impact of deposit rate ceiling changes on bank stock returns this paper reexamines the impact of four major changes in deposit rate ceilings that occurred during the 1970 80 decade on bank systematic and unsystematic risk the reexamination clarifies why it is dangerous to conduct event studies naively stephen m goldfeld and richard e quandt s switching regressions method is proposed as a procedure that forces the researcher to take a more disciplined approach to determining event dates contrary to previous studies switch dates identified by goldfeld and quandt s switching regressions method cannot be associated with ceiling change announcements because of other information flows so that inferences cannot be drawn about the specific effects of the regulatory adjustments copyright 1989 by ohio state university press

on the existence of pareto optimal allocations when individual welfare depends on relative consumption abstract in this paper we analyze the existence of pareto optimal allocations of k goods among n agents when individual welfare depends on relative consumption under rather mild assumptions we show that for any predetermined vector of utility values we can find the amounts of goods and their corresponding distribution so that those target utility values are efficiently achieved then we prove that in the case where utility functions are interpersonally comparable in ordinal terms there exists a pareto optimal allocation of any given bundle of goods that equalizes all agents welfare levels what we call a welfare fair allocation

current situation trends and potential of renewable energy in flanders abstract the current european union eu energy policy seeks to reach a balance between sustainable development competitiveness and secure supply in this sense the eu energy policy sets the target of a 13 share of renewable energy sources ress for belgium several instruments have been implemented to reach this target the objective of this study is analyzing those instruments and its effectiveness and efficiency to tackle this objective we first analyze the current status of res in flanders second we compare the situation in flanders to the national situation in belgium and to the other eu member states then we analyze the potential of each type of res finally we discuss the opportunities and problems of res related to spatial planning in flanders the main application of renewable energy is electricity production of which the main source is biomass an aspect of the flemish energy policy worth mentioning is the green certificate system which has stimulated the development of renewable energies however a greater effort to regulate this market and to decrease the cost of kwh produced has proven to be necessary the res electricity share of total consumption has increased by 3 2 between 1994 and 2008 but compared to others eu countries the share of res to gross inland consumption in flanders is small large scale facilities are necessary to reach the eu targets the development of large wind biomass and solar projects is suggested as the preferred option for flanders

effects of substituting energy with capital on china s aggregated energy and environmental efficiency abstract substituting energy with capital sec in economic productions has become a common practice both for business owners and policy makers to improve their energy and environmental efficiency however seldom previous studies on energy efficiency and or environmental performance evaluation took this role into account this paper aims to shed some light on the effects of sec on china s aggregated energy and environmental efficiency aeee within a parametric stochastic frontier analysis framework moreover influencing factors of regional efficiency score are also discussed using a pooled regression model the results indicate that sec poses significant effects on improving china s aeee and this impact appears obvious regional variation that regions with lower efficiency scores hold more extensive potential to improve their aeee by means of sec furthermore upgrading industrial structure and decreasing the proportion of coal in energy consumption make great sense to improve china s aeee

additions to bank loan loss reserves good news or bad news abstract this paper examines the effects of citicorp s and succeeding banks loan loss reserve announcements in 1987 it was found that while the average effect on bank stock return portfolios was weak the effect on individual bank returns was heterogeneous tests were undertaken to determine which bank specific variables explained the latter result two significant variables were the size of a banks ldc debt exposure and its position in ldc rescheduling committees

an informationally efficient equity criterion abstract a new equity criterion for exchange economies is proposed an allocation being declared equitable if no agent prefers the average of what everyone else consumes to what he consumes the logical relationship of this criterion with other criteria in the published literature is studied and its informational merits emphasized equitable allocations are shown to exist under standard assumptions a complete geometric characterization of all equitable allocations is offered with special attention being given to the case of large economies a detailed analysis of the two person two commodity case then the criterion coincides with that of an envy free allocation reveals several properties of interest of the criterion

efficiency analysis of chinese industry a directional distance function approach two efficiency measures of chinese industry were estimated at the provincial level from 1994 to 2002 using a directional output distance function one is a traditional efficiency measure that considers only desirable output while the other considers both desirable and undesirable outputs simultaneously a comparison of the two measures revealed that efficiency levels are biased only if desirable output is considered five coastal provinces municipalities that have attracted a large amount of foreign direct investment are found to be the most efficient when only desirable output is considered and also when both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered however omitting undesirable output tends to lead to an overestimate of industrial efficiency levels in shandong sichuan and hebei provinces we also found that a province s industrial structure has significant effects on its efficiency levels

dealing with envy abstract this paper argues that if envy matters then it should enter directly into the utility functions the pareto sets based on the envious utilities are natural candidates for the socially optimal allocations three forms of envious utility functions are considered and their pareto sets compared to the usual definition of the fair set where the notion of non envy is imposed on non envious utilities it is shown that very rarely will the fair set coincide with any envious pareto set and for certain types of envious utilities no outcome in the fair set is pareto optimal

bank foreign lending mandatory disclosure rules and the reaction of bank stock prices to the mexican debt crisis this paper examines the effects of the mexican debt mora torium in august 1982 on bank valuation the mexican default resulted in the passage of regulations requiring public disclosure of bank fo reign lending exposure the authors find that even in the absence of public disclosure regulations investors were able to discriminate a mong banks with different levels of exposure copyright 1987 by the university of chicago

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

government expenditure and energy intensity in china the recent economic stimulus package of china has raised growing concern about its potential impact on energy demand and efficiency to what extent does such expansion of government expenditure influence energy intensity this question has not been well answered by the previous research using provincial panel data this paper provides some evidence of a link between government expenditure and energy intensity in china the empirical results demonstrate that the expansion of government expenditure since asian financial crisis has exerted a significant influence on energy intensity an increase in government expenditure in china leads to an increase in energy intensity further analysis compares such relationships in different economic situations the comparison shows that such positive effect of government expenditure remains significant after the alteration in economic situation therefore the results suggest introducing some measures to consolidate china s existing gains in energy efficiency the analysis also explains why the downward trend in energy intensity is reversed in china since 2002

economic justice the central question abstract the central problem of economic justice is the just allocation of the benefits derived from the human resources in the three polar cases respectively 1 each individual has the full usufruct of all his capacities full process liberalism including liberal social contracts for the correction of market failures 2 the ideal is equal satisfaction replaced by a leximin in fundamental preferences or practical justice for efficiency 3 individuals are specifically entitled to or accountable for only their consumptive capacities this latter case implies equal consumption goods which are replaced for efficiency by the second best multidimensional maximin of super equity the properties of efficient super equity are characterized with particular application to the treatment of leisure the criteria of needs and responsibility are finally considered

energy development in china the need for a coherent policy abstract china the world s third largest consumer of primary energy remains in relative terms a poor developing country ambitious modernization plans exemplified by the goal of quadrupling per capita gnp by the year 2000 will require considerable attention to long range energy planning yet the past developments including the most recent guidelines have been marked by abrupt changes and outright reversals leaving china without any coherent energy policy the most durable strategies which emerged during the late 1970s are the stress on coal as the principal fuel building of mine mouth power plants accelerated construction of large hydro stations massive diffusion of small biogas digesters and widespread energy conservation measures

understanding the disinflations in australia canada and new zealand using evidence from smooth transition analysis abstract this paper investigates the disinflation experiences of three countries australia canada and new zealand unlike previous approaches which have sought to use institutional data to pre determine the causes speed and duration of the transitions to low inflation regimes this paper allows price data itself to determine the speed and timing of the reforms using smooth transition analysis the results show that the process of transition is related to two factors central bank independence and the general slowdown in economic activity which occurred during the early 1990s in all oecd countries other reforms to the labor market and fiscal policy were less influential

china s ongoing energy efficiency drive origins progress and prospects abstract in 2004 china s government launched a vigorous programme to reverse the trend of rising national energy intensity and to reduce intensity by 20 over the period 2006 2010 the aim of this paper is to examine this programme in the context of nearly 30 years of measures to enhance energy efficiency in china and thus to evaluate the likelihood that today s policies will yield improvements over a longer period the country achieved a sustained decline of energy intensity in the period 1980 2001 but this trend was reversed in 2002 this reversal arose from a shift in the structure of the economy to more energy intensive industries and from a decline in the rate of technical innovation the measures taken since 2003 have been directed principally at energy intensive industries but have also addressed other sectors of the economy though the energy intensity target for the year 2010 may be achieved greater efforts will be needed to address a number of constraints which include the reluctance to use economic and financial instruments the dependency of energy policy on industrial and social policies the nature of political decision making and of public administration a shortage of skills and social attitudes to energy

decomposition of electricity demand in china s industrial sector in the past five years china s demand for electricity has accelerated far beyond what central planners had forecasted leading to supply constraints and costly brownouts throughout the country this paper presents analysis of the effect of changes in the industrial sector on electricity demand an important economic sector contributing to these above patterns as it consumes nearly 70 of the electricity generated in china using decomposition analysis it is found that both increased industrial activity and fuel shifts helped increase industrial sector electricity demand between 1998 and 2002 the period of focus in this study but significant increases in energy efficiency countered this

what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate 1997 2006 abstract china is the second largest energy consumer in the world during 1997 2002 china s energy intensity declined by 33 however it rose by 10 7 over 2003 2005 and declined by 1 2 in 2006 what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate so drastically industry accounts for approximately 70 of the total energy consumption in china in this paper we decompose china s industrial energy intensity changes between 1997 and 2002 into sectoral structural effects and efficiency effects measured by sectoral energy intensities at two digit level and including the shifts of product mix in the sub sector or firm level using tornqvist and sato vartia index methods the results show that in this period efficiency effects possibly contributed to a majority of the decline while the contribution from structural effects was less during 2003 2005 the excessive expansion of high energy consuming sub sectors and the high investment ratio were foremost sources of the increasing energy intensity attributed to the government efforts the energy intensity has started to decline slightly since july 2006 in future to save more energy in addition to technical progress china should attach more importance to optimizing its sectoral structure and lowering its investment ratio

the wealth effects of the risk based capital requirement in banking the evidence from the capital market abstract the imposition of risk based capital requirements has been advocated by some regulatory authorities as a means of mitigating the incentive problems created by fixed premium deposit insurance however their imposition also constitutes a requirement to maintain an exogenously influenced capital structure which may adversely affect the values of the firms involved this paper examines the wealth effects of the announcement of the basle committee s intention to impose across international boundaries a pre determined minimum level of risk adjusted capital we find that in general the equity values of a sample of large publicly traded banks decrease at the time of the announcement further those banks with capital levels which are deficient relative to the mandated levels suffer the largest relative losses

energy security in china a quantitative analysis and policy implications abstract this study aims to examine how china s energy security has changed over 30 years of reform and the opening period it constructs a 4 as quantitative evaluation framework the availability of energy resources the applicability of technology the acceptability by society and the affordability of energy resources the quantitative results show that china s energy security was at its best during the sixth fyp period 1981 1985 but then deteriorated until it hit higher levels between 1995 and 2005 however it was still lower than the level reached during the sixth fyp period during the eleventh fyp period 2006 2010 the energy security situation deteriorated again differences in policy priority over the study period appear to affect the country s energy security status this study suggests that china needs to develop renewable energy resources on a large scale and pay more attention to emissions control to reverse the downward trend in energy security

total factor energy efficiency of regions in china abstract this paper analyzes energy efficiencies of 29 administrative regions in china for the period 1995 2002 with a newly introduced index most existing studies of regional productivity and efficiency neglect energy inputs we use the data envelopment analysis dea to find the target energy input of each region in china at each particular year the index of total factor energy efficiency tfee then divides the target energy input by the actual energy input in our dea model labor capital stock energy consumption and total sown area of farm crops used as a proxy of biomass energy are the four inputs and real gdp is the single output the conventional energy productivity ratio regarded as a partial factor energy efficiency index is computed for comparison in contrast to tfee our index is found fitting better to the real case according to the tfee index rankings the central area of china has the worst energy efficiency and its total adjustmentof energy consumption amount is over half of china s total regional tfee in china generally improved during the research period except for the western area a u shape relation between the area s tfee and per capita income in the areas of china is found confirming the scenario that energy efficiency eventually improves with economic growth

identifying electricity saving potential in rural china empirical evidence from a household survey in recent years there has been a fast growing body of literature examining energy saving potential in relation to electricity however empirical studies focusing on non western nations are limited to fill this gap this study intends to examine the electricity saving potential of rural households in china using a unique data set from the china residential electricity consumption survey crecs in collaboration with the china general social survey cgss conducted nationwide at the household level in rural china we use a stochastic frontier model which allows us to decompose residential electricity consumption into the minimum necessary amount of consumption based on physical characteristics e g house size house age number of televisions or refrigerators and estimate the consumption slack i e the amount of electricity consumption that could be saved which depends on various factors we find that rural households in china are generally efficient in electricity saving and the saving potential is affected by fast information feedback and social demographic characteristics instead of by the averaged electricity price or energy efficiency labelling signals in addition we find no evidence of regional heterogeneity on electricity saving potential for rural households policy implications are derived

the reaction of bank stock prices to the international debt crisis abstract in this paper we develop a cross sectional regression approach to estimate the impact of foreign loan exposure on the pricing of u s bank stocks a new approach is required because news about foreign loan problems may arrive incremently over time rather than reaching the market on a few specific dates the way earnings and dividend announcements do consistent with this interpretation we find that foreign loan exposure had a significant impact on the pricing of u s bank stocks during the years 1982 and 1983 but that the stock prices adjusted continually over the two year period rather than jumping on a few particular days

what goes up recent trends in china s energy consumption since 1996 china s energy output has dropped by 17 while primary energy use has fallen by 4 driven almost entirely by shrinking output from coal mines and declining direct use since china is the world s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases it is important to understand the sources of this apparent transformation and whether it portends a permanent change in patterns of energy use this remarkable reversal of the long term expansion of energy use has occurred even as the economy has continued to grow albeit more slowly than in the early 1990s generation of electric power has risen implying a steep fall in end uses particularly in industry available information points to a variety of forces contributing to this phenomenon including rapid improvements in coal quality structural changes in industry shutdowns of factories in both the state owned and non state segments of the economy improvements in end use efficiency and greater use of gas and electricity in households a combination of slowing economic growth industrial restructuring broader economic system reforms and environmental and energy efficiency policies has apparently led to at least a temporary decline in and perhaps a long term reduction in the growth of energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions

envy freeness and distributive justice the criterion of envy freeness according to which no agent should prefer any of his neighbours allocation to his own has become a central part of the economic theory of distributive justice it essentially corresponds to the need to express an ideal of equality in societies where preferences and endowments are heterogeneous this paper surveys various formulations of the idea of envy freeness starting with the simple distribution model then adding the possibility for agents to have different native talent endowments and finally moving to models with production many classical results are displayed but emphasis is also put on recent developments mainly the ideas of minimizing envy and of absence of domination five major difficulties facing envy freeness are identified and listed as directions of future research copyright 1994 by blackwell publishers ltd

the international debt crisis and bank security returns in 1982 this research investigates the reaction of bank security returns to the 20 august 1982 mexican request for the rescheduling of its external debt empirical results show that the reaction of bank stocks was rapid and significantly negative within six days of the published announcem ent prices had adjusted to reflect levels of individual bank exposure which re futes the much longer time impliedin other studies of this event the authors c onclude that the marketreaction was essentially efficient rational and orderly copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

the regulation of international lending imf support the debt crisis and bank stockholder wealth abstract in a recent article cornell landsman and shapiro 1986 provide insight in to the impact of selected regulatory responses to the international debt crisis on bank stock prices the current study concentrates on the reaction of bank shareholders to the legislative events that ultimately led to the passage of the international lending supervision act ilsa and to greater u s support of the international monetary fund imf while cornell landsman and shapiro restricted their legislative analysis to when the relevant bills were passed this study also examines when such legislation was introduced in the house or the senate the empirical results indicate that the introduction of such legislation materially influenced bank stockholder expectations in contrast to cornell landsman and shapiro the effect of these events on the risk return complexion of banks is measured furthermore the sensitivity of bank stockholders reactions to the above legislative events is appraised in light of banks latin american loan portfolio risk analysis of the expected impact of greater imf support and the ilsa on bank stockholders supplements the work of cornell landsman and shapiro by providing additional insight into the expected impact of such legislation on bank industry risk unlike cornell landsman and shapiro this study provides evidence that the joint effect of a greater imf quota and the ilsa was a net benefit to stockholders analysis suggests that the perceived benefit of a greater imf quota was apparently diminished by the ilsa however stockholders evidently perceived a general decrease in the risk of the banking industry as a result of the legislative events

a note on egalitarian and efficient allocations with externalities in consumption abstract a pure distribution problem when individual utilities depend on relative consumption has been treated by villar 1988 in an earlier issue of this journal one of his main results is that for any bundle of goods to be divided there exists a pareto optimal egalitarian allocation in this note we show that there are such distribution problems for which only weak pareto optimal and egalitarian allocations can be ensured

the brady plan the 1989 mexican debt reduction agreement and bank stock returns in the united states and japan the authors investigate the impact of the menu approach to debt rescheduling on the market value of two major creditors u s and japanese banks they try to understand how major creditor banks are affected by debt reschedulings and the menu choices they make so that debt deals can be structured in a way that appeals to both creditors and debtor countries they measure the stock market s reaction to the announcement of the brady plan and the mexican debt reduction agreement the brady plan was implemented through the menu approach which acknowledges creditor heterogeneity and provides financing packages that meet the country s financing requirements while still allowing the banks to reduce their exposure the mexican agreement provides an opportunity to test the impact of the brady plan s implementation by examining individual bank s menu choices exposure levels and the market s reaction they explore whether banks were able to make optimal portfolio choices when confronted with the obligation to participate they show that stock prices for different groups of banks reacted quite differently to focal events among all banks u s multinationals showed the strongest positive reaction to the brady announcement and the mexican agreement u s non multinationals do not appear to have been significantly affected by these international debt related events the reaction experienced by all japanese banks was much weaker than that of u s multinationals and was negative for the brady announcement and the initial mexico announcement the authors contend that the lack of a strong reaction was because of the japanese banks relatively low exposure to developing country risk they see the negative market reaction as a reflection of the expectation that a u s initiated debt reduction strategy would not be favorable for japanese banks indeed after the menu choices were announced the market recognized that the japanese banks were treated fairly and corrected itself they do not find that banks that made different choices were treated differently by the market so banks were able to negotiate menu choices in their best interest and to make portfolio choices consistent with their business objectives the results here confirm that the menu approach to debt restructuring may benefit both the creditor banks and the debtor countries

heterogeneous creditors and the market value of bank ldc loan portfolios abstract a standard proposition used in many empirical studies is that the value of an ldc loan does not depend on the identity of the lender i test this proposition using bank securities prices and prices for ldc loans trading in the secondary market i find significant cross sectional differences in the sensitivity of bank stocks to changes in the price of ldc loans differences in sensitivity appear to be related to changes in bank exposure to ldcs i also find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that cds are implicitly insured

playing fair with fairness a comment on arnsperger s envy freeness and distributive justice abstract the principle that no individual prefers another s allocation to his own is central in the analysis of economic justice mainly because of its identity with the basic case of equality of liberty rather than for its indirect relation with the sentiment of envy the various reproaches which have been addressed to this principle gathered by arnsperger either are misconceived or have been answered by rational justified extensions or specifications of the principle

the reaction of bank stock prices to news of derivatives losses by corporate clients abstract from march through may of 1994 several large nonfinancial firms announced millions of dollars in losses from derivatives deals especially those arranged by bankers trust accompanying these announcements and related news stories were allegations that bankers trust had either misrepresented lied or deceived its clients using sur methods we investigate how these announcements affected bankers trust and three portfolios of banks dealers nondealers and nonusers our results indicate significant cumulative abnormal returns of 12 14 bankers trust 5 56 13 dealer banks and 2 45 32 nondealer user banks the evidence suggests an intra industry information transfer effect consistent with rational pricing the replacement cost of derivative contracts is an important factor in explaining the variation in abnormal returns across banks

rational normative economics vs social welfare and social choice abstract the central part of the social ethics of economics based on concepts of social welfare and the corresponding part of social choice theory are mistaken approaches defining the social optimum as the maximal element of an ordering independent of the possibilities is shown to violate both common concepts of justice and rationality in the normal sense of the term anyway the social optimum need not be defined for non existing possibilities and individual preferences rationality requires that the optimum be defined by equalities of liberties in a large sense means powers rights etc a number of studies work within this paradigm liberalisms equities inequalities etc the origin of the mistake is to be traced to the political introduction of utilitarianism into english political philosophy

analysis of the effect and potential of energy conservation in china in this paper a quantitative algorithm for direct and indirect energy savings is developed based on the database analysis of china s energy consumption per gdp in the last two decades the result shows that direct energy savings due to improved energy conversion and end use utilization efficiencies only account for 26 5 of the total energy savings and that indirect energy savings due to increased added value of products product shifts and structure shifts in industries account for 73 5 of the total energy savings factors affecting indirect energy savings are then analyzed and total energy system efficiencies and direct energy savings in 2020 are quantitatively estimated which shows that enlarging indirect energy savings is a more crucial task for china s macro energy conservation in the future the paper suggests that china should pay more attention to indirect energy savings to improve the energy utilization output benefits by increasing the added value of products optimizing product and industry structures and improving production technologies the potential of indirect energy savings in china is more significant compared with developed countries

the economic effects of client losses on otc bank derivative dealers evidence from the capital market this paper investigates the economic impact of client derivatives losses on otc derivatives dealers its focus is on the capital marketers reaction to losses suffered by four end users of otc derivatives products arranged with bankers trust new york evidence is provided on the impact of these end user losses on bankers trust itself as well as whether these losses produced any systemic or contagion effects extending to other major bank otc derivatives dealers finally the paper investigates whether possible systemic effects may be associated with bank specific characteristics such as the level of derivatives exposure counterparty risk and reliance on trading income copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

implementation of energy saving policies in china how local governments assisted industrial enterprises in achieving energy saving targets abstract local governments have replaced the national ministries that are in charge of various industries to become the primary implementer of energy saving policies in china since 2000 this paper employs a case study based approach to demonstrate the significance of local governments policy measures in assisting industrial enterprises with energy saving activities in china based on the longitudinal case of the jasmine thermal electric power company this paper hypothesizes that sub national governments have played a major role in implementing energy saving policies in china since the 11th five year plan period a wide range of provincial and municipal agencies collaborated in implementing five types of policy measures informational policy skill building improved enforcement of central directives price adjustment and funding that reduced barriers to energy saving and motivated active pursuit of energy saving activities at industrial enterprises the case study demonstrates how an enterprise and local governments work together to achieve the enterprise s energy saving target the authors will investigate the hypothesis of this paper in the context of multiple case studies that they plan to undertake in the future

debt equity swaps regulation k and bank stock returns abstract since the early 1980s the financial health of several highly levered ldcs has become increasingly precarious their financial problems in turn imply potentially serious financial problems for their creditors foremost among whom are some of the largest banks in the american financial system in order to relieve some of the pressure on the lending firms the board of governors has recently amended regulation k which provides guidelines for international banking operations to allow for unrestricted investment in foreign nationalized firms through the mechanism of the debt equity swap this paper examines the capital market reaction to the regulatory change and we find that 1 investors on average viewed the change as a wealth increasing event 2 the magnitude of the market reaction was significant and positively related to the level of foreign lending exposure and 3 among ldc lenders the capital market reaction differed significantly between money center and non money center banks

geographical and environmental perspectives for the sustainable development of renewable energy in urbanizing china with rapid urbanization and industrialization china has become both the largest energy consumer and co2 emitting country in the world as a clean and low carbon energy source renewable energy is a good choice to substitute for the exhausted fossil energy the chinese central and local governments have made a series of policies and optimistic plans to promote a rapid development of renewable energies china s renewable energy development has become a key to the sustainable development of socioeconomic system unlike most of the current studies which mainly identified the challenges regarding policies and technologies around renewable energy or performed specific analyses for a certain kind of renewable energy this paper summarizes the spatial disparity and consistency among the major renewable energies coal resources energy consumption and its major influencing factors in china and reviews the positive and negative environmental impacts of major renewable energies based on the geographical and environmental perspectives this paper recommends that the chinese government constructs the national energy production bases according to the resource distribution integrates different energies on the basis of their natural features and spatial consistency adjusts the overall layout of socio economic development consistent with renewable energies and promotes a moderate renewable energy development to maximize the environmental benefits c 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the impacts of energy prices on energy intensity evidence from china in this paper we present a review of the deregulation of energy prices in china between 1985 and 2004 and assess the impacts of changes in energy prices on aggregate energy intensity and coal oil electricity intensity we used time series data to provide estimates of energy price elasticities empirical results showed that 1 the own price elasticities of coal oil and aggregate energy were negative in periods both before and after 1995 implying that higher relative prices of different energy types lead to the decrease in coal oil and aggregate energy intensities however the positive own price elasticity of electricity after 1995 probably indicates that the price effect was weaker than other factors such as income effect and population effect 2 the impacts of energy prices were asymmetric over time 3 sectoral adjustment also drove the decrease in aggregate energy intensity although raising energy prices to boost efficiency of energy use seems to be an effective policy tool other policy implications concerned with energy prices such as energy supply security and fuel poverty must also be considered