co2 emissions of china s food industry an input output approach in a joint u s china statement on climate change the chinese government declared to peak co2 emissions around 2030 this demonstrates the government s determination to deal with carbon emission and climate change although the food industry is not a carbon emission intensive industry its large scale makes the emission reduction in the industry very important based on the input output structural decomposition method this paper calculates the co2 emissions of china s food industry from 1991 to 2012 and decomposes the change in co2 emissions of the industry during 1992 1997 1997 2002 2002 2007 and 2007 2010 into four main effects emission factor energy structure energy intensity and total output including four sub effects intermediate use domestic final demand import substitution and export extension the results show that changes in co2 emissions in the food industry mainly depends on total output effect and energy intensity effect energy intensity effect is the most important factor reducing co2 emissions as it reduced cumulative 213 million tons mt co2 emissions of the industry among total output effect the effects of intermediate use and domestic final demand are the two biggest contributors to carbon emissions finally we provide some policy advices for constraining and reducing co2 emissions of china s food industry the advices include increasing r d investment and the substitution of energy with other input factors to decrease energy intensity increasing the added value of the food industry optimizing the energy structure with more clean and low carbon energy and maintaining the prices of raw materials of the food industry i e agricultural products with taxes or subsidies

the impact on economic performance of a transformation in workplace relations this study examines how a transformation in patterns of conflict and cooperation affected economic performance in 25 work areas of a large unionized manufacturing facility in the period 1984 87 unlike most studies of industrial relations and economic performance this study clearly distinguishes conflict from cooperation but evaluates the two together rather than focusing on only one an analysis of data collected from union and employer records and interviews strongly suggests that work areas with traditional labor management relations rooted in adversarial assumptions had higher costs more scrap lower productivity and a lower return to direct labor hours worked than work areas with transformational relations characterized by increased cooperation and improved dispute resolution

determinants of bilateral trade protection in this paper determinants of bilateral protection levels are empirically identified when controlling for multilateral trade regulation and importing country specific factors strong empirical support is provided of that three bilateral factors are influencing the bilateral protection level specifically a country s protection level on goods from a trade partner is positively affected by the domestic import penetration of goods produced by the trade partner negatively influenced by the intra industry traded share of these imports and positively affected by the trade partner s protection level on domestic goods moreover very high explanatory values are provided in the cross section estimations indicating that these determinants policy regulations and importer specific factors jointly explain almost all of the variation in bilateral protection levels the results are general in the sense that estimations are performed for a large sample of bilateral trade relations including 22 trade partners that are highly differentiated in terms of country characteristics the overall results indicate that to the extent that policy makers can affect bilateral protection levels under multilateral trade regulation they act on political economy rather than economic goals

defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

environmental regulation technological innovation and energy consumption a cross region analysis in china abstract china has encountered the environmental issues and energy pressures in the middle income stage strengthening environmental regulation is a crucial measure to prevent environment deterioration and energy dilemma this paper investigates the three types of environmental regulations on energy consumption using feasible generalized least squares method during 1997 2015 in direct and indirect path the main conclusions are as follows in the direct path the economical and supervised types of environmental regulations have inhibited energy consumption whilst legal environmental regulation has no significant impact as for indirect path the rebound effect of energy is greater than the energy conservation generated by technological innovation which is embodied as an inhibitory effect the effects of environmental regulation display regional difference the legal and supervised types of environmental regulations have significant cost effect and rebound effect on energy consumption in the entire samples on the contrary the economical environmental regulation shows the opposite sigh in eastern regions the counterfactual simulation results show that the net effects of environmental regulations on energy consumption are negative which is beneficial for relieving energy pressures based on the findings this paper provides pertinent policy implications

environmental efficiency and market segmentation an empirical analysis of china s thermal power industry abstract dominated by state owned administrative monopolistic enterprises china s power industry faces a dilemma that is being provoked by market oriented reforms regional protectionism makes it more difficult for those more efficient but non local power generators to enter into the local market thereby causing significant market segmentation ms in view of regional technology heterogeneity a meta frontier non radial slacks based measure model is used to evaluate the environmental efficiency ee of china s thermal power industry further we utilize a panel data tobit model and apply counterfactual analysis to explore the impacts of ms on ee the results show that 1 technology gaps exist between the group frontier and the meta frontier exhibiting greater potential for improvement 2 the degree of ms in thermal power industry in most provinces fluctuates within a narrow range from 2006 to 2015 and peaks during the period from 2008 to 2010 3 ms negatively affects ee performance both significantly and robustly with up to a 15 loss of thermal power generation due to ms in 2009 4 significant regional technology heterogeneity exists along with a widening technology gap ratio between developed and underdeveloped areas this study provides insightful policy implications for the sustainable development of china s thermal power industry

industrial relations performance economic performance and qwl programs an interplant analysis this study analyzes the relationship among plant level measures of industrial relations performance economic performance and quality of working life programs the analysis employs pooled time series and cross section data from 18 plants within a division of general motors for the years 1970 79 the empirical results show strong associations between industrial relations and economic performance measures and limited support for the hypothesis that quality of working life efforts improve both kinds of performance

assessing global co2 emission inequality from consumption perspective an index decomposition analysis abstract co2 emission inequality among countries is a key issue in international climate negotiations in view of the growing popularity of the consumption based emission accounting system in climate policy studies analyzing the emission inequality from the consumption perspective can help policymakers design emission abatement scenarios that are fairer to all parties using a new approach based on the theil index and the index decomposition analysis ida technique this paper examines global per capita consumption based emission inequality in 1995 2009 the sources and determinants of both the status and evolution of the emission inequality are quantified the empirical results show that the global emission inequality was sourced mainly from the emerging economies particularly china and india the global inequality decreased at an accelerating rate during the period studied the narrowing disparity among countries in per capita consumption level drove while the expanding disparity in consumption based emission intensity largely hindered the inequality reduction comparing the consumption based emission inequality with that under the production based principle reveals that the latter partly masked the inequality in the distribution of global co2 emissions through production outsourcing more detailed results and discussions are presented

conjecture uncertainty and cooperation in prisoner s dilemma games some experimental evidence abstract this paper presents experimental tests of two models of cooperation in finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma games kreps milgrom roberts and wilson 1982 the models suggest that either a perception that the other party may use the tit for tat strategy or mutual uncertainty concerning dominant noncooperative strategies can lead to rational cooperation the experiment independently manipulated both types of uncertainty and allowed for inferences concerning the players prior homemade preferences for cooperation only in relatively restricted situations did either type of uncertainty promote cooperation instead players cooperated much more than was predicted they also cooperated more when they were certain of their opponents payoffs

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

toward an economic model of the japanese firm i owe a great deal to professor moses abramovitz who suggested that i write this article i appreciate his constant encouragement and guidance which aided me throughout its preparation i am also indebted to three anonymous referees of the journal and to professors ryutaro komiya and michael riordan for their critical comments and helpful suggestions needless to say i am solely responsible for the views expressed in this paper

the effects of environmental regulation and technical progress on co2 kuznets curve an evidence from china based on environmental kuznets curve theory a panel data model which takes environmental regulation and technical progress as its moderating factors was developed to analyse the institutional and technical factors that affect the path of low carbon economic development the results indicated that there was a co2 emission kuznets curve seen in china environmental regulation had a significant moderating effect on the curve and the inflection of co2 emissions could come substantially earlier under stricter environmental regulation meanwhile the impact of technical progress on the low carbon economic development path had a longer hysteresis effect but restrained co2 emission during its increasing stage and accelerated its downward trend during the decreasing stage which was conducive to emission reduction strict environmental regulation could force the high carbon emitting industries to transfer from the eastern regions to the central or the western regions of china which would make the co2 kuznets curve higher in its increasing stage and lower in its decreasing stage than that under looser regulation furthermore energy efficiency energy structure and industrial structure exerted a significant direct impact on co2 emissions we should consider the above factors as essential in the quest for low carbon economic development

dynamic governance of clean energy markets how technical innovation could accelerate climate policies abstract this article explores the governmental means to accelerate technical progress in climate protection it is based on selected best practice cases in which the diffusion of low carbon technologies has been accelerated by ambitious policies the empirical cases involve not just renewable energies but also energy efficiency the latter being considered more difficult in terms of governance the examples are taken from advanced oecd countries as well as from emerging economies this article will explore which factors have caused this dynamic development the conclusion reached will show that the interaction of positive feedback mechanisms which has already been described as virtuous cycle provides only a plausible theoretical explanation if the policy cycle is added to the market cycle and the innovation cycle climate policy should not only define ambitious targets but also address all three feedback mechanisms

application of the structural decomposition analysis to assess the indirect energy consumption and air emission changes related to italian households consumption abstract the design of sustainable production and consumption strategies and the assessment of implemented actions require to identify the driving forces that influence the trend of energy consumption and environmental impacts for this purpose the structural decomposition analysis sda was developed as a suitable methodology to analyse the driving forces of the changes in economic energy and environmental indicators the paper presents one of the first italian studies that apply an energy and environmental extended input output model opportunely shaped to the examined context combined with sda in detail it aims at 1 investigating the energy use and the air emissions arisen from the productive sectors to meet the household final demand in the period 1999 2006 2 identifying the sources of variations in energy and environmental indicators and 3 identifying which economic sectors are the most relevant sources of variation and must to be taken into account in the definition of sustainable production and consumption strategies as sources of changes the authors investigate energy and emission intensity effects leontief effect and final demand effect outcomes point out that the increase of the final consumptions often nullifies the energy and environmental benefits due to the improvement of the eco efficiency and to the introduction of innovative technologies of production the sector level analysis shows that tertiary and electricity gas and vapour result the highest italian consuming sectors of energy thus they should be focused for energy saving strategies agriculture hunting and sylviculture and road transports that are primarily sectors affecting air emissions should be taken into account for the reduction of environmental impacts results highlight that the current dichotomy of final demand growth and improvement of eco efficiency represents a key problem that needs to be addressed therefore the presented study can aid to define suitable oriented strategies for the energy and environmental impact reduction

energy efficiency and policy in swedish pulp and paper mills a data envelopment analysis approach the paper provides an empirical assessment of the electricity efficiency improvement potential in the swedish pulp and paper industry by employing data envelopment analysis dea and mill specific input and output data for the years 1995 2000 and 2005 the empirical results are discussed in relation to the reported outcomes of the swedish voluntary energy efficiency programme pfe the estimated electricity efficiency gap is relatively stable over the time period it equals roughly 1 twh per year for the sample mills and this is three times higher than the corresponding self reported electricity savings in pfe this result is largely a reflection of the fact that in the pulp and paper industry electricity efficiency improvements are typically embodied in the diffusion of new capital equipment and there is a risk that some of the reported measures in pfe simply constitute an inefficient speed up of capital turnover the above does not preclude though that many other measures in pfe may have addressed some relevant market failures and barriers in the energy efficiency market overall the analysis suggests that future energy efficiency programs could plausibly be better targeted at explicitly promoting technological progress as well as at addressing the most important information and behaviour related failures

comparison of energy intensities in european union countries results of a structural decomposition analysis abstract this work proposes an input output structural decomposition analysis model to identify the sources of the differences in the energetic intensities of the european union countries given an economic structure a determined composition of the final demand and determined direct energy intensities by countries the work studies to what extent these factors explain the difference in aggregate energy intensities that are observed for different european union countries on the basis of this information indicators are constructed by sectors and countries that allow us to identify the role that each sector or country plays as an energy consumer the results show that the aggregate total energy differences in europe are strongly influenced by the direct energy intensity effect and by the demand effect without the different economic structures of the countries being an important factor in the explanation of these differences the metallurgical and manufacturing products sectors are identified as the most intensive in the aggregate energy intensity

assessing the influence of manufacturing sectors on electricity demand a cross country input output approach abstract the production and consumption of electricity is a major source of co2 emissions in europe and elsewhere in turn the manufacturing sectors are significant end users of electricity in contrast to most papers in the literature which focus on the supply side this study tackles the demand side of electricity an input output approach combined with a sensitivity analysis has been developed to analyse the direct and indirect consumptions of electricity by eighteen manufacturing sectors in fifteen european countries with indirect electricity demand related to the purchase of industrial products from other sectors which in turn require the consumption of electricity in their manufacturing processes we identify the industrial transactions and sectors which account for a greater share of electricity demand in addition the impact of an electricity price increase on the costs and prices of manufacturing products is simulated through a price model allowing us to identify those sectors whose manufacturing costs are most sensitive to an increase in the electricity price

union membership in the united states 1973 1981 this paper reports estimates of union membership gathered from may current population surveys from 1973 to 1981 the authors present data by occupation industry selected states and smsas race gender and educational attainment the paper both extends and differs from that by freeman and medoff which presents unionism estimates for the private sector for 1968 75 to facilitate longitudinal analysis this paper reports three year moving averages of occupational and industry data and annual estimates of demographic classifications the data include public sector as well as private sector workers and they exclude workers not covered by the national labor relations act also the authors provide only union membership estimates not estimates on workers covered by union contracts this paper suggests that the percentage of all workers that are unionized in the united states remained fairly constant over the 1973 81 period

technological gap scale economy and china s industrial energy demand abstract the industrial sector in china is energy intensive and accounts for more than 60 of the nation s total energy consumption demand narrating the story behind the growth of china s industrial energy consumption could help us understand the past and prepare for the future this paper aims to investigate the factors affecting china s industrial energy consumption in the 21st century by using an extended production theoretical decomposition approach pda with considering the technological gap and scale of the economy effects the new proposed decomposition framework includes four new factors namely the energy technological gap the output technological gap energy scale efficiency and output scale efficiency the results show that in the 21st century the energy consumption of china s industry increased by more than one billion tons of standard coal the expansion of the industrial economy is a dominant driver of china s industrial energy consumption while potential energy intensity energy technology and output technology are the three largest energy saving factors in addition to the conventional factors the newly proposed factors also have important effects on china s industrial energy consumption specifically output scale efficiency is an energy saving factor while the energy technological gap output technological gap and energy scale efficiency are drivers of energy consumption this suggests that china s industry is at the stage of returns to scale that is beneficial to output performance but harmful to energy performance meanwhile the widening of the industrial technological gaps has negative impacts on china s industrial energy conservation the proposed decomposition approach can provide information that cannot be obtained from traditional approaches and it can also be applied to many other cases for investigating feasible paths of energy saving and emissions reduction

efficient wage bargaining as a repeated game this paper builds a bridge between the two existing approaches for wage and employment determination in a unionized market the monopoly union model and the efficient bargaining model both fail to capture the dynamic aspects of wage bargaining when the repeated nature of the wage bargaining process is considered the equilibria are neither as inefficient as the monopoly union model predicts nor as fully efficient rather the two models can be regarded as particular cases with certain discount rates we apply our model to issues such as the endgame interpretation of the u s steel industry wage concessions and featherbedding

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp revisited the case of korea 1970 1999 abstract causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated applying a multivariate model of capital labor energy and gdp usual btu energy aggregate is substituted with a divisia aggregate in an attempt to mitigate aggregation bias to test for granger causality in the presence of cointegration among the variables we employ a vector error correction model rather than a vector autoregressive model empirical results for korea over the period 1970 1999 suggest a long run bidirectional causal relationship between energy and gdp and short run unidirectional causality running from energy to gdp the source of causation in the long run is found to be the error correction terms in both directions

the effects of factor market distortion and technical innovation on china s electricity consumption abstract this study integrates neoclassical economics and institutional theory to examine the relationship between market factor distortion technical innovation and china s electricity consumption using business data from china 2008 2014 first we provide evidence that factor market distortion promotes electricity consumption of industrial enterprises in china secondly we divide technical innovation into traditional technical innovation and green innovation finding that the level of technical innovation has an inverted u shaped effect on the electricity consumption of industrial enterprises further we also provide evidence that factor market distortion amplifies the inverted u shaped effect of the technical innovation plot the results show that accelerating the reform of the market and promoting green innovation should be regarded as important strategies for national energy saving and emission reduction

measurement of energy rebound effect in households evidence from residential electricity consumption in beijing china abstract energy efficiency improvement policies have special significance for carbon emissions reduction and the mitigation of the effects of climate change however the energy rebound effect caused by technological progress will indirectly increase energy consumption the magnitude of the rebound effect largely determines the effectiveness of energy efficiency in mitigating energy consumption this study reviews the main theory behind estimated methods of energy rebound effect measurement focuses on constructing a double logarithm energy demand model and an error correction model of the asymmetric demand responses of electricity price changes to empirically analyse the direct rebound effect on residential electricity use in beijing it integrates consumer s demand theory with the embodied electricity of household spending from a seven sector environmental energy input output e i o analysis to estimate the indirect rebound effect the three income elasticity weight change and proportional re spending scenario simulation results show that residential electricity use in beijing exhibits a partial rebound effect and the long term direct and indirect rebound effects are 46 to 56 and the short term direct rebound effect is 24 to 37 finally the direct and indirect energy rebound effect for various income groups needs further research an appropriate policy mix should be adopted to mitigate effectively the rebound effect in china s current lower energy price and lower energy efficiency market

assessing the technological responsibility of productive structures in electricity consumption abstract a methodology is developed which allows us to measure the responsibility of the productive structure of an economic system with respect to the consumption and generation of electricity within an input output framework we propose a technical indicator of technology responsibility in electricity consumption based on the assessment of technical coefficients technological responsibility refers to the capacity of a sector or economic transaction between sectors to induce electricity consumption regardless of the final demand vector sectors with a high technological responsibility are those whose technologies use inputs which either directly or indirectly require much electricity independently of the composition of the final demand in the economy this methodology is applied to the productive sectors of the spanish economy it is found out that a few transactions between sectors are highly technologically responsible regarding electricity consumption the results show that although the service sectors are the ones with the greatest share in electricity consumption the industrial sectors particularly the extractive heavy and energy industries the electricity generation sector and construction are the ones with the greatest technological responsibility i e they have technology mixes with a large propensity to consume electricity propagating to the other sectors the sectors with the highest technological responsibility are clustered around three broad sectors energy metal manufacturing and transport

material implication of chile s economic growth combining material flow accounting mfa and structural decomposition analysis sda abstract over the last three decades the economic integration of the chilean economy into global markets has been taking place at a rapid pace for example in 1986 exports represented 29 of gdp while in 1996 they had increased to 38 of gdp this period of time was characterized by strong economic growth with an average annual growth rate of about 10 from a physical perspective material requirements more than doubled from 220 to 500 million tons of direct material inputs dmi during the same decade the rate of material growth requirements was around 13 per year the main objective of this study is to explain the changes in dmi by using a structural decomposition analysis sda the changes in material flow accounting mfa were broken down into the effects caused by changes in resource use per unit of output material intensity effect changes between and within sectors structural change effect changes in the composition of final demand mix effect changes due to shifting shares of domestic final demand and export categories category effect and finally changes in the overall level of economic activities level effects the results as a percentage of the total level of dmi used in 1986 indicate that economic growth was the major source of material changes 109 the material intensity and category effects explained 31 and 14 of the increase respectively the increase in the material intensity is mainly due to a declining quality of ores in copper production however these components were partly compensated by the structure 14 and mix 13 effects therefore for a southern american country such as chile the main causes of these changes in material consumption have been a combination of the nature of economic growth along with an increase in export production and material intensity of production

china s energy consumption under the global economic crisis decomposition and sectoral analysis abstract it is now widely recognized that there is a strong relationship between energy consumption and economic growth most countries energy demands declined during the economic depression of 2008 2009 when a worldwide economic crisis occurred as an export oriented economy china suffered a serious exports decline in the course of the crisis however it was found that energy consumption continued to increase against such a background this paper aims to assess and explain the factors causing the growth of energy consumption in china first we will explain the impact of domestic final use and international trade on energy consumption by using decomposition analysis second embodied energy and its variation across sectors are quantified to identify the key sectors contributing to the growth lastly the policy implications for long term energy conservation are discussed the results show that the decline in exports was one of the driving forces for energy consumption reduction in the crisis but that the growth of domestic demand in manufacturing and construction largely stimulated by economic stimulus plans had the opposite effect on energy consumption international trade contributed to decreasing energy consumption of china during and after the crisis because the structure of exports and imports changed in this period

estimating the rebound effect in us manufacturing energy consumption abstract the energy price shocks of the 1970s are usually assumed to have increased the search for new energy saving technologies where eventual gains in energy efficiencies will reduce the real per unit price of energy services and hence the consumption of energy will rise and partially offset the initial reduction in the usage of energy sources this is the rebound effect which is estimated for the us manufacturing sector using time series data applying the dynamic ols method dols when allowing for asymmetric price effects the rebound effect is found to be approximately 24 for the us manufacturing sector

pay equality and industrial politics personnel managers often argue that equitable pay treatment manifested as wage compression is useful because it reduces disharmony among workers but it is far from obvious that a compressed salary structure is morale improving since better workers may feel disenchanted by this scheme however when workers rewards are based on relative comparisons salary compression reduces uncooperative behavior that is detrimental to the firm relative comparisons imply that some reference group must be selected the major result is that within the relevant groups some wage compression is efficient

small island developing states and their economic vulnerabilities abstract many small island developing states sids face special disadvantages associated with small size insularity remoteness and proneness to natural disasters these factors render the economies of these states very vulnerable to forces outside their control a condition which sometimes threatens their very economic viability the gdp or gnp per capita of these states often conceals this reality in this paper the major vulnerabilities faced by sids are discussed and when possible quantified in the form of an index an attempt is also made to construct a composite index of vulnerability

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

firms choice of method of pay using data from the bls industry wage survey the author tests the theory that firms choose their methods of pay by balancing the gains from more precise links between performance and pay against m

unions and cooperative behavior the effect of discounting using union contract and industry wage survey data this article examines the effect of discounting on cooperative bargaining behavior by unions and firms game theory predicts that higher discount rates raise the temptation to defect from cooperation measures of cooperative behavior included the presence of merit pay incentive pay wage employment guarantees or labor management study committees discount rates were proxied by the relevant industry s failure rate failure rates generally had negative effects on cooperation industry wage survey results showed larger effects for union than non union establishments providing support for the union bargaining framework

union s threats and wage determination this paper considers local wage bargaining as a sequential game and focus es on how different rules of the game affect employment and equilibri um payment to workers and employers work to rule and other go slow t hreats lead to low employment while strike threats lead to high empl oyment an increase in the bargaining power of the union induces high er or unchanged equilibrium employment in the strike threat case whi le employment is reduced in the slow down case finally if all kinds of industrial actions are legal only one is credible which type de pends on the parameters of the model copyright 1988 by royal economic society

durable goods and residential demand for energy and water evidence from a field trial this article describes a household production model in which energy efficient durable goods cost less to operate so households may use them more the model is estimated using household level data from a field trial in which participants received high efficiency clothes washers free of charge the estimation strategy exploits this quasi random replacement of washers to derive precise estimates of the household production technology and a demand function for clothes washing during the field trial households increased clothes washing on average by 5 6 after receiving a high efficiency washer implying a price elasticity of 06 the complete model is used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of recent changes in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers

direct rebound effect on urban residential electricity use an empirical study in china abstract though improving energy efficiency is an important approach to decrease the energy consumption the rebound effect caused by technology progress negatively affects the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies this paper empirically investigates direct rebound effect of urban residential electricity use in china using china s 30 provincial government panel data from1996 to 2010 we build a co integration equation and a panel error correction model to analyze the direct rebound effect the results indicate that an obvious rebound effect in the chinese urban residential electricity consumption does exist specifically the long term rebound effect is 0 74 while the short term rebound effect is 0 72 therefore the rebound effect significantly impairs functions of energy efficiency policies for this reason chinese government should take the rebound effect into consideration when formulating energy policies

decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions growth in the united states the role of research and development abstract the united states has achieved economic growth compatible with carbon reduction since 2007 this work is addressed to understand the eight effects especially effects related to research development rd whereas economic scale was the primary inhibitor to the drop of carbon emission followed by investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure the results of decoupling efforts analysis uncover that energy intensity r d intensity r d efficiency and sectoral carbon intensity contributed to decoupling economic growth from carbon emission whereas investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure did not contribute to the decoupling finally some policy implications are proposed

the gatt and gradualism abstract this paper shows how the institutional rules imposed on its signatories by the gatt created a strategic incentive for countries to liberalize gradually trade liberalization must be gradual and free trade can never be achieved if punishment for deviation from an agreement is limited to a withdrawal of equivalent concessions and if initial deviation from an agreement is also limited the paper shows how sufficiently patient countries have an incentive to deviate in a limited way when operating under gatt dispute settlement procedures

is energy efficiency a driver or an inhibitor of energy consumption changes in spain two decomposition approaches abstract the 2000 2008 expansion period of the economy was accompanied by an important increase of energy consumption the desire of decoupling has led us to analyse the driving forces behind the energy consumption changes during this expansion period through a structural decomposition analysis sda based on the spanish input output tables previous decomposition has been supplemented by a logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi analysis of the energy consumption changes during a longer period 2000 2013 the results show that the energy intensity was the main inhibitor effect of the energy consumption changes of sectors of production not only during the recession but also during the expansion period secondly the energy intensity was a driver of the energy consumption change of households during the expansion period however during the recession period the energy intensity of private transport contributed to reducing energy consumption having an inhibitor effect therefore if the activity effect is still the most important driver the energy intensity effect has become the main inhibitor of energy consumption changes the energy policy recommendation is to focus on household energy consumption in the future if the spanish government aims to attain the eu energy efficiency objectives

union wage practices and wage dispersion within establishments this study analyzes establishment level data primarily to examine the effect of unionism on the wage structure within establishments the major finding is that within establishment dispersion of wages is significantly narrower in unionized than in nonunionized establishments a pattern the author attributes in large part to unions wage practices such as single rate or automatic progression modes of wage payment as opposed to merit reviews and individual wage determination the data also show that dispersion in average wages is narrower among organized plants but by more modest amounts than the within establishment differential overall the evidence suggests a major role for explicit union wage policies in explaining the dispersion of wages within firms and in the economy as a whole

unit tax versus ad valorem tax a tax competition model with cross border shopping abstract within the framework of spatial tax competition with cross border shopping we examine the choice of tax method between ad valorem tax and unit specific tax this study shows that governments endogenously choose the ad valorem tax method not because of a classic welfare reason but because it is a good strategy to compete for mobile consumers another key finding is that while governments are committed to the ad valorem tax method the choice leads to inferior outcome tax cutting competition becomes more serious when countries adopt ad valorem tax and competition in ad valorem tax results in smaller tax revenue than competition in unit tax

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

competition for migrants in a federation tax or transfer competition this paper provides an analysis of competition for migrants competing in taxes transfers renders migration flows less more elastic with respect to changes in fiscal policy jurisdictions with aligned preferences i e jurisdictions that maximize the interest of the same type of households either mobile or immobile households prefer to reduce the competitive pressure and compete in taxes jurisdictions with distinct preferences on the other hand prefer to expose themselves to more competitive pressure and compete in transfers this paper offers insights into the optimal use and design of transfers and helps interpret existing empirical evidence

investigating co2 mitigation potentials and the impact of oil price distortion in china s transport sector abstract the transport sector is a major source of oil consumption and co2 emissions in china however due to the regulated pricing mechanism in china the end user oil price cannot reflect real market price and thus oil price distortion exists therefore the main aim of this paper is to study the affecting mechanism of oil price distortion on co2 emission mitigation firstly the level of oil price distortion is evaluated and a dynamic trans log cost function model is built to analyze the substitution relationship among energy products secondly the own price elasticity and cross price elasticity for fuel demand are calculated based on provincial panel data of china s transport sector over 2004 2016 finally co2 mitigation potentials are estimated by removing the impact of oil price distortion results show that 1 there is positive oil price distortion over 2004 2016 2 substitute relationship is observed between oil and coal oil and electricity and the substitution relationship is affected by factor substitution 3 removing oil price distortion will reduce co2 emissions of china s transport sector by 599 million tons in the studying period policies should focus removing the impact of oil price distortion promoting electricity oil substitution and promoting capital energy substitution to mitigate co2 emissions

methodological proposal for territorial distribution of the percentage reduction in gross inland energy consumption according to the eu energy policy strategic goal abstract a 20 reduction in the consumption of energy is one of the main goals of the european union s eu 20 20 20 energy strategy but the uniform application of this overall goal to all of the countries is neither fair nor equitable as it does not take into consideration the characteristics of the energy system in each member state this article therefore proposes a nonlinear distribution methodology with objective dynamic goals for reducing gross inland energy consumption according to the context and characteristics of each member state we hope it will open discussion on how these overall goals can be weighted then we analyse the situation of the energy indicators related to energy efficiency in the reference year 2005 used by the eu for reaching its goal of reducing the gross inland consumption by 20 by 2020 and its progress from 1996 to 2007 finally the methodology proposed is applied to the year 2020 on the nuts0 territorial level that is to members of the eu according to the eurostat nomenclature of territorial units for statistics nuts weighting is done based on energy intensity per capita gross inland consumption and per capita energy intensity in two scenarios the eu 15 and eu 27

optimum tariffs and retaliation revisited how country size matters in his seminal work on tariff retaliation johnson review of economic studies 21 1953 1954 showed that a country will win a bilateral tariff war if its relative monopoly monopsony power in world trade is sufficiently large however it is unclear from johnson s analysis and from subsequent research on the subject how this power is determined in general economic environments an important goal of this paper is to address this issue with the help of a neoclassical trade model in which country size is at centre stage it is shown that a sufficient condition for a country to prefer a non cooperative nash tariff equilibrium retaliation over free trade is that its relative size be sufficiently large the paper also refines the structure of the general trade model and generates additional characterization results on the importance of country size for best response tariff functions retaliatory tariffs and welfare

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

rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma experimental evidence this paper presents experiments designed to examine the sequential equilibrium reputation hypothesis in the finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma the authors test the hypothesis by controlling the subjects ability to build reputations and by manipulating their beliefs that their opponent is irrational or altruistic the responses of subjects strongly support the sequential equilibrium prediction the results also suggest an important role for homemade altruism that is a natural tendency to cooperate that subjects bring to the experiment from the outside the authors find that there may be no difference between the beliefs that an opponent is altruistic and the actual chance it is so copyright 1993 by royal economic society

sources of change in industrial electricity use in the taiwan economy 1976 1986 abstract this paper applies an input output structural decomposition model in order to analyse the sources of change in the 1976 to 1986 electricity demands of the industrial sectors in taiwan various types of demand shifts technical substitutions and technological changes are identified the relative importance of 14 mutually exclusive sources of change is evaluated the results indicate that over the course of the study period while economic growth had the dominant impact on electricity use followed in importance by substitution effects effects due to technological change had an adverse effect being much weaker than those resulting from economic growth and substitution effects it is expected that this pattern will remain unchanged in the foreseeable future hence industrial electricity demand in taiwan will continue to grow

the relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

gray water and environmental externalities international patterns of water pollution through a structural decomposition analysis abstract despite regulatory measures restricting industrial and agricultural operations from pouring pollutants into lakes streams and rivers around 1 1 trillion m3 of wastewater were still disposed in waterways around the world in 2009 and this amount continues to grow several studies have analyzed the determinants of gray water increase at local level but so far none has explored them in an international context to highlight the role of global value added chains and the dichotomy between developed and developing nations in order to provide insights on the dynamics of water pollution worldwide this paper analyzes the main drivers of gray water discharge during the 1995 2009 period and the effort on reducing gray water compared to other environmental externalities based on the world input output database a structural decomposition analysis sda of gray water generation shows that domestic demand for food is the main driver of gray water changes in all countries while relocation of industrial activities to developing nations has disproportionally transferred this burden from developed countries manufacturing industries we highlight that while national policies should target water pollution from the agri food sector within each country water discharges from manufacturing sectors in global value chains need to be regulated from an international perspective besides the empirical evidence on water pollution drivers currently lacking in the environmental literature this paper also introduces a novel hybrid multiplicative additive sda that overcomes the issue of distributing large interaction terms in standard additive models and allows simulating mitigation scenarios it portrays the heterogeneity among sectors of how environmental abatement policies affect water and air pollution

a combined input output and sensitivity analysis approach to analyse sector linkages and co2 emissions abstract this paper proposes a methodology which identifies the main productive linkages between activity branches in terms of co2 emissions and applies this methodology to the spanish case it suggests that emissions are related to the input output productive relationships within an economy to the co2 emissions intensity of sectors and to the structure of final demand of different sectors a formal analysis of these factors is carried out by means of an input output framework combined with sensitivity analysis and lineal programming the most co2 emissions intensive productive relationships in spain are shown this consideration of the main linkages contributes to the identification of the key sectors and facilitates the design of effective policy measures aimed at co2 emissions abatement

specific and ad valorem tariffs are not equivalent in trade wars abstract this note argues that when two countries choose optimal tariffs in a trade war specific tariffs are not equivalent to ad valorem tariffs even if all markets are competitive in particular it shows that if a country s trading partner switches from a specific tariff to an ad valorem tariff that yields the same revenue at the initial trade point the former country has an incentive to lower its tariff when two identical countries choose the types and magnitudes of tariffs in a two stage game they will choose ad valorem tariffs making the trade war less severe

the rebound effect for space heating empirical evidence from austria abstract the major focus of this paper is to investigate the magnitude of the rebound effect for space heating in austria different approaches are applied and compared the most important result of this investigation is that despite the fact that all approaches applied have their weaknesses and some results were not highly significant the final outcomes of the different approaches show quite good coincidence they provide evidence of a rebound effect between 20 and 30 the most important conclusions for energy policy makers are i standards with respect to building codes are very important tools to increase the thermal quality of new buildings ii due to prevailing low energy prices a triggering tool which may be rebates or loans has to be implemented to increase the efficiency of the building stock