the effect of urbanization affluence and trade openness on energy consumption a time series analysis in malaysia abstract this paper investigates the impact of urbanization on energy consumption by applying the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat in case of malaysia the study covers the time period of 1970q1 2011q4 the unit root test and the ardl bounds testing approach have been applied to examine integrating properties and long run relationship in the presence of structural breaks our results validated the existence of cointegration and exposed that urbanization is a major contributor in energy consumption affluence raises energy demand capital stock boosts energy consumption trade openness leads to affluence and hence increases energy consumption the causality analysis finds that urbanization granger causes energy consumption the feedback effect is found between energy consumption and affluence and energy consumption and capital the bidirectional causality exists between trade openness and energy consumption

the impact of population on co2 emissions evidence from european countries this paper analyses the impact of population growth on co2 emissions in european union countries traditionally researchers have assumed a unitary elasticity of emissions with respect to population growth in this study population is treated as a predictor in the model instead of being included as part of the dependent variable per capita emissions thus relaxing the above mentioned assumption of unitary elasticity we also contribute to the existing literature by taking into account the presence of heterogeneity in the sample and considering a dynamic specification the sample covers the period 1975 1999 for the current european union members our results show that the impact of population growth on emissions is more than proportional for recent accession countries whereas for old eu members the elasticity is lower than unity and non significant when the properties of the time series and the dynamics are correctly specified the different impact of population change on co2 emissions for the current eu members should therefore be taken into account in future discussions of climate change policies within the eu

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

the effect of urbanization on energy use in india and china in the ipets model abstract urbanization is one of the major demographic and economic trends occurring in developing countries with important consequences for development energy use and well being yet it is only beginning to be explicitly incorporated in long term scenario analyses of energy and emissions we assess the implications of a plausible range of urbanization pathways for energy use and carbon emissions in india and china using the integrated population economy technology science ipets model a computable general equilibrium cge model of the global economy that captures heterogeneity in household types within world regions and into which we have introduced income effects on household consumption preferences we find that changes in urbanization have a somewhat less than proportional effect on aggregate emissions and energy use a decomposition analysis demonstrates that this effect is due primarily to an economic growth effect driven by the increased labor supply associated with faster urbanization the influence of income on household consumption is strong and indicates a potentially rapid transition away from traditional fuel use and toward modern fuels such as electricity and natural gas results also indicate important directions for future work including the implications of alternative types and driving forces of urbanization over time a better understanding of possible changes in consumption preferences associated with income growth and the urbanization process and modeling strategies that can produce disaggregated household consumption outcomes within a cge framework

industrialization electricity consumption and co2 emissions in bangladesh this paper investigates the relationship between industrialization electricity consumption and co2 emissions in case of bangladesh using quarter frequency data over the period of 1975 2010 the ar

technological change and the rebound effect in the stirpat model a critical view abstract technological change is key to understand the explanatory variables behind environmental impacts in the context of the stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model an adequate representation and analysis of the significance of the technology variable t in the stirpat model becomes crucial even more if one aims to better understand underlying processes such as the environmental rebound effect e re a critical review of the application of the stirpat model has been conducted to understand the diversity and value of the variables scopes assumptions statistical approaches and the environmental impacts commonly studied the findings highlight that despite the multiple applications and the high potential of the stirpat model inconclusive results and or knowledge gaps remain notably 1 a geographical imbalance in the scope of studies 2 the almost exclusive focus on carbon emissions 3 a lack of agreement on the choice of data additional explanatory variables and regression models 4 a lack of consensus on how to approximate t and 5 a lack of explicit analyses of the e re our findings are useful to both policymakers and academics for method design further research and policy evaluation

capture by threat we analyze a simple stochastic environment in which policy makers can be threatened by nasty interest groups in the absence of these groups the policy maker s desire for reelection guarantees that good policies are implemented for every realization of the shock when pressure groups can harass the policy maker good policies will be chosen for only a subset of states of nature hence honest and able leaders might implement bad policies and needed reforms could be delayed in order to make good policies more likely the public will want to increase the cost of exerting pressure for nasty groups and provide rents to those in power this last result can be used to explain the existence of political parties they play a role resembling that of the supervisor in the literature on collusion in hierarchical agency a rational public may also choose to ignore negative media reports on a politician s personal life and in general elect strong political leaders the prevalence of coercive methods of infl

greenhouse gas emission and renewable energy sources for sustainable development in bangladesh abstract bangladesh is an energy starving country the country will be on one of the fast growing power markets with its population and growing energy demand per person its fast growing urbanization and its socio economic development at present the potential demand of power is 5569 mw and the supply is below 4000 mw the country is dependent on the imported petroleum that is big burden on the economy the per capita emission is only 0 2667 tonne per person still much below the world leading countries 19 8 tonne per person for usa however bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable to climate change effect in the world in this regard renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solution for clean and sustainable energy development in bangladesh biomass is the dominating source of energy in bangladesh biomass energy is used in a very traditional way biomass conversion to energy in the form of liquid gaseous and solid pellet or briquette could be a viable option to reduce the pressure on the conventional fossil fuel the geographical location of bangladesh has several advantages for extensive use of grid connected solar electricity and stand alone solar pv system this article presents a review of the potential and utilization of the renewable energy sources in bangladesh

the effects of energy prices urbanization and economic growth on energy consumption per capita in 186 countries abstract energy is the material basis for the development of national economy however energy shortages become increasingly serious as a result of the growing population and the modernization of the global economy therefore investigating drivers of energy consumption is crucial to coordinate the relationship between energy and national economic growth this study aimed to uncover the effects of energy prices ep urbanization urn and gdp on per capita energy consumption ec with considering the income gaps between countries the paper adopted the granger causality test approach and the impulse response function analysis by using long term time series data on ec ep urn and gdp during 1980 2015 in 186 countries divided into three groups high income upper and lower middle income groups the results indicated a long term co integration relationship among these variables granger causality test showed a bidirectional causality between urn and ec in high and lower middle income countries but no causality in the upper middle income group in all groups there is a bidirectional causal link between gdp and ec the results of irf showed that as urbanization level improves its role in promoting ec become less significant moreover ep affected ec negatively both in high and lower middle income countries but it has a positive impact on ec in upper middle income countries the study supports the finding that urbanization is an important factor affecting energy consumption per capita although its contributions vary across income groups which offers a new pathway to control the excessive growth of energy consumption

assessing the energy saving effect of urbanization in china based on stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model abstract the rapid urbanization process has posed great challenges to china s energy system this paper uses the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model to evaluate the energy saving effect of china s urbanization based on provincial panel data the results suggest that 1 the urbanization induces the energy consumption with a notable negative energy saving effect 2 the heterogeneity of urbanization impact on energy consumption is analyzed in different stages of urbanization showing that the energy saving effect of urbanization follows a u shaped path 3 considering the heterogeneity of the energy saving effect of urbanization at different income levels the energy saving effect increases with income level the outcome may draw a causation picture on the relationship between energy consumption and urbanization in addition an in depth causation analysis on energy inefficiency of china s urbanization is carried out and policy recommendations are put forward accordingly

does financial development increase energy consumption the role of industrialization and urbanization in tunisia this paper assesses the relationship among energy consumption financial development economic growth industrialization and urbanization in tunisia from 1971 to 2008 the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration and granger causality tests is employed for the analysis the result confirms the existence of long run relationship among energy consumption economic growth financial development industrialization and urbanization in tunisia long run bidirectional causalities are found between financial development and energy consumption financial development and industrialization and industrialization and energy consumption hence sound and developed financial system that can attract investors boost the stock market and improve the efficiency of economic activities should be encouraged in the country nevertheless promoting industrialization and urbanization can never be left out from the process of development we add light to policy makers with the role of financial development industrialization and urbanization in the process of economic development

plata o plomo bribe and punishment in a theory of political influence we present a model where groups attempt to influence policies using both bribes plata spanish for silver and the threat of punishment plomo spanish for lead we then use it to make predictions about the quality of a country s public officials and to understand the role of institutions granting politicians with immunity from legal prosecution the use of punishment lowers the returns from public office and reduces the incentives of high ability citizens to enter public life cheaper plomo and more resources subject to official discretion are associated with more frequent corruption and less able politicians this predicts that violence in a country will typically go together with corruption and worse politicians moreover the possibility of punishment changes the nature of the influence game so that even cheaper plata can lower the ability of public officials protecting officials from accusations of corruption immunity will decrease the frequency of corruption if the judiciary is weak and may increase the quality of politicians these predictions cannot emerge from a traditional model where only bribes are used the positive evils and dangers of the representative as of every other form of government may be reduced to two heads first general ignorance and incapacity or to speak more moderately insufficient mental qualifications in the controlling body secondly the danger of its being under the influence of interests not identical with the general welfare of the community

socioeconomic development and electricity consumption a cross country analysis using the random coefficient method this paper analyses the relationship between electricity consumption and socioeconomic variables by estimating the electricity consumption function on the basis of single year cross country data and using ols and random coefficient rc methods the latter method yields both mean response as well as country specific coefficients while electricity consumption is found to rise with socioeconomic development it is found to be inelastic with respect to changes in all the variables the estimated country specific coefficients with respect to per capita gnp and share of industry in gdp are found not to vary across countries indicating that the impact of these variables on electricity consumption is similar across countries on the other hand the impact of other variables years of schooling gdp growth urbanization and population density is found to vary substantially across countries

does trade openness promote multilateral environmental cooperation this article puts forward a number of arguments why trade openness might promote multilateral environmental cooperation most of these arguments are grounded in the substantive self interest of the trading country it tests the proposition using a range of proxy variables for general trade openness as well as specific export interests the article examines whether countries open to trade are more likely to have signed three recent multilateral environmental agreements meas and are more likely to have ratified early on another three agreements with quasi universal membership after controlling for income political freedom and population size the empirical estimations find some weak evidence in favour of a possible synergy between trade openness and multilateral environmental cooperation world trade organisation membership as well as general export openness go hand in hand with greater willingness to participate in multilateral environmental cooperation in some cases however whether specific trade interests promote or hinder multilateral environmental cooperation depends on whether the relevant agreement is likely to threaten or accommodate the interests of exporting countries

how do elections affect international cooperation evidence from environmental treaty participation is there a strategically beneficial time for political leaders to make international environmental commitments based on the political cycles theory we argue that leaders have incentives to delay costly ratification of international environmental agreements to the post electoral period however the cost of participating in these agreements is often lower for developing countries and they may enjoy indirect advantages which may make them more prone to ratifying in the pre electoral period these hypotheses are assessed empirically by studying the ratification process of 41 global environmental agreements censused in the environmental treaties and resources indicators database from 1976 to 1999 we use a duration model in which time is measured on a daily basis enabling us to precisely identify pre and post electoral periods a significant challenge in political cycles studies our investigation reveals the existence of political ratification cycles that are of substantial magnitude and non linear over the pre and post electoral years

non renewable and renewable energy consumption and co2 emissions in oecd countries a comparative analysis abstract this paper attempts to explore the determinants of co 2 emissions using the stirpat model and data from 1980 to 2011 for oecd countries the empirical results show that non renewable energy consumption increases co 2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption decreases co 2 emissions further the results support the existence of an environmental kuznets curve between urbanisation and co 2 emissions implying that at higher levels of urbanisation the environmental impact decreases therefore the overall evidence suggests that policy makers should focus on urban planning as well as clean energy development to make substantial contributions to both reducing non renewable energy use and mitigating climate change

kyoto protocol cooperation does government corruption facilitate environmental lobbying does environmental lobbying affect the probability of environmental treaty ratification does the level of government corruption play a role for the success of such lobbying in this paper we propose that a more corruptible government may be more responsive to the demands of the environmental lobby we use several stratified hazard models and panel data from 170 countries on the timing of kyoto protocol ratification to test this hypothesis we find that increased environmental lobby group activity raises the probability of ratification and the effect rises with the degree of corruption

urbanization energy consumption and emissions in the indian context a review abstract as the world s fastest growing major economy and home to nearly one fifth of the worlds population india a vibrant democracy is in the midst of a profound transformation and rapid urbanization urbanization improves the quality of life of people while promoting economic growth however it also increases energy consumption and is capable of generating an energy crisis urbanization has a significant impact on carbon dioxide co2 emissions as well this paper empirically investigates the temporal dynamic and causal relationships between urbanization energy consumption and emissions the study also aims to understand the urbanization process in india in terms of the level and tempo of urbanization and the urban growth morphology by utilizing the census data of 1901 2011 the rise in energy consumption and resulting emissions in the context of rapid urbanization is also reviewed to address these problems the study recommends a series of measures and a set of strategies that include energy intensity and emission intensity reduction measures through continuous monitoring information feedback systems introduction of industrial energy quota management incentives for energy efficient facilities shutting down of inefficient facilities and setting up of smart residential buildings reduction of distribution and transmission losses by investing in smart grids is also highly recommended

lobbying and welfare in a representative democracy this paper studies the impact of lobbying on political competition and policy outcomes in a framework which integrates the citizen candidate model of representative democracy with the menu auction model of lobbying positive and normative issues are analysed on the positive side lobbying need have little or no effect on policy outcomes because voters can restrict the influence of lobbyists by supporting candidates with offsetting policy preferences on the normative side coordination failure among lobbyists can result in pareto inefficient policy choices in addition by creating rents to holding office lobbying can lead to excessive entry into electoral competition

effects of urbanisation on energy consumption in china as a key issue in china s economic development urbanisation creates increasing pressure on energy supply and the natural environment thus a better understanding of the relationship between urbanisation and energy consumption is necessary for chinese decision makers at various levels to address energy security and sustainable economic and social development this paper empirically investigates the effects of china s urbanisation on residential energy consumption rec and production energy consumption pec through a time series analysis the results show that compared with rural areas urbanisation slows per capita rec growth because of the economy of scale and technological advantages associated with urbanisation but has greater promotional effects on the growth of rec and the improvement of rec structure the economic growth caused by urbanisation most significantly contributes to an increase in pec whereas technological advancement was found to reduce the scale of pec except from 2001 to 2005 finally the structural effect of the energy supply increased rather than decreased china s pec and the effect of industrial structure adjustment on pec was found to be insignificant

exchange rate pass through and international pricing strategy a conceptual framework and research propositions the extent to which exchange rate fluctuations affect international prices is called exchange rate pass through this paper develops a conceptual model in explaining how exchange rate fluctuations are channeled into international pricing strategy and offers research propositions our model posits that the extent of exchange rate pass through in international pricing is affected by the firm s pricing orientation performance orientation distribution policy and brand equity as well as by exchange rate uncertainty and competitive symmetry

co2 emissions energy consumption trade and income a comparative analysis of china and india in order to prevent the destabilisation of the earth s biosphere co2 emissions must be reduced quickly and significantly the causes of co2 emissions by individual countries need to be apprehended in order to understand the processes required for reducing emissions around the globe china and india are the two largest transitional countries and growing economies but are in two entirely different categories in terms of structural changes in growth trade and energy use co2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have significantly increased in the recent past this paper compares china and india using the bounds testing approach to cointegration and the ardl methodology to test the long and short run relationships between growth trade energy use and endogenously determined structural breaks the co2 emissions in china were influenced by per capita income structural changes and energy consumption a similar causal connection cannot be established for india with regard to structural changes and co2 emissions because india s informal economy is much larger than china s india possesses an extraordinarily large number of micro enterprises that are low energy consumers and not competitive enough to reach international markets understanding these contrasting scenarios is prerequisite to reaching an international agreement on climate change affecting these two countries

effects of urbanization on energy efficiency in china new evidence from short run and long run efficiency models abstract energy efficiency in china has been the cause for increasing concern for national and local sustainable development due to rapid economic development and large scale energy consumption using panel data of 30 provinces between 1997 and 2016 in china the measurement of energy efficiency is disentangled and the effects of urbanization on different types of energy efficiency are explored first the measurement of energy efficiency is disentangled with long run and short run efficiencies derived results of energy efficiency scores highlight the predominant status of long run inefficiency is low and that disparate energy efficiency is present between provinces second the effects of urbanization were found to be significantly negative on short run long run and overall energy efficiency comparatively the effect of urbanization on long run efficiency was shown to have recently grown implying an urgent call for energy conservation during rapid urbanization finally this study outlines broader implications and suggests policies to improve energy efficiency here application of energy conservation technology industrial structure upgrading and efficiency information disclosure to urban residents are thought to be smart ways to improve energy efficiency

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

political institutions and pollution control this paper models the selection of environmental policies under authoritarian and democratic regimes and tests the hypothesis that political institutions systematically affect the enactment of environmental regulations the results support the contention that political institutional arrangements rather than resource endowments largely determine policies concerning environmental regulation copyright 1992 by mit press

urbanization economic growth energy consumption and co2 emissions empirical evidence from countries with different income levels abstract the growth of anthropogenic co2 emissions has been widely attributed to the combustion of energy in support of human activities associated with economic development while the link between urbanization economic growth energy consumption and co2 emissions has as a result received considerable multidisciplinary scholarly attention little work has been undertaken with respect to the how differences in the development stages or income levels of the countries studied may affect these relations here we empirically explore the link between urbanization economic development energy consumption and co2 emissions specifically taking into account the different income levels of the countries studied a series of panel data models and a balanced dataset for a panel of 170 countries were utilized in the study which took the period of 1980 2011 into consideration the result of panel cointegration tests suggested that a cointegration relationship existed between variables in all the countries studied and that a statistically significant positive relationship existed between the variables employed in the long run the results of a granger causality test based on the vector error correction model vecm provided evidence of varied granger causality relationships between the variables across the income based subpanels moreover we also undertook an impulse response and variance decomposition analysis that allowed us to forecast the impacts of economic growth urbanization and energy consumption on future co2 emissions during the period surveyed our results cast a new light on the importance of a country s development stage and income level for government policy decisions relating to the reduction of co2 emissions

china s energy demand and its characteristics in the industrialization and urbanization process a reply zhang and qin 2013 argued that in jiang and lin 2012 the equation form and variable selection should be altered and it was problematic to use regression equation to project the future in this reply we disagree with and will refute some of the points raised in their comments the model that we established was based on the mature economic theory with the variable selections all having economic implications considering the economic development stage china s urbanization will speed up and this will have significant effect on energy consumption therefore urbanization is an indispensable variable for analyzing energy demand in china the scenario design only in terms of the gdp is sufficient for illustrating energy demand trend in china to be understood in a way by most of the people although energy forecast is not that precise it has an important implication for energy policy design especially for china which is in transition and china s energy demand will keep high growth in the mid term

electoral terms and terrorism many terror attacks occur at the beginning of electoral terms we present a game theoretical model with incomplete information to account for this empirical pattern both terrorists and governments can be of weak or strong types we find that the risk of terror attacks is highest at the beginning of electoral terms because striking early allows the terrorists to collect valuable information about the government s type and also because terrorists know that even initially weak governments sometimes retaliate to show toughness closer to an upcoming election the model s predictions are consistent with anecdotal evidence

political competition and violence in mexico hierarchical social control in local patronage structures many countries that have recently undergone transitions to democracy have experienced increases in violent crime yet sociological theories have generally failed to consider the impact of political factors on crime the author examines the relation between greater electoral competition and homicide at the subnational level in a country undergoing an uneven transition to democracy in societies characterized by the presence of patronage networks social and political changes that undermine the source of unequal exchange between actors at different levels in the social hierarchy result in a temporary loss of social control and an increase in crime the relation between electoral competition and homicide is tested using electoral results from a sample of 1 800 mexican municipalities greater electoral competition is associated with higher homicide rates across municipalities and over time even after controlling for standard correlates of violent crime consistent with the hypothesis that the increase is due to the disruption of patronage networks this association is present only in rural areas where patron client relations are more common

impacts of urbanization and industrialization on energy consumption co2 emissions does the level of development matter urbanization and industrialization have significant impacts on energy consumption and co2 emissions but their relationship varies at different stages of economic development taking cognizance of heterogeneity and the ratchet effect this paper adopts the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat framework as a starting point and re estimates the relationship using different panel date models the main results are obtained by dynamic panel threshold regression models which divide a balanced panel dataset of 73 countries over the period of 1971 2010 into four groups according to their annual income levels the key results are 1 in the low income group urbanization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions 2 in the middle low income and high income groups industrialization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions while urbanization significantly increases both energy consumption and co2 emissions 3 for the middle high income group urbanization does not significantly affect energy consumption but does hinder the growth of emissions while industrialization was found to have an insignificant impact on energy consumption and co2 emissions 4 from the population perspective it produces positive effects on energy consumption and also increases emissions except for the high income group these novel methodology and findings reveal that different development strategies of urbanization and industrialization should be pursued depending on the levels of income in a bid to conserve energy and reduce emissions

socioeconomic driving forces and scenario simulation of co2 emissions for a fast developing region in china abstract guangdong is one of china s fastest developing provinces and thus faces the challenge of reducing co2 emissions whilst fostering economic growth in order to advance the goal of developing a low carbon economy in china this study explored influencing factors change trends and reduction potential in relation to co2 emissions in guangdong province using a provincial dataset covering the period 1995 to 2014 we used extended stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model and the technique of ridge regression in order to identify key influencing factors behind guangdong s co2 emissions we also forecasted emission trends and estimated reduction potential in the period 2015 2030 our empirical results indicate that economic development population growth urbanization fixed asset investment and industrialization level all positively affected co2 emissions during the period studied while the impacts of energy consumption structure and technology progress were found to be negative scenario simulations reveal that the aggregate co2 emissions of guangdong province will increase continuously up to 2030 under all of the twenty scenarios developed and tested in this study despite this we argue that the potential for emission reduction remains large an optimal scenario was identified after cross sectional comparison our analysis casts new light on the importance of exploring socioeconomic determinants and reduction potential in relation to emissions in order to plan for rapidly developing regions like guangdong the empirical findings have significant implications for the chinese government in implementing policy measures in order to promote low carbon development

organised crime institutions and political quality empirical evidence from italian municipalities this article assesses how legal institutions affect the influence of politically active criminal organisations on the human capital of elected politicians using data from over 1 500 southern italian municipalities in the period 1985 2011 it exploits municipal government dissolutions imposed by the national government for presumed mafia infiltration as a source of exogenous variation in the presence of politically active criminal organisations the results support theoretical predictions that the average education level of local politicians significantly increases when active mafia infiltration of local politics is remedied through the implementation of a stricter legal institutional framework

mafia elections and violence against politicians organized crime uses political violence to influence politics in a wide set of countries this paper exploits a novel dataset of attacks directed towards italian local politicians to study how and why criminal organizations use violence against them we test two complementary theories to predict the use of violence i before elections to affect the electoral outcome and ii after elections to influence politicians from the beginning of their term we provide causal evidence in favor of the latter hypothesis the probability of being a target of violence increases in the weeks right after an election in areas with a high presence of organized crime especially when elections result in a change of local government

urban and rural energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in asia the process of urbanization has been shown to be important for economic development environmental impacts and human wellbeing particularly in developing countries in this paper we compare structure data sources and scenario results of four integrated assessment models that are capable of analyzing different aspects of urbanization the comparison focuses on residential sector energy use and related co2 emissions based on a set of urbanization scenarios for china and india important insights from this model comparison include that i total fossil fuel and industrial co2 emissions at the regional level are not very sensitive to alternative rates of urbanization and are largely dependent on the linkage between urbanization and economic growth via differentiated labor productivity in urban and rural areas ii alternative urbanization pathways may yield different results for the share of solid fuels in residential energy use thereby affecting the number of people relying on these fuels and the associated adverse health impacts and iii alternative economic growth scenarios can only be assessed for their welfare implications if urban and rural household are distinguished even though that distinction does not always strongly affect aggregate outcomes which is often due to two effects that compensate each other in total it can be concluded that urbanization and heterogeneity of households and consumers are clearly relevant for distributional effects and associated health and social impacts

why is there so little money in u s politics in this paper we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy buying but are rather a form of political participation and consumption we summarize the data on campaign spending and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals not special interests are the main source of campaign contributions moreover we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal good dependent upon income and campaign contributions as a percent of gdp have not risen appreciably in over 100 years if anything they have probably fallen we then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular notion that contributions buy legislators votes finally we illustrate that when one controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects there is little relationship between money and legislator votes thus the question is not why there is so little money politics but rather why organized interests give at all we conclude by offering potential answers to this question this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

non economic engagement and international exchange the case of environmental treaties we examine the role of non economic partnerships in promoting international economic exchange since far sighted countries are more willing to join costly international partnerships such as environmental treaties environmental engagement tends to encourage international lending countries with such non economic partnerships also find it easier to engage in economic exchanges since they face the possibility that debt default might also spill over to hinder their non economic relationships we present a theoretical model of these ideas and then verify their empirical importance using a bilateral cross section of data on international crossholdings of assets and environmental treaties our results support the notion that international environmental cooperation facilitates economic exchange

what causes pm2 5 pollution cross economy empirical analysis from socioeconomic perspective abstract is it true that as the mainstream intuition asserts urbanization and industrialization are the two main socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 how do the two trends affect pm2 5 emission this paper quantitatively analyzes the socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 through assessment on stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stripat based on the panel data of 79 developing countries over 2001 2010 the average levels of pm2 5 pollution are calculated using remote sensing data overcoming the difficulties that developing countries are in lack of pm2 5 monitors and that point data cannot reflect the overall level of pm2 5 pollution on a large scale squared terms of income and urbanization and their cross term are included in the regression models respectively to analyze the possible heterogeneous impacts on pm2 5 emissions in different development stages the results show that income urbanization and service sector have significant impact on pm2 5 pollution income has a positive effect on pm2 5 all the time but the effect decreases as the level of urbanization or income goes up an inverted u relationship exists between urbanization and pm2 5 in which pm2 5 pollution positively correlates with a low level of income or urbanization but negatively at a high level policy recommendations from the perspective of macro level social and economic regulation are provided for developing economies to reduce pm2 5 pollution

panel estimation for co2 emissions energy consumption economic growth trade openness and urbanization of newly industrialized countries abstract this paper empirically examines the dynamic causal relationships between carbon dioxide emissions energy consumption economic growth trade openness and urbanization for the panel of newly industrialized countries nic using the time series data for the period 1971 2007 using four different panel unit root tests it is found that all panel variables are integrated of order 1 from the johansen fisher panel cointegration test it is found that there is a cointegration vector among the variables the granger causality test results support that there is no evidence of long run causal relationship but there is unidirectional short run causal relationship from economic growth and trade openness to carbon dioxide emissions from economic growth to energy consumption from trade openness to economic growth from urbanization to economic growth and from trade openness to urbanization it is found that the long run elasticity of carbon dioxide emissions with respect to energy consumption 1 2189 is higher than short run elasticity of 0 5984 this indicates that over time higher energy consumption in the newly industrialized countries gives rise to more carbon dioxide emissions as a result our environment will be polluted more but in respect of economic growth trade openness and urbanization the environmental quality is found to be normal good in the long run

do urbanization and industrialization affect energy intensity in developing countries abstract against a backdrop of concerns about climate change peak oil and energy security issues reducing energy intensity is often advocated as a way to at least partially mitigate these impacts this study uses recently developed heterogeneous panel regression techniques like mean group estimators and common correlated effects estimators to model the impact that income urbanization and industrialization has on energy intensity for a panel of 76 developing countries in the long run a 1 increase in income reduces energy intensity by 0 45 to 0 35 long run industrialization elasticities are in the range 0 07 to 0 12 the impact of urbanization on energy intensity is mixed in specifications where the estimated coefficient on urbanization is statistically significant it is slightly larger than unity the implications of these results for energy policy are discussed

the monopoly of violence evidence from colombia many states in latin america africa and asia lack the monopoly of violence even though this was identified by max weber as the foundation of the state and thus the capacity to govern effectively in this paper we develop a new perspective on the establishment of the monopoly of violence we build a model to explain the incentive of central states to eliminate nonstate armed actors paramilitaries in a democracy the model is premised on the idea that paramilitaries may choose to and can influence elections since paramilitaries have preferences over policies this reduces the incentives of the politicians they favor to eliminate them we then investigate these ideas using data from colombia between 1991 and 2006 we first present regression and case study evidence supporting our postulate that paramilitary groups can have significant effects on elections for the legislature and the executive next we show that the evidence is also broadly consistent with the implication of the model that paramilitaries tend to persist to the extent that they deliver votes to candidates for the executive whose preferences are close to theirs and that this effect is larger in areas where the presidential candidate would have otherwise not done as well finally we use roll call votes to illustrate a possible quid pro quo between the executive and paramilitaries in colombia language en

assessing co2 emissions in china s commercial sector determinants and reduction strategies abstract the commercial sector is one of the key sectors in china s economic transformation and carbon emissions control this paper applies var and stirpat models to investigate the major influencing factors of co 2 emissions in china s commercial sector over the period 1980 2014 according to the empirical results per capita gdp urbanization and energy structure have positive effects on co 2 emissions while energy intensity has negative effect on co 2 emissions in the long term besides per capita gdp ranks as the most important driving factors of co 2 in china s commercial sector followed by urbanization energy structure and energy intensity in that order this paper argues that reducing energy intensity and improving energy structure are the means to realize co 2 emission reductions in the commercial sector in the short and long term respectively besides this paper forecasts that co 2 emissions in china s commercial sector will be 1942 mt by 2030 which is huge and about half of the co 2 emissions of the european union in 2014 the findings have important implications for policy makers to enact co 2 emission reduction policies

trafficking networks and the mexican drug war abstract drug trade related violence has escalated dramatically in mexico since 2007 and recent years have also witnessed large scale efforts to combat trafficking spearheaded by mexico s conservative pan party this study examines the direct and spillover effects of mexican policy toward the drug trade regression discontinuity estimates show that drug related violence increases substantially after close elections of pan mayors empirical evidence suggests that the violence reflects rival traffickers attempts to usurp territories after crackdowns have weakened incumbent criminals moreover the study uses a network model of trafficking routes to show that pan victories divert drug traffic increasing violence along alternative drug routes jel d72 d85 k42 o17 z13

the path of technological progress for china s low carbon development evidence from three urban agglomerations abstract it is widely believed that technological progress is the key driving force for low carbon development based on a panel data of 50 cities during the period 2005 2014 in china s three urban agglomerations beijing tianjin hebei yangtze river delta and pearl river delta this paper presents a comprehensive analysis on the path of technological progress for the low carbon development specifically it firstly estimates the factor biased technological progress by using a translog production function model and then dynamic panel data models are used to investigate the impacts of three sources of technological progress including rd finally we introduce an index to measure the appropriate technical structure and analyze the technological improvement strategy to the low carbon development the main results indicate that technological progress of the three urban agglomerations is biased toward electricity thereby shows a electricity saving effect fdi shows electricity saving and carbon reduction effects but rd the impacts of import and export on the factor biased technological progress are weak furthermore the path of technological progress is highly related to the level of economy when gdp per capita is higher than 37 000 yuan indigenous innovation is the main driver for low carbon development

impact of urbanization growth on malaysia co2 emissions evidence from the dynamic relationship abstract urbanization is a phenomenon of economic and social modernization investigating the link between urbanization growth and co2 emissions is necessary and helpful for malaysia to achieve its pollution reduction targets ecological modernization and augmented cobb douglas production theories are used in order to gain the best understanding of interaction between co2 emissions and urbanization for the 1971 2015 period this study aims to examine the relationships among co2 emissions urbanization growth energy consumption gdp domestic investment and financial development the f bounds test and vecm granger causality are utilized the dynamic relationship among variables and the inverted u shaped relationship between co2 emissions and urbanization in the long run are examined the elasticity of co2 urbanization is found positive elastic in the early stage of urbanization but it turns to negative inelastic at the higher urbanization stage furthermore the unidirectional causality from urbanization to co2 emissions in the short run are at a 1 percent level of significance and the bidirectional causality between co2 emissions and urbanization is at a 5 percent level of significance in the long run also we captured bidirectional causality among energy consumption domestic investment gdp co2 emissions and unidirectional causality from financial development to co2 emissions at least at a 5 percent level of significance these findings could support policymakers in managing urbanization development and considering clean investment and other green aspects for urban sustainable development which can save many people from natural disaster

interest groups campaign contributions and probabilistic voting this essay develops a simple model to analyze the impact of campaign contributions on electoral policy decisions of candidates for office interest groups here are firms that select contributions under the assumption that candidates policies and opposing groups donations remain unaltered candidates however recognize that their policy choices affect contributions campaign contributions are used by candidates to affect policy oriented voters perceptions of candidates positions in this framework the introduction of campaign contributions may affect candidates electoral policies and if they do then they benefit surely exactly one of the two interest groups

energy consumption and economic growth in turkey during the past two decades the turkish economy has undergone a transformation from agricultural to industrial enhanced by rapid urbanization especially after 1982 turkey s gross national production has grown at an average annual rate of 5 since 1983 ranking it at the top of the oecd countries although the growth pattern has been uneven economic growth in recent years has been associated with the privatization of public enterprises turkey s energy demand has risen rapidly as a result of social and economic development the country s energy consumption has grown considerably since the beginning of the 1980s the turkish government encourages foreign and turkish private sector investors to implement the energy projects and is currently working on a new investment model for the construction of new generation plants to create the additional capacity needed the turkish energy sector with its current size of 30 billion us dollars and projected size of 55 billion us dollars by 2015 as well as the fundamental restructuring process it has been going through since 2001 attracts both local and foreign investors the sector needs an investment amount of approximately 130 billion us dollars by 2020 the aim of the present paper is to investigate the increasing of turkish energy demand with the growth of the economy and utilization of domestic energy sources and the case of investments and imports in turkey during the past two decades

impacts of urbanization on national transport and road energy use evidence from low middle and high income countries abstract few attempts have been made to investigate quantitatively and systematically the impact of urbanization on transport energy use for countries of different stages of economic development this paper examines the influence of urbanization on national transport and road energy use for low middle and high income countries during 1975 2005 using the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model after controlling for population size income per capita and the share of services in the economy the main results suggest that urbanization influences national transport and road energy use positively however the magnitude of its influence varies among the three income groups changes in urbanization appear to have a greater impact on transport and road energy use in the high income group than in the other groups surprisingly the urbanization elasticities of transport and road energy use in the middle income group are smaller than those of the low income group this study not only sheds further light on the existing literature but also provides policy makers with insightful information on the link between urbanization and transport energy use at the three different stages of development

the impact of urbanization on co2 emissions evidence from developing countries abstract this paper analyzes the impact of urbanization on co2 emissions in developing countries from 1975 to 2003 it contributes to the existing literature by examining the effect of urbanization taking into account dynamics and the presence of heterogeneity in the sample of countries the results show an inverted u shaped relationship between urbanization and co2 emissions indeed the elasticity emission urbanization is positive for low urbanization levels which is in accordance with the higher environmental impact observed in less developed regions among our contributions is the estimation of a semi parametric mixture model that allows for unknown distributional shapes and endogenously classifies countries into homogeneous groups three groups of countries are identified for which urbanization s impact differs considerably for two of the groups a threshold level is identified beyond which the emission urbanization elasticity is negative and further increases in the urbanization rate do not contribute to higher emissions however for the third group only population and affluence but not urbanization contribute to explain emissions the differential impact of urbanization on co2 emissions should therefore be taken into account in future discussions of climate change policies

does urbanization affect energy intensities across provinces in china long run elasticities estimation using dynamic panels with heterogeneous slopes abstract although there has been extensive debate in the literature that addresses the impact of urbanization on total energy use the relative magnitude of each impact channel has not been empirically examined and urbanization s effects on energy transition dynamics in china remains unknown using panel datasets at the provincial level from 1986 to 2011 this paper employs dynamic models to investigate both the long run and short run elasticities of urbanization on energy intensities and the most significant impact channel is identified coal intensity and electricity intensity are also modeled to reveal energy transition dynamics driven by urbanization a set of newly developed regression techniques namely well performed common correlated effects mean group ccemg and augmented mean group amg estimators are used to treat residual cross sectional dependence nonstationary residuals and unlikely to hold homogeneous slope assumptions the results obtained verify that the net effects of urbanization on overall energy intensity and electricity intensity are statistically positive with long run elasticities of 0 14 to 0 37 and 0 23 to 0 29 respectively whereas china s urbanization does not significantly increase coal intensity the fact that short run elasticities account for a majority of corresponding long run values indicates that the short run effect that is indirect energy use induced by urban infrastructures is the most significant impact channel of urbanization on energy use in china an energy transition from high pollution coal to clean electricity is also present in china although the fundamental transition to renewable energy is still in its infancy from a regional perspective urbanization exerts asymmetric impacts on provincial energy use so that energy policies associated with urbanization should be province specific the findings also illustrate that for a panel dataset on regional dimension within large and fast growing economies such as china error cross sectional dependence and residual nonstationarity must be tested and properly treated to avoid size distortion and biased estimators

energy consumption and modes of industrialization four developing countries abstract because of heterogeneity of developing countries energy consumption dynamics can only be analysed at the level of individual countries this paper focuses on the comparison of the energy consumption dynamics of south korea india brazil and mexico and on the origins of the dynamics observed it is shown that the same factors explain the diversified energy consumption dynamics the national availability of energy resources the energy policies and the modes of industrialization adopted as well as the patterns of private consumption

residential electricity demand in taiwan this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in taiwan as a function of household disposable income population growth the price of electricity and the degree of urbanization short and long term effects are separated through the use of an error correction model in the long run the income elasticity is unit elastic the own price effect is negative and inelastic in an error correction framework the short run income and price effects are small and less than the long run effects cooling degree day effects have a positive impact on short run consumption we have used a proxy variable urbanization to capture economic development characteristics and changes in electricity using capital stocks not explained by income the variable provides significant explanatory power to the model both in the short and long run we interpret it as controlling for economic development factors not captured by the pure income effect and we think it holds promise for explaining residential electricity consumption in other developing countries

why cooperate public goods economic power and the montreal protocol this paper develops a correlated probit model to describe dichotomous choices that may contain a public goods component or some other forms of interdependency the key contribution of the paper is to formulate tests for interdependent behavior among agents in particular we examine the decisions by nations whether or not to ratify the montreal protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer specifically we reject free riding as a motive for not ratifying the protocol and we find little evidence that individual nations were influenced by the behavior of their largest trading partners hence the data suggest that with respect to the montreal protocol most nations acted without regard for the actions of other nations

economic targets and loss aversion in international environmental cooperation economic targets in environmental coopeartion in the standard emission problem each country s ruling party decides on an optimal level of emissions by analyzing the cost and benefit to the country however such policy decisions are often influenced by political parties incentives to be elected voters tend to give higher priority to economic issues than they do to environmental ones as a result political parties have additional incentives to reach a critical economic benefit level at a cost of higher emission level in order to satisfy voters expectations in economic issues therefore this study explores the implications of political parties being averse to insufficient economic performance relative to a critical economic target level on sustaining an international environmental agreement on emission levels in doing so we allow countries to have asymmetric concerns about economic targets as well as asymmetric technology levels we find that stronger concerns about economic targets deter the most cooperative emission levels countries could jointly sustain furthermore technological asymmetry could either deepen or offset this impact these results suggest that efforts on achieving substantial international environmental agreements should be supported at the citizen level to eliminate the adverse effects

impact of income inequality and environmental regulation on environmental quality evidence from china abstract china s environmental pollution is of widespread concern and environmental governance has become the country s main method of achieving high quality development environmental quality is a comprehensive indicator which includes many factors such as air water and solid waste pollution this study did not use a single pollutant as a substitute variable for environmental quality firstly we used principal component analysis to construct a comprehensive environmental quality index secondly the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology and panel quantile regression models were used with data from 30 chinese provinces in china from 1998 to 2017 to analyze the effect of income inequality and environmental regulation on environmental quality the constructed comprehensive index revealed that china s environmental quality had an m type trend over time the mean regression results showed that income inequality and environmental regulation improved environmental quality but higher income inequality reduced environmental quality the panel quantile regression model results revealed that the coefficient of income inequality was positively significant at the 10 30 quantiles and negatively significant at the 70 90 quantiles the coefficients of the absolute value of income inequality at the 10 30 quantiles were less than those at the 70 90 quantiles this implied that higher income inequality reduced environmental quality whereas higher environmental regulations improved environmental quality considering the possible impact of environmental quality on income inequality and environmental regulations we designed a simultaneous equation model to overcome the deviation caused by bilateral causality the conclusions of this study provide policymakers with a new perspective on environmental governance and new paths for achieving high quality development

the participation decision versus the level of participation in an environmental treaty a spatial probit analysis abstract this paper represents treaty participation as a two stage game for which nations first decide whether or not to participate and then they choose their level of participation the resulting subgame perfect equilibrium is used to derive a reduced form equation for estimating and separating the influences of the variables at the two decision stages this spatial probit equation forms the basis for a full information maximum likelihood estimator that accounts for the simultaneity bias associated with public good spillins at both stages when the procedure is applied to the helsinki protocol we find that the strategic influence of a variable may drastically differ depending upon which stage is scrutinized

impact of urbanization on energy demand an empirical study of the yangtze river economic belt in china abstract this paper provides an empirical assessment of the effects of china s urbanization on its energy demand for 2003 2014 using a dataset of 108 cities located in the yangtze river economic belt both demographic urbanization du and land urbanization lu are considered in the empirical analysis the results show that urbanization exerts significant and positive impacts on energy demand during the study period our empirical suggest that one unit rises in du and lu rises the energy demand by 48 85 91 62 and 65 54 68 09 respectively without with considering control variables the energy demand effects of urbanization still hold when considering spatial and heterogeneity factors these results are robust to alternative measures of urbanization and empirical model specifications our results indicate that policymakers should improve the quality of urbanization to promote the growth of high tech and high quality industries avoiding excessive energy consumption with extensive urbanization large cities should not be allowed to grow unchecked more attention should be paid to promote the development of medium sized cities and implement a balanced population distribution among different cities the energy demand structure industrial and residential primary and secondary renewable and nonrenewable should be optimized by introducing cleaner low carbon technology and its transformation

analyzing the effects of energy action plans on electricity consumption in covenant of mayors signatory municipalities in andalusia permitted deposit due to funding body institutional and governmental policy or mandate may be required to comply with embargo periods of 12 months to 48 months

electoral manipulation via voter friendly spending theory and evidence abstract we present a model of the political budget cycle in which incumbents try to influence voters by changing the composition of government spending rather than overall spending or revenues rational voters may support an incumbent who targets them with spending before the election even though such spending may be due to opportunistic manipulation because it may also reflect sincere preference of the incumbent for types of spending voters favor classifying expenditures into those which are likely targeted to voters and those that are not we provide evidence supporting our model in data on local public finances for all colombian municipalities our findings indicate both a pre electoral increase in targeted expenditures combined with a contraction of other types of expenditure and a voter response to targeting

exploring the nature of inter country interactions in the process of ratifying international environmental agreements the case of the kyoto protocol international environmental agreements require negotiation and cooperation among countries this paper attempts to analyze the presence and nature of inter country interactions in the process of ratifying such agreements we develop a theoretical argument based on the notions of strategic substitutability and strategic complementarity and study the interactions among three different peer types geographic neighbors trading partners and green investment projects partners in our case clean development mechanism projects partners we test for the presence of interactions by taking into account a temporal dimension which constitutes a methodological contribution to this end we introduce spatially lagged endogenous variables into a parametric survival model and apply the proposed framework to the kyoto protocol ratification process our data sample covers 164 countries for the period 1998 to 2009 we find evidence that while countries ratification decisions are basically strategic substitutes they become strategic complements once we focus on the ratification decisions of specific peers

the relationship between disaggregate energy consumption and industrial production in the united states an ardl approach abstract we re examine the relationship between disaggregate energy consumption and industrial output as well as employment in the united states using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach developed by pesaran and pesaran pesaran m h pesaran b 1997 working with microfit 4 0 camfit data ltd cambridge and pesaran shin and smith pesaran m h shin y smith r j 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 289 326 in particular we focus attention on the following energy consumption variables coal fossil fuels conventional hydroelectric power solar energy wind energy natural gas wood and waste the sample period covers 2001 1 2005 6 our results imply that real output and employment are long run forcing variables for nearly all measures of disaggregate energy consumption

how does foreign direct investment affect co2 emissions in emerging countries new findings from a nonlinear panel analysis abstract despite their success in attracting foreign direct investment fdi emerging countries are suffering from increasing carbon pollution the identification of the impact of fdi on co2 emissions plays a prominent role in utilizing fdi to propel cleaner production and reduce pollutant emissions numerous studies have been devoted to clarifying the direct impact of fdi on co2 emissions however little work has focused on the spillover effect of fdi on co2 emissions through economic growth to address this gap in the literature this paper introduces an extension of the panel smooth transition regression pstr model with nonlinear and dynamic features to simultaneously investigate the direct and spillover influences at work in fdi inflows and co2 discharges the results manifest that fdi can directly result in an ascent in co2 concentrations in contrast the results of spillover effect through economic growth suggest that fdi can decrease co2 concentrations with the increase in fdi inflows the total effect of fdi on co2 leakages is smoothly shifted from positive to negative thereby corroborating the pollution haven and pollution halo hypotheses moreover the connection between inward fdi and co2 emissions exhibits two transition regimes and the transition is realized when fdi reaches 24 340 the results of a nonlinear marginal analysis show that the influence of fdi on co2 emissions has significant regional heterogeneity and reveals w v shaped temporal characteristics the findings set out in this study provide new evidence for the evaluation of the pollution risk caused by fdi inflows and insights into the choice of a sustainable development path in emerging markets

strategic foreign exchange management this paper argues that it is possible to advise firms on how to hedge against foreign exchange risks only if one has detailed knowledge of the competitive environment they work in to illustrate this we compare firms hedging requirements in a number of different standard industrial organizations models in particular the cournot model a model with conjectural variations price taking firms and monopolistic competition consider the situation of a firm producing in germany and selling an important part of its total output in the us obviously its profitability may be seriously compromised by an unexpected appreciation of the dm relatively to the the company can react to this uncertainty in two ways either it can assume that the conditions of the modigliani miller theorem are approximately fulfilled and that it best serves the interests of its shareholders by behaving in a risk neutral fashion alternatively the firm may for a variety of reasons behave as a risk averter itself and try to obtain some coverage against exchange rate risk when looking at the amount of insurance taken up by companies on conventional insurance markets one gets the impression that the latter alternative risk averse firms is for many practical cases a realistic assumption the activities of many companies are more easily understood if one admits that they exhibit a certain degree of risk aversion if one accepts this one may go on to ask just how companies should go about insuring themselves against unexpected exchange rate fluctuations more specifically one has to study how much exchange risk the firms should insure against and which exchange rates are of relevance in the example above of a german company selling in the us the answer might at first sight seem obvious the company should obtain coverage against dm fluctuations for an amount approximately equal to its anticipated revenues on brief reflection it immediately appears that this is surely an excessively simplistic answer first the amount of coverage required must be affected by the question of how the price of the product varies when the dm exchange rate shifts second it may be the case that the german company s main competitors are located in say france in this case fluctuations of the

opportunistic political cycles test in a young democracy setting this paper tests the theory of opportunistic cycles in a decade old democracy russia finds strong evidence of cycles and provides an explanation for why previous literature often found weaker evidence using regional monthly panel data we find that 1 the budget cycle is sizable and short lived public spending shifts toward direct monetary transfers to voters 2 the magnitude of the cycle decreases with democracy government transparency media freedom voter awareness and over time and 3 preelectoral manipulation increases incumbents chances for reelection the short length of the cycle explains underestimation of its size by previous literature because of low frequency data used in previous studies

impacts of urbanization and real economic development on co 2 emissions in non high income countries empirical research based on the extended stirpat model abstract this article focuses on the effects of urbanization and economic development on carbon dioxide co 2 emissions in non high income countries using the extended stirpat model following the building idea of the ipat model co 2 emissions i are decomposed into nine factors population affluence technology level urbanization level urban employment level industrialization level population carrying intensity of the real economy built on goods and services co 2 emission intensity and energy intensity then the extended ipat model is reconstructed as the extended stirpat model furthermore based on panel data from 1991 to 2013 and using the extended stirpat model this article respectively analyzes the effects of the driving forces especially urbanization and real economic development on co 2 emissions for non high income countries upper and lower middle income countries the results indicate that urbanization and real economic development have a small impact on co 2 emissions in non high income countries accelerating urbanization and real economic development will not result in a significant increase in co 2 emissions in fact for upper middle income countries real economic development will lead to a decrease in co 2 emissions and acceleration of the urbanization process will only cause a small increase in emissions the main driving factors of co 2 emissions remain population affluence energy intensity and co 2 emission intensity this article also quantitatively calculates the actual contribution rate of each driving force for the 1991 2013 period the study contributes to understanding the emission characteristics and key driving forces in each type of countries allowing for appropriate policy recommendations

how urbanization affects energy use in developing countries abstract this paper identifies mechanisms whereby urbanization affects energy consumption industrialization and urbanization accompany each other during economic development but urbanization exerts a number of independent influences on energy use it permits economies of scale in production but requires more transportation food must be transported to urbanized populations and relatively smaller agricultural populations must modernize entailing considerable increases in agricultural energy use in cities a number of production activities which were domestically provided in rural areas using human or animal energy shift to sources outside the household using modern energy sources the largest single source of change in energy use is personal transportation passenger transport in cities is heavily weighted towards fuel using modes particularly as incomes increase to assess the overall impact a regression analysis of 59 developing countries for 1980 is conducted holding constant per capita income and the extent of industrialization the elasticity of energy consumption per capita and per dollar of gdp is between 0 35 and 0 48

factors determining energy consumption evidence from indonesia malaysia and thailand abstract the aim of this study is to verify empirically the impact of various factors on energy consumption in three asean countries namely indonesia malaysia and thailand over the period 1980 to 2012 after using sundry appropriate diagnostic tests for checking time series data the method of least square as an analytical technique is used for parameters estimation the findings validate that fdi inflows economic growth trade openness and human development index have positive and statistically significant impacts on energy consumption the other variable urbanization has positive and statistically significant impacts on energy consumption for thailand and indonesia only while the empirical results reveals that population growth rate has a positive and statistically significant relationship with energy consumption only in the case of malaysia so in the light of determinations of the study the policy implication is that energy policy needs to be orientated in favor of expanding the supply of energy to reach an enhanced degree of sustainable economic growth and development

how a firm can induce legislators to adopt a bad policy this paper shows why a majority of legislators may vote for a policy that benefits a firm but harms all legislators the firm may induce legislators to support the policy by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district where voters or their representative support the policy in equilibrium no one vote may be decisive so each legislator who seeks the firm s investment votes for the policy though all legislators would be better off if they all voted against the policy and when votes reveal information about the district the firm s implicit promise or threat can be credible unlike influence mechanisms based on contributions or bribes the behavior considered is time consistent and in line with the low campaign contributions by special interests

are there election cycles in wage agreements an analysis of german public employees in this article the possibility of nordhaus political wage cyclesin the west german public services during 1961 1965 is investigated since wage negotiations are centralized one might expect a systematicallyhigher wage increase shortly before a federal election a regression ofwage increases from 30 consecutive public sector pay contracts is run onan election variable and several additional explanatory variables thenull of no election influence is rejected for worker wage increases theestimated increase in wages due to an imminent election is predicted to bein the range of 2 5 to 3 percentage points

electoral competition with informed and uninformed voters i present a model of electoral competition in which candidates raise campaign contributions by choosing policies that benefit interest groups and then expend those contributions to influence voters who are uninformed about the policies informed voters however vote based on those policies so candidates face a trade off between choosing a policy to generate funds to attract the uninformed vote and choosing a policy to attract the informed vote electoral equilibria are characterized for two categories of policies particularistic and collective in the case of particularistic policies the equilibrium policies of the candidates are separated if the proportion of uninformed voters is sufficiently high and the degree of separation is an increasing function of that proportion the model is extended to include the public financing of elections and incumbency advantages for the case of collective policies the candidates locate at the median of the ideal points of the informed voters and contributions are zero

breaking the silos distributed knowledge and strategic responses to volatile exchange rates a model of effective decision making in a situation of distributed knowledge is developed drawing on three perspectives the sociocognitive perspective which focuses on framing issues the economic perspective which focuses on the role played by incentives in the integration of knowledge and decision making authority and the process perspective which stresses the role of integrating mechanisms and of processes that either hinder or foster risk awareness and flexibility the model is tested on a sample of managers from different functional areas of fortune 500 firms using strategic responses to exchange rate volatility as the context the results show that all three perspectives framing incentives and process are significant in explaining the effectiveness of strategic responses to volatile exchange rates the findings suggest that simultaneously addressing managerial mindsets incentives and process may be crucial to generating effective strategic responses across functions