monitoring changes in economy wide energy efficiency from energy gdp ratio to composite efficiency index since the 1973 world oil crisis monitoring trends in energy efficiency at the economy wide level has been an important component of energy strategy in many countries to support this effort various energy efficiency related indicators have been developed we examine some classical indicators which are often found in national and international energy studies in the 1970s and 1980s we then describe the recent developments in using the index decomposition analysis to give an economy wide composite energy efficiency index based on a bottom up approach this composite index is superior to the classical indicators as an economy wide energy efficiency measure and has lately been adopted by a growing number of countries for national energy efficiency trend monitoring

vehicle scrappage and gasoline policy abstract we estimate the sensitivity of scrap decisions to changes in used car values and show how this scrap elasticity produces emissions leakage under fuel efficiency standards a process known as the gruenspecht effect we first estimate the effect of gasoline prices on used vehicle values and scrappage of vehicles with different fuel economies we then estimate the scrap elasticity itself which we find to be 0 7 when applied in a model of fuel economy standards 13 16 percent of the expected fuel savings leak away through the used vehicle market this effect rivals or exceeds the importance of the often cited mileage rebound effect jel h23 l62 l78 q35 q38 q48 q58

a cross country analysis of aggregate energy and carbon intensities abstract an update on the study by ang energy economics 9 1987 274 286 shows substantial changes in the relationship between energy consumption and national output across world countries from 1975 to 1997 while the ratio of commercial energy consumption to national output increases across countries as per capita income increases in 1975 the converse is observed in 1997 the cross country energy elasticity has also dropped from values well above unity to below or close to unity using the 1997 data the relationship between co 2 emissions and national output across countries is studied and the results show some interesting differences from that between energy consumption and national output

understanding the evolution and performance of water markets and allocation policy a transaction costs analysis framework abstract water markets and associated allocation policy reforms have struggled to achieve their intended goals in many water stressed rivers in part due to the institutional friction imposed by transition and transaction costs this paper elaborates a transaction costs analysis framework to examine the evolution and performance of water markets and allocation policy reforms this analysis rests on three pillars i a synthesis of three theoretical traditions of institutional analysis williamson north and ostrom often considered independently ii a framework to examine the types and interactions of transaction costs in market based water allocation over time and iii an illustrative analysis of three large river basins the colorado columbia and murray darling with varying levels of success in market based water policy reforms the resulting framework accounts for water s complexity as an economic good this framework and the case studies lead to the identification of several policy implications including the need for a multiphase sequencing of reform strategic investment in institutional transition costs and institutional choices that preserve future flexibility to adjust water rights and diversion limits to manage social and environmental externalities

1 000 cash back the pass through of auto manufacturer promotions automobile manufacturers frequently use promotions involving cash incentives while payments are nominally directed to either customers or dealers the ultimate beneficiary of the promotion depends on the outcome of price negotiation we use program evaluation methods to compare the incidence of these two types of promotions customers obtain 70 to 90 percent of a customer rebate but only 30 to 40 percent of a dealer discount promotion a 500 difference for a typical promotion our leading hypothesis is that pass through rates differ because of information asymmetries customer rebates are well publicized to customers while dealer discount promotions are not

the determinants of aggregate energy use in west germany factor substitution technological change and trade this paper examines the determinants of production related energy use in west germany over the period 1976 1994 the approach is to estimate a system of share equations for energy capital low skilled labor high skilled labor and materials in the west german production sector taking account of biased technological change and increasing trade orientation while technological change is found to be energy saving increased openness is energy using i e tends to increase the energy share factor substitution biased technological change and trade contribute to the year to year volatility of energy intensity in the proportion 66 30 4 the results are robust across several specifications examined

automobile prices and quality did the gasoline price increases change consumer tastes in the u s a hedonic model of automobile prices that takes gasoline costs into account is developed and used to examine whether gasoline price increases especially those related to the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks changed consumer evaluations of the relative qualities of used cars in the u s during 1970 1981 we test the null hypothesis that the characteristics coefficients remained constant over time it is rejected if gasoline costs are excluded from the model but not if they are included alternative approaches are developed to show that the gasoline price increases alone can explain much of the observed changes in the coefficients

transactions costs of expanding nutrient trading to agricultural working lands a virginia case study abstract agricultural nonpoint sources nps figure prominently in the design of many water quality trading programs in concept water quality trading programs can create incentives for agricultural operators to supply low cost pollutant reductions while still keeping land in agricultural production in practice water quality trading programs in the united states have produced few trades involving agricultural nps transactions costs are a critical but poorly understood feature of water quality trading programs the objective of this study is to examine the transactions costs associated with expanding the use of nps credits in a water quality trading program in virginia united states to include credits generated from agricultural working lands best management practices bmps findings indicate that transactions costs for agricultural nps trades in virginia are currently relatively low due to the activity being credited simple land conversion based on best available evidence transactions costs of creating credits using management and structural bmps will be 2 to 16 times more costly on a per project basis than for land conversion credits compliance monitoring protocols are a significant driver of costs for working lands credits our results suggest an important cost risk tradeoff between verification costs and compliance certainty for program designers to consider

who loses when prices are negotiated an analysis of the new car market we establish that there are large and persistent differences in final transaction prices for identical new cars and that demographic characteristics explain at least 20 of the observed variation older consumers perform progressively worse in negotiations and the age premium is greater for women than for men our results suggest that the complex nature of vehicle transactions leads to price dispersion in this market and that the worst performing groups older women have the lowest rates of market participation we conjecture that the results are driven by the sharp increases in women s education and labor force participation in recent decades

long term changes in co2 emissions in austria and czechoslovakia identifying the drivers of environmental pressures this study presents fossil fuel related co2 emissions in austria and czechoslovakia current czech republic and slovakia for 1830 2000 the drivers of co2 emissions are discussed by investigating the variables of the standard kaya identity for 1920 2000 and conducting a comparative index decomposition analysis proxy data on industrial production and household consumption are analysed to understand the role of the economic structure co2 emissions increased in both countries in the long run czechoslovakia was a stronger emitter of co2 throughout the time period but per capita emissions significantly differed only after world war i when czechoslovakia and austria became independent the difference in co2 emissions increased until the mid 1980s the period of communism in czechoslovakia explained by the energy intensity and the composition effects and higher industrial production in czechoslovakia counterbalancing factors were the income effect and household consumption after the velvet revolution in 1990 czechoslovak co2 emissions decreased and the energy composition effect and industrial production lost importance despite their different political and economic development austria and czechoslovakia reached similar levels of per capita co2 emissions in the late 20th century neither austrian eco efficiency nor czechoslovak restructuring have been effective in reducing co2 emissions to a sustainable level

an alternative analysis of apparent ekc type transitions abstract the hypothesis of the environmental kuznets curve ekc depends upon the assumption that countries pass through a similar environmental impact trajectory as they experience income growth implying that income levels determine pollution levels the authors present evidence that this is not representative of the way many individual country s pollution emission trajectories evolve and question the emphasis on income determinism by the ekc the study proposes that nonlinear dynamic systems analysis provides a more complete description of individual country pollution trajectories in the case of co 2 emissions the nonlinear time trajectories show abrupt transitions that occur contemporaneously with historical events and over a broad range of incomes

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

product line rivalry and market segmentation with an application to automobile optional engine pricing this paper addresses the questions whether and when the pricing practices on base products may differ from those of premium products sold with options or add ons various alternative models are considered a monopoly model a model of brand rivalry with full consumer information and a model of rivalry in which consumers are only well informed about base product prices only the brand rivalry model with limited consumer information predicts that premium products have larger percentage markups than base products provided that brand rivalry is sufficiently intense empirical evidence on base and premium product pricing in the automobile market is consistent with the limited information model and inconsistent with the other two models

do economic financial and institutional developments matter for environmental degradation evidence from transitional economies abstract several studies have examined the relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth however most of them did not take into account financial developments and institutional quality moreover stern stern d 2004 the rise and fall of the environmental kuznets curve world development 32 8 1419 1439 noted that there are important econometric weaknesses in the earlier studies such as endogeneity heteroscedasticity omitted variables etc the purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the linkage between not only economic development and environmental quality but also financial development and institutional quality we employ the standard reduced form modelling approach to control for country specific unobserved heterogeneity and gmm estimation to control for endogeneity our study considers 24 transition economies and panel data for 1993 2004 our results support the ekc hypothesis while confirming the importance of both institutional quality and financial development for environmental performance we also found that financial liberalization may be harmful for environmental quality if it is not accomplished in a strong institutional framework

prospects of india s energy and emissions for a long time frame abstract for any nation sector wise forecasts of energy demand and emissions are becoming valuable elements in devising its national and international policies relating to energy security local environment and global climate change it is in this context that this work attempts to forecast india s possible energy demands and emissions adopting a key indicator approach on least cost generation expansion optimization methodology for a long time frame this study developed key indicators for useful energy demand for end use sectors such as industry commerce and residence key indicators for transport sector and non energy use sectors were developed on transport mobility demand and end use fuel demand the main drivers of these key indicators are socio economic parameters this work was conducted in a linear programmed lp times g5 model on times modeling framework for model horizon of 1990 2100 by the end of the 21st century india s energy demands are projected to be about 1825 mtoe of primary energy 1263 mtoe of final energy consumption 4840 twh of electricity generations 723 mtoe of energy import and 4414 mt of co2 emissions

gasoline prices and the used automobile market a rational expectations asset price approach this paper examines the impact of changes in gasoline price expectations on the market values of used automobiles an asset model of automobile valuation is used to relate year to year changes in market values to changes in the present discounted value of gasoline expenses econometric evidence from data covering the years 1972 through 1981 substantially confirms the hypothesis of the model that a gasoline price shock causes relative price changes across automobile types in proportion to the differences in their rates of fuel consumption

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

factors that influence transaction costs in development offsets who bears what and why abstract environmental policy instruments generate transaction costs to public and private parties there is a growing literature reporting on the size of transaction costs produced by environmental policy instruments this paper extends that literature through an analysis of the factors that influence transaction costs in environmental policy and how this influence occurs the theory based factors that influence transaction costs are categorised as 1 transaction characteristics 2 transactor characteristics 3 nature of the institutional environment and 4 nature of the institutional arrangements we examined how these factors influenced transaction costs through the analysis of two australian based development offset schemes with different policy designs we found evidence of all four theory based categories of influence in the policy case studies the degree of influence and how each factor influenced transaction costs varies across the two policies and between parties policy design as a component of the institutional environment had a particularly large bearing on transaction costs of offset buyers and the policy administrator an important contribution to transaction cost theory assumes the institutional environment as given

output fluctuations at the plant level this paper examines the short run dynamics of manufacturing costs by detailing how plants in the u s automobile industry change output weekly data show a variety of margins on which firms adjust production these margins which are distinct from the usual factor demand choices differ in their lumpiness their adjustment costs and their variable costs the existence of these margins explains several empirical puzzles of output fluctuations using a theory of the short run dynamic cost function we are able to infer some of the characteristics of the underlying cost function from the dynamic behavior of the different margins

the demand for cars and the price of gasoline the user cost approach the theory of the user cost of capital is used to estimate the demand for new and used cars in israel the results demonstrate that the price of operating costs must be included in the demand function they also show that the importance of gasoline price increases with engine size income elasticities are higher for new than for old cars and increase with engine size the inevitability of further increases in gasoline prices implies a further reduction in the average size of cars and a possible decline in the number of cars in the economy unless the trend is moderated by an acceleration in economic growth the future of the us auto industry will depend to a large extent on its ability to compete in the small and medium car markets 13 references 3 tables

transaction costs and tradeable permits abstract tradeable permit systems are at the center of current interest and activity in market based reforms of environmental policy because these systems can offer significant advantages over conventional approaches to pollution control unfortunately claims made for their relative cost effectiveness have often been exaggerated transaction costs which may be significant in these markets reduce trading levels and increase abatement costs in some cases equilibrium permit allocations and hence aggregate control costs are sensitive to initial permit distributions providing an efficiency justification for politicians typical focus on initial allocations

one discriminatory rent or double jeopardy multicomponent negotiation for new car purchases about half of new car transactions actually consist of two transactions one in which the customer buys a new car from a dealer and the other in which the customer sells his or her existing car to the dealer as a trade in at most dealerships both the price of the new car and the price of the trade in are negotiated in such negotiations as a general rule car dealers are willing to trade off profits made on the new car versus profits made on the trade in to an economist this suggests that the dealer may see the new car customer as the source of a certain amount of extractable profit one discriminatory rent that can be subdivided into two arbitrary buckets the new car margin and the trade in margin economic models of bargaining tend to use a similar paradigm modeling the amount of total economic surplus created by the transaction and supposing that each party will get a share of that surplus that is determined by the party s bargaining power it is usually recognized that there are multiple price mechanisms that could convey the same division of surplus to the two parties if this is indeed a good description of how new car negotiations unfold then an observer comparing a similar set of transactions should expect new car and trade in profit margins to be negatively correlated the better the deal the customer gets on a new car the less good the deal one should expect the customer to get on the trade in an alternative view of this multicomponent negotiation is that customers or dealers or competition and market structure

the effects of the corporate average fuel efficiency standards in the us this paper examines the effects of the corporate average fuel economy standards cafe on automobile sales prices and fuel consumption first a discrete choice model of automobile demand and a continuous model of vehicle utilization are estimated using micro data from the consumer expenditure survey for 1984 1990 next the demand side model is combined with a model of oligopoly and product differentiation on the supply side with these elements in place the effects of the cafe regulation are assessed through simulations and compared to the effects of alternative policy instruments such as an increase in gasoline tax

transaction costs collective action and adaptation in managing complex social ecological systems abstract with the escalating uncertainties and surprises faced in responding to environmental and natural resource challenges has come growing recognition of the need to manage such issues as social ecological systems and value the capacities that enable adaptation to these changes adaptations in environmental management often involve complex including wicked problems of collective action institutions introduced to reduce the transaction costs of solving these problems do not come for free a cost effectiveness framework designed to provide a comprehensive and logical structure for economic evaluation of path dependent institutional choices in this context and a procedure for boundedly rational empirical application of the framework are proposed and illustrated in this article including for the choice between water buy back and infrastructure upgrade programmes for accumulating the environmental water needed to sustain the ecosystems of australia s murray darling basin also outlined is a research strategy designed to help identify the heuristics needed for application of this procedure

methodological proposal for territorial distribution of the percentage reduction in gross inland energy consumption according to the eu energy policy strategic goal abstract a 20 reduction in the consumption of energy is one of the main goals of the european union s eu 20 20 20 energy strategy but the uniform application of this overall goal to all of the countries is neither fair nor equitable as it does not take into consideration the characteristics of the energy system in each member state this article therefore proposes a nonlinear distribution methodology with objective dynamic goals for reducing gross inland energy consumption according to the context and characteristics of each member state we hope it will open discussion on how these overall goals can be weighted then we analyse the situation of the energy indicators related to energy efficiency in the reference year 2005 used by the eu for reaching its goal of reducing the gross inland consumption by 20 by 2020 and its progress from 1996 to 2007 finally the methodology proposed is applied to the year 2020 on the nuts0 territorial level that is to members of the eu according to the eurostat nomenclature of territorial units for statistics nuts weighting is done based on energy intensity per capita gross inland consumption and per capita energy intensity in two scenarios the eu 15 and eu 27

the informational role of product trade ins for pricing durable goods this research theorizes that sellers of durable goods can utilize inferences about the buyer s willingness to pay based not only on her decision to trade in the old good but also on its characteristics we find empirical support for this theory using transaction data for new car purchases the results support the notion that dealers infer a higher willingness to pay and charge higher prices to consumers who trade in a used vehicle than to those who do not we also find that dealers charge even higher prices to those consumers who trade in used cars that are similar to the new one

influences of transaction costs in environmental policy abstract there is a growing literature reporting the extent of transaction costs for environmental policies however understanding why transaction costs occur and why they are small or large is also important for efficient policy selection and evaluation following an analysis of the organisational economics literature and reports of the extent of transaction costs for a number of environmental policies three key influences to transaction costs in environmental policies are identified these are the following 1 the characteristics of the transaction for the environmental good 2 the nature of the transactors and 3 the current institutional environment and arrangements these affect transaction costs to the government and all other parties influenced by a policy transaction costs occur due to actions of information collection and policy design policy enactment and establishment implementation and contracting administration and monitoring and enforcement an interrogation of transaction cost influences reveals that 1 the influence varies between parties and is affected by the actions and interactions of and between all parties to a policy 2 how transaction costs are experienced varies across time and 3 who experiences transaction costs depends on the policy itself future policy selection and refinement will benefit from empirical analysis of the causes of transaction costs

measuring total factor co2 emission performance and technology gaps using a non radial directional distance function a modified approach implementing the common but differentiated responsibilities principle for co2 mitigation requires an understanding of co2 emission performance and technology gaps in different countries this paper uses a meta frontier and non radial directional distance function to propose an alternative three stage approach to measure total factor co2 emission performance and technology gaps the first stage calculates the co2 emission performance of the group frontier the second stage uses these results to calculate the technology gap ratio the third stage integrates data from the first two stages to calculate co2 emission performance under the meta frontier this approach is easier to apply than other approaches in the literature and effectively avoids the phenomenon of the technology gap ratio being greater than unity the proposed approach can also decompose co2 emission performance loss into two categories management inefficiency and technical gaps to demonstrate the method an empirical analysis using data for 54 countries was conducted the study highlighted three main findings first upper middle income countries did not perform as well as high income countries and lower middle income countries second high income countries generally enjoy optimized production technology whereas the lower middle income countries generally had the lowest technological levels third both management inefficiency and technical gaps negatively impacted co2 emission performance but management inefficiency played a dominant role

evaluating the interplays among economic growth and energy consumption and co2 emission of china during 1990 2007 the interplays among economy and energy and environment have been widely concerned this paper put forward several indicators to quantify the relationships among economic growth and energy consumption and co2 emission as an example these indicators were applied to evaluate the comprehensive performances of china during 1990 2007 the results show that chinese people has been living a better life with chinese rapid economic growth but not synchronously in urban and rural areas non carbon energy resources share has increased however fossil energy resources have still acted as the main driver for chinese economic growth during this period technical progress has improved the fossil energy efficiency of chinese economic activity which leads to co2 emission per unit gdp and co2 emission per capita unit gdp dropping simultaneously however the two indicators annual decline rates become smaller and smaller which reflects that technical progress role is dropping and economic scale s effect is climbing people s survival has a rising contribution to co2 emission co2 emission per capita has increased which shows that economic scale has greater impact on co2 emission than technical progress does relatively speaking chinese development patterns have become more and more sustainable during this period finally based on the related issues being discussed some corresponding suggestions are put forward for chinese government to further coordinate the relationship among economic development and energy consumption and co2 emission the proposed indicators can form a set of useful tool for policy makers to promote the harmonious development of economy and energy and environment in different regions and countries

are consumers myopic evidence from new and used car purchases abstract we investigate whether car buyers are myopic about future fuel costs we estimate the effect of gasoline prices on short run equilibrium prices of cars of different fuel economies we then compare the implied changes in willingness to pay to the associated changes in expected future gasoline costs for cars of different fuel economies in order to calculate implicit discount rates using different assumptions about annual mileage survival rates and demand elasticities we calculate a range of implicit discount rates similar to the range of interest rates paid by car buyers who borrow we interpret this as showing little evidence of consumer myopia jel d12 h25 l11 l62 l71 l81

a cross sectional analysis of energy output correlation abstract the nature of the correlation between energy consumption and output is examined based on cross sectional data for 100 countries the bias in the correlation due to the use of nominal income and to the convention adopted in measuring non commercial energy consumption is analysed it is found that when real income is used and non commercial energy consumption measured in commercial energy replacement value the cross sectional energy elasticity increases rapidly from about unity for the low income developing countries to between 1 6 and 1 8 for the high income developing countries and declines marginally thereafter in the industrial country income range the results show certain disparity on energy output ratio across countries with higher income countries consuming disproportionately more energy per unit of real output

gospel or disaster an empirical study on the environmental influences of domestic investment in china abstract since the beginning of china s reform and opening up in late 1970s the contradiction between environmental quality and economic development has become increasingly acute as the main driving force of development china s fixed asset investment fai has grown rapidly in the meanwhile china s energy consumption surged and the environmental pressures mounted the surge in fai may have great influences on the environmental quality on the one hand the rapid increase in fai facilitated the development of the secondary industry especially energy and pollution intensive industries which brought about significant amount of energy related pollution on the other hand growing investment on environmental investment is expected to slow environmental deterioration moreover the environmental quality and domestic investment may have potential spatial correlations in this paper after fully accounting for the spatial dependence the relationship between domestic investment and environmental quality in china is quantitatively investigated using co2 and so2 as two representative pollutants the estimation results indicate that the spatial dependence indeed exists and total effects of fai on pollutant emissions are positive however there is no evidence that environmental protection investment had expected effects to effectively curb pollutant emissions in china

transaction costs in payment for environmental service contracts citation jeffrey m peterson craig m smith john c leatherman nathan p hendricks john a fox transaction costs in payment for environmental service contracts american journal of agricultural economics volume 97 issue 1 1 january 2015 pages 219 238 https doi org 10 1093 ajae aau071