china s oil use 1990 2008 abstract over the past two decades china s oil demand has risen steeply in 1990 it was only about 25 higher than that of 1978 the year economic reform was introduced by 2008 it had reached 396 0 million tons roughly four times the 1978 level making china the second largest oil user worldwide the country became a net oil importer in 1993 and between 1993 and 2008 its net import dependency a yardstick for energy security soared from 7 5 to 50 0 china s increased demand for oil has made the country a global energy player of critical importance although the literature on the global implications of china s oil use has proliferated relatively few studies have attempted to examine how china uses oil hence this study covers every oil consuming facility and sector in china exploring the patterns of and factors involved in oil demand by power plants oil refineries heat plants and gas works and industrial transport agricultural household and commercial sectors it concludes that in virtually all sectors in china oil demand will grow with transport and industry leading the way

impacts of opec s political risk on the international crude oil prices an empirical analysis based on the svar models abstract the impacts of opec s political risk on the fluctuations of international crude oil prices have caused widespread concern and analyzing the impacts is of great significance to the investment decisions and risk aversion strategies in the crude oil markets therefore using the international country risk guide icrg index as a proxy for the countries political risk situation we empirically investigate the impacts of opec s political risk on the brent crude oil prices based on several structural vector autoregression svar models the main empirical results indicate that 1 the political risk of opec countries does have a significant and positive influence on brent crude oil prices in the sample period from january 1998 to september 2014 and the most significant positive influences appear in about one and a half year and last about a year 2 opec s integrated political risk contributes to 17 58 of the oil price fluctuations in the sample period which is only lesser than that of the oil demand shocks 34 64 3 compared with the political risk of opec countries in north africa and south america the political risk of opec countries in the middle east contributes most to the oil price fluctuations 4 among the eight components of the political risk in opec the internal conflicts contribute most to the oil price fluctuations in the sample period

the impact of global oil price shocks on china s bulk commodity markets and fundamental industries this paper investigated the reaction of aggregate commodity market to oil price shocks and also explored the effects of oil price shocks on china s fundamental industries metals petrochemicals grains and oilfats we separated the volatilities of oil price into expected unexpected and negatively expected categories to identify how oil prices influence bulk commodity markets we contrasted the results between different periods and among classified indices in order to discover the significant changes in recent years and the differences at an industry level our results indicate that the aggregate commodity market was affected by both expected and unexpected oil price volatilities in china the impact of unexpected oil price volatilities became more complex after 2007 the metals and grains indices did not significantly respond to the expected volatility in oil prices in contrast to the petrochemicals and oilfats indices these results not only contribute to advancing the existing literature but also merit particular attention from policy makers and market investors in china

what determines real exchange rates the nordic countries the model derived in this paper yields testable implications concerning the long run co movements of real exchange rates relative labor productivity the trade balance and terms of trade countries with relatively higher output growth trade deficits or improved terms of trade are found to have more appreciated real exchange rates with the main channel of transmission working through the relative price of nontraded goods exogenous terms of trade shocks are found to be the most important determinant of long run movements in the real exchange rate for denmark and norway while demand shocks account for most of the long run variance in the real exchange rate for finland and sweden

incentive effects of the u s welfare system a review the author would like to acknowledge support for prior work on this topic from the u s department of health and human services and helpful comments from three anonymous referees rebecca blank howard chernick john fitzgerald irwin garfinkel peter gottschalk edward gramlich david greenberg judith gueron james heckman v joseph hotz robert hutchens michael keane frank levy larry mead michael murray robert plotnick anuradha rangarajan philip robins howard rolston jeffrey smith and daniel weinberg all opinions and errors are those of the author alone

preference belief and welfare policy choices depend on general values such as equality freedom justice and welfare when economists evaluate policies they focus on their welfare consequences and they take welfare to be the satisfaction of preferences yet most would allow exceptions when preferences are based on obviously false beliefs few for example would claim that drinking a fatal poison in the mistaken belief that it was water improves a person s welfare to deny that drinking poison is welfare enhancing is only good sense but it creates serious philosophical tensions for the preference satisfaction view for one cannot define welfare as the satisfaction of preferences and then admit that satisfying preferences sometimes makes people worse off such clear cases are artificial but the dependence of preferences on unreliable beliefs is a pervasive feature of social life which makes a preference based standard of welfare generally problematic although many kinds of beliefs influence preferences we shall focus on judgments concerning the probabilities of risky and uncertain outcomes 1

environmental valuation under sustainable development environmentalism has evolved since the 1960 s from a concern with the preservation of wilderness in the american experience to a concern over pollution of human habitat throughout the industrialized world northern anxiety spread to the loss of tropical rainforests and biodiversity in the south where environmentalism evolved further in an encounter with indigenous interpretations conditions and priorities by the late 1980 s climate change emerged as a central issue in a now global discourse on the relationship between environment and development the principle of sustainable development that current needs are to be met as fully as possible while ensuring that the life opportunities of future generations are undiminished relative to present is now widely accepted this paper illustrates that incorporating environmental values per se in decision making will not bring about sustainability unless each generation is committed to transferring to the next sufficient natural resources and capital assets to make development sustainable 11 refs 3 figs

a novel hybrid method for crude oil price forecasting abstract forecasting crude oil price is a challenging task given the nonlinear and time varying characteristics of international crude oil prices we propose a novel hybrid method to forecast crude oil prices first we use the ensemble empirical mode decomposition eemd method to decompose international crude oil price into a series of independent intrinsic mode functions imfs and the residual term then the least square support vector machine together with the particle swarm optimization lssvm pso method and the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch model are developed to forecast the nonlinear and time varying components of crude oil prices respectively next the forecasted crude oil prices of each component are summed as the final forecasted results of crude oil prices the results show that the newly proposed hybrid method has a strong forecasting capability for crude oil prices due to its excellent performance in adaptation to the random sample selection data frequency and structural breaks in samples furthermore the comparison results also indicate that the new method proves superior in forecasting accuracy to those well recognized methods for crude oil price forecasting

comparison of china s oil import risk results based on portfolio theory and a diversification index approach in recent years the international oil price has fluctuated violently bringing about huge risk for the international oil trade in fact the risk of crude oil and petroleum product imports is different because of the different import origins and prices which import risk is lower for china from the perspective of oil supply security how should china portfolio crude oil and petroleum product imports to minimize its oil import risk using portfolio theory and a diversification index approach this paper compares and analyzes the supply price and transport risks of crude oil and petroleum product imports our results show that the following 1 specific risk diversification risk and marine transport risk of china s petroleum product imports are lower than that of crude oil imports 2 the average rate of return of china s petroleum product imports is higher than that of crude oil imports moreover the average import price variance of petroleum product imports is lower than that of crude oil imports thus the systematic risk price risk of petroleum products is lower too therefore from the perspective of oil supply security china should increase petroleum product imports to decrease its oil import risk

when will occur the crude oil bubbles abstract in this paper we apply a recursive unit root test to investigate whether there exist multiple bubbles in crude oil price the method is best suited for a practical implementation of a time series and delivers a consistent date stamping strategy for the origination and termination of multiple bubbles the empirical result indicates that there exist six bubbles during 1986 2016 when the oil price deviate from its intrinsic value based on market fundamentals specifically oil price contains the fundamentals and bubble components the dates of the bubbles correspond to specific events in the politics and financial markets the authorities should actively fight speculative bubbles or just observe their evolutions and speculation activities may decrease which is favour of the stabilisation of the staple commodities including crude oil price these findings have important economic and policy implications to recognise the cause of bubbles and take corresponding measures to reduce the impact on the real economy cause of the fluctuation of crude oil price

an empirical analysis of the dynamic programming model of stockpile acquisition strategies for china s strategic petroleum reserve abstract the world s future oil price is affected by many factors the challenge therefore is how to select optimal stockpile acquisition strategies to minimize the cost of maintaining a reserve this paper provides a new method for analyzing this problem using an uncertain dynamic programming model to analyze stockpile acquisition strategies for strategic petroleum reserve using this model we quantify the impact of uncertain world oil price on optimal stockpile acquisition strategies of china s strategic petroleum reserve for the period 2007 2010 and 2011 2020 our results show that the future stockpile acquisition is related to oil prices and their probability and if not considering the occurrence of oil supply shortage china should at least purchase 25 million barrels when world oil price is at an optimal level the optimal price of stockpile acquisition of every year has a stronger relationship with the probability of high price and the optimal expected price and size of stockpile acquisition is different in each year

modeling and forecasting energy consumption in china implications for chinese energy demand and imports in 2020 the chinese economy is in a stage of energy transition from low efficiency solid fuels to oil gas and electric power from agriculture to urbanization and industrialization from heavy industry to lighter and high tech industry from low motorization to rapid growth of the motor vehicle population experts fear that continued rapid economic growth in china will translate into a massive need to expand imports of oil coal and gas we build an econometric model of the chinese energy economy based on the energy balance we use that model to forecast chinese energy consumption and imports to 2020 the study suggests that china will indeed require rapidly growing imports of oil coal and gas this growth is not so sensitive to the rate of economic growth as to increases in motorization it can be offset but probably only in small part by increasing domestic energy production or by improvements in the efficiency of use particularly in the production of electric power

the relationship between oil price shocks and china s macro economy an empirical analysis china postdoctoral science foundation 20090460751 ministry of education of the people s republic of china 09yjc790167 09yja820074 national social science funds 09zd050 08ajy031

does china factor matter an econometric analysis of international crude oil prices abstract whether china s crude oil imports are the culprit of oil price volatility these years has not been quantitatively confirmed therefore this paper empirically investigates the role of china s crude oil net imports in brent price changes from october 2005 to november 2013 based on an econometric analysis the results indicate that during the sample period china s crude oil imports do not significantly affect brent price changes no matter in the long run or short run therefore the blame for china s crude oil imports to cause the dramatic fluctuations of international oil price has no solid evidence also there exists significant uni directional causality running from the brent price to china s crude oil imports at the 5 level besides the response of the brent price to china s crude oil imports is found positive but slight and the brent price responds more significantly to us dollar exchange rate and oecd commercial inventory than to china s crude oil imports in the short run finally the contribution of china s crude oil imports to brent price movement is about 10 which is less than that of us dollar exchange rate but larger than that of indian crude oil imports or oecd commercial inventory

strategic oil stockpiling for energy security the case of china and india abstract compared with the developed countries the developing countries could be more vulnerable to oil supply disruptions due to their lack of strategic petroleum reserves sprs several developing countries including china and india are establishing their sprs to ensure energy security in the common world oil market one country s spr decisions can be affected by the decisions of other countries this paper investigates the spr policies of china and india two of the largest developing countries in a game theoretic framework where the interactions between the two countries are taken into account the results show that players equilibrium stockpiling strategies and total expected costs could vary significantly with the initial oil market state stockpile acquisition capacity and the probabilities for disruptions to persist

incorporating distributional considerations in the safe minimum standard approach endangered species and local impacts abstract explicitly incorporating current distributional concerns into the safe minimum standard sms approach is the objective of this study the sms approach is a collective choice process that prescribes protecting a minimum level of a renewable natural resource unless the social costs of doing so are somehow excessive or intolerably high more complete implementation of an sms approach if it is to be a pragmatic policy tool requires that distributional considerations be included in determining whether the economic consequences of preservation actions are intolerable two case studies involving the us endangered species act are used to illustrate how distributional concerns might be incorporated into the sms approach

causality cointegration and control abstract the first sections of the paper show that causality tests can be relevant when considering the effectiveness of a control mechanism rejecting some results in earlier papers the relevance comes from a more careful consideration of what information is available to whom and when compared to previous work the final section of the paper extends this analysis to cointegrated variables when causality is a necessary consequence

the impact of financial development on carbon emissions an empirical analysis in china given the complexity between china s financial development and carbon emissions this paper uses some econometric techniques including cointegration theory granger causality test variance decomposition etc to explore the influence of financial development on carbon emissions results indicate that first china s financial development acts as an important driver for carbon emissions increase which should be taken into account when carbon emissions demand is projected second the influence of financial intermediation scale on carbon emissions outweighs that of other financial development indicators but its efficiency s influence appears by far weaker although it may cause the change of carbon emissions statistically third china s stock market scale has relatively larger influence on carbon emissions but the influence of its efficiency is very limited this to some extent reflects the relatively lower liquidity in china s stock markets finally among financial development indicators china s fdi exerts the least influence on the change of carbon emissions due to its relatively smaller volume compared with gdp but it is mainly utilized in carbon intensive sectors now therefore with the increase of china s fdi in the future many efforts should be made to adapt its utilizing directions and play its positive role in promoting low carbon development

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

the integration of china into the world crude oil market since 1998 abstract the integration of china into the world oil market is an important issue for at least two reasons first the influence of the country on the world oil market is dependent on the level of the integration second integration into the world oil market means that china is opening itself up to potential disturbances in the world market and this leads to significant energy security concerns for the country the aim of this paper is to investigate whether or not china is an integral part of the world oil market by reviewing the relevant trade and pricing policies of the chinese government as well as the behavior of the chinese national oil companies we find that china is actively engaging itself in the world oil market our time series results show that the chinese oil price is cointegrated with the major oil prices in the world and a high degree of co movement between the prices is found causality between the price pairs is found to be bi directional in most cases the empirical results suggest that china is now an integral part of the world oil market

towards an ecological economics of sustainability abstract persistent disagreement both as to the interpretation to be given to sustainability and as to the relation between ecological and economic sustainability has hindered the development of an ecological economics of sustainable resource use this paper identifies the main concepts of sustainability deriving from the two disciplines in order to explore the difference implied by an ecological approach to the problem it is argued that present economic and ecological approaches are largely disjoint and that they address basically different phenomena by combining the efficiency requirements of what is usually thought of as economic sustainability with the stability requirements of an ecological approach it is shown that an intertemporally efficient allocation of resources that satisfies the conditions for constant levels of consumption is not necessary to assure ecological sustainability ecological sustainability requires that the allocation of economic resources should not result in the instability of the economy environment system as a whole

an analysis of the global oil market using svarma models the paper analyses the importance of supply versus demand shocks on the global oil market from 1974 to 2017 using a parsimonious structural vector autoregressive moving average svarma model the superior out of sample forecasting performance of the reduced form varma compared to var alternatives advocates the suitability of this framework we specifically account for the changes in the oil market over three distinctive sub periods pre moderation great moderation and post moderation periods to provide a means of identifying the changing nature of shock transmission mechanism across times the findings shed some light on the effects of supply versus demand related oil shocks under different economic environment oil supply shocks explain large fraction of the movements in the global oil market in the pre and post moderation periods i e during the slower economic growth periods the importance of global activity shock on oil price movements is obvious during the 2003 2008 boom period the oil specific shock has an interesting transmission path on the global economic activity where the global activity responded positively and negatively during the global economic expansion and contraction respectively emphasising the precautionary nature of the shock

entitlements missing markets and environmental uncertainty reply abstract at one level dore and ward seem intent on immunizing received doctrine they say that i did not prove that rights violated nozick s principles of justice and that i did not prove that missing markets were the problem more telling they allege i did not prove that my story was better than the particular story favored by dore and ward that is they argue that there is an alternative approach based on the theory of public economics which is indeed operational 3 they then use the bulk of their comment to explain and defend this alternative model they hope to convince the reader that the model of public economics survives intact in the face of my alternative model to the extent that their model allows one to define the problem away it is not difficult to see why they find it so compelling more seriously dore and ward fail to make a coherent argument about the concept of rights and duties and the logic of a particular rights structure that happens to prevail they seem concerned that my article was tampering with some sacred social construct the status quo rights structure and that my article threatened the received wisdom of both public economics and paretian walrasian bliss indeed theirs seems to be a genuine fear that if economists release their grip on the certitude of received orthodoxy the floodgates will be open to all manner of bumbling regulators seeking to shift rights and wealth positions across generations my article is apparently threatening because it seems to suggest that the received wisdom may at times be misleading

do emerging markets matter in the world oil pricing system evidence of imported crude by china and india abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the changing structure of world oil price system by identifying an additional driver emerging market factor we choose china and india as a representative of emerging markets to examine if the quantity of crude oil imported by china and india is significant in the existing oil pricing system kaufmann et al 2004 our data starts from january 2002 and ends in march 2010 which includes the oil shock of 2007 2008 we utilize cointegration and error correction model framework developed by engle granger 1987 and gregory hansen 1996 in the analysis our results indicate that demand from emerging markets has become a significant factor in the world oil pricing system since 2003 this result is significant as it lends empirical support to the widely held conjecture that the oil shock of 2007 2008 is a demand led shock hamilton 2009 our result also has significant policy implications that go beyond the oil shock the emerging market factor is there to stay and reflects the changing power between emerging and developed economies in the world economic system as a result of decades of fast economic development in the former it will certainly influence policy issues related to oil and beyond

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

asymmetric effects of oil prices and exchange rates on china s industrial prices abstract this paper explores the impacts of positive and negative changes in crude oil price and exchange rate variables on raw material procurement prices and product ex factory prices of china s industrial enterprises we run the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag nardl model for the full sample from january 2000 to june 2019 and find the existence of the cointegrating relationships and the asymmetries of the long run effects from positive and negative changes in oil price and exchange rate variables then we run the ols and quantile regressions for the two subsamples through the analysis of the estimates in different quantities in the latter model we obtain rich and novel findings the main findings include the inconsistency between the practice of oil price and exchange rate transmissions in china and the usual theoretical explanations and the active roles of china s oil product mechanism and exchange rate policy reforms in mitigating transmission distortions in addition we also find other asymmetries such as the asymmetric effects in different locations of dependent variable s conditional distribution and the different effects on raw material prices and product ex factory prices from the same independent variables

an empirical analysis of the risk of crude oil imports in china using improved portfolio approach abstract this paper quantifies the diversification index of china s crude oil imports during the period 1996 2004 and explores the relationship between the monthly prices and brent crude oil cash prices accordingly we calculate the systematic and specific risks using portfolio theory of china s crude oil import over the period 1996 2004 because china s crude oil import increased rapidly since 1996 we improve upon the traditional portfolio theory and develop a risk index model of portfolio theory for crude oil imports in order to explore objectively the changes in china s crude oil import risks the results show that china s crude oil import risk is affected extensively by the fluctuation of international oil prices so the traditional portfolio theory is insufficient to measure china s crude oil import risk the improved portfolio theory risks index model reflects the effect of international oil prices diversification imports and geopolitics factors etc on crude oil import risk and changes in crude oil import risk therefore the risk index model of portfolio theory provides greater theoretical and methodological robustness as an indicator of china s crude oil import security than that offered from the application of traditional measures of dependence

china on the move oil price explosion abstract rapid expansion of highway and jet traffic in china has created a surge of demand for oil products putting pressure on world energy markets and petroleum product prices this paper examines trends in freight and passenger traffic to assess how growth in china s transport demand relates to growth in china s economy as well as the energy intensity of transport based on assumptions about demand elasticity and energy intensity a range of scenarios is developed for china s oil demand through 2020 incremental oil demand from china s transport sector is then compared with world oil demand projections to assess the likely impact on world oil prices the finding is that new demand from china s transport sector would likely raise world oil prices in 2020 by 1 3 in reference scenarios or by 3 10 if oil supply investment is constrained

how inefficient are multiple in kind transfers the inefficiencies from multiple in kind transfers are smaller than one would guess from studying such programs singly though medicaid can give rise to average discounts as large as 60 percent the benefits from the programs are quite large relative to recipients incomes effective marginal tax rates under in kind transfers are appreciably lower than they would be if the programs gave cash poverty rates among recipients are markedly lowered if one counts the value of in kind transfers as income this effect is insensitive to whether one accounts for the discounting of in kind transfers by recipients

oil prices speculation and fundamentals interpreting causal relations among spot and futures prices abstract a consensus that the world oil market is unified begs the question where do innovations in oil prices enter the market here we investigate where changes in the price of crude oil originate and how they spread by examining causal relationships among prices for crude oils from north america europe africa and the middle east on both spot and futures markets results indicate that innovations first appear in spot prices for dubai fateh and spread to other spot and futures prices while other innovations first appear in the far month contract for west texas intermediate and spread to other exchanges and contracts links between spot and futures markets are relatively weak and this may have allowed the long run relationship between spot and future prices to change after september 2004 together these results suggest that market fundamentals initiated a long term increase in oil prices that was exacerbated by speculators who recognized an increase in the probability that oil prices would rise over time

forecasting crude oil market volatility further evidence with jumps this paper analyzes volatility models and their forecasting abilities in the presence of jumps in two crude oil markets brent and west texas intermediate wti between january 6th 1992 and december 31st 2014 we compare a number of garch type models that capture short memory as well as asymmetry garch gjr garch and egarch estimated on raw returns to three competing approaches that deal with the presence of jumps garch type models estimated on jump filtered returns and two new classes of volatility models called generalized autoregressive score gas and markov switching multifractal msm models estimated using raw returns the forecasting performance of these volatility models is evaluated using the model confidence set approach which allows us to identify a subset of models that outperform all the other competing models we find that asymmetric models estimated on filtered returns provide better out of sample forecasts than do garch gas type and msm models estimated on raw return series for brent and wti returns

a problem with the negative income tax abstract the goal of a negative income tax is to increase the work incentives of welfare recipients this note points out that it may not do so and empirical simulations show that this is a real world possibility

energy consumption pollutant emissions and economic growth in south africa article i nfo article history this paper examines the long run and the causal relationship between economic growth pollutant emissions and energy consumption for south africa for the period 1965 2006 in a multivariate framework which includes labour and capital as additional variables using the bound test approach to cointegration we found a short run as well as a long run relationship among the variables with a positive and a statistically significant relationship between pollutant emissions and economic growth further applying a modified version of the granger causality test we also found a unidirectional causality running from pollutant emissions to economic growth from energy consumption to economic growth and from energy consumption to co2 emissions all without a feedback the econometric evidence suggests that south africa has to sacrifice economic growth or reduce its energy consumption per unit of output or both in order to reduce pollutant emissions in the long run however it is possible to meet the energy needs of the country and at the same time reduce co2 emissions by developing energy alternatives to coal the main source of co2 emissions however the econometric results upon which the policy suggestions are made should be interpreted with care as they may not be sufficiently robust enough to categorically warrant the choice of an unpalatable policy option by south africa

effective tax rates and guarantees in the afdc program 1967 1982 estimates of effective tax rates on earned and unearned income and estimates of effective guarantees in the afdc program by state are provided for the period 1967 1982 the results indicate that effective real guarantees fell every year from 1967 to 1981 but stabilized in 1982 effective tax rates on unearned income rose steadily from 1967 to 1981 and took a particularly large additional jump in 1982 effective tax rates on earned income fell after 1967 but then gradually rose throughout the 1970s until 1982 when they took a much larger jump thus guarantees fell and tax rates rose over the 1970s as tight budgets forced states to restrict benefits and in the early 1980s tax rates were pushed even higher by federal legislation

rational performance and gibbard s pareto consistent libertarian claim abstract the purpose of this paper is to introduce a new condition called the rational performance and hereby point out that the gibbard s pareto consistent libertarian claim has a certain defect from this point of view

the paretian liberal paradox and ecological economics abstract two of the most basic considerations in collective choice are the pareto principle and some minimal protection of individual rights in his impossibility theorem sen 1970 shows that there is a potential inconsistency between preference sovereignty as expressed by the pareto condition and the protection of minimal rights a liberal or liberty condition the paretian liberal paradox plp and the extensive debate surrounding it prompts serious reconsideration of the traditional welfare economics approach the critique of welfarism made by the plp is of central importance for environmental issues given pervasive externalities missing markets uncertainty and potential irreversibilities making collective choice decisions on these issues may require using explicit non utility information and restricting individual preference sovereignty we explore the implications of the plp for long term environmental policy and the transdisciplinary field of ecological economics as a simple pedagogical device relying on sparse principles the plp stimulates an increased awareness of the potential conflict between preferences and rights recognition of the plp focuses attention on what counts as admissible information in collective choice rules for example consideration of the plp illuminates differences in the informational requirements of alternative sustainability concepts

intergenerational resource rights efficiency and social optimality the discipline of economics is generally defined as the science of the allocation of scarce resources between competing social objectives given an initial distribution of resources between economic agents how would they behave so as to improve their welfare according to the pareto criterion the agents would exchange commodities until the opportunities for fruitful exchange were fully exhausted and no agent could be made better off without rendering at least one other agent worse off pareto efficiency is a powerful concept in microeconomic analysis provided that the initial distribution of property rights is equitable allocative efficiency gives rise to the best of all possible worlds acknowledging that the assumptions of perfect competition are often violated firms are monopolistic information is incomplete and externalities exist economists have argued for the modification of institutions so that economic reality will conform more closely to the assumptions of the model that yields such gratifying results but microeconomic theory has always maintained that allocative efficiency is in itself insufficient to maximize social welfare bator 1957 a social welfare function is required to discriminate a social optimum among the array of efficient allocations that correspond to alternative assignments of property rights though economists have posited alternative functional forms for the sake of pursuing conceptual arguments welfare functions have remained elusive constructs for well known theoretical and practical reasons consequently a sharp line of demarcation has been drawn between questions of efficiency the province of economics and equity the principal focus of ethical and political discourse in resource economics however the line demarcating efficiency and equity is often crossed the term optimal depletion appears regularly where only efficient depletion is meant while political debates about resource exploitation over time are laden with questions of the proper distribution of our natural patrimony between generations resource economists have predominantly espoused particular use rules that guarantee efficiency but overlook potential improvements in social welfare achievable through the reassignment of property rights across generations we document the evolution and current status of the misuse of the term optimal depletion in section ii we develop a simple two generation three period general equilibrium model in section iii to illustrate how alternative distributions of resource rights between generations relate to alternative pareto efficient solutions in section iv we demonstrate how different social welfare functions affect the optimal solution and associated assignment of resource rights between generations

empirical analysis of optimal strategic petroleum reserve in china abstract the chinese government began to prepare for the establishment of strategic petroleum reserve in march 2004 therefore answering the question of what level of strategic petroleum reserve would be suitable for china s future economic development becomes essential using a decision tree model based on a cost function this paper quantifies china s optimal strategic petroleum reserve for the period 2005 2020 this approach provides a methodology reference for further quantified discussion on china s spr our results show that for economic development and security of the energy supply the strategic petroleum reserve should be the equivalent of 30 60 days of net oil import for an optimal solution when the oil price is 50 bbl with a reserve of an equivalent of 60 90 days of net oil import to have an optimal solution when oil price is 20 35 bbl

dynamic relationship of oil price shocks and country risks abstract this study investigates the dynamic relationship between oil price shocks and country risks using a structural var framework for a sample of both net oil exporting and net oil importing countries over the period january 1994 december 2014 the results reveal that country risk is significantly affected by oil price shocks but the impacts are different unanticipated positive oil price shocks trigger a reduction addition in country risk for net oil exporting country net oil importing countries as to the responses of oil prices to country risk shock evidence show that country risk shocks have a delayed significantly positive impacts on oil price for oil exporting country with respect to the effects of subcomponents of country risk we find evidence that economic and political risk have a significant impact on supply side shocks in net oil exporting countries like canada while economic and political risk have a significant effect on supply side shocks and oil specific demand shocks in net oil importing countries like the us these results are particularly important to policy makers and government

methodological individualism and social knowledge it is a touchstone of accepted economics that all explanations must run in terms of the actions and reactions of individuals our behavior in judging economic research in peer review of papers and research and in promotions includes the criterion that in principle the behavior we explain and the policies we propose are explicable in terms of individuals not of other social categories i want to argue today that a close examination of even the most standard economic analysis shows that social categories are in fact used in economic analysis all the time and that they appear to be absolute necessities of the analysis not just figures of speech that can be eliminated if need be i further argue that the importance of technical information in the economy is an especially

intergenerational equity and environmental decisions a model using rawls veil of ignorance abstract four general strategies for resource use exploitationism conservationism naturalist preservationism and extensionist preservationism are sketched and a two step model for deciding resource policy issues is proposed the model based on a modification of rawls hypothetical rational decision model posits a self interested chooser who decides the rules constituting a fair society in the first stage the chooser places pre emptive constraints on each generation s use of resources these constraints embodying leopold s conception of whole ecosystem health limit the options available to individuals of any generation in the pursuit of economic welfare in the second stage each generation may choose a strategy of resource use from those possibilities fulfilling the first stage constraints it is argued that a exploitationism is not in general an acceptable strategy because it violates constraints that would be imposed on all generations by a chooser who is ignorant regarding the generation he will inhabit b extensionist preservation which recognizes values inherent in wild species and natural ecosystems provides no operationalizable guide for environmental policy c conservationism fails to protect the biotic heritage of future generations because applications of the sustainable yield criterion can cause simplification and eventual breakdowns of natural ecosystems and therefore d a broadly naturalist preservationist strategy which imposes constraints on the pervasive exploitation of ecological systems and thereby protects biological diversity in the long run would be chosen by the rational chooser who is ignorant of the generation he will inhabit