explaining the border effect the role of exchange rate variability shipping costs and geography this paper exploits a three dimensional panel data set of prices on 27 traded goods over 88 quarters across 96 cities in the us and japan we show that a simple average of good level real exchange rates tracks the nominal exchange rate well suggesting strong evidence of sticky prices focusing on dispersion in prices between city pairs we find that crossing the us japan border is equivalent to adding as much as 43 000 trillion miles to the cross country volatility of relative prices we turn next to economic explanations for this so called border effect and to its dynamics distance unit shipping costs and exchange rate variability collectively explain a substantial portion of the observed international market segmentation relative wage variability on the other hand has little independent impact on segmentation 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

historical review of demand side management in china management content operation mode results assessment and relative incentives abstract traditional power load management in china is featured by power rationing without considering user demand however since the 1990s demand side management dsm has been introduced by local governments and enterprises in china to improve terminal power efficiency and optimize resources allocation and certain breakthrough have already been achieved demand response aims at improving the energy efficiency of end users and achieving emission reduction targets based on the development status of power industry and electricity market in china this paper firstly reviews the three key development stages of traditional dsm including management content operation mode and results assessment secondly this paper analyzes the demand side management aimed at energy conservation and emissions reduction selecting the core elements and key processes influencing terminal power efficiency of dsm development in addition dsm safeguard system and incentive mechanism including political economic technical and managerial measures are further discussed to achieve the aim of energy conservation and emission reduction finally this paper systematically analyzes related policies and regulations proposed by the government and put forward relative policy recommendations for dsm development in china

coal overcapacity in china multiscale analysis and prediction gaining a quantitative understanding of the causes of coal overcapacity and accurately predicting it are important for both government agencies and coal enterprises following the decomposition reconstruction prediction concept a combined ensemble empirical mode decomposition least square support vector machine autoregressive integrated moving average eemd lssvm arima model is proposed for quantitatively analyzing and forecasting coal overcapacity in china the results show that the main causes of coal overcapacity in china include insufficient demand market failure and institutional distortion institutional distortion with an influence degree of 73 75 is the most fundamental and influential factor from 2017 to 2019 the scale of coal overcapacity in china will reach between 1 721and 1 819 billion tons suggesting that coal overcapacity will remain a serious problem the rate of coal overcapacity caused by insufficient demand will fluctuate slightly while coal overcapacity caused by market failure will trend downward but the impact of institutional distortion on coal overcapacity will be exacerbated a statistical analysis demonstrates that the eemd lssvm arima model significantly outperformed other widely developed baselines e g arima lssvm eemd arima and eemd lssvm

the prospective of coal power in china will it reach a plateau in the coming decade abstract coal power holds the king position in china s generation mix and has resulted in ever increasing ecological and environmental issues hence the development of the electric power sector is confronted with a series of new challenges china has recently adopted a new economic principle of the new economic normal which has a large effect on the projection electricity demand and power generation planning through 2020 this paper measures electricity demand based upon china s social and economic structure the 2020 roadmap presents china s developing targets for allocating energy resources to meet new demands and the 2030 roadmap is compiled based upon an ambitious expansion of clean energy sources results show that electricity demand is expected to reach 7500 twh in 2020 and 9730 twh in 2030 coal power is expected to reach its peak in 2020 at around 970 gw and will then enter a plateau even with a pathway of active electricity substitution in place

trade policy making in a small island economy the wto review of the maldives the purpose of this paper is to examine trade policy regime and trade related development issues in the maldives on the basis of the trade policy review maldives 2003 of the wto the key theme of the paper is that given the narrow resource base and small domestic market openness to foreign trade and investment remains the natural policy choice for a small developing economy like the maldives since the late 1980s the maldivian government has made considerable progress in implementing policy reforms driven by this conviction however the reform process is far from complete high import tariffs maintained predominantly on revenue considerations a large direct role played by the public sector in foreign trade and some key sectors of the economy lack of transparency in duty concessions and other investment incentives failure to incorporate environmental concerns as part of the national development policy and delays in meeting reform commitments under the wto are among the key items of the unfinished reform agenda

law enforcement and transition abstract we present a simple model to analyze law enforcement problems in transition economies law enforcement implies coordination problems and multiplicity of equilibria due to a law abidance and a fiscal externality we analyze two institutional mechanisms for solving the coordination problem a first mechanism which we call dualism follows the scenario of chinese transition where the government keeps direct control over economic resources and where a liberalized non state sector follows market rules the second mechanism we put forward is accession to the european union we show that accession to the european union even without external borrowing provides a mechanism to eliminate the bad equilibrium provided the accessing country is small enough relative to the european union interestingly we show that accession without conditionality is better than with conditionality because conditionality creates a coordination problem of its own that partly annihilates the positive effects of expected accession

statistical analysis and combination forecasting of environmental efficiency and its influential factors since china entered the wto 2002 2010 2012 abstract since china became a member of world trade organization wto its economy develops at a fast speed at the same time the environmental problem becomes more and more serious and increasingly affects economic development studying the factors that influence environmental efficiency has become an essential point in dealing with the relationship between economy and environment considering the differences in space and economic development among different districts this paper discusses the quantitative relationship among exports figure imports figure gdp per capita industrialization level fiscal decentralization and environmental efficiency of each chinese province by using statistical analysis furthermore this paper discusses differences among each district s influential factors from the perspective of spatial economics and makes combination forecast on the trend of environmental efficiency it also shows that the environmental efficiency of chinese provinces is generally at a low level in addition as the economic statuses of different provinces vary and the factors that influence environmental efficiency in different provinces also have significant differences each province should take certain measures to design the environmental protection policy in line with its local circumstance

analysis of the economic impact of different chinese climate policy options based on a cge model incorporating endogenous technological change abatement cost is the main concern for climate change mitigation and the key factor for mitigation cost is technological change this study established an integrated economic energy environmental dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model representing endogenous technological change for china s climate change policy analysis this study analyzed and compared the economic impact of different approaches to mitigation commitments as well as the potential role of technological change in the formulation of mitigation targets and commitments taking into account china s climate policy making needs based on the current international climate negotiation process the results show that absolute emission limits similar to the kyoto protocol will seriously impede the future economic development of china while the impact of an 80 reduction in carbon intensity forecast for 2050 based on the 2005 level is relatively small technological change can promote economic growth improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon intensity per unit of output through the substitution of production factors consequently it can reduce marginal abatement cost and related gdp loss by mitigation at the same time it can increase mitigation potentials and extend the emission reduction amount showing that consideration of the impact of technological change when deciding the emission reduction targets is necessary

democracy and development the devil in the details does democracy promote economic development this paper reviews recent attempts to address this question that exploited within country variation it shows that the answer is largely positive but also depends on the details of democratic reforms first the sequence of economic vs political reforms matters countries liberalizing their economy before extending political rights do better second different forms of democratic government lead to different economic policies and this might explain why presidential democracy leads to faster growth than parliamentary democracy third it is important to distinguish between expected and actual political reforms taking expectations of regime change into account helps identify a stronger growth effect of democracy

china s capacities for mitigating climate change summary economic growth and structural change have turned china into the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world the country has no international commitments to reduce its emissions but it has developed domestic policies and climate relevant capacities which do have mitigative effects economic and political reforms have supported capacity development however so far china s climate relevant actions have not been influenced by climate considerations potential emission reductions are mainly a by product of measures embedded in energy and transport policies aimed at cutting energy costs and increasing energy security

the economics of coal power generation in china abstract the chinese government recently released the 13th fyp five year plan power development plan and proposed a capacity installation target of 1100 gw for coal power considering the weak demand growth of coal power since 2014 continuous decline in the annual utilisation hour and the coming market competition such a planning target is unwelcome and could further the economic deterioration of coal power in this paper we employ lcoe levelised cost of electricity and project evaluation models to conduct a nationwide survey on the economics of coal power the economic analysis has clearly indicated that the recent boom of coal power investment in china which is absurd in many perspectives is largely the aftermath of uncompleted market reform in the power sector however the fundamentals of electricity demand and supply are changing at a speed beyond the imagination of power generators and have foreboded a gloomy prospect for coal power our study shows that by 2020 with several exceptions in most provinces the internal rate of return for coal power will drop below the social average return rate or will even be negative in this regard the 13th fyp capacity planning target for coal power is economically untenable and requires radical revision

reevaluating the modernization hypothesis we revisit and critically reevaluate the widely accepted modernization hypothesis which claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy existing studies find support for this hypothesis because they fail to control for the presence of omitted variables controlling for these factors either by including country fixed effects in a linear model or by including parameterized random effects in a nonlinear double hazard model removes the correlation between income and the likelihood of transitions to and from democratic regimes in addition the estimated fixed effects from the linear model are related to historical factors that affect both the level of income per capita and the likelihood of democracy in a country this evidence is consistent with the idea that events during critical historical junctures can lead to divergent political economic development paths some leading to prosperity and democracy others to relative poverty and non democracy

bayesian interval robust optimization for sustainable energy system planning in qiqihar city china abstract old industrial bases in northeastern china have been experiencing a series of problems such as energy scarcity economic slack and environmental pollution due to lack of scientific planning of energy systems effective energy system management is desirable for avoiding occurrence of these problems in the following decades under the national policy of revitalizing these industrial bases this task is challenged by system complexity data unavailability and inaccurate demand forecasting which can hardly be resolved in existing studies for improving energy system management in qiqihar city a representative industrial base in northeastern china under these challenges a large scale and fine resolution bayesian interval robust energy system optimization bireso approach is developed in this study in detail the structure characteristics problems and complexities of the energy system in this city are identified and analyzed based on these efforts a series of optimized energy system management schemes are generated through construction of a bireso model and development of a solution algorithm the obtained solutions can be ensured to remain robust when input data changes through controlling the degree of solution conservatism in accordance with probabilistic bounds on constraint violation furthermore bayesian estimation method was employed for effectively achieving dynamic forecast of energy demands the tradeoff among energy security economic development and environmental conservation under multiple uncertainties is revealed and the optimal balance among them is identified a scenario analysis approach is used to quantify the effects of economic growth on energy system schemes based on several developed scenarios results show that the bireso approach is capable of providing scientific support for energy supply planning renewable energy development technological advancement facility expansion energy allocation pollution control economic impacts assessment and other energy related activities in qiqihar city

carbon weighted economic development performance and driving force analysis evidence from china based on a data envelopment analysis framework this study develops an indicator termed as carbon weighted economic development cwed covering the dimensions of energy environment economy and resources to measure the economic development performance in a carbon emission conscious economy as an empirical application the proposed approach is applied to a case study of 30 provinces in china in addition to identify the driving forces underlying low carbon economic development in china we analyze the endogenous interactions and dynamic behaviors between cwed foreign direct investment foreign trade industrial structure local fiscal expenditure and energy consumption structure using a panel vector auto regression model the main findings show that 1 adjusting industrial structure by vigorously developing the service industry and reducing the coal energy share in the primary energy consumption structure are the two most effective approaches to improve cwed in both the short run and long run in return cwed has positive feedback effects on both approaches in the long run 2 increase of the fiscal expenditure has a short term positive effect on cwed 3 fdi has an indirect negative effect on cwed in the long run and foreign trade has an indirect positive effect on cwed in the short term

the effect of implementing trade in strategy on duopoly competition abstract we study a firm that makes new products in the first period and collects used products through trade in along with new product sale in the second period to conduct a convincing analysis we initially evaluate the problem in a duopoly situation in which one firm firm a implements trade in and the other one firm b does not we subsequently introduce the competitive environment in a two period planning horizon to identify thresholds that determine the trade in operations and then derive the equilibrium decisions of the resulting scenarios we characterize the optimal production quantities that are associated with parameter b the sum of used product salvage value and government subsidy in the nash equilibrium results indicate that adopting trade in could bring competitive advantage for firm a in terms of market share and profit if the new product sale is comparatively profitable then the trade in firm may forgo some of the collection margin by raising the trade in rebate and selling additional units to increase new product sale in the second period moreover the total collection quantity does not always increase with government subsidy we consequently expand the model to the case where both firms compete in trade in and derive the corresponding decision space of the duopoly firms finally we explore the effect of adopting trade in on consumer surplus and compare it in the two models

incentives to provide local public goods fiscal federalism russian style abstract based on a unique data set on russian city budgets this paper shows that revenue sharing between regional and local governments provides local governments with no incentive to increase tax base or provide public goods any change in local government s own revenues is almost entirely offset by changes in shared revenues this leads to governmental over regulation of private businesses it is shown that fiscal incentives are a determinant of the formation of private business and the efficiency of public goods provision the russian federalism is compared to the chinese federalism where fiscal incentives reputedly are stronger in many provinces

trade policymaking in a resource rich landlocked country the wto review of mongolia the aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the trade policy review of mongolia tprm 2014 the tprm 2014 demonstrates that the mongolian economy is relatively open and it has very low formal trade barriers although there remain significant behind the borders barriers including poor governance and infrastructure being a landlocked country any major cross border price differences quickly results in informal trade with neighbouring china limiting mongolia s ability to pursue independent commercial policy mongolia s growth is not broad based and largely driven by the mining boom making its economy highly vulnerable to external shocks while this is not unique to mongolia and has been seen in many natural resource abundant countries experience suggests that countries with sound institutions and macroeconomic policies have overcome the so called resource curse

democracy market liberalization and political preferences abstract we estimate the impact of market development and democratization on subjective political preferences we rely on the specific situation of frontier zones and the considerable regional variations in culture and economic development in the countries of the former socialist bloc for identification using a survey conducted in 2006 we find a positive and significant effect of democracy on support for a market economy but no effect of market liberalization on support for democracy hence in contrast with the conventional wisdom concerning the sequencing of political and economic reforms democratization may become a necessary condition to obtain public support for further economic liberalization

development of supersmart grids for a more efficient utilisation of electricity from renewable sources abstract if europe is serious about reaching its target to keep global mean temperature increase below 2 c it must strive for a 100 renewable electricity system by 2050 the supersmart grid approach combines what is often perceived as two exclusive alternatives wide area power generation and decentralised power generation we argue that by combining these in fact complementary measures it is possible to address the crucial issue of renewable generation fluctuating supply in a comprehensive as well as in a technologically and economically viable manner thus the supersmart grid simultaneously can contribute to energy security climate security social security and national security

the weight of history on european cultural integration a gravity approach cultural integration is a european obsession given the growing evidence on the role of culture as a determinant of economic development this issue is of importance to economists some literature hypothesizes that the variation of the relative strengths of cultural assimilation and differentiation gave rise to different patterns of economic development quamrul ashraf and oded galor 2007 while other literature emphasizes the importance of specific cultural traits for institutional and economic development among those social trust has received particular attention recently the literature has looked into the historical origins of social trust relating contemporary cross regional differences in trust to historical events such as the free city states experiences in northern italy guido tabellini 2008 luigi guiso paola sapienza and luigi zingales 2008 or the slave trades in africa nathan nunn and leonard wantchekon forthcoming going even further back in history ruben durante 2010 links current regional differences in trust to climatic variability since the year 1500 while such evidence on the longterm persistence of cultural traits is intriguing little remains understood concerning the rate at which cultural values change under the influence of such historical events cultural persistence and cultural heterogeneity are the two sides of the same coin historians have hypothesized that one reason behind the complexity of european integration may be the fact that europe as opposed to china or north america has never experienced a single unifying historical experience wim blockmans 2006 the model in this paper estimates the contribution to cultural integration or its counter

good bye lenin or not the effect of communism on people s preferences preferences for redistribution as well as the generosities of welfare states differ significantly across countries in this paper we test whether there exists a feedback process of the economic regime on individual preferences we exploit the experiment of german separation and reunification to establish exogeneity of the economic system from 1945 to 1990 east germans lived under a communist regime with heavy state intervention and extensive redistribution we find that after german reunification east germans are more in favor of redistribution and state intervention than west germans even after controlling for economic incentives this effect is especially strong for older cohorts who lived under communism for a longer time period we further find that east germans preferences converge towards those of west germans we calculate that it will take one to two generations for preferences to converge completely

provincial allocation of coal de capacity targets in china in terms of cost efficiency and fairness developing a de capacity scheme that is economical fair and efficient has become a key problem affecting the smooth achievement of coal de capacity targets it is also an important policy issue with regard to the overall implementation of china s supply side structural reforms in this study we use the production function method as well as the panel variable coefficient model to calculate the 25 provinces boundary production functions for the coal industry which leads to the estimation of the coal capacity and capacity utilization rate of each province taking into account the labor resettlement cost and disposal cost of fixed assets a total cost function of coal de capacity is established the growth rate function of total factor productivity tfp in the coal industry is constructed by the solow residual value method an allocation model of coal de capacity is then proposed based on multi objective nonlinear optimization with constraint conditions on the total reduction amount and minimum output of coal in each region finally using the relevant data of china s 25 coal producing provinces in 1990 2015 the allocation of coal de capacity is obtained under the goal of minimizing the total cost and maximizing the tfp growth rate the results show that the capacity utilization rate of china s coal industry is much lower than the lower limit of the reasonable utilization ratio while tfp shows negative growth over a long period the comparative analytical results indicate that in terms of total cost the optimal allocation scheme is 44 5335 billion yuan lower than the government allocation scheme the disposal cost of fixed assets and labor resettlement costs decrease by 29 2749 billion yuan and 15 2586 billion yuan respectively in terms of tfp growth the optimal allocation scheme has a 1 54 higher tfp growth rate compared with the government allocation scheme in terms of fairness the gini coefficients of the optimal scheme calculated by various indexes are all smaller than 0 3 placing the scheme within the category of considerable or absolute fairness in addition we calculate the optimal allocation ratio of coal de capacity in the situation where cost preference and quality preference of central government are considered to verify the intrinsic consistency of the model in brief the optimal allocation scheme proposed in this study effectively realizes the integration of economy efficiency and fairness 2018 elsevier b v

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

the coming sustainable energy transition history strategies and outlook abstract facing global climate change and scarce petroleum supplies the world must switch to sustainable energy systems while historical transitions between major energy sources have occurred most of these shifts lasted over a century or longer and were stimulated by resource scarcity high labor costs and technological innovations the energy transition of the 21st century will need to be more rapid unfortunately little is known about how to accelerate energy transitions this article reviews past transitions and factors behind them along with their time frames three modern case studies are discussed brazil which shifted from an oil based transportation system to one based on sugarcane ethanol success france which shifted from oil fired electric power to nuclear power success and the united states which attempted to shift from foreign oil to a mix of domestic energy resources failure lessons from these attempts to govern energy transitions are discussed several policy instruments to accelerate a transition are identified though even under ideal circumstances a global energy supply transition will be very slow given the need to simultaneously implement programs in countries with different political economies a greater focus on energy efficiency promotion of smart grids and possibly a new treaty should yield more timely results

coal power overcapacity and investment bubble in china during 2015 2020 abstract electricity consumption growth in china has experienced radical adjustment from high speed to medium speed with the advent of new economy normal however the investment enthusiasm on coal power remains unabated and leads to continuous operation efficiency deterioration in recent years in this paper we quantify the rational capacity and potential investment of coal power in china during the 13th fyp period 2016 2020 by employing power planning model and fully considering the power sector s contribution in the 15 non fossil primary energy supply target by 2020 we estimate that the reasonable capacity addition space of coal power ranges between 50 gw and 100 gw depending on the expected range of demand growth we find that if all the coal power projects submitted for environmental impact assessment eia approval were put into operation in 2020 capacity excess would reach 200 gw such huge overcapacity will bring forth disastrous consequences including enormous investment waste poor economic performance of generators and more importantly delay of low carbon energy transition finally policy recommendations are proposed to address this issue

the virtues of gradualism and legitimacy in the transition to a market economy this paper presents a simplified model of sectoral restructuring in eastern europe a move towards allocative efficiency is desired by the reform minded government but the shift to higher productivity which such efficiency requires would lead to massive layoffs and labour reallocation in the transition period we look at the impact of political constraints unanimity and or majority worker approval on reform proposals when the government faces a heterogeneous workforce holding private information on relative outside opportunities when the budgetary consequences of exit compensations are so important as to make partial reforms preferable to full reforms gradualism emerges as the optimum in a dynamic context without government commitment it is also shown that under democratic majority rule a government in control of the agenda of reforms can win majority approval for plans which end up hurting majority interests intertemporally by threatening to switch majorities in future reform proposals this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

energy conservation and emissions reduction in china progress and prospective abstract energy conservation ec has been taken as basic state policy in china for more than 20 years and china achieves 3 9 annual energy saving from 1980 to 2005 in 2006 china central government firstly set up a binding target of reducing gdp energy intensity by 20 in its 11th five year plan fyp at the end of 2010 19 1 reduction in energy intensity has been achieved which is 95 of the target and means 608 million tons stand coal equivalence sce saved 1510 million tons co 2 emission reduced 300 billion rmb saving in energy bill and vast saving in infrastructure investment this paper is systematical review and prospective analysis on energy policy issue in china review on policy evolution and progress of ec and emission reduction er in china during the 11th fyp periods is presented in detail outlook of energy demand and supply into 2050 is presented and the roadmap to realize sustainable energy development is drafted to set the framing constraints for china s energy policy options rationality and feasibility analysis on newly formulated 12th fyp ec and er target is also addressed then lessons from the 11th fyp periods are drawn and factors underlying and limiting the policy formulation and implementation are discussed in details to probe the policy predicament and solutions finally policy suggestions are proposed for long term successful implementation of ec and er in china

energy innovations ghg emissions nexus fresh empirical evidence from oecd countries abstract this study explores the impact of improvements in energy research development erd on greenhouse gas ghg emissions using environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for 28 oecd countries over the period of 1990 2014 in doing so we have employed a panel data where public budget in energy research development and demonstration erd d has transformed into a finite inverted v lag distribution model developed by de leeuw 1962 this model considers that energy innovation accumulates in time and presents empirical evidence how energy innovation contributes in reducing energy intensity and environmental pollution as well our results indicate that energy innovation measures require lapses of time to reach their full effect i e innovation applied to measures for environmental correction does not reach its whole effect immediately requiring instead a certain amount of time to pass innovation policies have recommended for improving environmental quality

north south and distance in the gravity model abstract it is generally assumed that distance in the gravity model strictly reflects frictions impeding bilateral trade however distances north south could also reflect differences in factor endowment that provide opportunities for profitable trade this paper investigates the hypothesis that if we control for distance in the ordinary sense differences north south promote international trade the hypothesis receives ample support moreover the significance of differences north south survives a battery of robustness tests concerning period distinctions between differences in latitude north north north south and south south and controls for other measures of differences in factor endowment such as differences in per capita output and differences in average temperature rainfall and seasonal range in temperature the impact of differences north south on bilateral trade has also been falling this decline in turn might be partly responsible for the weakening of the influence of distance that has been occurring since world war ii this last hypothesis receives confirmation as well finally the paper examines the impact of internal distance and remoteness on trade since both variables are country specific this is done by studying their impact on the country fixed effects themselves in the earlier estimates internal distance turns out to have a far greater impact than remoteness by an order of 10

political regimes and economic growth arguments that relate regimes to growth focus on property rights pressures for immediate consumption and the autonomy of dictators while everyone seems to agree that secure property rights foster growth it is controversial whether democracies or dictatorships better secure these rights the main mechanism by which democracy is thought to hinder growth is pressure for immediate consumption which reduces investment only states that are institutionally insulated from such pressures can resist them and democratic states are not the main argument against dictatorships is that authoritarian rulers have no interest in maximizing total output these views are summarized in turn

economic integration and political disintegration in a world of trade restrictions large countries enjoy economic benefits because political boundaries determine the size of the market under free trade and global markets even relatively small cultural linguistic or ethnic groups can benefit from forming small homogeneous political jurisdictions this paper provides a formal model of the relationship between openness and the equilibrium number and size of countries and successfully tests two implications of the model firstly the economic benefits of country size are mediated by the degree of openness to trade secondly the history of nation state creations and secessions is influenced by the trade regime

the empire is dead long live the empire long run persistence of trust and corruption in the bureaucracy we hypothesise that the habsburg empire with its well respected administration increased citizens trust in local public services in several eastern european countries communities on both sides of the long gone habsburg border have shared common formal institutions for a century now we use a border specification and a two dimensional geographic regression discontinuity design to identify from individuals living within a restricted band around the former border we find that historical habsburg affiliation increases current trust and reduces corruption in courts and police falsification tests of spuriously moved borders geographic and pre existing differences and interpersonal trust corroborate a genuine habsburg effect

the political economy of transition the overriding importance of political constraints in the transition process has led to developments of the theory of the political economy of reform what are the main insights from that theory how does it reflect the transition reality what have we learned and what do we still need to learn the present article will attempt to answer those questions

comparative democracy the economic development thesis in comparative politics an established finding that economic development fosters democratic performance has recently come under challenge we counter this challenge with a dynamic pooled time series analysis of a major but neglected data set from 131 nations the final generalized least squares autoregressive moving averages estimates n 2 096 appear robust and indicate strong economic development effects dependent in part on the nation s position in the world system for the first time rather hard evidence is offered on the causal relationship between economics and democracy according to granger tests economic development causes democracy but democracy does not cause economic development overall the various tests would seem to advance sharply the modeling of democratic performance

does high income promote democracy the authors construct a statistical model with which to test whether the regularity that democracy is more commonly found among wealthy countries stems from a democratizing effect of high income or is due entirely to other factors such as the historical context various features of the institutional setting and simultaneity with the process of leadership change even after correcting for these many other influences the democratizing effect of income remains as a statistically significant factor promoting the emergence of democratic political institutions the authors go on to find that leaders risks of losing power rise during their time in office and that these risks are higher in more democratic countries the authors confirm the finding by burkhart and lewis beck that the democracy promoting effect of income is stronger among the european countries they suggest that high income has a more powerful democratizing effect among the southern european countries because it interacts with pressure from major trading partners to democratize this suggests a revaluation of policies designed to foster the replacement of authoritarian regimes by democratic ones through free trade

democratisation and growth this article challenges cross sectional findings that democracy has a negligible effect on growth we employ a new dataset of political transitions during the third wave of democratisation and examine the within effect of democratisation in countries that abandoned autocracy and consolidated representative institutions the panel estimates imply that on average democratisations are associated with a 1 increase in annual per capita growth the dynamic analysis reveals that while during the transition growth is slow in the medium and long run it stabilises at a higher level this evidence favours development theories of democratic rule and friedrich hayek 1960 s idea that the merits of democracy appear in the long run leading politicians and commentators have argued that democratisation will bring prosperity and growth into pariah and economically poorly performing countries 1 others however remain sceptical pointing to the mixed and inconclusive empirical evidence the old debate dating back to plato and aristotle on which political regime is socially and economically optimal arises again this debate is not purely academic and philosophical as it has important policy implications in the last thirty years the world has experienced an unprecedented move towards democratic institutions influential policy makers and scholars urge western authorities to foster democratic movements in totalitarian countries see the economist article philosophers and kings june 19th 2003 yet the question remains will democratisation bring economic growth to assess the average growth effect of a successful democratic transition we analyse the evolution of annual real per capita gdp growth before and after incidents of permanent democratic reform in the 1960 2003 period in our analysis we exploit a newly constructed dataset of permanent democratisations during the so called third wave of democratisation and the 1990s when many former socialist countries moved towards representative rule the panel results reveal new evidence that contrast with the previous mainly cross sectional work first conditioning on time invariant country characteristics and global shocks a permanent democratisation is associated with approximately a one half to one per cent increment in annual real per capita gdp growth second a dynamic j shaped effect emerges with considerable though not this article is a major revision of an earlier paper titled aristotle was right stable democracy fosters

will recent boom in coal power lead to a bust in china a micro economic analysis abstract in this paper by adopting the levelized cost of electricity model and the financial appraisal method we provide an economic interpretation for china s recent coal power bubble under weak demand growth the study surveys the economics of a typical 600 mw newly built pure condensing coal fired power plant in six case provinces shanxi inner mongolia xinjiang hebei jiangsu and guangdong where the profitability margins of coal power are above national average by the end of 2015 results indicate that the continuous falling in coal prices have lowered the generation costs but there has been insufficient adjustment to the benchmark on grid tariff enabling coal power to obtain unprecedented excess profits such excess profits have spurred the investment and caused local government to over rely on coal power under economic downturn however in the context of cost escalation by deteriorated operation efficiency higher environmental and climate change compliance costs and fierce market competition the profitability of coal power will dissipate soon integrated power capacity plan consistent with the new economic normal stringent control on the scale of new coal power projects and deep power market reform are the key policy implications of our analysis

how democracy affects growth abstract this paper introduces a new methodology to examine the empirical relationship between democracy and economic growth democratic institutions are assumed to affect growth through a series of channels we specify and estimate a full system of equations determining growth and the channel variables results suggest that democracy fosters growth by improving the accumulation of human capital and less robustly by lowering income inequality on the other hand democracy hinders growth by reducing the rate of physical capital accumulation and less robustly by raising the ratio of government consumption to gdp once all of these indirect effects are accounted for the overall effect of democracy on economic growth is moderately negative our results indicate that democratic institutions are responsive to the demands of the poor by expanding access to education and lowering income inequality but do so at the expense of physical capital accumulation

scenario analysis of china s emissions pathways in the 21st century for low carbon transition china s growing demand for energy and its dependence on coal has seen its carbon emissions increase more than 50 since 2000 within the debate about mitigating global climate change there is mounting pressure for emerging economies like china to take more responsibility for reducing their carbon emissions within a post 2012 international climate change policy framework for china this leads to fundamental questions about how feasible it is for the country to shift away from its recent carbon intensive pattern of growth this paper presents some general results of scenarios that have been developed to investigate how china might continue to develop within a cumulative carbon emissions budget the results show how changes in the key sectors of the chinese economy could enable china to follow four different low carbon development pathways each of which complies with a cumulative emissions constraint each scenario reflects different priorities for governmental decision making infrastructure investments and social preferences having compared the key features of each scenario the paper concludes with some implications for chinese government policy

from education to democracy the conventional wisdom views high levels of education as a prerequisite for democracy this paper shows that existing evidence for this view is based on crosssectional correlations which disappear once we look at within country variation in other words there is no evidence that countries that increase their education are more likely to become democratic

managing electric power system transition in china abstract this research studies the low carbon transition of the electric power sector in china using a multi level perspective mlp of niches socio technical regime and landscape as well as literature on innovation systems three lines of thought on transition process are integrated in the paper to probe the possible transition pathways in china a mlp analysis is presented to understand the current niches regime and landscape of china s power sector a brief analysis on the future macroscopic socio economic transition in the process of industrialization urbanization and modernization of chinese society and its implication on power landscape are depicted to prove the urgency and magnitude of transition in china and why systematic transition management is needed five transition pathways namely reproduction transformation substitution reconfiguration de alignment re alignment and reconfiguration with their possible technology options are presented the paper goes further to propose an interactive framework for managing the transition to a low carbon energy system in china representative technology options are appraised by employing innovation theory to indicate the logic of policymaking within the framework institutional gaps in realizing the transition are also addressed the work presented in the paper will be useful in informing policy makers and other stakeholders and may provide references for power sector transition management in other countries

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

trade policymaking in a land locked developing country the wto review of nepal sandwiched between india in the south east and west and the people s republic of china in the north nepal is a small landlocked developing country its trade policy autonomy is constrained by land lockedness and open border with india despite opening up the economy it has not fully benefited from openness perhaps partly due to poor governance and partly due to transit and customs related problems although these are crucial issues for trade competitive the trade policy review of nepal 2012 tprn 2012 is either very polite or lacks a comprehensive analysis on most of these since transit related costs faced by landlocked developing countries can be substantial just evaluating the progress made in liberalising tariffs and nontariff barriers can provide a distorted picture of the overall business climate the future wto review reports on these countries should have a separate section on transit related issues to contribute to policy debate on the problems of landlocked developing countries despite this the publication of tprn 2012 is very timely given the emphasis placed in the current policy debate in the wto and other international forums on the problems of landlocked developing countries

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

effective protection policy appraisal and trade policy reform when the effective protection concept was rst developed it was widely regarded as a key widely used especially in the context of policy reform and policy appraisal in developing countries this paper re appraises tmeasure of the structure of protection and became widely deployed it was however subject to a he concept reviews the extent of its application and discusses the factors behind its longevity as an investigative tool the theoretical critique on the grounds that it was essentially a partial equilibrium measure which could not be easily embedded ipaper concludes that the measure still has a role to play in evaluating the structure of protection n a general equilibrium framework notwithstanding this critique the concept has continued to be

is democracy a normal good evidence from democratic movements 1 introduction is democracy a normal good in other words do people desire higher levels of democracy more participation in government as their incomes increase this paper uses the existence of a democratic movement to solve a missing variable problem in the current literature works such as barro 1996 huntington 1991 and lipset 1959 provide evidence of a strong positive correlation between levels of democracy and income this is frequently interpreted as evidence that higher incomes lead people to demand more democracy i address this issue in a more literal sense specifically if our goal is to infer what causes people to demand democracy we cannot ignore the persuasive evidence that citizens of countries like south africa under apartheid burma or china countries with low levels of democracy that have experienced widespread movements for democracy demand democracy instead of democracy levels i use the existence of a democratic movement as evidence of countries demand for democracy in this paper i define democratic movements as widespread public demonstrations that are explicitly pro democracy i e participants demands must include either democracy or direct elections and in which participants express these views physically some of the wellknown democratic movements that are included are the chinese student demonstrators in tiananmen square in 1989 the work of the african national congress and others in south africa to end the nondemocratic system of apartheid and the 1986 people power demonstrations in the philippines that forced ferdinand marcos to concede victory to corazon aquino the main goal of the paper is to use a new data set on democratic movements to estimate the relationship between income and democracy testing more directly than has previously been done whether democracy is a normal good a secondary goal is to investigate the conditions under which democratic movements are most likely to occur in an authoritarian country footnote 1 this excludes boycotts of elections and voting against a proposed authoritarian constitution unless those events are accompanied by physical demonstrations protests or strikes

allocation of coal de capacity quota among provinces in china a bi level multi objective combinatorial optimization approach abstract coal de capacity or capacity cut is an important part of china s energy transition formulating a quota allocation scheme for coal de capacity is the key to realizing smooth exit of coal overcapacity this study proposes a novel method of allocation of coal de capacity quota among provinces based on bi level multi objective combinatorial optimization in this bi level optimal allocation scheme boas the upper level is the central government and the lower level is the provincial governments the results indicate that because of the different costs of coal de capacity in each province the execution rate of each province for tasks assigned by the central government is quite different compared with the government allocation scheme gas and the single level optimal allocation scheme soas the growth rate of total factor productivity of the boas increases by 2 14 and 0 60 respectively the total de capacity cost of boas has reduced 64 billion yuan and 19 billion yuan respectively and the environmental benefits of boas has increased 73 billion yuan and 71 billion yuan respectively the gini coefficient of boas calculated by various indexes is less than 0 3 placing the scheme within the category of considerable or absolute fairness in addition the proposed allocation model truly reflects the complex dynamics of the game process of china s coal overcapacity governance system and can provide a more effective decision making reference for the chinese government in formulating the allocation scheme of coal de capacity

sri lanka s trade policy reverting to dirigisme the paper surveys recent development in sri lankan trade policy with an emphasis on emerging protectionist tendencies using sri lanka s trade policy review 2010 by the world trade organisation as a reference point the sri lankan experience for over the three decades following the liberalisation reforms stated in 1977 has clearly demonstrated that an outward oriented policy regime can yield a superior development outcome compared to a closed economy regime even under severe strains of a protracted ethnic conflict and macroeconomic instability viewed against this backdrop recent developments in the sri lankan policy scene do not seem to augur well for the future of the sri lankan economy

energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth in china abstract this paper investigates the existence and direction of granger causality between economic growth energy consumption and carbon emissions in china applying a multivariate model of economic growth energy use carbon emissions capital and urban population empirical results for china over the period 1960 2007 suggest a unidirectional granger causality running from gdp to energy consumption and a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to carbon emissions in the long run evidence shows that neither carbon emissions nor energy consumption leads economic growth therefore the government of china can purse conservative energy policy and carbon emissions reduction policy in the long run without impeding economic growth

on the number and size of nations this paper studies the equilibrium determination of the number of countries in different political regimes and in different economic environments with more or less economic integration we focus on the trade off between the benefits of large jurisdictions and the costs of heterogeneity of large and diverse populations our model implies that i democratization leads to secessions ii in equilibrium one generally observes an inefficiently large number of countries iii the equilibrium number of countries is increasing in the amount of economic integration

transition of china s power sector consistent with paris agreement into 2050 pathways and challenges abstract with a high carbon fuel mix and enormous space for efficiency potential the power sector is critical to cope with global emission mitigation targets the climate targets of less than 2 c and even ambitious 1 5 c confront china s power sector due to the rising momentum of power demand and the power mix dominated by coal power considering the potential carbon emissions space of the power sector in china this paper sets the alternative high share renewable power 1 5 and 2 c scenarios that necessitate the zero emissions and even negative emissions for the power sector by 2050 and then proposes the pathways and outlines challenges to demonstrate the arduousness and uncertainty of the mega project of power transition the results indicate that a package of options is needed for the transition while unconventional bio energy is the key to a 1 5 c scenario notably the coal power represents the largest barrier to low carbon transition owing to the rising installation and massive stranded assets during the long term reconfiguration of the power sector

unintended consequences of china s coal capacity cut policy in early 2016 china introduced additional capacity cut policies to rebalance supply in the coal market to match demand that had been reduced by slow economic growth and strict environmental regulation ensuing disruptions to the coal market caused these policies to be revised and subsequently discarded as decision makers tried to find a balance between efficient supply economic and social stability and environmental sustainability this paper explores the causes of these unintended consequences using an extended version of the kem china model the results reveal that full and partial compliance with the capacity cut policies results in a significant gap between supply and demand this suggests that implementation of the policy was technically infeasible even allowing for a significant increase in coal prices and economic costs besides significant differences in coal prices and output profiles are registered across the country we argue that the heterogeneous nature of the chinese coal market and policy compliance was a major factor leading to the unintended consequences rendering a single national price benchmark inappropriate as a policy gauge we propose that the capacity cut policy should be differentiated across regions and even types of coalmines market approaches would be preferable to the command and control instruments and policy distortions that cause excess capacity should be removed

study on china s low carbon development in an economy energy electricity environment framework abstract emissions mitigation is a major challenge for china s sustainable development we summarize china s successful experiences on energy efficiency in past 30 years as the contributions of energy usage management and integrated resource strategic planning which are essential for low carbon economy in an economy energy electricity environment e4 framework the paper studies the low carbon development of china and gives an outlook of china s economy growth energy electricity demand renewable power generation and energy conservation and emissions mitigation until 2030 a business as usual scenario is projected as baseline for comparison while low carbon energy and electricity development path is studied it is defined as low carbon energy electricity when an economy body manages to realize its potential economic growth fueled by less energy electricity consumption which can be characterized by indexes of energy electricity intensity and emissions per unit of energy consumption electricity generation results show that with eum china could save energy by 4 38 billion ton oil equivalences toes and reduce co2 emission by 16 55 billion tons with irsp china could save energy by 1 5 btoes and reduce co2 emission by 5 7 btons during 2010 2030 to realize the massive potential china has to reshape its economic structure and rely much on technology innovation in the future

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

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from china at both aggregated and disaggregated levels using a neo classical aggregate production model where capital labor and energy are treated as separate inputs this paper tests for the existence and direction of causality between output growth and energy use in china at both aggregated total energy and disaggregated levels as coal oil and electricity consumption using the johansen cointegration technique the empirical findings indicate that there exists long run cointegration among output labor capital and energy use in china at both aggregated and all three disaggregated levels then using a vec specification the short run dynamics of the interested variables are tested indicating that there exists granger causality running from electricity and oil consumption to gdp but does not exist granger causality running from coal and total energy consumption to gdp on the other hand short run granger causality exists from gdp to total energy coal and oil consumption but does not exist from gdp to electricity consumption we thus propose policy suggestions to solve the energy and sustainable development dilemma in china as enhancing energy supply security and guaranteeing energy supply especially in the short run to provide adequate electric power supply and set up national strategic oil reserve enhancing energy efficiency to save energy diversifying energy sources energetically exploiting renewable energy and drawing out corresponding policies and measures and finally in the long run transforming development pattern and cut reliance on resource and energy dependent industries

integrated resource strategic planning in china abstract many governments around the world are focusing on emissions reduction through energy efficiency improvements particularly on the demand side although integrated resource planning irp which considers both supply side and demand side options had been a useful tool in the planning process for the power industry its effectiveness has been challenged recently with the restructuring of the power sector that has occurred in china and elsewhere around the world the paper proposes integrated resource strategic planning irsp as an alternative to irp in a deregulated power sector irsp takes the resource planning process one step further to the national level in this paper the authors demonstrate the tremendous potential for efficiency improvements on both the supply and demand sides of the power sector in china with irsp the results show that between 2009 and 2020 the potential for electricity savings will reach about 1228 5 twh and the potential reduction in carbon dioxide co 2 emissions will be about 1020 5 million tons another important finding of this study is that the current market based pricing system in china should be improved to provide sufficient incentives for pursuing energy savings on the demand side

challenges of rapid economic growth in china reconciling sustainable energy use environmental stewardship and social development china aims at quadrupling per capita gdp by 2020 compared to the year 2000 without any energy and environmental policy measures this tremendous economic growth would be associated with a quadrupling of primary energy consumption up to 6 3 billion tons of standard coal equivalents sce and energy related co2 emissions of 13 9 billion tons against this background this paper is to set china s need to implement its sustainable development strategy into the quantitative context of the countries economic development and subsequent economic growth related environmental problems china is urgently searching for a way to ease the negative implications of economic growth and has committed itself to achieve a level of 3 0 billion ton sce primary energy consumption in 2020 as a consequence the macro economic energy intensity has to be reduced by 53 by 2020 a reduction of 53 by 2020 would lead to an energy intensity level 30 points below the year 2000 level of developed countries as for natural resources the expected economic growth will lead to an increase of crude oil net imports up to 455 million ton sce in 2020 and 650 million ton sce in 2030 as for regional income distribution economic growth helped to decrease existing inequities

a survey of china s low carbon application practice opportunity goes with challenge abstract the steady and maintainable energy supply for human development provides the strong motivation which is necessary to every country in the whole world the high strength carbon emissions has brought great harm to the earth since industrialization before hundreds of years and the global warming and extreme weather cause humans to develop low carbon economy low carbon economy has become a consensus of the entire human race no matter developed countries or developing countries which is the combination of the lifestyle changing and production structure basic changing and technical innovation it is well known that china is the largest developing country in the world with the rapid industrialization of country energy demand of chinese society is increasing in an incredible speed china has become the second largest energy consumer and the first carbon emissions country at present furthermore chinese energy structure and production methods are very inappropriate which cannot guarantee the sustainable development of china in future and therefore actively developing low carbon economy is the only road to realize china s economic development mode change and sustainable development which is supported by central government and local governments low carbon economy for china is not only an opportunity but also a great challenge firstly this paper discusses the current situation of energy supply and energy structure in china secondly current situation of units energy consumption in china is discussed thirdly some application practices of low carbon are described such as low carbon traffic low carbon city and low carbon village then the policies and law of china central government and local governments are described in the following paragraphs at the end the developmental prospect of low carbon economy in future china and the development barriers and recommendations are introduced respectively