accounting for asymmetric price responses and underlying energy demand trends in oecd industrial energy demand abstract this paper explores the way technical progress and improvements in energy efficiency are captured when modelling oecd industrial energy demand the industrial sectors of the developed world involve a number of different practices and processes utilising a range of different technologies consequently given the derived demand nature of energy it is vital when modelling industrial energy demand that the impact of technical progress is appropriately captured however the energy economics literature does not give a clear guide on how this can be achieved one strand suggests that technical progress is endogenous via asymmetric price responses whereas another strand suggests that it is exogenous more recently it has been suggested that potentially there is a role for both endogenous technical progress and exogenous technical progress and consequently the general model should be specified accordingly this paper therefore attempts to model oecd industrial energy demand using annual time series data over the period 1962 2010 for 15 oecd countries using the structural time series model framework the general specifications allow for both asymmetric price responses for technical progress to impact endogenously and an underlying energy demand trend for technical progress and other factors to impact exogenously but in a non linear way the results show that almost all of the preferred models for oecd industrial energy demand incorporate both a stochastic underlying energy demand trend and asymmetric price responses this gives estimated long run income elasticities in the range of 0 34 to 0 96 estimated long run price maximum elasticities in the range of 0 06 to 1 22 estimated long run price recovery elasticities in the range of 0 00 to 0 27 and estimated long run price cut elasticities in the range of 0 00 to 0 18 furthermore the analysis suggests that when modelling industrial energy demand there is a place for endogenous technical progress and an exogenous underlying energy demand trend consequently it is argued that any modelling strategy should start by including both and only imposed restrictions if accepted by the data

environmental kuznets curves new evidence on both panel and country level co2 emissions using data on per capita co2 emissions and per capita real gdp from fifteen countries spanning the period 1960 2013 this paper tests the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc using both panel based and time series based methodological approaches of cointegration given that the ekc hypothesis postulates an inverted u shaped relationship between emissions and output the study tests for cointegration between per capita co2 emissions per capita real gdp and the squared values of per capita real gdp the evidence from panel cointegration methodologies is mixed this result might arise due to time dependence of cointegrating coefficients the time varying cointegration approaches provide strong evidence in favor of time varying cointegration parameters furthermore based on the quantile cointegration approach the results indicate that the ekc hypothesis holds in 12 out of the 15 countries however even for these three countries the ekc hypothesis seems to hold at certain quantiles

the causality relationship between energy consumption and gdp in g 11 countries revisited abstract this paper explores whether energy conservation policies can be implemented in countries with the same level of development that is is restraining energy consumption without compromising economic growth feasible in all industrialized countries a new granger non causality testing procedure developed by toda and yamamoto 1995 journal of econometrics 66 225 250 is applied to re investigate the relationship if any between energy consumption and income in 11 major industrialized countries the results clearly do not support the view that energy consumption and income are neutral with respect to each other except in the case of the united kingdom germany and sweden where a neutral relationship is found bi directional causality in the united states and uni directional running from energy consumption to gdp in canada belgium the netherlands and switzerland are found this indicates that energy conservation may hinder economic growth in the latter five countries further the causality relationship appears to be uni directional but reversed for france italy and japan which implies that in these three countries energy conservation may be viable without being detrimental to economic growth

income and price elasticities of energy consumption in egypt a time series analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide empirical estimates of the price and income elasticities of energy consumption in egypt it fills an important gap since policy discussion of energy pricing issues has so far been based more on assumptions than on hard evidence the paper shows that the real relative price of energy has been falling steadily since 1972 while per capita energy consumption rose some 50 over the decade 1972 81 evidence produced in this exercise indicates quite clearly that price and income elasticities of energy consumption are significantly much lower than was generally believed

an alternative analysis of apparent ekc type transitions abstract the hypothesis of the environmental kuznets curve ekc depends upon the assumption that countries pass through a similar environmental impact trajectory as they experience income growth implying that income levels determine pollution levels the authors present evidence that this is not representative of the way many individual country s pollution emission trajectories evolve and question the emphasis on income determinism by the ekc the study proposes that nonlinear dynamic systems analysis provides a more complete description of individual country pollution trajectories in the case of co 2 emissions the nonlinear time trajectories show abrupt transitions that occur contemporaneously with historical events and over a broad range of incomes

management by the numbers a formal approach to deriving informational and distributional properties of unmanaged earnings we explore the theoretical relation between earnings and market returns as well as the properties of earnings frequency distributions under the assumption that managers use unbiased accounting information to sequentially decide on real options their firms have and report generated earnings truthfully with the market pricing the firm based on those reported earnings we generate benchmarks against which empirically observed earnings returns relations and aggregate earnings distributions can be evaluated this parsimonious model shows a coherent set of results reported losses are less persistent than reported gains decision making diminishes the s shaped market response to earnings and earnings relate to returns asymmetrically in the way documented by basu 1997 furthermore the implied frequency distribution of aggregate earnings is neither symmetric nor necessarily single peaked instead it may exhibit a kink at zero and look similar to the plots reported by burgstahler and dichev 1997 however within our model none of these phenomena are due to reporting noise bias or some undesirable strategic managerial behavior they are the natural consequences of using past earnings as the basis for value increasing managerial decision making that in turn generates the future earnings on which future decisions will be based

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

asymmetric price responses and the underlying energy demand trend are they substitutes or complements evidence from modelling oecd aggregate energy demand abstract a number of energy demand studies have considered the importance of modelling asymmetric price responses apr for example the often cited work of gately and huntington 2002 griffin and schulman 2005 questioned the asymmetric approach arguing that this is only capturing energy saving technical progress huntington 2006 however showed that for whole economy aggregate energy and oil demand there is a role statistically for both apr and exogenous energy saving technical change in a separate strand of the literature the idea of the underlying energy demand trend uedt has been developed see for example hunt et al 2003a and 2003b and dimitropoulos et al 2005 they argue that it is important in time series energy demand models to allow for stochastic trends or uedts based upon the structural time series dynamic regression methodology recommended by harvey 1989 1997 this paper attempts to bring these strands of the literature together by proposing a testing procedure for the uedt and apr in energy demand models within both a panel context consistent with the huntington 2006 approach and the structural time series modelling framework a set of tests across a range of specifications using time series and panel data are therefore suggested in order to try and ascertain whether energy saving technical change or the more general uedt and apr are substitutes for each other when modelling energy demand or whether they are actually picking up different influences and are therefore complements using annual whole economy data for 17 oecd countries over the period 1960 2006 the results suggest that for most of the countries the uedt is preferred to apr whereas for another group the uedt and apr are complements and for another group they are substitutes it is argued therefore that energy demand modellers should not assume at the outset that one method is superior to the other moreover wherever possible a general model be it in a time series or panel context that includes a non linear uedt and apr should be initially estimated and only if accepted by the data should symmetry and or a more restrictive uedt be imposed

accounting conservatism and the efficiency of debt contracts in this paper we examine how accounting conservatism affects the efficiency of debt contracting we develop the statistical and informational properties of accounting reports under varying degrees of conditional and unconditional accounting conservatism consistent with basu s 1997 description of differ ential verifiability standards optimal debt covenants and interest rates on debt are derived from a natural tension between debt holders and equity claimants we show how optimal covenants vary with the degree of conservatism and de rive an efficiency metric that depends on the degree of conservatism we find that accounting conservatism actually decreases the efficiency of debt contracts contrary to the suggestions of watts 2003 and contrary to the hypothesis in numerous empirical studies

examining the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors in energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria policy implications abstract this paper examines the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors such as consumers preferences lifestyles and values which have hitherto been ignored in energy demand and co2 emissions modelling for nigeria we use a structural time series model to estimate various energy demand and co2 intensity models that take account of the aforementioned factors we adopt preferred models from these estimates to analyse how energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria might evolve by generating three different future scenarios to 2025 we find energy efficiency and non economic factors to influence energy demand and co2 emissions the long run income and price elasticities obtained differ significantly from those in existing studies that have ignored these salient factors in a business as usual scenario the results indicate that energy demand will continue to grow consequently present policies do not sufficiently mitigate aggregate co2 emissions in nigeria the lesson for policy makers is that the extant policies introduced to restrain co2 emissions from a production perspective have to be combined with new policies that influence consumers lifestyles and behaviours develop energy efficient technologies and apply low tariffs on imported energy efficient appliances to drive down co2 emissions from a consumption perspective

earnings as an explanatory variable for returns in this paper we investigate whether the level of earnings divided by price at the beginning of the stock return period is relevant for evaluating earnings returns associations the primary model motivating this research relies on the idea that book value owners equity and market value are both stock variables indicating the wealth of the firm s equity holders the related flow variables after adjusting for dividends are respectively earnings divided by price at the beginning of the return period a p 1 and market returns it then follows that earnings divided by beginning of period price should be associated with stock returns although models based on a relation between market value and book value are used occasionally in the accounting research literature see for example landsman 1986 harris and ohlson 1987 and barth

internal control system earnings quality and the dynamics of financial reporting using an earnings management model in which managers manipulate information when the firm s control system fails i introduce a measure of earnings quality based on the notion of integral precision that has solid theoretical foundations a trade off between the frequency and the magnitude of overstatements is shown overstatements are larger when misreporting is less likely overall the model generates a distribution of earnings announcements similar to its empirical analogue and provides a structural method to identify the likelihood and magnitude of misreporting by exploiting information from the moments of the distribution of reported earnings

is there a debt threshold effect on output growth abstract this paper studies the relationship between public debt expansion and economic growth and investigates whether the debt growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness we contribute theoretically by developing tests for threshold effects in the context of dynamic heterogeneous panel data models with cross sectionally dependent errors in the empirical application using data on a sample of forty countries over the 1965 2010 period we find no evidence for a universally applicable threshold effect in the relationship between public debt and economic growth regardless of the threshold however we find significant negative effects of public debt buildup on output growth

growth inequality and poverty looking beyond averages the evidence is compelling that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction but how much do poor people share in growth do they gain more in some settings than others do some gain while others lose does pro poor growth mean more or less aggregate growth recent theories and evidence suggest some answers but deeper microeconomic empirical work is needed on growth and distributed change only then will we have a firm basis for identifying the specific policies and programs needed to complement and possibly modify growth oriented policies

review of key international demand elasticities for major industrializing economies abstract this paper conducts a selective review of various estimates for energy demand responses focused specially upon lower income industrializing economies rather than richer mature nations it emphasizes recent trends from empirical studies that have been published after 2000 emphasis is placed on the five major emerging or transitional economies in brazil china india mexico and russia although other important nations like chile and south korea are also discussed when studies are available the review focuses attention on the long run responses to changes in prices and income after capital stock turnover has been completed the terminology often refers to elasticities or the percentage change in energy use divided by the percentage change in price or income holding constant all other factors that could influence energy use decisions estimates cover petroleum products natural gas and electricity although the available studies often ignore coal they also include the economy wide impacts real gdp to price changes most studies have focused upon household and transportation use of liquid fuels many fewer studies have investigated fuels used by industry or commerce or for electric generation based upon the available estimates price and income elasticities for liquid fuels are generally less than one unity for many countries and sectors except for the long run income effect for transportation purposes which can range widely by country between 0 24 and 1 75 while averaging 0 94 for all countries

economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions abstract recent empirical research has examined the relationship between certain indicators of environmental degradation and income concluding that in some cases an inverted u shaped relationship which has been called an environmental kuznets curve ekc exists between these variables unfortunately this inverted u shaped relationship does not hold for greenhouse gas emissions one explanation of the absence of ekc like behavior in greenhouse gas emissions is that greenhouse gases are special pollutants that create global not local disutility but the international nature of global warming is not the only reason that prevents de linking greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth the intergenerational nature of the negative impact of greenhouse gas emissions may have also been an important factor preventing the implementation of greenhouse gas abatement measures in the past in this paper we explore the effect that the presence of intergenerational spillovers has on the emissions income relationship we use a numerically calibrated overlapping generations model of climate economy interactions we conclude that 1 the intertemporal responsibility of the regulatory agency 2 the institutional capacity to make intergenerational transfers and 3 the presence of intergenerationally lagged impact of emissions constitute important determinants of the relationship between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions

true world income distribution 1988 and 1993 first calculation based on household surveys alone the paper derives world income or expenditure distribution of individuals for two years 1988 and 1993 it is the first paper to calculate world distribution for individuals based entirely on household survey data from 91 countries and adjusted for differences in purchasing power parity between the countries measured by the gini index inequality increased from an already very high 63 in 1988 to 66 in 1993 the increase was driven more by rising differences in mean incomes between the countries than by rising inequalities within countries the most important contributors were rising urban rural differences in china and slow growth of rural incomes in south asia compared to several large developed market economies

the role of economic theory in modelling the long run this argues for a closer link between the modelling of the long run relations in applied economics and the intertemporal equilibrium notion from economic theory this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

do increases in energy efficiency improve environmental quality and sustainability governments world wide increasingly see energy efficiency as an important aspect of sustainability however there is a debate in the literature as to whether the impact of improved energy efficiency on reducing energy use might be partially or more than wholly offset through rebound and backfire effects this paper clarifies the theoretical conditions under which such effects would occur and explores their likely significance using a computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy we find that for scotland a general improvement in energy efficiency in the production sectors of the economy initially produces rebound effects that eventually grow into backfire energy use ultimately increases in response to an efficiency gain and the ratio of gdp to co2 emissions falls the economic factors underpinning rebound effects are straightforward energy efficiency improvements result in an effective cut in energy prices which produces output substitution competitiveness and income effects that stimulate energy demands however the presence of strong rebound or even backfire does not mean that efficiency enhancing policies are irrelevant rather it suggests that such policies operating alone are insufficient to generate environmental improvements the implication is that a co ordinated portfolio of energy policies is required

earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses this paper provides evidence that firms manage reported earnings to avoid earnings decreases and losses specifically in cross sectional distributions of earnings changes and earnings we lind unusually low frequencies of small decreases in earnings and small losscs and unusually high frequencies of small increases in earnings and small positive income we find evidence that two components of earnings cash flow from operations and changes in working capital are used to achieve increases in earnings we present two theories based on stakeholder use of information processing heuristics and prospect theory about the motivation for avoidance of earnings decreases and losses

the environmental kuznets curve and the structural change hypothesis we provide a very simple macroeconomic investigation of the role that structural changes might play in generating inverted u shaped income pollution relationships differently from previous research which mainly focuses on empirical static or general equilibrium models we develop a standard balanced growth path bgp analysis we show that along the bgp equilibrium an inverted u shaped income pollution relationship may occur as a response to structural changes but whether this is the case or not it will crucially depend upon the magnitude of a production externality parameter moreover we show that the negative relationship between income and pollution can only be a transitory phenomenon and in the long run pollution will increase as income rises generating overall an n shaped pattern

reassessing the environmental kuznets curve for co2 emissions a robustness exercise the number of studies seeking to empirically characterize the reduced form relationship between a country economic growth and the quantity of pollutants produced in the process has recently increased significantly in several cases researchers have found evidence pointing to an inverted u benvironmental kuznetsq curve in the case of co2 however the evidence is at best mixed in this paper we reconsider that evidence by assessing how robust it is when the analysis is conducted in a different parametric setup and when using alternative emissions data from the international energy agency relative to the literature our contribution can be viewed as a robustness exercise in these two respects the econometric results lead to two conclusions firstly published evidence on the ekc does not appear to depend upon the source of the data at least as far as carbon dioxide is concerned secondly when an alternative functional form is employed there is evidence of an inverted u pattern for the group of oecd countries with reasonable turning point regardless of the data set employed not so for non oecd countries as the ekc is basically increasing slowly concave according to the iea data and more bellshaped in the case of cdiac data d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

energy efficiency and sustainable growth in industrial sectors in european union countries a nonlinear ardl approach abstract it can be said that economic growth providing it ensures a clean and safe environment is one of the main objectives of many countries with this in mind an important question needs to be asked what is the relationship between energy efficiency and economic growth this can only be answered through an empirical analysis by carrying out such an analysis using the energy efficiency of the industrial sector for 11 european union countries for a time span from 1997 to 2015 it should be possible to understand if the energy efficiency measures and investments being made are driving economies towards greater energy efficiency and sustainable growth this paper uses a nonlinear ardl model which allows short and long run relationships to be analysed for the ascending and descending movements of variables the results indicate that investment is increasing energy efficiency while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions economic growth is driving economies to greater energy efficiency the same result is found in the industrial energy price index to verify robustness the environmental kuznets curve was estimated using gross domestic product per capita and as an alternative the industrial production index to ensure increased energy efficiency along with sustainable growth policymakers must adapt their policies and devise new ones to both incentivise investment and control energy pricing alternative ways of electricity generation such as renewable sources could allow the economy to grow in a more sustainable way such mechanisms would let policymakers develop policies for greener and more sustainable growth while at the same time encouraging the efficient use of energy

testing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis across the u s evidence from panel mean group estimators abstract it is widely believed that greenhouse gases contribute to a warmer climate since global warming is a serious threat and greenhouse gas emissions are one of the main causes of it analyzing the effects of economic development on environment have great importance in this study the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for the 50 u s states during the 1960 2010 period using recent panel data estimators that take cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity into account accordingly the cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity robust estimators augmented mean group amg and common correlated effects mean group estimator ccemg provide mixed results the amg estimator strongly validates the ekc hypothesis asserting that the ekc holds in 30 of the 50 states with turning points for income per capita lie between 1292 and 48597 on the contrary the ccemg estimator provides only weak evidence on the ekc hypothesis and the ekc holds only in 10 states with turning points between 2457 and 14603

environmental policy and macroeconomic dynamics in a new keynesian model this paper studies the dynamic behavior of an economy under different environmental policy regimes in a new keynesian model with nominal and real uncertainty we find the following results i an emissions cap policy is likely to dampen macroeconomic fluctuations ii staggered price adjustment alters significantly the performance of the environmental policy regime put in place iii the optimal environmental policy response to shocks is strongly influenced by the degree to which prices adjust and by the monetary policy reaction

estimation and empirical properties of a firm year measure of accounting conservatism we estimate a firm year measure of accounting conservatism examine its empirical properties as a metric and illustrate applications by testing new hypotheses that shed further light on the nature and effects of conservatism the results are consistent with the measure c score capturing variation in conservatism and also predicting asymmetric earnings timeliness at horizons of up to 3 years ahead cross sectional hypothesis tests suggest firms with longer investment cycles higher idiosyncratic uncertainty and higher information asymmetry have higher accounting conservatism event studies suggest increased conservatism is a response to increases in information asymmetry and idiosyncratic uncertainty

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

carbon intensity and economic development 1962 1991 a brief exploration of the environmental kuznets curve the relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity co2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991 the inverted u curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982 this is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle income countries the curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy

causality between income and emission a country group specific econometric analysis abstract empirical studies of the environmental kuznets curve ekc examine the presence or otherwise of an inverted u shaped relationship between the level of pollution and the level of income customarily in the diagram of ekc the level of income is shown on the horizontal axis and that of pollution on the vertical axis thus it is presumed that the relationship between income and pollution is one of unidirectional causality with income causing environmental changes and not vice versa the validity of this presumption is now being questioned it is being asserted that the nature and direction of causality may vary from one country to the other in this paper we present the results of a study of income co 2 emission causality based on a granger causality test to cross country panel data on per capita income and the corresponding per capita co 2 emission data briefly our results indicate three different types of causality relationship holding for different country groups for the developed country groups of north america and western europe and also for eastern europe the causality is found to run from emission to income for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan causality from income to emission is obtained finally for the country groups of asia and africa the causality is found to be bi directional the regression equations estimated as part of the granger causality test further suggest that for the country groups of north america and western europe the growth rate of emission has become stationary around a zero mean and a shock in the growth rate of emission tends to generate a corresponding shock in the growth rate of income in contrast for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan a shock in the income growth rate is likely to result in a corresponding shock in the growth rate of emission finally causality being bi directional for the country groups of asia and africa the income and the emission growth rates seemed to reinforce each other

underlying energy demand trends in south korean and indonesian aggregate whole economy and residential sectors abstract this paper used annual time series data over the period 1973 2008 to estimate energy demand functions for south korea and indonesian aggregated whole economy and residential sectors furthermore the underlying energy demand trend uedt which may be non linear and reflects not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction is also examined in the paper in estimating the price and income elasticities the study applies harvey s structural time series approach where a stochastic trend is used as a proxy for uedt empirical evidence from this study reveals that the estimated long run income and price elasticities range from 0 58 to 1 15 and from 0 09 to 066 respectively furthermore the stochastic form for the uedt is preferred for both countries and sectors suggesting a wide variation in the exogenous effects of energy saving technical progress in addition to other pertinent exogenous factors such as economic structure consumer preferences and socio economic influences

can big bath and earnings smoothing co exist as equilibrium financial reporting strategies we study a model of financial reporting where investors infer the precision of reported earnings reporting a larger earnings surprise reduces the inferred earnings precision dampening the impact on firm value of reporting higher earnings and providing a natural demand for smoother earnings we show that for sufficiently bad news the manager under reports earnings by the maximum preferring to take a big bath in the current period in order to report higher future earnings if the news is good the manager smoothes earnings with the amount of smoothing depending on the level of cashflows observed he either over reports or partially under reports for slightly good news and gradually increases his under reporting as the news gets better until he is under reporting the maximum amount for sufficiently good news this result holds both when investors are naive and ignore management s ability to manipulate earnings or sophisticated and correctly infer management s disclosure strategy

why have measures of earnings quality changed over time the properties of earnings have changed dramatically over the past 40 years prior studies interpret this trend as a decline in earnings quality but disagree on whether it results from changes in the real economy or changes in accounting standards i find that each new cohort of listed firms exhibits lower earnings quality than its predecessors mainly because of higher intangible intensity i conclude that the trend of decline in earnings quality is due more to changes in the sample of firms than to changes in generally accepted accounting principles gaap or in the earnings quality of previously listed firms

the income inequality and carbon emissions trade off revisited abstract this paper investigates the marginal effect of income inequality on carbon emissions per capita we use a panel consisting of 68 countries over a 50 year period from 1961 to 2010 we report estimates that support the hypothesis that there is a trade off between carbon emissions per capita and income inequality this trade off is not homogeneous across countries and depends upon the level of development measured by income per capita using panel smooth transition regression we find that this relationship is negative for countries with low to moderate income per capita but becomes slightly positive after passing a threshold located around fifteen thousand 2011 us dollars moreover the inequality elasticity of emissions per capita is comparable in magnitude to its income elasticity therefore both inequality and income levels are crucial to define policies to reduce carbon emissions this implies a challenge to policymakers who pursue to reduce both income inequality and carbon emissions

industrial electricity demand for turkey a structural time series analysis abstract this research investigates the relationship between turkish industrial electricity consumption industrial value added and electricity prices in order to forecast future turkish industrial electricity demand to achieve this an industrial electricity demand function for turkey is estimated by applying the structural time series technique to annual data over the period 1960 to 2008 in addition to identifying the size and significance of the price and industrial value added output elasticities this technique also uncovers the electricity underlying energy demand trend uedt for the turkish industrial sector and is as far as is known the first attempt to do this the results suggest that output and real electricity prices and a uedt all have an important role to play in driving turkish industrial electricity demand consequently they should all be incorporated when modelling turkish industrial electricity demand and the estimated uedt should arguably be considered in future energy policy decisions concerning the turkish electricity industry the output and price elasticities are estimated to be 0 15 and 0 16 respectively with an increasing but at a decreasing rate uedt and based on the estimated equation and different forecast assumptions it is predicted that turkish industrial electricity demand will be somewhere between 97 and 148 twh by 2020

do countries influence neighbouring pollution a spatial analysis of the ekc for co2 emissions abstract by considering spatial relationships this study aims to analyse to what extent per capita co2 emissions are determined by renewable energy consumption the share of the services sector in gdp energy intensity and real per capita income a panel data set composed of 173 countries over the 1990 2014 period is used to estimate an environmental kuznets curve ekc augmented by neighbouring per capita income and energy intensity both standard and spatial forms are estimated for seven different sets of countries to assess the robustness of the results finally several forecasts are performed to verify global sustainability and to provide some policy suggestions for the period 2015 2100 the empirical results indicate that i most areas support the standard ekc ii there seems to be an inverted u shaped relationship between neighbouring per capita income and national per capita emissions in europe asia and the world as a whole iii neighbouring energy intensity increases national per capita emissions and iv forecasts show that economic growth will accelerate climate change however a steady annual growth in renewable energy consumption and a steady decrease in energy intensity both close to 2 5 may guarantee environmental sustainability prior to 2100

backcasting u s oil demand over a turbulent decade abstract this paper compares 10 year backcast projections of u s petroleum consumption for the 2000 2009 period based upon a range of functional forms although a univariate specification based upon only lagged consumption performed better than most approaches it provides little value to the policymaker who wants to understand the factors that influence oil consumption and by how much one structural approach performed considerably better than all other approaches including the univariate model this specification is the autoregressive distributed lag adl model that allowed oil demand to respond differently asymmetrically to price increases and decreases certain forms of this equation however do well while others perform poorly evaluations of backcast projections over different periods and updated frequently can be important byproducts of energy modeling

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

co2 emissions energy consumption and output in france abstract this paper examines the dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for france using cointegration and vector error correction modelling techniques we argue that these variables are strongly inter related and therefore their relationship must be examined using an integrated framework the results provide evidence for the existence of a fairly robust long run relationship between these variables for the period 1960 2000 the causality results support the argument that economic growth exerts a causal influence on growth of energy use and growth of pollution in the long run the results also point to a uni directional causality running from growth of energy use to output growth in the short run

assessing the role of institutions in limiting the environmental externalities of economic growth emissions of pollutants tend to be procyclical as they generally increase with economic growth however as government policy has a role to play in the mitigation of the environmental consequences of economic activity the quality of institutions may influence the procyclicality of pollution and reduce the environmental cost of economic growth based on the assumption that changes in emissions are stronger at earlier stages of development we develop a non linear framework and confirm first the presence of income related threshold effects in the relationship between pollution co 2 and greenhouse gas emissions and growth for a panel of 142 countries over a period spanning from 1960 to 2017 we also find that institutional quality influences this relationship as the quality of institutions lowers the value of the threshold and the degree of procyclicality of emissions these results bring therefore evidence that higher institutional quality can attenuate the environmental externalities of economic growth

what do we know about global income inequality in this paper we review the recent literature on global interpersonal income inequality while all estimates agree that the level is very high with a gini of between 0 630 and 0 686 in the 1990s there is no consensus regarding the direction of change we discuss methodological issues including the use of national accounts versus survey based estimates of mean income or consumption and the choice of purchasing power parity exchange rates findings of a rise or fall in global income inequality are not robust across different estimation methods and datasets given the diversity of estimates and various sources of uncertainty including gaps and errors in the underlying data we conclude there is insufficient evidence to determine the direction of change in global interpersonal inequality in recent decades

do nonlinearity firm specific coefficients and losses represent distinct factors in the relation between stock returns and accounting earnings abstract recent studies have provided theory and evidence that the contemporaneous relation between stock returns and accounting earnings is nonlinear different for profits and losses and different across firms since each factor can result from differences in earnings persistence existing theory is ambiguous as to whether these factors are distinct or overlapping thus we conduct a simultaneous examination our primary tests show that each factor explains a significant portion of the variance of returns after controlling for the other two factors with firm specific estimation providing the largest incremental explanatory power alternative tests produce similar conclusions empirically the three factors are distinct

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

economic growth and energy consumption the energy environmental kuznets curve for latin america and the caribbean abstract this paper investigates the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption using the hypothesis postulated for the energy environmental kuznets curve which assumes an inverted u shape relationship between income and energy consumption panel data for 22 latin american and caribbean countries for the period 1990 2011 were used absolute energy consumption was chosen as an environmental pressure indicator because energy consumption is the major contributor of emissions pollutants the results obtained in the estimations show that the hypothesis postulated for the energy environmental kuznets curve is not supported for the region on the contrary the results show an exponential growth as gross value added grows also notable differences are shown between the analyzed economies

a measurement approach to conservatism and earnings management this paper formalizes a two step representation of accounting measurement and uses it to formalize a general rationale for conservatism as a measurement principle a transaction s economic substance manifests itself in characteristics of the transaction and an accounting rule is a mapping from transaction characteristics to an accounting report managers who have stakes in the accounting report are able to influence transaction characteristics such earnings management is ex post rational for managers but ex ante inefficient to safeguard against such ex post opportunism the optimal ex ante accounting rule is conservative in the sense that it requires more verification of the transaction characteristics favorable to managers thus this rationale for conservatism is as general as the managers ability and incentive to inflate transaction characteristics by opening the black box of accounting measurement the two step representation also formalizes some classic accounting concepts such as relevance reliability verifiability verification and accounting motivated transactions

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

on the optimal relation between the properties of managerial and financial reporting systems we develop a theoretical model of the firm that links properties stewardship vs valuation focus of financial reporting regimes with the informational properties of optimal managerial accounting systems we show that contrary to the standard textbook proposition properties of management and financial accounting systems are not independent significantly we provide an explicit connection between exogenous and observable properties of a firm s financial reporting system and the quality of the managerial accounting system on which manager s base real economic decisions as the quality of those economic decisions can also be inferred from publicly available data our theory generates new opportunities for empirical managerial accounting research on large nonproprietary samples further by being able to identify enhanced performance due to improved managerial accounting information our theory provides opportunities to gain a better understanding of the link between particular managerial accounting practices and the quality of the information produced

the information content of losses abstract this study hypothesizes that because shareholders have a liquidation option losses are not expected to perpetuate they are thus less informative than profits about the firm s future prospects the results are consistent with the hypothesis they also show that the documented increase in the earnings response coefficent as the cumulation period increases appears to be due exclusively to the effect of losses the liquidation option effect extends to profitable cases where earnings are low enough to make the option attractive alternating explanations for the low informativeness of losses such as mean reversal of earnings are not supported by the tests

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part a concept causes and the co2 emissions case abstract the main purpose of this study is to capture the main features of the environmental kuznets curve ekc concept according to the ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected eventually to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the ekc concept leads many researchers from the early 1990s to assume that each economy should focus on its growth and any environmental problems will be eventually eliminated by the process of economic growth several studies attempt to test empirically the ekc hypothesis using data on many countries and examining various types of environmental degradation while other studies examine the underlying factors that may drive such a relationship this article reviews the evolution of the ekc concept and the possible causes of an ekc pattern like the distribution of income the international trade pollution haven hypothesis structural changes technical progress and improvements in energy efficiency institutions and governance and consumer preferences as co2 emissions are a pollutant with global effects several studies deal with the possible ekc pattern for co2 emissions and these studies are discussed separately the various critiques on the ekc concept are reviewed in the second article of this work

economy and environment a theoretical essay on the interdependence of economic and environmental systems preface notation guide 1 introduction part i the physical economy environment system 2 closed physical systems a model 3 structure and time in the physical system 4 technological change and the environmental constraints to physical growth part ii the economic system 5 the price system 6 prices property and the environment 7 economic conflict and environmental change part iii environmental strategies in an evolutionary economy environment system 8 time uncertainty and external effects 9 the market solution 10 the stationary state 11 conclusions references index

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

trade the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve examining the linkages abstract this paper examines the extent to which the ekc inverted u relationship can be explained by trade and specifically the migration or displacement of dirty industries from the developed regions to the developing regions the pollution haven hypothesis phh using detailed data on north south trade flows for pollution intensive products the evidence for the phh is assessed emissions of 10 air and water pollutants are then estimated controlling for trade openness structural change and dirty north south trade flows evidence of pollution haven effects is found although such effects do not appear to be widespread and appear to be relatively small compared to the roles played other explanatory variables

optimal impairment rules abstract we study the optimal accounting policy of a financially constrained firm that pledges assets to raise debt capital for financing a risky project the accounting system provides information about the value of the collateral absent accounting regulation the optimal accounting system is conditionally conservative it recognizes an impairment loss if the asset value is below a certain threshold but never reports unrealized gains we describe the optimal impairment rule and the optimal precision of the accounting information and we provide comparative static results that lead to testable predictions on the determinants of impairment rules

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part b critical issues according to the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the first article of this study reviews the empirical studies examining various factors other than income that may lead to an ekc pattern the current article reviews in the first part the major critiques on the ekc speculation which relate to the following issues the normal distribution of world income the feedback from environmental degradation to economic growth the characteristics of the pollutant in question various econometric issues the evolution of consumption when income rises and the assumption about a common developmental pattern in all countries the second part discusses additional matters reported indirectly in the literature and or must be further examined there are doubts whether the gdp series captures the transition of production to the three productive sectors in empirical estimations and whether services are less polluting compared to industry activities finally the original kuznets theory which laid the groundwork for the ekc concept does not seem to solve income inequality problems

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

a comparative study on decoupling relationship and influence factors between china s regional economic development and industrial energy related carbon emissions abstract to study the relationship between china s regional economic development and industrial carbon emission reveal the major influencing factors and mechanism of carbon emission change in all regions and provide theoretical evidence for governments to formulate emission reduction strategies and policies big data analysis and the tapio extended model were adopted to quantitatively analyse the decoupling relationship between carbon emission and economic growth in eight major regions of china between 1996 and 2012 logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi was also applied to decompose the main factors affecting carbon emission change in all regions the results show that 1 the proportions of industrial energy related to carbon emissions in central china and the beijing tianjin region decreased year by year while the opposite was the case in coastal areas of northern china furthermore the proportions in other regions basically remained unchanged 2 a weak decoupling relation between industry energy carbon emission and economic growth was found in most regions except in northwest china during the period 1996 2000 southwest china south and north coastal regions during the period 2001 2005 beijing and tianjin during the period 2010 2012 energy consumption decoupling factors exerted a consistent positive effect on industry energy carbon emission decoupling with decoupling impact greater than emission factors 3 the overall level of carbon emission reduction technology in china was low and backwards and limited contributions have been made to economic growth and industry energy carbon emission decoupling development emphases of decoupling should be put on energy saving technology promotion industry structure upgrading and energy structure improvement in the future 4 economic intensity effect has exerted the most powerful positive influence on carbon emissions except in developed areas and the positive effect was weaker than that in other regions

is china at the tipping point reconsidering environment economy nexus abstract environmental kuznets curve ekc has become the predominant approach between environmentalists and sociologists to modeling environment economy nexus during the past quarter century also with regard to china the largest industrial pollutant emitter in the world where unprecedented change offers a unique approach to the aggregate emissions in the case of china the question is whether a tipping point can be reached without de industrialization and at a lower income phase than in developed economies it is also the worldwide intrinsic concern of environment economy nexus in the prospective industrialization process of developing countries however china relative researches involve some existing challenges such as cross regional time series various socioeconomic drivers and turning thresholds taking the new normal china economy formulation into consideration a rethink and reexamination of the environment economy relationship was performed using the longest possible environmental and economic data from 30 provincial economies for the period of 1985 2017 different from the existing mostly time series based china ekc literature not only the llc ips fisher unit root tests pedroni and kao panel cointegration tests and the panel ols are used but the problem of cross sectional dependence is handled in panel unit root tests across various cross economies and the error correction based cointegration test is employed allowing for various forms of heterogeneity robust against the cross sectional dependence and the dols estimators are applied to resolve the standard ols for serial correlation and for endogeneity of regressors especially in only small possible china samples in particular the finding contrasts with the overly optimistic research of certain scholars who state that china could be on a clearly different path from the routes of some developed economies in the world realizing the environmental turnaround at low levels of economy and industrialization china economy is not just having a certain environmental dividend effect but mainly faces a more significant environmental pressure effect environmental input and its efficiency is still insufficient to perform the intended pollution reduction effects fundamentally the environmental investment as a proportion of gdp should reach the past levels of some developed economies in the similar pollution economy phase

corruption pollution and the kuznets environment curve abstract this paper examines the implications of corruption and rent seeking behavior by the government for the relationship between pollution and growth cases of both cooperative and non cooperative interaction between the government and the private firm are studied it is shown that corruption is not likely to preclude the existence of an inverted u shaped kuznets environmental curve under both these cases however for any level of per capita income the pollution levels corresponding to corrupt behavior are always above the socially optimal level further the turning point of the kuznets curve takes place at income and pollution levels above those corresponding to the social optimum

cash flow asymmetry causes and implications for conditional conservatism research earnings asymmetric timeliness captures both accrual and operating cash flow cfo asymmetric timeliness because recognition of operating cash flows does not reflect differential verification thresholds for recognizing unrealized gains versus losses cfo asymmetry adds noise or bias to tests of conditional conservatism we show that cfo asymmetry is predictable in the cross section and varies systematically with life cycle characteristics removing cfo from earnings and using accruals based measures of asymmetric timeliness eliminates several biases that prior studies have attributed to other sources moreover accrual asymmetric timeliness varies in the cross section as theory predicts going forward we recommend researchers use accruals based asymmetric timeliness measures when testing for conditional conservatism

what causes pm2 5 pollution cross economy empirical analysis from socioeconomic perspective abstract is it true that as the mainstream intuition asserts urbanization and industrialization are the two main socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 how do the two trends affect pm2 5 emission this paper quantitatively analyzes the socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 through assessment on stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stripat based on the panel data of 79 developing countries over 2001 2010 the average levels of pm2 5 pollution are calculated using remote sensing data overcoming the difficulties that developing countries are in lack of pm2 5 monitors and that point data cannot reflect the overall level of pm2 5 pollution on a large scale squared terms of income and urbanization and their cross term are included in the regression models respectively to analyze the possible heterogeneous impacts on pm2 5 emissions in different development stages the results show that income urbanization and service sector have significant impact on pm2 5 pollution income has a positive effect on pm2 5 all the time but the effect decreases as the level of urbanization or income goes up an inverted u relationship exists between urbanization and pm2 5 in which pm2 5 pollution positively correlates with a low level of income or urbanization but negatively at a high level policy recommendations from the perspective of macro level social and economic regulation are provided for developing economies to reduce pm2 5 pollution

energy consumption income and carbon emissions in the united states abstract this paper investigates the effect of energy consumption and output on carbon emissions in the united states earlier research focused on testing the existence and or shape of an environmental kuznets curve without taking energy consumption into account we investigate the granger causality relationship between income energy consumption and carbon emissions including labor and gross fixed capital formation in the model we find that income does not granger cause carbon emissions in the us in the long run but energy use does hence income growth by itself may not become a solution to environmental problems

why are losses less persistent than profits curtailments vs conservatism it is well documented that losses are less persistent than profits and that stock prices anticipate the lower persistence of losses yet the underlying explanation for these results is unclear one explanation lies in the abandonment option whereby firms with losses are more likely to curtail operations e g hayn hayn c 1995 the information content of losses j accounting econom 20 2 125 153 another explanation involves timely loss recognition stemming from conservative accounting e g basu basu s 1997 the conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings j accounting econom 24 1 3 37 we provide direct evidence that curtailments are an important factor contributing to the lower persistence of losses an implication of our results is that popular measures of conservatism such as the measure proposed by basu also reflect curtailments this paper was accepted by suraj srinivasan accounting

land consumption and income in italy a case of inverted ekc abstract the ekc hypothesis postulates that the relationship between economic growth and environmental deterioration is represented by an inverted u shaped function its validity has been questioned from several perspectives and a need for public policies has been expressed this paper uses a heuristic approach to analyze the relationship between per capita income and land consumption as proxied by the number of building permits issued by public authorities using data from the italian regions we run a panel data regression model to test whether the ekc hypothesis holds results confute it evidencing a u shaped relationship in the authors opinion the combined effect of market conditions lifestyle evolution and institutional and political factors have produced an adverse effect on environment on this basis the paper claims that when social and intergenerational aspects are involved a balanced mix of market policies and institutional architecture is needed

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

the importance of engaging residential energy customers hearts and minds abstract in an attempt to reduce the contribution of residential greenhouse gas emissions the eu has implemented a variety of policy measures the focus has been to promote domestic energy efficiency and ultimately a reduction in residential energy demand in this study we estimate residential energy demand using underlying energy demand trend uedt and asymmetric price responses for 14 european oecd countries between 1978 and 2008 our results support the conclusion that policies to reduce residential energy consumption and the consequent emissions need to account for behavioural lifestyle and cultural factors in order to be effective

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

exploring the environmental kuznets hypothesis theoretical and econometric problems focussing on the prime example of co2 emissions we discuss several important theoretical and econometric problems that arise when studying environmental kuznets curves ekcs an ekc refers to an inverse u shaped relationship between a pollutant and economic activity the dominant theoretical approach is given by integrated assessment modelling which consists of economic models that are combined with environmental impact models we critically evaluate the aggregation model dynamics and calibration aspects and their implications for the validity of the results we then turn to a discussion of several important econometric problems that go almost unnoticed in the literature the most fundamental problems relate to nonlinear transformations of nonstationary regressors and in a nonstationary panel context to neglected cross sectional dependence we discuss the implications of these two major and some minor problems that arise in the econometric analysis of kuznets curves our discussion shows that ekc modelling as performed to date is subject to major drawbacks at both the theoretical and the econometric level

the turning points of carbon kuznets curve evidences from panel and time series data of 164 countries with the dramatic economic development global warming caused by carbon emission has become increasingly serious and carbon emission reduction therefore comes to be the principle in most countries turning point tp which represents carbon emission turns from increasing to decreasing tendency with the economic growth has become a major focus of political and academic concern however previous studies on tp were contextualized only in individual countries or regions but barely from a global perspective which are insufficient for solving the carbon emission as a global issue therefore this study aims to provide a global picture of the carbon emissions by identifying the tps of 164 countries and five panel groups i e global high income upper middle income lower middle income and low income levels in the world and the patterns of them the results show that 123 individual countries and all the five panel groups accept the carbon kuznets curve ckc hypothesis then the tps of them are identified in particular three close correlations are identified throughout the study 1 the proportion of the ckc hypothesis and income level i e the higher income level the larger proportion of countries meeting the ckc hypothesis 2 the tps and income level i e the higher income level the higher tp and 3 the turning years and income level i e the higher income level the shorter turning years the identified tps in this study provide valuable references for not only individual countries but also countries at different income levels to tailor their strategies and policies to finally achieve global carbon emission reduction

accounting information capital investment decisions and equity valuation theory and empirical implications this paper develops a theoretical model to reexamine the roles of earnings and book value for equity valuation and to explore cross sectional differences in the properties of the valuation function ohlson 1995 and feltham and ohlson 1995 1996 show that assuming the clean surplus relation and a specific linear information dynamic equity value can be represented as a linear function of earnings and book value however recent empirical evidence indicates linear valuation functions do not fully capture the effects of earnings and book value on equity value for instance burgstahler and dichev 1997 find the valuation impact of either earnings or book value depends on the levels of these two variables and the valuation function is convex not linear similarly hayn 1995 and collins pincus and xie 1999 report that the valuation effect of earnings is asymmetric between positive and negative earnings also as collins pincus and xie 1999 show the relative and the incremental importance of earnings versus book value in explaining equity

the world distribution of income falling poverty and convergence period we estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 138 countries between 1970 and 2000 country distributions are constructed by combining national accounts gdp per capita to anchor the mean with survey data to pin down the dispersion poverty rates and head counts are reported for four specific poverty lines rates in 2000 were between one third and one half of what they were in 1970 for all four lines there were between 250 and 500 million fewer poor in 2000 than in 1970 we estimate eight indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution of income all of them show reductions in global inequality during the 1980s and 1990s

the path of technological progress for china s low carbon development evidence from three urban agglomerations abstract it is widely believed that technological progress is the key driving force for low carbon development based on a panel data of 50 cities during the period 2005 2014 in china s three urban agglomerations beijing tianjin hebei yangtze river delta and pearl river delta this paper presents a comprehensive analysis on the path of technological progress for the low carbon development specifically it firstly estimates the factor biased technological progress by using a translog production function model and then dynamic panel data models are used to investigate the impacts of three sources of technological progress including rd finally we introduce an index to measure the appropriate technical structure and analyze the technological improvement strategy to the low carbon development the main results indicate that technological progress of the three urban agglomerations is biased toward electricity thereby shows a electricity saving effect fdi shows electricity saving and carbon reduction effects but rd the impacts of import and export on the factor biased technological progress are weak furthermore the path of technological progress is highly related to the level of economy when gdp per capita is higher than 37 000 yuan indigenous innovation is the main driver for low carbon development

the heterogeneous effect of democracy political globalization and urbanization on pm2 5 concentrations in g20 countries evidence from panel quantile regression abstract pm2 5 emissions have serious adverse impacts on health and impede transport activities especially air and highway consequently policymakers and economists have focused on this issue the primary objective of this study is to investigate the effect of democracy political globalization and urbanization on pm2 5 concentrations within g20 countries ecological modernization theory is used to gain the best understanding of the impact of these driving forces on pm2 5 concentrations and obtains an analytical framework the method utilized is the panel quantile regression which takes into account the unobserved individual and distributional heterogeneity the results demonstrate that first the direct effect of democracy on pm2 5 concentrations is significantly positive in countries with higher emissions and has no impact on lower emission countries second the direct effect of political globalization on pm2 5 concentrations is significantly positive and especially greater in extremely low and high emission countries third persuasive evidence proves the existence of an environmental kuznets curve between urbanization and pm2 5 concentrations additionally this paper further assesses the direct and indirect influence mechanisms of democracy and political globalization on pm2 5 concentrations across pollution levels both have a positive negative indirect effect on pm2 5 concentrations in countries with higher lower emissions through its effect on gdp per capita the total effect appears positive suggesting that the increase in democracy and political globalization degrade environmental quality these results provide policymakers with critical policy recommendations that contribute to the reduction of pm2 5 concentrations and ensure sustainable economic development in the g20 countries

do scaling and selection explain earnings discontinuities abstract earnings distributions commonly exhibit statistically significant discontinuities at zero earnings which are widely interpreted as evidence of earnings management to avoid a loss in contrast durtschi and easton 2005 durtschi and easton 2009 assert that discontinuities are instead explained by some combination of prior researchers choice s of scaling and sample selection as well as a scaling related effect due to a systematic relation between the sign of earnings and market prices resolution of the conflicting interpretations of discontinuities is important because 1 it affects how investors regulators and scholars view earnings management and 2 it demonstrates the importance of a close linkage between theory and research design choices we point out that de provide no evidence that scaling or selection create discontinuities but only evidence showing that changes in scaling or selection eliminate discontinuities we demonstrate why the research designs used by de eliminate discontinuities and why alternative designs using the same data yield statistically significant discontinuities that cannot be attributed to either scaling or selection

energy content of world trade this paper constructs a comprehensive dataset of oil and total energy embedded in world trade of manufacturing goods for 73 countries from 1978 to 2000 applying the data to debates on the dependency on foreign energy sources makes clear that achieving complete energy independence in the foreseeable future is unlikely to be feasible and may not be desirable applying it to the discussion of environmental kuznets curves ekcs highlights an important distinction between production and consumption of energy richer countries use relatively less energy in their industrial production yet still consume relatively large amounts of energy indirectly a further investigation largely excludes structural shifts of production in and out of the manufacturing sector as an explanation for the downward sloping portion of the ekc country level analyses add caveats but show tentative support for the cross country conclusions

underlying trends and seasonality in uk energy demand a sectoral analysis this paper demonstrates the importance for energy demand modelling of allowing for trends and seasonal effects that are stochastic in form inherent underlying trends may be non linear and reflect not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction using quarterly unadjusted data for various sectors in the uk it is shown that unless energy demand models are formulated so as to allow for stochastic trends and seasonals estimates of price and income elasticities could be seriously biased

income and co2 emissions evidence from panel unit root and cointegration tests abstract this paper re investigates the stationarity properties of per capita carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 109 countries within seven regional panel sets covering 1971 2003 we apply the recent unit root test of the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller suradf test developed by breuer et al 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 482 493 2002 series specific unit root tests with panel data oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 64 527 546 the panel suradf test accounts for the presence of cross country correlations in the data and the parameters in the panel specification vary across countries more importantly this test allows us to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root overall our empirical results illustrate that real gdp and co 2 emissions in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 processes and that the traditional panel unit root tests could lead to misleading inferences as well as the conduct of cointegration analysis being perhaps inappropriate the results of our analysis carry critical implications for the modeling of co 2 emissions and gdp because of the different orders of integration for the two variables

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

economic modelling of energy services rectifying misspecified energy demand functions abstract although it is well known that energy demand is derived since energy is required not for its own sake but for the energy services it produces such as heating lighting and motive power energy demand models both theoretical and empirical often fail to take account of this feature in this paper we highlight the misspecification that results from ignoring this aspect and its empirical implications biased estimates of price elasticities and other measures and provide a relatively simple and empirically practicable way to rectify it which has a strong theoretical grounding to do so we develop an explicit model of consumer behaviour in which utility derives from consumption of energy services rather than from the energy sources that are used to produce them as we discuss this approach opens up the possibility of examining many aspects of energy demand in a theoretically sound way that have not previously been considered on a widespread basis although some existing empirical work could be interpreted as being consistent with this type of specification while this formulation yields demand equations for energy services rather than for energy or particular energy sources these are shown to be readily converted without added complexity into the standard type of energy demand equation s that is are typically estimated the additional terms that the resulting energy demand equations include compared to those that are typically estimated highlight the misspecification that is implicit when typical energy demand equations are estimated a simple solution for dealing with an apparent drawback of this formulation for empirical purposes namely that information is required on typically unobserved energy efficiency indicates how energy efficiency can be captured in the model such as by including exogenous trends and or including its possible dependence on past energy prices the approach is illustrated using an empirical example that involves estimation of an aggregate energy demand function for the uk with data over the period 1960 2011