co2 emissions from china s power sector at the provincial level consumption versus production perspectives abstract the chinese electricity sector plays an important role in domestic co2 mitigation efforts due to its large contribution to overall emissions however primary energy resources used for electricity generation are not evenly distributed across the country such a supply and demand mismatch in reality results in large parts of electricity to be transferred from economically less developed provinces in the west to economic growth centres in the east a literature review shows that the emissions embodied in electricity transfer within china have not been explicitly studied although in fact they cause a shift of environmental pollution away from economically well off provinces to resource rich and less developed provinces therefore it is critical for policy makers to address this issue under such a circumstance a bottom up model is developed to calculate direct co2 emissions embodied in electricity export and import between chinese provinces it helps quantifying emissions from the power sector associated with both production and consumption perspectives and sheds lights on the environmental impact of regional supply and demand mismatch in china results show that the difference between consumption and production based co2 emissions from electricity sector in some provinces were higher than the total co2 emissions from electricity sector in netherlands in the case of beijing or as high as the total co2 emission from france s electricity sector in the case of guangdong based upon chinese realities policy implications and suggestions are made such as how to set up appropriate emission reduction targets for electricity sector at provincial level and the inclusion of consumption emissions in designing china s cap and trade mechanism the methodology and findings may be useful for investigation of embodied emissions throughout various regions of the world

a first empirical comparison of energy footprints embodied in trade mrio versus plum abstract the ecological footprint as an indicator that accounts for human demand on global bioproductivity sets out to quantify the impacts associated with consumption in a given country including the impacts associated with trade the national footprint accounts nfa by global footprint network gfn calculate trade embodied footprints by multiplying yield and embodied energy factors with mass volumes of traded goods in a product land use matrix plum this article compares energy footprints embodied in trade from and to the united kingdom in 2002 as calculated by the nfa plum with the results from a recently developed multi region input output model mrio for the uk although totals for imports and exports are comparable breaking down the results by economic sectors reveals large differences and hardly any correlation between the two methods the omission of trade in services especially transport services and upstream impacts of energy goods fossil fuels and the use of inappropriate embodied energy factors in the nfa plum method are identified as the main reasons for these differences in the light of the results it seems that a comprehensive footprint account of trade can better be achieved with an input output based approach i conclude that mrio models once fully developed will be particularly suitable in the future to estimate the ecological footprints of imports and exports of nations with the possibility to track their origin via inter industry linkages international supply chains and multi national trade flows

embodied carbon dioxide emission at supra national scale a coalition analysis for g7 bric and the rest of the world abstract presented in this study is an empirical analysis of embodied carbon dioxide emissions induced by fossil fuel combustion for the world divided into three supra national coalitions i e g7 bric and the rest of the world row via the application of a multi region input output modeling for 2004 embodied emission intensities for the three coalitions are calculated and compared with market exchange rate and purchase power parity separately used to investigate the difference between nominal and real production efficiencies emissions embodied in different economic activities such as production consumption import and export are calculated and analyzed accordingly and remarkable carbon trade imbalances associated with g7 surplus of 1 53 billion tons or 36 its traded emissions and bric deficit of 1 37 billion tons or 51 its traded emissions and approximate balance with row deficit of 0 16 billion tons or 3 its traded emissions are concretely revealed carbon leakages associated with industry transfer and international trades are illustrated in terms of impacts on global climate policies the last but not least per capita consumption based emissions for g7 bric and row are determined as 12 95 1 53 and 2 22 tons respectively and flexible abatement policies as well as equity on per capita entitlement are discussed

carbon emission flow in the power industry and provincial co2 emissions evidence from cross provincial secondary energy trading in china abstract the accurate calculation of co2 emissions in every province in china is the basis for developing regional energy policies there is a huge fossil fuel reserve and production capacity in western china whereas their underdeveloped social and economic status means that there is lower demand the more developed eastern coastal regions of china show dynamic economic momentum and hence higher energy demand based on the carbon emission flows in network theory this paper proposes an approach to recalculate provincial co2 emissions from the perspective of secondary energy consumption this approach attributes co2 emissions to final energy consumers after considering cross provincial secondary energy trading especially cross provincial electric power trading in the regional power grid given the uneven distribution of energy resources and the imbalance of energy consumption among regions cross provincial secondary energy trading in china is significant especially in the power industry by adopting the approach proposed in this paper the provincial carbon intensity and the corresponding energy policy can be modified to make energy end users pay rather than the primary producer

a review of recent multi region input output models used for consumption based emission and resource accounting abstract the interest in consumption based emission and resource accounting has grown significantly many studies juxtapose consumer emissions carbon footprint and producer territorial emissions of greenhouse gases in order to demonstrate the effects of trade on the national emission budget to this end a respectable number of studies have been undertaken worldwide in order to estimate emissions embedded in international trade of numerous countries and world regions input output approaches and increasingly multi region input output mrio models are commonly chosen as they provide an appropriate methodological framework for complete carbon footprint estimates at the national and supra national level with increasing processing capabilities of computers and a wider availability of economic accounts environmental accounts and trade data such models are now being implemented on a wide scale after a brief overview of salient single region input output studies i provide an in depth review of the most recent multi region input output models used for the purpose of consumption based environmental accounting the main methodological features and important results are described for around twenty studies covering the years 2007 to 2009 this is followed by a detailed review of studies dealing with uncertainty in mrio analysis an area which has not received a lot of attention so far i conclude that further research is mainly needed in two areas a improvements in data availability and quality and b improvements in the accuracy of mrio modelling

primary energy and greenhouse gases embodied in australian final consumption an input output analysis input output modeling of primary energy and greenhouse gas embodiments in goods and services is a useful technique for designing greenhouse gas abatement policies the present paper describes direct and indirect primary energy and greenhouse gas requirements for a given set of australian final consumption it considers sectoral disparities in energy prices capital formation and international trade flows and it accounts for embodiments in the gross national expenditure as well as the gross domestic product primary energy and greenhouse gas intensities in terms of mj and kg co2 e are reported as well as national balances of primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions

learning rational expectations in a policy game abstract rational expectations is a maintained assumption in the analysis of economic policy here we examine how two types of learning rational expectations rational and econometric affect the time profile of optimal policy in both cases the government adopts policies which delay convergence to rational expectations there is also a reduction in the inflationary bias in one case permanently in the other temporarily the results also show that reputation effects will be explained by models of learning

escaping nash inflation an ordinary differential equation ode gives the mean dynamics that govern the convergence to self confirming equilibria of self referential systems under discounted least squares learning another ode governs escape dynamics that recurrently propel away from a self confirming equilibrium in a model with a unique self confirming equilibrium the escape dynamics make the government discover too strong a version of the natural rate hypothesis the escape route dynamics cause recurrent outcomes close to the ramsey commitment inflation rate in a model with an adaptive government

federal reserve information and the behavior of interest rates this paper tests for the existence of asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public by examining federal reserve and commercial inflation forecasts it demonstrates that the federal reserve has considerable information about inflation beyond what is known to commercial forecasters it also shows that monetary policy actions provide signals of the federal reserve s information and that commercial forecasters modify their forecasts in response to those signals these findings may explain why long term interest rates typically rise in response to shifts to tighter monetary policy jel e52 e43 d82 asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public is a phenomenon that is often posited but rarely tested numerous models of central bank behavior for example show that the existence of asymmetric information has important implications for the effectiveness of policy and the consequences of dynamic inconsistency yet there

new energy strategies in the swedish pulp and paper industry the role of national and eu climate and energy policies the swedish pulp and paper industry has gone through a strategic change in its approach to electricity production and consumption over the past decade this paper documents this reorientation which includes increased on site electricity production investments and investment plans for wind power and new partnerships concerning investments in electricity production assets we also assess the extent to which these changes can be attributed to key energy and climate policies our analysis shows that this strategic reorientation has been driven by changes in the underlying economic conditions for the pulp and paper industry in particular increases in the price of electricity following the swedish energy market reform in 1996 and the introduction of the eu ets the scheme for tradable renewable electricity certificates on the other hand has provided a new source of income while these market based signals and responses are the most dominant drivers of strategic change cognitive changes in the pulp and paper industry have also played a role in the strategic reorientation the cognitive changes concerning the functioning of the electricity market i e the pricing of electricity and influence of the eu ets have been particularly important in this regard

common drifting volatility in large bayesian vars the general pattern of estimated volatilities of macroeconomic and financial variables is often broadly similar we propose two models in which conditional volatilities feature comovement and study them using u s macroeconomic data the first model specifies the conditional volatilities as driven by a single common unobserved factor plus an idiosyncratic component we label this model bvar with general factor stochastic volatility bvar gfsv and we show that the loss in terms of marginal likelihood from assuming a common factor for volatility is moderate the second model which we label bvar with common stochastic volatility bvar csv is a special case of the bvar gfsv in which the idiosyncratic component is eliminated and the loadings to the factor are set to 1 for all the conditional volatilities such restrictions permit a convenient kronecker structure for the posterior variance of the var coefficients which in turn permits estimating the model even with large datasets while perhaps misspecifi

embodied energy use in china s industrial sectors abstract as the world s top energy consumer china is facing a great challenge to solve its energy supply issue in this paper energy use from all industrial sectors in china s economy of 2007 was explored by conducting an extended environmental input output analysis we compare the energy consumption embodied in the final demand for goods and services from 29 sectors with the energy demand required for the actual production process in each sector two different viewpoints for sectoral energy use have been presented energy use is directly allocated to the producer entity and energy use is reallocated to sector s supply chain from consumption perspective our results show that considerable amount of energy use is embodied in the supply chain especially for construction and other service activities sectors which is not detected if energy use is allocated on a production basis when further dividing embodied energy consumption into direct energy consumption and indirect energy consumption total indirect energy consumption is much higher than that of total direct energy consumption accounting for 80 6 of total embodied energy consumption in 2007 our results provide a more holistic picture on sectoral energy consumption and therefore can help decision makers make more appropriate policies

energy and carbon embodied in the international trade of brazil an input output approach abstract all goods and services produced in an economy are directly and or indirectly associated with energy use and according to the type of fuel utilized with co2 emissions as well international trade is an important factor in shaping the industrial structure of a country and consequently in affecting a country s energy use and co2 emissions this study applies input output techniques to the brazilian economy to evaluate the total impacts of international trade on its energy use and co2 emissions a commodity by industry io model in hybrid units energy commodities in physical units and non energy commodities in monetary units is applied to the brazilian economy in 1995 results show that total energy embodied in the exports of non energy goods of brazil equals 831 pj while total carbon embodied is 13 5 mtc these amounts are larger than the relevant amounts embodied in the imports of non energy goods respectively 679 pj and 9 9 mtc these figures are better understood by contrasting them with the total energy use and the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 estimated by this work 6781 pj and 99 4 mtc respectively this means that international inflows and outflows of energy embodied in non energy goods are in the order of 10 and 12 of the total energy use while inflows and outflows of carbon embodied in non energy goods are approximately 10 and 14 of the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 the general picture is that brazil is not only a net exporter of energy 153 pj and of carbon 3 6 mtc embodied in the non energy goods internationally traded by the country in 1995 but also that each dollar earned with exports embodied 40 more energy and 56 more carbon than each dollar spent on imports these findings suggest that brazilian policy makers should be concerned about the extra impacts international trade policy may have on energy use and carbon emissions of the country

monetary policy in a data rich environment abstract most empirical analyses of monetary policy have been confined to frameworks in which the federal reserve is implicitly assumed to exploit only a limited amount of information despite the fact that the fed actively monitors literally thousands of economic time series this article explores the feasibility of incorporating richer information sets into the analysis both positive and normative of fed policymaking we employ a factor model approach developed by stock j h watson m w diffusion indices journal of business economic statistics 2002 20 2 147 forecasting inflation 1999 journal of monetary economics 44 2 293 that permits the systematic information in large data sets to be summarized by relatively few estimated factors with this framework we reconfirm stock and watson s result that the use of large data sets can improve forecast accuracy and we show that this result does not seem to depend on the use of finally revised as opposed to real time data we estimate policy reaction functions for the fed that take into account its data rich environment and provide a test of the hypothesis that fed actions are explained solely by its forecasts of inflation and real activity finally we explore the possibility of developing an expert system that could aggregate diverse information and provide benchmark policy settings

quo vadis mrio methodological data and institutional requirements for multi region input output analysis abstract in order to understand wider sustainability impacts of consumption and to successfully promote and implement sustainable consumption and production policies there is a need to capture the whole life cycle impact of products and services across international supply chains multi region input output mrio databases are a well described and suitable foundation for global sustainability analyses addressing a wide range of policy and research questions in this paper we reflect on the reasons for the recent boom in mrio compilation summarise the current state of development and discuss future options for mrio analysis we list in detail the requirements for efficient and effective mrio research and propose systemic and institutional changes we deliberately try to go beyond existing ambitions for mrio compilation and thus intend to stimulate discussion and to lay out the options for the future of mrio research

the fomc versus the staff where can monetary policymakers add value a key issue in monetary policymaking is the appropriate division of labor between the profes sional staff of the central bank and the appointed policymakers lars e o svensson 1999 argues that the appropriate role of a policymaking group such as the federal open market com mittee fomc in the united states is to make judgments about social welfare taking as given the likely outcomes of different policies as esti mated by the staff in this division the staff is relied upon to assess current and prospective economic conditions and to forecast the effects of different policies policymakers only role is to decide which of the various options should be chosen

review of policies and measures for energy efficiency in industry sector abstract energy efficiency in industry plays key roles in improving energy security environmental sustainability and economic performance it is particularly important in strategies to mitigate climate change the evidence of great potential for cost effective efficiency derived reductions in industrial energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions have prompted governments to implement numerous policies and measures aimed at improving their manufacturing industries energy efficiency what can be learned from these many and varied initiatives this paper provides foundation for policy analysis for enhancing energy efficiency and conservation in industry by surveying more than 300 policies encompassing about 570 measures implemented by governments in iea countries brazil china india mexico russia and south africa it outlines the measures main features their incidence of use and their connections with specific technical actions and key stakeholders i e how and where measures affect the energy efficiency of industry it also examines the key features underlying the measures success 1 potential to reduce energy use and co2 emissions cost efficiently 2 ease of policy development execution and assessment and 3 ancillary societal effects

urban energy flow processes in the beijing tianjin hebei jing jin ji urban agglomeration combining multi regional input output tables with ecological network analysis abstract regional disparity is due to economic development physical geography and lifestyle jing jin ji urban agglomeration is advocating integrated development but its development is not so smooth the goals of this research are to identify the energy utilization characteristics of the three regions and their ecological roles and to promote the integrated development of this agglomeration system to do so we used the concept of urban metabolism and abstracted sectors and energy flows as nodes and paths in a network model based on multi regional input output tables in china in 2002 and 2007 the monetary values in the tables can be converted into physical units furthermore combining these tables with ecological network analysis can assess the indirect energy consumption of each sector then its embodied energy consumption will be accounted for also this method can reflect the roles producer or consumer of the three regions and of the five sectors in each region in regional energy exchanges the results showed that hebei had the largest embodied energy consumption in both years with beijing coming second the ecological roles of the three regions did not change greatly between 2002 and 2007 hebei acted as a producer and beijing and tianjin served as consumers exploitation relationships were dominant in both years this analysis provided insights that will support planning to adjust the industrial structure and future integrated development of the agglomeration

energy embodied in the international trade of china an energy input output analysis abstract growing international trade has not only positively affected the people s republic of china s china s economic development but also expanded the exportation of energy embodied in goods during their production this energy flow out will pose risks to china s rational utilization of natural resources as well as environmental protection in this paper we evaluate the energy embodied in goods produced in china during 1992 2005 and use input output structural decomposition analysis to identify five key factors causing the changes of energy embodied in exports direct primary energy efficiency primary energy consumption structure structure of intermediate inputs structure of exports and scale of exports for the three sub periods of 1992 1997 1997 2002 and 2002 2005 results show that china is a net exporter of energy and the energy embodied in exports tends to increase over time the expanding total volume of exports and increasing exports of energy intensive goods tend to enlarge the energy embodied in exports within all three sub periods but these driving forces were offset by a considerable improvement of energy efficiency and changes in primary energy consumption structure from 1992 to 2002 and the effects of structure of intermediate input only in the sub period from 1992 to 1997 from 2002 to 2005 the sharp augmentation of energy embodied in exports was driven by all the five factors our research has practical implications for the chinese economy results of this study suggest that the energy embodied in trade should receive special attentions in energy policies design to limit the energy resource out flow and pollution generation

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

performance of monetary policy with internal central bank forecasting abstract recent models of monetary policy have analyzed the desirability of different optimal and ad hoc interest rules under the restrictive assumption that forecasts of the private sector and the central bank are homogeneous this paper studies the implications of heterogeneity in forecasting by the central bank and private agents for the performance of interest rules in a framework of econometric learning

analysis of co2 emissions embodied in china s bilateral trade a non competitive import input output approach co2 emissions embodied in international trade are critical to the national carbon mitigation strategy studies estimating embodied co2 emissions in china often overestimate actual values this work calculates china s co2 emissions embodied in bilateral trade with the usa european union japan and other countries using a modified non competitive import input output method and latest data the results show that net co2 emissions embodied in china s trade in 2007 were only 400 million tons much lower than previous estimations accordingly china s co2 emission on the consumption side in 2007 dropped to 5 628 billion tons with the transfer part accounting for 6 6 of total co2 emissions calculated for the production side it is concluded that because co2 emissions embodied in trade are not as great as previously estimated china should place more emphases on energy saving and emission reduction on its own side instead of emission transfer to substantially mitigate co2 emissions

macroeconomic forecasting and structural change the aim of this paper is to assess whether explicitly modeling structural change increases the accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts we produce real time out of sample forecasts for inflation the unemployment rate and the interest rate using a time varying coefficients var with stochastic volatility tv var for the us the model generates accurate predictions for the three variables in particular for inflation the tv var outperforms in terms of mean square forecast error all the competing models fixed coefficients vars time varying ars and the na ove random walk model these results are also shown to hold over the period commonly referred to as the great moderation

monetary policy trend inflation and the great moderation an alternative interpretation with positive trend inflation the taylor principle does not guarantee a determinate equilibrium we provide new theoretical results on determinacy in new keynesian models with positive trend inflation and new empirical findings on the federal reserve s reaction function before and after the volcker disinflation to find that i while the fed likely satisfied the taylor principle before volcker the us economy was still subject to self fulfilling fluctuations in the 1970s ii the us economy switched to determinacy during the volcker disinflation and iii the switch reflected changes in the fed s response to macroeconomic variables and the decline in trend inflation jel e12 e23 e31 e32 e52

optimal embodied energy abatement strategy for beijing economy based on a three scale input output analysis abstract energy strategies in china s 11th and 12thzfive year plan failed to reduce the total energy consumption and misled the implementation of energy saving measures as they were focused towards the direct energy input as well as formulated based on incomplete energy consumption information therefore an optimal energy abatement strategy built on comprehensive information on overall embodied energy consumption is in urgent need adopting the three scale input output analysis this study uses beijing as a case to depict a specific urban economy s overall energy consumption impacted by local direct energy use domestic and foreign trade the results show that energy embodied in domestic trade dominated beijing s energy consumption while local direct energy is accounting for less than 1 3 of beijing s total embodied energy consumption the quantity of energy embodied in imports far exceeds that embodied in exports making the city a net embodied energy importer and indicating that policies considering direct energy use only will cause energy leakage problem these findings suggest that the current measures such as displacing energy intensive sectors to other regions lead to local reduction but overall rise moreover analysis for five abatement scenarios average intensity share absolute share discriminatory absolute and discriminatory intensity was carried out to figure out the optimal abatement strategy for beijing due to less loss of potential output it is found that intensity share scenario is the optimal one among all the scenarios concerned analysis in this study suggests that each region should break limits of self centered perceptions and multi scale governance for more appropriate responsibility assignment is recommended for overall energy abatement

a theory of ambiguity credibility and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information this paper develops a positive theory of credibility ambiguity and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information the monetary policymaker maximizes his own politically motivated objective function that is positively related to economic stimulation through monetary surprises and negatively related to monetary growth the relative importance he assigns to each target shifts stochastically through time his current preference trade off is known to him but not to the public when choosing the state contingent path of money growth for the present and the future the policymaker compares the benefits from current stimulation with the costs associated with higher future inflation expectations current monetary growth conveys information to the public about future money growth because there is persistence in the policymaker s objectives although expectations are rational information is imperfect because monetary control procedures are imprecise as a result the public cannot correctly distinguish persistent changes of emphasis on different policy objectives from transitory monetary control errors the public becomes aware of changes gradually by observing past monetary growth credibility is defined in terms of the speed with which the public recognizes changes in the objectives of the policymaker credibility is lower the noisier monetary control and the more stable the objectives of the policymaker looser monetary control and a higher degree of time preference on the part of the policymaker induce him to produce higher and more variable monetary growth when the policymaker is free to determine the accuracy of monetary control he does not always choose the most effective control available in spite of the fact that monetary surprises always have an expected value of zero the reason is that ambiguous control procedures enable the policymaker to generate positive surprises when he cares more than on average about economic stimulation he leaves the inevitable negative surprises for periods in which he cares more about inflation prevention this result provides an explanation for the fed s preference for ambiguity recently documented by goodfriend 1986 the policymaker is more likely to pick more ambiguous control procedures the more uncertain his objectives and the higher his time preference the paper also provides a theoretical underpinning for the well documented crosscountry positive correlation between the level and the variability of inflation

bias in federal reserve inflation forecasts is the federal reserve irrational or just cautious abstract inflation forecasts of the federal reserve seem to have systematically under predicted inflation from the fourth quarter of 1968 until volcker s appointment as chairman and to systematically over predict it afterwards until the second quarter of 1998 furthermore under quadratic loss commercial forecasts seem to have information not contained in those forecasts to investigate the cause of this apparent irrationality this paper recovers the loss function implied by federal reserve s inflation forecasts the results suggest that the cost of having inflation above an implicit time varying target was larger than the cost of having inflation below it for the period since volcker and that the opposite was true for the pre volcker era once these asymmetries are taken into account the federal reserve s inflation forecasts are found to be rational

policies for eliminating low efficiency production capacities and improving energy efficiency of energy intensive industries in china abstract china faced the greatest challenge in balancing its economic growth energy and resource security as well as environmental pollution the energy intensive industries which used to be the major force driving china s economic growth had seriously exhausted the countries natural resources and energy and at the same time polluted the environment because of the severe surplus of low efficiency production capacities as a result the chinese government had initiated multiple economic and administrative policies to eliminate these low efficiency production capacities intended to improve the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries these policies are summarized in this paper along with export tax rebating rate resource tax administrative audit and approvals differential electric power pricing and shutting down the low efficiency production capacities the paper also evaluates the effects of these policies by analyzing several key indicators about the energy intensive industries including fixed asset investment growth rate energy intensity of industrial added value waste gas emission intensity of industrial added value the valdex methodology is selected to examine the improving trends of energy efficiency for energy intensive industries the analyzing results show that firstly the development of low efficiency capacities tends to be more sensitive to the policies so the policies that china had enacted really exert very important effects on improving the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries however the effects of economic policies seem more faster and obvious than the fiscal policies besides the results also show that polices which are designed to reserve energy may not necessarily exert the same effects on reducing emissions there is still large room for improving the energy efficiency of energy intensive industries substantial improvement still needs to be done for current policies system some suggestions for future work are provided

china s provincial co2 emissions embodied in international and interprovincial trade trades create a mechanism of embodied co2 emissions transfer among regions causing distortion on the total emissions as the world s second largest economy china has a large scale of trade which results in the serious problem of embodied co2 emissions transfer this paper analyzes the characteristics of china s co2 emissions embodied in international and interprovincial trade from the provincial perspective the multi regional input output model is used to clarify provincial co2 emissions from geographical and sectoral dimensions including 30 provinces and 28 sectors two calculating principles production accounting principle and consumption accounting principle munksgaard and pedersen 2001 are applied the results show that for international trade the eastern area accounts for a large proportion in china s embodied co2 emissions the sectors as net exporters and importers of embodied co2 emissions belong to labor intensive and energy intensive industries respectively for interprovincial trade the net transfer of embodied co2 emissions is from the eastern area to the central area and energy intensive industries are the main contributors with the largest amount of direct co2 emissions the eastern area plays an important role in co2 emissions reduction the central and western areas need supportive policies to avoid the transfer of industries with high emissions

the development of policy instruments in supporting low carbon governance in china abstract this paper examines the development of policy instruments that support the low carbon governance in china the instruments are analysed in five aspects in relation to the key policies in low carbon governance in china including energy conservation developing new energy reforestry developing circular economy and industry restructuring each aspect is discussed in three instrument groups which are 1 law and regulations 2 industry standard and 3 finance and taxation this research suggests that law enforcement for the new established laws should be further strengthened and stricter supervision systems should be in place to safeguard effective implementation of low carbon policies measures and standards especially for those energy condensed sectors more rigorous industry standards regarding energy efficiency should be considered to help eliminate outdated equipments in industries and promote the introduction of more climate friendly technologies the industrial standards should be given strong legal support in accountability in order to enforce their complete application once in operation new policies and instruments need to be introduced in order to reduce carbon print by landfill the backward law and industrial standards in china should be upgraded more regularly therefore to support the low carbon development strategy

coal use for world economy provision and transfer network by multi region input output analysis concerns surrounding climate change and environmental challenge make the coal utilization network essential not only for understanding the pattern of energy provision and transfer but also for illustrating the interaction between anthropogenic activities and ecological systems at global level this paper fills the research gap by dint of multi regional input output model to outline coal embodied routes from natural boundaries to economic activities and to identify the central hubs in the global coal supply chain based on the most recent available statistics for 2011 as the economic value and environmental influences of different kinds of coals could be remarkably diverse the separation of coal categories in systematic analysis could provide fundamental information regarding the displacement and teleconnection of coal utilization in the world the estimation shows that in weight 64 99 of coal direct supply is ultimately embodied in international trade indicating the crucial roles of trade interlinks in global coal utilization apart from this the findings pertinent to sectoral structure regional supply chain and per capita characteristics of coal embodied utilization could be valuable to identify the global energy routes driven by international trade as well as to facilitate energy and environmental policy

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

an overview of energy consumption of the globalized world economy abstract for the globalized world economy with intensive international trade an overview of energy consumption is presented by an embodied energy analysis to track both direct and indirect energy uses based on a systems input output simulation in 2004 the total amounts of energy embodied in household consumption government consumption and investment are 7749 874 and 2009 mtoe million tons of oil equivalent respectively the united states is shown as the world s biggest embodied energy importer 683 mtoe and embodied energy surplus receiver 290 mtoe in contrast to china as the biggest exporter 662 mtoe and deficit receiver 274 mtoe energy embodied in consumption per capita varies from 0 05 uganda to 19 54 toe rest of north america based on a forecast for 2005 2035 china is to replace the united states as the world s leading embodied energy consumer in 2027 when its per capita energy consumption will be one quarter of that of the united states

analysis on energy intensive industries under taiwan s climate change policy abstract this study addresses the planning and implementation of energy industry and carbon economy policies concerning the development of the taiwan s energy intensive industries from perspective of climate change as a newly industrialized country taiwan attaches greater importance to the development of green energy and low carbon industries in cooperation with global pressure for carbon reduction due to climate changes through energy and industrial conferences thus in the past year the taiwanese government constructed four laws concerning energy and carbon reduction in order to drive the green energy industry furthermore it plans to reduce current carbon emission benchmarks nevertheless statistical analysis found that in the last decade energy intensive industries have presented structural unbalance regarding energy consumption co 2 emissions energy intensity contributions to the gdp and product value industries in the industrial sector have high energy consumption high carbon emissions and increase total domestic consumption and carbon emissions which have disproportionate contributions to industrial added value nevertheless the government continues to approve investments for such energy intensive industries and results in continuous increases in energy consumption and carbon emissions this contradictory phenomenon indicates that newly industrialized countries rely on a manufacturing economic structure which is difficult to adjust and violates the trends of a global low carbon economy hence the government must examine and adjust such unbalanced industrial structures where such adjustments are executed in a fair and just manner and encourage the development of high value added measures for low carbon manufacturing and service sectors to become equal with competitors in a global economy

the changing of the relationships between carbon footprints and final demand panel data evidence for 40 major countries abstract global warming and environmental pollution have led many countries to begin to implement measures to reduce the use of fossil fuels however emissions reductions may have been reached because of the displacement of emissions intensive production the objective of this study is to analyze the relationships between the emissions caused by countries from a demand point of view the carbon footprints and the demand for goods and services in these countries and especially in the european countries with this aim a two step process was carried out firstly carbon footprints were calculated during the 1995 2009 period secondly the ekc hypothesis between these carbon footprints and the total final demands were tested by using panel data and a multilevel mixed effects model the results show that the ekc hypothesis is not supported when considering carbon footprints with respect to final demand it is also shown that carbon footprints are slightly increasing with respect to final demand beyond proportionality the carbon footprint elasticities are different between countries their values increasing with the final demand per capita of countries

monetary policy and market interest rates this thesis contains four chapters each of which examines different aspects of the uncertainty facing monetary policymakers monetary policy and market interest rates investigates how interest rates set on financial markets respond to policy actions taken by the monetary authorities the reaction of market rates is shown to depend crucially on market participants interpretation of the factors underlying the policy move these theoretical predictions find support in an empirical analysis of the u s financial markets predicting monetary policy using federal funds futures prices examines how prices of federal funds futures contracts can be used to predict policy moves by the federal reserve although the futures prices exhibit systematic variation across trading days and calendar months they are shown to be fairly successful in predicting the federal funds rate target that will prevailafter the next meeting of the federal open market committee from 1994 to 1998 monetary policy with uncertain parameters examines the effects of parameter uncertainty on the optimal monetary policy strategy under certain parameter configurations increasing uncertainty is shown to lead to more aggressive policy in contrast to the accepted wisdom should central banks be more aggressive examines why a certain class of monetary policy models leads to more aggressive policy prescriptions than what is observed in reality these counterfactual results are shown to be due to model restrictions rather than central banks being too cautious in their policy behavior an unrestricted model taking the dynamics of the economy and multiplicative parameter uncertainty into account leads to optimal policy prescriptions which are very close to observed federal reserve behavior

energy use by chinese economy a systems cross scale input output analysis abstract an overview for energy use in chinese economy is presented in this study by means of a systems cross scale input output analysis to concretely reflect the cross scale effect between china and the rest of the world embodied energy intensity of foreign imports is provided on the basis of our recent work on the world economy in contrast to the conventional assumption of the same intensity for both the foreign and domestic trade in 2012 the energy embodied in gross fixed capital formation is found to constitute nearly half of the total energy use in china three quarters larger than the total household consumption approximately 40 of energy resources embodied in final use turn out to be imported from foreign regions twice the share of the direct energy imports in total energy consumption recorded by traditional direct accounting the trade imbalance in energy use is illustrated with the support of the law of comparative advantage in addition to economic benefits hidden social impacts including indirect external dependence and health costs associated with non energy trade should also be considered by the government in industrial structure adjustment the present embodiment study is expected to be remarkably supportive for sustainable energy policy making in china

composition of energy outflows embodied in the gross exports of the construction sector abstract energy sustainability has great importance in the development of the economy and society since energy is a necessary driving force for economic growth the construction sector accounts for a greater percentage of global energy consumption than most other sectors the structure of exports in the current trade pattern has affected the transmission of sectoral embodied energy through changes in regional economies this paper uncovers the composition of productions for gross exports and examines embodied energy from the viewpoint of value added through a case study in the construction sector multi regional input output tables have been used to process the data relevant to economic trade and energy input while the production of gross exports in 40 countries has been decomposed into the exports of value added trade and the exports of vertical specialisation trade based on data from world input output tables the decomposition and reorganisation clearly show the pathways and composition in the trade activities of gross exports the embodied energy of value added exports accounted for 60 90 of gross exports in the construction sectors of 37 countries the framework for sharing production in the construction sector still dominated the connections among many countries especially the trade relationships between large economies in the process of vertical specialisation trade the foreign value added of the construction sector was still limited by significant events such as the global financial crisis the construction sectors were ranked between 5 and 11 in all 35 domestic sectors in 34 countries as measured by the total export of embodied energy so the creation of high value added is enhanced by improvement in energy efficiency in the construction sector however the reduction of energy consumption in the construction sector may indirectly increase energy consumption in its upstream sectors because of the connection between exports and related production the balance between energy consumption and creation of value added in exports is an important consideration for government supervision and sectoral development local construction markets need to strengthen their ability in the supply of intermediate goods which benefits value added exports and domestic demand moreover developing national and international supply chains can positively offset the impact of the imbalanced distribution of globalised production

analysis of interregional industry linkage and economic distance in china evidence from the mining industry abstractthe mining industry is an important sector of the national economy which provides essential support for energy and other resources for economic development industrial linkage and economic distance are two different concepts in measuring the correlationship of different industries in this article we apply the model that combines both of them to analyse the industries significantly influence the mining industry we find that electricity and heating industry and the mining industry itself from forward linkages have greatly influenced the mining industry and the industries from backward linkages affect mining industry are changing with industrial economic transformation we also find resources can flow across several regions only after 2007 which means the role of geographical factors limiting long range transportation of resources is weakening after 2007 and we explain how resources flow among various regions during 1997 2007 based on the findings above policy implications from the empiri

a review of industrial energy and climate policies in japan and sweden with emphasis towards smes abstract the threat of increased global warming resulting from the use of fossil fuels stresses decision makers to formulate and adopt policies towards different sectors of the economy in light of the great earthquake in japan 2011 energy efficiency also plays an important role in meeting the challenge of power supply shortage energy policies towards industry are of particular importance as a major part of the energy in the economy is used in industrial production the number of papers investigating and presenting experience from energy end use policies are scarce furthermore for those present they often only include a very brief analysis from a public point of view evaluations of energy programs are of major importance to measure the performance of the programs from an energy policy designer point of view it is of major importance to not only see the cost effectiveness of the policy but also to understand the fundamental mechanisms for the success or failure of an industrial energy program in order to learn how to improve future programs the aim of this paper is to present a review of energy end use policy instrument in japan and sweden towards the industrial sector from 1990 to 2014 with special emphasis on industrial smes from the results presented some general conclusions can be made 1 results show that the cost effectiveness differs substantially between the evaluated programs and 2 that from a governmental point of view subsidies towards energy audit programs seem like the most cost effective policy in addition to this 3 the results from the review also stress the importance of a clear strategy for every energy program on how the program is going to be evaluated ex ante or ex post and how the performance of the program is to be measured this structure should be included from the start of the program

reexamine so2 emissions embodied in china s exports using multiregional input output analysis previous studies on embodied emission in china s exports focus on the national aggregate analysis while pay little attention to the interregional emission transfer driven by exports we used multiregional input output model of 30 provinces to reexamine the embodied emissions and to capture the interregional linkage in it results in 2002 2007 show that so2 embodied in exports contributes 15 17 22 08 of the total domestic so2 emissions and 74 40 78 14 of the embodiment is in exports from the eastern provinces where over 90 of china s exports occur however only about 70 of the embodied emission in eastern china s exports is discharged in the east an increasing portion 24 to 34 is released in the central and western provinces as a result of interregional production linkage moreover the interregional connection becomes closer during the 2002 2007 period which increases the scale and intensity of embodied emission in china s export given large gaps in emission intensity among regions further analysis on guangdong china s largest export province shows that the so2 emissions per unit of output induced by guangdong s exports are larger than that induced by the province s own exports for most provinces especially the central and western provinces which are restricted in exports and indirectly export by supporting guangdong s exports via interregional economic linkage the results yield important implications for china s export and pollution emission control policy

the fisher hypothesis and the forecastability and persistence of inflation abstract for the period 1860 to 1939 the simple correlation of the u s commercial paper rate with the contemporaneous inflation rate is 0 17 the corresponding correlation for the period 1950 to 1979 is 0 71 this paper attributes this apparent change in the fisher relation to differences in the stochastic process of inflation rather than a change in any structural relationship between interest rates and expected inflation contrary to recent claims in the literature there is little evidence of inflation non neutrality in data from the pre world war i period

how well do experts predict interbank loan rates and spreads abstract this study examines blue chip forecasts of the 3 month london interbank offered rate libor federal funds rate ffr and libor ffr for 1988 2008 we show that the interest rate spread forecasts while directionally accurate imply asymmetric symmetric loss

stock returns over the fomc cycle we document that since 1994 the equity premium is earned entirely in weeks 0 2 4 and 6 in federal open market committee fomc cycle time that is even weeks starting from the last fomc meeting we causally tie this fact to the fed by studying intermeeting target changes fed funds futures and internal board of governors meetings the fed has affected the stock market via unexpectedly accommodating policy leading to large reductions in the equity premium evidence suggests systematic informal communication of fed officials with the media and financial sector as a channel through which news about monetary policy has reached the market

voluntary agreements in the field of energy efficiency and emission reduction review and analysis of experiences in the european union abstract a number of member states of the eu have introduced voluntary agreements vas that aim to deliver energy savings and emission reductions via increased energy efficiency in different end use sectors mainly targeting industry where there is a successful track record of cooperation between public authorities and the private sector vas can offer advantages to public authorities in comparison to legislation most importantly better flexibility when introduced or updated greater acceptance by industry possibility for tailor made solutions e g at the level of industrial sectors and opportunity to overcome the information asymmetry between public authorities and private actors nevertheless vas have been criticized for lack of specific obligations and lenient targets as well as for deficiencies in compliance monitoring and self reporting and difficulty in establishing the policy additionality of va activity this paper analyses the design of existing vas in terms of general framework targets and sectors obligations and commitments motivation to join reporting and monitoring provisions and results of existing vas as reported by national authorities the paper summarizes the key characteristics of voluntary agreements and gives recommendations for the successful application of this policy tool

monetary policy surprises and interest rates choosing between the inflation revelation and excess sensitivity hypotheses author affiliation willem thorbecke george mason university and senior fellow research institute of economy trade and industry 1 3 1 kasumigaseki chiyoda ku tokyo 100 8901 japan tel 81 3 35018286 e mail wthorbec gmu edu corresponding author hanjiang zhang department of finance mccombs school of business university of texas at austin 1 university station b6000 austin tx 78712 usa e mail hanjiang zhang mccombs utexas edu acknowledgment we thank the co editor kent kimbrough two anonymous referees and seminar participants at the research institute of economy trade and industry for many helpful comments we also thank andrew swiston for generously providing us data on unexpected changes in the federal funds rate target 1 introductionwhy do increases in the federal reserve s fed s target for the federal funds rate raise interest rates on long term treasury securities one might expect that contractionary monetary policy would raise short term rates because of a liquidity effect and reduce long term rates by lowering expected inflation yet cook and hahn 1989 reported that increases in the fed s target for the federal funds rate from september 1974 to september 1979 raised interest rates at all horizons similarly kuttner 2001 found that unanticipated increases in the federal funds rate target over the june 1989 to february 2000 period increased interest rates at all maturities one interpretation of the results of cook and hahn 1989 and kuttner 2001 is that contractionary monetary policy raises longer term real interest rates the nominal interest rate equals the real interest rate plus the expected inflation rate if contractionary monetary policy lowers expected inflation or leaves it unchanged then evidence that it increases the nominal interest rate implies that it must also be increasing the real interest rate romer and romer 2000 provided an alternative explanation for these findings they showed that the fed has substantially more information about future inflation than is available from commercial forecasts their results imply that the optimal strategy for individuals with access to both the fed s forecasts and commercial forecasts would be to rely exclusively on the fed s forecasts they also demonstrated that federal reserve policy actions reveal some of the fed s private information about inflation an increase in the federal funds rate target could thus increase interest rates by raising expectations of future inflation gurkaynak sack and swanson 2005a presented evidence indicating that increases in the federal funds rate target have the opposite effect lowering expected inflation from 1990 2002 they found that unexpected increases in the funds rate target lower the one year forward rate 10 years ahead they also found that real long term forward rates derived from inflation indexed treasury securities do not respond to monetary policy surprises while the compensation for inflation responds with a significant negative coefficient to positive innovations in the federal funds rate target they interpreted these findings to mean that surprise increases in the federal funds rate target lower future expected inflation their conclusion is thus exactly the opposite of romer and romer s 2000 information revelation explanation ellingsen and soderstrom 2001 presented a model that encompasses the models of romer and romer 2000 and gurkaynak sack and swanson 2005a in their model unanticipated changes in the central bank rate can occur because the central bank has private information about the economy or because the central bank changes its preferences for inflation stabilization relative to output stabilization romer and romer focused on the first effect and gurkaynak sack and swanson focused on the second campbell 1995 noted that the effect of funds rate increases on inflation expectations should depend on the fed s credibility in fighting inflation

the effect of changes in the federal funds rate target on market interest rates in the 1970s abstract this paper examines the influence of monetary policy on interest rates by estimating the effect of changes in the federal funds rate target the federal reserve s policy instrument on market interest rates in the 1970s we find that changes in the target caused large movements in short term rates and smaller but significant movements in intermediate and long term rates we hypothesize that the similarity of the reactions of three six and twelve month rates to changes in the target offers a possible explanation for the lack of support for the expectations theory from studies that have tested the theory using these rates

competence implies credibility the credibility of monetary policy under discretion has been traditionally linked to the central bank s conservatism we show that another trait of the central bank cb her competence at doing her job or reputation thereof can be just as important to make her policy credible and transparent we analyze a static barro and gordon 1983 s game where the effects of monetary policy depend on an unknown state of the economy the cb forms her own private and imprecise view of this state that she may announce to p in a cheap talk game to explain and motivate her policy intentions the precision of the noise in the cb s view measures her competence the more accurate her assessment the clearer an idea she has about what to do the fineness of the equilibrium message space measures monetary policy s transparency in any equilibrium of the cheap talk game the cb credibly announces one of finite inflation targets that differ by at least a multiple of the inflation bias competence ratio if this ratio is too large the cb can credibly communicate only the direction of monetary policy as the cb s competence rises and this ratio falls p knows that the cb puts increasing weight on pursuing her objective targets relative to surprising expectations to stimulate output therefore the equilibrium message space becomes finer a more competent cb is also less likely to erroneously observe extreme realizations of the shocks so she is more able tofine tune expectations at times of business as usual

on credible monetary policy and private government information credible and optimal monetary policies are considered in environments in which the government observes a signal that is correlated with the state of the economy when the signal is public information it is optimal for monetary policy to be conditioned upon it the extent to which such conditioning should occur when the signal is the private information of the government depends upon the government s incentives to misrepresent information it is shown that in some cases the ramsey policy is incentive compatible in others it is not in the latter cases policy must be constrained to be incentive compatible this may result in penalty phases along the equilibrium path following apparent mistakes by the policy maker it may result in the optimal monetary policy making no use of the signal journal of economic literature classification numbers c73 e52 e58

market distortions and government transparency in this paper we investigate how government transparency depends on economic distortions we first consider an abstract class of economies in which a benevolent policy maker is privately informed about the exogenous state of the economy and contemplates whether to release this information our key result is that distortions limit communication even if transparency is ex ante pareto superior to opaqueness it cannot constitute an equilibrium when distortions are sufficiently high we next confirm this broad insight in two applied contexts in which monopoly power and income taxes are the specific sources of distortions jel d82 e61

energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in china s 11th five year plan a performance evaluation in the 11th five year plan fyp 2005 2010 the chinese government initiated a series of energy saving and emission reduction policies in many key fields in response to environmental pollution and climate change this paper quantitatively evaluates the performance of energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in this period the impact of these policies and potentials by integrating the contributions of energy conversion efficiency and energy utilization efficiency improvement industrial restructuring fuel mix shift and renewable energy development in a unified framework as a first attempt to introduce energy conversion efficiency improvement into a decomposition approach comprehensive and specific policies are summarized as a policy list to be investigated the results show that energy intensity and conversion efficiency effects were mainly responsible for driving down energy consumption by 637 4 mtce and 85 4 mtce respectively and they reduced co2 emissions by 1345 3 mt and 243 8 mt respectively due to a significant improvement in the 11th fyp period most of the contributions made by the conversion efficiency effect 94 come from thermal power generation and the emission coefficient effect reduced co2 emissions by 17 4 mt through developing renewable energy economic growth is still the biggest driver of energy consumption and increasing emissions while industrial restructuring and fuel mix shift effects contributed relatively little developing renewable energy and promoting economic restructuring to limit the increase of energy intensive sectors are still the main challenges and the next policy focus to achieve the targets for energy saving and carbon emission reduction in the 12th five year plan

comprehensive evaluation of household indirect energy consumption and impacts of alternative energy policies in china by input output analysis abstract households consume a large amount of indirect energy through the consumption of goods and services this fact makes the quantitative analysis of indirect household energy consumption the foundation of energy policy design this paper improves the compilation method of energy input output tables and establishes a sequence of energy input output tables for china based on these tables the indirect energy consumption of both rural and urban households is calculated then with economic data for the year of 2005 the adjusted input output price model is applied to evaluate how the alternative energy policies impact production prices consumption prices and real income of rural and urban households through the mechanism of indirect energy consumption by using electricity as an example this research has practical implications for chinese economy the integration of energy efficiency improvements and energy prices increase serves as a means to achieve both economic and energy conservation goals and may also have a positive effect on residents real income and a minimal effect on production prices

lock in effect of emission standard and its impact on the choice of market based instruments abstract a country s existing emission standard policy will lead to a lock in effect when the country plans to adopt new market based instruments to control greenhouse gas emissions it must consider this effect as it chooses among instruments to avoid larger efficiency loss in this paper we find that the lock in effect will cause a kink point to occur on the marginal abatement cost mac curve this change of shape for the mac curve reminds us to be cautious in choosing market based instruments when applying weitzman s rule we also introduce this concept into a dynamic multi regional computable general equilibrium cge model for china and simulate mac curves for all regions after applying weitzman s rule we propose a timeline for introducing price instruments under different marginal benefit mb curve scenarios

is there a dead spot new evidence on fomc decisions before elections using new data that chronicle the fed s internal forecast of the output gap from 1973 to 1998 this paper tests for an electoral cycle in the decisions of the federal open market committee fomc the paper provides evidence of a dead spot in the committee s decisions before presidential elections for given values of these internal forecasts the fomc is less likely to decide to tighten monetary policy in the year preceding a presidential election than at other times

forecast uncertainty ex ante and ex post u s inflation and output growth survey respondents who make point predictions and histogram forecasts of macro variables reveal both how uncertain they believe the future to be ex ante as well as their ex post performance macroeconomic forecasters tend to be overconfident at horizons of a year or more but overestimate i e are underconfident regarding the uncertainty surrounding their predictions at short horizons ex ante uncertainty remains at a high level compared to the ex post measure as the forecast horizon shortens there is little evidence of a link between individuals ex post forecast accuracy and their ex ante subjective assessments

energy content in manufacturing exports a cross country analysis abstract this article compares the energy content in manufacturing exports in a set of 30 advanced and emerging economies and examines its evolution from 1995 to 2005 combining information from the oecd input output matrices and international trade data in 17 manufacturing sectors in addition the article suggests a methodology to disentangle export structure and sectoral energy efficiency effects presenting results according to technological categories the article concludes that brazil india and mostly china present a high energy content in manufacturing exports which has increased from 1995 to 2005 conversely many advanced economies notably in europe and north america which showed energy contents below the world average in 1995 reinforced their position as exporters with relatively lower energy usage the contribution of export structure and energy efficiency effects to explain differences in the energy content of exports draws attention to the situation of china this country increased its relative energy usage in the exports of all technological categories of goods this effect was reinforced by the stronger export specialization in high tech products and hindered by a comparatively lower specialization in medium high tech products

the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

real time density forecasts from bayesian vector autoregressions with stochastic volatility central banks and other forecasters are increasingly interested in various aspects of density forecasts however recent sharp changes in macroeconomic volatility including the great moderation and the more recent sharp rise in volatility associated with increased variation in energy prices and the deep global recession pose significant challenges to density forecasting accordingly this paper examines with real time data density forecasts of u s gdp growth unemployment inflation and the federal funds rate from bayesian vector autoregression bvar models with stochastic volatility the results indicate that adding stochastic volatility to bvars materially improves the real time accuracy of density forecasts this article has supplementary material online

the impact of domestic trade on china s regional energy uses a multi regional input output modeling to systematically reveal how domestic trade impacts on china s regional energy uses an interprovincial input output modeling is carried out to address demand derived energy requirements for the regional economies in 2007 based on the recently available data both the energy uses embodied in final demand and interregional trade are investigated from the regional and sectoral insights significant net transfers of embodied energy flows are identified from the central and western areas to the eastern area via interregional trade shanxi is the largest energy producer and interregional embodied energy deficit receiver in contrast to guangdong as the largest energy user and surplus receiver by considering the impacts of interregional trade the energy uses of most eastern regions increase remarkably for instance shanghai hainan zhejiang beijing jiangsu and guangdong have their embodied energy requirements 87 49 19 97 13 64 12 60 6 46 and 6 38 times of their direct energy inputs respectively in contrast the embodied energy uses of some central and western regions such as inner mongolia shanxi xinjiang shaanxi and guizhou decrease largely the results help understand the hidden network linkages of interregional embodied energy flows and provide critical insight to amend china s current end reduction oriented energy policies by addressing the problem of regional responsibility transfer

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

one size fits all monetary policy and asymmetric household debt cycles in u s states i investigate the nonlinear effects of monetary policy through differences in household debt across u s states after constructing a novel indicator of inflation for the states i compute state specific monetary policy stances as deviations from an aggregate taylor rule i find that the effectiveness of monetary policy is curtailed during periods of large household debt imbalances moreover a common u s monetary policy does not fit all it may have asymmetric effects on the economic performance across states particularly at times of high dispersion in the household debt imbalances as it may have been the case around the great recession

electricity generation from renewables in madagascar opportunities and projections climate change is the greatest challenge of our time for development adaptation to this change combined with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can help to boost the economic transformation which stimulates growth fills the energy gap and reduces poverty this paper focuses on the potential of renewable energy sources res for electricity generation in madagascar which is a lower income country a large accessibility to electricity could be a driving force for the economic development of this fourth worldwide island the electricity mix is currently heavily dependent to fossil fuel imports indeed most of the electric demands are fulfilled by diesel power plants an overview of the power situation and renewable energy potential of madagascar is first presented then different scenarios for the evolution its electricity mix are proposed

expectations and the stability problem for optimal monetary policies eine auf den fundamentaldaten beruhende regelbindung der geldpolitik ohne selbstverpflichtung die bei vollkommen rationalen erwartungen der privaten akteure optimal ware ist instabil wenn diese akteure de facto den ublichen regeln des adaptiven lernens folgen dieses problem lasst sich dadurch beheben dass die erwartungen privater akteure berucksichtigt und in geeigneter weise in die optimale geldpolitik einbezogen werden diese eindeutige schlusfolgerung gilt auch dann wenn sich der geldpolitische entscheidungstrager und die privaten akteure in einem simultanen lernprozess befinden unsere ergebnisse zeigen wie wichtig es ist die geldpolitik angemessen zu gestalten und dabei nicht nur die fundamentaldaten sondern auch direkt die beobachteten erwartungen privater haushalte und unternehmen zu berucksichtigen

monetary policy and long term interest rates in germany abstract in this paper we provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between short and long run interest rates for germany we find a positive correlation after a supply and demand shock and a negative correlation after a monetary policy shock this finding is consistent with the theory of ellingsen and soderstrom american economic review 2001 91 5 1594 1607

promises and pitfalls in environmentally extended input output analysis for china a survey of the literature abstract as the world s largest developing economy china plays a key role in global climate change and other environmental impacts of international concern environmentally extended input output analysis ee ioa is an important and insightful tool seeing widespread use in studying large scale environmental impacts in china calculating and analyzing greenhouse gas emissions carbon and water footprints pollution and embodied energy this paper surveys the published articles regarding ee ioa for china in peer reviewed journals and provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview of the body of literature examining the research impact environmental issues addressed and data utilized the paper further includes a discussion of the shortcomings in official chinese data and of the potential means to move beyond its inherent limitations

why are professional forecasters biased agency versus behavioral explanations professional forecasters may not simply aim to minimize expected squared forecast errors in models with repeated forecasts the pattern of forecasts reveals valuable information about the forecasters even before the outcome is realized rational forecasters will compromise between minimizing errors and mimicking prediction patterns typical of able forecasters simple models based on this argument imply that forecasts are biased in the direction of forecasts typical of able forecasters our models of strategic bias are rejected empirically as forecasts are biased in directions typical of forecasters with large mean squared forecast errors this observation is consistent with behavioral explanations of forecast bias

energy use embodied in china s construction industry a multi regional input output analysis abstract the rapid urbanization process was bound to produce considerable energy demand in china which increased the pressure on sustainable development this study employed a multi regional input output model to investigate energy use embodied in the consumption and interregional trade of china s construction industry results show that as a typical demand driven sector the construction industry consumed 793 74 million tons of coal equivalent in 2007 which is equal to 29 6 of china s total national energy consumption regions have been divided according to different driving forces for energy increment shanxi liaoning heilongjiang henan and sichuan were identified to be driven by their extensive construction activities and inefficient construction process interregional imports of the construction industry represented a resource dependent geographical distribution energy flows are from resource abundant areas in the central part to resource deficient areas in the eastern coast by contrast energy exports represented a regional discrete distribution which mainly transferred energy in the form of labor mobility and service supply this study provided insight into the current energy consumption status of provincial construction industry from both regional and sectoral perspectives which can be a basis for energy policy making and implementation

the long run information effect of central bank communication abstract why do long run interest rates respond to central bank communication whereas existing explanations imply a common set of signals drives short and long run yields we show that news on economic uncertainty can have increasingly large effects along the yield curve to evaluate this channel we use the publication of the bank of england s inflation report from which we measure a set of high dimensional signals the signals that drive long run interest rates do not affect short run rates and operate primarily through the term premium this suggests communication plays an important role in shaping perceptions of long run uncertainty

input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade competitive versus non competitive imports energy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers using the environmental input output framework in the literature two different approaches to deal with emissions embodied in a country s imports can be found one of the approaches is based on the assumption of competitive imports while the other is based on the assumption of non competitive imports we show that the implications of the results obtained using different imports assumptions are not the same the approach using the competitive imports assumption gives estimates larger than those obtained using the non competitive import assumption the differences between the two embodiment estimates come from the transition of embodied emissions in china s imports for intermediate consumption to those in china s exports this explains why relatively high estimates of co2 emissions embodied in china s exports are reported in several recent studies appearing in energy policy

emergy network analysis of chinese sectoral ecological sustainability abstract ecological sustainability of the chinese economy is vital for china as well as for the world by integrating environmental input output analysis emergy theory and a complex network model into one framework this paper explores chinese sectoral ecological sustainability with the most recent 2012 input output table the results show that there are significant differences in emergy intensities among sectors the non metal mining sector is the most emergy intensive sector at 6 06e 17 sej 10000 yuan followed by the metal mining sector additionally output connections have a positive impact on the emergy yield ratio input connections exert a negative impact on the emergy yield ratio and pagerank centrality has a positive effect on the environmental loading ratio this paper updates the chinese sectoral emergy assessment identifies key sectors in the chinese ecological network and analyzes the impact of network indicators on sectoral emergy performance these analyses will be useful in updating the guide for adjusting industrial structure in china

the quantification of the embodied impacts of construction projects on energy environment and society based on i o lca abstract with rapid social development and large scale construction of infrastructure in china construction projects have become one of the driving forces for the national economy whose energy consumption environmental emissions and social impacts are significant to completely understand the role of construction projects in chinese society this study developed input output life cycle assessment models based on 2002 2005 and 2007 economic benchmarks inventory indicators included 10 types of energy 7 kinds of environmental emissions and 7 kinds of social impacts results show that embodied energy of construction projects in china accounts for 25 30 of total energy consumption embodied so2 emissions are being controlled and the intensities of embodied nox and co2 have been reduced however given that the construction sector related employment is 17 of the total employment in china the accidents and fatalities related to the construction sector are significant and represent approximately 50 of the national total the embodied human and capital investments in science and technology st increased from 2002 to 2007 the embodied full time equivalent fte of each st person also increased while the personal st funding and intramural expenditures decreased this might result from the time lag between rd activities and large scale implementation

global warming agreements international trade and energy carbon embodiments an input output approach to the italian case abstract in the kyoto protocol the absence of green house gases ghgs commitments of developing countries non annex i and the more flexible terms of implementation which are allowed to countries shifting toward a market economy transition economies naturally lead to the absence or to less constraining national measures and policies of reduction of the ghgs emissions which in turn may determine a comparative advantage in the production of the highest energy carbon intensive commodities for these countries these arguments are valid also considering the future implementation of the european emission allowance trading scheme eats thus developing countries may become a haven for the production of not environmental friendly commodities in this case the so called pollution haven hypothesis stating that due to freer international trade the comparative advantage may change the economic structure and consequently the trade patterns of the countries linked by trade relationships could occur this would lead to the increase of the transfers of energy and carbon embodied in traded commodities from developing countries and transition economies toward kyoto or eats constrained countries the aim of this paper is to verify if for italy as a kyoto and eats complying country evidence of a change in the trade patterns occurred on the basis of the pollution haven hypothesis does exist and to estimate the magnitude of the under estimation of the carbon actually emitted the carbon leakage the input output model has been used to calculate the intensities of energy consumption and the related green house gases emission for each italian economic sector

does the federal reserve possess an exploitable informational advantage abstract this paper provides evidence that the federal reserve has an informational advantage over the public that can be exploited to improve activist monetary policy the informational superiority does not result from the fed having earlier access to publicly released financial data instead this advantage is generated by confidential supervisory knowledge about troubled non publicly traded institutions as a result this information can remain confidential for an extended period since these banks have neither the desire to fully disclose the extent of their financial troubles nor the requirement to do so the informational advantage is both statistically significant and economically important providing a potential justification for activist monetary policy

learnability and transparency with time inconsistent monetary policy abstract in the canonical time inconsistency model of monetary policy the rational expectations equilibrium is expectationally stable central bank transparency is undesirable if and only if the private sector s initial inflation forecast is in a certain interval near the equilibrium inflation

a critical review of china s rapidly developing renewable energy and energy efficiency policies renewable energy and energy efficiency reee policies have far reaching implications for energy security climate change economic competitiveness pollution and human livelihood for these reasons reee has become a national priority for the chinese government particularly since 2005 this paper aims to critically review china s reee policies in six sectors electricity industry transportation buildings and local government in addition to examining the progress china has made in the development and implementation of reee policies this review also identifies limitations and room for improvement finally five policy recommendations are presented

china s regional co2 emissions characteristics inter regional transfer and emission reduction policies abstract this paper analyzes the characteristics of china s regional co 2 emissions and effects of economic growth and energy intensity using panel data from 1997 to 2009 the results show that there are remarkable regional disparities among eastern central and western areas regional elasticities of per capita gdp and energy intensity on co 2 emissions which reflect the regional differences in economic development economy structure and restraining function of energy intensity decrease on the emission energy intensity reducing is more effective to emission abatement for provinces with higher elasticity of energy intensity but may not be significant for provinces with lower elasticity the inverse distribution of energy production and consumption regional unfairness caused by institutional factors like energy price and tax system result in inter regional co 2 emission transfer embodied in the power transmission the calculation indicates that the embodied emission transfer was gradually significant after 2003 from eastern area to the central and western areas especially energy production provinces in central area which leads to distortion on the emission and emission intensity the regional emission reduction targets and supporting policies should be customized and consistent with the actual situations rather than setting the same target for all the provinces

assessing the eco efficiency of u s manufacturing industries with a focus on renewable vs non renewable energy use an integrated time series mrio and dea approach abstract this study investigated the global supply chain linked renewable and nonrenewable energy use impacts and economic output of u s manufacturing industries over a twenty year period considering energy use impacts and economic outputs together within the scope of a global trade linked cradle to gate life cycle provides a comprehensive understanding of the environmental and economic impacts of industrial activities in the first phase of the methodology twenty multi region input output models were built to assess the energy and economic output nexus using a time series approach sixteen energy carriers were considered and aggregated in terms of renewable and nonrenewable energy use impacts the second phase of the methodology focused on benchmarking u s manufacturing industries eco efficiency considering renewable to nonrenewable energy use and economic output to accomplish this data envelopment analysis dea models were developed and two benchmarking eco efficiency measures were proposed namely renewability ratio rr and economic output induced renewability ratio e rr the results indicated that the economic output of the manufacturing industries exhibited a steady sustainable growth similar growth was observed in nonrenewable energy use in contrast the trend in renewable energy use was seen to be stagnant no statistically significant improvement was observed in either the rr or e rr measures which were found to parallel the multi region input output analysis mrio results although an increase in both the mean rr 0 3 0 4 and the mean e rr 0 38 0 52 scores was recorded from 1995 to 2014 this was concluded to be unsatisfactory since the majority of the industries eco efficiency results were still below 0 5 such an unsatisfactory result could be attributed to an imbalanced growth in nonrenewable energy use and economic output relative to renewable energy use the findings of this study suggest that substantial policy changes are required immediately to shift the negative trend in renewable energy use to comply with un sustainability development goals 7 and 13

is the fed s news perception different from the private sector s the recent literature on monetary policy has dedicated considerable attention to modelling agents processing of information about the future in real time this paper contributes to this growing st

carbon intensity in production and the effects of climate policy evidence from swedish industry we analyze carbon intensity performance at firm level and the effectiveness of the swedish co2 tax carbon intensity performance is derived from a production technology and measured as changes in t

comment on the long run information effect of central bank communication by stephen hansen michael mcmahon and matthew tong abstract hansen et al 2019 highlight an uncertainty effect on long term interest rates particularly term premia of central bank communication using novel measures constructed directly from the text of the bank of england s inflation report this comment takes a more in depth look at these narrative measures showing that the measures identified as being important for explaining the short rate expectations and term premia components of interest rates are equally important for explaining overall interest rate movements at all maturities furthermore the signals identified as being important for long term rates and term premia are indeed correlated with perceptions of uncertainty but are also related to changes in longer horizon economic forecasts this suggests a more balanced view of central bank communications transmitting to long term interest rates through both short rate expectations and uncertainty