household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

regime switches in exchange rate volatility and uncovered interest parity abstract we use a regime switching model to examine how exchange rate volatility is related to the failure of uncovered interest parity main findings are as follows first exchange rate returns are strongly influenced by regime switches in the relationship between the returns and interest rate differentials second low yielding currencies appreciate less frequently but once it occurs their movements are faster than when they depreciate third depreciation of low yielding currencies and low volatility are mutually dependent on each other finally these three findings are more evident for shorter horizons the second and third results are consistent with a market participants view short term carry trades in a low volatility environment and their rapid unwinding substantially influence exchange rates we consider the effects of funding liquidity to explain these results

estimating permanent income and wealth of the us farm households farm households are unique in the way they derive income when compared to nonfarm households farm operators and spouses have dual income sources from farm and off farm activities further farm households on an average possess higher wealth than nonfarm households this article estimates permanent income for the us farm households using data from a large national farm level survey the estimated income is then used to identify the determinants of wealth accumulation by the us farm households results confirm that permanent income is closely related to age of the operator education occupation farm size location and number of earners in the household along with age permanent income is a significant determinant of household wealth it was also found that the wealth income curve is nonlinear upward sloping and convex hausman s specification test indicates that variations in farm household wealth is better explained by estimated permanent income than observed total household income off farm income

energy saving behavior and marginal abatement cost for household co2 emissions abstract this paper attempts to measure consumers perceived net benefits or net costs of energy saving measures in using energy consuming durable goods using the estimated net costs and the volume of co2 reduced by the measures a marginal abatement cost mac curve for the average household s co2 emissions is produced an analysis using the curve suggests that in order to provide households with an incentive to take actions that can lead to co2 emission reductions in using energy consuming durables a high level of carbon price is needed in addition a regression analysis reveals that the net benefits of the measures are larger for households that put a higher priority on energy saving for those living in detached houses for those with a smaller number of persons living together and for those with less income the result of the analysis using the mac curve may suggest that promoting energy saving behavior will require not only a policy to provide economic incentives but also interventions to influence psychological factors of household behavior

inequality of opportunity in energy consumption in china abstract this paper proposes an empirical implementation of the concept of inequality of opportunity in energy consumption expenditure and applies this to data from chinese general social survey cgss we examine the role played by circumstances beyond the control of individuals for instance gender hukou status family background and region of birth in generating inequality in energy consumption expenditure in china this study shows that the relative share of inequality of opportunity ior in energy consumption expenditure in china is 10 02 for the entire sample ior turns out to be larger for the older cohort peaking at 14 40 for the 1955 64 cohort a shapley value decomposition presents that hukou status and region of birth are the two largest contributors to inequality of opportunity across birth cohorts a heterogeneity analysis further shows that more disadvantaged groups for instance female individuals born in the west of rural china with worse family backgrounds are facing more unequal opportunities in energy consumption in china these results suggest that energy policies focused on zero discrimination in opportunities should be encouraged

wealth accumulation over the life cycle and precautionary savings this article constructs and simulates a life cycle model of wealth accumulation and estimates the parameters of the utility function the rate of time preference and the coefficient of risk aversion by matching the simulated median wealth profiles with those observed in the panel study of income dynamics and in the survey of consumer finances the estimates imply a low degree of patience and a high degree of risk aversion the results are used to study the importance of precautionary savings in explaining wealth accumulation they imply that wealth accumulation is driven mostly by precautionary motives at the beginning of the life cycle whereas savings for retirement purposes become significant only closer to retirement

currency carry trade regimes beyond the fama regression abstract we show that carry trade strategies resemble fx option strategies that sell out of the money puts on high interest rate currencies both strategies collect premiums to generate persistent excess returns that unwind sharply when volatility increases we also show that the widely documented negative slope coefficient in regressions of exchange rate depreciation on forward currency premiums is an artifact of the volatility regime in high volatility regimes the so called fama regression produces a positive coefficient greater than unity we finally document the existence of an intuitive co movement between currency risk premiums and yield curve risk factors

carbon inequality at the sub national scale a case study of provincial level inequality in co2 emissions in china 1997 2007 abstract this study asks whether sub national inequalities in carbon dioxide co2 emissions mirror international patterns in carbon inequality using the case study of china several studies have examined global level carbon inequality however such approaches have not been used on a sub national scale this study examines inter provincial inequality in co2 emissions within china using common measures of inequality coefficient of variation gini index theil index to analyze provincial level data derived from the ipcc reference approach for the years 1997 2007 it decomposes co2 emissions inequality into its inter regional and intra regional components patterns of per capita co2 emissions inequality in china appear superficially similar to though slightly lower than per capita income inequality however decomposing these inequalities reveals different patterns while inter provincial income inequality is highly regional in character inter provincial co2 emissions inequality is primarily intra regional while apparently similar global patterns in co2 emissions are not mirrored at the sub national scale

future inequality in co2 emissions and the impact of abatement proposals this paper analyzes future carbon emissions inequality using a group decomposition of the gini index business as usual projections to the year 2100 for 135 countries show inequality in per capita emissions declines slowly next the impact on emissions levels and inequality of the kyoto protocol and other abatement proposals for annex ii countries in 2010 are measured with a focus on the gap narrowing and reranking effects substantial reranking of per capita emissions between annex ii and non annex ii countries will not occur unless the former reduce their emissions by at least 50 versus 1990 levels and the latter continue growing unabated

international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions a decomposition methodology by kaya factors in this paper we provide a methodology for decomposing international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions into kaya multiplicative factors and two interaction terms we use the theil index of inequality and show that this decomposition methodology can be extended for analyzing between and within group inequality components we can thus analyze the factors behind inequalities in per capita co2 emissions across countries between groups of countries and within groups of countries the empirical illustration for international data suggests some points firstly international inequality in per capita co2 emissions is mainly attributable to inequalities in per capita income levels which helps to explain its recent reduction while differences in carbon intensity of energy and energy intensity have made a less significant contribution this result is strongly influenced by the performance of china and india secondly the between group inequality component which is the biggest component is also largely explained by the income factor thirdly the within group inequality component increased slightly during the period something mainly due to the change in the income factor and the interaction terms in a few regions

rethinking inequality decomposition with evidence from rural china we examine inequality decompositions by income source and describe a general regression based approach for decomposing inequality the approach provides an efficient and flexible way to quantify the roles of variables like education and age in a multivariate context we illustrate the method using survey data from china the empirical results demonstrate how sharply different conclusions can emerge for different decomposition rules we explain how these differences reflect the treatment of equally distributed sources of income and we discuss implications for how results from inequality decomposition are interpreted a renewed interest in economic growth political economy and the distribution of income has again placed the economics of income inequality firmly on the academic research agenda relatively poor performances in latin america have been contrasted with success stories in east asia and recent evidence on the changing income distributions of emerging economic giants like china has

remittances and inequality in this paper the authors propose a framework and develop techniques for analyzing the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size and subsequently its impact on rural welfare household data are used to assign numerical coefficients to the impact of net remittances from both internal and international migrants on income inequality in 2 mexican villages the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size depends critically on the degree to which migration opportunities become diffused through the village population on the returns to human capital embodied in remittances and on the distribution of potentially remittance enhancing skills and education across village households our empirical findings demonstrate that in a village where many households contain internal migrants but few have experience migrating to the u s remittances from mexico to us migrants have an unequalizing impact on village incomes while remittances from internal migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution by contrast in a village with a long historyh of sending migrants to the us and hence a more ready access to us labor markets us to mexico remittances have an equalizing impact on incomes remittances from internal migrants in this village however embody a large human capital component and are highly correlated with household income hence internal migrant remittances account for a comparatively large share of inequalities in the 2nd village the overall effect of remittances on income inequality is favorable in both villages migration type migration stage and interaction terms all appear to play a role in this context the effects of small changes in remittances upon income inequality and rural welfare in the 2 villages are explored and some implications for migration and rural development policy are considered authors modified

income risk and allocation of labour time an empirical investigation this study investigates the behaviour of risk averse farm operators in response to farm income and employment variability economic theory maintains that greater farm income variability should incr

distributional aspects of emissions in climate change integrated assessment models the recent failure of copenhagen negotiations shows that concrete actions are needed to create the conditions for a consensus over global emission reduction policies a wide coalition of countries in international climate change agreements could be facilitated by the perceived fairness of rich and poor countries of the abatement sharing at international level in this paper i use two popular climate change integrated assessment models to investigate the path and decompose components and sources of future inequality in the emissions distribution results prove to be consistent with previous empirical studies and robust to model comparison and show that gaps in gdp across world regions will still play a crucial role in explaining different countries contributions to global warming

international inequality in energy intensity levels and the role of production composition and energy efficiency an analysis of oecd countries abstract this paper analyses the inequality of energy intensity levels between oecd countries its causes and evolution the paper develops a methodology which allows the inequality in energy consumption per capita to be decomposed into explanatory factors it also analyses the contribution of different groups of countries to this inequality the results show that although differences in affluence are the most significant factor in explaining inequality in energy consumption per capita the inequality in energy intensity levels plays a prominent role in reducing the inequality in energy consumption per capita over the analysed period the paper also develops a methodology which determines the importance of different production structures and energy efficiency of productive sectors in the differences in energy use per unit of gdp between the countries analysed the results show that sector specialisation becomes increasingly important in explaining the inequality of energy intensity while there is a significant trend towards the convergence of energy efficiency between countries sector by sector this trend would explain the decreasing weight of energy intensity as an explanatory factor of the inequalities in energy consumption per capita

are younger generations higher carbon emitters than their elders inequalities generations and co2 emissions in france and in the usa abstract proper understanding of the determinants of household co2 emissions is essential for a shift to sustainable lifestyles this paper explores the impacts of date of birth and income on household co2 emissions in france and in the usa direct co2 emissions of french and american households are computed from consumer budget surveys over the 1980 2000 time period age period cohort estimators are used to isolate the generational effect on co2 emissions i e the specific effect of date of birth independent of the age the year and other control variables the paper shows that french 1935 55 cohorts have a stronger tendency to emit co2 than their predecessors and followers the generational effect is explained by the fact that over their lifespan french baby boomers are better off than other generations and live in energy and carbon inefficient dwellings in the usa the absence of a generational effect on co2 emissions can be explained by the fact that intergenerational income inequalities are weaker than in france persistence of the generational effect once income and housing type is controlled for in france can be explained by the difficulty for french 1935 55 cohorts to adapt to sober energy consumption patterns

the nature of precautionary wealth abstract this paper uses the panel study of income dynamics to provide some of the first direct evidence that wealth is systematically higher for consumers with predictably greater income uncertainty however the apparent pattern of precautionary wealth is not consistent with a standard parameterization of the life cucle model in which consumers are patient enough to begin saving for retirement early in life wealth is estimated to be far less sensitive to uncertainty than implied by that model instead our results suggest that over most of their working life time consumers behave in accordance with the buffer stock models of saving described in carroll 1992 1997 or deaton 1991 in which consumers hold wealth principally to insulate consumption against near term fluctuations in income

the performance of ndf carry trades this paper investigates the performance of carry trade strategies for currencies with non deliverable forward ndf contracts we find that carry trades for currencies with ndf contracts are associated with higher sharpe ratios compared to carry trades for currencies with deliverable forward df contracts we also find that during the recent financial crisis df carry trades incur heavy losses while ndf carry trades realize insignificant losses df carry trade payoffs are shaped by credit risk global foreign exchange fx volatility and crash risk in contrast ndf carry trade payoffs are driven by global fx volatility and crash risk liquidity risk and currency convertibility risk measured by deviations from covered interest parity in offshore markets while global convertibility risk has a limited effect on carry trades

applying quantile regression and shapley decomposition to analyzing the determinants of household embedded carbon emissions evidence from urban china abstract as co2 emissions differ in households with different characteristics mitigation policies still address the contributions of these characteristics and their effects on specific households using a representative resident survey in urban china this paper compares how household characteristics differ in their associations with household embedded carbon emissions heces at different levels by quantile regression then this paper analyzes the contributions of these characteristics by shapley decomposition the findings include the following i household income is the most important contributor to the difference of heces and its positive effect increases as heces rise ii the use of wealth has different effects on heces because household housing ownership and deposits contribute little to heces but the positive effects of household car ownership contribute 25 8 iii young people and children will emit more heces than adults the employed emit more than persons who are unemployed or retired iv education increases heces overall but mainly at the low quantiles the negative effect of the marriage increases as heces rise v income car ownership marital status size and constitution of households with high heces should be addressed to reduce the inequality of heces indeed education on the low carbon concept is another way forward

precautionary savings a panel study theoretical literature shows that income uncertainty boosts saving yet empirical work is incomplete i test for the precautionary motive for saving using panel data knowing this motive s size is important for gauging the responsiveness of saving to government programs that reduce uncertainty and for comparison to other motives such as bequests most empirical studies of precautionary saving use either aggregate time series or cross sectional data which cannot capture the effects of individual income uncertainty i derive measures of total permanent and transitory income uncertainty from panel data the national longitudinal survey and find a strong precautionary motive a doubling of uncertainty increases the ratio of wealth to permanent income by 29

impact of off farm income on food expenditures in rural bangladesh an unconditional quantile regression approach this study examines the effects of off farm income on food expenditures of rural bangladeshi households our analysis yields unbiased estimates of the unconditional impact of off farm income on food expenditures and reveals the heterogeneous effects that occur across the distribution of total food consumption expenditures the findings suggest that the impacts of off farm income are uniformly positive across the unconditional quantile regression and significantly increase food consumption expenditures for all quantiles except for the 25th quantile in addition we found that schooling experience and location of the household increase the food expenditures of rural households most importantly this article argues that female headed rural households in which the female works off the farm tend to have significantly lower food expenditures

decomposing inequality in co2 emissions the role of primary energy carriers and economic sectors emission inequality across countries and the contribution of the energy mix and the sectoral composition of a country s energy use are of central importance to the climate debate we analyze the evolution of inequality in global co2 per capita emissions using both historical data on energy related co2 emissions and future emission scenarios generated with the integrated assessment model remind within our sample of 90 countries the results indicate that the gini index declined from about 0 6 in 1971 to slightly above 0 4 in 2008 a decomposition of the gini index of total emissions into primary energy carriers indicates that this reduction is mainly attributed to declining shares of emissions from coal peat and oil in total emissions and decreasing emission inequality within all fossil primary energy sources from the perspective of economic sectors the decline in overall inequality is almost entirely due to a decline of the contribution of emissions from manufacturing construction our analysis also suggests that an equally spread emission reduction from any one source would not have a major impact on overall emission inequality the analysis of future scenario data indicates that climate policy reduces absolute emission inequality while inducing drastic progressive emission reductions in all regions

indirect carbon emissions of urban households in china patterns determinants and inequality abstract the urban household sector is considered to be an essential source of climate change in order to obtain detailed information concerning the description of household consumption activities this paper combined consumer lifestyle approach and input output analysis to estimate indirect carbon emissions of urban household from 2002 to 2012 besides we further analysed the driving forces and inequality of indirect carbon emissions the results showed that the total indirect carbon emissions during the study period increased rapidly rising from 894 08 mtco2 to 1957 03 mtco2 more than 58 of carbon emissions were from 40 of the high income population the highest income group 10 of total urban households deduced 21 of urban indirect carbon emissions the per capita carbon emissions of different households showed a remarkable disparity and the per capita carbon emissions of high income groups decreased from 2011 to 2012 the effective mitigation efforts should focus on reducing carbon intensity and shifting consumption structure for high inequality consumption activities caused by rich households rich urban households should consume less goods and services from this consumption activities for high inequality consumption activities caused by low income households the redistribution of income from rich to poor and low carbon intensity lifestyles may be better options to reduce carbon emissions and inequalities of urban households

the carry trade and fundamentals nothing to fear but feer itself the carry trade is the investment strategy of going long in high yield target currencies and short in low yield funding currencies recently this nave trade has seen very high returns for long periods followed by large crash losses after large depreciations of the target currencies based on low sharpe ratios and negative skew these trades could appear unattractive even when diversied across many currencies but more sophisticated conditional trading strategies exhibit more favorable payos we apply novel within economics binary outcome classication tests to show that our directional trading forecasts are informa tive and out of sample loss function analysis to examine trading performance the critical conditioning variable we argue is the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate feer expected returns are lower all else equal when the target currency is overvalued like traders researchers should incorporate this information when evaluating trading strategies when we do so some questions are resolved negative skewness is purged and market volatility vix is uncorrelated with returns other puzzles remain the more sophisticated strategy has a very high sharpe ratio suggesting market ineciency

lessons from the evolution of foreign exchange trading strategies abstract the adaptive markets hypothesis posits that trading strategies evolve as traders adapt their behavior to changing circumstances this paper studies the evolution of trading strategies for a hypothetical trader who chooses portfolios from foreign exchange forex technical rules in major and emerging markets the carry trade and us equities the results show that a backtesting procedure to choose optimal portfolios improves upon the performance of nonadaptive rules we also find that forex trading alone dramatically outperforms the s p 500 with much larger sharpe ratios over the whole sample but there is little gain to coordinating forex and equity strategies which explains why practitioners consider these tools separately forex trading returns dip significantly in the 1990s but recover by the end of the decade and have been markedly superior to an equity position since 1998 overall trading rule returns still exist in forex markets with substantial stability in the types of rules though they have migrated to emerging markets to a considerable degree

off farm labor supply responses to permanent and transitory farm income a sample of iowa farm couples is used to evaluate whether off farm labor supply decisions respond to permanent and transitory components of farm income off farm labor supply of both spouses declines in response to increases in permanent farm income farm wives also reduce off farm labor supply in response to positive transitory farm income shocks consequently one mechanism farm households use to smooth their goods consumption when facing fluctuating farm income is to modify their consumption of leisure ability to smooth goods consumption does not imply the absence of liquidity constraints among farm households unless leisure consumption is also smoothed

geographical spread of global emissions within country inequalities are large and increasing abstract in spite of the extensive literature on greenhouse gas emission inequalities at the world wide level most of the evidence so far has been based on country level data however the within country dimension matters for both the implementation and the policy formation of climate policies as a preliminary step towards a better understanding of within country inequalities this paper measures their extent for the two major greenhouse gases co2 and ch4 over the 1970 2008 period using theil index decompositions we show that within country inequalities account for the bulk of global inequality and tend to increase over the sample period in contrast with diminishing between country inequalities including differences across sectors reveals that between sector inequalities matter more than between country inequalities and between sector inequalities become the dominant source of global inequality at the end of the sample period in the co2 case finally estimated social tensions arising from the disconnection between emissions and future damages turn out to be increasing as soon as within country disparities are taken into account these orders of magnitude should be kept in mind while discussing the efficiency and fairness of alternative paths in combating global warming

can implied volatility predict returns on the currency carry trade abstract currency carry strategies have long positions in currencies with a high interest rate and short positions in currencies with a low interest rate currency carry strategies have generated about 5 4 return per annum sharpe ratio 0 57 over the period december 1996 to may 2014 however during the recent financial crisis the carry strategy suffered losses of up to 20 on invested capital we investigate whether investors could have used the implied option volatility index on the us equity market the vix or the option implied volatility index from g7 currencies the vxy to time the currency carry trade we examine a large set of timing strategies and find that for some specific settings excess returns can be as large as 2 5 per annum however when we take into account that we investigated many trading strategies these excess returns turn out not to be statistically significant hence our findings cast doubt on implied volatility as a stand alone timing indicator for currency carry trading in real life portfolio decisions

permanent household income and consumption in urban south america milton friedman s permanent income hypothesis pih is considerably more complex and difficult to test than it appears at first sight which is why certain of its postulates still cannot be accepted or rejected with certainty one of the chief difficulties is that of separating the effects on consumption of permanent income which is unobservable and of various observable household characteristics which may be highly correlated with permanent income but may also be presumed to affect consumption directly this difficulty can be overcome provided a variable can be found which is associated with permanent income but has no independent direct effect on the propensity to consume if households are grouped by classes of that variable the permanent consumption propensity or elasticity can be estimated from mean income and consumption in the groups this technique requires the assumption of zero mean transitory income in each group but does not depend on the postulate that transitory income is uncorrelated with consumption for these reasons it cannot be applied to individual households this paper presents and estimates a model which separates the direct and indirect effects on consumption of a series of observable characteristics using regression techniques on individual household observations this makes it possible to estimate all the parameters of the model both the consumption propensity or elasticity and the contribution to permanent income of each observable explanatory variable the technique still requires that at least one of the explanatory variables affect consumption only through permanent income but for all other variables both direct and indirect influences can be estimated and the propensity to consume a given income can vary among households with different characteristics another principal problem with the pih is the assumption that transitory income and consumption are uncorrelated efforts to test this postulate can lead to very different results ranging from agreement with the hypothesis to findings of high propensities to consume transitory income see robert ferber pp 1306 09 this inconsistency and continued controversy over the hypothesis is due to the fact that permanent income cannot be estimated exactly but can be known only with an error which is conceptually distinct from transitory income empirical work on the pih has uniformly overlooked this fact treating estimates of permanent income as exact and regarding the whole of the unexplained residual as transitory income the present model explicitly distinguishes the estimation error from the error of transitory income or consumption the two transitory components can then be assumed to be uncorrelated while the part of permanent income which is not explained is consumed exactly like the explained part whether residual income and consumption appear to be correlated or not then depends on the relative sizes of these two components the unexplained permanent part and the true transitory part this technique has the further advantage that estimating the variance of the error of estimation makes it possible to tell how well a set of observable variables explain permanentincome this explanation may be better than the brookings institution robert solow richard eckaus and robert hall supervised the dissertation 1974 on which this article is based i am particularly grateful to ross williams and robert hall for help in specifying and estimating the model and to denisard alves for a crucial suggestion william cline irwin friend ricardo ffrench davis and robert ferber provided helpful comments on earlier versions subsequent discussions with surjit bhalla and robert lawrence have been most useful i am also much indebted to the managing editor and to a referee for improvements in the final version

inequality of energy intensities across oecd countries a note abstract this paper proposes the use of theil s second measure to analyze international energy intensity differences this index allows differences to be broken down within and between groups of countries in a consistent manner an analysis of oecd countries for the period 1971 1999 shows some basic points first the fall in energy intensities differences is attributable both to within group and between group inequality components second between group inequalities are currently the main contributor to the whole inequality value finally a detailed exploration on within group inequalities reveals the significant explanatory role played by eu countries

weighting vectors and international inequality changes in environmental indicators an analysis of co2 per capita emissions and kaya factors abstract analyses of international inequality in environmental factors such as the well known co 2 per capita or the kaya factors that is carbon intensity energy intensity and affluence have overlooked the effect that weighting vectors of distance functions and their time variations can have on the evolution of the inequality observed thus for example increases in the relative weight of countries with low emissions tend ceteris paribus to increase the inequality even when the vector of international per capita emissions remains unchanged this effect strictly associated with share variations is assessed in this paper by means of a simple decomposition methodology this methodology allows us to ascertain what part of the time variation of the inequality is attributable to the variations in the shares and or the variations in the environmental variable analysed and in turn suggests extending the analysis to the group components of inequality shorrocks 1980 this proposition is used empirically to assess international inequalities in co 2 per capita and the kaya factors for a variety of sub periods during the 1971 2007 period and for various satisfactory inequality indices

inequality in co2 emissions across countries and its relationship with income inequality a distributive approach this paper analyses the inequality in co2 emissions across countries and groups of countries and the relationship of this inequality with income inequality across countries for the period 1971 1999 the research employs the tools that are usually applied in income distribution analysis the methodology used here gives qualitative and quantitative information on some of the features of the inequalities across countries that are considered most relevant for the design and discussion of policies aimed at mitigating climate change the paper studies the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and shows that income inequality across countries has been followed by an important inequality in the distribution of emissions this inequality has diminished mildly although the inequality in emissions across countries ordered in the increasing value of income inequality between rich and poor countries has diminished less than the simple inequality in emissions lastly the paper shows that the inequality in co2 emissions is mostly explained by the inequality between groups with different per capita income level the importance of the inequality within groups of similar per capita income is much lower and has diminished during the period especially in the low middle income group

the impact of budget deficits on national saving in the usa this paper analyses the effect of government budget deficits on national saving in the usa utilizing annual time series data from 1967 to 1996 a model that includes budget deficits money supply real exchange rate real interest rate and the proportion of working age population to total population to explain national saving is developed after examining the time series properties of the data an error correction model is estimated the overall results suggest that an increase in government budget deficits tend to reduce national saving the working age population coming out of the baby boom generation has positively contributed to an increase in national saving

income growth and atmospheric pollution in spain an input output approach abstract the relationships between economic growth and environmental pressures are complex since the early nineties the debate on these relationships has been strongly influenced by the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis which states that during the first stage of economic development environmental pressures increase as per capita income increases but once a critical turning point has been reached these pressures diminish as income levels continue to increase however to date such a delinking between economic growth and emission levels has not happened for most atmospheric pollutants in spain the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income growth and nine atmospheric pollutants in spain in order to obtain empirical outcomes for this analysis we adopt an input output approach and use namea data for the nine pollutants first we undertake a structural decomposition analysis for the period 1995 2000 to estimate the contribution of various factors to changes in the levels of atmospheric emissions and second we estimate the emissions associated with the consumption patterns of different groups of households classified according to their level of expenditure

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

wealth weather risk and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments despite the growing evidence that farmers in low income environments are risk averse there has been little empirical evidence on the importance of risk in shaping the actual allocation of production resources among farmers differentiated by wealth the authors use panel data on investments in rural india to examine how the composition of productive and nonproductive asset holdings varies across farmers with different levels of total wealth and across farmers facing different degrees of weather risk income variability is a prominent feature of the experience of rural agents in low income countries the authors report evidence based on measures of rainfall variability that the agricultural investment portfolio behavior of farmers in such settings reflects risk aversion due evidently to limitations on consumption soothing mechanisms such as crop insurance or credit markets the authors results suggest that uninsured weather risk is a significant cause of lower efficiency and lower average incomes a one standard deviation decrease in weather risk measured by the standard deviation of the timing of the rainy season would raise average profits by up to 35 percent among farmers in the lowest wealth quartile moreover rainfall variability induces a more unequal distribution of average incomes for a given distribution of wealth wealthier farmers are willing to absorb significant risk without giving up profits to reduce production risk smaller farmers have to invest their limited wealth in ways that reduce their exposure to risk at the cost of lower profit rates the authors found that at high levels of rainfall variability differences in rates of profit per unit of agricultural assets were similar across classes of wealth but over the sample range of rainfall variability these rates of profit were always higher for the poorer farmers than for the wealthier ones suggesting that the disadvantages of small farmers in risk diffusion are more than offset by their labor cost advantage

a stochastic dominance analysis of yen carry trades abstract yen carry trades have made headline news for over a decade we examine the profitability of such trades for the period 2001 2009 yen carry trades generated high mean returns and sharpe ratios prior to the recent financial crisis they continued to outperform major stock markets for the full sample period given the non normality of carry trade returns we apply non parametric tests based on stochastic dominance sd to evaluate whether the high returns of yen carry trades are compatible with risk as reflected in returns on us and global stock market indices we apply a general test for sd developed recently by linton maasoumi and whang 2005 to six currencies as well as portfolios of these currencies for a large class of risk averse investors profits from yen carry trades cannot be attributed to risks

integrating sustainability into city level co2 accounting social consumption pattern and income distribution abstract from a sustainability perspective city level co2 emissions require reconsiderations correspondingly the economy environment society nexus should be incorporated into city scale co2 accounting therefore in this study the semi closed io model is integrated with a hem to calculate co2 emissions arising from the social consumption pattern and income distribution and to explore economic drivers behind co2 variations this method is applied to a case study of beijing result demonstrate that beijing in 2012 witnessed something different from that in 2005 1 co2 emissions centred in the internal linkages of a broader class of consumption terms with high economic output mainly driven by interprovincial exports 2 imports increasingly helped decarbonize the mixed net forward and backward co2 linkages of consumption items and 3 income driven co2 emissions excluding demand side parts persisted which were more obvious on the supply side where households have more economy wide effects besides urban households played an essential role in household wide co2 reductions this paper ended with corresponding conclusions policy implications and directions for future work

impact of macro economic surprises on carry trade activity abstract can official news and policy announcements affect foreign exchange speculation a widespread speculative strategy in foreign exchange markets is carry trade this paper explores the links between macro economic news and foreign exchange options to identify macro economic fundamentals most relevant to the pricing of downside risk measured by risk reversals options contracts to carry trade activity focusing primarily on the japanese yen carry trade we identify a significant impact of macro economic surprises on dollar yen risk reversals the effect is sizeable with news related to bilateral trade balance of particular concern moreover there is a close link between risk reversals and speculative futures positions in japanese yen this allows us to quantify a substantial effect of macro economic news on carry trade activity with the cost of hedging as the transmission mechanism

sharing resources the global distribution of the ecological footprint abstract this paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands as measured by the ecological footprint is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable just and efficient currently different nations place different demands on the environment i e the ecological footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe calculation of the gini coefficient for total ecological footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use calculation of the atkinson index shows how inequality in the ecological footprint is related to the inequality of income and environmental intensity

estimates of trends in global income and resource inequalities it is often argued that the inequality in the world is increasing we study the global income and resource inequality between 1960 and late 1990s income is measured in gdp capita in terms of both current market exchange rate and purchasing power parity ppp consumption of paper energy electricity food animal food as well as emissions of carbon dioxide is also studied changes in the absolute and relative gap between the top and bottom 20 consumers as well as the atkinson measure are used as inequality indicators some remarks are made on how to compare income across countries and how inequality should be measured we find that the inequality in terms of gdp capita measured in ppp terms is rather stable in relative terms but increasing in absolute terms we conclude that inequality as measured by the atkinson index is decreasing for all resources but that the gap in resource consumption in absolute terms is increasing for paper and electricity consumption

farm income variability and the supply of off farm labor if farmers are risk averse greater farm income variability should increase off farm labor supply this effect is confirmed for a sample of kansas farmers off farm employment of farmers and their spouses is also found to be significantly influenced by farm experience off farm work experience farm size leverage efficiency and farm specific education in addition farm operators and spouses who receive significant income support through government farm programs are less likely to work off the farm this may suggest that policy changes reducing farm income support payments may increase off farm employment of farmers and their spouses

examining the influencing factors of co2 emissions at city level via panel quantile regression evidence from 102 chinese cities ascertaining the influencing factors of carbon dioxide emissions in chinese cities is an important issue for policy makers this paper investigates the effect of several determinants on carbon emis

empirical age earnings profiles the human capital earnings function in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics in spite of its widespread acceptance the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience the standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30 50 and overstates midcareer growth by 20 50 however simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available

decomposing inequality in energy related co2 emissions by source and source increment the roles of production and residential consumption abstract using provincial data on energy related co2 emissions in china from 1997 to 2014 and the co2 emission gini coefficient ceg this study evaluates china s spatial inequality in energy related co2 emissions further we decompose this inequality and its variation from the perspectives of production and residential energy consumption using the source decomposition and source increment decomposition methods this paper presents a new ceg source increment decomposition method that can achieve complete decomposition the results reveal a downward trend in china s overall production sector and residential sector co2 emissions inequality although the gini coefficient of co2 emissions from the residential sector is larger than that from the production sector the contribution of the latter to the overall ceg is higher the impacts of the spatial inequality of co2 emissions from china s production and residential sectors depend on the type of energy the concentration effect is the primary factor responsible for inducing changes in china s overall and production sector co2 emissions inequality but it is not the only dominant factor for the residential sector co2 emissions inequality

trading the forward bias are there limits to speculation abstract in this paper we investigate whether trading the forward bias allows for economically significant excess returns we find that bias trading strategies can be viewed as attractive investment opportunities per se useful diversification devices and promising portfolio extensions for active fund managers trying to beat their benchmarks the empirical results which also mirror the problems arising in attempts to explain the puzzle by risk premia are consistent with market evidence that the bias is traded in practice overall our findings suggest that limits to speculation are unlikely to provide a stand alone explanation for the persistence of the forward bias

conditioning carry trades less risk more return abstract prior studies show that extreme interest rate differentials irds and high foreign exchange rate fx volatility have substantial explanatory power for the validity of uip we show that these contemporaneous drivers also have predictive power by implementing a conditional currency carry trade ct strategy that excludes regimes for which uip is likely to hold conditioning high fx volatility only or on both fx volatility and extreme irds outperforms the base case unconditional ct strategy in virtually any of the settings analyzed conditioning on very large irds only shows mixed findings our strategy works best for smaller ct portfolios

global patterns of materials use a socioeconomic and geophysical analysis abstract human use of materials is a major driver of global environmental change the links between materials use and economic development are central to the challenge of decoupling of materials use and economic growth dematerialization this article presents a new global material flow dataset compiled for the year 2000 covering 175 countries including both extraction and trade flows and comprising four major material categories biomass construction minerals fossil energy carriers and ores industrial minerals first we quantify the variability and distributional inequality gini coefficients in international material consumption we then measure the influence of the drivers population gdp land area and climate this analysis yields international income elasticities of material use finally we examine the coupling between material flows and between income and material productivity measured in economic production per tonne material consumed material productivity is strongly coupled to income and may thus not be suitable as an international indicator of environmental progress a finding which we relate to the economic inelasticity of material consumption the results demonstrate striking differences between the material groups biomass is the most equitably distributed resource economically the most inelastic and is not correlated to any of the mineral materials the three mineral material groups are closely coupled to each other and economic activity indicating that the challenge of dematerializing industrial economies may require fundamental structural transformation our analysis provides a first systematic investigation of international differences in material use and their drivers and thus serves as the basis for more detailed future work

using weather variability to estimate the response of savings to transitory income in thailand this paper measures the extent to which farmers are able to use savings and dissavings to smooth consumption in response to unexpected shocks to income time series information on regional rainfall is used to construct estimates of transitory income due to rainfall shocks the relationship between these measures of transitory income and savings indicates that farm households save a significantly higher fraction of transitory income than nontransitory income jel d91 016 the incomes of farm households in developing countries are notorious for being both low and uncertain policies that increase the incomes of farmers may well be different

carry trade and foreign exchange rate puzzles this article demonstrates that carry trade is part of the explanation of foreign exchange rate puzzles we introduce carry traders in a heterogeneous agent model in addition to fundamentalists and chartists our model has the ability to produce the stylized facts observed in empirical exchange rates such as heavy tails excess volatility and volatility clustering as well as the negative relationship between market volatility and carry trade activity we find that the interaction between carry traders and chartists provides an explanation for the forward premium puzzle this effect is strengthened by chartists who extrapolate the trend induced by carry trade

explanatory factors of co2 per capita emission inequality in the european union the design of european mitigation policies requires a detailed examination of the factors explaining the unequal emissions in the different countries this research analyzes the evolution of inequality in co2 emissions per capita in the european union eu 27 in the period 1990 2009 and its explanatory factors for this purpose we decompose the theil index of inequality into the contributions of the different kaya factors the decomposition is also applied to the inequality between and within groups of countries north europe south europe and east europe the analysis shows an important reduction in inequality to a large extent due to the smaller differences between groups and because of the lower contribution of the energy intensity factor the importance of the gdp per capita factor increases and becomes the main explanatory factor however within the different groups of countries the carbonization index appears to be the most relevant factor in explaining inequalities the policy implications of the results are discussed

china s carbon emissions from urban and rural households during 1992 2007 in china rapid economic growth has stimulated fast urban expansion and rural household income and consumption expenditure in current paper an input output method is used to determine the impact of china s increased urban and rural household consumption on carbon emissions the results shows that the direct and indirect co 2 emission from household consumption accounted for more than 40 of total carbon emissions from primary energy utilization in china in 1992 2007 the population increase expansion of urbanization and the increase of household consumption per capita all contribute to an increase of indirect carbon emissions while carbon intensity decline mitigates the growth of carbon emissions therefore at the domestic level household consumption is of great significance for co 2 emission which could be mitigated through changing the composition of goods and services consumed by households and switching to consumption pattern of less carbon intensive products the government must consider the substantial contribution of household consumption to carbon emissions when china is encouraging consumption in order to address the current global financial crisis c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

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

risky adjustments or adjustments to risks decomposing bank leverage by use of cointegration analysis this paper splits bank leverage into a short and long run dimension regarding the long run if banks leverage ratios or related liability shares are stable over time they form a cointegrating relationship thus cointegration tests indicate whether banks liability ratios were stable or subject to structural breaks during the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008 by endogenous identification of structural breaks my analysis tracks the precise channels of banks leverage adjustments findings on the long run suggest that banks cut their leverage twice in june 2007 banks significantly reduced their foreign debt while in april 2008 they withdrew from interbank borrowing regarding the short run i study how banks adjust to the dynamics of risk proxies from distinct financial markets findings on the short run point out that banks reactions to risks differ considerably across different types of financial markets

analysis of the international distribution of per capita co2 emissions using the polarization concept abstract the concept of polarization is linked to the extent that a given distribution leads to the formation of homogeneous groups with opposing interests this concept which is basically different from the traditional one of inequality is related to the level of inherent potential conflict in a distribution the polarization approach has been widely applied in the analysis of income distribution the extension of this approach to the analysis of international distribution of co 2 emissions is quite useful as it gives a potent informative instrument for characterizing the state and evolution of the international distribution of emissions and its possible political consequences in terms of tensions and the probability of achieving agreements in this paper we analyze the international distribution of per capita co 2 emissions between 1971 and 2001 through the adaptation of the polarization concept and measures we find that the most interesting grouped description deriving from the analysis is a two groups one which broadly coincide with annex b and non annex b countries of the kyoto protocol which shows the power of polarization analysis for explaining the generation of groups in the real world the analysis also shows a significant reduction in international polarization in per capita co 2 emissions between 1971 and 1995 but not much change since 1995 which might indicate that polarized distribution of emission is still one of the important factors leading to difficulties in achieving agreements for reducing global emissions

risk premia carry trade dynamics and economic value of currency speculation in this paper we derive the dynamics and assess the economic value of currency speculation by formalizing the concept of a trader inaction range we show that exchange rate returns comprise a time varying risk premium and that uncovered interest parity uip holds in a speculative sense the often cited forward bias puzzle originates from the omission of the risk premium in standard uip tests consistent with its popularity among market professionals the carry trade strategy can be rationalized as it systematically collects risk premia and generates economic value when applied in multi currency portfolios

saving in developing countries theory and review in the literature on economic development much of the interest in saving has been focused on the relation between saving and growth but saving is not only about accumulation it is about smoothing consumption in the face of volatile and unpredictable income and helping to ensure the living standards of poor people whose lives are difficult and uncertain this paper develops a model of households which cannot borrow but which accumulate assets as a buffer stock to protect consumption when incomes are low such households dissave as often as they save do not accumulate assets over the long term and have on average very small asset holdings but their consumption is markedly smoother than their income much of the evidence is as consistent with this view of saving as it is incosistent with standard views of smoothing over the life cycle and with explanations of the link between saving and growth in terms of life cycle saving behavior consumption smoothing is also a useful way of thinking about government policy where volatility in the world prices of taxed commodities can generate sharp fluctuations in government revenues as well as reallocations of revenue between the private and public sectors many important policy issues in developing countries hinge on issues of consumption and smoothing and research on these issues is currently likely to be more productive than work on the relation between saving and growth

diet and the distribution of environmental impact abstract this paper examines the relationship between scale and distribution issues it is argued that since achieving a sustainable scale requires economic activity to stay within biophysical limits considerations of equity should not be limited to the distribution of monetary measures such as income but should include the distribution of scarce environmental services as well in order to make this point this paper examines how differences in diet across populations lead to inequality in the distribution of environmental impact first the distribution of food consumption across the world s population is examined using national data next ecological footprints are estimated in order to ascertain how differences in diet affect the distribution of environmental impact the results show that the meat intensive diet enjoyed by many in the industrialized world leads to a greater degree of inequality in the use of environmental services than is apparent from examination of the distribution of food consumption across countries

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