policy watch infrastructure investment and economic growth in the late 1980s david aschauer 1989 triggered a long overdue dialogue among economists and political leaders when he published a study arguing that much of the decline in u s productivity that occurred in the 1970s was precipitated by declining rates of public capital investment my own work confirmed these results munnell 1990a spending advocates seized on these findings as support for increased public investment the enthusiasm among policymakers for the early aschauer results was matched if not surpassed by skepticism on the part of many economists critics of these studies charged that the methodology was flawed that the direction of causation between public investment and output growth is unclear and that even if the historical empirical relationships were estimated correctly they provide no clear indications for current policy who s right what do we know and not know about the link between public infrastructure and productivity and what are the implications of these results for policy

relating the environmental impact of consumption to household expenditures an input output analysis in this paper we evaluate the relationships between household expenditures and the environmental impact categories climate change acidification eutrophication and smog formation by combining household expenditures with environmentally extended input output analysis expenditure elasticities are examined with regression analysis and are compared and interpreted on the basis of insight at the product level with data from the netherlands in the year 2000 we find that environmental impact increases with increasing household expenditures although the degree to which the environmental impact increases differs per impact category climate change and eutrophication increase less than proportionally with increasing expenditures acidification increases nearly proportionally with increasing expenditures whereas smog formation increases more than proportionally it appears that the mix of necessities and luxuries to which an environmental impact is related is essential in explaining the relationship

politics and efficiency of separating capital and ordinary government budgets we analyze a golden rule that separates capital and ordinary account budgets and allows a government to finance only capital items with debt many national governments followed this rule in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and most u s states do today we study an overlapping generations economy where majorities choose durable and nondurable public goods in each period when demographics imply even moderate departures from ricardian equivalence the golden rule substantially improves efficiency examples calibrated to u s demographics show greater improvements at the state level or with nineteenth century demographics than under current national demographics

the increase in brazilian household income and its impact on co2 emissions evidence for 2003 and 2009 from input output tables abstract in recent years brazil has experienced economic growth and a recovery of income that has had a positive impact on the consumption of goods in this paper we evaluate the impact of brazilian household consumption on the co2 emissions for 2003 and 2009 using input output tables from the world input output database we used a semi closed model with eight household groups in order to apply the hypothetical extraction method in the consumption structure of each group further we use the result from the hypothetical extraction to evaluate the impacts of the structure consumption of each household group in terms of co2 emissions we find that there is a trade off between the households greater satisfaction from consumption and the increasing setback in emissions from the restructuring and modification of the consumption basket thus this study contributes to the research on emissions by mapping the recent behavior of the brazilian economy in terms of increased income changes in the consumption structure and their impacts on emissions the paper s aggregated results by income and consumption structure based on the intensity of the emissions and their systemic effects add to the discussions on less polluting production processes more conscious consumption of goods and more rational uses of energy and transportation

energy overview for globalized world economy source supply chain and sink abstract energy use of the globalized world economy is comprehensively overviewed by means of a systems input output analysis based on statistics of 2010 emphases are put on the sources of primary energy exploitation inter regional trade imbalance of energy use via global supply chains and sinks of energy use in final demand the largest final user turns out to be the united states compared with china as the leading energy exploiter the global trade volume of energy use is shown in magnitude up to about 90 of the global primary energy exploited the united states is recognized as the world s biggest energy use importer in contrast to russia as the biggest exporter approximately one third of global primary energy exploited is shown to be embodied in inter regional net trade japan and russia are respectively illustrated to be the world s leading net importer and leading net exporter of energy use for china as the leading energy exploiter about 30 of its exploited energy is for foreign regions final use and 70 for its own final use for the european union as the largest sink region nearly 80 of the energy required in its final use is from foreign regions led by russia as reflected in the results the conventional perspective based only on the direct energy consumption by region inevitably leads to inter regional energy grabbing and carbon leakage which raises a serious concern of regional decrease at the expense of global increase in current context of energy shortage and climate change this global energy overview can provide essential strategic implications at the international national and regional scales for sustainable energy policy making

the impact of domestic trade on china s regional energy uses a multi regional input output modeling to systematically reveal how domestic trade impacts on china s regional energy uses an interprovincial input output modeling is carried out to address demand derived energy requirements for the regional economies in 2007 based on the recently available data both the energy uses embodied in final demand and interregional trade are investigated from the regional and sectoral insights significant net transfers of embodied energy flows are identified from the central and western areas to the eastern area via interregional trade shanxi is the largest energy producer and interregional embodied energy deficit receiver in contrast to guangdong as the largest energy user and surplus receiver by considering the impacts of interregional trade the energy uses of most eastern regions increase remarkably for instance shanghai hainan zhejiang beijing jiangsu and guangdong have their embodied energy requirements 87 49 19 97 13 64 12 60 6 46 and 6 38 times of their direct energy inputs respectively in contrast the embodied energy uses of some central and western regions such as inner mongolia shanxi xinjiang shaanxi and guizhou decrease largely the results help understand the hidden network linkages of interregional embodied energy flows and provide critical insight to amend china s current end reduction oriented energy policies by addressing the problem of regional responsibility transfer

energy embodied in the international trade of china an energy input output analysis abstract growing international trade has not only positively affected the people s republic of china s china s economic development but also expanded the exportation of energy embodied in goods during their production this energy flow out will pose risks to china s rational utilization of natural resources as well as environmental protection in this paper we evaluate the energy embodied in goods produced in china during 1992 2005 and use input output structural decomposition analysis to identify five key factors causing the changes of energy embodied in exports direct primary energy efficiency primary energy consumption structure structure of intermediate inputs structure of exports and scale of exports for the three sub periods of 1992 1997 1997 2002 and 2002 2005 results show that china is a net exporter of energy and the energy embodied in exports tends to increase over time the expanding total volume of exports and increasing exports of energy intensive goods tend to enlarge the energy embodied in exports within all three sub periods but these driving forces were offset by a considerable improvement of energy efficiency and changes in primary energy consumption structure from 1992 to 2002 and the effects of structure of intermediate input only in the sub period from 1992 to 1997 from 2002 to 2005 the sharp augmentation of energy embodied in exports was driven by all the five factors our research has practical implications for the chinese economy results of this study suggest that the energy embodied in trade should receive special attentions in energy policies design to limit the energy resource out flow and pollution generation

industry migration and growth in the south for at least the last two decades the south and southwest have been the fastest growing regions in the united states during this period we have witnessed considerable shifts in the location of economic activity and overall the movement has been decidedly toward the south since the early sixties when this southern migration began to accelerate an increasing amount of public attention has been directed to this topic so much so that it is now popularly referred to as the sunbelt phenomenon numerous explanations have been advanced to account for this rapid growth in the south but three explanations have persistently evoked an impressive level of debate first many have argued that a significant portion of this regional redistribution can be attributed to differentials in state and local taxing policies in particular the state corporate income tax these rates vary considerably across states but even more important is the observation that there have been significant changes in the structure of corporate taxes over the last few decades beginning in the early 1950s the relative tax rate for several southern states particularly those in the east south central and west south central divisions began to decline sharply on the other hand relative tax rates for three divisions new england the east north central and the midatlantic rose in the early sixties by 1970 the relative tax rate ranged from 0 60 in the west south central down from 1 20 in 1950 to 1 37 in the mid atlantic up from 1 15 in 1950 notwithstanding these stylized facts the consensus from previous empirical work on industry location suggests that state taxes have not influenced the direction or magnitude of industry migration however there are reasons to believe that acceptance of this conclusion may be premature for example in the early body of work results were based on simple correlations of tax levels and changes in either value added or employment 2 more recent attempts to empirically model corporate tax effects have arrived at somewhat ambiguous results carlton 1977 examining three 4 digit industries found that corporate tax differentials failed to explain any of the variation in new births of firms across smsas hodge 1979 while confirming carlton s results for the same industries discovered that taxes have significantly affected regional investment patterns in another industry not covered in carlton s study 3 why taxes mattered in one industry and not in the other three remained a matter of ad hoc speculation a second explanation alleges that states in the south have begun to exhibit a more favorable business climate although it is difficult to measure directly a state s business climate one important manifestation of that climate is its position with respect to the division of power between union and management in the collective bargaining process legal obstacles to union organization and bargaining power will be viewed by firms as a positive signal of a pro business environment the creation of legislative obstareceived for publication october 29 1981 revision accepted for publication april 16 1982 miami university the author is especially indebted to michael ward at the rand corporation for numerouls helpful discussions throughout the preparation of this study also the author benefited from the advice and comments of john antel robert cotterman lee lillard john lunn william j moore james smith finis welch and two referees of this review financial suppoi t was provided by the foundation for research in economics and education at ucla and the university of british columbia humanities and social sciences committee i the relative tax is defined as a state s tax rate divided by the average for all states as in most economic discussions it is relative price that matters 2 for a review of earlier work see due 1961 some of the studies reviewed include bloom 1955 campbell 1958 floyd 1952 and larson 1957 see also garwood 1952 3 most of the other empirical work focused exclusively on intt urban location decisions and hence had no reason to examine state corporate taxes however they found local tax differentials inter zonal were unimportant in determining intra urban movement for example see moses and williamson 1967 and schmenner 1978

evaluation of the environmental impact of weekly food consumption in different socio economic households in australia using environmentally extended input output analysis this paper uses input output analysis to model the environmental impacts of the weekly food consumption of australia s households sorted by income quintile in 2003 we found that weekly food consumption of the relatively better off households caused greater environmental burden than that of the less well off household meat and bakery products flour cereals were the categories that contributed the largest share of environmental impacts in an average household s food consumption footprint 58 water 26 energy 29 co2 and 31 wasted materials per dollar spent fruit and vegetables generated 0 0874 m3 of water 0 0055 gj of energy 0 37 kg of co2 and 0 0114 kg of wasted materials this was lower than the per dollar impacts of bakery products 0 8482 0 0067 0 63 0 0204 meat 0 3471 0 0070 0 65 0 0203 dairy 0 0995 0 0114 0 98 0 0192 and edible fats 0 2373 0 0080 0 70 0 0165 eating out and fast food consumption also had a low per dollar impact 0 1317 0 0046 0 38 0 0141 we surmise that substituting fruit and vegetables at the expense of animal products processed foods and fats would decrease environmental impacts change at low income levels should be focused upon meat bakery and dairy consumption while higher incomes should be focused upon the consequences of eating food outside the home

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

a review of residential tiered electricity pricing in china abstract at present the unformed market oriented pricing mechanism has become a great challenge faced by china s electricity pricing and the unreasonable electricity pricing caused by cross subsidization has become increasingly serious with the economic development and energy shortage tiered electricity price tep which was developed and used since 1970s was introduced into china as a new electricity pricing method for residential electricity consumption the tep can also improve the tariffs the behaviors and the efficiency of residential electricity consumption in this study we use the fundamental theory of the electricity economics to analyze the pricing methods and the forms of china s power market with the reform of electric power industry we also point out the characteristics of residential tiered electricity pricing in china which is also compared with other countries such as the united states and japan the main factors influencing the residential tiered electricity pricing design are discussed in this paper from the perspectives of users the electric power enterprise and government regulation then we point out the main problems of china s existing tiered electricity pricing including inadequate level of public awareness and acceptance unreasonable tiered and electricity price standard insufficient reflection in regional differences less combination with other electricity pricing forms and low level of smart meter application

the role of consumption patterns demand and technological factors on the recent evolution of co2 emissions in a group of advanced economies changes in production structures and modifications of patterns of consumption are key factors in the fight against environmental harm initiatives such as agenda 21 promoted by the un highlight the need to evaluate the relationships among factors of production and consumption innovation and demographics and the environment in the attainment of sustainable development in this context our work studies in depth those factors underlying the economic activity of households in a representative group of european union countries and the us within the framework of an input output model a structural decomposition analysis is considered in order to identify the weight that growth in demand changes in patterns of consumption changes in the distribution of income the substitution of inputs and changes in energy intensity have all had on the evolution of co2 emissions the work specifically seeks to identify common patterns and differential behaviors among productive sectors in the european social environment the results show that growth in demand and therefore in production largely absorbs the limited effect of technological and efficiency improvements and the incipient changes observed in consumption patterns

explaining government growth in the u s states despite the explosive increase in the research program on government growth in recent years little work has been done on government growth disaggregated to the subnational level i examine the empirical validity of five competing models of government growth for the fifty u s states from 1945 to 1984 wagner s law fiscal illusion party control bureau voting and intergovernmental grant government size is defined in terms of state government spending as a proportion of total state economic output with separate implicit price deflators being employed for the public and private sectors based on a longitudinal test of these competing models the analysis uncovers strong empirical support for the bureau voting and intergovernmental grant models moderately weak support for the wagner s law model and virtually no support for the fiscal illusion and party control explanations these findings have important implications for the study of government growth in general and more specifically in the states

optimal embodied energy abatement strategy for beijing economy based on a three scale input output analysis abstract energy strategies in china s 11th and 12thzfive year plan failed to reduce the total energy consumption and misled the implementation of energy saving measures as they were focused towards the direct energy input as well as formulated based on incomplete energy consumption information therefore an optimal energy abatement strategy built on comprehensive information on overall embodied energy consumption is in urgent need adopting the three scale input output analysis this study uses beijing as a case to depict a specific urban economy s overall energy consumption impacted by local direct energy use domestic and foreign trade the results show that energy embodied in domestic trade dominated beijing s energy consumption while local direct energy is accounting for less than 1 3 of beijing s total embodied energy consumption the quantity of energy embodied in imports far exceeds that embodied in exports making the city a net embodied energy importer and indicating that policies considering direct energy use only will cause energy leakage problem these findings suggest that the current measures such as displacing energy intensive sectors to other regions lead to local reduction but overall rise moreover analysis for five abatement scenarios average intensity share absolute share discriminatory absolute and discriminatory intensity was carried out to figure out the optimal abatement strategy for beijing due to less loss of potential output it is found that intensity share scenario is the optimal one among all the scenarios concerned analysis in this study suggests that each region should break limits of self centered perceptions and multi scale governance for more appropriate responsibility assignment is recommended for overall energy abatement

do state and local taxes affect economic growth this paper tests if variations in the treatment of expenditures by state and local governments are an explanation for the inconsistent results of previous tax studies estimates for net investment and employment in manufacturing for 1962 82 support this conjecture indicating that state and local taxes have a negative effect when the revenues are devoted to transfer payment programs and that with taxes held constant increases in expenditures on health education consistent with the vicious circle phenomenon do not appear simply to reflect common cyclical movements and provide evidence of structural linkages implicit in previous results for growth in state personal income copyright 1990 by mit press

on the faustian dynamics of policy and political power this paper examines the faustian dynamics of policy and power we posit a general class of dy namic games in which current policies affect the future distribution of political power resulting in the following faustian trade off if the current ruler chooses his preferred policy he then sacrifices future political power yet if he wants to preserve his future power he must sacrifice his present policy objec tives the trade off comes from the fact that the current political ruler pivotal voter cannot uncouple the direct effect of his policy from its indirect effect on future power a policy endogenous pe equilibrium describes this endogenous transfer of power and the resulting evolution of policy and political power over time we show that the faustian trade off in a pe equilibrium is decomposed into two basic rationales the political preservation effect induces more tempered policy choices than if one s policy choice did not affect one s political fortunes however the reformation effect induces more aggressive policies in order to exploit the productivity gains from policies chosen by even more aggressive successors we distinguish between political systems that give rise to monotone faustian dynamics political power that progressively evolves towards more fiscally liberal types of leaders and cyclical faustian dynamics political power that oscillates between liberal and conservative types of leaders in each case we show that the faustian trade off moderates the choices of each type of leader

what if consumers decided to all go green environmental rebound effects from consumption decisions shifting consumer preferences towards green consumption is promoted by many governments and environmental groups rebound effects which reduce the effectiveness of such actions are estimated for cost saving green consumption choices using australian data cases examined are reduced vehicle use reduced electricity use changing to smaller passenger vehicles and utilising fluorescent lighting it is found that if rebound effects are ignored when evaluating green consumption environmental benefits will be overstated by around 20 for reduced vehicle use and 7 for reduced electricity use rebound effects are higher and environmental benefits lower when more efficient vehicles or lighting are utilised rather than simple conservation actions of forgoing use in addition lower income households have higher rebound effects suggesting that environmental policy directed at changing consumer behaviour is most effective when targeted at high income households an inherent trade off between economic and environmental benefits of green consumption choices is demonstrated the size of the rebound effect and the observed variation with household income is attributed to life cycle analysis lca methodologies associated with the calculation of embodied ghg emissions of consumption goods these results should be therefore be interpreted as the minimum rebound effect to include in policy evaluation

achieving low carbon urban passenger transport in china insights from the heterogeneous rebound effect abstract the rapid increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions in china s passenger transportation sector threatens both the environment and the nation s energy security energy efficiency improvements leading to lower fuel consumption are therefore of considerable interest to policymakers trying to achieve low carbon travel however it is well established that higher miles per gallon efficiencies can by reducing the costs of travel lead to some level of increased personal travel the so called rebound effect this paper describes an empirical study to measure the size and also the variability in this effect at the provincial level and what this variability implies for a carbon tax policy this rebound effect is quantified using a two stage almost ideal demand system aids model a backfire effect i e the rebound is 100 is observed in urban passenger transport with disparities in the size of the rebound effect ranging from 114 to 153 among china s provinces the differences in economic development as well as related differences in consumers behavior especially in the behavior of marginal consumers have contributed to this heterogeneity with a larger carbon tax more than 110yuan tonne needed in richer provinces such as jiangsu zhejiang guangdong and fujian in order to bring about similar levels of carbon reductions nationwide

time inconsistency and fiscal policy empirical analysis of u s states 1969 89 abstract we offer an extensive and robust test of the time inconsistency theory of fiscal politics we employ data of u s states from 1969 to 1989 and the results of our tests indicate the variables such as legislative stability and executive term limits have strongly predictable impacts on the volatility of various measures of fiscal policy

a model of political equilibrium in a representative democracy abstract this paper studies political equilibrium in a two party representative democracy in which the political parties are policy motivated and voters trade off their policy preferences against their party identity it is shown that the parties will in general adopt differing policy positions in equilibrium and that under certain qualifications the winning policy will lie between the more popular party s preferred policy and a certain utilitarian optimum the winning policy will be closer to this utilitarian optimum the less biased the electorate is in terms of party identification

infrastructure investment a review essay economists try not to be faddists but they often cannot help themselves while work on a topic should mirror the prospective importance of the topic that situation seems to occur with disappointing frequency instead the usual pattern is that some reasonably important topic will be totally ignored for the longest time then recognized and then the subject of a flurry of work all out of proportion to its likely long run importance nowhere has this speculative bubble of economic research been more clearly illustrated than with infrastructure investment macroeconomists havelong felt that the stock of public capital is an important factor input in the production of total output macroeconomists have known that u s productivity growth slowed dramatically in about 1973 and macroeconomists should have known that united states investment in public capital has been down since the late 1960s yet analysis of the u s productivity slowdown completely ignored infrastructure investment for the first fifteen years of this slowdown concentrating instead on energy prices social regulation the composition of the work force research and development different rates of obsolescence of the private capital stock and any number of other matters the public capital stock was hardly ever even mentioned as a potential factor in the productivity slowdown aschauer changed all that he wrote a series of papers 1989a 1989b 1989c that put these two movements together econometrically infrastructure investment turned down and aggregate productivity turned down slightly later both in the united states and in some other developed countries his work hit the magic button those who had worried about the productivity puzzle for fifteen years welcomed a new suspect those who were worried about low rates of u s national saving welcomed a new way to make their argument even more forcefully than with official figures on saving and investment which do not count infrastructure investment as investment political liberals and liberal politicians saw a way to rescue government spending and projects from the assaults of reaganism and even a way to avoid oth

impact of household consumption on co2 emissions danish household consumption increased by 58 over the period 1966 1992 while co2 emissions only increased by 7 using decomposition analysis we investigated the global co2 impact of danish household consumption from 1966 to 1992 our conclusion is that overall growth in private consumption but not changes in the composition of consumption is the key to understanding the increase in co2 emissions however the effect of growth in private consumption has been partly offset by substantial energy conservation in the energy supply and manufacturing sectors

inefficiency in legislative policymaking a dynamic analysis this paper develops an infinite horizon model of public spending and taxation in which policy decisions are determined by legislative bargaining the policy space incorporates both productive and distributive public spending and distortionary taxation the productive spending is investing in a public good that benefits all citizens e g national defense and the distributive spending is district specific transfers e g pork barrel spending investment in the public good creates a dynamic linkage across policymaking periods the analysis explores the dynamics of legislative policy choices focusing on the efficiency of the steady state level of

new methodology for the ecological footprint with an application to the new zealand economy abstract sustainable development has become a primary objective for many countries throughout the world since the late 1980s a major difficulty associated with sustainable development objectives however is the absence of reliable indicators to measure progress towards the goal of sustainability the ecological footprint provides an estimate of the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption for a given population on an aggregate basis the ecological footprint may be compared with the amount of ecologically productive land available to give an indication of whether consumption patterns are likely to be sustainable this paper proposes the use of a modified form of input output analysis to calculate the ecological footprint the input output approach provides a consistent means of calculating an ecological footprint using data collected as part of the system of national accounts in most developed countries in addition it makes explicit the link between the level of economic activity in a country and its corresponding impact on the environment an application of this methodology to new zealand indicates that it takes 3 49 has of ecologically productive land per year to sustain the average new zealander s current level of consumption

the benefits of privatization evidence from mexico critics of privatization often argue that its benefits come at a high cost to society the authors test the validity of this criticism for mexico s privatization program one of the world s largest case by case programs assessing the performance of newly privatized firms in such areas as profitability and efficiency they find that these firms quickly close the gap with their peers in the private sector their findings suggest that the firms profit gains come from productivity gains 52 percent layoffs 33 percent and higher prices 15 percent

equilibrium political budget cycles political business cycle theories generally rely on nominal rigidities and voter myopia this paper offers an equilibrium theory that preserves some basic insights from earlier models though with significant refinements the political budget cycle emphasized here is in fiscal policy rather than output and inflation it arises via a multidimensional signal process one can consider the welfare implications of proposals to mitigate the cycle and the effects of altering the electoral structure copyright 1990 by american economic association

primary energy and greenhouse gases embodied in australian final consumption an input output analysis input output modeling of primary energy and greenhouse gas embodiments in goods and services is a useful technique for designing greenhouse gas abatement policies the present paper describes direct and indirect primary energy and greenhouse gas requirements for a given set of australian final consumption it considers sectoral disparities in energy prices capital formation and international trade flows and it accounts for embodiments in the gross national expenditure as well as the gross domestic product primary energy and greenhouse gas intensities in terms of mj and kg co2 e are reported as well as national balances of primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

state owned and privately owned firms an empirical analysis of profitability leverage and labor intensity for some it is an article of faith that governmentowned firms must be less efficient or at least less profitable than privately owned firms maxim boycko et al 1996 argue that politicians cause government owned firms to employ excess labor inputs anne o krueger 1990 suggests that such firms may be pressured to hire politically connected people rather than those best qualified to perform desired tasks more generally government owned firms are thought to forgo maximum profit in the pursuit of social and political objectives such as wealth redistribution in addition the residual cash flow claims of these firms are not readily transferable like the shares of a private corporation this impairs residual claimant incentives to monitor managers and ultimately degrades firm performance as a consequence one expects government owned firms to be technically less efficient and therefore less profitable than private firms the implication is that in competitive markets without significant externalities private ownership is the superior organizational form the view that government firms are inherently less efficient than private ones however remains controversial among economists john vickers and george yarrow 1991 among others point out that agency problems arise in private firms as well as public ones in most large private corporations managers own little of the stock because monitoring managers is costly a divergence arises between their objectives and those of private shareholders private shareholders typically hold a small stake in any one firm and it may not pay any shareholder to bear the cost of monitoring management it follows from this discussion that whether government firms are more or less efficient than private firms is primarily an empirical issue to date the body of empirical evidence is mixed in this paper we report further empirical evidence on the relative efficiency of public and private enterprises we build on previous work by studying larger samples over longer time periods and by allowing for additional factors that influence firm performance in particular our analysis controls for time series variation in the general level of economic activity that may otherwise confound performance comparisons between government and private firms 2 we approach the issue in two different ways first using accounting numbers we conduct a large sample cross sectional comparison of government owned and privately owned corporations this comparison is similar in design to that of boardman and vining 1989 but our sample is three times the size of theirs and includes three

comparison of household consumption and regional production approaches to assess urban energy use and implications for policy assessment of urban energy use may proceed by a number of methods here we derive an energy account from local statistics and compare them with an input output io analysis as applied to melbourne australia these approaches highlight different aspects of urban energy use and comparable outputs are presented together to assess consistency to identify complementarities and discuss the insight each approach brings to understanding urban energy the io method captures the direct and embodied primary energy requirements of local household expenditure 235 8 gj capita year while the regional assessment more directly accounts for local production activity 258 1 gj capita year the parity of these results is unexpected for a developed city with a strong tertiary sector sectoral detail reveals differences between the primary energy required by melbourne s economic structure and that ultimately required through the full supply chain relating to household expenditure this is accompanied by an io analysis of the geography of melbourne s energy catchment it is suggested that the io consumption and regional production approaches have particular relevance to policies aimed at consumption behaviour and economic re structuring respectively their complementarity further suggests that a combined analysis would be valuable in understanding urban energy futures and economic transitions elsewhere

voting on the budget deficit comment textabstractin this comment it is argued that a balanced budget rule may cause underinvestment as a consequence such a rule is not ex ante efficient in order to achieve the ex ante optimal outcome it would be necessary to add an extra rule for the level of public investment unfortunately however such an investment rule is likely to be very difficult to implement in practice when there are no rules to prevent underinvestment it is no longer clear whether a balanced budget rule is beneficial or not in some cases the cost of low levels of investment outweigh the benefits of a balanced budget

a positive theory of fiscal deficits and government debt this paper considers an economy in which policymakers with different preferences alternate in office as a result of elections government debt is used strategically by each policymaker to influence the choices of his successors if different policymakers disagree about the desired composition of government spending between two public goods the economy exhibits a deficits bias that is debt accumulation is higher than it would be with a social planner the equilibrium level of debt is larger the larger is the degree of polarization between alternating governments and the less likely it is that the current government will be re elected

energy use embodied in china s construction industry a multi regional input output analysis abstract the rapid urbanization process was bound to produce considerable energy demand in china which increased the pressure on sustainable development this study employed a multi regional input output model to investigate energy use embodied in the consumption and interregional trade of china s construction industry results show that as a typical demand driven sector the construction industry consumed 793 74 million tons of coal equivalent in 2007 which is equal to 29 6 of china s total national energy consumption regions have been divided according to different driving forces for energy increment shanxi liaoning heilongjiang henan and sichuan were identified to be driven by their extensive construction activities and inefficient construction process interregional imports of the construction industry represented a resource dependent geographical distribution energy flows are from resource abundant areas in the central part to resource deficient areas in the eastern coast by contrast energy exports represented a regional discrete distribution which mainly transferred energy in the form of labor mobility and service supply this study provided insight into the current energy consumption status of provincial construction industry from both regional and sectoral perspectives which can be a basis for energy policy making and implementation

how does income redistribution affect households material footprint abstract this paper presents a study of the evolution of spanish households material footprint for the period 2006 to 2013 the method proposed combines the multiregional input output model with spanish national data on household consumption according to social group material footprint has been affected by the 2008 economic crisis in relative terms the share of spanish households material footprint with respect to total material footprint decreased drastically from 70 7 in 2006 to 50 8 in 2011 this reduction can be mainly attributed to the construction sector crash 34 4 of the reduction is due to construction materials followed by biomass 29 metals 27 1 and fossil fuels 26 1 by type of household the material footprint exhibits a scale effect while consumption and income levels grow and this is accompanied by a global teleconnection effect which varies from 62 for biomass to 64 for metals to 82 for construction materials to 95 for fossil fuels given the context of increasing income inequality we perform one redistribution simulation from high to middle and low income households finding a material footprint increase in all cases the most materialized consumer basket is that corresponding to households with incomes between 1500 and 1999 euros above that income level the growing weight of expenditures on services reduces the use of materials importantly social income redistribution and environmental material footprint sustainability will become incompatible if responsibility is transferred only to households

why a stubborn conservative would run a deficit policy with time inconsistent preferences a conservative government in favor of a low level of public consumption knows that it will be replaced by a government in favor of a larger level of public consumption we show that the resulting level of public consumption is in between the levels the two governments would choose if each were in power both in the present and in the future in particular we show that if the conservative government is more stubborn in a particular sense than the succeeding government the conservative government will borrow more than it would had it remained in power in the future

carbon dioxide emissions and global gdp abstract a positive relationship between carbon dioxide emissions the most important greenhouse gas ghg implicated in global warming and gdp is shown in this paper examining per capita income and co2 emissions of 137 countries across 21 years it also appears that as per capita incomes accelerate across countries emissions increases for the most part tend to decelerate it could be that higher income levels lead to increased demand for environmental protection only emissions reduction proposals that assure incomes will not be adversely affected particularly those of less developed countries ldcs will have any possibility of successful implementation

input output simulations of energy environment economy interactions in the uk this paper shows how a number of the complex interrelationships between energy environment and economic welfare can be investigated with the aid of a 10 sector input output i o model of the uk with pollution emission coefficients and a european sulphur deposition vector the paper reviews relevant past applications of i o analysis in the energy environment area and describes the endam program and its operation it is used to simulate the effects of a variety of policies and possibilities not only through changes in exogenous variables final demand and income taxes and transfers but also through changes in the structural matrices and their coefficients in each case the full effects direct indirect and income induced can be traced and the changes in comparative static equilibrium values discovered in this way policy issues connected with energy use and environmental impacts employment and economic welfare have been investigated

economic growth regressions for the american states a sensitivity analysis i introduction researchers motivated by a variety of questions turn to data on the economic performance of the american states to analyze their ideas empirically the appeal of cross state empirical analysis derives from the fact that while states differ in relevant dimensions they are not so different as to make omitted variables an overwhelming source of error for example the state economies operate under the same monetary regime the federal reserve comparable legal institutions the u s constitution and borders open to the flow of productive factors knowledge and products cross state analysis avoids the myriad structural differences that encumber cross national empirical analysis thus investigators feel secure in considering a relatively small number of control variables in attempting to establish a statistical relationship between state economic performance and a particular variable of interest the availability of uniform and accurate time series data for the states adds to the appeal of cross state regression models despite the advantages associated with evaluating institutionally similar economies researchers who rely on state regressions find little systematic guidance concerning which variables to include and other basic specification issues for instance do demographic and geographic characteristics vary sufficiently across states to require independent controls do cultural or climatic conditions affect growth or are these variables correlated with other factors that may affect growth such as labor force participation rates or education levels a review of the extensive literature reveals that few studies control for the variables analyzed by other researchers these specification differences make it hard to evaluate and compare the results of existing studies bartik 1991 and phillips and goss 1995 illustrate this problem as they attempt to garner the effect of taxes on state economic development from dozens of studies that employ alternative specifications and methodologies they use meta regression analysis mra to test whether specification changes and alternative variables significantly affect the estimated elasticity of state growth with respect to taxes the mra technique focuses on the sensitivity of the estimated coefficients for state tax variables to model variation in this paper we employ a technique to assess the sensitivity of numerous control variables identified in the state growth literature we also introduce several new control variables the approach identifies which variables are robust to small changes in the conditioning information set our procedure closely follows that in levine and renelt 1992 which for its part relies on the extreme bounds analysis eba suggested by learner 1983 1985 1 the main difference is that we employ annual panel data on the american states pooling cross sectional and time series data whereas levine and renelt employ cross country data averaged over 20 year or even longer time intervals the cross country studies such as those assessed in levine and renelt that average long time periods generally seek to identify factors associated with long run steady state growth the u s state studies using annual panel data do not share a comparable unifying purpose relationships estimated from yearly data reveal short term responses and pick up business cycle effects which confounds drawing implications about growth theory with this qualification in mind the results presented below indicate which variables included in past studies are robust and provide a set of core variables as a starting point for future research that relies on state growth regressions and annual panel data finally the findings demonstrate that several important conclusions in the literature depend on how variables are measured for example the relationship between state growth and government size reverses sign depending on whether we denominate government size in per capita terms or as a share of state income

the evolution of household induced value chains and their environmental implications abstract the growing fragmentation of production processes and expansion of international trade in the last decades have increased the scope and complexity of value added chains worldwide causing a rearrangement of sectoral linkages intra and inter regionally in terms of economic spillovers this implies that a dollar entering a particular economy nowadays follows a different path than a decade before permeating in longer interregional feedback loops and creating additional multiplier effects outside its region of origin however it also implies that the environmental burden that such this dollar generates has changed in scale and spatial distribution in this paper we explore the evolution of these paths over the period 1997 2008 and highlight the main drivers of observed structural changes that contribute to the surge or decline of the spatial distribution of economic spillovers and greenhouse gases emissions we specifically study the effects of an increase in income in the united states the country with the largest trade volume in the world we introduce an extended version of the temporal leontief inverse tli framework that allows tracing the evolutionary path of the american households multiplier in a quasi dynamic fashion isolating the contribution of expenditure patterns income trade and foreign structural change to the temporal evolution we find similar growing multiplier effects inside and outside the us due to services and manufacturing respectively but a declining local environmental burden due to changes in interindustry relations inside the us with declining manufacturing and a reduced emission intensity we also highlight the fragmentation process with declining foreign intraregional spillovers and increasing trade spillovers

energy requirements of household consumption a case study of the netherlands this article describes the results of several research programmes that together aim at the development and application of methodologies that enable the study of long term environmental effects mainly related to the total household energy demand of household consumption in relation to other economic sectors this is usually described as the household metabolism approach in this article we use energy consumption and co2 emissions as proxies for long term impacts on the environment the major long term environmental effects of several hundred dutch household consumption categories have been determined by means of the hybrid energy analysis methodology total energy consumption and related co2 emission data have been calculated as a function of household income and family type past trends have been studied by a time series 1950 1990 analysis technical reduction potentials have been calculated for mid and long term scenarios it is concluded that the set of methodologies described form a useful tool for the analysis of unsustainable trends in household consumption patterns and associated energy requirements in the past and the present the results indicate that present trends lead towards unsustainability however reversal of these trends is feasible if this starts in the immediate future and if it is maintained for decades c 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

structural path analysis and multiplier decomposition within a social accounting matrix framework the main purpose of this paper is to apply structural path analysis to a social accounting matrix sam framework because the sam is a comprehensive essentially general equilibrium data system the whole network through which influence is transmitted can be identified and specified through structural path analysis the latter provides an alternative and much more detailed way to decompose multipliers as compared with the traditional treatment of stone 1978 and pyatt and round 1979 this paper consists of five sections the first one reviews the sam framework as a basis for multiplier analysis and multiplier decomposition in particular the additive decomposition in terms of transfer open loop and closed loop effects is succinctly presented section ii applies this conventional decomposition to a sam of south korea to illustrate with eleven specific cases the effects of an exogenous injection on the endogenous accounts of the sam i e the incomes of the factors household groups and production activities section iii is devoted to the presentation of the elements of structural analysis and more particularly the transmission of economic influence within a structure finally section iv applies structural path analysis to the south korean sam and compares and contrasts the multiplier decomposition which it yields with the alternative decomposition discussed in section ii the comparison is the more significant in that the two decomposition methods are applied to the same eleven selected cases spanning a variety of sectors i e poles of origin for the injection and sectors poles of destination the empirical analysis in section iv suggests that structural path analysis applied to a sam is a potentially operationally useful technique within which a whole series of policy issues can be addressed the final section is devoted to a brief summary and conclusions

comparing a territorial based and a consumption based approach to assess the local and global environmental performance of cities abstract in the framework of pressing local and global environmental challenges it is essential to understand that cities are complex systems dependent on and linked to the rest of the world through global supply chains that embody an array of environmental flows cities are thus a complex articulation that intertwine local and global challenges which rely at their extended hinterland for their resource use and pollution emission to assess the environmental sustainability of an urban area in a comprehensive manner it is not only necessary to measure its local and direct environmental performance but also to understand and take into account its global and indirect environmental counterparts this paper presents a comparative analysis of a territorial based and a consumption based approach to estimate both direct and embodied resource use and pollution flows for the case of brussels capital region belgium the territorial based approach is based on local energy water and material consumption measured data as well as measured data on waste generation and pollution emissions the estimation of indirect resource use and pollution emissions or consumption based approach is based on the regional io tables of the city region of brussels extended with multi region input output tables taking into account the global flows of consumption the comparison of these two approaches is particularly relevant in the case of cities that have limited productive activities and limited or no extraction of materials as the impact on the hinterland is often underestimated or neglected by local environmental policies which are only based on territorial based figures the results show that the indirect primary energy use ghg emissions and material use estimated by the consumption based approach is more than three times higher than local measures indicate the embodied water use estimated via ioa was over 40 times higher than the local water consumption these results show that territorial based approach using local data underestimate the resource needs and pollution emissions of a city and can therefore be insufficient or even be misguiding by mapping the origin of embodied flows it is in fact possible to illustrate the open character of an urban economy and its dependence on the global hinterland finally this paper discusses the possibility and relevance to combine these two approaches to create a hybrid framework that measures the full environmental performance of cities both accurately and comprehensively

comprehensive evaluation of household indirect energy consumption and impacts of alternative energy policies in china by input output analysis abstract households consume a large amount of indirect energy through the consumption of goods and services this fact makes the quantitative analysis of indirect household energy consumption the foundation of energy policy design this paper improves the compilation method of energy input output tables and establishes a sequence of energy input output tables for china based on these tables the indirect energy consumption of both rural and urban households is calculated then with economic data for the year of 2005 the adjusted input output price model is applied to evaluate how the alternative energy policies impact production prices consumption prices and real income of rural and urban households through the mechanism of indirect energy consumption by using electricity as an example this research has practical implications for chinese economy the integration of energy efficiency improvements and energy prices increase serves as a means to achieve both economic and energy conservation goals and may also have a positive effect on residents real income and a minimal effect on production prices

development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand abstract this paper reviews the development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand since its beginnings in the late 1970s a historical account is presented that focuses particularly on the activities of the australia new zealand society for ecological economics and key ecological economics research activities achievements of ecological economics in australia and new zealand are assessed using a range of quantitative and qualitative data the main areas of expertise developed by australian and new zealand ecological economists were found to be theoretical foundations and visions for ecological economics biodiversity and resilience input output analysis heterodox valuation approaches analysis of economy environment interactions sustainability indicators sustainable agriculture fisheries and oceans and energy thermodynamics both countries are ranked at the top or near the top of the world rankings in terms of per capita isee membership and publication rates in ecological economics a defining feature of ecological economics in australia and new zealand has also been its practical and problem solving focus and the level of end user engagement the paper concludes by discussing the challenges that face the future development of ecological economics in australia and new zealand

energy requirements of consumption urban form climatic and socio economic factors rebounds and their policy implications household consumption requires energy to be used at all stages of the economic process thereby directly and indirectly leading to environmental impacts across the entire production chain the levels structure and determinants of energy requirements of household consumption therefore constitute an important avenue of research incorporating the full upstream requirements into the analysis helps to avoid simplistic conclusions which would actually only imply shifts between consumption categories without taking the economy wide effects into account this paper presents the investigation of the direct and indirect primary energy requirements of australian households contrasting urban suburban and rural consumption patterns as well as inter and intra regional levels of inequality in energy requirements furthermore the spatial and socio economic drivers of energy consumption for different categories of energy requirements are identified and quantified conclusions regarding the relationships between energy requirements household characteristics urban form and urbanization processes are drawn and the respective policy implications are explored

energy requirements of households in brazil abstract in this study we determine the total direct plus indirect energy requirements of a given set of brazilian households we use a generalized input output model in order to calculate the energy embodied in goods and services purchased by households of different income level in 11 capital cities of brazil our results show that on average the total energy intensity of household expenditure increases with income level although there is a considerable spread in energy intensities within income classes as well as disparities between regions of the country the total yearly average energy requirement per household in brazil in 1995 96 was 173 6 gj 61 of which was indirect with 32 8 gj for the lower income level 66 of which was indirect and 602 2 gj for the higher income level 62 of which was indirect of this total average energy requirement 76 was required for only three consumption categories utilities 31 mobility 28 and shelter 17 this analysis calls for the attention that has to be given not only to the direct energy consumption as motor fuels and electricity for example but also to the consumption categories that encompass an important part of the indirect energy requirement of households in capital cities in brazil

a carbon footprint proportional to expenditure a case for norway abstract motivated by the importance of consumption as an underlying driver of co 2 emissions we examine the link between consumption and co 2 emissions for norwegian households the main goal is to investigate whether there is a decoupling of consumption expenditures and the environmental impact as we move up the income ladder by combining a 2007 norwegian consumer expenditure survey with emission coefficients from an environmental input output model reflecting emissions embodied in both domestically produced and imported goods and services we calculate the per capita carbon footprint the results from the analysis suggest that the per capita carbon footprint is directly proportional to expenditure with an estimated elasticity close to unity implying no decoupling the finding is partly driven by a near zero emission power sector which leads to comparatively low emissions embodied in domestically produced goods and services

is public expenditure productive abstract this paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government spending variables the empirical results indicate that i the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending ii military capital bears little relation to productivity and iii a core infrastructure of streets highways airports mass transit sewers water systems etc has most explanatory power for productivity the paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the productivity slowdown of the last fifteen years

religious participation and income the relationship between religion and income has been explored in several studies in this paper we extend this inquiry by arguing that religious participation through its effects on preferences and net earnings potential reduces participants incomes similarly we argue that high incomes discourage religious participation by encouraging individuals to substitute market work for religious activities in an empirical model we simultaneously estimate the effects of religious participation on income and income on religious participation using us state data on per capita personal income and church membership the results strongly support our hypotheses 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

barriers to investment in polarized societies i present a tractable dynamic model of political economy where disagreements about the composition of public spending result in implementation of short sighted policies the relative price of investment to consumption is excessively large in equilibrium due to over taxation investment rates are too low which slows down growth along the transition in the long run this results in output consumption and welfare being inefficiently low the larger is the degree of polarization the greater is the inefficiency political stability mitigates the effects of polarization by making the incumbent internalize the dynamic inefficiencies introduced by the choice of growth retarding policies

coal use embodied in globalized world economy from source to sink through supply chain abstract an empirical analysis of coal use embodied in the globalized world economy is performed in the present work via the application of a systems multi regional input output model for 2012 the use of primary coal is tracked from the sources of exploitation to the sinks of final use through inter regional trade as a global supply network mainland china is revealed to be the largest coal user but the per capita coal use embodied in its household consumption is only a quarter of that in the united states and doesn t even exceed the level in the united kingdom the leader in the movement away from coal the global trade volume of coal use is in magnitude calculated up to seventy percent of the world total coal exploitation the united states is demonstrated to be the world s leading importer of coal use of which the imports are dominated by non coal products as indirect coal imports in contrast mainland china is the leading exporter mainly due to the massive exports of commodities made in china two new indicators of self sufficiency rates are developed in order to explore the direct and indirect external coal dependence of the region two fifths of the coal finally used by the united states turns out to be exploited from foreign areas which is different from the result that the united states has no dependence on foreign coal resources based on the conventional external dependence degree this overview of coal use aims to provide a global insight into energy sustainability as well as a sound scientific reference for policy making for global resources management and climate change mitigation

evaluation of the soft measures effects on ambient water quality improvement and household and industry economies abstract various ecological footprint calculators carbon footprint calculators and water footprint calculators have been developed in recent years the basic concepts of ecological behaviour record notebooks and of carbon dioxide emission calculators have been developed since the late 20th century the first carbon dioxide emission calculator was developed in 1991 likewise water pollutant discharge calculators have been developed to estimate the effects of soft measures introduced into households to reduce pollutant discharge since 2004 the soft measures which have been developed in japan may consist of a wider framework household sustainable consumption which has been developed in europe and can be referred to cleaner consumption in this research summarisation of the short history of ecological behaviour record notebooks and ecological footprint calculators in japan since the 1980s was conducted and the soft measures in households to reduce pollutant discharge were evaluated for their effects on ambient water quality improvement as well as household and industry economies effects of the soft measures on related industry economies were investigated using an input output table analysis and the effects of the imported goods were evaluated with an import effect matrix which was developed in this research the effects of the soft measures on household expenditures were estimated to be a decrease by 2 5 or usd 285 person 1 year 1 in 2003 2006 the results show that the soft measures positively affect the chemical fibre industry and significantly affect the detergent industry analysis of the import effect matrix proved that the six industries were tightly related through extensive amounts of imported goods the soft measures in households may lead to household sustainable consumption and thus reduce disadvantageous human impacts on water environments the effects of the measures introduced to improve the environment should be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated to avoid redundant concerns and discord between the environment and the economy which may be worried when the relationship is not well understood

sources of inefficiency in a representative democracy a dynamic analysis this paper studies the efficiency of policy choice in representative democracies it extends the citizen candidate model of democratic policy making to a dynamic environment equilibrium policy choices are shown to be efficient in the sense that in each period conditional on future policies being selected through the democratic process there exists no alternative current policy choices which can raise the expected utilities of all citizens however policies that would be declared efficient by standard economic criteria are not necessarily adopted in political equilibrium the paper argues that these divergencies are legitimately viewed as politicalfailures

domestic ghg emissions and the responsibility of households in spain looking for regional differences abstractthe aim of this article is to analyze the responsibilities of spanish households as final consumers for the generation of domestic greenhouse gases emissions ghg by region of residence distinguishing between nuts 1 and nuts 2 autonomous regions the motivation is the process of convergence experimented by spanish regions based on the strong economic growth experienced by the country until 2008 which could results in different emissions responsibilities because of different lifestyles and production structures we examine in depth the relationships between a representative household in each region and its patterns of consumption although we do find a relationship between per capita income and regional responsibility for pollution generation it is based on a demand scale effect which overlaps the effects of the regional consumption patterns thus in the richest regions madrid northeast east despite their having a less polluting pattern than other regions the level of per capita em

the political economy of fiscal deficits and government production abstract this paper studies how disagreement over which goods government should provide affects resource allocation in the public sector an incumbent combines pre determined capital with labor to produce different goods in the current period and accumulates physical and financial capital for future production capital labor complementarity determines how anticipated political turnover shapes governments choice between saving in physical capital or financial assets turnover tends to render the stock of physical capital for public production too low and inefficiently combined with labor the main cost of political turnover is production inefficiency in the public sector not a suboptimal savings level

income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions the case of chinese urban households abstract this paper draws on chinese survey data to investigate variations in carbon dioxide emissions across households with different income levels rich households generate more emissions per capita than poor households via both their direct energy consumption and their higher expenditure on goods and services that use energy as an intermediate input an econometric analysis confirms a positive relationship between emissions and income and establishes a slightly increasing marginal propensity to emit mpe over the relevant income range the redistribution of income from rich to poor households is therefore shown to reduce aggregate household emissions suggesting that the twin pursuits of reducing inequality and emissions can be achieved in tandem

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

an empirical investigation of the strategic use of debt the paper examines the accumulation of debt by swedish local governments i find that right wing governments accumulate more debt when facing a higher probability of defeat whereas the opposite occurs for left wing governments these effects are sizable a right wing government increases its level of debt by 15 percent whereas a left wing government decreases its debt by 11 percent if they are both certain of being replaced as compared to when they are certain of remaining in office the results are consistent with the predictions from a strategic debt model developed by persson and svensson

interest group politics and economic growth in the u s states mancur olson s model of economic growth has attracted great attention as a theoretical account of how interest groups influence the rate of economic growth over time moreover the model appears to have received strong empirical support in olson s tests employing u s state data however the specification of the olson construct in these tests is insufficiently attentive to the complex causal chain implicit in olson s argument inadequately accounts for precisely how interest groups matter and employs a static research design that obfuscates the cause and effect relationships posited by the model we review these issues and develop a more complete specification of the olson model the respecified model is then tested using u s state data for the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s using new measures of interest group influence

the effect of state and local taxes on economic development a meta analysis economists and policy makers have long questioned the effect of state and local taxes on economic development according to schmenner 55 economists have long argued that taxes had little impact on business location decisions while development practitioners and elected officials ignored this advice and aggressively pursued development by using tax incentives more recent research using improved data and methodologies has begun to show that taxes can make a difference and the emerging consensus among economists now says that taxes do matter this changing view among researchers is perhaps best exemplified in a 1991 study by timothy j bartik 2 bartik examined 84 econometric studies completed since 1979 which assess the impact of state and local taxes on economic growth in the u s he concluded that the long run elasticity of business activity with respect to state and local taxes was between 10 and 60 for studies focusing on intermetropolitan or interstate business economic activity and between 1 0 and 3 0 for intrametropolitan areas however bartik s study did not control for a variety of study characteristics that may have influenced the measured elasticity this study builds upon bartik s analysis by performing a meta analysis of the studies bartik reviewed meta analysis is a method for statistically analyzing results across empirical studies though it has been little used by economists researchers in psychology education and health sciences have used meta analysis extensively this study uses a meta analytic technique suggested by stanley and jarrell 57 to analyze the studies reviewed by bartik the technique yields increased precision for our understanding of the relationship between state and local taxes and economic development the objective of this study is two fold first to derive a more precise estimate of the tax elasticity and second to determine how the inclusion and omission of key variables in the estimated equations influences the elasticity estimates

the environmental effect of car free housing a case in vienna abstract a case control study of the car free model housing project in vienna was conducted to evaluate whether people living in this settlement have more sustainable lifestyles than people living in comparable buildings in vienna another aim was to identify the lifestyle characteristics and household activities which significantly influence the environmental impact of the residents of the car free housing project and a control group the control group referred to as the reference settlement was chosen from a nearby building complex with similar characteristics but without the car free feature household consumption patterns were estimated based on interviews in combination with data from the austrian consumer expenditure survey and the national accounts the evaluation of household environmental impacts uses emissions estimates from the austrian national accounting matrices including environmental accounts and data from life cycle assessments households from the car free settlement have substantially lower environmental impacts in the categories of ground transportation and energy use their co 2 emissions of these two categories are less than 50 of those living in the reference settlement the households in the car free settlement have somewhat higher emissions in the categories air transport nutrition and other consumption reflecting the higher income per capita as a result the co 2 emissions are only slightly lower than in the reference settlement but the emissions intensity is 20 lower both household groups have significantly lower environmental impacts than the austrian average reflecting less car use and cleaner heating energy in vienna

electoral manipulation via voter friendly spending theory and evidence abstract we present a model of the political budget cycle in which incumbents try to influence voters by changing the composition of government spending rather than overall spending or revenues rational voters may support an incumbent who targets them with spending before the election even though such spending may be due to opportunistic manipulation because it may also reflect sincere preference of the incumbent for types of spending voters favor classifying expenditures into those which are likely targeted to voters and those that are not we provide evidence supporting our model in data on local public finances for all colombian municipalities our findings indicate both a pre electoral increase in targeted expenditures combined with a contraction of other types of expenditure and a voter response to targeting

voting on the budget deficit this paper analyzes a model in which a group of rational individuals votes over the composition and time profile of public spending all voters agree that a balanced budget is ex ante optimal however if there is disagreement between current and future majorities a balanced budget is not a political equilibrium under majority rule under certain conditions a majority of the voters favors a budget deficit and the equilibrium deficit is larger the greater is the polarization among voters copyright 1990 by american economic association

interest groups and the size of government the results of the previous section estimates of a three equation model from 23 observations must obviously be regarded as tentative the consistent positive relationship between number of interest groups and size of government observed with changing sets of included independent variables changing samples of nations and treating the number of interest groups as either exogenous or codetermined does imply rather unequivocally that interest groups are able to influence public policies in such a manner as to lead to increased government size beyond helping to reinforce this conclusion the results of the previous section should be regarded as first steps in the development of a model of the polity that can explain participation in the political process by interest groups and citizens as well as the size of government

factor substitution and factor augmenting technical progress in the united states a normalized supply side system approach abstract using a normalized ces function with factor augmenting technical progress we estimate a supply side system of the u s economy from 1953 to 1998 avoiding potential estimation biases that

the effect of state and local taxes on economic growth a time series cross section approach results based on pooled time series and cross section data are presented which indicate that state and local tax increases significantly retard economic growth when the revenue is used to fund transfer payments however when the revenue is used instead to finance improved public services such as education highways and public health and safety the favorable impact on location and production decisions provided by the enhanced services may more than counterbalance the disincentive effects of the associated taxes these findings underscore the importance of considering the incentives provided by a state s expenditures as well as by its taxes i n the past several years a number of states have implemented limitations on taxes or expenditures while others have raised tax rates in response to the revenue shortfalls of the early 1980s although much of the ongoing debate over state fiscal structures revolves around expressed preferences over tax expenditure combinations per se the question of how state and local taxes may affect economic growth is often central to the discussion nonetheless the empirical evidence remains sparse previous studies can be divided into two broad categories assessments of the magnitudes of tax costs and statistical analyses of the relationship between tax rates and growth cost studies have tended to minimize the role of taxes in business location decisions either because state and local taxes are a relatively small component of total costs for most businesses or because interstate tax differences are small relative to other cost differences between states although these results suggest that the role played by taxes is a minor one describing how large the tax disparities may be is not the same as ascertaining their economic effect of the statistical studies many including bloom 1955 thompson and mattila 1959 and carlton 1979 1983 find no relationship between taxes and growth however kleine 1977 grieson 1980 and generally grieson et al 1977 report negative correlations romans and subrahmanyam 1979 find growth to be negatively related to the fraction of revenues devoted to transfer payments and a variable which they claim measures personal tax progressivity but positively related to business taxes with the exception of carlton who estimates models of the birth and size of firms within metropolitan areas and the grieson et al 1977 and grieson 1980 studies which consider taxes in new york city and philadelphia these authors use data from a single cross section of states more recently newman 1983 and plaut and pluta 1983 both use cross sectional data from two time periods the former finding negative effects of corporate tax rates and the latter yielding mixed results in this study we utilize a time series from 1965 through 1979 of cross sections of 48 states exploiting the richness of this data set we are able to allow for otherwise unexplained differences between states which could be expected to bias results based on a single cross section moreover this much larger sample provides the statistical power necessary to disentangle the separate effects of different categories of taxes public expenditures and transfer payments a distinguishing feature of this paper is that we explicitly recognize the government budget constraint linking these fiscal variables and the deficit or surplus in addition we have taken account of the effects of labor force characteristics by including variables for wage rates unionization and population density our results indicate that tax increases significantly retard economic growth when the revenue is used to fund transfer payments as a result programs of income redistribution are more effectively undertaken at the federal than at the state and local level on the other hand when the revenue is received for publication april 30 1984 revision accepted for publication january 22 1985 university of california davis i am indebted to the institute of governmental affairs at the university of california davis for financial support to adrienne kandel for invaluable research assistance and to two referees for their helpful comments 1 see williams 1967 morgan and brownlee 1974 vasquez and deseve 1977 and the advisory commission on intergovernmental relations 1981 see also due 1961 for a survey of the early literature including a discussion of the findings and limitations of survey results on this topic 574 1 copyright 1985 this content downloaded from 157 55 39 35 on mon 29 aug 2016 04 45 38 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms state and local taxes and economic growth 575 used instead to finance enhanced public services such as highways education and public health and safety the favorable impact on location and production decisions provided by the improved services may more than counterbalance the disincentive effects of the concomitant taxes these findings underscore the importance of considering the incentives provided by a state s expenditures as well as by its taxes we begin by sketching a model which provides the basis for the analysis and discussing appropriate estimation techniques then in section ii we describe the data used and our hypotheses the econometric results are presented in section iii followed by brief concluding remarks in the final

another look at tax policy and state economic growth the long run and short run of it i use a spatial durbin model to estimate the effects of taxes on state economic growth results indicate that taxes have negative short run and long run own state and spatial spillover effects on state growth

political and monetary institutions and public financial policies in the industrial countries institutions and policies vittorio grilli donato masciandaro and guido tabellini why do countries as similar as the industrialized oecd countries go through such different experience in terms of public deficits and debts or in terms of inflation the answer cannot come from macroeconomic policy responses to different disturbances nor from the principles of optimal taxation but rather from politics this article focuses on the role that particular institutions exert in providing constraints and incentives which shape the actions of policymakers the electoral process and political traditions affect the ability of governments to deal with deficits and mounting debts what seems to matter most it is found is the effect of the durability of governments governments with short horizons act myopically and never quite tackle the hard choices such governments typically exist in countries with an electoral system favouring many small political parties central bank independence promotes low inflation with no apparent costs in terms of real economic performance irrespective of the political institutions in fact there is no link between monetary and fiscal discipline these findings carry powerful implications for countries facing high indebtedness or stubborn inflation but also for the construction of the european economic and monetary union

energy intensity and embodied energy flow in australia an input output analysis abstract decoupling energy use from economic growth is critical for improving energy productivity and mitigating climate change input output databases have been increasingly utilised for consumption based energy accounting and for exploring both the direct and indirect influence of energy use this study performed an environmentally extended input output analysis of energy use in australia from 2006 to 2015 to investigate the total energy intensity of industry sectors and the embodied energy flow from sources of energy use to the final consumption of commodities between 2006 and 2015 the national direct energy intensity reduced by an average of 2 per annum nearly all industry sectoral groups reduced their total energy intensity because of direct energy intensity reduction from other or within industry sectoral groups the difference between the embodied energy use in the import and the export had widened making australia a greater net importer of embodied energy with significant outsourcing of direct energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions despite a slight reduction in per capita direct household energy use 3 the per capita indirect energy use embodied in household commodity consumption increased by 7 as indirect household energy use is more than three times direct household energy use improving end use energy efficiency should also consider the embodied energy in commodities structural decomposition analysis shows that for the studied period population growth and per capita demand for imported commodities are two major contributors for the increased total embodied energy in australia

social groups and co2 emissions in spanish households abstract this paper examines the social factors that underlie the composition of final demand and therefore determine the final volume of emissions the study throws light on the relationships between the parameters characterising spanish households income urban rural residence local population density head of household s level of education and social class and their behaviour with regard to consumption and the demand for goods and services on this basis we determine which consumption patterns are best aligned with sustainable growth and development our main conclusion is that the factors analysed determine the volume of emissions for each household in terms of their correlation with income which is the primary determinant of consumption patterns the methodology proposed combines linear sam models and econometric estimation of emissions elasticity with respect to spending

explaining the rain the rise and decline of nations after 25 years in the quarter century since the publication of mancur olson s rise and decline of nations a large literature has evolved testing the central hypothesis regarding olson s thesis on institutional sclerosis these tests have taken the form of both econometric regression analysis involving a sample of various nations and detailed narrative case studies of specific nations tests have appeared in both economics and political science journals as well as in collected volumes and independent books performed primarily by authors from america and europe a review of over 50 separate works reveals that on the whole the theory of institutional sclerosis is generally but certainly not universally supported no systematic bias in favor of or opposition to olson is found to have arisen on the basis of methodology publication outlet or authorship location