decoupling of industrial energy consumption and co2 emissions in energy intensive industries in scandinavia as methodology the ex post analysis deserves more attention as a device to calibrate energy sector models this paper studies the impact of energy prices and taxes on energy efficiency and carbon emissions of ten industrial sectors in the three scandinavian countries a database with sector specific energy prices and taxes has been established which allows the analysis to take various price reductions and tax exemptions better into account a translog factor demand system estimation for a cross industry pooled model is explored and fixed effects across industries and time is estimated the findings here confirm recent analyses which indicate higher long term elasicities for industries than normally assumed in scandinavian energy sector models with the observations on differences in energy intensities among sectors and countries the findings allow for some optimism as to the opportunities for further decoupling between trends in gross value added carbon emissions and energy consumption

urbanization and industrialization impact of co2 emissions in china abstract this study investigates the causal linkage among co2 emissions per capita energy intensity real gdp per capita industrialization share of industrial value added in gdp urbanization share of urban population in total population and share of renewable energy consumption in china over the period from 1970 to 2015 we employ autoregressive distributed lag ardl technology to test the co integration and short and long run estimates and apply the vector error correction model vecm to analyze the directional causality among the time series data the estimates of long run parameters indicate that 1 augments of energy intensity real gdp industrialization and urbanization increase co2 emissions by 1 1 0 6 0 3 and 1 0 respectively long run feedback granger causalities exist among emissions real gdp and industrialization thus our main policy suggestions are as follows i to encourage green and sustainable urbanization as it increases economic growth but not at the expense of environmental degradation ii to strategically adjust and optimize the industrial structure iii to improve the efficiency of energy use and technological innovation and iv to increase the proportion of renewable energy in total energy consumption

how urbanization affects co2 emissions in malaysia the application of stirpat model we investigate the impact of urbanization on co2 emissions by applying the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat in the case of malaysia over the period of 1970q1 2011q4 empirically after testing the integrating properties of the variables using the unit root test we applied the bayer hanck combined cointegration approach to examine the cointegration relationship between the variables further we tested the robustness of the long run relationship in the presence of structural breaks using ardl bounds testing approach the causal relationship between the variables is investigated by applying the vecm granger causality test our results validate the existence of cointegration in the presence of structural breaks the empirical results exposed that economic growth is a major contributor to co2 emissions besides energy consumption raises emissions intensity and capital stock boosts energy consumption trade openness leads affluence and hence increases co2 emissions more importantly we find that the relationship between urbanization and co2 emissions is u shaped i e urbanization initially reduces co2 emissions but after a threshold level it increases co2 emissions the causality analysis suggests that the urbanization granger causes co2 emissions

technology international trade and pollution from us manufacturing pollution emitted by us manufacturers declined markedly over the past several decades even as real manufacturing output increased i first show that most of the decline in us manufacturing pollution has resulted from changing production processes technology rather than changes in the mix of goods produced i then show that increased net imports of polluting goods international trade accounts for only a small portion of the pollution reductions from the changing mix of goods together these two findings demonstrate that shifting polluting industries overseas explains only a minor part less than 10 percent of the cleanup of us manufacturing jel f18 l23 l60 o30 q52 q53

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

is environmental policy a secondary trade barrier an empirical analysis should international trade agreements be extended to include negotiations over environmental policy the answer depends on whether countries distort levels of environmental regulations as a secondary means of providing protection to domestic industries our results suggest that they do previous studies of this relationship have treated the level of environmental regulation as exogenous and found a negligible correlation between environmental regulation and trade flows in contrast we find that when the level of environmental regulation is modelled as an endogenous variable its estimated effect on trade flows is significantly higher than previously reported jel classification fl f14 f18 est ce que la politique environnementale est une barriere commerciale secondaire une analyse empirique est ce que les accords commerciaux internationaux doivent etre etendus pour couvrir la politique environnementale la reponse depend du degre de distorsion que les pays introduisent dans leur politique environnementale pour proteger leurs industries nationales nos resultats suggerent que cet impact est important des etudes anterieures de cette relation ont traite la politique environnementale comme exogene et ont montre qu il existe une co relation negligeable entre politique envir onnementale et flux commerciaux au contraire nous revelons que quand la politique environnementale est consideree comme variable endoge ne son effet sur les flux com merciaux est plus eleve de maniere significative que ce qu on a note anterieurement

decoupling economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions in china a sectoral factor decomposition analysis china is facing the dilemma of how to coordinate economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions reduction this paper investigates the decoupling effect of economic growth from co2 emissions in china during the period 1992 2012 using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method we decompose the driving forces of the decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions in china s five major economic sectors into several factors and measure the contribution of each factor to the decoupling of china s overall economy from co2 emissions the results show that china performed the weak decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions during 1992 2012 and so did all its five major sectors such a state did not occur smoothly and presented five different stages energy intensity and economic activity level were the most important factors affecting the decoupling in china energy intensity decreased in all sectors indicating a large acceleration for the sectoral decoupling states this finding is applicable to process carbon intensity in industrial sector and energy emission factor in agricultural industrial construction and service sectors in terms of sectoral effects on the decoupling in china industrial sector played a dominant role while construction sector had the most marginal influence the economic activity level and economic share of industrial sector exerted the most negative effects on the decoupling the energy intensity of industrial sector played a key role in promoting the national decoupling state while the energy emission factor of agricultural sector contributed the least

the estimation of a joint wage hours labor supply model in this paper the standard cross sectional static model of labor supply is modified to make the wage endogenous and a joint wage hours model is estimated the econometric technique addresses the non linearity of the budget constraint by approximating the constraint by a series of discrete points the results show that the budget constraint is indeed nonlinear that hours affect the wage quadratically that true wage elasticities are lower as a result and that the model fits the hours distribution much better than the standard tobit model

is decoupling economic growth from fuel consumption possible in developing countries a comparison of china and india abstract a better understanding the coupling decoupling of economic growth from energy demand in china and india can serve both countries and other developing countries to achieve the goal of gaining higher economic growth with less energy demand to demonstrate the relationship between coupling decoupling economy and energy in china and india better this work has made following contributions i analyzes the decoupling elasticity between economic growth and energy consumption by using the tapio model ii explores the five key effects labor input investment energy structure energy intensity technology level of decoupling elasticity by combining the cobb douglas c d function and log mean divisia index lmdi method and iii evaluates the decoupling efforts by applying decoupling efforts model in china and india between 1990 and 2015 the decoupling elasticity results show china s decoupling elasticity curve is in an inverted u shaped trend and the decoupling elastic value is concentrated between 0 and 0 8 in most years showing a weak decoupling state furthermore the decoupling state is strong decoupling during 2014 2015 indicating china has initially achieved the decoupling of economy and energy consumption while india s decoupling elasticity presents irregular fluctuations indicating that india s decoupling status is not very satisfactory the decomposition results uncover that major effects of decoupling in china and india are similar i e the investment effect is the biggest driver which contributed to a cumulative increasing impact in energy consumption in china and india by 3017 10 million tonnes oil equivalent and 675 18 million tonnes oil equivalent respectively whereas the energy intensity effect is the greatest inhibiting factor which contributed to a cumulative reduction in energy consumption in china and india by 1437 81 million tonnes oil equivalent and 139 21 million tonnes oil equivalent the decoupling efforts results show decoupling effort in china is better than that in india improving energy efficiency is the leading contributor to china s decoupling efforts while advancing technology is the major contributor to india s decoupling effort

how will the chinese national carbon emissions trading scheme work the assessment of regional potential gains abstract the implementation of a national emissions trading scheme ets in china is likely to have an important effect on potential regional gains this study proposes a unified analytical framework for anticipating such gains in 2020 and estimates the key factors involved using data envelopment analysis based models the results indicate that 1 when the value of the marginal abatement cost is higher than the carbon price no regions will have an incentive to reduce emissions by technological improvements the only source of direct potential gains is from the amounts of carbon quota 2 as carbon price increases from cny 10 to 4000 per ton the indirect potential gains will increase because the strategies for carbon reduction are technological innovation or limit economic activities however jiangsu and shanghai will suffer potential losses even though the price is high because they have no more carbon reduction potential 3 most central provinces will have potential gains when the carbon price is lower in ets while regions rich in fossil energy sources will suffer potential losses however a middle price interval of cny 1000 2000 ton is more rational because it helps motivate market transactions and benefits low carbon technological innovations

who shapes china s carbon intensity and how a demand side decomposition analysis abstract as national efforts to decouple carbon emissions from economic growth intensify policymakers need more specific sub national information about the sources and reduction potentials of carbon intensity this study presents a demand side decomposition of china s carbon intensity to its regions final demand types and economic sectors based on a predefined aggregate embodied intensity aei indicator i e the ratio of embodied emissions to embodied value added we find that china s carbon intensity has been largely shaped by developed provinces capital investment demand and the construction sector however less developed provinces consumption demand and the services sector have played increasingly important roles wealthy provinces generally experienced much lower aeis and higher aei reductions compared to poor provinces from 2007 to 2012 mainly owing to the provincial differences in final demand structure and sectoral structure coastal region s emission reduction efforts at both production and demand sides were the main contributor to china s decrease in carbon intensity during the period while interior region s structural degradation in demand partially offset the decrease our results suggest that allocating national carbon intensity targets based on aei and adjusting the final demand structure of central western provinces would greatly benefit for china to achieve its ambitious carbon intensity target by 2030

developments in the throughput income relationship theoretical and empirical observations abstract it has been suggested that the relationship between income and the associated environmental pressure in terms of derived materials inputs and pollution levels may take an inverted u shape indicating a delinking of environmental pressure from economic growth in relation to rising per capita incomes the likelihood of such a relationship being persistent is discussed in the context of a simple macro model of industrial metabolism and the possibility of relinking clearly emerges data on specific indicators of environmental pressure i e the throughput of materials energy and the volume of transport in 19 countries have been used to investigate patterns of delinking the results suggest that delinking may not be persistent already some advanced economies may be entering a new period of relinking the relationships between environmental pressure and welfare in the medium long term may be n shaped rather than inverted u shaped

reexamining the empirical evidence for an environmental kuznets curve this paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities worldwide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between national income and pollution we test the sensitivity of the pollution income relationship to functional forms to additional covariates and to changes in the nations cities and years sampled we find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes and conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted u shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data

toward to economic growth without emission growth the role of urbanization and industrialization in china and india abstract the contradiction between economic growth and carbon emissions in china and india is the most prominent in the world both countries have faced tremendous pressures to curb carbon emissions because they are major source of new added emission sources meanwhile both countries have faced greater pressures to achieve industrialization and urbanization in order to eradicate poverty better understanding the decoupling status and its drivers can serve to develop effective policy to achieve economic growth without an increase in emission this paper comparatively analyses the decoupling effect of the economic growth from the carbon emissions as well as its drivers during the period 1980 2014 in china and india the tapio decoupling model was used to analyze the decoupling status and the co integration theory and the impulse response functions were applied to investigate the effects of urbanization industrialization per capita gdp and carbon emission intensity to decoupling the results show that china mainly performed a weak decoupling of economic growth from carbon emissions in 1980 2014 while the decoupling status of india was no regular in china carbon emission intensity is the biggest contributor of decoupling followed by urbanization per capita gdp and industrialization in india the biggest driver of decoupling is also the carbon emission intensity followed by urbanization industrialization and per capita gdp therefore improving energy efficiency is the best policy to toward economic growth without emission growth in china and india

embodied pollution in trade estimating the environmental load displacement of industrialised countries abstract the present paper sets out to aid in the development of environmental load displacement indicators developing the notion of the environmental memory of physical flows we estimated embodied pollution in trade of 18 industrialized countries with a the rest of the world and b developing countries from 1976 to 1994 we found that in the last years of analysis total imports of japan usa and western europe have entailed in general larger air pollutant emissions than local exports the balance of embodied emissions in trade beet seems to follow an inverted u shape across time in japan and western europe and an n shape in the us in the period of analysis japanese and european environmental terms of trade with developing countries improved from the japanese and european point of view whereas american environmental terms of trade with developing countries deteriorated over time although there is no statistical trend between income and embodied emissions in imports in a cross section analysis there does seem to be a positive relationship between both variables at a national level the results suggest that despite many shortcomings this type of assessment may shed useful insights on the international aspects of sustainable development

less than 2 c an economic environmental evaluation of the paris agreement abstract the literature dedicated to the analysis of the different climate agreements has usually focused on the effectiveness of the aims for emissions in the light of the advance in climate change this article quantifies the variation in emissions that the intended nationally determined contributions indcs will entail and their financial allocation and policies country by country and regionally the objective is evaluating the paris agreement feasibility regarding the indcs and its economic and environmental constraints the criteria through which the 161 indcs are analysed are as follows i socio economic impact of the transition ii focus on energy management iii substitution of non renewable sources iv the role of technology v equality of the transition vi compliance with emission reductions the results obtained show that the paris agreement excessively relies on external financial support 41 4 moreover its unilateralist approach the socio economic and biophysical constraints could be the underlying cause of the ineffectiveness of the 2 c objective this way each country would emit an average of 37 8 more than in the years 2005 2015 when this is weighted the figure would be a 19 3 increase due mainly to the increases in china and india these figures would lead the temperatures up to 3 4 c

environmental kuznets curve for co2 in canada abstract according to the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis the relationship between per capita gdp and per capita pollutant emissions has an inverted u shape this implies that past a certain point economic growth may actually be profitable for environmental quality most studies on this subject are based on estimating fully parametric quadratic or cubic regression models while this is not technically wrong such an approach somewhat lacks flexibility since it may fail to detect the true shape of the relationship if it happens not to be of the specified form we use semiparametric and flexible nonlinear parametric modeling methods in an attempt to provide more robust inferences we find little evidence in favour of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis our main results could be interpreted as indicating that the oil shock of the 1970s has had an important impact on progress towards less polluting technology and production

fifty shades of green revisiting decoupling by economic sectors and air pollutants abstract using a consistent dataset for eighteen eu countries six economic sectors and six pollution indicators we analyze decoupling of production based emissions from gdp growth from 1995 to 2008 computing decoupling factors as defined by the oecd 2002 we find that in almost all sectors and by almost all pollutants the median eu country had at least some decoupling however considerable heterogeneity in its magnitude can be observed across countries sectors and pollutants for most pollutants and sectors median decoupling performance improved from 2001 2008 compared to 1995 2001 while between country disparities increased simultaneously in a second step we investigate country level changes in decoupling states between the two sub periods based on tapio 2005 we find high diversity across countries and over time to explain these differences across countries and sectors we assess the impact of environmental policy stringency and find tentative evidence that stricter policy encourages decoupling however the effects are small and imprecise differ by economic sector and pollutant and take several years to materialize

individual and aggregate labor supply in heterogeneous agent economies with intensive and extensive margins we develop a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model that incorporates both intensive and extensive margins of labor supply a nonconvexity in the mapping between time devoted to work and labor services distinguishes between extensive and intensive margins we consider calibrated versions of this model that dier in the value of a key preference parameter for labor supply and the extent of heterogeneity the model is able to capture the salient features of the empirical distribution of hours worked including how individuals transit within this distribution we then study how the various specications inuence labor supply responses to aggregate technology shocks we nd that abstracting from intensive margin adjustment has large eects on the volatility of aggregate hours even if intensive margin uctuates relatively little

rank dynamics and club convergence of sustainable development for countries around the world abstract assessment of country level sustainable development is a critical research topic entrenched in the global battle against climate change this study employs the frontier approach combined with convergence analysis to assess the sustainable development for a set of 121 countries over 1990 2014 focusing on analyzing the countries rank dynamics and convergence behavior the levels of the countries sustainable development are captured by data envelopment analysis a nonparametric frontier approach that can jointly assess a country s economic and environmental performance reflecting the divergent views on the importance of economic and environmental objectives in the pursuit of sustainability the proposed approach generates the countries sustainability scores by prioritizing either economic or environmental criterion this study finds that developed countries have significantly outperformed developing countries if environmental criterion takes precedence over economic criterion in performance assessment moreover regardless of the model employed there is strong evidence of club convergence i e convergence in subgroups of countries to different steady states rather than convergence in full sample we analyze the pattern of convergence paths and discuss policy implications obtained from our empirical findings

what is the role of openness for china s aggregate industrial so2 emission a structural analysis based on the divisia decomposition method abstract having observed the weaknesses in previous structural analyses on the role of environmental kuznets curve ekc the author proposes a detailed analysis using a rich data set of provincial level production and so2 emission intensity of 13 industrial sectors the latter represent more than 98 of the total industrial production in each chinese province for the period 1991 2001 through the use of the log mean divisia index decomposition method the variations in province level industrial so2 emissions with regard to the 1990 baseline level are decomposed into the contribution from three components scale composition and technical effects the following analysis seeks to explain how trade openness affects aggregate industrial so2 emission through its impact on the structural determinants for these three components of region specific environmental variations

linking analyses and environmental kuznets curves for aggregated material flows in the eu abstract the relationship between economy and environmental impacts has been an essential topic in the discussion on environmental problems for a long time from the 1990s this relationship has gained a position in environmental policy as well de coupling the use of natural resources from economic growth has been set as one of the policy goals in the sixth environmental action programme by the european commission in the scientific discussion the concept of environmental kuznets curve deals closely with the de coupling or de linking phenomenon aggregated material flows on the other hand have often been considered as a macro level proxy of environmental degradation different methods or approaches have been designed for sustainability or carrying capacity evaluation as well the objective of this article is i to discuss the possibilities and limitations of using environmental and economic indicators in the sustainability analysis at the macro level ii to present a theoretical framework for the linking analysis including a classification of the degrees of de linking re linking environmental impacts from to economic growth and iii to give an empirical example by using indicators of direct material flows as a proxy of environmental degradation and by applying the framework into the european union and its 15 member countries the results show that the trend in the european union is a weak de linking of material flows from economic growth during the years 1980 2000 in other words material intensity of the economy has generally decreased due to increased efficiency but the absolute amount of material use has increased although at a lower rate of increase than economic growth on the other hand there is a quite large variation between different eu member countries however absolute decrease in the use of materials cannot be found as a continuous trend between the years 1980 and 2000 in any of the studied eu member countries

decoupling analysis and environmental kuznets curve modelling of provincial level co2 emissions and economic growth in china a case study abstract guangdong is one of the most representative provinces of china in terms of reflecting how the provincial level co2 emissions dynamically evolve with economic development during the process of industrialisation and urbanisation the present study combines decoupling analysis with environmental kuznets curve ekc modelling to systematically explore the interactions between co2 emissions and economic growth in guangdong from the short to long terms aiming to provide the referential significance of low carbon development to other chinese provinces empirical results indicate that co2 economy interactions in guangdong dynamically changed with time performing an effect of expansive weak decoupling during 1995 2014 and having a potential to achieve a strong decoupling in the long run the decoupling states of various sectors and their contributions to the provincial overall decoupling differed greatly and varied by time and household and service sectors played increasingly important roles overall the decoupling effect of provincial co2 emissions is distinctly affected by the stage of industrialisation and urbanisation renewable energy utilisation as well as low carbon technical progress therefore promoting co2 economy decoupling at the provincial level should be specific to the feature and development reality of various provinces

footprints on the earth the environmental consequences of modernity growing evidence demonstrating clear threats to the sustainability of the ecosystems supporting human societies has given rise to a variety of sociological theories of human environment interactions these environmental impact theories fall into three general perspectives human ecology modernization and political economy these theories however have not been empirically tested in a common analytic framework here a framework that relies on ecological principles is adopted and modified using a revised stochastic formulation of that framework and the most comprehensive measure of environmental impact to date the ecological footprint the factors driving the environmental impacts of societies are assessed the overall findings support the claims of human ecologists partially support the claims of political economists and contradict the claims of modernization theorists basic material conditions such as population economic production urbanization and geographical factors all affect the environment and explain the vast majority of cross national variation in environmental impact factors derived from neo liberal modernization theory such as political freedom civil liberties and state environmentalism have no effect on impacts taken together these findings suggest societies cannot be sanguine about achieving sustainability via a continuation of current trends in economic growth and institutional change authors

foreign direct investment and decoupling between energy and gross domestic product in developing countries on a sample of 20 developing countries we noticed a clear decline in the energy intensity as foreign direct investment increases the reason for that probably is the use of modern technologies that came with foreign direct investment i e a leapfrogging over the old fashioned traditional technologies in use in these countries

female labor supply with a discontinuous nonconvex budget constraint incorporation of a part time full time wage differential this paper incorporates the well documented part time full time wage differential into an empirical labor supply model with both a heterogeneity and a random error term and estimates that model fo

why does china s carbon intensity decline and india s carbon intensity rise a decomposition analysis on the sectors abstract as more attention paid to global warming the international community argues that developing countries should take more carbon reduction responsibility china and india the top two developing countries confronted heavy pressure to handle the dilemma of environmental protection or economic increase in this context we switched focus to carbon intensity defined as carbon emission per unit of economic output to investigate carbon performance and economic performance simultaneously in this study we fully considered the impact of sector heterogeneity on carbon intensity that is we decomposed the carbon intensity of the 56 industries which subsequently reclassified into 18 industries in china and india using the data from wiod world input output database the results indicate that 1 india s carbon intensity presented a constant increasing trend while china appeared a stable decreasing trend and the former exceeded the latter since 2009 2 all industries of china exerted efforts to decrease carbon intensity conversely india only had a few industries decreasing carbon intensity 3 energy intensity significantly decreased china s carbon intensity while increased india s carbon intensity surprisingly 4 in general structure effect made negative contribution to carbon intensity improvement in china while positive in india specifically economic structure had a positive impact on china and india though the impact was minor for the former significant for the latter energy structure slightly promoted india s carbon intensity to decrease on the contrary it was the largest inhibitor to china this research will not only promote low carbon economy development of china and india but also provide scientific and practical references to other developing countries

decomposing the decoupling of co2 emissions and economic growth in brazil abstract this paper examines the occurrence of a decoupling between the growth rates in economic activity and co 2 emissions from energy consumption in brazil from 2004 to 2009 this decoupling was highlighted when economic activity and co 2 emissions moved in opposite directions in 2009 more generally we observe several periods of relative decoupling in brazil but not to the extent witnessed in 2009 to identify the determinants of emissions change we develop a decomposition model based on a log mean divisia index lmdi framework the results indicate that the carbon intensity and energy mix are the main determinant of emissions reduction in brazil between 2004 and 2009 modifications in the economy structure are also associated to emission mitigation in the period such evidence demonstrates similarities with events of decoupling registered for the interval 1980 1994 in brazil finds from brazil differ from observations in other countries in which improvement in energy intensity has been the most common determinant of emissions reduction

does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower co2 emissions a cross country analysis despite the relationship between urbanization energy use and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to differences in development stages or income levels most previous studies have implicitly assumed that the impact of urbanization is homogenous for all countries this assumption can be questionable as there are many characteristic differences among countries of different levels of affluence this paper investigates empirically the effects of urbanization on energy use and co2 emissions with consideration of the different development stages using the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model and a balanced panel dataset of 99 countries over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that the impact of urbanization on energy use and emissions varies across the stages of development surprisingly urbanization decreases energy use in the low income group while it increases energy use in the middle and high income groups the impact of urbanization on emissions is positive for all the income groups but it is more pronounced in the middle income group than in the other income groups these novel findings not only help advance the existing literature but also can be of special interest to policy makers and urban planners

the end of economic growth a contracting threshold hypothesis this paper argues that gdp growth in both developed and developing countries has associated costs that can outweigh the benefits and thus reduce sustainable well being this conclusion is based upon the findings of empirical applications of the genuine progress indicator gpi to a range of countries in the asia pacific region the studies conducted on seven asia pacific countries indicate that in the case of five of the seven nations more recent gdp growth has reduced the sustainable well being experienced by the average citizen residing within them moreover the threshold point at which the costs of gdp growth outweigh the benefits appears to be contracting i e occurring at a much lower per capita level of gdp this paper therefore introduces a new contracting threshold hypothesis as the economies of the asia pacific region and the world collectively expand in a globalised economic environment there is a contraction over time in the threshold level of per capita gdp as a consequence the threshold point confronting growth late comers i e developing countries occurs at a much lower level of sustainable welfare than what wealthy nations currently enjoy the consequences of this for developing countries are clearly significant and require a new approach to economic development

decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions growth in the united states the role of research and development abstract the united states has achieved economic growth compatible with carbon reduction since 2007 this work is addressed to understand the eight effects especially effects related to research development rd whereas economic scale was the primary inhibitor to the drop of carbon emission followed by investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure the results of decoupling efforts analysis uncover that energy intensity r d intensity r d efficiency and sectoral carbon intensity contributed to decoupling economic growth from carbon emission whereas investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure did not contribute to the decoupling finally some policy implications are proposed

dirty industries patterns of change in industrial countries this article concerns itself with the environmental role of heavily polluting industries since 1970 analysing its development in 11 basic industries as well as electricity production and road transport in 32 industrial countries it argues for a green industrial policy demonstrating that other mitigations of environmental pressure in industrial countries end of pipe treatment relocation to the third world structural change in the industrial sector and even environmentally oriented modernization have so far been unable to solve the problems of dirty industries although some approaches have shown some promise

does increasing investment in research and development promote economic growth decoupling from carbon emission growth an empirical analysis of brics countries abstract it is generally recognized that increasing research and development investment is an effective measure to promote economic and social progress an open question is if increasing research and development investment help economic growth decoupling from carbon emission this study investigates research and development investment and carbon emission in brics countries by using the fully modified ordinary least squares for empirical estimation from 1996 to 2014 the results show that every 1 increase in research and development investment carbon emissions will be decreased by 0 8122 for the brics as a whole which indicates increasing research and development investment has a positive impact on decoupling economic growth from environmental pressure for individual this impact is most significant in china weak in russia and india however it also should be noted that only increasing research and development investment cannot achieve the decoupling between economic growth and carbon emission because other factors such as economic activity industrialization and urbanization renewable energy also influences the decoupling economic growth from carbon emission the results also show that economic activity industrialization and urbanization pose negative impact on the decoupling whereas renewable energy consumption promote the decoupling

decoupling factors on the energy output linkage the spanish case the recent increase of energy intensity in spain and the ratification of the kyoto protocol call for the implementation of energy policies in spain in this paper we investigate the relationship between gross domestic product gdp and energy consumption ec by taking into account several decoupling factors that can affect this linkage specifically we have considered the temporal aggregation of data and its seasonal adjustments the multivariate methodology the substitution between ec and other inputs and the technological changes empirical tests reveal a long run relationship between ec and gdp that can only be established in a complete way with a multivariate cointegration analysis furthermore a short run unidirectional causality from ec to economic growth is found therefore primary ec plays an important role as a limiting factor for economic growth in spain in the short run

air pollution and dirty industries how and why does the composition of manufacturing output change with economic development this paper examines the impact on air pollution ofchanges in the composition of manufacturing output indeveloped and developing countries pollutionemissions from manufacturing output are estimated ina manner which holds constant the effect of technologyand regulations allowing the impact of compositional changes alone on pollution to beestimated the paper has three main findings 1 theinverted u estimated between per capita income and thepollution intensity of gdp arises due to both thecomposition of manufacturing becoming cleaner and theshare of manufacturing output in gdp falling compositional changes alone are not responsible forthe inverted u between per capita income and percapita emissions 2 changes to the composition ofmanufacturing output are consistent with the pollutionhaven hypothesis however there is clear evidence thatrising per capita incomes are associated with afalling income elasticity of demand for dirty products this fact may explain the compositionalchanges that occur with development 3 in additionto the income elasticity effect the analysis suggeststhat land prices and to a lesser extent the prices oflabour and capital determine the proportion of dirtyindustry within a country s manufacturing sector

is energy transition promoting the decoupling economic growth from emission growth evidence from the 186 countries abstract a more comprehensive understanding the effects of energy transition on the decoupling economic growth from carbon emission growth at global and national scale can serve to develop more effective approaches towards to economic growth without emission growth this paper combined decoupling index model and decomposition approach to identify decoupling state and uncover factors driving decoupling process in the world and 186 countries divided into three groups upper middle income umi lower middle income lmi and high income hi between 1990 and 2014 regarding to decoupling state world experienced weak decoupling 1990 2000 expansive negative decoupling and expansive coupling 2000 2011 and weak decoupling 2011 2014 hi initially realized the most desirable strong decoupling while decoupling state of umi and lmi were rather not ideal enough especially lmi changed violently and appeared no clear improving trend turning to decomposition results energy transition had positively contributed to decoupling process of hi while not in umi and lmi hi enjoyed better energy utilization efficiency absolutely offsetting negative impact caused by economic scale to decoupling process more importantly umi and lmi had great economic potential and will definitely emit tremendous carbon emission without taking appropriate measurements consequently umi and lmi shall take more responsibility to reduce carbon emission and actively accelerate the process of energy transition so as to achieve economic growth strongly decouple from carbon emission

assessing the decoupling of economic growth from environmental impacts in the european union a consumption based approach abstract pursuing a responsible and sustainable development the united nations urged to decouple economic growth from environmental impacts several european union eu policies have been implemented towards such goal although multiple authors have evaluated the decoupling of the economic growth from the resource use or environmental concerns the environmental assessment mostly focused on pressures rather than impacts and used single indicators assumed to be a proxy of the overall effects on the environment furthermore no studies were found using a process based life cycle approach to quantify the environmental impacts of consumption to solve such research gap this paper assesses the decoupling in the eu focusing on potential environmental impacts complementing a production based approach with two options for accounting for the impacts of consumption the aim of this paper is to evaluate the decoupling of the economic growth in terms of gross domestic product from the environmental impacts due to eu 28 consumption assessed by means of life cycle assessment lca the decoupling is then assessed in impact terms rather than limited to pressures by using the environmental footprint ef2017 indicators which allows assessing 16 different impacts the consumption footprint indicator quantified the environmental impacts of eu apparent consumption including the territorial impacts domestic footprint and the embodied impacts in both imports and exports trade footprint the inventory of pressures for the trade component is compiled either with a bottom up approach process based lca of representative traded goods or a top down approach input output based lca methodological aspects influencing the decoupling assessment and the resulting outputs are presented and discussed according to the results the environmental impacts of eu 28 consumption showed decoupling during the last decades 2005 2014 between relative to absolute decoupling depending on the inventory modeling approach taken some countries showed higher decoupling levels than others displaying a heterogeneous map of eu 28 decoupling which was led by acidification particulate matter land use and eutrophication impacts notwithstanding current limitations the assessment of decoupling using consumption based environmental indicators is very promising for supporting policy making towards addressing the actual impacts driven by the eu production and consumption system

the carbon content of japan us trade we analyze the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in trade between japan and the us extending the japanese government s linked japan us input output model to include carbon emission coefficients for each sector we estimate that in 1995 japan us trade reduced us industrial emissions by 14 6 million tons of co2 equivalent and increased emissions in japan by 6 7 million tons for a global savings of 7 9 million tons these quantities are less than one percent of each country s total emissions trade with the rest of the world reduced emissions by much larger amounts roughly four percent of each country s emissions the sectoral patterns of carbon intensity are strongly correlated between japan and the us in addition greater carbon intensity has a small but significantly positive effect on net exports policies that tax or otherwise regulate carbon emissions are needed to discourage this destructive route to competitiveness however the most important policy implication may be that us industry could cut its carbon emissions by more than half if it matched the environmental performance of industry in japan r 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

decoupling analysis of world economic growth and co2 emissions a study comparing developed and developing countries abstract this study discusses decoupling trends in world economic growth and co2 emissions based on decoupling theories the decoupling trends of economic growth and co2 emissions in typical developed and developing countries in 1965 2015 are compared by using an oecd decoupling factor model and tapio elastic analysis tea method and the igtx decoupling model on this basis this study evaluates correlations of these three decoupling models by employing the spearman s rank correlation coefficient the research indicates that owing to the igtx decoupling model being easily affected by other non environmental factors the shorter the research period of interest the more easily the decoupling indices distort while the accuracy of the tea method is not limited by the length of the research period of interest with respect to the overall decoupling trend the research shows that 1 strong decoupling is found in developed countries and slightly increases in the stabilisation thereof the decoupling state in the united kingdom and germany is more stable than that of the united states and france 2 developing countries demonstrate weak decoupling that fluctuates significantly and lacks regularity the stabilisation and optimisation of china in decoupling process are better than those of brazil and india finally according to research conclusions relevant policies and suggestions are proposed in view of energy savings and emissions reduction in developing countries

decoupling global environmental pressure and economic growth scenarios for energy use materials use and carbon emissions in recent decades economic growth and increased human wellbeing around the globe have come at the cost of fast growing natural resource use including materials and energy and carbon emissions leading to converging pressures of declining resource security rising and increasingly volatile natural resource prices and climate change we ask whether well designed policies can reduce global material and energy use and carbon emissions with only minimal impacts on improvements in living standards we use a novel approach of combined economic and environmental modelling to assess the potential for decoupling for 13 world regions and globally we apply a production territorial and consumption approach to discuss regional differences in natural resource use and carbon emissions across three stylized policy outlooks a reference case with no significant changes to environment and climate policies a high efficiency outlook involving a global carbon price rising from 50 to 236 constant price per tonne of co2 between 2010 and 2050 and improvements in resource efficiency rising from 1 5 historically to between 3 5 and 4 5 in the scenarios and a medium efficiency outlook midway between the no change and high outlooks we find that global energy use will continue to grow rapidly under all three scenarios from 17 billion tonnes of oil equivalent toe in 2010 to between 30 and 36 billion toe carbon emissions would be considerably lower with a global carbon price less than half the level of the reference case 29 37 billion tonnes of co2 instead of 74 billion tonnes and also material use would grow much more slowly under a carbon price and significant investment to increase resource efficiency 95 instead of 180 billion tonnes of materials we find that oecd economies have significant potential to reduce their material throughput and carbon emissions with little impact on economic growth and that developing economies such as china could expand their economies at much lower environmental cost globally the effects of very strong abatement and resource efficiency policies on economic growth and employment until 2050 are negligible our study suggests that decarbonization and dematerialization are possible with well designed policy settings and would not contradict efforts to raise human wellbeing and standards of living the research demonstrates the usefulness of scenarios for unpacking environmental and economic outcomes of policy alternatives the findings have important implications for future economic opportunities in a highly resource efficient and low carbon global economy to set human development and achieving the sustainable development goals on a more resilient path

nonwage benefits in a simultaneous model of wages and hours labor supply functions of young females this article argues that the negative relationship between weekly hours worked and the gross hourly wage rate is due to the provision of fringe benefits as the total weekly wage increases employers and employees avoid taxation by substituting wages with nontaxable nonwage benefits i produce a wage that incorporates the benefit effects and estimate the corresponding labor supply elasticities an estimator is presented for the wage hours market locus and the structural labor supply function an empirical application indicates that an estimated negative labor supply elasticity associated with the observed gross wage is reversed when the adjusted wage is employed

us environmental load displacement examining consumption regulations and the role of nafta abstract in light of concerns that structural changes to us production may not be accompanied by similar changes to us consumption this paper provides a detailed examination of us environmental load displacement over the period 1974 2001 the forces that drive such displacement are also examined with particular attention paid to the scale and composition of us consumption the share of imports in consumption the role of environmental regulations and the potential impact of nafta it is found that the usa as a whole has experienced environmental load displacement over the period under consideration with the extent of this displacement seeming to increase over the last decade it would appear to be the increasing scale of us trade that is increasing environmental load displacement indeed the composition of us imports and exports have become significantly cleaner over the period considered however although imports from mexico have grown more rapidly than exports to mexico no evidence is found to suggest that nafta is increasing displacement to mexico with regard to us domestic consumption patterns although they have become cleaner a greater share than ever is now met via imports sectoral pollution abatement costs are found to be a determinant of this increasing share of imports in domestic consumption