price volatility in the carbon market in china abstract china is the world s largest developing country and a carbon dioxide emitter a functional carbon market can effectively reduce carbon emissions this paper uses the markov chain monte carlo stochastic volatility model and the wavelet multi resolution model to analyze the volatility of price returns and the dynamic characteristics of price fluctuations in the carbon pilot markets in hubei shanghai and shenzhen the price movements in these markets are compared to the emissions trading system of the european union eu ets the results show that there is a volatility clustering in the price of carbon trading in hubei shanghai shenzhen and the eu ets china s carbon pilot markets have a deficiency in terms of volatility stability as does the eu ets from a long term perspective china s carbon market lacks a detailed development plan which is vital because the construction of the market system is not yet optimal from a short term view china s carbon market is not active and the participants attitude toward risk is extremely sensitive

tradeable permits missing markets and technology this paper examines the effects of missing markets heterogeneous pollutants and the pollution technology of firms on the efficacy of transferable pollution permits under the assumption of perfect competition in all markets we show that if firms can substitute among pollutants then setting the optimal number of permits for only one pollutant will not in general lead to an efficient outcome the degree of the inefficiency will depend on the information set available to the regulator and the substitutability among pollutants by firms when establishing transferable pollution rights regulators should therefore consider the technology of firms if firms discharge pollutants in the same fixed proportions then the regulator need only set a market for one of the pollutants to ensure an efficient outcome where firms can substitute among pollutants however establishing a market for only one pollutant provides an incentive for firms to substitute to unregulated ones this is an important policy issue as substitutability among pollutants within and across production processes may dampen the dynamic advantages of a tradeable permit policy

china s carbon emissions trading overview challenges and future because china has emerged as the largest greenhouse gas ghg emitter in total annual emissions to accelerate the pace of ghg emission reduction in china is important to the success of global efforts in addressing climate change carbon trading is a market mechanism and key instrument in the mitigation of climate change this paper explores the policy process and development state to date of china s carbon trade market to understand the emergence and development of that market and to understand what barriers are hampering china s carbon trade market development to achieve this goal this paper introduces and analyzes china s status in the international market examines the factors driving carbon market launching by the chinese government and traces the development of mandatory carbon emission trading and voluntary emission trading it is argued that china s carbon trading market is confronted with challenges such as the absence of a functional carbon trading market inaccuracy of the quota allocation an imperfect trading mechanism and lagging legislation at the present stage shortcomings such as having no real time carbon price and dominated spot transactions differentiate china s trade market substantially from a functional system a quick market integration of china s carbon market appears remote it is suggested that specific measures be taken to promote the development of the chinese carbon trading market

international migration the brain drain and poverty a cross country analysis the aim of the paper is threefold first it empirically investigates the effect of international migration on poverty in origin countries using data from a cross country analysis second it explores the specific part of the income distribution from which migrants are drawn by comparing the effect of international migration on different income quintiles of the population finally given that the selection of migrants depends not only on the income level of their households but also on the skill levels of movers the paper casts some light on the implications of the emigration of skilled workers on poverty this article shows that the stock of international migrants have a positive effect on the income of the poor while it does not have a significant impact on the income of the middle and top quintiles of the population in particular a 10 per cent increase in the per capita stock of migrants resident in oecd nations augments the income of the poor by 1 per cent on average and ceteris paribus finally the poverty reducing effect of migration holds even when the emigration process selects the best and the brightest

a multi criteria decision analysis model for carbon emission quota allocation in china s east coastal areas efficiency and equity abstract the allocation of carbon emission quotas is recognized as a fundamental and critical step towards the establishment of an effective nationwide carbon emissions trading cet market in china this paper aims to examine the quota allocation pertaining to china s east coastal areas these regions are pioneers in reformation and the domestic heavy emitters in this paper a multi criteria decision analysis model is proposed this model is based on the principles of efficiency and equity in order to reflect the true efficiency of carbon emissions a weighted russell direction distance model is employed three criteria namely capacity responsibility and potential are used to evaluate the degrees of equity furthermore different situations are set to evaluate the related indicators the results indicate the following 1 industrial provinces have less carbon emission quota increments 2 the yangtze river delta economic zone has notably improved energy efficiency and future quota increments correspond with the zone s current carbon emissions 3 circum bohai sea economic zone will be a major buyer of carbon emission quotas while pan pearl river delta economic zone currently receives surplus quota 4 the overall allocation of quotas converts from uneven to even as a result of gdp growth these results provide a reference for collaborative regional reductions in carbon emissions and for the construction of a cet market

valuing carbon assets for high tech with application to the wind energy industry abstract in contrast to the traditional methods for high tech evaluation we introduce a new more active idea for considering the carbon asset effect in addition to the economic and technological considerations for strategic significance the method proposed in this paper considers a reduced amount of carbon emissions less than that of the current industry baseline to be an asset that is beneficial to a firm that adopts a new technology the measured carbon asset values vary across different technologies in different industries and over time the new method is applied to the valuing of wind energy technology and uses the weibull distribution to estimate the wind energy capacity and a concrete sensitivity analysis these applications support the validity of the new method and show that the impact of the fluctuations of carbon sinks on the values of carbon assets is significantly greater than that of volatility in the production output the paper also presents some policy recommendations based on the results

the impact of social mobility and within family learning on voter preferences evidence from a sample of twins abstract income maximizing consumers should vote in predictable ways support for liberal redistributive governments should fall as income rises but weak empirical evidence for these voting patterns might suggest that voters are influenced by alternative factors such as perceptions of social mobility from within family learning to examine these effects this paper uses a data set of twins and a recently developed econometric approach to show that within family learning and family specific effects are important determinants of voting preferences and preferences for redistribution

policy implications for achieving the carbon emission reduction target by 2030 in japan analysis based on a bilevel equilibrium model abstract in japan the national intended determined contributions indcs towards post 2020 ghg emission reductions indicates a reduction of 26 0 is expected by the fiscal year 2030 however regional emissions allowances have not been fully discussed based on japan s indcs target which considers the regional socio economic features given this this study points out a soft path for a fair and efficient quota allocation by proposing an integrated bilevel equilibrium model within a hierarchical structure consisting of the national government and 47 prefectural governments this proposed model can be changed into a single level solvable equilibrium model which can be solved by particle swarm optimization pso method the major findings show that hokkaido tokyo and osaka were allowed the largest emissions quotas while tottori saga and okinawa had the lowest emissions quotas and the equity is necessary to be considered along with improving the emissions efficiency when reallocating carbon emission quotas otherwise the initiative to reduce emissions will not take place in prefectures with higher efficiency performance based on the findings energy policy implications can be generated based on the above quantitative analysis to form a fair and efficient emission quota system at a sub national level

marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions in the thermal power sector a regional empirical analysis from china abstract quantifying marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions are beneficial to estimate mitigation potentials and costs of china s regional thermal power sector based on the panel data of 30 provinces from 2004 to 2013 this study estimates the technical efficiency reduction potential and marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions from the thermal power sector in china using a parametric quadratic directional output distance function a regression analysis is undertaken to identify the factors that drive marginal abatement costs the main results are 1 the mean value of directional output distance function in china s thermal power sector is 0 0449 indicating that inefficient production of chinese thermal power sector accounts for 4 49 co2 emissions could be mitigated by accumulated 1 22 billion ton in the past ten year which is approximate 4 49 of total co2 emissions 2 the national weighted average marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions are 316 51 yuan ton which is far higher than carbon price in the current ets emission trading system pilots in china implying that carbon price does not inflect supply and demand of carbon allowance 3 the regression results show that the marginal abatement costs positively connect with regional power scale namely a 1 increase in power scale will result in a 13 8 increase technology level coal supply and power structure are negatively correlated with marginal abatement costs namely a 1 increase in technology level coal supply and power structure will result respectively in a 30 41 4 38 and 77 7 decrease

harmonization of carbon taxes in international climate agreements the use of some kind of carbon tax is often proposed as part of an international climate policy one possibility could be an international climate agreement requiring a harmonization of domestic carbon taxes it is shown that there are several practical difficulties with such an agreement and that it therefore is unlikely that co2 emissions will be allocated efficiently between countries with this type of agreement alternative types of agreements include an international carbon tax in which the governments of the participating countries pay a tax in proportion to their co2 emissions to an international agency a very similar arrangement would be to introduce a system of emission permits which are internationally tradeable between governments under quite general conditions agreements of these two types can be designed so that they are both efficient and satisfy whatever distributional objectives one might have under both of these systems the choice of domestic policies could be left to the individual countries a domestic carbon tax is an obvious policy response from a country participating in an agreement of this type

firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control reply abstract the process of technological change in pollution control is broken into three basic steps innovation diffusion and optimal agency response firm incentives to promote these steps are then examined under five regulatory regimes direct controls emission subsidies emission taxes free marketable permits and auctioned marketable permits on a relative basis emission taxes and auctioned permits provide the highest firm incentives to promote technological change at times free permits generate lower incentives direct controls which are common regulatory tools usually provide the lowest relative firm incentives to promote technological change

general economic conditions and national elections the fact that economic conditions influence voters is a leading commonplace of conversation in election years the question is is this fact in fact a fact despite the overwhelming popularity of the fact it has received neither an explicit theoretical analysis presumably because it is so obvious that economic adversity should create political adversaries nor until recently a satisfactory statistical analysis gerald h kramer has presented a multivariate analysis of congressional elections which would strongly suggest that fluctuations in the rate of unemployment have no appreciable effect upon elections but that fluctuations in per capita real income are influential in the following pages i propose to 1 reaffirm his finding on the electoral unimportance of ordinary fluctuations in unemployment 2 argue that contrary to kramer fluctuations in real income also do not have important electoral effects and 3 present an argument based upon rational voter behavior for the unimportance of general economic conditions in national elections

carbon trade policy and carbon free trade areas this paper discusses both the potential contribution that trade policy initiatives can make towards the achievement of significant global carbon emissions reduction and the potential impacts of proposals now circulating for carbon reduction motivated geographical trade arrangements including carbon free trade areas we first suggest that trade policy is likely to be a relatively minor consideration in climate change containment the dominant influence on carbon emissions globally for the next several decades will be growth more than trade and its composition and in turn the size of trade seemingly matters more than its composition given differences in emission intensity between tradables and non tradables we then note that differences in emissions intensity across countries are larger than across products or sectors and so issues of country discrimination in trade policy and violations of mfn arise we next discuss both unilateral and regional carbon motivated trade policy arrangements including three potential variants of carbon emission reduction based free trade area arrangements one is regional trade agreements with varying types of trade preferences towards low carbon intensive products low carbon new technologies and inputs to low carbon processes a second is the use of joint border measures against third parties to counteract anti competitive effects from groups of countries taking on deeper emission reduction commitments a third is third country trade barriers along with free trade or other regional trade agreements as penalty mechanisms to pressure other countries to join emission reducing environmental agreements we differentiate among the objectives forms and possible impacts of each variant we also speculate as to how the world trading system may evolve in the next few decades as trade policy potentially becomes increasingly dominated by environmental concerns we suggest that the future evolution of the trading system will likely be with environmentally motivated arrangements acting as an overlay on prevailing trade and financial arrangements in the wto and imf and eventually movement to linked global trade and environmental policy bargaining

unemployment and the democratic electoral advantage this article calls into question the conventional wisdom that incumbent parties are rewarded when unemployment is low and punished when it is high using county level data on unemployment and election returns for 175 midterm gubernatorial elections and 4 presidential elections from 1994 to 2010 the analysis finds that unemployment and the democratic vote for president and governor move together other things being equal higher unemployment increases the vote shares of democratic candidates the effect is greatest when republicans are the incumbent party but democrats benefit from unemployment even when they are in control the explanation for these findings is that unemployment is a partisan issue for voters not a valence issue and that the democratic party owns unemployment when unemployment is high or rising democratic candidates can successfully convince voters that they are the party best able to solve the problem

bread and peace voting in u s presidential elections a simple bread and peace model shows that aggregate votes forpresident in postwar elections were determined entirely byweighted average growth of real disposable personal income percapita during the incumbent party s term and the cumulativenumbers of american military personnel killed in action as aresult of u s intervention in the korean and vietnamese civilwars the model is subjected to robustness tests against twenty two variations in functional form inspired by the extensiveliterature on presidential voting not one of these variationsadds value to the bread and peace model or significantly perturbsits coefficients

the optimal initial allocation of pollution permits a relative performance approach the initial allocation of pollution permits is an important aspect of emissions trading schemes we generalize the analysis of bohringer and lange 2005 eur econ rev 49 8 2041 2055 to initial allocation mechanisms that are based on inter firm relative performance comparisons including grandfathering and auctions as well as novel mechanisms we show that using firms historical output for allocating permits is never optimal in a dynamic permit market setting while using firms historical emissions is optimal only in closed trading systems and only for a narrow class of allocation mechanisms instead it is possible to achieve social optimality by allocating permits based only on an external factor which is independent of output and emissions we then outline sufficient conditions for a socially optimal relative performance mechanism

optimal migration a world perspective we ask what level of migration would maximize world welfare welfare is assumed to be a weighted average of the utilities of the world s various citizens but the weights are also country specific using a calibrated one sector model we find that unless the weights are heavily biased toward the natives of rich countries the extent of migration that would be optimal far exceeds the levels observed today the claim remains true in a two sector extension of the model all versions of the model assume that migration is the only redistributive tool

rent capture in a rights based fishery abstract the paper compares four methods of rent capture in a fishery managed with individual transferable quotas using simulations from a unit profit function some theoretical properties of a quota rental charge profit charge lump sum charge and an ad valorem royalty are examined and then compared in simulations in terms of the distribution of profits distortions to the fishery the relative burden on fishers and flexibility to adjust to changes in the fishery

transaction costs in pollution markets an empirical study this paper studies a market in pol lution permits launched in los angeles in 1994 this tradable permit market has been projected to lead to substantial cost savings due to the flex ibility it provides firms in terms of compliance with environmental regulation this paper shows that transaction costs can play an important role in the initial years of the program the transac tion cost variables have been defined to include search costs and information costs these costs are significant in explaining non participation of some firms in the market the study also draws policy implications for the development of future emissions trading programs jel q28 q25

european emission trading scheme and competitiveness a case study on the iron and steel industry abstract we quantify the impact of the european emission trading scheme ets on the two dimensions of competitiveness production and profitability for the iron and steel industry among those covered by the scheme this sector is one of the most exposed since it is both highly co 2 intensive and relatively open to international trade we also examine the robustness of these results to various assumptions marginal abatement cost curve trade and demand elasticities as well as pass through rates and updating of allocation rules of which the latter two are scarcely debated we conclude that for this sector competitiveness losses are small we prove this conclusion to be robust hence arguments against tightening the environmental stringency of the ets in phase ii are not justified on grounds of competitiveness loss our systematic sensitivity analysis allows us to identify the important assumptions for each output variable it turns out that pass through rates and updating rules are significant despite being often implicit and least debated in existing analyses

cost based modelling of optimal emission quota allocation abstract given that a fixed national emission reduction target could be achieved by imposing emission quotas among multiple decision making units under administration a novel nonlinear programming approach is proposed in this paper to obtain an optimal emission quota allocation in a least cost way marginal emission abatement cost curves are simulated based on the environmental performance and marginal emission abatement costs measured in a set of parametric directional output distance functions with multi inputs and multi outputs further the proposed model is applied to empirically investigate the optimal carbon emission quota allocation for china s building construction industry among thirty three provinces in three different regions the results indicate that the relatively developed eastern region in china has higher marginal emission abatement cost and can be imposed with more emission quotas while the central and western regions can undertake more emission reduction approximately 74 million rmb can be saved by implementing the optimal emission allocation proposed in this paper as compared to a uniform emission quota allocation the findings are of great theoretical methodological and practical significance for policymakers and social science researchers in terms of climate change mitigation

privatization and the british electorate microeconomic policies macroeconomic evaluations and party support despite much scholarly research on the link between macroeconomic evaluations and political behavior relatively little is known about the influence of government economic policy on this process margaret thatcher s recent sales of public assets privatization in britain provide a unique opportunity to examine the link between microeconomic activity measured by privatization macroeconomic evaluations and voting by applying multivariate analysis to data collected during the 1983 and 1987 general elections we show that privatization measured by share purchases and council house ownership stimulates positive judgments about the country s economy however the effect of privatization on the vote is almost entirely indirect via these retrospective judgments about the economy while privatization has undoubtedly benefited the conservatives electorally the evidence on council house purchases suggests that the impact may be temporary

carbon trading in the policy mix the kyoto protocol is stimulating the development of emissions trading schemes at the national and international levels these are being introduced alongside existing policy instruments such as carbon taxes and negotiated agreements leading to complex problems of policy interaction but the topic of policy interaction remains under researched this paper aims to improve understanding of such interactions by examining the conditions under which a cap and trade scheme for carbon dioxide emissions may usefully coexist with carbon energy taxes support mechanisms for renewable electricity and policies to promote energy efficiency the paper argues that each of these instrument combinations may be acceptable provided they contribute to either improving the static or dynamic efficiency of the trading scheme or delivering other valued policy objectives but since the coexisting instruments may raise overall abatement costs while contributing nothing further to emission reductions the objectives and trade offs within the policy mix must be explicit

tradeable emission permits and the control of greenhouse gases this article reiterates the case for tradeable permits as a global policy option for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and considers the detailed design of a global tradeable permit regime emphasising the importance of the initial assignment of property rights and arguing that the relevant property rights in this case are the rights of every member of the world community to share in a sustainable global atmosphere and climate the allocation of permits should therefore be done on a per capita basis across the world community with the result that rents generated by the process of reducing carbon emissions would accrue to non polluters most of whom live in the south the international transfers of income and wealth implied by the proposed scheme are large but feasible there is therefore a real prospect that an international convention on carbon dioxide emissions could end the debt crisis and finance sustainable development in the south

the economic costs to international labor restrictions revisiting the empirical discussion summary in a 1984 article hamilton and whalley calculated the annual efficiency gains from free international migration we update that study to compare developments over time with the aim of producing more reasonable and politically relevant scenarios our results suggest that the estimated gains from the liberalization of global immigration controls have increased substantially indeed we find that even a small liberalization of international migration restrictions can still yield substantial gains in particular we estimate that a 10 increase in international migration corresponds to an efficiency gain of about us 774 billion 1998 dollars

efficiency and distributional implications of global restrictions on labour mobility calculations and policy implications abstract in this paper a procedure for calculating the annual efficiency gains from various alternative changes in existing global immigration restrictions is presented along with an evaluation of impacts of wage rate changes on non migrating labour a simple methodology uses data on u s dollar gnp capita across countries to infer differences in the marginal productivity of labour both between countries and across major world trading areas two key assumptions used are that the worldwide labour supply is fixed and full employment occurs in all regions differences occuring in labour s marginal product across regions are assumed to arise because of barriers to inward mobility of labour in high wage countries when these are removed labour reallocates and efficiency gains occur while the calculations are based on contentious assumptions a striking feature is the size of the annual worldwide gains in some cases annual gains can easily exceed existing worldwide gnp generated in the presence of labour mobility restrictions while all gains do not accrue to ldc s the size of the gains nonetheless suggests that this issue may be much more important to these countries than other issues raised thus far in the north south debate the losses to labour already employed in high wage countries dramatize the incentives for labour unions in the developed world to oppose liberalization

paying for pollution permits and charges tradeable emission permits are becoming an increasingly important instrument for controlling emissions for a variety of reasons emission permits are often allocated gratis conferring a windfall gain on the first generation of permit holders this paper examines how a regulator may capture this rent four different methods of rent capture profit output and input charges and an emission permit rental charge are compared with respect to their effects on efficiency and the relative burden placed on cleaner and dirtier firms in addition to generating revenue for the regulator certain charges coupled with emission permits may result in a better instrument than permits alone

migration and the sending economy a disaggregated rural economy wide analysis abstract most economic research on migration impacts focuses on the households that send the migrants and get the remittances ignoring linkages with others in the sending economies this paper offers an alternative disaggregated economy wide perspective on migration and its impacts data from the 2003 mexico national rural household survey are used to calibrate a series of interacting rural household models nested within a general equilibrium model of the whole rural economy simulations reveal that the impacts of international migration and remittances on sending areas depend critically on the ways in which local markets transmit influences among households

trade climate change and the political game theory of border carbon adjustments the lack of real progress at the durban climate change conference in 2011 postponing effective action until at least 2020 has many causes one of which is the failure to address trade issues and in particular carbon leakage this paper advances two arguments first it argues that the conventional view of border carbon adjustments bcas as a dirty trade barrier should be turned on its head rather the absence of a carbon price comprises an implicit subsidy to dirtier production in non regulated markets second bcas could act as a game changer when climate policy negotiations move at a glacial pace if at all materially stronger progress could be achieved indirectly from the threat of unilateral trade policies the paper shows how this could come about using a simple political game theory model the appropriate game form is one in which parties move unilaterally and sequentially given the failure to agree on a common course of action and are fully aware of the impacts of their actions the paper shows that properly crafted bcas could help reduce trade distortions limit the competiveness effects and help build a broader coalition of interests for more global actions

skills and the pattern of migration the role of qualitative and quantitative restrictions on international labor mobility this paper develops a two country model of international migration in an attempt to study the role of both qualitative and quantitative restrictions on international labor mobility individuals are distinguished in terms of their ability and age enabling the model to examine factors which influence the age and skill profile of those who migrate as well as the equilibrium flow of migrants and the pattern of factor rewards in the two economies effects of changes in certain parameters of the model are related to the nature of the immigration policy enforced by the host country the role of emigration restrictions is also considered excerpt

sector decomposition of china s national economic carbon emissions and its policy implication for national ets development abstract uncovering the contributions of each sector s driving factors to the growth of national economic carbon emissions has great significance for china in developing its nationwide emission trading scheme ets the paper applies the index decomposition analysis ida and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model to discuss the underlying drivers behind china s national economic carbon emissions during the period 1996 2012 from both sector and factor decomposition perspectives and accordingly offers policy proposals for china s national ets development major conclusions include 1 six heavy industry sectors the transport storage post sector and the construction sector are the largest contributors and hence proposed for incorporation into the ets s coverage 2 the rapid expansion of economic output dominantly increases carbon emissions the design of cap on emissions should allow for a proper increment and establish a new entrant reserve to coordinate economic development 3 as the dynamics of carbon emissions vary markedly across sectors allowance allocation needs to consider the changing sectoral structure of emissions 4 the combined effects of sectoral energy intensity and structure changes largely offset carbon emissions benchmarking is suggested as an ideal allocation mechanism and the setup of sectoral carbon intensity benchmark should synthetically evaluate the potential impacts of related factors 5 manufacturer based manner and carbon offset mechanism are respectively recommended for the initial implementation of carbon trading in the transport storage post sector and the construction sector

research on the efficiency of carbon trading market in china abstract in 2014 china proposed medium and long term low carbon development goals in china u s joint statement on climate change that the emission of carbon dioxide would reach its peak and the proportion of non fossil energy accounted for the primary energy consumption would increase to 20 in 2030 in order to achieve these goals the unified carbon emission trading system should be put into effect by 2017 the implementation of the unified carbon emission trading system depends on the effectiveness of the current carbon trading market in china on the basis of the effective market theory and fair game model the unit root test and the run test are developed to analyze the carbon emission market of four representative cities in china the results show that 1 the carbon trading market in china has only achieved weak efficiency while the semi strong efficiency and the strong efficiency have not been reached 2 with the expansion of the market scale the increase of trading volume the carbon trading market would converge from the state of inefficiency to weak form efficiency gradually and the carbon trading market in china shows signs of restoring market efficiency

a model of intertemporal emission trading banking and borrowing abstract this paper provides a general treatment of emission trading banking and borrowing in an intertemporal continuous time model using optimal control theory the decentralized behavior of firms is shown to lead to the least cost solution attainable under joint cost minimization explicit solutions for the time paths of emissions and permit prices are derived when firms are allowed to both bank and borrow and when firms are only allowed to bank emission permits the policy implications of emission banking and borrowing are discussed

do international migration and remittances reduce poverty in developing countries summary few studies have examined the impact of international migration and remittances on poverty in the developing world this paper fills this lacuna by constructing and analyzing a new data set on international migration remittances inequality and poverty from 71 developing countries the results show that both international migration and remittances significantly reduce the level depth and severity of poverty in the developing world after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international migration and controlling for various factors results suggest that on average a 10 increase in the share of international migrants in a country s population will lead to a 2 1 decline in the share of people living on less than 1 00 per person per day after instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of international remittances a similar 10 increase in per capita official international remittances will lead to a 3 5 decline in the share of people living in poverty

the impacts of liquidity dynamics on emissions allowances price different evidence from china s emissions trading pilots abstract the liquidities of china s emissions trading markets have significant impacts on emissions allowances price movement and pricing efficiency liquidity measures on illiquidity ratio and trade values indicate hubei emissions allowances hbea product has the highest liquidity shenzhen allowances sza and guangdong emissions allowances gdea products have the higher liquidity than beijing emissions allowances bea and shanghai emissions allowances shea products while tianjin emissions allowances tjea product has the lowest market liquidity in considered china s emissions trading pilots the dynamics of the illiquidity ratios for all selected emissions allowances products are negatively related with emissions allowances returns and trade volumes for bea tjea sza and hbea products are also negatively related with emissions allowances returns the dynamics of daily illiquidity ratios and trade based liquidity in beijing tianjin guangdong shenzhen hubei emissions pilots have significant volatility clustering impacts on the variances of regional emissions allowances returns previous market shocks of overnight and intraday price variations have the more persistent influences on the gdea returns than hbea returns reflecting greater inter day price ranges clustering effect

does terrorism work this paper examines whether terrorism is an effective tool for achieving political goals by exploiting geographic variation in terror attacks in israel from 1988 to 2006 we show that local terror attacks cause israelis to be more willing to grant territorial concessions to the palestinians these effects are stronger for demographic groups that are traditionally right wing in their political views however terror attacks beyond a certain threshold cause israelis to adopt a less accommodating position in addition terror induces israelis to vote increasingly for right wing parties as the right wing parties move to the left in response to terror hence terrorism appears to be an effective strategy in terms of shifting the entire political landscape to the left although we do not assess whether it is more effective than non violent means

auctions and alternative procedures for allocating pollution rights this paper considers two different types of auctions which the government could use to sell discharge rights 1 an auction where rights are sold for a single clearing price and 2 a special type of discriminating auction that discourages strategic manipulation of bids by individual dischargers based on both theoretical and practical considerations there appears to be a fundamental trade off between reducing the financial burden of rights purchases and eliminating the incentives for strategic behavior very few discharges in either case study would have lower expenses under government sales of rights than under uniform treatment the simulations also suggest that there may be opportunities for strategic behavior under nonincentive compatible procedures because of small numbers of dischargers despite its problems with respect to incentive compatibility the right allocation approach of free distribution followed by exchange may offer the most desirable package of features this approach can yield dischargers savings over the expenses of present uniform regulations as well as provide incentives for efficient allocation of treatment efforts 25 references 1 figure 5 tables

the evolving role of carbon finance in promoting renewable energy development in china abstract the world is negotiating what the international climate change regime will look like after 2012 the year that current kyoto protocol greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets expire and the future of the clean development mechanism cdm is under discussion critics claim the scale of reductions that the cdm is driving in the developing world is insufficient from a scientific perspective if we are to avoid dangerous climate change that the project by project crediting process is inefficient and that the reductions being achieved are not additional meaning they would have happened anyway and thus should not be financially supported yet the efficacy of cdm must be examined in the broader context of carbon mitigation in the developing world and the actions that are taking place this paper examines the role that the cdm has played in promoting renewable energy development in china in order to assess how international carbon finance can best be used to help promote emissions mitigation in the developing world it also assesses how several options under consideration for reforming the current structure of the cdm in particular and developing country engagement in general may impact renewable energy development in china in the coming years

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation abstract energy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers using the environmental input output analysis framework it is well known that both sector aggregation and spatial aggregation affect the results obtained in such studies with regard to the latter past studies are often conducted at the national level irrespective of country or economy size for a large economy with the needed data studies may be conducted at different levels of spatial aggregation we examine this problem analytically by extending the work of su et al su b huang h c ang b w zhou p 2010 input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation energy economics 32 1 166 175 on sector aggregation we present a numerical example using the data of china and by dividing the country into eight regions it is found that the results are highly dependent on spatial aggregation our study shows that for a large country like china it is meaningful to look into the effect of spatial aggregation

taxes versus tradable discharge permits a review in the light of the u s and european experience the u s and west european environmental protection programs have incorporated different economic instruments for controlling pollution the u s has made extensive use of tradable permits of several forms but has never used direct pollution taxes the countries of the european community have long used an array of pollution taxes but have never used tradable permits a review and critique of these experiences and an analysis of the attributes of taxes and tradable permits seeks identify the strengths and weaknesses of each instrument and to provide guidelines for the successful implementation of each system

the impact on electric power industry under the implementation of national carbon trading market in china a dynamic cge analysis abstract as the largest carbon emissions source sector electric power industry is undoubtedly a principal part of the carbon trading market in china aimed at researching the impact on power industry beyond establishing the national carbon trading market a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model embedded with carbon trading block is introduced in this paper subsequently we design 8 scenarios of which illustrate corresponding industry carbon emissions baselines and free quotas ratios the main simulation results are as follows the implementation of carbon emissions trading would bring a certain negative impact on the overall economy real gdp will be reduced by about 0 08 0 52 in 2030 though low free quotas ratio will cause a relatively high loss of gdp this negative impact would be eliminated in the long run in addition carbon emissions trading would also promote the clean production of electricity indeed the electric power industry would reach carbon emissions peak around 2020 relative to scenarios without carbon trading carbon emissions would reduce more than 1000 million tons in 2030 when industry carbon emissions baseline declines at an annual rate of 2 consequently the carbon market can achieve a more significant reduction in carbon emissions with the influencing of quotas fully auctioned scenario

religiosity and state welfare abstract the catholic sex abuse scandals reduced both membership and religiosity in the catholic church because government spending on welfare may substitute for the religious provision of social services we consider whether this plausibly exogenous decline in religiosity affected several measures of the public taste toward government and spending on welfare between 1990 and 2008 in places where there were more scandals individuals state a preference for less government provision of social services in contrast a higher level of abuse is also associated with an increase in voting for democratic candidates for president state legislatures and the us house of representatives and an increase in per capita government welfare spending although this increase is insufficient to replace the decrease in catholic provided charity

policy oriented voting in response to economic issues this study explores the hypothesis that voting in response to economic problems is policy oriented voters concerned about unemployment ore predicted to give greater support to democratic candidates while those concerned about inflation are predicted to vote more republican in light of evidence from previous research this study investigates the electoral effects of inflation and unemployment as 1 problems directly experienced by the individual and 2 problems deemed serious for the nation as a whole support is strongest for the unemployment side of the hypothesis voters personally affected by unemployment gave a modest boost to democratic candidates in virtually every election and in years of high unemployment the large percentage of voters who fell it was a serious national problem voted heavily democratic as well this study concludes by discussing the important implications these findings have for our understanding of how economic conditions influence voting behavior in american national elections

the unemployment rate consequences of partisan monetary policies economists and political scientists have identified several ways in which political motivations and institutional arrangements can affect macroeconomic policymaking one way is described by the political business cycle model 42 37 in which vote seeking politicians manipulate the path of the economy to secure unsustainably favorable conditions at election times variants of this model have been widely tested with limited success a second channel for political impacts comes through partisan policy changes brought about by electoral turnover the pathbreaking work in this literature includes the contributions of hibbs 30 31 32 33 and beck 11 these works have focused on the empirical issue of how unemployment rates vary under democratic and republican presidents in the u s and have found strong support for the proposition that unemployment rates decline under democratic administrations a third phenomenon has been studied primarily by economists and concerns the credibility problem faced by a central bank selecting money growth rates models of the credibility problem 8 21 describe a setting in which the central bank and the public interact by respectively choosing actual and expected money growth rates in a variant of the prisoners dilemma this interaction can result in excessive inflation

a comparative study on decoupling relationship and influence factors between china s regional economic development and industrial energy related carbon emissions abstract to study the relationship between china s regional economic development and industrial carbon emission reveal the major influencing factors and mechanism of carbon emission change in all regions and provide theoretical evidence for governments to formulate emission reduction strategies and policies big data analysis and the tapio extended model were adopted to quantitatively analyse the decoupling relationship between carbon emission and economic growth in eight major regions of china between 1996 and 2012 logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi was also applied to decompose the main factors affecting carbon emission change in all regions the results show that 1 the proportions of industrial energy related to carbon emissions in central china and the beijing tianjin region decreased year by year while the opposite was the case in coastal areas of northern china furthermore the proportions in other regions basically remained unchanged 2 a weak decoupling relation between industry energy carbon emission and economic growth was found in most regions except in northwest china during the period 1996 2000 southwest china south and north coastal regions during the period 2001 2005 beijing and tianjin during the period 2010 2012 energy consumption decoupling factors exerted a consistent positive effect on industry energy carbon emission decoupling with decoupling impact greater than emission factors 3 the overall level of carbon emission reduction technology in china was low and backwards and limited contributions have been made to economic growth and industry energy carbon emission decoupling development emphases of decoupling should be put on energy saving technology promotion industry structure upgrading and energy structure improvement in the future 4 economic intensity effect has exerted the most powerful positive influence on carbon emissions except in developed areas and the positive effect was weaker than that in other regions

efficiency gains from liberalizing labor mobility in this paper we quantify the effect of a complete liberalization of cross border migration on the world gdp and its distribution across regions we build a general equilibrium model endogenizing bilateral migration and income disparities between and within countries our calibration strategy uses data on effective and potential migration to identify total migration costs and visa costs by education level data on potential migration reveal that the number of people in the world who have a desire to migrate is around 400 million this number is much smaller than that predicted in previous studies and reflects the existence of high incompressible migration costs in our benchmark framework liberalizing migration increases the world gdp by 11 5 12 5 percent in the medium term our robustness analysis reveals that the gains are always limited in the range of 7 0 percent with schooling externalities to 17 9 percent if network effects are accounted for

market power and transferable property rights the appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal when competition is not a foregone conclusion the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage this paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights first a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence this is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem the control of particulate sulfates in the los angeles region

the economic impact of china s indc distinguishing the roles of the renewable energy quota and the carbon market abstract this study contributes to the existing literature on economic impacts assessment of china s intended nationally determined contributions indc by 2030 a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model of china that incorporates the technological details of the electricity sector is used in this study two main policy choices including the renewable quota and the carbon market are modeled to distinguish different pathways to indc targets results show several important findings first the total economic cost required to achieve china s indc targets ranges from 0 11 to 0 43 of gdp by 2030 second energy sectors such as the coal mining and electric power sectors are the most affected by china s indc in terms of both sectoral production and price this study further indicates that the implementation of a national carbon market is efficient in reducing the compliance costs of indc targets while the deployment of renewable power helps to create employment opportunities and reduce permit prices in the carbon market in addition the results of a cost benefit analysis suggest that the hidden health benefits of china s indc can offset approximately 42 1 162 3 of the compliance costs even based on the most conservative estimates

what will china s carbon emission trading market affect with only electricity sector involvement a cge based study abstract on december 29 2017 china s carbon trading scheme ets was officially launched and it may be the largest emission trading platform in the world this paper establishes 5 counter measured scenarios based on the recently launched china s national ets market and constructs a dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium model to study the impact of national ets on the economy energy and environment we find that the national ets will have a negative impact on gdp by 0 19 1 44 the national ets can significantly increase the price of electricity however the increase in the prices of other commodities will be much lower than that of electricity as long as the mechanism of the ets market remains unchanged emission reduction per year will increase linearly economic output and co2 emission are sensitive to annual decline factor adf this paper argues that china s national ets market is an effective tool to reduce co2 emission and we suggest that adf could be 0 5 when allocating carbon allowance for the electricity sector this could balance economic output and co2 reduction also it is easy to achieve the goal of double control total amount and intensity in china

partisan cycles in congressional elections and the macroeconomy in the postwar united states the president s party has always done worse in the midterm congressional elections than in the previous congressional election republican administrations exhibit below average and democratic administrations above average economic growth in the first half of each term whereas in the latter halves the two see equal growth our rational expectations model is consistent with these two regularities in presidential elections voters choose between two polarized candidates they then use midterm elections to counterbalance the president s policies by strengthening the opposition in congress since presidents of different parties are associated with different policies our model predicts a spurious correlation between the state of the economy and elections our predictions contrast with those of retrospective voting models in which voters reward the incumbent if the economy is doing well before the election our model performs empirically at least as well as and often better than alternative models

chinese companies awareness and perceptions of the emissions trading scheme ets evidence from a national survey in china abstract china announced the launch of a national emissions trading scheme ets in 2017 however companies appear show little enthusiasm for participation in the ets in china this paper identifies the factors affecting companies awareness and perceptions of ets by conducting a national survey based on an online questionnaire from may to november 2015 in seven carbon trading pilots the results indicate that companies attitudes towards the ets are positively influenced by government regulations and policy public relations management and estimated economic benefit of these public relations management is the decisive factor and estimated economic benefit is confirmed to be a relatively weak predictor a company s environmental and energy strategy exerts insignificant effects on its preference for the ets although the sampled companies are very willing to save energy and reduce emissions there exists an inverted u shape relationship between a company s level of mitigation technologies and its attitudes towards the ets the carbon price fails to stimulate companies to upgrade mitigation technologies the majority of companies treat participation in the ets only as a means of improving ties with governments as well as of earning a good social reputation rather than as a cost effective mechanism to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions

the promotion of sustainable development in china through the optimization of a tax subsidy plan among hfc and power generation cdm projects abstract china is expected to reach record growth by 2020 in the energy sector by at least doubling its electricity generation capacity in order to protect the environment and foster economic development china will greatly benefit from transfers of state of the art power generation technologies through international agreements such as the clean development mechanism cdm however a buyer driven carbon market and a highly competitive environment due to more cost effective projects attribute to china s need to achieve a balance between sustainability and profitability for cdm projects implemented in china in the cdm tax subsidy optimization model cdmtso model here developed a sustainable development assessment method evaluates the cdm projects economic and environmental benefits and an optimization program returns tax subsidy rates at which the greatest number of cdm technologies becomes viable and where better cdm projects can be the most profitable bringing china s development on a more sustainable path the results show that the cdmtso model brings the sustainable cdm projects internal rate of return closed to 10 if a discount rate of 9 is considered it allows three clean energy technologies natural gas combined cycle wind energy and hydropower to become economically viable and the environmental costs avoided are increased by 37

low carbon transition in a distributed energy system regulated by localized energy markets abstract low carbon transition becomes an urgent need of modern societies for energy conservation and environmental protection the purpose of this work is to evaluate the roles of market regulation energy consumption and energy capacity in low carbon transition for distributed energy systems through an agent based simulation a set of agent behavioral rules for the competition of high carbon and low carbon energies mimics the local dynamics of the energy production of distributed energy systems and the energy consumption of industrial firms under the impact of energy market fluctuation simulation results show that under the condition of increased energy capacities with a positive feedback between supply and demand low carbon transition can be facilitated by the combination of market adjustment favoring low carbon energies and the policy adjustment for low energy consumptions by contrast with low energy capacities and high energy consumptions transitions from high carbon economy to low carbon economy inevitably render a catastrophic economic depression policy implications for different situations of countries are drawn regarding the regulation of localized energy markets for restricting the supply of high carbon energy while cultivating the demand for low carbon energy and the improvement on energy saving energy production efficiency and storage capacity

the dynamic linkage effect between energy and emissions allowances price for regional emissions trading scheme pilots in china abstract china s emissions trading scheme cets pilots are emerging and fragmented markets these emissions allowances markets may exhibit a different fundamental price process from the european union s eu and the united states us emissions trading scheme ets the dynamic linkage effects between energy and emissions allowances prices are investigated for regional ets pilots in china using cointegration techniques the empirical results confirm that in the long run coal oil and natural gas prices are the main determinant factors of regional emissions allowances prices except for the second phase beijing ets pilots however their long run cointegration relationships in the beijing and shanghai pilots are not exactly in line with the guangdong and hubei pilots in the short run the changes in oil and natural gas prices in the second phase beijing ets pilot the natural gas prices in the shanghai ets pilot and the coal prices in the hubei ets pilot are found to have significant effects on regional emissions allowances prices in china finally regional energy pricing inefficiency regional emissions trading market overreaction and their inefficient fundaments may provide major obstacles in reducing the effectiveness of the fossil energy price pass through to emissions allowances prices in regional ets pilots

how to improve the market efficiency of carbon trading a perspective of china abstract emissions trading scheme ets is one of the effective measures to realize energy conservation and emission reduction in order to set up a nationwide carbon emissions trading mechanism seven ets pilots have been launched in china firstly based on empirical investigation and research of seven pilots this paper analyzed the market efficiency of ets pilots from four aspects carbon price trading volume market liquidity and information transparency the result showed that the market efficiency of ets pilots is not satisfactory in spite of the fact that system designs of ets have achieved preliminary result then the reason for low market efficiency of ets pilots was discussed from some factors such as institutional arrangements market participants the supply and demand etc finally this paper puts forward some policy suggestions to improve the market efficiency of china s carbon trading market

economic and referendum voting a comparison of gubernatorial and senatorial elections we compare vote choice in senate and gubernatorial elections from 1986 and 1990 with two retrospective voting hypotheses the national referendum hypothesis and an economic retrospective hypothesis despite the similarities between the office of u s senator and governor same constituency high levels of campaign spending highly visible candidates etc we find that different types of retrospective evaluations are used with respect to vote choice as members of the national legislative branch senators fortunes are linked to the success or failures of the president in contrast governors as state executives are held accountable for perceived state economic conditions while senators escape unscathed from the same general economic evaluations these findings shed some light on the nature of vote choice in a political system complicated by federalism and separation of powers

on the mechanics of migration decisions skill complementarities and endogenous price differentials abstract why are highly skilled workers more responsive than other workers to productivity differentials when taking migration decisions why do low skilled workers abandon rich regions this paper aims to answer these questions using skill complementarities and endogenous price differentials between rich and poor regions if the skill premium is increasing in the average level of human capital of a location the more skilled the workers are the stronger the economic incentives to migrate to the rich regions become in contrast the low skilled workers have an incentive to migrate to the poor regions to minimize their living costs

opportunities and challenges for renewable energy policy in china renewable energy is the inevitable choice for sustainable economic growth for the harmonious coexistence of human and environment as well as for the sustainable development government support is the key and initial power for developing renewable energy in this article an overall review has been conducted on renewable energy development policy including laws and regulations economic encouragement technical research and development industrialized support and government model projects etc in china on this basis a systematic analysis has been conducted on the disadvantages of renewable energy development policy on the point of long term effective system for renewable energy development a series of policy advice has been offered such as strengthening the policy coordination enhancing regional policy innovation echoing with clean development mechanism implementing process management constructing market investment and financing system it is expected that the above advices could be helpful to ever improvement of renewable energy development policy c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved