period 2002 2015 is utilized several spatial factors are also introduced to control for the potential spatial correlations in economic development and pollutant emissions the estimation results indicate that there exist apparent differences in the environmental effects of fai and fdi the direct effects of fai on so 2 emissions are significant positive and dominate the negative indirect effects by contrast the direct indirect and total effects of fdi on pollutant emissions are all negative therefore overall speaking well designed and targeted policies should be formulated to reduce the negative environmental impacts of fai and to increase the positive influences of fdi on environment

is there convergence in per capita so2 emissions in china an empirical study using city level panel data abstract as china s economy has grown rapidly in recent years china s environmental pollution has become increasingly significant among all the traditional pollutants sulfur dioxide has been monitored by the chinese government since the 1990s in this study china s city level panel data between 2002 and 2012 are utilized to investigate the existence of convergence in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across chinese cities the conventional estimation methods for convergence suffer from an endogeneity problem and therefore produce biased results to address the endogeneity problem and allow for dynamics dynamic panel data estimators are utilized and the static estimation results are conducted as a robustness check in addition the influential factors for convergence are examined the empirical results indicate that in the chosen sample period there were absolute and conditional convergences in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across cities within the whole nation as well as in the eastern western and central regions of china because per capita gross domestic product and the ratio of secondary industry to gross domestic product are both positively related with per capita sulfur dioxide emissions higher income per capita and greater importance of the secondary industry would cause the convergence speed to be lower therefore the most straightforward policy implication for the empirical results is that the policies for controlling sulfur dioxide emissions should be regionally differentiated for cities with high sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the regulation could be tight as the emissions would decrease faster because convergence exists however for cities with low sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the target for reducing emissions should not be excessively aggressive

a further generalization of the solow growth model the role of the public sector we develop in this paper an augmented version of the solow 1956 solow r 1956 a contribution to the theory of economic growth quarterly journal of economics 70 65 94 growth model including the role of government the model leads to a non monotonic relationship between the rate of growth of per capita output and government size generalizing previous results by barro 1990 barro r 1990 government spending in a simple model of endogenous growth journal of political economy 98 s103 s125 to the case in which returns to scale to private factors are not constant 2000 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

corruption income and the environment an empirical analysis abstract in response to the recent growth of a largely theoretical body of literature analysing the linkages between corruption and pollution this paper subjects the corruption pollution relationship to a detailed empirical examination a distinction is drawn between the direct impact of corruption on pollution and the indirect impact which operates through corruption s impact on per capita income and the resultant impact of income on pollution using data for 94 countries covering the period 1987 2000 both direct and indirect impacts of corruption on air pollution emissions are estimated for both sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide corruption is estimated to have a positive direct impact on per capita emissions indirect effects are found to be negative and larger in absolute value than direct effects for the majority of the sample income range as a result the total effect of corruption on emissions is negative for all but the highest income countries in the sample

a test of environmental kuznets curve for haze pollution in china evidence from the penal data of 27 capital cities abstract the mounting environmental crisis especially the large scale and continuous haze pollution is the most pressing challenge for china during rapid urbanization process this study is aimed at examining the relationship between haze pollution and economic growth and its turning points for different regions in china based on the panel data of 27 capital cities and municipalities in china during 2011 2015 we constructed the parameter estimation model after conducting the unit root cointegration and hausman tests based on the basic and extended models we find that the relationship between haze pollution and economic growth in china is not a typical inverted u shaped environmental kuznet curve ekc by introducing variables such as industrial structure foreign trade and energy intensity this study demonstrates that adjusting industrial structure and improving energy efficiency are effective means for haze pollution control grouping regressions reveal that regional differences exist in the relationships between haze pollution and economic growth and their tuning points for instance there was a u shaped relationship for the central region while there were inverted n shaped relationships for eastern western and northeastern regions policy implications are thus summarized for different regions in terms of balancing economic growth and environmental protection

optimal abatement of carbon emission flows we study optimal carbon capture and storage ccs from point sources taking into account damages incurred from the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere and exhaustibility of fossil fuel reserves high carbon concentrations call for full ccs meaning zero net emissions we identify conditions under which partial or no ccs is optimal in the absence of ccs the co2 stock might be inverted u shaped with ccs more complicated behavior may arise it can be optimal to have full capture initially yielding a decreasing stock then partial capture while keeping the co2 stock constant and a final phase without capture but with an inverted u shaped co2 stock we also introduce the option of adaptation and provide a unified theory regarding the optimal use of ccs and adaptation

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

china s coal price disturbances observations explanations and implications for global energy economies since china decontrolled coal prices its coal price has risen steadily and been unusually volatile in 2011 in particular high coal prices and capped electricity prices in china discouraged coal fired power generation triggering widespread power shortages we suggest that these coal price disturbances could be symptomatic of a major change in pricing dynamics of global fossil fuel markets with increasing correspondence between coal and oil prices globally historically global coal prices have been more stable and lower than oil and natural gas prices on a per heat basis in recent years however coal prices have been increasingly volatile worldwide and have tracked other fossil fuel prices more closely meanwhile the recent development of unconventional gas has substantially decoupled us natural gas and oil prices technically low us natural gas prices with potential fuel switching could drive us domestic coal prices lower however this effect is unlikely to counteract the overall trend in increasing coal consumption globally china s market size and unique partially controlled energy system make its reform agenda a key force in the global economy policymakers in the us e u and elsewhere should monitor china s economic reform agenda to anticipate and respond to changes accompanying china s increasing importance in the global energy economy

a hotelling model with a ceiling on the stock of pollution abstract environmental agreements such as the kyoto protocol aim to stabilize the amount of carbon in the atmosphere which is mainly caused by the burning of nonrenewable resources such as coal we characterize the solution to the textbook hotelling model when there is a ceiling on the stock of emissions we consider both increasing and decreasing demand for energy we show that when the ceiling is binding both the low cost nonrenewable resource and the high cost renewable resource may be used jointly a key implication is that if energy demand were to decline in the long run we may supplement energy supply through clean renewables to meet the environmental standard but then revert back to using only dirty fossil fuels in the future when the ceiling has become non binding that is the much heralded societal transition to clean energy resources may be short lived

the world price of coal a significant increase in the seaborne trade for coal over the past 20 years has unified formerly separate coal markets into a world market in which prices move in tandem by virtue of its large domestic market the usa has become the residual supplier and price setter in the world coal market changes in multifactor productivity have been the primary cause of the long term fluctuations in coal prices that have been observed in the usa since the end of the second world war and in the world coal market

the impact of environmental regulation shadow economy and corruption on environmental quality theory and empirical evidence from china abstract mounting environmental pressures led china to focus on the effectiveness of the environmental regulation to control pollution since the shadow economy or underground economic activities that are not included in official statistics accounts for an increasing fraction of china s economy its impacts on environmental quality should be carefully evaluated in this study the main research questions are as follows 1 what is the extent of the effect of environmental regulation on environmental quality and 2 what are the factors that influence the impact of environmental regulation on environmental pollution a theoretical model is developed to explain the relationship among the environmental regulation shadow economy and environmental quality in china an empirical analysis is conducted to test the three propositions of the model thereby examining the explanatory power of the theoretical model concretely using panel data from 30 provinces for the period of 1998 2012 the generalized method of moments gmm method is employed to control for potential endogeneity and introduce dynamic effects the estimation results indicate that stringent environmental regulation and the level of the shadow economy are both positively related to china s environmental pollution however the results also indicate that tighter environmental control would help reduce pollution at a given level of the shadow economy moreover an increase in the proportion of corrupt officials may weaken the environmental regulation which would consequently lead to the increase in illegal production and total pollutant emissions besides many economic and social factors may also affect the environmental quality for instance the development of secondary industry contributes toward an increase in pollutant emissions however increased research and development r d spending on eco friendly industrial operations can help to reduce pollution

government size and growth accounting for economic freedom and globalization we examine the relationship between government size and economic growth controlling for economic freedom and globalization and using bayesian averaging over classical estimates in a panel of rich countries

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

income and democracy existing studies establish a strong cross country correlation between income and democracy but do not control for factors that simultaneously affect both variables we show that controlling for such factors by including country fixed effects removes the statistical association between income per capita and vari ous measures of democracy we present instrumental variables estimates that also show no causal effect of income on democracy the cross country corre lation between income and democracy reflects a positive correlation between changes in income and democracy over the past 500 years this pattern is con sistent with the idea that societies embarked on divergent political economic development paths at certain critical junctures jel d7 e 1

gospel or disaster an empirical study on the environmental influences of domestic investment in china abstract since the beginning of china s reform and opening up in late 1970s the contradiction between environmental quality and economic development has become increasingly acute as the main driving force of development china s fixed asset investment fai has grown rapidly in the meanwhile china s energy consumption surged and the environmental pressures mounted the surge in fai may have great influences on the environmental quality on the one hand the rapid increase in fai facilitated the development of the secondary industry especially energy and pollution intensive industries which brought about significant amount of energy related pollution on the other hand growing investment on environmental investment is expected to slow environmental deterioration moreover the environmental quality and domestic investment may have potential spatial correlations in this paper after fully accounting for the spatial dependence the relationship between domestic investment and environmental quality in china is quantitatively investigated using co2 and so2 as two representative pollutants the estimation results indicate that the spatial dependence indeed exists and total effects of fai on pollutant emissions are positive however there is no evidence that environmental protection investment had expected effects to effectively curb pollutant emissions in china

optimal timing of carbon capture policies under learning by doing abstract using a standard hotelling model of resource exploitation we determine the optimal energy consumption paths from three options dirty coal which is non renewable and carbon emitting clean coal which is also non renewable but carbon free thanks to carbon capture and storage ccs and solar energy which is renewable and carbon free we assume that the atmospheric carbon stock cannot exceed an exogenously given ceiling taking into account learning by doing in ccs technology we show the following results i clean coal exploitation cannot begin before the outset of the carbon constrained phase and must stop strictly before the end of this phase ii the energy price path can evolve non monotonically over time and iii when the solar cost is low enough an unusual energy consumption sequence along with solar energy is interrupted for some time and replacement by clean coal may exist

the role of carbon capture and sequestration policies for climate change mitigation this paper takes the policy failure in establishing a global carbon price for efficient emissions reduction as a starting point and analyzes to what extent technology policies can be a reasonable second best approach from a supply side perspective carbon capture and storage ccs policies differ substantially from renewable energy policies they increase fossil resource demand and simultaneously lower emissions we analyze ccs and renewable energy policies in a numerical dynamic general equilibrium model for settings of imperfect or missing carbon prices we find that in contrast to renewable energy policies ccs policies are not always capable of reducing emissions in the long run if feasible ccs policies can carry lower social costs compared to renewable energy policies in particular when second best policies are only employed temporally in case fossil resources are abundant and renewable energy costs low renewable energy policies perform better our results indicate that a pure ccs policy or a pure renewable energy policy carry their own specific risks of missing the environmental target a smart combination of both however can be a robust and low cost temporary second best policy