the environmental kuznets curve ekc and the environmental problem of the day this study evaluates the relevancy of the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis to the environment problem of the world to achieve this objective different aspects of the ekc have been critically reviewed the study concludes that ekc growth strategy grow now clean later is too much resource intensive and has huge environmental cost that this planet may not be able to absorb in future the key recommendations of the study are that developing countries should follow different growth path than that of the ekc the growth path that must be sustainable and less destructive since energy is the most important determinant of the pollution therefore the governments should frame a special policy for renewable energy by taxing the fossil and subsidizing the renewables

asymmetric fdi and tax treaty bargaining theory and evidence abstract tax treaties are often viewed as a mechanism for eliminating tax competition however this approach ignores the need for bargaining over the treaty s terms this paper focuses on how bargaining can affect the withholding taxes set under the treaty in a simple framework we develop hypotheses about patterns in treaty tax rates a key determinant for these patterns is the relative size of bilateral foreign direct investment fdi activity in plausible situations more asymmetric countries will negotiate treaties with higher tax rates this theory is then tested using 1992 data from us and organization for economic cooperation and development oecd bilateral tax treaties overall the data supports the prediction that greater asymmetric fdi activity increases the negotiated tax rates

china s energy consumption and sustainable development comparative evidence from gdp and genuine savings this paper employs the structural vector autoregressions framework and the generalized impulse response function to study the long term dynamic relation between china s energy consumption and sustainable economic growth in addition to the conventional economic indicators gdp growth rates genuine savings rates are particularly examined to indicate sustainable economic development results show that the high elasticity of energy consumption dramatically undermines the capacity of china s sustainability in terms of reducing genuine savings rates we also use variance decomposition to calculate relative variance contribution rates in order to identify the most important factor affecting gdp growth as well as genuine savings rates the analysis finds that clean and renewable energy increase the country s genuine savings significantly that is renewable energy consumption promotes sustainable development for both natural and economic societies however increase in traditional solid energy consumption is more likely to benefit only the growth of gdp

inequality and the environmental kuznets curve abstract is income inequality harmful to the environment the answer to this question has not reached a consensus in the literature this study seeks to provide insight into this question by examining the influence of income inequality on the environmental kuznets curve ekc i e the impact of income inequality on the ekc turning point two potential mechanisms through which inequality may affect the ekc turning point by reducing public demand for environmental protection and by increasing a power of capital owners to prevent such protection using a large sample n 170 174 of countries we find evidence of the ekc for so2 emissions and income inequality has a significant impact on the ekc turning point income inequality increases the ekc turning point suggesting that high inequality can be damaging to the environment the results are robust to potential outliers different data sources of income inequality a different so2 emissions measure changes in model specification different samples and an alternative estimation method we also find that inequality appears to be more important than corruption in determining the ekc turning point

anxiety and technological change explaining the inverted u curve of sulphur dioxide emissions in late 20th century finland abstract this article examines the linkage between per capita gdp and sulphur dioxide emissions for one single country in this case finland the narrow approach together with a combination of a historical and economical approach enables us to cut deeper into the controversial environmental kuznets curve hypothesis we found the main reasons for a downturn in sulphur emissions to be technological development and anxiety about possible environmental damage and economic costs related to that it can be discussed whether our results refute the environmental kuznets curve or just show possible ways in which the environmental kuznets curve is achieved nevertheless our case study casts some serious doubt on the most straightforward assumption coming out from the ekc that economic growth would automatically solve environmental problems we claim that the causal connection might also go in an opposite direction proper environmental standards and conservation comprise a necessary condition for economic growth in the long run

behavioral rationality in finance the case of dividends as the title suggests this paper attempts to get to the specifics of the behavioral rationality theme of this conference by focusing on an area in the main core of finance namely the demand and supply of dividends where by common consent the essentially rationalist paradigm of the field seems to be limping most noticeably important and pervasive behavior patterns on both the paying and the receiving ends have despairingly been written off as puzzles even by theorists as redoubtable as fischer black see esp his much cited 1976 article behaviorists have homed in on precisely these same dividendrelated soft spots in the current body of theory see esp shefrin and statman 1984 we seem to have in sum an ideal place to look for signs of an imminent paradigm shift in the behavioral direction of precisely the kind envisioned by some of the other contributors to this conference the dividend related difficulties and supposed anomalies at issue here are more than just the parochial concern of finance specialists the dividends seem a natural area in finance where the introduction of behavioral cognitive elements might help resolve long standing anomalies particularly the seeming failure of supply to adjust to taxinduced price penalties a closer look at the empirical record however particularly at evidence of responsiveness to major structural changes shows behavior of the aggregates to be less anomalous than conventional handwringing might suggest behavioral cognitive elements whatever they might contribute to the description of particular microdecisions do not appear to be essential adjuncts to the basic finance model in the major comparative static applications for which it was intended helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper have been received from nai fu chen jean marie gagnon gur huberman kose john james poterba and especially melvin reder

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

oil exploitation and the environmental kuznets curve abstract this study refers to a panel estimation of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for oil to determine the factors most affecting oil exploitation in 38 oil producing countries during 1990 2000 control variables such as oil reserves oil price population political rights and the gini index were used to determine its contribution to the main ekc model the empirical results fully support the existence of an ekc for oil exploitation furthermore the result indicates that the proved oil reserves has a significant and positive role in oil production but oil price and population do not significantly affect crude oil production also increased freedoms and a better income distribution will reduce the rate of oil exploitation thus policies aiming at enhancing democratic society and better income distribution would be more compatible with sustainability

exploring the environmental kuznets hypothesis theoretical and econometric problems focussing on the prime example of co2 emissions we discuss several important theoretical and econometric problems that arise when studying environmental kuznets curves ekcs an ekc refers to an inverse u shaped relationship between a pollutant and economic activity the dominant theoretical approach is given by integrated assessment modelling which consists of economic models that are combined with environmental impact models we critically evaluate the aggregation model dynamics and calibration aspects and their implications for the validity of the results we then turn to a discussion of several important econometric problems that go almost unnoticed in the literature the most fundamental problems relate to nonlinear transformations of nonstationary regressors and in a nonstationary panel context to neglected cross sectional dependence we discuss the implications of these two major and some minor problems that arise in the econometric analysis of kuznets curves our discussion shows that ekc modelling as performed to date is subject to major drawbacks at both the theoretical and the econometric level

relationships between water pollutant discharges per capita pdcs and indicators of economic level water supply and sanitation in developing countries abstract water pollutant discharges per capita pdcs as indicators to evaluate quantitatively domestic wastewater pollutant discharges to the ambient water were applied to eight international coastal zones and lakeside regions statistical analyses were conducted to find the relationships between pdcs and water sanitation and economic parameters including purchase power parity based gross national income ppp gni per capita proportions of access to safe drinking water and appropriate sanitation domestic water usage amount and integrated parameters of water sanitation and economic indicators wsei1 2 two of the important findings from the regression analyses results were pdc bod correlated with ppp gni per capita with 3rd order regression and pdc tp correlated with wsei1 positively with 10 significance besides smaller adjusted regression coefficients t values of partial regression coefficients between pdc tp and wsei2 increased in the most analyses cases compared to those between pdc tp and wsei1 which showed improvement of the indices empirical estimations were also conducted based on the regression analyses results and distributions of pdcs and ppp gni per capita on the graphs six components generated by the principle component analysis pca contributed 99 of the parameters the first component represented access to sanitation second one represented household connection of safe drinking water third one represented areal equipment of water supply in urban area fourth one represented domestic water usage amount fifth one represented areal equipment of water supply and sixth one represented income per capita and sanitation although some statistically significances of the multiple linear regression analysis were observed the relationships between pdcs and the water supply parameters were considered as complicated in regards to areal equipment and household connection and in whole country and in urban area possible chronological relationships between pdc bod and water supply equipment were considered based on the results of the multiple linear regression analyses and pca based on the considerations of the water pollutant discharges and the economic related parameters relationships domestic wastewater treatment facility deployments and improvements on pollutant discharges reduction for the water quality improvement in the receiving water bodies were recommended which would lead the relationship curves between the water sanitation and economic related indicators and pdcs to move downward

loss function assumptions in rational expectations tests on financial analysts earnings forecasts abstract prior research concludes that financial analysts do not process public information efficiently in generating their earnings forecasts the ordinary least squares ols regression based tests used in prior studies assume implicitly that analysts face a quadratic loss function in contrast we argue that analysts likely face a linear loss function and hence try to minimize their absolute forecast errors we conduct and compare rational expectations tests using these two alternative loss functions we reproduce most prior findings of forecast inefficiency with ols regressions but find virtually no evidence of forecast inefficiency with least absolute deviation regressions where we explicitly assume a linear loss function

rational markets yes or no the affirmative case with the recent flurry of articles declaiming the death of the rational market hypothesis it is well to pause and recall the very sound reasons this hypothesis was once so widely accepted at least in academic circles although academic models often assume that all investors are rational this assumption is clearly an expository device not to be taken seriously what is in contention is whether markets are rational in the sense that prices are set as if all investors are rational even if markets are not rational in this sense abnormal profit opportunities still may not exist in that case markets may be said to be minimally rational i maintain that not only are developed financial markets minimally rational they are with two qualifications rational i contend that realistically market rationality needs to be defined so as to allow investors to be uncertain about the characteristics of other investors in the market i also argue that investor irrationality to the extent that it affects prices is particularly likely to be manifest through overconfidence which in turn is likely to make the market hyper rational to illustrate the article reexamines some of the most serious historical evidence against market rationality

a portrait of the individual investor abstract behavioral finance models often rely on a concept of noise traders who are prone to judgment and decision making errors what do noise traders do we review prior research and present new survey evidence on the behavior of small individual investors who manage their own equity portfolios many people 1 discover naive patterns in past price movements 2 share popular models of value 3 are not properly diversified and 4 trade in suboptimal ways

a test for parameter homogeneity in co2panel ekc estimations this paper casts doubt on empirical results based on panel estimations of an inverted u relationship between per capita gdp and pollution using a new dataset for oecd countries on carbon dioxide emissions for the period 1960 1997 we find that the crucial assumption of homogeneity across countries is problematic decisively rejected are model specifications that feature even weaker homogeneity assumptions than are commonly used furthermore our results challenge the existence of an overall environmental kuznets curve for carbon dioxide emissions

consumption based accounting and the trade carbon emissions nexus abstract this paper considers a recently developed consumption based carbon emissions database from which emissions calculations are made based on the domestic use of fossil fuels plus the embodied emissions from imports minus exports to test directly for the importance of trade in national emissions comparing such consumption based emissions data to conventionally measured territory based emissions data produces several useful conclusions for example most countries are net importers of carbon emissions their consumption based emissions are higher than their territory based emissions also while low and high income countries tend to have the largest ratios of consumption based emissions to territory based emissions the majority of middle income countries have ratios greater than one as well furthermore china alone is responsible for over half the global outflows of carbon via trade the econometric estimations which were robust across income levels determined that i trade was significant for consumption based emissions but not for territory based emissions ii exports and imports offset each other so that exports lower consumption based emissions whereas imports increase them and iii the fossil fuel content of a country s energy mix is more important likely significantly so for territory based emissions than for consumption based emissions and iv domestic fossil fuel prices oil gasoline had a negative impact on territory based emissions but were insignificant for consumption based emissions hence there is a wedge between i the emissions a country is responsible for consumption based emissions and ii the emissions that a country s domestic policies affect territory based emissions so countries should have both an interest and a responsibility to help lower the carbon intensity of energy in countries that are particularly important for global carbon transfers china and india

discussion of competing theories of financial anomalies efficient markets and asset pricing research did not begin with the development of a theory of price formation which was then subjected to empirical tests rather the impetus came from the accumulation of evidence that the behavior of speculative prices could be well approximated by a random walk faced with the evidence economists felt compelled to offer some rationalization in short there existed a large body of empirical results in search of a rigorous theory

the environmental kuznets curve semi parametrically revisited this paper re examines the existence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc across countries using a semi parametric regression estimator which places no restrictions on the functional form our results using cross country panel data on sulfur and carbon dioxide strongly suggest that the relationship between wealth and environmental degradation is not bell shaped as suggested by an ekc rather that there is a positive link for the very poorest countries and no clear relationship for richer countries

the environmental kuznets curve cointegration and nonlinearity this paper clarifies some conceptual shortcomings of the empirical environmental kuznets curve ekc literature that arise because of the hitherto inadequate application of unit root and cointegration techniques the literature to date has ignored the fact and a fortiori the consequences that powers of integrated processes are themselves not integrated processes the paper explains why standard methods should not be applied and discusses some recently proposed viable estimation and testing approaches for cointegrating polynomial regressions the application to co2 and so2 emissions data shows that using appropriate methods leads to strongly reduced evidence for a cointegrating ekc compared to typical but conceptually not sound findings

corruption and the environmental kuznets curve empirical evidence for sulfur abstract we investigate how corruption influences the income level at the turning point of the relationship between sulfur emissions and income using a wide cross national panel of countries at different levels of development and with different degrees of corruption our results support the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for sulfur we find evidence that the higher the country s degree of corruption the higher the per capita income at the turning point suggesting different income pollution paths across countries due to corruption we build upon a new specification for the ekc developed by bradford et al 2005 that avoids using nonlinear transformations of potentially nonstationary regressors in panel estimation also we account for the indirect impact of corruption on emissions through its impact on per capita income our main findings remain unchanged when we investigate additional heterogeneity allowing for different income slopes across richer and poorer countries

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part b critical issues according to the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the first article of this study reviews the empirical studies examining various factors other than income that may lead to an ekc pattern the current article reviews in the first part the major critiques on the ekc speculation which relate to the following issues the normal distribution of world income the feedback from environmental degradation to economic growth the characteristics of the pollutant in question various econometric issues the evolution of consumption when income rises and the assumption about a common developmental pattern in all countries the second part discusses additional matters reported indirectly in the literature and or must be further examined there are doubts whether the gdp series captures the transition of production to the three productive sectors in empirical estimations and whether services are less polluting compared to industry activities finally the original kuznets theory which laid the groundwork for the ekc concept does not seem to solve income inequality problems

decoupling strategies co2 emissions energy resources and economic growth in the group of twenty abstract this study uses the group of twenty g20 as a representative sample of global economic development within a panel emissions energy output eeo framework over the period 1991 2016 to estimate the carbon kuznets curve ckc the clean fossil fuels energy consumption ce ff elasticity of demand for carbon emissions the causalities between emissions energy and economy and thus to propose strategy for decoupling environmental pressure from economic growth eg the results of the descriptive statistical analysis suggest an absolute decoupling effect seems to have occurred with the drop in related environmental pressure and the continuation of economic growth the panel cointegration test results show that there is a long run equilibrium relationship between carbon emissions ff real gdp and different types of ce i e new renewable ren hydropower hydro nuclear nuc the estimation results show that the ckc exists and emissions are positively elastic to ff and negatively inelastic to ren hydro nuc although ren s average per capita compound annual growth rate reached 14 the results of panel vector error correction models reveal that 1 the use of nuclear energy is a key means for dealing with carbon emissions 2 the substitutability symbiosis exists between ren hydro and ff 3 the feedback hypothesis between eg and ff ren and the hydro nuc led growth hypothesis are confirmed therefore energy saving policies may hurt eg a broad strategy for emissions energy consumption and economy decoupling are to support diversified sustainable energy consumption mix including shp ren and nuc and maintain stable economic growth thereby improving energy efficiency and safety reducing carbon dioxide intensity and thus leading the world to absolute decoupling absolute decoupling is the only way to achieve a truly sustainable future

impatience pollution and indeterminacy abstract this paper examines an equilibrium growth model in which production activities generate environmental pollution that has a negative welfare effect and in which individual households subjective discount rate is a function of individual consumption which is internal to each household and of total pollution which is an external factor to the individual agents it is shown that there may exist multiple steady states and that the dynamic equilibrium may display indeterminacy depending on the properties of the discount rate function the pollution capital relationship in production technology and the pollution consumption relationship in instantaneous utility the long run effects of tighter environmental policy are subsequently examined and the results are also found to be dependent on the above factors

an empirical analysis of energy intensity and the role of policy instruments abstract the reduction of energy intensity is important for sustainable economic growth especially in non oecd countries where energy demand growth is high understanding the impact of policies on energy intensity can help policy makers to reduce energy intensity using empirical methods and cross country data from 44 countries over the period 1990 2016 we study the determinants of energy intensity the common correlated effects mean group estimator is employed since it addresses nonstationarity cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity all three of which exist in the data both gdp per capita and economy wide energy prices are shown to be negatively associated with energy intensity the empirical results provide evidence that several policy instruments are effective in reducing energy intensity i standards and labeling ii government direct investment iii strategic planning and support iv fiscal measures taxes and v grants and subsidies the duration of the policy is more important than the mere existence of the policy in demonstrating the policy s effectiveness

income and co2 emissions evidence from panel unit root and cointegration tests abstract this paper re investigates the stationarity properties of per capita carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 109 countries within seven regional panel sets covering 1971 2003 we apply the recent unit root test of the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller suradf test developed by breuer et al 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 482 493 2002 series specific unit root tests with panel data oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 64 527 546 the panel suradf test accounts for the presence of cross country correlations in the data and the parameters in the panel specification vary across countries more importantly this test allows us to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root overall our empirical results illustrate that real gdp and co 2 emissions in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 processes and that the traditional panel unit root tests could lead to misleading inferences as well as the conduct of cointegration analysis being perhaps inappropriate the results of our analysis carry critical implications for the modeling of co 2 emissions and gdp because of the different orders of integration for the two variables

taking the u out of kuznets a comprehensive analysis of the ekc and environmental degradation unlike most environmental kuznets curve ekc studies which focus on narrow measures of pollution as proxies for environmental quality we test the validity of the ekc using the ecological footprint ef a more comprehensive measure of environmental degradation we find no empirical evidence of an ekc relationship between the ef and economic development and only limited support for such a relationship among the components of the ef in addition we discover that energy is largely responsible for the lack of an ekc relationship and that energy consumption levels would have to be cut by over 50 in order for a statistically significant ekc relationship to emerge from the data overall these results suggest that growth alone will not lead to sustainable development

tests of the rational expectations hypothesis this paper reviews evidence on the structure of anticipation from a number of empirical studies jack muth s rational expectations hypothesis is compared with a variety of alternative models including ferber s law the implicit expectations model of edwin mills and muth s new errors in the variables model the cumulative evidence is of such strength as to compel the suspension of belief in the concept of rational expectations this implies that it is a mistake to proceed under the maintained hypothesis that expectations are rational instead it is necessary to test the sensitivity of empirical and theoretical results to alternative assumptions about the structure by which anticipations are generated copyright 1986 by american economic association