electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa a trivariate causality test abstract in this paper we examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa we incorporate the employment rate as an intermittent variable in the bivariate model between electricity consumption and economic growth thereby creating a simple trivariate causality framework our empirical results show that there is a distinct bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa in addition the results show that employment in south africa granger causes economic growth the results apply irrespective of whether the causality is estimated in the short run or in the long run formulation the study therefore recommends that policies geared towards the expansion of the electricity infrastructure should be intensified in south africa in order to cope with the increasing demand exerted by the country s strong economic growth and rapid industrialisation programme this will certainly enable the country to avoid unprecedented power outages similar to those experienced in the country in mid january 2008

any non welfarist method of policy assessment violates the pareto principle reply the public at large many policymakers and a number of economists hold views of social welfare that are non welfarist that is they attach some importance to factors other than the effects of policies on individuals utilities we show however that any non welfarist method of policy assessment violates the pareto principle

revealed social preferences of dutch political parties we measure the redistributive preferences of dutch political parties using unique detailed information from their election proposals by employing the inverse optimal tax method we calculate the political weights across the income distribution for each political party we find that all dutch political parties give a higher political weight to middle incomes than to the poor moreover the political weights of the rich are close to zero furthermore we detect a strong political status quo bias as the political weights of all political parties hardly deviate from the weights implied by the pre existing tax system we argue that political economy considerations are key in understanding these results

risk perceptions and distributional judgments abstract we examine the role of laboratory questionnaire experiments and recent applied empirical research on attitudes in understanding the relationships between people s perceptions of inequality and their perceptions of risk we consider risk in three interpretations in vacuo in day to day life and in the original position

electricity consumption and economic growth nexus in bangladesh revisited evidences abstract in this paper an attempt is being made to examine the causal relationship between per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp of bangladesh using the vector error correction specified granger causality test to search their short run long run and joint causal relationships for the period of 1971 2008 empirical findings reveal that there is a short run unidirectional causal flow running from per capita electricity consumption to per capita gdp without feedback the presence of a positive short run causality explains that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic activity in bangladesh likewise results from joint causality exhibit the same as in short run by contrast long run results show a bi directional causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth with feedback these findings can provide essential policy insights to design immediate and long term growth prospect for bangladesh keeping in mind its present planned growth strategy and dismal power and energy sector

popular acceptance of inequality due to innate brute luck and support for classical benefit based taxation abstract u s survey respondents views on distributive justice differ in two specific related ways from what is conventionally assumed in modern optimal tax research when expressing their preferences over allocations in stylized hypothetical scenarios meant to isolate key features of the tax problem a large share of respondents resist the full equalization of unequal outcomes due to innate brute luck that standard analyses recommend a similar share prefer a classical benefit based logic for taxes over the conventional logic of diminishing marginal social welfare moreover these two views are linked respondents who more strongly resist equalization are more likely to prefer the classical benefit based principle though the amazon mechanical turk survey population is not a representative sample of the u s population robustness of these results across demographic traits and political views suggests that a large share of the american public holds views inconsistent with standard welfarist objectives

on the principle of equal sacrifice in income taxation abstract in an influential article by young journal of economic theory 1988 44 321 335 it is shown that the traditional equal sacrifice principles in taxation can be justified from a non utilitarian perspective by proving that equal sacrifice is in fact a consequence of more primitive concepts of distributive justice this result is obtained in a distribution theoretic setting where total revenue to be raised is fixed the present paper studies the same question in a setting where the basic problem is to determine a tax function without any reference to the total tax revenue a setting which is familiar from the theory of progressive taxation and shows that i there exists a utility function which is continuous and strictly increasing relative to which all agents sacrifice equally if and only if the tax function is incentive preserving and ii any convex hence progressive and incentive preserving tax function equalizes sacrifice relative to a utility function which is continuous strictly increasing and concave

electricity consumption and economic growth in algeria a multivariate causality analysis in the presence of structural change this article addresses the issue of electricity consumption petroleum price and economic growth in algeria the primary objective is to investigate and analyze the causal relationship between electricity consumption ec brent oil price bop and economic growth gdp for algeria over the period of 1971 2010 to examine short run long run and joint causality relationships we used a multivariate cointegration approach based on the recent advances in time series econometrics e g zivot andrews test gregory hansen cointegration test vector error correction models vecm the empirical results show that there is evidence of short run and a strong long run bi directional causal relationship between ec and real gdp in algeria findings indicate also the absence of causal relationship between bop and ec our empirical findings support the idea that there a link between electricity consumption and economic growth and disproves the neo classical assumption referred to as the neutrality hypothesis

a dynamic panel study of economic development and the electricity consumption growth nexus abstract this study examines the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth for 88 countries categorized into four panels based on the world bank income classification high upper middle lower middle and low income within a multivariate panel framework over the period 1990 2006 the larsson et al 2001 panel cointegration test indicates there is a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp coal consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force for the high upper middle and lower middle income country panels the results from the panel vector error correction models reveal 1 bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run for the high income and upper middle income country panels 2 unidirectional causality from electricity consumption to economic growth in the short run but bidirectional causality in the long run for the lower middle income country panel and 3 unidirectional causality from electricity consumption to economic growth for the low income country panel

positive and normative judgments implicit in u s tax policy and the costs of unequal growth and recessions calculating the welfare implications of changes to economic policy or shocks requires economists to decide on a normative criterion one approach is to elicit the relevant moral criteria from real world policy choices converting a normative decision into a positive inference as in the recent surge of inverse optimum research we find that capitalizing on the potential of this approach is not as straightforward as we might hope we perform the inverse optimum inference on u s tax policy from 1979 through 2010 and argue that the results either undermine the normative relevance of the approach or challenge conventional assumptions upon which economists routinely rely when performing welfare evaluations

economic growth and electricity consumption in cote d ivoire evidence from time series analysis this paper examines the causal relationship between the electric power industry and the economic growth of cote d ivoire using the data from 1971 to 2008 a test was conducted for the cointegration and granger causality within an error correction model results from these tests reveal a bidirectional causality between per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp a unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to industry value added appears in the short run economic growth is found to have great effects on electricity consumption and a reverse causality from electricity to economic growth may also appear in the long run there is a unidirectional causality between electricity and both gdp and industry value added from these findings we conclude that the country will be energy dependent in the long run and must therefore secure the production network from shortfalls to ensure a sustainable development path accordingly government should adopt policies aimed at increasing the investment in the sector by stepping up electricity production from existing and new energy sources

the relationship between economic growth and electricity consumption from renewable and non renewable sources a study of turkey abstract the main objective of this study is to analyze the short and long run estimates as well as the causality relationships between economic growth gr electricity consumption from renewable sources relc and electricity consumption from non renewable sources nrelc for turkey in a multivariate model wherein capital k and labor l are included as additional variables using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach to cointegration the johansen cointegration test and the gregory hansen cointegration test with structural break we show that gr relc nrelc k and l are cointegrated although nrelc has a long run positive effect on gr the long run estimate of relc is negative but insignificant at 5 level of significance the granger causality test based on the vector error correction model reveals the evidence of neutrality hypothesis between relc and gr and between nrelc and gr in turkey in the short run in addition the granger causality runs from relc nrelc k and l to gr as well as from gr relc k and l to nrelc in the long run which supports the existence of growth hypothesis between relc and gr and feedback hypothesis between nrelc and gr in the long run it is advised that policy makers in the turkish government should continue to reduce the share of electricity consumption from renewable sources and encourage the usage of electricity from non renewable sources to have sustainable long run growth rates it is also essential to promote the investment projects to increase the efficiency of electricity generation from non renewable sources

on the causal dynamics between emissions nuclear energy renewable energy and economic growth this paper examines the causal relationship between co2 emissions nuclear energy consumption renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a group of 19 developed and developing countries for the period 1984 2007 using a panel error correction model the long run estimates indicate that there is a statistically significant negative association between nuclear energy consumption and emissions but a statistically significant positive relationship between emissions and renewable energy consumption the results from the panel granger causality tests suggest that in the short run nuclear energy consumption plays an important role in reducing co2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption does not contribute to reductions in emissions this may be due to the lack of adequate storage technology to overcome intermittent supply problems as a result electricity producers have to rely on emission generating energy sources to meet peak load demand

using elasticities to derive optimal income tax rates this paper derives optimal income tax formulas using compensated and uncompensated elasticities of earnings with respect to tax rates a simple formula for the high income optimal tax rate is obtained as a function of these elasticities and the thickness of the top tail of the income distribution in the general non linear income tax problem this method using elasticities shows precisely how the different economic effects come into play and which are the key relevant parameters in the optimal income tax formulas of mirrlees the optimal non linear tax rate formulas are expressed in terms of elasticities and the shape of the income distribution these formulas are implemented numerically using empirical earning distributions and a range of realistic elasticity parameters

progressive taxation and the equal sacrifice principle abstract a classical problem in public finance is when does equal sacrifice imply progressive taxation suppose that a tax schedule imposes equal sacrifice on all taxpayers in loss of utility and that this property is preserved under re indexing of the schedule then the utility function must exhibit constant relative risk aversion i e it must be logarithmic or a power function if equal sacrifice relative to such a utility function holds for all taxable incomes and if tax rates do not exceed 100 percent then the degree of relative risk aversion must be at least unity and the tax must be nonregressive

phasing the operation mode of foreign subsidiaries reaping the benefits of multinationality through internal capital markets the lifetime of foreign equity partnerships is often limited research suggests that mncs abandon their local partners when the need for sharing ownership in foreign subsidiaries has diminished this study shows that mncs may abandon their local equity partners to reap the benefits of multinationality as mncs gain a competitive advantage from leveraging resources across borders they will initially benefit from sharing ownership with a local firm to embed their foreign subsidiaries in the local environment and access local resources more effectively later they will benefit from taking over the local partner s equity share to better embed their subsidiaries in the parent organization and transfer locally accessed resources to the mnc s other locations moderated mediation regressions provide evidence of such practice in the context of cross border transfers of capital resources this strategy seems to work as a corollary of our model panel regressions suggest that sharing ownership with local firms in a host country with a capital resource advantage is associated with appropriating more capital resources from the local debt market while abandoning these partner firms later is associated with transferring more capital resources from this host country via internal capital markets to other parts of the mnc

electricity consumption and economic growth nexus in portugal using cointegration and causality approaches the aim of this paper is to re examine the relationship between electricity consumption economic growth and employment in portugal using the cointegration and granger causality frameworks this study covers the sample period from 1971 to 2009 we examine the presence of a long run equilibrium relationship using the bounds testing approach to cointegration within the unrestricted error correction model uecm moreover we examine the direction of causality between electricity consumption economic growth and employment in portugal using the granger causality test within the vector error correction model vecm as a summary of the empirical findings we find that electricity consumption economic growth and employment in portugal are cointegrated and there is bi directional granger causality between the three variables in the long run with the exception of the granger causality between electricity consumption and economic growth the rest of the variables are also bi directional granger causality in the short run furthermore we find that there is unidirectional granger causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption but no evidence of reversal causality

optimal embodied energy abatement strategy for beijing economy based on a three scale input output analysis abstract energy strategies in china s 11th and 12thzfive year plan failed to reduce the total energy consumption and misled the implementation of energy saving measures as they were focused towards the direct energy input as well as formulated based on incomplete energy consumption information therefore an optimal energy abatement strategy built on comprehensive information on overall embodied energy consumption is in urgent need adopting the three scale input output analysis this study uses beijing as a case to depict a specific urban economy s overall energy consumption impacted by local direct energy use domestic and foreign trade the results show that energy embodied in domestic trade dominated beijing s energy consumption while local direct energy is accounting for less than 1 3 of beijing s total embodied energy consumption the quantity of energy embodied in imports far exceeds that embodied in exports making the city a net embodied energy importer and indicating that policies considering direct energy use only will cause energy leakage problem these findings suggest that the current measures such as displacing energy intensive sectors to other regions lead to local reduction but overall rise moreover analysis for five abatement scenarios average intensity share absolute share discriminatory absolute and discriminatory intensity was carried out to figure out the optimal abatement strategy for beijing due to less loss of potential output it is found that intensity share scenario is the optimal one among all the scenarios concerned analysis in this study suggests that each region should break limits of self centered perceptions and multi scale governance for more appropriate responsibility assignment is recommended for overall energy abatement

effects of financial development economic growth and trade on electricity consumption evidence from post fukushima japan abstract this study examines the long run and short run effects of financial development economic growth export imports and capital on the japanese energy predicaments as a result of the foregoing energy crisis in the country to ensure a robust outcome the study applied the extended cobb douglas production function and used time series data from 1970 to 2012 following to this structural break unit root test ardl bounds test approach to cointegration and the johansen cointegration test were applied in addition the vecm granger causality framework was used in determining the causal relationship between the variables the findings of the study establish that in the long run a 1 rise in financial development economic growth exports and imports in japan will exert a significant pressure on the japanese electricity consumption by 0 2429 0 5040 0 0921 and 0 2193 respectively however capital was found to decline energy consumption in all material respect in the short run the study discovered how a 1 rise in the dynamics of financial development economic growth exports and imports to add to the japanese electricity predicaments by 0 2210 0 5840 0 0521 and 0 2031 respectively the existence of the feedback relationship between most of the variables was discovered while economic growth exports imports and trade openness were found to granger cause electricity consumption the study advocates the adoption of massive but competitive renewable energy system in japan how it should be done and why it should be done are carefully set by this study

optimal incentives for labor force participation abstract optimal taxation is analyzed under a rawlsian criterion in an economy where the only decision of the agents is to participate or not to the labor force the model allows for heterogeneity both in the agent s productivities and aversions to work at a first best optimal schedule the marginal agent who decides to work pockets all of her productivity while being just compensated for her work aversion when the planner does not observe work aversion financial compensation for work is lower than productivity theory puts little restrictions on the shape of the optimal tax schedules the usual first order conditions involving the elasticities of participation only apply for sufficiently regular economies we qualitatively show how the optimal incentive schemes depend on the underlying structure of the preferences 100 marginal tax rates or subsidies to work are related to specific features of the economies

inconsistency of economic growth and electricity consumption in china a panel var approach abstract china has the largest electricity system in the world which is undergoing a critical market reform based on the panel data in 2000 to 2016 of china this paper tries to explain theinconsistency between electricity consumption and economic growth for example in 2015 gdp growth rate was close to 6 9 but with only 2 9 growth in electricity consumption however in 2018 a 6 6 growth in gdp required an 8 5 electricity growth the results explain the reasons for inconsistency and identify the key factors we find that the increase in inventory fixed capital and industrial electricity consumption will narrow the gap when economy grows faster than electricity consumption and widen the gap on the contrary heterogeneity exists among regions the model and variables seem most convincing in explaining the situation in the western region which is most similar to the full sample of china feedback effect is also observed between electricity consumption and economic growth in most parts of china by granger test the findings provides suggestions for the policy makers in making power planning in an effort to avoid large power shortage or surplus

electricity consumption and economic growth a time series experience for 17 african countries abstract while the availability of electricity by itself is not a panacea for the economic and social problems facing africa the supply of electricity is nevertheless believed to be a necessary requirement for africa s economic and social development this paper tests the long run and causal relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 17 african countries for the period 1971 2001 using a newly developed cointegration test proposed by pesaran et al 2001 and using a modified version of the granger causality test due to toda and yamamoto 1995 the advantage of using these two approaches is that they both avoid the pre testing bias associated with conventional unit root and cointegration tests the empirical evidence shows that there was a long run relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gdp per capita for only 9 countries and granger causality for only 12 countries for 6 countries there was a positive uni directional causality running from real gdp per capita to electricity consumption per capita an opposite causality for 3 countries and bi directional causality for the remaining 3 countries the result should however be interpreted with care as electricity consumption accounts for less than 4 of total energy consumption in africa and only grid supplied electricity is taken into account

the antidirector rights index revisited the antidirector rights index has been used as a measure of shareholder protection in over a hundred articles since it was introduced by la porta et al law and finance 1998 journal of political economy 106 1113 55 a thorough reexamination of the legal data however leads to corrections for thirty three of the forty six countries analyzed the correlation between corrected and original values is only 0 53 consequently many empirical results established using the original index may not be replicable with corrected values in particular the corrected index fails to support three widely influential claims that shareholder protection is higher in common than in civil law countries that shareholder protection predicts stock market size or ownership dispersion and that weak corporate governance explains the extent of exchange rate depreciation during the asian financial crisis of 1997 1998 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

the nexus of electricity consumption economic growth and co2 emissions in the brics countries abstract this study reexamines the causal link between electricity consumption economic growth and co 2 emissions in the brics countries i e brazil russia india china and south africa for the period 1990 2010 using panel causality analysis accounting for dependency and heterogeneity across countries regarding the electricity gdp nexus the empirical results support evidence on the feedback hypothesis for russia and the conservation hypothesis for south africa however a neutrality hypothesis holds for brazil india and china indicating neither electricity consumption nor economic growth is sensitive to each other in these three countries regarding the gdp co 2 emissions nexus a feedback hypothesis for russia a one way granger causality running from gdp to co 2 emissions in south africa and reverse relationship from co 2 emissions to gdp in brazil is found there is no evidence of granger causality between gdp and co 2 emissions in india and china furthermore electricity consumption is found to granger cause co 2 emissions in india while there is no granger causality between electricity consumption and co 2 emissions in brazil russia china and south africa therefore the differing results for the brics countries imply that policies cannot be uniformly implemented as they will have different effects in each of the brics countries under study

a theory of optimal inheritance taxation this paper derives optimal inheritance tax formulas that a capture the key equityeciency trade o b are expressed in terms of estimable sucient statistics c are robust to the underlying structure of preferences we consider dynamic stochastic models with general and heterogeneous bequest tastes and labor productivities we limit ourselves to simple but realistic linear or two bracket tax structures to obtain tractable formulas we show that long run optimal inheritance tax rates can always be expressed in terms of distributional parameters aggregate behavioral elasticities and social preferences for redistribution importantly those results carry over with tractable modications to a the case with social discounting instead of steady state welfare maximization b the case with partly accidental bequests c the standard barro becker dynastic model in all cases the optimal inheritance tax rate increases with the concentration of bequest received and decreases with the elasticity of aggregate bequests to the net of tax rate the optimal tax rate is positive and quantitatively large if concentration is high the elasticity is low and society cares mostly about those receiving little inheritance in contrast the optimal tax rate is negative when society cares mostly about inheritors we propose a calibration using micro data for france and the united states we nd that for realistic parameters

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from the economic community of west african states ecowas access to modern energy is believed to be a prerequisite for sustainable development poverty alleviation and the achievement of the millennium development goals however theoretical models and empirical results offer conflicting evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth that we remain largely unsure of the cause and effect nature of this relationship if indeed a relationship exists at all this paper tests in a panel context the long run relationship between energy access and economic growth for fifteen african countries from 1980 to 2008 by using recently developed panel cointegration techniques we adopt a three stage approach consisting of panel unit root panel cointegration and granger causality tests to study the dynamic causal relationships between energy consumption energy prices and growth as well as relationship between electricity consumption prices and growth results show that gdp and energy consumption as well as gdp and electricity move together in the long run by estimating these long run relationships and testing for causality using panel based error correction models we found unidirectional long run and short run causality the causality is running from gdp to energy consumption in the short run and from energy consumption to gdp in the long run there is also evidence of unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to gdp in the long run this study thus provides empirical evidence of long run and causal relationships between energy consumption and economic growth for our sample of fifteen countries suggesting that lack or limited access to modern energy services could hamper economic growth and compromise the development prospects of these countries

the value of tax progressivity evidence from survey experiments abstract the aim of this paper is to investigate how people value tax progressivity more precisely i study the potential trade off between any improvement in the final income distribution and the progressivity of the tax schedule to do this i designed survey experiments in which respondents were asked to rank or to choose between different taxation redistribution schemes with different treatments varying in terms of information availability 1 when only information about final incomes is provided and 2 when information about average tax rates is also available using a within subject design the instability of rankings between 1 and 2 indicates whether or not respondents value tax progressivity i find that information about tax rates significantly affects respondents judgments about tax schemes they exhibit a strong preference for tax progressivity i e they accept a fall in the quality of the final income distribution in exchange for progressive taxation the results of an additional treatment suggest that the mere fact of providing new information cannot account for this finding

market demand for conservative analysts abstract sell side analysts on balance have incentives to emphasize good company news and downplay the bad resulting in inefficient forecasts we conjecture that this behavior generates a demand for forecasts from conservative analysts who unwind this pattern at least in part resulting in more efficient forecasts to investigate we introduce a measure of analyst conservatism and assess the market reaction to analysts forecast revisions conditioned on their past levels of conservatism we find a stronger market reaction to forecast revisions by more conservative analysts and that this result is heightened for companies with greater institutional investor following

social mobility and redistributive politics just like economists voters have conflicting views about redistributive taxation because they estimate its incentive costs differently we model rational agents as trying to learn from their dynastic income mobility experience the relative importance of effort and predetermined factors in the generation of income inequality and therefore the magnitude of these incentive costs in the long run left wing dynasties believing less in individual effort and voting for more redistribution coexist with right wing dynasties this allows us to explain why individual mobility experience and not only current income matters for political attiitudes and how persistent differences in perceptions about social mobility can generate persistent differences in redistribution across countries

the marginal cost of public funds hours of work versus labor force participation this paper extends the theory and measurement of the marginal cost of public funds mcf to account for labor force participation responses our work is motivated by the emerging consensus in the empirical literature that extensive participation responses are more important than intensive hours of work responses in the modelling of extensive responses we argue that it is crucial to account for the presence of non convexities created by fixed work costs in a non convex framework tax and transfer reforms give rise to discrete participation responses generating first order effects on government revenue these revenue effects make the marginal cost of funds higher and we show numerically that the implications for mcf tend to be substantial

moody s and s p ratings are they equivalent conservative ratings and split rated bond yields we examine the relative impact of moody s and s p ratings on bond yields and find that at issuance yields on split rated bonds with superior moody s ratings are about 8 basis points lower than yields on split rated bonds with superior s p ratings this suggests that investors differentiate between the two ratings and assign more weight to the ratings from moody s the more conservative rating agency moody s becomes more conservative after 1998 and the impact of a superior moody s rating becomes stronger furthermore the differential impact of the two ratings is more pronounced for the more opaque rule 144a issues

understanding welfare stigma taxpayer resentment and statistical discrimination abstract welfare stigma is widely regarded to be of central importance in understanding the impact of welfare programs in their goal of alleviating poverty it affects both the decision to take up benefits and the well being of those who actually do this paper develops alternative models of the determinants of welfare stigma we identify two views a statistical discrimination approach and a taxpayer resentment view we discuss how each may be formalized and derive their implications we then examine what they imply about the relationship between stigma and program design

optimal non linear income taxation for the alleviation of income poverty there has been much discussion recently of structuring tax and transfer programs to ensure that resources go to the poor with minimal leaks to the nonpoor the poor have no incentive to earn income with 100 percent marginal tax rates but how high or low the marginal rate of taxation should be and how they should vary with income is a complex issue and opinions vary social security schemes that withdraw benefits represent an extremely high effective marginal tax rate other schemes call for relatively low marginal tax rates at the bottom of the income distribution which tax transfer schedule does most to reduce poverty the issue is one of optimal nonlinear income taxation the authors show that one of the key theoretical results of the welfarist literature is overturned if it is desirable for everybody to work the optimal marginal tax rate on the very poorest individuals is strictly negative they argue that the nonwelfarist perspective points toward lower marginal tax rates in the lower part of the income distribution than does the welfarist perspective but numerical simulations suggest that the effect is of limited quantitative significance using conventional functional forms and parameter values optimal marginal tax rates on the poor are in the 60 70 percent range

equal sacrifice and incentive compatible income taxation abstract the concepts of equal sacrifice and incentive compatibility in income taxation have been of interest to economists for some time here we attempt to integrate the two literatures in a model that offers a labor leisure choice to consumers while imposing an equal relative or absolute sacrifice tax system the main result is that equal sacrifice incentive compatible income tax systems generally exist and are locally unique examples are presented where this tax system is easy to compute comparative statics are calculated finally some remarks about the welfare properties of these tax systems are made

the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates a critical review this paper critically surveys the large and growing literature estimating the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates using tax return data first we provide a theoretical framework showing under what assumptions this elasticity can be used as a sufficient statistic for efficiency and optimal tax analysis we discuss what other parameters should be estimated when the elasticity is not a sufficient statistic second we discuss conceptually the key issues that arise in the empirical estimation of the elasticity of taxable income using the example of the 1993 top individual income tax rate increase in the united states to illustrate those issues third we provide a critical discussion of selected empirical analyses of the elasticity of taxable income in light of the theoretical and empirical framework we laid out finally we discuss avenues for future research jel h24 h31 j22

a new measure of horizontal equity in this paper we propose a new measure of horizontal equity that overcomes many of the shortcomings of previous proposed measures our starting point is the observation that a well behaved social welfare function need not evaluate global vertical equity differences in after tax income using the same weights it applies to local horizontal equity differences even though this constraint has been applied in the past following work on the structure of individual preferences we show that a social welfare function can imply different preferences toward horizontal and vertical equity adopting the general approach to the measurement of inequality developed by atkinson 1970 we use such a social welfare function to derive measures of inequality that are decomposable into components naturally interpreted as indices of horizontal and vertical equity in particular the former index measures deviations from the fundamental principle that equals be treated equally finally we apply our new measure to two tax return data sets evaluating the degree to which the horizontal equity of the us personal income tax has changed over time and how horizontal equity would be altered by one version of recent proposals to do away with the so called marriage penalty this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

distributive justice in taxation abstract a classical criterion for apportioning taxes is that all should sacrifice equally in loss of utility suppose that a method of apportioning taxes is continuous and has the following four properties i the way that taxpayers split a given tax total depends only on their own taxable incomes ii an increase in the tax total implies that everyone pays more iii every incremental increase in tax is apportioned according to taxpayers current after tax incomes iv the ordering of taxpayers by pre tax income and after tax income is the same then there exists a utility function relative to which all sacrifice equally

home bias foreign mutual fund holdings and the voluntary adoption of international accounting standards we test the assertion that a consequence of voluntarily adopting international accounting standards ias is the enhanced ability to attract foreign capital using a unique database that reports firm level holdings of over 25 000 mutual funds from around the world our multivariate tests find that average foreign mutual fund ownership is significantly higher among ias adopters we also find that ias adopters in poorer information environments and with lower visibility have higher levels of foreign investment consistent with firms using ias adoption to provide more information and or information in a more familiar form to foreign investors taken together our findings are consistent with voluntary las adoption reducing home bias among foreign investors and thereby improving capital allocation efficiency

linear and nonlinear causality between sectoral electricity consumption and economic growth evidence from taiwan this study investigates the linear and nonlinear causality between the total electricity consumption tec and real gross domestic production rgdp unlike previous literature we solve the undetermined relation between rgdp and electricity consumption by classifying tec into industrial sector consumption isc and residential sector consumption rsc as well as investigating how tec isc and rsc influence taiwan s rgdp by using the granger s linear causality test it is shown that i there is a bidirectional causality among tec isc and rgdp but a neutrality between rsc and rgdp with regard to the linear causality and ii there is still a bidirectional causality between tec and rgdp but a unidirectional causality between rsc and rgdp with regard to the nonlinear causality on the basis of i and ii we suggest that the electricity policy formulators loosen the restriction on isc and limit rsc in order to achieve the goal of economic growth

energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth nexus in bangladesh cointegration and dynamic causality analysis abstract the paper investigates the possible existence of dynamic causality between energy consumption electricity consumption carbon emissions and economic growth in bangladesh first we have tested cointegration relationships using the johansen bi variate cointegration model this is complemented with an analysis of an auto regressive distributed lag model to examine the results robustness then the granger short run the long run and strong causality are tested with a vector error correction modelling framework the results indicate that uni directional causality exists from energy consumption to economic growth both in the short and the long run while a bi directional long run causality exists between electricity consumption and economic growth but no causal relationship exists in short run the strong causality results indicate bi directional causality for both the cases a uni directional causality runs from energy consumption to co 2 emission for the short run but feedback causality exists in the long run co 2 granger causes economic growth both in the short and in the long run an important policy implication is that energy electricity as well can be considered as an important factor for the economic growth in bangladesh moreover as higher energy consumption also means higher pollution in the long run policy makers should stimulate alternative energy sources for meeting up the increasing energy demand

cointegration and causality between electricity consumption and gdp empirical evidence from malawi abstract the granger causality gc and error correction ecm techniques were applied on 1970 1999 data for malawi to examine cointegration and causality between electricity consumption kwh and respectively overall gdp agricultural gdp agdp and non agricultural gdp ngdp cointegration was established between kwh and respectively gdp and ngdp but not with agdp the gc results detect bi directional causality between kwh and gdp suggesting that kwh and gdp are jointly determined but one way causality running from ngdp to kwh the ecm results detect causality running one way from gdp also from ngdp to kwh suggesting that a permanent rise in gdp may cause a permanent growth in electricity consumption

re investigating the electricity consumption and economic growth nexus in portugal in the previous decades a number of studies have been conducted to analyse the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in the portuguese economy however the evidence remains controversial because the previous studies do not provide clear causality evidence this might be attributed to the omitted variables bias because most previous studies only focus on the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in a bi variate model this paper attempts to re investigate the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in portugal using a multivariate model based on the bounds testing approach to cointegration and the granger causality test within the vector error correction model vecm our empirical results confirm the presence of cointegration among the variables moreover there is evidence of bi directional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in the short and long run this suggests that energy is an important source of economic growth in portugal therefore energy conservation policies should not be implemented because it would deteriorate the process of economic growth and development of the portuguese economy

electricity consumption and economic growth evidence from turkey abstract this study investigates the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp in turkey during the period of 1950 2000 both of the series were found to be a stationary process around a structural break by the zivot and andrews test thus two different methodologies have been employed to test the granger non causality the dolado lutkepohl test using the vars in levels and the standard granger causality test using the detrended data both tests have yielded a strong evidence for unidirectional causality running from the electricity consumption to the income this implies that the supply of electricity is vitally important to meet the growing electricity consumption hence to sustain the economic growth in turkey

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from cameroon abstract the aim of this paper is to study the nature of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in cameroon through a three step approach i study the stationarity of the chronic ii test of causality between variables and iii estimate the appropriate model the study concludes in a non stationarity of the series using the data in first difference the granger causality test yields a strong evidence for unidirectional causality running from oil to gdp cointegration tests also show that these two series are co integrated and the error correction model ecm reveals that every percentage increase in oil products consumption increases economic growth by around 1 1 this result confirms the intuition that an economic policy aimed at improving energy supply will necessarily have a positive impact on economic growth on the other side a lack of energy is a major bottleneck for further economic development in cameroon

the declining credit quality of u s corporate debt myth or reality in recent years the number of downgrades in corporate bond ratings has exceeded the number of upgrades leading some to conclude that the credit quality of u s corporate debt has declined however an alternative explanation of this apparent decline in credit quality is that the rating agencies are now using more stringent standards in assigning ratings an ordered probit analysis of a panel of firms from 1978 through 1995 suggests that rating standards have indeed become more stringent implying that at least part of the downward trend in ratings is the result of changing standards bond ratings play a key role in corporate financing and investment decisions a corporation that can issue higher rated bonds usually receives better terms than one that can issue only lower rated bonds by law or policy some investors can purchase only bonds with an investment grade rating a restriction which in some asset pricing models would affect the relative prices of financial assets numerous articles in the popular press have presumed that the credit quality of the debt of u s corporations has been declining over the last couple of decades the comprehensive study by lucas and lonski 1992 of moody s rating changes of corporate debt is consistent with this presumption to cite their statistics in 1970 moody s downgraded 21 issues and upgraded 23 issues but over the following years the number of bonds downgraded began to exceed by substantial margins the number of bonds upgraded and by 1990 moody s downgraded 301 issues and upgraded only 61 their study includes both investment and noninvestment grade bonds but internal data from donaldson lufkin jenrette confirm that this trend also applies to investment grade bonds alone in a somewhat different context grundy 1997 documents similar trends in the ratings of preferred shares over the 1965 to 1990 period as the credit quality of a firm s corporate debt decreases that firm will face a greater probability of financial distress which at the extreme translates into bankruptcy there is some debate as to the effect of financial dis

electricity consumption and economic growth nexus in beijing a causal analysis of quarterly sectoral data abstract traditional energy economy nexus analysis is limited to aggregated and annual data because more detailed energy consumption data are usually not available however probing the disaggregated sectoral data usually provides a deep insight of energy economy nexus at sectoral level which is vital for governments to make proper policies in a timely manner this paper developed a deep research to find detailed quarterly and sectoral nexus between electricity consumption and economic growth sectoral data of electricity consumption and economic growth from 2005q1 to 2016q3 in beijing were exploited to model with granger causality analysis the results show that at the aggregated level there is a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption at sectoral level for the primary sector the electricity consumption impacts its added value with two quarter lagged for the secondary sector and the tertiary sector there is a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption at cross sector level the economic growth of the secondary sector has no impact on that of the tertiary sector while the economic growth of the tertiary sector strongly affects that of the secondary sector in terms of energy saving and emission reduction different policies should be employed in the three sectors beijing should encourage the electrification of the primary sector to stimulate its development beijing should make more efforts on tertiary sector to reduce electricity consumption however these policies should be more prudent while for the secondary sector improving energy efficiency and technological innovation should be paid more attention to

electricity consumption from renewable and non renewable sources and economic growth evidence from latin american countries abstract this study explores the effect of renewable and non renewable electricity consumption on economic growth in 18 latin american countries to achieve the goal of this study a panel gross domestic product gdp model was constructed taking the period 1980 2010 into account from the pedroni cointegration test results it was found that renewable electricity consumption non renewable electricity consumption labor gross fixed capital formation and total trade are cointegrated moreover the panel dynamic ordinary least squares dols test results revealed that all above the mentioned variables have a long run positive effect on gdp growth in the investigated countries the vector error correction vec granger causality model results revealed the existence of feedback causality between the variables the results of the study indicated that renewable electricity consumption is more significant than non renewable electricity consumption in promoting economic growth in the investigated countries in the long run and the short run based on the results of this study it is recommended that the investigated countries should increase their investment on renewable energy projects to increase the role of electricity consumption from renewable sources in addition it is essential that these countries should reduce their non renewable electricity consumption by increasing their energy efficiency and implementing energy saving projects by applying these recommendations these countries would be able to mitigate global warming and reduce their dependency on fossil fuel to increase their energy security

structural shifts in credit rating standards i examine the time series variation in corporate credit rating standards from 1985 to 2007 a divergent pattern exists between investment grade and speculative grade rating standards from 1985 to 2002 as investment grade standards tighten and speculative grade loosen in 2002 a structural shift occurs toward more stringent ratings holding characteristics constant firms experience a drop of 1 5 notches in ratings due to tightened standards from 2002 to 2007 credit spread tests suggest that the variation in standards is not completely due to changes in the economic climate rating standards affect credit spreads loose ratings are associated with higher default rates

the promise of positive optimal taxation normative diversity and a role for equal sacrifice abstract a prominent assumption in modern optimal tax research is that the objective of taxation is utilitarian i present new survey evidence that most people reject this assumption s implications for several prominent features of tax policy instead preferring tax policies based at least in part on a classic alternative objective the principle of equal sacrifice i generalize the standard model to accommodate this preference for a mixed objective proposing a method by which to make disparate criteria commensurable while respecting pareto efficiency then i show that optimal policy in this generalized model calibrated to the survey evidence and u s microdata is capable of quantitatively matching several features of existing tax policy that are incompatible in the conventional model but widely endorsed in the survey and reality including the coexistence of substantial redistribution and limited tagging together these findings demonstrate the potential of a positive theory of optimal taxation

nuclear energy consumption commercial energy consumption and economic growth in south asia bootstrap panel causality test abstract the objective of the study is to investigate the causal relationship among nuclear energy consumption commercial energy consumption i e oil consumption gas consumption electricity consumption and coal consumption and economic growth in south asian countries namely afghanistan bangladesh bhutan india maldives nepal pakistan and sri lanka over the period of 1975 to 2010 data is analyzed by bootstrap panel granger causality method the results reveal that nuclear energy consumption granger causes economic growth in nepal and pakistan while commercial energy consumption i e oil consumption granger causes economic growth in bangladesh bhutan maldives nepal and srilanka gas consumption granger causes economic growth in bangladesh bhutan india and maldives electricity consumption granger causes economic growth in india and srilanka finally coal consumption granger causes economic growth in bangladesh bhutan nepal and srilanka on the other side economic growth granger causes nuclear energy consumption in pakistan economic growth granger causes oil consumption in bhutan maldives and srilanka economic growth granger causes gas consumption in nepal srilanka and pakistan finally economic growth granger causes electricity consumption economic growth granger causes coal consumption in all south asian countries the findings show that the nature of causality between nuclear energy consumption economic growth and commercial energy consumption economic growth is in favor of the neutrality hypothesis in most of the countries

how does the implementation of the policy of electricity substitution influence green economic growth in china abstract to promote the level of electrification reduce environmental pollution and achieve the goal of clean energy usage and green economic growth in china the national development and reform commission and other eight departments jointly issued and implemented the policy of electricity substitution in 2016 electricity substitution aims to replace traditional fossil fuels such as coal and fuel oil with clean electric energy in different fields e g industry transportation and construction and deal with the pollutants at power generation however we still need to find out the exact impact of the policy of electricity substitution on energy saving and emission reduction in this paper we estimate the economically feasible increment of electricity demand according to different classifications in electricity substitution technology furthermore based on the input output model we discuss the relative influence of the policy of lectricity substitution the main conclusions are first the policy of electricity substitution alone is not adequate to reduce the dependence on fossil energy and environmental pollution under china s current power generation structure we should also increase the use of renewable energy second the power sector plays a leading role in stimulating economic output and the increasing electricity consumption due to the policy of electricity substitution can boost the green development of china s economy

ratings shopping and asset complexity a theory of ratings inflation abstract many identify inflated credit ratings as one contributor to the recent financial market turmoil we develop an equilibrium model of the market for ratings and use it to examine possible origins of and cures for ratings inflation in the model asset issuers can shop for ratings observe multiple ratings and disclose only the most favorable before auctioning their assets when assets are simple agencies ratings are similar and the incentive to ratings shop is low when assets are sufficiently complex ratings differ enough that an incentive to shop emerges thus an increase in the complexity of recently issued securities could create a systematic bias in disclosed ratings despite the fact that each ratings agency produces an unbiased estimate of the asset s true quality increasing competition among agencies would only worsen this problem switching to an investor initiated ratings system alleviates the bias but could collapse the market for information

cross listed bonds information asymmetry and conservatism in credit ratings we propose information asymmetry as an additional explanation for rating conservatism because information asymmetry is likely higher for cross listed bonds than for u s bonds we expect and find that cross listed bonds are rated more conservatively than u s domestic bonds at issuance further cross listed bonds receive less frequent upgrades and take longer to be upgraded after issuance because lower ratings might also reflect higher default risk based on agencies private information we conduct additional tests to discriminate between the rating conservatism and private information explanations the results are consistent with ratings conservatism and inconsistent with the private information explanation

redistributive effects of minimal equal sacrifice taxation we examine the circumstances under which minimal equal sacrifice taxation reduces income inequality focusing on absolute sacrifice and relative inequality we show that after tax incomes are more equally distributed than before tax incomes and that after tax inequality decreases with the revenue to be raised if and only if the elasticity of the marginal utility of income is decreasing however other things equal after tax inequality is shown to decline as the utility function becomes more concave we investigate next how these conclusions extend when one takes the absolute inequality view and considers that it is the relative loss in utility that has to be equalized across individuals

cluster sample methods in applied econometrics inference methods that recognize the clustering of individual observations have been available for more than 25 years brent moulton 1990 caught the attention of economists when he demonstrated the serious biases that can result in estimating the effects of aggregate explanatory variables on individual specific response variables the source of the downward bias in the usual ordinary least squares ols standard errors is the presence of an unobserved state level effect in the error term more recently john pepper 2002 showed how accounting for multi level clustering can have dramatic effects on t statistics while adjusting for clustering is much more common than it was 10 years ago inference methods robust to cluster correlation are not used routinely across all relevant settings in this paper i provide an overview of applications of cluster sample methods both to cluster samples and to panel data sets

a sceptic s comment on the study of economics a survey was carried out among two groups of undergraduate economics students and four groups of students in mathematics law philosophy and business administration the main survey question involved a conflict between profit maximisation and the welfare of the workers who would be fired to achieve it significant differences were found between the choices of the groups the results were reinforced by a survey conducted among readers of an israeli business newspaper and phd students of harvard it is argued that the overly mathematical methods used to teach economics encourage students to lean towards profit maximisation

the case for a progressive tax from basic research to policy recommendations the fair distribution of the tax burden has long been a central issue in policyhe fair distribution of the tax burden has long been a central issue in policymaking a large academic literature has developed models of optimal tax making a large academic literature has developed models of optimal tax theory to cast light on the problem of optimal tax progressivity in this theory to cast light on the problem of optimal tax progressivity in this paper we explore the path from basic research results in optimal tax theory to paper we explore the path from basic research results in optimal tax theory to formulating policy recommendations formulating policy recommendations models in optimal tax theory typically posit that the tax system should maximize a models in optimal tax theory typically posit that the tax system should maximize a social welfare function subject to a government budget constraint taking into account social welfare function subject to a government budget constraint taking into account that individuals respond to taxes and transfers social welfare is larger when resources that individuals respond to taxes and transfers social welfare is larger when resources are more equally distributed but redistributive taxes and transfers can negatively are more equally distributed but redistributive taxes and transfers can negatively affect incentives to work save and earn income in the fi rst place this creates the clasaffect incentives to work save and earn income in the fi rst place this creates the classical trade off between equity and effi ciency which is at the core of the optimal income sical trade off between equity and effi ciency which is at the core of the optimal income tax problem in general optimal tax analyses maximize social welfare as a function of tax problem in general optimal tax analyses maximize social welfare as a function of individual utilities the sum of utilities in the utilitarian case the marginal weight for individual utilities the sum of utilities in the utilitarian case the marginal weight for a given person in the social welfare function measures the value of an additional dollar a given person in the social welfare function measures the value of an additional dollar of consumption expressed in terms of public funds such welfare weights depend on of consumption expressed in terms of public funds such welfare weights depend on the level of redistribution and are decreasing with income whenever society values the level of redistribution and are decreasing with income whenever society values more equality of income therefore optimal income tax theory is fi rst a normative more equality of income therefore optimal income tax theory is fi rst a normative theory that shows how a social welfare objective combines with constraints arising from theory that shows how a social welfare objective combines with constraints arising from limits on resources and behavioral responses to taxation in order to derive specifi c limits on resources and behavioral responses to taxation in order to derive specifi c

nonrenewable energy renewable energy carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in china from 1952 to 2012 abstract this paper mainly investigates the relationship among energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth in china from 1952 to 2012 first we implement unit root and cointegration analysis to test the stationary furthermore we analyze the mutual influence among energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth through granger causality analysis next we also conduct static and dynamic regression analysis on the determinants of carbon emissions and economic growth last we predict the future influence of different energy consumption on carbon emissions and economic growth we find that coal has dominant impact on economic growth and carbon emissions gdp gross domestic product has bi directional relationship with co2 carbon dioxide emission coal gas and electricity consumption it is imperative to change energy consumption structure in china we had better decrease coal consumption rate it is significant to develop hydro and nuclear power in china

social preferences self interest and the demand for redistribution preferences for redistribution may be influenced by values and beliefs about distributive justice as well as by self interest people may prefer more redistribution to the poor if they believe that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond individual control therefore beliefs about the causes of income may affect demand for redistribution alternatively the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences may be spurious if they are correlated with income and self interest is not properly controlled for they may also measure incentive cost concerns using social survey data i find that self interest cannot explain the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

credit ratings and the evolution of the mortgage backed securities market gse backed mortgage backed securities mbs market lies at the heart of the 2007 2009 global financial crisis this market both fueled and was fueled by the expansion of subprime credit and the housing boom we study the role of the three primary rating agencies moody s s p and fitch in the expansion of the mbs market rating agencies play an important role in all fixed income markets in part because they have access to privileged information on securities and their issuers a privilege protected from regulations such as regulation fair disclosure reg fd the agencies however have received sharp criticism for their ratings practices in the mbs market many critics point to a potential conflict in rating agencies fees and income structure instead of being compensated by the investors who consume their product issuers pay the rating agencies the conflict of interest hypothesis thus stipulates that agencies may provide unduly favorable ratings especially to large issuers who bring and could potentially take away substantial revenues the risk of lost reputation and hence lost future profits potentially offsets the conflict of interest problem because this industry has just three dominant players loss of reputation

to what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisition among citizens to what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income aquisition among citizens journal of public economics

the electricity consumption and gdp nexus for the fiji islands fiji is a small open island economy dependent on energy for its growth and development hence the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is crucial for fiji s development in this paper we investigate the nexus between electricity consumption and economic growth for fiji within a multivariate framework through including the labour force variable we use the bounds testing approach to cointegration and find that electricity consumption gdp and labour force are only cointegrated when gdp is the endogenous variable we use the granger causality f test and find that in the long run causality runs from electricity consumption and labour force to gdp implying that fiji is an energy dependent country and thus energy conservation policies will have an adverse effect on fiji s economic growth

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from china at both aggregated and disaggregated levels using a neo classical aggregate production model where capital labor and energy are treated as separate inputs this paper tests for the existence and direction of causality between output growth and energy use in china at both aggregated total energy and disaggregated levels as coal oil and electricity consumption using the johansen cointegration technique the empirical findings indicate that there exists long run cointegration among output labor capital and energy use in china at both aggregated and all three disaggregated levels then using a vec specification the short run dynamics of the interested variables are tested indicating that there exists granger causality running from electricity and oil consumption to gdp but does not exist granger causality running from coal and total energy consumption to gdp on the other hand short run granger causality exists from gdp to total energy coal and oil consumption but does not exist from gdp to electricity consumption we thus propose policy suggestions to solve the energy and sustainable development dilemma in china as enhancing energy supply security and guaranteeing energy supply especially in the short run to provide adequate electric power supply and set up national strategic oil reserve enhancing energy efficiency to save energy diversifying energy sources energetically exploiting renewable energy and drawing out corresponding policies and measures and finally in the long run transforming development pattern and cut reliance on resource and energy dependent industries

corporate bond market transaction costs and transparency using a complete record of u s over the counter otc secondary trades in corporate bonds we estimate average transaction costs as a function of trade size for each bond that traded more than nine times between january 2003 and january 2005 we find that transaction costs decrease significantly with trade size highly rated bonds recently issued bonds and bonds close to maturity have lower transaction costs than do other bonds costs are lower for bonds with transparent trade prices and they drop when the trace system starts to publicly disseminate their prices the results suggest that public traders benefit significantly from price transparency

generalized social marginal welfare weights for optimal tax theory this paper proposes to evaluate tax reforms by aggregating money metric losses and gains of different individuals using generalized social marginal welfare weights optimum tax formulas take the same form as standard welfarist tax formulas by simply substitut ing standard marginal social welfare weights with those generalized weights weights directly capture society s concerns for fairness without being necessarily tied to individual utilities suitable weights can help reconcile discrepancies between the welfarist approach and actual tax practice as well as unify in an operational way the most prominent alternatives to utilitarianism such as libertarianism equality of opportunity or poverty alleviation jel d60 d63 h21 h23 i38