monitoring changes in economy wide energy efficiency from energy gdp ratio to composite efficiency index since the 1973 world oil crisis monitoring trends in energy efficiency at the economy wide level has been an important component of energy strategy in many countries to support this effort various energy efficiency related indicators have been developed we examine some classical indicators which are often found in national and international energy studies in the 1970s and 1980s we then describe the recent developments in using the index decomposition analysis to give an economy wide composite energy efficiency index based on a bottom up approach this composite index is superior to the classical indicators as an economy wide energy efficiency measure and has lately been adopted by a growing number of countries for national energy efficiency trend monitoring

are labour productivity and residential living standards drivers of the energy consumption changes abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the effects that explain the final energy consumption changes in spain in the period 2000 2013 using the lmdi i method distinguishing between the final energy consumption by the productive sectors and households residential and private transport the consumption changes in the productive sectors and households have been decomposed into five effects these are the intensity the inverse of labour productivity the structural the standard of living and the activity effects the energy intensity effect has been defined from a physical perspective in order to eliminate the possible effects brought about by causes unconnected with the energy process the evolution of the market the variation of productivity etc that usually affect the energy intensity indicator when measured from a macroeconomic perspective the results show that the activity the living standard of private transport and sectoral intensity effect are those that contribute most to the increase of energy consumption in this period whereas the inverse of labour productivity the structural and the intensity effects in private transport contribute to reducing the final energy consumption the results obtained for the sectoral intensity except for non private transport and the residential intensity effects lead us to recommend that it is necessary to focus on a more effective and intensive policy in the matter of energy efficiency in spain than that developed in the period of analysis

an alternative decomposition of the fisher index we derive a novel decomposition of the fisher price index that is directly implied by its linear homogeneity in price relatives our results can readily be generalized to any index that satisfies the linear homogeneity property

marriage and managers attitudes to risk marital status can both reflect and affect individual preferences we explore the impact of marriage on corporate chief executive officers ceos and find that firms run by single ceos exhibit higher stock return volatility pursue more aggressive investment policies and do not respond to changes in idiosyncratic risk these effects are weaker for older ceos our findings continue to hold when we use variation in divorce laws across states to instrument for ceo marital status which supports the hypothesis that marriage itself drives choices rather than it just reflecting innate heterogeneity in preferences we explore various potential explanations for why single ceos may be less risk averse data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2014 1926 this paper was accepted by wei jiang finance

indicators for sustainable energy development a multivariate cointegration and causality analysis from tunisian road transport sector this paper studies causal mechanism between indicators for sustainable energy development related to energy consumption from tunisian road transport sector the investigation is made using the johansen cointegration technique and the environmental kuznets curve ekc approach it examines the nexus between transport value added road transport related energy consumption road infrastructure fuel price and co2 emissions from tunisian transport sector during the period of 1980 2010 empirical results show that road transport related energy consumption transport value added transport co2 emissions and road infrastructure are mutually causal in the long run these results do not support the hypothesis of neutrality between energy and income for the tunisian road transport sector also there is a unidirectional causality running from fuel price to road transport related energy consumption with no feedback in both the short and long runs the fuel price and the road infrastructure are significant in the causal chain though the estimated long run cointegrated equation we conclude that there is an inverse n shaped relation between transport value added and transport co2 emissions with income turning point respectively equal to 75 and 579 constant 2000 tnd prices therefore our empirical findings refute the hypothesis of an inverted u shaped ekc for transport co2 emissions in tunisia the findings of this study have a number of policy implications economic growth environmental degradation energy and transportation policies should be recognized in order to improve the energy efficiency in transport sector all measures that should reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without affecting economic growth may be undertaken the policymakers in tunisia should plan urban transport relocate production units improve fuel efficient vehicles and reinforce legislation on controlling emissions in order to copying with policies based on low carbon development and climate resilient strategies

the social basis of interdependent preferences abstract most economists are sympathetic to the idea that concerns for relative position are an important aspect of many economic problems there has traditionally been a reluctance to include such concerns primarily because models that included them often allow such a broad range of behavior that there are few if any restrictions on equilibrium behavior and hence such models would have little or no predictive power in this paper we discuss how reduced form models may naturally give rise to utility functions that depend in part on relative standing there are several advantages of modelling concern for relative standing in reduced form utility functions even when there is no similar concern in the deep preferences it provides structure and constraints on the way that relative standing affects utility and further it can yield testable implications about the way that changes in the underlying environment affect the concern for relative standing we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of modelling social concerns in this way and provide examples that illustrate how concerns for relative standing can affect savings investment and labor choice decisions

gender differentiation in risk taking behavior on the relative risk aversion of single men and single women we relate an observed difference between single men sm and single women sw in attitudes towards risk to the higher value assigned to social status by sm than by sw in the marriage market low status carries a harsher penalty for sm than for sw because when selecting a partner the social status of a man is more important to a woman than the social status of a woman is to a man correlating social status with relative wealth we show how intensified distaste at experiencing low relative wealth reduces relative risk aversion

analysis of energy end use efficiency policy in spain abstract the implementation of saving measures and energy efficiency entails the need to evaluate achievements in terms of energy saving and spending this paper aims at analysing the effectiveness and economic efficiency of energy saving measures implemented in the energy savings and efficiency action plan 2008 2012 eap4 in spain for 2010 the lack of assessment related to energy savings achieved and public spending allocated by the eap4 justifies the need of this analysis the results show that the transport and building sectors seem to be the most important from the energy efficiency perspective although they did not reach the direct energy savings that were expected there is scope for reduction with the appropriate energy measures for the effectiveness indicator the best performance are achieved by public service agricultural and fisheries and building sectors while in terms of energy efficiency per monetary unit the best results are achieved by transport industry and agriculture sectors authors conclude that it is necessary that central regional and local administrations will get involved in order to get better estimates of the energy savings achieved and thus to affect the design of future energy efficiency measures at the lowest possible cost to the citizens

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

the demand for road diesel in canada abstract in this paper we estimate the demand for road diesel in canada using aggregate annual data for the period 1986 2008 using a partial adjustment model pam we find short and long run price elasticities of 0 43 and 0 8 respectively however using cointegration techniques we obtain price elasticities that are 30 to 50 lower the short run elasticity with respect to gdp per capita is evaluated at 0 5 with the pam and 1 55 with cointegration in the long run both estimation techniques indicate an income elasticity around 0 9 our results underline the importance of controlling for the expansion of the primary sector which has been characterizing the canadian economy in the 2000s

are incentive contracts rigged by powerful ceos we argue that some powerful ceos induce boards to shift the weight on performance measures toward the better performing measures thereby rigging incentive pay a simple model formalizes this intuition and gives an explicit structural form on the rigged incentive portion of ceo wage function using u s data we find support for the model s predictions rigging accounts for at least 10 of the compensation to performance sensitivity and it increases with ceo human capital and firm volatility moreover a firm with rigged incentive pay that is one standard deviation above the mean faces a subsequent decrease of 4 8 in firm value and 7 5 in operating return on assets

misery loves company equilibrium portfolios with heterogeneous consumption externalities the present article extends the arrow debreu portfolio model to consumption externalities it is assumed that each investor has a von neumann morgenstern utility that is a function of her own consumption and of the average consumption in the group to which she belongs individual degrees of risk aversion and conformism are heterogeneous within each group and between the different groups in the economy we show that under some conditions on the degree of conformism in the economy the optimal portfolio and consumption choices observed at equilibrium in each group with consumption externalities are equivalent to those that are optimal without any externality but with an adjusted degree of risk aversion if these conditions are not fulfilled groups have no representative agent and the demand for pure zero mean lotteries may be positive thereby showing that not all diversifiable risks are washed away at equilibrium we characterize the relationship between the distribution of conformism in the economy to the competitive allocation of risk and to the equity premium we provide conditions for the two fund separation property to hold

decompositions of fisher indexes abstract a fisher price or quantity index has no natural additive or multiplicative decomposition in view of the growing use of fisher indexes in official statistics however there is need for such decompositions this paper summarizes and compares the various proposals

rice in asia is it becoming an inferior good empirical results using time series and cross sectional data indicate that rice in asia is becoming an inferior good income elasticities declined and in some cases became negative between 1961 and 1985 in most of the fourteen asian countries studied accordingly domestic demand for rice in these countries is not likely to grow as rapidly as it has in the past as a consequence there is a potential for excess supplies of rice to develop in asia putting downward pressure on rice prices while governments in asian countries may need to adjust their rice policies in the future world rice suppliers may need to develop new markets for rice

the sensitivity of ceo wealth to equity risk an analysis of the magnitude and determinants abstract to control risk related incentive problems equity holders are expected to manage both the convexity and slope of the relation between firm performance and managers wealth i find stock options but not common stockholdings significantly increase the sensitivity of ceos wealth to equity risk cross sectionally this sensitivity is positively related to firms investment opportunities this result is consistent with managers receiving incentives to invest in risky projects when the potential loss from underinvestment in valuable risk increasing projects is greatest firms stock return volatility is positively related to the convexity provided to managers suggesting convex incentive schemes influence investing and financing decisions

rice in asia is it becoming an inferior good reply huang david and duff raise a number of issues concerning data and method in particular they argue for the following procedures a use of private consumption expenditures expressed in a common currency rather than per capita gross domestic product gdp expressed in national currencies b use of domestic price data instead of world price data and c the use of prior information in specifying the ridge regression using these procedures they reestimate our model and obtain results that differ from

yours mine and ours do divorce laws affect the intertemporal behavior of married couples divorce laws establish spouses individual property rights over household resources and determine when divorce is allowed this paper examines how such laws inuence the intertemporal behavior and the welfare of u s married couples i build a model of household choice about consumption labor supply and divorce under multiple divorce law regimes and i estimate it using exogenous variation in u s divorce laws from the 1970s to the 1990s couples responded to equal division of property and unilateral divorce by increasing tangible assets up to 19 which suggests the presence of a strong income eect for the primary earner and by reducing female employment by over 5 percentage points because the threat of divorce granted additional bargaining power to married woman the bargaining weight of women implied by these responses in the model corresponds to a third of the weight of men this indicates that equal division of assets beneted women when it was

measuring structural change and energy use decomposition of the us economy from 1997 to 2002 abstract the steadily increasing focus on energy production and consumption has led to growing research attention to patterns of energy use within economies of particular interest has been comparing the driving forces of increasing efficiency and economic structural change input output analysis ioa and decomposition analysis have become critical tools for performing such analyses this study analyzes aggregate energy use in the united states in 1997 and 2002 to discover the causes of changing energy usage and flows results show that rising population and household consumption acted to drive up energy demand but this driving force was offset by considerable structural change within the economy particularly related to a quickly increasing trade deficit in manufacturing goods thus while total energy intensity the ratio of energy use to economic output declined by approximately 12 between 1997 and 2002 changes in the structure of the economy explain this drop more than increased energy efficiency the level of aggregation at which decomposition analyses are run was identified as a crucially sensitive parameter for the determination of structural change and future studies should specifically address the amount of detail necessary to adequately measure changes in economic structure

fatter attraction anthropometric and socioeconomic matching on the marriage market we construct a marriage market model of matching along multiple dimensions some of which are unobservable in which individual preferences can be summarized by a one dimensional index combining the various characteristics we show that under testable assumptions these indices are ordinally identified and that the male and female trade offs between their partners characteristics are overidentified using psid data on married couples we recover the marginal rates of substitution between body mass index bmi and wages or education men may compensate 1 3 additional units of bmi with a 1 percent increase in wages whereas women may compensate two bmi units with 1 year of education

decomposing the decoupling of co2 emissions and economic growth in brazil abstract this paper examines the occurrence of a decoupling between the growth rates in economic activity and co 2 emissions from energy consumption in brazil from 2004 to 2009 this decoupling was highlighted when economic activity and co 2 emissions moved in opposite directions in 2009 more generally we observe several periods of relative decoupling in brazil but not to the extent witnessed in 2009 to identify the determinants of emissions change we develop a decomposition model based on a log mean divisia index lmdi framework the results indicate that the carbon intensity and energy mix are the main determinant of emissions reduction in brazil between 2004 and 2009 modifications in the economy structure are also associated to emission mitigation in the period such evidence demonstrates similarities with events of decoupling registered for the interval 1980 1994 in brazil finds from brazil differ from observations in other countries in which improvement in energy intensity has been the most common determinant of emissions reduction

factors shaping aggregate energy intensity trend for industry energy intensity versus product mix understanding the mechanisms of change of energy consumption in industry has attracted much attention since the 1973 world oil crisis a popular line of research has been to decompose changes in the aggregate energy intensity of industry to give the relative impacts arising from energy intensity change and product mix change using a decomposition technique many empirical studies covering a large number of countries have been reported the main objective of this paper is to put together the empirical results reported in these studies in a coherent framework and identify possible systematic features of particular interest are the basic trends in this line of research the relative importance of energy intensity change and product mix change possible variations over time and between country groups in the energy impacts of these changes and inconsistencies in findings among studies an overview of the decomposition technique including its strengths weaknesses and role in industrial energy consumption studies is also presented

attribution of changes in divisia real energy intensity index an extension to index decomposition analysis abstract in this paper we extend the methodology of index decomposition analysis ida in energy studies by quantifying the contribution of individual attributes to the percent change of factors such as the real energy intensity index and structural change index we apply the proposed method to the real energy intensity index in the multiplicative logarithmic mean divisia index m lmdi approach a major ida technique since the m lmdi is based on geometric mean type indices and chain computation we need some appropriate method to cope with the difficulties that arise we present a numerical illustration of the proposed method using the energy consumption and real value added data of the us manufacturing industry and compare the results obtained by the fisher real energy intensity index

extended divisia index decomposition of changes in energy intensity a case of korean manufacturing industry abstract this study aims to examine the energy efficiency of the manufacturing industry of korea by using the extended divisia index decomposition of choi and ang 2012 first we applied the sato vartia index decomposition to the energy intensity of the manufacturing industry in korea second we attributed the growth rate of aggregate energy intensity to 10 sub manufacturing industries through two channels real energy intensity and structural change the result of the decomposition illustrates that the aggregate energy intensity index decreased in the period 1981 2010 the index decomposition analysis demonstrates that real energy intensity decreased by 85 85 whereas structural change increased energy intensity by 69 37 over the same period of time the negative effect of structural change is partly a result of the increasing portion of energy intensive industry in manufacturing the result reflects that industrial structure in korea can be an important aspect for improving energy efficiency

an econometric analysis of rice consumption in the people s republic of china abstract rice is the most important staple food in the people s republic of china prc in many asian countries rice appears to have become an inferior good with income increases leading to declines in per capita consumption as other food products are substituted for rice in this study human rice consumption is analyzed with a model that allows income elasticities to vary with income levels an additional equation accounting for rice disappearance as seed livestock feed industrial uses and exports is also estimated the results of the analysis indicate that rice has become an inferior good in china and per capita consumption is likely to decline in the future population growth and the growing use of rice for other purposes means that total rice disappearance will continue to increase although at a rate that is lower than has historically been the case the predicted changes in rice consumption will create pressures to adjust production and trade patterns for rice as well as other agricultural products

energy intensity in road freight transport of heavy goods vehicles in spain abstract this paper examines the factors that have influenced the energy intensity trend of the spanish road freight transport of heavy goods vehicles over the period 1996 2012 this article aims to contribute to a better understanding of these factors and to inform the design of measures to improve energy efficiency in road freight transport the paper uses both annual single period and chained multi period multiplicative lmdi ii decomposition analysis the results suggest that the decrease in the energy intensity of spanish road freight in the period is explained by the change in the real energy intensity index lower energy consumption per tonne kilometre transported which is partially offset by the behaviour of the structural index greater share in freight transport of those commodities the transportation of which is more energy intensive the change in energy intensity is analysed in more depth by quantifying the contribution of each commodity through the attribution of changes in divisia indices

social norms savings behavior and growth we argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets we interpret an agent s status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector the existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in for example the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status moreover it can naturally yield multiple equilibria it is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences technologies or endowments different social organizations lead to different reduced form preferences which lead to different growth rates

the equilibrium distribution of income and the market for status this paper explores the implications for risk taking behavior and the equilibrium distribution of income of assuming that the desire for status positions is a powerful motive and that it raises the marginal utility of consumption in contrast to previous analyses we consider the case in which status positions are sold in a hedonic market we show that such a complete hedonic market in status positions can be perfectly replicated by a simpler arrangement with a status good and a social norm that assigns higher status to those that consume more of this good the main result is that for a wide range of initial conditions the equilibrium distribution over income status and consumption is the same that this allocation requires inequality of income and consumption and that this allocation coincides with the optimum of a utilitarian planner

male incarceration the marriage market and female outcomes abstract this paper studies how rising male incarceration has affected women through its effect on the marriage market variation in marriage market shocks arising from incarceration is isolated using two facts the tendency of people to marry within marriage markets defined by the interaction of race location and age and the fact that increases in incarceration have been very different across these three characteristics using a variety of estimation strategies including difference and fixed effects models and tsls models in which we use policy parameters to instrument for within marriage market changes in incarceration we find evidence that is on the whole consistent with the implications of the standard marriage market model in particular higher male imprisonment appears to have lowered the likelihood that women marry modestly reduced the quality of their spouses when they do marry and shifted the gains from marriage away from women and toward men the evidence suggests that women in affected

decomposition of aggregate energy intensity changes in two measures ratio and difference decomposition analysis has been popular in energy demand analysis and has been found useful in policy related studies past studies include decomposition of changes of an aggregate indicator measured in terms of either ratios or differences into several pre defined contributing factors aggregate indicators that are often studied include total national energy demand energy demand in specific consuming sectors aggregate energy intensity and energy related carbon dioxide emissions however the possible linkages between the ratio measure and the difference measure including their decomposition results have seldom been analysed this paper examines this issue using the divisia decomposition technique and a unique pair of decomposition formulae numerical examples based on singapore and taiwan industrial electricity demand data are presented

decomposing road freight energy use in the united kingdom applying the techniques of decomposition analysis we estimate the relative contribution of ten variables termed key ratios plus gdp to the change in uk road freight energy use over the period 19892004 inclusive the results are best interpreted as an estimate of the percentage growth in energy consumption that would have resulted from the change in the relevant factor e g length of haul had the other factors remained unchanged the results demonstrate that the main factor contributing to the decoupling of uk road freight energy consumption from gdp was the decline in the value of domestically manufactured goods relative to gdp over the period 19892004 this largely offset the effect of increases in gdp on road freight energy consumption while the decline in domestic manufacturing was to some extent displaced by increases in imports the net effect of these supply factors together with shifts in the commodity mix has been to reduce uk road freight energy consumption by 30 1 the net effect on global carbon dioxide co2 emissions is likely to be somewhat less beneficial since many freight movements associated with the manufacture of imported goods have simply been displaced to other countries

diversification and its discontents idiosyncratic and entrepreneurial risk in the quest for social status social status concerns influence investors decisions by driving a wedge in attitudes toward aggregate and idiosyncratic risks i model such concerns by emphasizing the desire to get ahead of the joneses which implies that aversion to idiosyncratic risk is lower than aversion to aggregate risk the model predicts that investors hold concentrated portfolios in equilibrium which helps rationalize the small premium for undiversified entrepreneurial risk in the model status concerns are more important for wealthier households consequently these households own a disproportionate share of risky assets particularly private equity and experience greater volatility of consumption consistent with empirical evidence diversification and risk sharing are fundamental principles of modern finance and macroeconomics however empirical evidence suggests that household portfolios are poorly diversified with many people reporting substantial holdings of a single stock for the wealthiest households large shares in closely held businesses constitute a particularly important source of risk e g heaton and lucas 2000a it is not surprising that entrepreneurs bear substantial undiversified risk since it is important for mitigating moral hazard and or adverse selection problems yet from a standpoint of portfolio theory entrepreneurship does not appear to be well compensated implying that many investors are willing to take poorly rewarded risks despite the availability of superior investment opportunities such as public equity that earns a large risk premium e g moskowitz and vissing j0rgensen 2002 hall and woodward 2007

saving risk sharing and preferences for risk saving decisions are made jointly by household members who generally earn risky incomes consequently to interpret saving patterns it is crucial to analyze the relationship between intrahousehold risk sharing and intertemporal choices to that end in this paper the household is characterized as a group of agents with possibly heterogeneous preferences making efficient decisions two results are obtained first it is shown that risk sharing can increase the amount saved by the household second i find that an increase in risk aversion and prudence of an individual member can reduce household risk aversion and prudence these results are consistent with the empirical evidence collected using the hrs

decomposition of aggregate carbon intensity for freight trends from 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1993 abstract historical patterns of aggregate carbon intensity from freight are different than those from other sectors while aggregate carbon intensity declined for all other sectors aggregate carbon intensity for freight increased the adaptive weighted divisia rolling base year index specification is applied to carbon emissions from the freight sector of 10 oecd countries for the period 1970 1993 increases in aggregate carbon intensity for nine of the countries range from less than 20 to over 150 and may be primarily attributed to shifts in modal structure toward more carbon intensive modes these increases in aggregate carbon intensity are driven primarily by an increase in activity which parallels the growth in gdp furthermore changes in fuel price and vehicle purchase taxes do not appear to be effective instruments for reducing energy consumption for this end use alternative policy options including less carbon intensive fuels and technologies and reduced congestion appear to be better choices

ceo turnover and volatility under long term employment contracts we study the role of the contractual time horizon of chief executive officers ceos for ceo turnover and corporate policies using hand collected data on 3 954 fixed term ceo contracts we show that remaining time under contract predicts ceo turnover when contracts are close to expiration turnover is more likely and is more sensitive to performance we also show a positive within ceo relation between remaining time under contract and firm risk our results are similar across short and long contracts and are driven neither by firm or ceo survival nor technological cycles they are consistent with incentives to take long term projects with interim volatility