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

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

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

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

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

partisan politics and fiscal policy does the partisan character of governing parties play a role in the formation of fiscal policy the conventional view is that the left tends toward excessive deficits whereas the right practices a more prudent fiscal policy however strong arguments have been advanced that whatever room existed previously for partisanship in fiscal policy making has been sharply reduced by developments in recent decades these issues are examined with a series of models that have been estimated using data from 14 organization for economic cooperation and development countries for the period from 1961 through 1991 the evidence suggests that the relationship between partisanship and fiscal policy is contingent on macroeconomic conditions the evidence also suggests that these differences have been reduced over recent decades

fiscal policy and the current account deficits and trade jose vinals does the balance of payments act as an external constraint on the design of domestic economic policy in practice most governments believe it does yet popular discussion is sometimes confused this paper begins by evaluating the nature of the external constraint and the extent to which it can adequately be measured by the current account of the balance of payments it is often argued that a fiscal expansion will increase employment it is also widely held that a fiscal expansion necessarily leads to a deterioration of the current account while these propositions may hold in specific circumstances neither is generally true the theoretical basis of the two propositions is examined and compared with recent international experience when important changes in fiscal stance occurred the popular presumptions are confirmed by recent experience in the us the uk and germany but france is a counterexample to the first and spain to the second the important policy implication is that one can identify both in theory and in practice clear circumstances in which expansionary fiscal policy is appropriate and will not be thwarted by external considerations

on the political economy of welfare expansion a comparative analysis of 18 advanced capitalist democracies 1960 1971 this article elaborates the thesis that economic growth and various types of collective action by class linked actors determine the expansion and decline of welfare spending in rich capitalist democracies our multivariate model of this thesis specified to 1960 1971 growth rates in direct cash transfer payments as proportions of gross domestic product is supported strongly by regression analyses these indicate that economic growth notably facilitates transfer payment growth they also suggest that rightist party participation in government notably dampens welfare expansion while leftist centrist and christian democratic party participation in government are conducive to welfare expansion and they suggest that the political influences of both unions and large industrial corporations are conducive to growth in transfers payments as well in addition state authorities appear to augment welfare spending in response to working class protests strike activity and capital investment disinvestment activ

fragmented government effects on fiscal policy new evidence most industrialized countries entered the 1980s with their public finances in disarray at the time persistent deficits pushed up public debt to gdpratios despite such similarities deficit spending varies substantially between countries and within countries over time recent theoretical and empirical research has considered how differences in political arrangements affecting national policy formation might explain variation in fiscal policies pursued using a panel of 22 oecd countries over the 1971 1996 period this paper extends previous literature on the effects of fragmented government on fiscal policy outcomes in various directions first we focus on data relating to central government instead of general government as all theories refer to central government second not only do we analyze the effect of size fragmentation of government we also examine government s position vis a vis parliament and government s political fragmentation we find evidence that more fragmented government defined in terms of the number of political parties in a coalition or the number of spending ministers have higher deficits there is also some evidence that governments that dispose of excess seats in parliament have lower deficits right wing governments appear to have been fiscally more responsible in the seventies political fragmentation does not affect government s budget deficit

political parties world demand and unemployment domestic and international sources of economic activity this article replicates and extends earlier work on the politics of macroeconomic policy by considering political effects on unemployment in 14 western industrial nations between 1960 and 1983 changes of party control of government display broadly the expected effects namely that unemployment falls under left wing governments and rises under right wing governments however the principal conclusions of this article are that partisan effects on unemployment in open economies that is economies heavily dependent on trade with other countries can only be satisfactorily estimated relative to the constraint imposed by the level of world economic activity and that in addition to politicians strategic incentives political institutions and economic regime constraints also determine whether partisan effects on unemployment will be sustained transitory or absent with respect to the latter on the whole no effects are found where no such effects were promised by the new government before taking office where one party or dominant partner coalitions form the effect on unemployment is transitory whereas where broad coalitions form it is sustained or absent finally ceteris paribus any partisan effects are more likely where governments secure parliamentary majorities

effects of government characteristics on fiscal deficits in 18 oecd countries 1961 1994 political economists studying industrialized countries have claimed that certain institutional characteristics of governments such as majority status the number of parties in government and stability affect levels of public deficits they have specifically argued that weak unstable governments produce higher deficits than strong stable ones the author tests the validity of such claims by examining empirical data from 18 organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries between 1961 and 1994 it is shown that evidence does not support the deficit prone weak governments thesis if anything there is some evidence to suggest that deficits are lower under what political economists call weak unstable governments such as minority governments coalition governments or less durable governments it is further shown that there is extremely limited evidence to support another line of argument that the strength stability of governments does not necessarily create deficits but does affec

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

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 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

political determinants of budget deficits coalition effects versus minority effects this paper reexamines some recent empirical evidence on the hypothesis that institutional arrangements in the political process affect budget deficits the results of roubini and sachs 1989b are replicated and sensitivity analysis indicate that their results are robust however the main conclusion of roubini and sachs that coalition governments are less capable of budgetary discipline needs to be modified a reformulation of their variable representing political cohesion reveals that it captures the effects of minority governments rather than majority coalition governments the data support the hypothesis that it is harder to negotiate in parliament than within a government

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

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

do the personal characteristics of finance ministers affect changes in public debt using a unique dataset of the personal characteristics of national finance ministers in western europe 1980 2010 i show that a finance minister s experience affects the national debt to gdp ratio the increase in the debt to gdp ratio is smaller if the finance minister stays in office for an additional year this result is robust to the inclusion of the personal characteristics of prime ministers and a measure of political stability however the magnitude of the effect is sensitive to how finance ministers are selected in the econometric model when more than one minister holds office during a particular year the estimation of interaction terms further reveals that experience particularly matters in election years or in times of negative gdp growth because an experienced finance minister has the power to restrict the usual increase in the debt to gdp ratio in contrast a finance minister s educational background and ideological leaning have no significant impact on the debt to gdp ratio

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

the weak government thesis some new evidence this paper presents new evidence on the hypothesis that coalition governments will find it more difficult to keep their budgets in line after an adverse economic shock than do one party majoritarian governments the estimates are based on a broad sample of oecd countries for the period 1979 1995 using various specifications as suggested in the literature we do not find evidence that the type of government affects cross country variation in fiscal policy however the number of political parties in government affects central government debt growth

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

can budget institutions counteract political indiscipline the budget is an expression of political rather than economic priorities we confirm this proposition for a group of new and potential members of the european union finding that politics dominates the contemporary practice of democracy can increase budget deficits through not only ideological preferences but also more fragmented government coalitions and higher voter participation long term structural forces triggered by societal divisions and representative electoral rules have more ambiguous implications but also appear to increase budget pressures as others have also found however our most robust and hopeful finding is that budget institutions mechanisms and rules of the budget process that create checks and balances have significant value in curbing fiscal pressures even when the politics is representative but undisciplined and when long term structural forces are unfavourable stefania fabrizio and ashoka mody

politics institutions and welfare spending in industrialized democracies 1960 82 electoral turnout as well as left and center governments increase welfare effort that the welfare efforts of governments led by particular types of parties show significant differences and vary notably with the strength of oppositional and junior coalitional parties and that relatively neocorporatist centralized and traditionalistic polities are high on welfare effort overall our findings suggest that contrary to many claims both partisan and nonpartisan facets of democratic politics and political institutions shape contemporary social welfare effort

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

current account and budget deficits twins or distant cousins the paper develops a two country micro theoretic model consistent with the ricardian equivalence hypothesis reh specifically tax increases used to retire government debt will not affect private spending or the current account balance however increases in government spending regard less of the means of finance can be expected to induce a current account deficit an unconstrained vector autoregres sion shows some patterns in the recent u s data which appear to be inconsistent with the reh rigorous testing of the model however does not allow us to reject the indepen dence of the record federal government budget and current account deficits

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

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

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

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 political economy of deficit spending in nine industrialized parliamentary democracies the role of fiscal institutions this article analyzes the influence of four sets of factors on deficit spending in 9 industrialized parliamentary democracies during 1958 1990 this article analyzes the influence of these factors and introduces and tests the importance of an additional potential influence on the size of a country s fiscal deficit the strength of fiscal bureaucracy it is argued that the stronger a country s fiscal bureaucracy the lower its deficit ceteris paribus empirically the authors find that the state of a nation s economy heavily affects its deficit little systematic relationship is found between the ideology of the ruling political party and a nation s deficit or between the political strength of the ruling party and deficits in contrast to the findings of roubini and sachs finally it is found that the strength of a country s fiscal bureaucracy is an important influence on the deficit in these 9 industrialized parliamentary democracies

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

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

coalition governments versus minority governments bargaining power cohesion and budgeting outcomes recent empirical work investigating the role of minoritygovernments in the selection of fiscal policies has shown thatthe majority status does not affect the budget size thispaper presents an analytical framework which accounts for thisresult it combines a government formation game and a budgetgame involving cabinet and parliament a general indifferenceresult applies an exogenous shock to the bargaininigenvironment which absorbes the cohesion of the governmentincreases the demand for expenditures at the same time theconditions for the formation of a minority government arefulfilled if the formateur is strong a minority governmentcan be a device for cutting expenditures

politics and business cycles in industrial democracies politics alberto alesina influences from political competition on macroeconomic policy are often thought to be a source of economic fluctuations politicians are described as being driven by two not mutually exclusive main motivations they want to be reelected and they harbour political or ideological biases when such theories are confronted with actual cycles in a number of industrial countries the pattern of inflation unemployment output and budget deficits indicates that partisan policy making is a fairly widespread phenomenon with more limited evidence that electoral preoccupations result in major fluctuations the combination of partisanship and electoral cycles may easily result in socially undesirable outcomes in particular the degree of politico institutional stability and the independence of the central bank have a bearing on macroeconomic outcomes these observations raise a number of important questions about the design of political institutions

political and monetary institutions and public financial policies in the industrial countries institutions and policies vittorio grilli donato masciandaro and guido tabellini why do countries as similar as the industrialized oecd countries go through such different experience in terms of public deficits and debts or in terms of inflation the answer cannot come from macroeconomic policy responses to different disturbances nor from the principles of optimal taxation but rather from politics this article focuses on the role that particular institutions exert in providing constraints and incentives which shape the actions of policymakers the electoral process and political traditions affect the ability of governments to deal with deficits and mounting debts what seems to matter most it is found is the effect of the durability of governments governments with short horizons act myopically and never quite tackle the hard choices such governments typically exist in countries with an electoral system favouring many small political parties central bank independence promotes low inflation with no apparent costs in terms of real economic performance irrespective of the political institutions in fact there is no link between monetary and fiscal discipline these findings carry powerful implications for countries facing high indebtedness or stubborn inflation but also for the construction of the european economic and monetary union

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 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

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

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

searching for leviathan an empirical study in several papers and a recent book geoffrey brennan and james buchanan 1977 1978 1980 have put forth a striking and controversial view of the public sector drawing by analogy on the conventional theory of monopoly in the private sector they envision a monolithic government that systematically seeks to exploit its citizenry through the maximization of the tax revenues that it extracts from the economy from this perspective they develop a fiscal constitution whose central purpose is to constrain leviathan by limiting in various ways its access to tax and other fiscal instruments while the leviathan hypothesis has been the source of lively debate and a wide range of policy proposals it has not been the subject of much systematic empirical work or testing this is a matter of some importance since the policy implications of the leviathan view are disturbing to put it mildly in particular brennan and buchanan virtually stand on their heads many of the basic theorems in public finance for an efficient and equitable tax system if in fact the leviathan view is an inaccurate depiction of the functioning of the public sector the introduction of their policy proposals is likely to make a sorry mess of the fiscal system the leviathan model does however have some straightforward implications for observable fiscal behavior it is the purpose of this paper to examine one of these testable implications brennan and buchanan stress that fiscal decentralization is itself a powerful constraint on leviathan competition among governments in the context of the interjurisdictional mobility of persons in pursuit of fiscal gains can offer partial or possibly complete substitutes for explicit fiscal constraints on the taxing power 1980 p 184 such competition among governments in a federal system that places heavy reliance on local fiscal decisions will greatly limit the capacity of leviathan to channel resources into the public sector in short as indicated by the epigraph to this paper the leviathan model implies that other things equal the size of the public sector should vary inversely with the extent of fiscal decentralization 2

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