a multi regional input output analysis of the pollution haven hypothesis from the perspective of global production fragmentation pollution haven hypothesis is an important debate on the environmental effects of international trade the pattern of which has been reshaped obviously by global production fragmentation recently the production process is distributed globally and the pollution haven effect of international trade is becoming more complicated for instance intermediate product trade corresponds to the largest share of embodied emissions and the share of emissions induced by the global value chain related trade is increasing gradually the aim of this paper is to make a comprehensive analysis on the pollution haven hypothesis in carbon emissions embodied in three different trade patterns from global bilateral and national perspectives we propose a method to parcel the pollution haven hypothesis in a multi regional input output analysis and discuss the contribution of production fragmentation for global emissions it is found that international production fragmentation generates global emissions savings the intermediate product trade has a negative balance of avoided emissions the final product trade becomes increasingly less environmentally effective during the period 1995 2009 there are significant differences in the environmental effects of different trade patterns for each country

the effect of technology spillover on co2 emissions embodied in china australia trade abstract co2 emissions embodied in international trade have drawn wide attention in the academia and national climate negotiations in this study we estimate the embodied co2 emissions in the trade between china and australia using long time series disaggregated sectoral data based on missions embodied in bilateral trade eebt method and analyse the major driving forces for these emissions changes based on structural decomposition analysis sda method the results show that export volume contributed to these embodied co2 emissions increase while emission intensity could offset these co2 emissions increase we further predict embodied co2 emission in sino australia trade under different scenarios and the results indicate that technology spillover can significantly reduce embodied co2 emissions in trade electricity transportation and cement industries have significant potential to reduce carbon emissions in addition we evaluate future carbon reduction potential till 2030 the results in this study can inform decision makers for australia and china to formulate energy conservation and emission reduction policies

change in co2 emission and its transmissions between korea and japan using international input output analysis abstract this paper is intended to analyze co 2 transmission between japan and south korea through international trade based on 1990 and 1995 international input output data it applied a residual free structural decomposition method proposed by chung and rhee chung h s rhee h c 2001 a residual free decomposition of the sources of carbon dioxide emissions a case of the korean industries energy 26 1 15 30 to emission related international input output analysis for the first time in the decomposition studies this paper is a case study regarding the manner and the extent to which co 2 emissions are influenced by international trade between japan an annex i country and south korea a non annex i country which is of particular interest for the carbon leakage issue in this paper we attempted to show which factors contributed to the changes in emission of the major greenhouse gas in south korea and japan the changes in emission are analyzed in terms of emission intensity input techniques demand composition and trade structures according to our analysis south korea a non annex i country has more energy intensive production structures than japan an annex i country south korea s trade pattern with japan reflects these production features resulting in the korea s comparative advantage in emission intensive products though the degree has somewhat mitigated in 1995 compared to 1990

co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 a structural decomposition analysis abstract this study examines the annual co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 using environmental input output analysis four driving forces including emission intensity economic production structure export composition and total export volume are compared for their contributions to the increase of embodied co2 emissions using a structural decomposition analysis sda technique although offset by the decrease in emission intensity the increase of embodied co2 emissions was driven by changes of the other three factors in particular the change of the export composition was the largest driver primarily due to the increasing fraction of metal products in china s total export relevant policy implications and future research directions are discussed at the end of the paper

is integrated reporting determined by a country s legal system an exploratory study in recent years companies responsibilities towards society have expanded significantly and former business models have been revised in line with a more pluralist approach which takes stakeholders sustainability business ethics and transparency into account these considerations are increasingly reflected in corporate sustainability reporting i e statements reflecting the impact of business practices related to economic environmental and social perspectives however the data contained in such documents are reported independently of the financial aspects implying a disconnection between the three pillars of business strategy in order to avoid this shortcoming some leading companies have developed integrated reporting which expresses the interconnections between a firm s strategy governance performance and prospects as well as the contexts within which it operates the aim of this paper is to examine the influence of one of the most important institutional factors the legal system on the development of integrated reports the analysis of a non balanced sample of 750 international companies for the years 2008 2010 in which a logit methodology is applied to panel data reveals the impact of this institutional factor the results show that companies located in civil law countries and where indices of law and order are high are more likely to create and publish a broad range of integrated reports thus favouring decision taking by the different stakeholders on the basis of these findings two policy recommendations are proposed first it may be necessary to establish national laws and protection mechanisms to promote and ensure holistic transparency second managers must be able to decide on the appropriate disclosure practices in the context of their own legal environment in order to obtain maximum benefits from their decisions the results should be considered as having only preliminary value due to the limited number of firms that disclose this typology of reporting and because of the limitations of the data sample

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

china s balance of emissions embodied in trade approaches to measurement and allocating international responsibility international trade is characterized not only by the flow of capital and goods but also by the energy and emissions embodied in goods during their production this paper investigates the evolving role that chinese trade is playing in the response to climate change by estimating the scale of emissions embodied in china s current trade pattern and demonstrating the magnitude of the difference between the emissions it produces some of which are incurred to meet the consumption demands of the rest of the world and the emissions embodied in the goods it consumes estimating china s emissions on a consumption rather than a production basis both lowers its responsibility for carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 2006 from 5 500 to 3 840mtco2 and reduces the growth rate of emissions from an average of 12 5 per cent p a to 8 7 per cent p a between 2001 and 2006 the analysis indicates that a reliable consumption based accounting methodology is feasible and could improve our understanding of which actors and states are responsible for emissions for example recent emissions reductions by developed countries may lack credibility if production has merely been displaced to countries such as china moreover in the current institutional context production methodologies encourage leakages through trade that may do more to displace than to reduce emissions both equity and efficiency concerns therefore suggest that emissions embodied in trade should receive special attention in the distribution of post kyoto abatement burdens

co2 embodiment in china australia trade the drivers and implications abstract this study focuses on co 2 emissions embodied in the characteristic china australia bilateral trade which refer to the co 2 emissions due to the production of goods traded between the two countries we perform an assessment of the co 2 embodiment in the trade during the period between 2002 and 2010 we find that the scale effect has been a dominant effect contributing to an increase of co 2 emissions embodied in the bilateral trade through the years while the composition effect seems to be a major driver for reducing co 2 embodiment in the exports of australia to china based on an analysis of the difference between the amounts of actual co 2 embodiment and those in a hypothetical no trade scenario we estimate that the net co 2 emissions due to the bilateral trade declined from around 10 mt of co 2 emissions in 2002 to 10 mt in 2010 that is the bilateral trade contributed to a reduction of the global carbon emissions in the recent years this finding suggests that the rapid growth of exports of carbon intensive goods from australia to china has helped in reducing carbon emissions globally because carbon intensity factors of those goods are much lower in australia than those in china

tax evasion and inequality this paper attempts to estimate the size and distribution of tax evasion in rich countries we combine random audits the key source used to study tax evasion so far with new micro data leaked from large offshore financial institutions hsbc switzerland swiss leaks and mossack fonseca panama papers matched to population wide wealth records in norway sweden and denmark we find that tax evasion rises sharply with wealth a phenomenon random audits fail to capture on average about 3 of personal taxes are evaded in scandinavia but this figure rises to close to 30 in the top 0 01 of the wealth distribution a group that includes households with more than 45 million in net wealth a simple model of the supply of tax evasion services can explain why evasion rises steeply with wealth taking tax evasion into account increases the rise in inequality seen in tax data since the 1970s markedly highlighting the need to move beyond tax data to capture income and wealth at the top even in countries where tax compliance is generally high we also find that after reducing tax evasion by using tax amnesties tax evaders do not legally avoid taxes more this result suggests that fighting tax evasion can be an effective way to collect more tax revenue from the very wealthy

inter linking issues and dimensions in sustainability reporting during the last decade sustainability reporting sr has been increasingly adopted by corporations worldwide this is evidenced by the adoption of several guidelines such as the iso 14000 series the social accountability 8000 standard and the gri sustainability guidelines sr shows promise to help corporate leaders and their employees to contribute towards achieving sustainable societies however most of the guidelines and standards address sustainability issues through comparmentalisation thereby leading to the separation of the economic environmental and social dimensions due to these divisive approaches holistic assessments of the effects of their efforts are seldom properly integrated into coporate decisions and procedures to make improvements for example through cleaner production worker health and safety consumer safety and reductions in the negative short and long term social and environmental impacts this paper analyses sr reports from three companies with the help of grounded theory s constant comparative analysis this analytical framework helped the authors to systematically assess the degree to which the companies addressed economic ecological and social issues separately or in an integrated and inter linked manner from the inter linkages found a new category is proposed to be added to future sr this new category can help corporate sr planners and researchers on sustainability reports to better understand how the company leaders understand their responsibilities with regard to sd these inter connectednesses are highly relevant in many short and long term dimensions of supply chain management global warming ecological disruption and societal equity issues especially with regard to the local national and global energy issues of fuels and oils the central themes of the conference at which this paper was originally presented it also plays a key role in real long term changes towards sustainability where the time dimension plays a key role in human survival on planet earth

why did the energy intensity fall in china s industrial sector in the 1990s the relative importance of structural change and intensity change there have been a variety of studies investigating the relative importance of structural change and real intensity change to the change in china s energy consumption in the 1980s however no detailed analysis to date has been done to examine whether or not the increased energy efficiency trend in the 1980s still prevailed in the 1990s this article has filled this gap by investigating the change in energy consumption in china s industrial sector in the 1990s based on the data sets of value added and end use energy consumption for the 29 industrial subsectors and using the newly proposed decomposition method of giving no residual our results clearly show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline in industrial energy use in the 1990s was the decline in real energy intensity indicating that the trend of real energy intensity declines in the 1980s at the 2 digit level was still maintained in the 1990s this conclusion still holds even if we lower the growth rate dramatically in line with the belief that the growth rate of china s gdp may be overestimated

estimating tax noncompliance with evidence from unaudited tax returns this article estimates the degree of tax noncompliance using evidence from unaudited tax returns measurements of noncompliance are derived from the relationship between reported charitable contributions and reported income from wages and salary as compared to alternative reported income sources such as self employment farm and other small business income assuming that the source of one s income is unrelated to one s charitable inclinations and that the ratio of true income to taxable income does not vary by income source any difference in the relationship between charitable contributions and the source of income can be attributed to relative underreporting by the individual we find that the implied amount of noncompliance is significant and that it varies by source of income as well as between positive and negative values of each type of income tax evasion creates horizontal inequity and if opportunities for evasion are correlated with income complicates the attempt to achieve vertical equity evasion also imposes economic costs because taxpayers expend resources to facilitate evasion and the tax agency expends resources to contain it the equity and efficiency implications of tax evasion and optimal policy to address it depend on its magnitude and nature which for obvious reasons is difficult to ascertain this article contributes to that effort by developing a new method for estimating the extent and nature of tax noncompliance based on evidence from unaudited tax returns this evidence is derived from the relationship between reported charitable contributions and reported taxable income from various sources such as wages and salaries selfemployment nonfarm small business and farm income and is based on the assumptions that the source of one s income is unrelated to one s charitable inclinations and that the ratio of true income to taxable income does not vary by income source we find that the implied amount of noncompliance on non wageand salary income is substantial and that it varies among these sources of income as well as between positive and negative values of each type of income on average reported positive self employment nonfarm small business and farm income must be multiplied by a factor of 1 54 4 54 and 3 87 respectively in order to obtain true income even those individuals who report zero income for a specific income source but file the schedule for that source are estimated to have true positive income finally those households that report negative schedule income may actually have greater true income than those households that report positive income

an expenditure based estimate of britain s black economy abstract we estimate the size of britain s black economy defined narrowly as unreported taxable income by using income and expenditure data drawn from the 1982 family expenditure survey our working assumptions are that all income groups report expenditure on food correctly employees in employment report income correctly and that the self employed under report their income we estimate food exependiture equations for all groups and then invert them to arrive at the conclusion that on average true self employment income is 1 55 times as much as reported self employment income this implies that the size of the black economy is about 5 5 percent of gdp

building institutions based on information disclosure lessons from gri s sustainability reporting abstract global reporting initiative gri is the best known framework for voluntary reporting of environmental and social performance by business worldwide using extensive empirical data including interviews and documentary analysis we examine gri s organizational field and conclude that since its modest beginnings in 1999 gri has been by several measures a successful institutionalization project but the institutional logic of this new entity as an instrument for corporate sustainability management leaves out one of the central elements of the initial vision for gri as a mobilizing agent for many societal actors this emergent logic reflects gri s dominant constituency large global companies and financial institutions and international business management consultancies and not the less active civil society organizations and organized labor we attribute these developments to factors such as building gri within the existing institutional structures the highly inclusive multistakeholder process and the underdeveloped base of information users from the institutional theory perspective this case shows how the process of institutionalization is deeply affected by initial strategies of the founders and how it reproduces existing power relations from the governance perspective this case leads us to question the power of commodified information to mobilize civil society and to strengthen governance based on partnerships

carbon transfer within china insights from production fragmentation abstract production fragmentation not only reshapes trade patterns but also reallocates trade related emissions this study employs china s multi regional input output tables for 2007 2010 and 2012 to explore the effect of production fragmentation on virtual carbon trade derived from three trade patterns i e final goods trade intermediate goods trade for the final stage of production and value chain related trade results showed that inter provincial trade within china reduced the national carbon emissions by 208 mt and 114 mt in 2007 and 2012 the first two trade patterns contributed to the reduction while value chain related trade resulted in carbon growth the four trillion yuan stimulus package promoted the development of energy intensive industries while inter provincial trade increased national carbon emissions by 247 mt in 2010 moreover this study revealed a list of provinces trade patterns and sectors with the high carbon reduction potential

reducing evasion through self reporting evidence from charitable contributions abstract in absence of third party reporting taxpayers are required to self report information with various degrees of detail ranging from uncorroborated claims to comprehensive records with receipts using a quasi experimental design applied to noncash charitable contribution deductions i show that even basic self reporting requirements are effective at reducing evasion but impose large compliance costs on taxpayers i find that simplified reporting requirements reduce reporting costs by 55 per person and substantially increase claimed donations however half of the new donations are due to evasion thus information reporting should only be imposed on total reported donations above a pre specified threshold

no taxation without information deterrence and self enforcement in the value added tax abstract claims that the vat facilitates tax enforcement by generating paper trails on transactions between firms contributed to widespread vat adoption worldwide but there is surprisingly little evidence this paper analyzes the role of third party information for vat enforcement through two randomized experiments among over 400 000 chilean firms announcing additional monitoring has less impact on transactions that are subject to a paper trail indicating the paper trail s preventive deterrence effect this leads to strong enforcement spillovers up the vat chain these findings confirm that when taking evasion into account significant differences emerge between otherwise equivalent forms of taxation jel d83 h25 h26 k34 o17

input output analysis of carbon emissions embodied in china japan trade abstractenergy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers all over the world by using the bilateral trade input output btio approach this study investigates the co2 emissions embodied in china japan trade during 1995 2009 and attempts to identify the driving forces for the change in co2 emissions embodied in china s exports to japan during that period by using structural decomposition analysis sda result shows that co2 emissions embodied in china s exports increased by about 100 from 1995 to 2009 whereas those embodied in china s imports increased by about 500 during the same period result of this research also reveals that the scale effect had a large influence on the increase in co2 emissions embodied in china japan trade the technical effect greatly decreased co2 emissions embodied in china s exports to japan but obviously increased those embodied in imports the influence of the structural effect was relatively small and insignificant in

the relevance of national contexts for carbon disclosure decisions of stock listed companies a multilevel analysis abstract response rates to the cdp climate change program differ strongly between different countries globally this indicates that participation in carbon disclosure by stock listed companies is strongly influenced by characteristics of national contexts this article builds on ecological modernization theory and institutional theory on this basis we examine how stringency and enforcement of environmental regulations on the one hand and legal origins of financial systems on the other can explain firms participation in cdp climate change disclosure furthermore it is asked whether multinational corporations are less affected by country level characteristics for the first time in the disclosure literature multilevel regression analysis is used a method that accounts for the hierarchical structure of a population of firms being embedded in national contexts our results show that both environmental regulations and legal origin are extremely relevant explanatory factors accounting for more variance than all tested firm level variables except size furthermore while multinational firms do report more than domestic firms we could not find that multinational corporations are less affected by the characteristics of their countries of origin our findings have implications for transparency based initiatives as a governance tool for climate change mitigation since they fit into some regulatory contexts better than others advances in voluntary disclosure seem most likely in emergent countries which tighten environmental regulations while liberalizing their economy

carbon emissions embodied in china australia trade a scenario analysis based on input output analysis and panel regression models abstract understanding carbon emissions embodied in trade is an important prerequisite for the effective formulation of climate mitigation policies based on input output analysis and panel regression models this study proposes a multi step forecasting procedure to simulate carbon emissions embodied in bilateral trade we calculate carbon emissions embodied in the trade between china and australia during 2000 2014 and forecast the same for the period 2015 2022 under four different development scenarios the results show that during 2000 2014 net carbon outflow from china to australia increased from 2 2 to 15 5 mt co2 concentrated in textile and heavy manufacturing sectors the simulation results show that the forecasts of r d focus and gdp focus scenarios constitute the lower and upper bounds of embodied emissions and the latter is more than two times of the former in 2022 both for embodied emissions in australia s exports and china s exports finally conclusions are drawn and policy implications are discussed

manufacturing energy use in oecd countries decomposition of long term trends abstract in this paper we examine manufacturing energy use in 13 oecd countries over the period 1971 1995 we describe changes in aggregate energy intensity using the adaptive weighting divisia decomposition method we contrast the development in the periods after the oil price shocks of 1973 and 1979 with the period of relatively stable energy prices after the oil price crash of 1986 the results show that manufacturing output grew in most countries pushing up energy use the share of electricity increased in almost every sector while there was a clear trend away from oil and coal towards natural gas changes in the structure of output drove up energy use between 1973 and 1994 in some countries and down in others changes in energy intensities had a profound and downward effect on manufacturing energy use in all countries however contrasting the period after oil prices fell in 1986 with earlier years we see that for most countries the rate of energy intensity decline slowed slightly but did not reverse with falling prices in a few countries efficiency improvements continued to have a strong effect this suggests that even without higher prices improvements of energy efficiency seems to take place

approaches for estimating noncompliance examples from federal taxation in the united states crime and underground economic activity are a fact of life around the world most societies attempt to control these activities through the expenditure of resources on monitoring prosecution punishment and educational programmes gathering statistics about who is engaging in illegal or underground activity the frequencies with which various crimes or underground transactions are occurring and the severity or magnitude of these acts is crucial for making good decisions regarding our allocation of resources in this area unfortunately in general it is very difficult to obtain accurate information about these issues this is partly because the individuals engaged in such activities wish not to be identified and often take actions to avoid detection and partly because by their very nature the activities tend not to generate economic accounting legal demographic or other cultural records the fact that it is difficult to obtain accurate information about the activities however does not in any way imply that we should not make a concerted effort to try to obtain the best information we can i believe the cost associated with attempting to determine the extent and nature of these activities is in most circumstances well below the expected benefit which includes the likelihood of improved decisionmaking by relevant government personnel and the general public as a result i also believe the debate about developing estimates of illegal or underground economic activity should primarily focus on practical issues related to how best to go about developing estimates that are as reliable as possible in this short article i shall discuss the measurement of noncompliance with laws and regulations my particular area of expertise and shall not discuss the measurement of other kinds of hidden economic behaviours such as informal contracting unmeasured home production and grey market activities in particular i shall discuss three approaches for estimating the aggregate amount of noncompliance with respect to a specific law or regulation i intensive data collection for a focused subsample of the population ii detection controlled estimation and iii the comparision of estimates generated by distinct datasets and models for each i shall describe in general terms what the approach is and how it is implemented review limitations of the approach and present an example of the application of the approach to the measurement of tax noncompliance in the united states my discussion shall necessarily be short and i refer the interested reader to a variety of original research publications for more details especially about the specific examples

comparing structural decomposition analysis and index to analyze and understand historical changes in economic environmental employment or other socio economic indicators it is useful to assess the driving forces or determinants that underlie these changes two techniques for decomposing indicator changes at the sector level are structural decomposition analysis sda and index decomposition analysis ida for example sda and ida have been used to analyze changes in indicators such as energy use co2 emissions labor demand and value added the changes in these variables are decomposed into determinants such as technological demand and structural effects sda uses information from input output tables while ida uses aggregate data at the sector level the two methods have developed quite independently which has resulted in each method being characterized by specific unique techniques and approaches this paper has three aims first the similarities and differences between the two approaches are summarized second the possibility of transferring specific techniques and indices is explored finally a numerical example is used to illustrate differences between the two approaches

the tax evasion social multiplier evidence from italy we estimate social externalities of tax evasion in a model where congestion of the auditing resources of local tax authorities generates a social multiplier identification is based on a contrast of the variance of tax evasion at different levels of aggregation we use a unique data set that contains audits of about 80 000 small businesses and professionals in italy and also provides an exact measure of reference groups in our model we find a social multiplier of about 3 which means that the equilibrium response to a shock that induces an exogenous variation in mean concealed income is about 3 times the initial average response this is a short run effect that persists to the extent that auditing resources are not adjusted to internalize the congestion externality

on the determinants of corporate social responsibility international evidence on the financial industry this article sets out to undertake a thorough point by point examination of the theory postulated by campbell 2007 in which an attempt is made to specify the conditions under which corporations may or may not act in socially responsible ways in order to ensure the overall reliability of our study and to attempt to provide a new understanding of and greater insights into whether corporate social responsibility csr is affected by financial and institutional variables we empirically investigate a total of 520 financial firms in 34 countries between the years 2003 and 2005 our empirical findings are i firms with larger size are more csr minded and the financial performance and csr are not related ii firms would actually act in more socially responsible ways to enhance their competitive advantages when the market competitiveness is more intense iii financial firms in countries with stronger levels of legal enforcement tend to engage in more csr activities however interestingly and rather strikingly those firms in countries with stronger shareholder rights tend to engage in less csr activities and iv self regulation within the financial industry has a significantly positive effect on csr with firms being found to act in more socially responsible ways in those countries which have more cooperative employer employee relations higher quality management schools and a better macroeconomic environment

myth and reality of flat tax reform micro estimates of tax evasion response and welfare effects in russia we examine the effects of russia s 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption income and tax evasion we use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax e

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

getting the word out enforcement information dissemination and compliance behavior the question for the tax authority is how individuals become aware of enforcement effort to be an effective tool in reducing tax evasion taxpayers must be aware of the current audit and penalty regime we use laboratory experiments to examine the compliance impact of types of information dissemination regarding audit frequency and results the information includes official information disseminated by the tax authority and unofficial or informal communications among taxpayers our results indicate that the effect of the type of post audit information is conditional on whether the taxpayer is well informed of the audit rate prior to filing we find that the tax authority would be served by pre announcing audit rates credibly and by emphasizing the previous period audit frequency in annual reporting of enforcement effort

direct estimation of hidden earnings evidence from russian administrative data abstractwe employ unique administrative data from moscow to obtain a direct estimate of hidden incomes our approach is based on comparing employer reported earnings to market values of cars owned by the corresponding individuals and their households we detect few hidden earnings in most foreign owned firms and larger firms especially state owned enterprises in heavily regulated industries the same empirical strategy indicates that up to 80 percent of earnings of car owners in the private sector are hidden especially in smaller companies and industries such as trade and services where cash flows are easier to manipulate we also find considerable hidden earnings in government services our approach sheds new light on the decline in the gross domestic product gdp in russia after the collapse of communism and subsequent recovery in particular we argue that a good deal of these changes might represent changes in income reporting rather than actual changes in gdp

estimates of the black economy based on consumer demand approaches we propose a consumer demand system approach to estimating the size of the black economy where alternative hypotheses affecting the empirical results can be tested in a nested framework this approach allows for the estimation of the under reporting of household income from various sources dispensing with the need to use arbitrary criteria to classify households by their main source of income it also avoids potential bias in black economy estimates arising from mistaking preference heterogeneity substitution as income effects we illustrate these arguments by estimating the extent to which self employment income in the uk is underreported using parametric and nonparametric techniques the black economy broadly defined as the economic activities that are hidden from public authorities to avoid taxation has recently received increased attention in the literature due to arguments that the rising tax burden and state regulation is driving economic activity underground tanzi and schuknecht 1997 enste and schneider 1998 the usefulness of attempts to estimate the size of the black economy however is a controversial issue the sceptics emphasise the difficulties associated with the precise definition of black economy activities and point to the widely different estimates of the size of these activities resulting from alternative methods dixon 1999 tanzi 1999 thomas 1999 authors approaching the subject in an optimistic frame of mind emphasise positive aspects of estimating the size of the black economy such as the correct measurement of gdp and other macroeconomic variables e g employment and the design of policy and econometric models bhattacharyya 1999 giles 1999 the controversy on estimation issues however does not subtract from the widespread concern about the undesired consequences of the black economy undeclared economic activities reduce the tax base thereby undermining the financing of public goods and social protection a country trying to curtail the loss of tax revenue by raising tax rates can create a vicious cycle as this reinforces the incentive not to declare economic activities to the public authorities high tax rates have a distorting effect resulting in inefficient allocation of resources due to unequal opportunities and willingness to evade in different sectors of the economy and can undermine the ability of the country to compete internationally distortions in the labour market can also arise because individuals working in the black economy may have difficulty in moving from one job to another furthermore in countries where health pension and other social security payments are not universal individuals working in the black economy and their families are outside the

does trade openness improve environmental quality the literature on trade openness economic development and the environment is largely inconclusive about the environmental consequences of trade this study treats trade and income as endogenous and estimates the overall impact of trade openness on environmental quality using the instrumental variables technique we find that whether or not trade has a beneficial effect on the environment varies depending on the pollutant and the country trade is found to benefit the environment in oecd countries it has detrimental effects however on sulfur dioxide so2 and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in non oecd countries although it does lower biochemical oxygen demand bod emissions in these countries we also find the impact is large in the long term after the dynamic adjustment process although it is small in the short term

structural change and energy efficiency in industry the change in the ratio of energy consumed to industrial production is examined over the years 1968 1980 changes in the composition of industry are analysed creating a better picture of movements in physical efficiency of energy use the medium term trends show the significance of the 1973 oil crisis the effects being contrary to those of intuition the implications of the two recessions for efficiency and industrial structure are described in detail the role of demand often relegated to an incidental consideration is brought to the fore in the years following 1973 it appears more important than ex post substitution in production and with this comes a particular implication for the use of aggregate production functions

institutional corruption and election fraud evidence from a field experiment in afghanistan w e investigate the relationship between political networks weak institutions and election fraud during the 2010 parliamentary election in afghanistan combining i data on political connections between candidates and election officials ii a nationwide controlled evaluation of a novel monitoring technology and iii direct measurements of aggregation fraud we find considerable evidence of aggregation fraud in favor of connected candidates and that the announcement of a new monitoring technology reduced theft of election materials by about 60 percent and vote counts for connected candidates by about 25 percent the results have implications for electoral competition and are potentially actionable for policymakers jel c93 d02 d72 k42 o17

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

the effects of direct trade within china on regional and national co2 emissions curbing national carbon emissions and clarifying regional carbon reduction responsibility are two challenges faced by china both of which are influenced by interregional trade to exclude the influence of trade balance this paper proposes a methodology to parcel the pollution haven hypothesis into a multi regional input output model applies it to a longer time gap which is made up of two representative periods of chinese economy 1997 2002 and 2002 2007 and clarifies the provincial and sectoral contributions to national emissions we find that 1 embodied co2 emissions first remain relatively stable and then increase sharply for the two periods and the changing trends are mainly determined by the decreasing carbon intensity and the expanding trade scale respectively 2 with the secondary industry as the main contributor regional carbon spillover is mainly concentrated in the coastal provinces but it contributes to an increase of co2 emissions in the central and western regions 3 the coastal and inland provinces contribute to the increase of national carbon emissions through interregional imports and exports respectively but the pollution haven hypothesis is not obvious and is only observed in 2002

determinants of net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade abstract the existing research on carbon emissions embodied in trade has been concentrated between net importing countries and net exporting countries few study has been conducted to analyze carbon emissions embodied in trade between net exporting countries to fill the research gap this work systematically investigated the net carbon emissions embodied in trade between the largest net exporter of developing countries china and the largest net exporter of developed countries german based on the non competitive input output analysis and the structural decomposition analysis was used to study the driving factors effecting the change of net embodied carbon emissions in sino german trade the results show the net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade increased significantly with the sharp increase of net trade volume after china s accession to the world trade organization carbon transfer through trade was mainly concentrated in the carbon intensive industrial sectors in sino german trade this phenomenon was attributed to the differences in the trade structure and the production efficiency between china and germany the decomposition analysis shows china s intermediate input structure effect and the country structure effect of germany s final demand were the leading contributors to growth in net carbon emission in sino german trade which mainly was offset by china s carbon intensity effect finally some policy implications are offered

participation in gvcs and co2 emissions abstract this paper attempts to explore the determinants of co2 emissions in the context of international trade while there exist studies that examine the roles of horizontal specialization and inter industry trade transactions little previous research attention has been paid to the roles of vertical specialization and intra industry trade transactions in affecting co2 emissions to fill the knowledge gap this study uses the panel data of 62 countries and regions for the period of 1995 2011 to estimate the effect of participation in global value chains gvcs on per capita co2 emissions major findings include 1 the relationship between participation degrees in gvcs and per capita co2 emissions is found to be inversely u shaped at the aggregate economy level and for most individual industries 2 per capita gdp shows an n shaped relationship with per capita co2 emissions and 3 benign drivers of co2 emissions include r d energy conservation and population control it can be concluded that countries with low gdp or gvc participation degrees are expected to experience worsening co2 emissions in the short or even medium run this trend however can be moderated or even reversed with more r d investments

trade the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve examining the linkages abstract this paper examines the extent to which the ekc inverted u relationship can be explained by trade and specifically the migration or displacement of dirty industries from the developed regions to the developing regions the pollution haven hypothesis phh using detailed data on north south trade flows for pollution intensive products the evidence for the phh is assessed emissions of 10 air and water pollutants are then estimated controlling for trade openness structural change and dirty north south trade flows evidence of pollution haven effects is found although such effects do not appear to be widespread and appear to be relatively small compared to the roles played other explanatory variables

the role of the board of directors in disseminating relevant information on greenhouse gases in today s world the corporate image of the largest companies is closely linked to their performance in the field of corporate social responsibility and the disclosure of information on that topic specifically on climate change since the board of directors is the body responsible for this process the aim of this article is to show the role that companies boards of directors play in the accountability process vis a vis stakeholders in relation to one specific aspect which has enormous significance in environmental information practices used to monitor greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve this we shall verify certain business characteristics in addition to the size and activity of the board of directors and we shall take different dependence models into consideration these models will include variables related to the level of independence and diversity of the board of directors which interact with dummy variables representing the company s litigation risks regarding environmental behavior and the institutional macro context of the organization s country of origin the results make it clear that boards of directors are basically focused on the traditional responsibility of creating economic value instead of dealing with today s broader business world concepts which include social responsibility this focus therefore does not favor the accountability process before other stakeholders if this makes it more difficult to protect the interests of shareholders

state capacity conflict and development the absence of state capacities to raise revenue and to support markets is a key factor in explaining the persistence of weak states this paper reports on an ongoing project to investigate the incentive to invest in such capacities the paper sets out a simple analytical structure in which state capacities are modeled as forward looking investments by government the approach highlights some determinants of state building including the risk of external or internal conflict the degree of political instability and dependence on natural resources throughout we link these state capacity investments to patterns of development and growth

cyprus from boom to bail in this is a case study of how a country nearly reached bankruptcy in march 2013 within five years of entering the eurozone the magnitude of the requested assistance is extremely large relative to gdp 100 and studying this event provides useful lessons for avoiding such crises in the future the crisis resulted from a worsening european economic environment especially in greece bad choices with regards to public finances weak corporate governance within the local banking sector inadequate and or difficult regulation of cross border banking worsening competitiveness and bad political decisions at the european and especially the local cypriot level local politics reflected in short term political calculations and or inadequate understanding of the magnitude of the crisis delayed corrective action for 18 months until election time making a bad situation almost impossible to deal with overconfidence can be one behavioural explanation for why local politicians ignored the dramatic costs of inaction alexander michaelides

unwilling or unable to cheat evidence from a tax audit experiment in denmark this paper analyzes a tax enforcement field experiment in denmark in the base year a stratified and representative sample of over 40 000 individual income tax filers was selected for the experiment half of the tax filers were randomly selected to be thoroughly audited while the rest were deliberately not audited the following year threat of audit letters were randomly assigned and sent to tax filers in both groups we present three main empirical findings first using baseline audit data we find that the tax evasion rate is close to zero for income subject to third party reporting but substantial for self reported income since most income is subject to third party reporting the overall evasion rate is modest second using quasi experimental variation created by large kinks in the income tax schedule we find that marginal tax rates have a positive impact on tax evasion for self reported income but that this effect is small in comparison to legal avoidance and behavioral responses third using the randomization of enforcement we find that prior audits and threat of audit letters have significant effects on self reported income but no effect on third party reported income all these empirical results can be explained by extending the standard model of rational tax evasion to allow for the key distinction between self reported and third party reported income

identifying the global transmission of the 2007 2009 financial crisis in a gvar model abstract the paper analyses and compares the role that the tightening in liquidity conditions and the collapse in risk appetite played for the global transmission of the financial crisis dealing with identification and the large dimensionality of the empirical exercise with a global var approach the findings highlight the diversity of the transmission process while liquidity shocks have had a more severe impact on advanced economies it was mainly the decline in risk appetite that affected emerging market economies the tightening of financial conditions was a key transmission channel for advanced economies whereas for emerging markets it was mainly the real side of the economy that suffered moreover there are some striking differences also within types of economies with europe being more adversely affected by the fall in risk appetite than other advanced economies

factors shaping aggregate energy intensity trend for industry energy intensity versus product mix understanding the mechanisms of change of energy consumption in industry has attracted much attention since the 1973 world oil crisis a popular line of research has been to decompose changes in the aggregate energy intensity of industry to give the relative impacts arising from energy intensity change and product mix change using a decomposition technique many empirical studies covering a large number of countries have been reported the main objective of this paper is to put together the empirical results reported in these studies in a coherent framework and identify possible systematic features of particular interest are the basic trends in this line of research the relative importance of energy intensity change and product mix change possible variations over time and between country groups in the energy impacts of these changes and inconsistencies in findings among studies an overview of the decomposition technique including its strengths weaknesses and role in industrial energy consumption studies is also presented

distance and private information in lending we study the effects of physical distance on the acquisition and use of private information in informationally opaque credit markets using a unique data set of all loan applications by small firms to a large bank we show that borrower proximity facilitates the collection of soft information leading to a trade off in the availability and pricing of credit which is more readily accessible to nearby firms albeit at higher interest rates ceteris paribus analyzing loan rates and firms decision to switch lenders provides further evidence for banks strategic use of private information however distance erodes our lender s ability to collect proprietary intelligence and to carve out local captive markets suggesting that the requisite soft information is primarily local the author 2010 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

an overview of the driving forces behind energy demand in china s construction industry evidence from 1990 to 2012 abstract the rapid urbanization in china has produced a large demand for energy in the past decades it is therefore urgent to have an understanding of the driving forces behind the energy increase in the construction industry this study applies structural decomposition analysis sda to quantify the effects of driving factors from insight into consumption and production the results show that the energy consumption trajectory of china s construction industry is the result of competition between the effect of increasing final demand and improvement in energy efficiency although the effect of consistent efforts in structure optimization by the central government was significant from 2007 to 2012 the potential to save much energy still lies in structure optimization in energy production and final demand according to the projection structural upgrades in economy would be the most important factor for energy reduction in 2020 scenario analysis further indicated that the percentage change of energy increments in 2020 can be reduced at 22 of 2010 level under the optimistic scenario sector aggregation analysis revealed that more aggregates would increase uncertainty to some extent and result in a misinterpretation of the importance of the underlying factors according to the quantitative analysis in this study the percentage change of total embodied energy consumption in the construction industry should be limited below 25 of 2010 level at the end of the 13th five year plan

the effect of trade between china and the uk on national and global carbon dioxide emissions we estimate the amount of carbon dioxide embodied in bi lateral trade between the uk and china in 2004 developing and applying the method of shui and harriss 2006 tile role of co2 embodiment in us china trade energy policy 34 4063 4068 the most recently available data on trade and co2 emissions have been updated and adjusted to calculate the co2 emissions embodied in the commodities traded between china and the uk it was found that through trade with china the uk reduced its co2 emissions by approximately 11 in 2004 compared with a non trade scenario in which the same type and volume of goods are produced in the uk in addition due to the greater carbon intensity and relatively less efficient production processes of chinese industry china uk trade resulted in an additional 117 mt of co2 to global co2 emissions in the same one year period compared with a non trade scenario in which the same type and volume of goods are produced in the uk this represents an additional 19 to the reported national co2 emissions of the uk 555 mt y in 2004 and 0 4 of global emissions these findings suggest that through international trade very significant environmental impacts can be shifted front one country to another and that international trade can but does not necessarily result in globally increased greenhouse gas emissions these results are additional to the environmental consequences of transporting goods which are not robustly quantified here c 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

dirty industries patterns of change in industrial countries this article concerns itself with the environmental role of heavily polluting industries since 1970 analysing its development in 11 basic industries as well as electricity production and road transport in 32 industrial countries it argues for a green industrial policy demonstrating that other mitigations of environmental pressure in industrial countries end of pipe treatment relocation to the third world structural change in the industrial sector and even environmentally oriented modernization have so far been unable to solve the problems of dirty industries although some approaches have shown some promise

business culture and tax evasion why corruption and the unofficial economy can persist abstract this paper shows that business and tax inspection culture can create multiple equilibria in bad equilibria high cheating and corruption increases in penalties or auditing can have perverse impacts and increase cheating the source of the multiple equilibria is the externalities created by business and tax inspection cultures as tax evasion and corruption become more common they become more acceptable and their cost is lowered a third externality that between firms and inspectors is the source of the perverse effect more cheating by firms is good for bribe taking inspectors and more bribe taking inspectors are good for cheating firms

cheating ourselves the economics of tax evasion no government can announce a tax system and then rely on taxpayers sense of duty to remit what is owed some dutiful people will undoubtedly pay what they owe but many others will not over time the ranks of the dutiful will shrink as they see how they are being taken advantage of by the others thus paying taxes must be made a legal responsibility of citizens with penalties attendant on noncompliance but even in the face of those penalties substantial tax evasion exists and always has the history of taxation is replete with episodes of evasion often notable for their inventiveness during the third century many wealthy romans buried their jewelry or stocks of gold coin to evade the luxury tax and homeowners in eighteenth century england temporarily bricked up their fireplaces to escape notice of the hearth tax collector webber and wildavsky 1986 p 141 this essay reviews what is known about the magnitude nature and determinants of tax evasion with an emphasis on the u s income tax alm 1999 andreoni erard and feinstein 1998 and slemrod and yitzhaki 2002 offer more comprehensive recent reviews of the literature it then places this information into a conceptual and policy context

tax evasion capital gains taxes and the housing market abstract in this study we exploit a policy shock that differentially increased capital gains taxes for housing units with holding period less than 5 years and document tax avoidance and tax evasion in the residential resale market in china we show suggestive evidence that after the capital gains tax increase resale transactions exhibit more bunching above 5 years of holding period but the responses are small and imprecisely estimated more importantly using precise information of both the actual transaction price and the reported price to the tax authority we find that tax evasion measured by the difference between the two prices becomes 23 3 higher we also document that the policy has strong heterogeneous effects whereby cash buyers are 8 4 more likely to buy a house than buyers who need financing after the policy this is mainly because financing buyers prefer a higher reported price and so less tax evasion to secure higher bank loans but cash buyers do not have such concern

temporal change of china s pollution terms of trade and its determinants abstract based on the world input output database wiod this study employed a revised pollution terms of trade ptt indicator to investigate the temporal change of china s environmental cost relative to its economic gains from international trade from 1995 to 2009 the results show that china has ptt larger than 1 indicating that china emits more emissions to obtain each unit of value added from exports than its trade partners over the period china s ptt first decreased from 1995 to 2001 and then increased from 2001 to 2009 the further decompositions show that improving technology is the leading driving force to decrease ptt while the change in global trade pattern is the leading force increasing ptt especially after 2001 we further decomposed the temporal change of china s ptt by income group of the trading partners the results show that the change in the global trade pattern is the crucial driving force behind the different changes of ptt by income group

measuring income tax evasion using bank credit evidence from greece we document that in semiformal economies banks lend to tax evading individuals based on the bank s assessment of the individual s true income this observation leads to a novel approach to estimate tax evasion we use microdata on household credit from a greek bank and replicate the bank underwriting model to infer the banks estimate of individuals true income we estimate that 43 45 of self employed income goes unreported and thus untaxed for 2009 this implies 28 2 billion of unreported income implying forgone tax revenues of over 11 billion or 30 of the deficit our method innovation allows for estimating the industry distribution of tax evasion in settings where uncovering the incidence of hidden cash transactions is difficult using other methods primary tax evading industries are professional services medicine law engineering education and media we conclude with evidence that contemplates the importance of institutions paper trail and political willpower for the persistence of tax evasion jel codes g21 h22 h24 h26 p37

trade from resource rich countries avoids the existence of a global pollution haven hypothesis abstract free trade agreements are currently receiving much attention in the media and politics one important question concerning free trade is its effect on the environment for example in carbon dioxide emissions the goal of this paper is to provide evidence on the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis using a multi regional input output approach for six regions and the rest of the world as a whole our findings indicate that in the period from 1995 to 2009 international trade has allowed the global economy to reduce its overall co2 emissions compared to a hypothetical situation without international trade the total amount of emissions saved was 15 06 gt in the period under consideration however not all of the seven regions in our model have been able to reduce their co2 emissions through trade global value chains have led to china becoming a pollution haven for other regions and its exports have increased world emissions to 1 28 gt co2 in 2008 however what allows a net saving of emissions on a global scale is the supply of energy and natural resources from a set of peripheral economies which in our geographical categorization are mostly integrated in the region of the rest of the world

do differences in institutional and legal environments explain cross country variations in ipo underpricing we empirically analyse the determinants of initial public offering ipo underpricing using panel data for 24 countries over the period 1988 2005 our hypotheses stress the importance of institutional and legal factors in explaining cross country variations we find evidence that underpricing is higher in countries with stronger protection of outside investors suggesting that incumbent managers try to use underpricing as a tool to safeguard their private benefits of control when going public moreover the results show that underpricing is reduced when stronger law enforcement and the availability of accounting information reduce the value of private benefits of control

the european sovereign debt crisis the origin and propagation of the european sovereign debt crisis can be attributed to the flawed original design of the euro in particular there was an incomplete understanding of the fragility of a monetary union under crisis conditions especially in the absence of banking union and other european level buffer mechanisms moreover the inherent messiness involved in proposing and implementing incremental multicountry crisis management responses on the fly has been an important destabilizing factor throughout the crisis after diagnosing the situation we consider reforms that might improve the resilience of the euro area to future fiscal shocks

structural change and convergence of energy intensity across oecd countries 1970 2005 abstract this paper uses new and unique data derived from a consistent framework of national accounts to compute and evaluate energy intensity developments across 18 oecd countries and 50 sectors over the period 1970 2005 we find that across countries energy intensity levels tend to decrease in most manufacturing sectors in the service sector energy intensity decreases at a relatively slow rate with diverse trends across sub sectors a decomposition analysis reveals that changes in the sectoral composition of the economy explain a considerable and increasing part of aggregate energy intensity dynamics a convergence analysis reveals that only after 1995 cross country variation in aggregate energy intensity levels clearly tends to decrease driven by a strong and robust trend break in manufacturing and enhanced convergence in services moreover we find evidence for the hypothesis that across sectors lagging countries are catching up with leading countries with rates of convergence that are on average higher in services than in manufacturing aggregate convergence patterns are almost exclusively caused by convergence of within sector energy intensity levels and not by convergence of the sectoral composition of economies

factors influencing voluntary annual report disclosures by u s u k and continental european multinational corporations this study examines factors influencing the voluntary disclosures of three types of information strategic nonfinancial financial contained in the annual reports of mncs from the u s u k and continental europe while company size country region listing status and to a lesser extent industry are the most important factors explaining voluntary disclosures overall the importance of the factors varies by information type

structural change and energy use the case of the manufacturing sector in taiwan abstract this paper examines the role of sectoral shift and improvements in energy intensity of individual industries in aggregate manufacturing sector energy intensity changes in taiwan during 1971 1985 the divisia index approach is employed to decompose sectoral shift and energy intensity effects a major finding of this analysis is that changes in energy intensities of individual industries were the main influence in changes in aggregate manufacturing sector fuel and electricity intensities during the period sectoral shifts were found to contribute very little to the energy intensity changes

global corruption and the shadow economy spatial aspects using a large sample of nations this paper examines the relation between corruption and the shadow economy focusing especially on geographic spillovers the results point to complementarity between corruption and the shadow economy we find evidence of own contagion across nations in both corruption and shadow economy activity while cross contagion mostly points to substitution between own shadow economy corruption and neighboring corruption shadow economy these findings are fairly robust across different estimation techniques and measures of the shadow economy

bi lateral co2 emissions embodied in australia china trade abstract this paper quantifies the co 2 emissions embodied in bi lateral trade between australia and china using a sectoral input output model the results revealed 1 that china performs lower than australia in clean technology in the primary manufacturing energy sectors due to their overuse of coal and inefficient sectoral production processes and 2 that china had a 30 94 mt surplus of bi lateral co 2 emissions in 2010 2011 and 3 overall global emissions were reduced by 20 19 mt through australia china trade in 2010 2011 the result indicates that the greater the energy efficient a country among the trading partners the lower will be the overall global co 2 emissions global emissions decreased mainly because china consumed australian primary products rather than producing them australia is an energy efficient producer of primary products relative to china the bilateral trade compositions and trade volume played an important role in lowering global emissions and therefore one can view proposed china australia free trade agreement positively in reducing global emissions however for the sustainable development china should strengthen clean energy use and both countries should adopt measures to create an emission trading scheme in order to avoid protectionism in the form of future border price adjustments

environment adjusted total factor energy efficiency of taiwan s service sectors this study computes the pure technical efficiency pte and energy saving target of taiwan s service sectors during 2001 2008 by using the input oriented data envelopment analysis dea approach with the assumption of a variable returns to scale vrs situation this paper further investigates the effects of industry characteristics on the energy saving target by applying the four stage dea proposed by fried et al 1999 we also calculate the pre adjusted and environment adjusted total factor energy efficiency tfee scores in these service sectors there are three inputs labor capital stock and energy consumption and a single output real gdp in the dea model the most energy efficient service sector is finance insurance and real estate which has an average tfee of 0 994 and an environment adjusted tfee eatfee of 0 807 the study utilizes the panel data random effects tobit regression model with the energy saving target est as the dependent variable those service industries with a larger gdp output have greater excess use of energy the capital labor ratio has a significantly positive effect while the time trend variable has a significantly negative impact on the est suggesting that future new capital investment should also be accompanied with energy saving technology in the service sectors

intermediaries and corruption surveys of businessmen and anecdotal evidence blame intermediary agents middlemen hired by corporations and individuals for increasing corruption in the developing world although this problem has gained the attention of policy makers there has been little formal analysis of it in the economics literature in a game theoretic model analyzing the interaction between clients public official and intermediary agents we find that intermediary agents worsen the impact of corruption and that traditional methods of fighting corruption can actually increase corruption in the presence of intermediary agents

decomposition analysis for assessing the progress in decoupling industrial growth from co2 emissions in the eu manufacturing sector decomposition analysis is used in this paper not only to explain changes in industrial co2 emissions but also to comparatively evaluate the progress made in 14 eu countries in decoupling emissions from industrial growth the analysis is performed for the period 1990 2003 by distinguishing two time intervals for assessing progress prior to and following the agreement on the kyoto protocol the refined laspeyres model is used to determine the impact of 5 explanatory factors output energy intensity structure fuel mix and utility mix the obtained results are further elaborated in order to assess the real efforts undertaken in each country and their effectiveness in dissociating the economic and environmental dimensions of development moreover a rescaling procedure is implemented in order to adjust efforts to the average progress in the eu and proceed to a fair comparative evaluation it is found that most eu countries made a considerable but not always sufficient decoupling effort while no significant acceleration is observed in the post kyoto period

the effect of succession taxes on family firm investment evidence from a natural experiment this paper provides causal evidence on the impact of succession taxes on firm investment decisions and transfer of control using a 2002 policy change in greece that substantially reduced the tax on intrafamily transfers of businesses i show that succession taxes lead to a more than 40 decline in investment around family successions slow sales growth and a depletion of cash reserves furthermore succession taxes strongly affect the decision to sell or retain the firm within the family i conclude by discussing implications of my findings for firms in the united states and europe

to steal or not to steal firm attributes legal environment and valuation data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within country variation that decreases with the strength of investors legal protection a simple model identifies three firm attributes related to that variation investment opportunities external financing and ownership structure using firm level governance and transparency data from 27 countries we find that all three firm attributes are related to the quality of governance and disclosure practices and firms with higher governance and transparency rankings are valued higher in stock markets all relations are stronger in less investor friendly countries demonstrating that firms adapt to poor legal environments to establish efficient governance practices

industry energy use and structural change a case study of the people s republic of china abstract this paper examines the effects of structural change and improvements in energy intensities of individual industries in aggregate industry energy intensity changes in china during 1980 88 the divisia index is used to decompose the energy intensity effect and structural effect a major finding of this analysis is that the main contribution to changed aggregate energy intensity was from the changes in energy intensities of individual industries during the period structural effects were found to contribute little to the aggregate energy intensity changes

the role of co2 embodiment in us china trade abstract this study examines the influence of us china trade on national and global emissions of carbon dioxide co2 the three basic questions are as follows 1 what amount of co2 emissions is avoided in the us by importing chinese goods 2 how much are co2 emissions in china increased as a result of the production of goods for export to the us and 3 what are the impacts of us china trade on global co2 emissions our initial findings reveal that during 1997 2003 1 us co2 emissions would have increased from 3 to 6 if the goods imported from china had been produced in the us 2 about 7 14 of china s current co2 emissions were a result of producing exports for us consumers and 3 us china trade has increased global co2 emissions by an estimated 720 million metric tons we suggest that the export of us technologies and expertise related to clean production and energy efficiency to china could be a win win strategy for both countries for reducing their trade imbalance and mitigating global co2 emissions improved international accounting methodologies for assigning responsibility for co2 emissions must be designed to account for the dynamic nature of international trade

manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the impacts of changes in output industry structure and energy intensity this paper examines trends in manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the changes that occured between 1973 and 1987 into the effects of changes in aggregate manufacturing activity industry structure and energy intensities measured at the industry group level while manufacturing production grew in every country except the uk the rate of growth was variable from nation to nation structural change led to modest reductions in energy use in most countries although in norway structural change led to substantial growth in energy use the reduction in energy intensities was strikingly uniform across all nations ranging from 20 norway to 36 japan over the period of the analysis while other studies have used divisia decomposition techniques we use an alternative method based on laspeyres indices a comparison of the two techniques shows that they yield closely similar empirical results although the laspeyres approach is more easily interpreted while the interactions between changes in structure and intensity are arbitrarily assigned to the two factors by the divisia approach the lapeyres method yields interaction terms that explicitly account for such effects

reexamine so2 emissions embodied in china s exports using multiregional input output analysis previous studies on embodied emission in china s exports focus on the national aggregate analysis while pay little attention to the interregional emission transfer driven by exports we used multiregional input output model of 30 provinces to reexamine the embodied emissions and to capture the interregional linkage in it results in 2002 2007 show that so2 embodied in exports contributes 15 17 22 08 of the total domestic so2 emissions and 74 40 78 14 of the embodiment is in exports from the eastern provinces where over 90 of china s exports occur however only about 70 of the embodied emission in eastern china s exports is discharged in the east an increasing portion 24 to 34 is released in the central and western provinces as a result of interregional production linkage moreover the interregional connection becomes closer during the 2002 2007 period which increases the scale and intensity of embodied emission in china s export given large gaps in emission intensity among regions further analysis on guangdong china s largest export province shows that the so2 emissions per unit of output induced by guangdong s exports are larger than that induced by the province s own exports for most provinces especially the central and western provinces which are restricted in exports and indirectly export by supporting guangdong s exports via interregional economic linkage the results yield important implications for china s export and pollution emission control policy