defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

public sector efficiency evidence for new eu member states and emerging markets in this article we analyse public sector efficiency in the new member states of the eu compared to that in emerging markets after a conceptual discussion of expenditure efficiency measurement we compute efficiency scores and rankings by applying a range of measurement techniques the study finds that expenditure efficiency across new eu member states is rather diverse especially as compared to the group of top performing emerging markets in asia econometric analysis shows that higher income civil service competence and education levels as well as the security of property rights seem to facilitate the prevention of inefficiencies in the public sector

environmental regulation technological innovation and energy consumption a cross region analysis in china abstract china has encountered the environmental issues and energy pressures in the middle income stage strengthening environmental regulation is a crucial measure to prevent environment deterioration and energy dilemma this paper investigates the three types of environmental regulations on energy consumption using feasible generalized least squares method during 1997 2015 in direct and indirect path the main conclusions are as follows in the direct path the economical and supervised types of environmental regulations have inhibited energy consumption whilst legal environmental regulation has no significant impact as for indirect path the rebound effect of energy is greater than the energy conservation generated by technological innovation which is embodied as an inhibitory effect the effects of environmental regulation display regional difference the legal and supervised types of environmental regulations have significant cost effect and rebound effect on energy consumption in the entire samples on the contrary the economical environmental regulation shows the opposite sigh in eastern regions the counterfactual simulation results show that the net effects of environmental regulations on energy consumption are negative which is beneficial for relieving energy pressures based on the findings this paper provides pertinent policy implications

environmental efficiency and market segmentation an empirical analysis of china s thermal power industry abstract dominated by state owned administrative monopolistic enterprises china s power industry faces a dilemma that is being provoked by market oriented reforms regional protectionism makes it more difficult for those more efficient but non local power generators to enter into the local market thereby causing significant market segmentation ms in view of regional technology heterogeneity a meta frontier non radial slacks based measure model is used to evaluate the environmental efficiency ee of china s thermal power industry further we utilize a panel data tobit model and apply counterfactual analysis to explore the impacts of ms on ee the results show that 1 technology gaps exist between the group frontier and the meta frontier exhibiting greater potential for improvement 2 the degree of ms in thermal power industry in most provinces fluctuates within a narrow range from 2006 to 2015 and peaks during the period from 2008 to 2010 3 ms negatively affects ee performance both significantly and robustly with up to a 15 loss of thermal power generation due to ms in 2009 4 significant regional technology heterogeneity exists along with a widening technology gap ratio between developed and underdeveloped areas this study provides insightful policy implications for the sustainable development of china s thermal power industry

allocating decision rights on the shop floor a perspective from transaction cost economics and organization theory this paper explores the links that the allocation of decision rights on the shop floor maintains with labor transaction attributes and several structural traits of the firm the approach is based on the transaction cost apparatus and harnesses the theoretical and empirical background provided by organization theory data are presented from a wide field survey in the spanish food and electronics industries standard industry classification sic 20 and 36 evidence not only verifies the influence of firm size property age and unionism but also shows that the allocation of decision rights is related to a particular mix of labor transaction traits specifically one of the most important results is that employer opportunism offers greater explanatory power than employee opportunism

relational contracts and the theory of the firm relational contracts informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships are prevalent within and between firms we develop repeated game models showing why and how relational contracts within firms vertical integration differ from those between nonintegration we show that integration affects the parties temptations to renege on a given relational contract and hence affects the best relational contract the parties can sustain in this sense the integration decision can be an instrument in the service of the parties relationship our approach also has implications for joint ventures alliances and networks and for the role of management within and between firms

the function of authority in transaction cost economics abstract this paper questions the transaction cost characterization of observed authority relations as efficient governance structures various inadequacies in the transaction cost account of work organization and the limits of firm size are traced to its neglect of the possibility that authority may be abused opportunistically this exemplifies a more general propensity in the transaction cost literature that of explaining economic organization in functionalist terms with little attention to the causal mechanisms through which efficient governance structures might actually arise three such mechanisms are considered but none is found to provide an adequate rationale for the imputation of efficiency to observed structures

tying the manager s hands constraining opportunistic managerial intervention we discuss and examine empirically a firm level equivalent of the ancient problem of tying the king s hands namely how to avoid managerial intervention that is undertaken to reap private benefits but is harmful to overall value creation that is managerial opportunism the link from managerial intervention to firm level value creation is moderated by employee motivation thus intervention in the form of managers overruling employees or reneging on delegation may demotivate employees particularly when the intervention is perceived as being unfair undertaken for personal gain etc we argue that a number of mechanisms such as managers staking their personal reputation employees controlling important assets strong trade unions etc may function as constraints on managerial proclivities to intervene thus reducing the problem of managerial opportunism we derive four hypotheses from these ideas and test them using path analysis on a rich dataset based on 329 firms in the spanish food and electric electronic industries

the effects of environmental regulation and technical progress on co2 kuznets curve an evidence from china based on environmental kuznets curve theory a panel data model which takes environmental regulation and technical progress as its moderating factors was developed to analyse the institutional and technical factors that affect the path of low carbon economic development the results indicated that there was a co2 emission kuznets curve seen in china environmental regulation had a significant moderating effect on the curve and the inflection of co2 emissions could come substantially earlier under stricter environmental regulation meanwhile the impact of technical progress on the low carbon economic development path had a longer hysteresis effect but restrained co2 emission during its increasing stage and accelerated its downward trend during the decreasing stage which was conducive to emission reduction strict environmental regulation could force the high carbon emitting industries to transfer from the eastern regions to the central or the western regions of china which would make the co2 kuznets curve higher in its increasing stage and lower in its decreasing stage than that under looser regulation furthermore energy efficiency energy structure and industrial structure exerted a significant direct impact on co2 emissions we should consider the above factors as essential in the quest for low carbon economic development

dynamic governance of clean energy markets how technical innovation could accelerate climate policies abstract this article explores the governmental means to accelerate technical progress in climate protection it is based on selected best practice cases in which the diffusion of low carbon technologies has been accelerated by ambitious policies the empirical cases involve not just renewable energies but also energy efficiency the latter being considered more difficult in terms of governance the examples are taken from advanced oecd countries as well as from emerging economies this article will explore which factors have caused this dynamic development the conclusion reached will show that the interaction of positive feedback mechanisms which has already been described as virtuous cycle provides only a plausible theoretical explanation if the policy cycle is added to the market cycle and the innovation cycle climate policy should not only define ambitious targets but also address all three feedback mechanisms

comparison of energy intensities in european union countries results of a structural decomposition analysis abstract this work proposes an input output structural decomposition analysis model to identify the sources of the differences in the energetic intensities of the european union countries given an economic structure a determined composition of the final demand and determined direct energy intensities by countries the work studies to what extent these factors explain the difference in aggregate energy intensities that are observed for different european union countries on the basis of this information indicators are constructed by sectors and countries that allow us to identify the role that each sector or country plays as an energy consumer the results show that the aggregate total energy differences in europe are strongly influenced by the direct energy intensity effect and by the demand effect without the different economic structures of the countries being an important factor in the explanation of these differences the metallurgical and manufacturing products sectors are identified as the most intensive in the aggregate energy intensity

the industrial organization of congress or why legislatures like firms are not organized as markets this paper provides a theory of legislative institutions that parallels the theory of the firm and the theory of contractual institutions like market institutions legislative institutions reflect two key components the goals or preferences of individuals here representatives seeking reelection and the relevant transactions costs we present three conclusions first we show how the legislative institutions enforce bargains among legislators second we explain why given the peculiar form of bargaining problems found in legislatures specific forms of nonmarket exchange prove superior to market exchange third our approach shows how the committee system limits the types of coalitions that may form on a particular issue

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp revisited the case of korea 1970 1999 abstract causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated applying a multivariate model of capital labor energy and gdp usual btu energy aggregate is substituted with a divisia aggregate in an attempt to mitigate aggregation bias to test for granger causality in the presence of cointegration among the variables we employ a vector error correction model rather than a vector autoregressive model empirical results for korea over the period 1970 1999 suggest a long run bidirectional causal relationship between energy and gdp and short run unidirectional causality running from energy to gdp the source of causation in the long run is found to be the error correction terms in both directions

the effects of factor market distortion and technical innovation on china s electricity consumption abstract this study integrates neoclassical economics and institutional theory to examine the relationship between market factor distortion technical innovation and china s electricity consumption using business data from china 2008 2014 first we provide evidence that factor market distortion promotes electricity consumption of industrial enterprises in china secondly we divide technical innovation into traditional technical innovation and green innovation finding that the level of technical innovation has an inverted u shaped effect on the electricity consumption of industrial enterprises further we also provide evidence that factor market distortion amplifies the inverted u shaped effect of the technical innovation plot the results show that accelerating the reform of the market and promoting green innovation should be regarded as important strategies for national energy saving and emission reduction

measurement of energy rebound effect in households evidence from residential electricity consumption in beijing china abstract energy efficiency improvement policies have special significance for carbon emissions reduction and the mitigation of the effects of climate change however the energy rebound effect caused by technological progress will indirectly increase energy consumption the magnitude of the rebound effect largely determines the effectiveness of energy efficiency in mitigating energy consumption this study reviews the main theory behind estimated methods of energy rebound effect measurement focuses on constructing a double logarithm energy demand model and an error correction model of the asymmetric demand responses of electricity price changes to empirically analyse the direct rebound effect on residential electricity use in beijing it integrates consumer s demand theory with the embodied electricity of household spending from a seven sector environmental energy input output e i o analysis to estimate the indirect rebound effect the three income elasticity weight change and proportional re spending scenario simulation results show that residential electricity use in beijing exhibits a partial rebound effect and the long term direct and indirect rebound effects are 46 to 56 and the short term direct rebound effect is 24 to 37 finally the direct and indirect energy rebound effect for various income groups needs further research an appropriate policy mix should be adopted to mitigate effectively the rebound effect in china s current lower energy price and lower energy efficiency market

a knowledge based theory of the firm the problem solving perspective in this paper we develop a knowledge based theory of the firm while existing knowledge based theory focuses on the efficiency of hierarchy in economizing on knowledge exchange we develop a theory of the firm that focuses on the efficiency of alternative organizational forms ingenerating knowledge or capability our theory begins with the problem as the basic unit of analysis arguing that a problem s complexity influences the optimal method of solution search and the optimal means of organizing that search the distinguishing feature that differentiates among organizational alternatives is the different way each resolves conflict over the selection of solution trials that is the way it chooses the path of search our theory predicts that efficiency demands that these governance alternatives be matched in a discriminating way to problems based on their associated benefits and costs in governing solution search thus our theory is among the first to simultaneously treat both the boundary choice i e internal versus external and the choice among alternative internal approaches to organizing

power in a theory of the firm transactions take place in the firm rather than in the market because the firm offers power to agents who make specific investments past literature emphasizes the allocation of ownership as the primary mechanism by which the firm does this within the contractibility assumptions of this literature we identify a potentially superior mechanism the regulation of access to critical resources access can be better than ownership because i the power agents get from access is more contingent on their making the right investment and ii ownership has adverse effects on the incentive to specialize the theory explains the importance of internal organization and third party ownership

selective intervention and internal hybrids interpreting and learning from the rise and decline of the oticon spaghetti organization infusing hierarchies with elements of market control has become a much used way of simultaneously increasing entrepreneurialism and motivation in firms however this paper argues that such internal hybrids particularly in their radical forms are inherently hard to successfully design and implement because of a fundamental incentive problem of establishing credible managerial commitments to not intervene in delegated decision making this theme is developed and illustrated using the case of the world leading hearing aids producer oticon in the beginning of the 1990s oticon became famous for its radical internal hybrid the spaghetti organization recent work has interpreted the spaghetti organization as a radical attempt to foster dynamic capabilities by organizational means neglecting however that about a decade later the spaghetti organization has given way to a more traditional matrix organization in contrast an organizational economics interpretation of oticon organizational changes is developed this lens suggests that a strong liability of the spaghetti organization was the above incentive problem frequent managerial meddling with delegated rights led to a severe loss of motivation and arguably caused the change to a more structured organization refutable implications are developed and the discussion is broadened to more general issues of economic organization

the effect of recessions on firms boundaries the economic theory of the firm offers conflicting predictions of how the two major effects of recessions changes in demand and access to credit affect firm boundaries using data on norwegian firms in the recent recession we find support for both increased and reduced vertical integration of core activities in response to a recessionary shock further we find a negative interaction effect between reductions in access to credit and reductions in demand on insourcing of core activities but no such effect on outsourcing of core activities we argue that this finding may highlight a possible explanation for the conflicting theoretical predictions regarding vertical integration in response to demand and credit shocks

estimating the rebound effect in us manufacturing energy consumption abstract the energy price shocks of the 1970s are usually assumed to have increased the search for new energy saving technologies where eventual gains in energy efficiencies will reduce the real per unit price of energy services and hence the consumption of energy will rise and partially offset the initial reduction in the usage of energy sources this is the rebound effect which is estimated for the us manufacturing sector using time series data applying the dynamic ols method dols when allowing for asymmetric price effects the rebound effect is found to be approximately 24 for the us manufacturing sector

durable goods and residential demand for energy and water evidence from a field trial this article describes a household production model in which energy efficient durable goods cost less to operate so households may use them more the model is estimated using household level data from a field trial in which participants received high efficiency clothes washers free of charge the estimation strategy exploits this quasi random replacement of washers to derive precise estimates of the household production technology and a demand function for clothes washing during the field trial households increased clothes washing on average by 5 6 after receiving a high efficiency washer implying a price elasticity of 06 the complete model is used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of recent changes in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers

direct rebound effect on urban residential electricity use an empirical study in china abstract though improving energy efficiency is an important approach to decrease the energy consumption the rebound effect caused by technology progress negatively affects the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies this paper empirically investigates direct rebound effect of urban residential electricity use in china using china s 30 provincial government panel data from1996 to 2010 we build a co integration equation and a panel error correction model to analyze the direct rebound effect the results indicate that an obvious rebound effect in the chinese urban residential electricity consumption does exist specifically the long term rebound effect is 0 74 while the short term rebound effect is 0 72 therefore the rebound effect significantly impairs functions of energy efficiency policies for this reason chinese government should take the rebound effect into consideration when formulating energy policies

the efficiency of social public expenditure in european countries a two stage analysis abstractdo european countries differ in the efficiency of their welfare policies and which factors can account for such variability to address these questions we perform a two stage efficiency a

does empowerment lead to higher quality and profitability abstract this paper examines the implications of alternative empowerment regimes on a firm s product quality and profitability when ownership and management of the firm are separated and it faces environmental uncertainties the analyses of a three stage game highlight the circumstances under which empowering a manager to make quality investment decisions results in higher profitability and or product quality when delegation reduces a manager s disutility either monitored or complete empowerment arise as the preferred management system if delegation increases the manager s disutility of effort and uncertainties about consumers preferences are small forcing may become the preferred management system

openness country size and government abstract this paper shows that smaller countries have a larger share of public consumption in gdp and are also more open to trade these empirical observations are consistent with recent theoretical models explaining country formation and break up and may account for the observed positive empirical relationship between trade openness and government size

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

balancing subsidiary influence in the federative mnc a business network view the contest for intra organisational power in the multinational corporation mnc has gradually become a prominent issue on the research agenda as long as 25 years ago hedlund 1980 investigated the strategic roles of subsidiaries in mncs and doz and prahalad 1981 raised the issue of how difficult it is for headquarters to remain in control of its subsidiaries and to influence their strategies over time since then several researchers have suggested that mncs can be considered to be dispersed structures of power in which the top management s authority does not necessarily result in hierarchical power being the ultimate control mechanism hedlund 1986 forsgren 1989 ghoshal and bartlett 1990 doz and prahalad 1993 ferner and edwards 1995 kristensen and zeitlin 2001 morgan and whitley 2003 birkinshaw and hood 1998 examined the evolution of capabilities at the subsidiary level and recognised that in most corporations there is an internal competition for charter that implies a process of change in subsidiary roles birkinshaw and hood 1998 782 case research has also indicated that changes in the charters of divisions or subsidiaries in mncs constitute a strong feature of horizontal or vertical competition in the corporate marketplace galunic and eisenhardt 1996 birkinshaw and fry 1998 the tension between the headquarters and overseas laboratories caused by the laboratories desire for autonomy and influence is an example of such a competition asaka wa 2001

investigating co2 mitigation potentials and the impact of oil price distortion in china s transport sector abstract the transport sector is a major source of oil consumption and co2 emissions in china however due to the regulated pricing mechanism in china the end user oil price cannot reflect real market price and thus oil price distortion exists therefore the main aim of this paper is to study the affecting mechanism of oil price distortion on co2 emission mitigation firstly the level of oil price distortion is evaluated and a dynamic trans log cost function model is built to analyze the substitution relationship among energy products secondly the own price elasticity and cross price elasticity for fuel demand are calculated based on provincial panel data of china s transport sector over 2004 2016 finally co2 mitigation potentials are estimated by removing the impact of oil price distortion results show that 1 there is positive oil price distortion over 2004 2016 2 substitute relationship is observed between oil and coal oil and electricity and the substitution relationship is affected by factor substitution 3 removing oil price distortion will reduce co2 emissions of china s transport sector by 599 million tons in the studying period policies should focus removing the impact of oil price distortion promoting electricity oil substitution and promoting capital energy substitution to mitigate co2 emissions

integrating the internal and external labour markets evidence of shifts towards atomized relations in the labor market appears to conflict with economic theories of the internal labor market the problem however lies not with the irrelevance of internal labor market systems and broader institutional structures but rather with the misspecification of theoretical analysis new institutional and labor market segmentation models are typically restricted to a static dualistic framework of comparative forms of work organization this paper outlines a dynamic approach to the study of internal labor markets the authors argue that internal and external competitive pressures mutually interact to shape employer strategy and the relative labor market positions of employees copyright 1998 by oxford university press

the relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

the rebound effect for space heating empirical evidence from austria abstract the major focus of this paper is to investigate the magnitude of the rebound effect for space heating in austria different approaches are applied and compared the most important result of this investigation is that despite the fact that all approaches applied have their weaknesses and some results were not highly significant the final outcomes of the different approaches show quite good coincidence they provide evidence of a rebound effect between 20 and 30 the most important conclusions for energy policy makers are i standards with respect to building codes are very important tools to increase the thermal quality of new buildings ii due to prevailing low energy prices a triggering tool which may be rebates or loans has to be implemented to increase the efficiency of the building stock