a panel cointegration analysis of the demand for oil in the middle east this article applies recently developed panel unit root and panel cointegration techniques to estimate the long run income and price elasticities for oil in the middle east the results for the panel indicate that demand for oil is highly price inelastic and slightly income elastic in the middle east there is considerable variation in the results for the income variable across countries with the coefficient on the income variable statistically insignificant for several countries the coefficient on the price variable is statistically significant in all cases with the expected sign and the price elasticity is uniformly low while the results for the income variable differ across countries the results for the panel as a whole suggest that the demand for oil in the middle east is being driven largely by strong economic growth while consumers are largely insensitive to price changes

energy consumption and economic growth nexus in tanzania an ardl bounds testing approach abstract in this paper we examine the intertemporal causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in tanzania during the period of 1971 2006 unlike the majority of the previous studies we employ the newly developed autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach by pesaran et al 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 289 326 to examine this linkage we also use two proxies of energy consumption namely total energy consumption per capita and electricity consumption per capita the results of the bounds test show that there is a stable long run relationship between each of the proxies of energy consumption and economic growth the results of the causality test on the other hand show that there is a unidirectional causal flow from total energy consumption to economic growth and a prima facie causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth overall the study finds that energy consumption spurs economic growth in tanzania

revisiting the tourism led growth hypothesis for turkey using the bounds test and johansen approach for cointegration abstract this paper empirically revisits and investigates the tourism led growth tlg hypothesis in the case of turkey by employing the bounds test and johansen approach for cointegration using annual data from 1960 2006 although gunduz and hatemi j 2005 is the tourism led growth hypothesis valid for turkey applied economics letters 12 499 504 support the tlg hypothesis for turkey suggesting unidirectional causation from tourism to economic growth by making use of the leveraged bootstrap causality tests and ongan and demiroz 2005 the contribution of tourism to the long run turkish economic growth ekonomick casopis journal of economics 53 9 880 894 suggest bidirectional causality between international tourism and economic growth in turkey this study does not find any cointegration between international tourism and economic growth in turkey therefore unlike the findings of gunduz and hatemi j 2005 and ongan and demiroz 2005 this study rejects the tlg hypothesis for the turkish economy since no cointegration was found and error correction mechanisms plus causality tests cannot be run for further steps in the long term

exploring the relationship among co2 emissions real gdp energy consumption and tourism in the eu and candidate countries evidence from panel models robust to heterogeneity and cross sectional dependence a major criticism to the existing energy growth environment literature we notice is the selection of methodology panel estimation techniques that fail to consider both heterogeneity and cross sectional dependence across countries may cause forecasting errors the other concern related to the literature is that only a small number of studies analyze the influence of tourism on co2 emissions even though tourism sector has potential for affecting the environment to fulfill the mentioned gaps in the literature this study analyzes the relationship among carbon emissions real income energy consumption and tourism for a panel of the eu and candidate countries over the period 1995 2011 by using heterogeneous panel estimation techniques with cross sectional dependence results from the cadf and the cips panel unit root tests show that the analyzed variables become stationary at their first differences the lm bootstrap panel cointegration test indicates the presence of a long run relationship among the analyzed variables results from the ols with fixed effects the fmols the dols and the group mean estimator reveal that energy consumption contributes to the level of emissions while real income and tourism mitigate co2 emissions the emirmahmutoglu kose panel granger causality test suggests that there is one way causality running from tourism to carbon emissions and two way causality between co2 emissions and energy consumption and between real income and co2 emissions policy implications are further discussed

are macroeconomic policies better in curbing air pollution than environmental policies a dsge approach with carbon dependent fiscal and monetary policies abstract the environmental impacts of macroeconomic policies and their interaction with climate policies are under researched in the existing literature this paper compares the effectiveness of standard macroeconomic tools fiscal and monetary policies with carbon taxation in curbing air pollution by using an environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium e dsge model we show how government expenditure interest rate and carbon tax rate should vary over time in order to stabilize carbon emission levels we find that i while all the aforementioned policies could stabilize carbon emissions their underlying mechanisms are different fiscal monetary and carbon tax policies uniquely and respectively lead to a reduction in abatement effort income tax revenue and general price level ii with economic expansions driven by total factor productivity tfp shocks fiscal policy is the only policy that could maintain the emission levels and simultaneously improve household welfare in term of consumption and labor iii regarding the interaction between carbon and macroeconomic policies carbon taxation should complement monetary policy while it should not respond to fiscal policy

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

the demand for spatially complementary national parks using a panel dataset on annual visits to each u s national park we empirically analyze the demand for these parks using a spatial lag model which accounts for the complementary nature of the parks our results suggest that increases in fuel costs temperature increases of greater than 3 f and restrictions on foreign tourism all lower visitation to u s national parks causing associated decreases in money spent by tourists jobs created and income generated these results can also be used to analyze the possible implications of proposed public policies such as international visa requirements gas taxes and carbon taxing trading

growth deforestation and the efficiency of the redd mechanism this paper assesses the long term impacts of an international transfer called the reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation redd mechanism which aims at preserving tropical forests of the recipient economy this two sector economy faces a dilemma between economic growth and deforestation the rural sector can substitute reproducible capital for agricultural land whereas the manufacturing sector only requires capital the model shows that the redd mechanism has a non monotonic effect on steady state welfares for low transfer schemes the agricultural output increases with the transfer even though less land is under cultivation for high transfer schemes the increase in the transfer may not offset the decrease in the agricultural output the open loop symmetric nash equilibrium in a dynamic deforestation game predicts that redistributing the transfer among a finite number of producers is less efficient in reducing deforestation than in the social optimum

relationship between forest resources and economic growth empirical evidence from china abstract natural resources especially forests are critical to china s sustainable development in recent years effective utilization of forest resources has become a significant concern in china in this study on the basis of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis the relationship between forest resources and economic growth is examined using panel data from 30 provinces in china for the period 2002 2015 and the generalized method of moments gmm approach to control for potential endogeneity the empirical results indicate that with continuous economic growth the timber output and area of afforestation would at first increase and then decrease after reaching the corresponding turning points given the considerable regional gap in economic and social development three regions of china were investigated to perform a more in depth analysis evidence observed for the country and the three regions suggests an ekc for forest resources these findings indicate positive effects of china s pursuit of a more balanced growth path where forest resources would be less consumed and more actively protected

fuel taxes an important instrument for climate policy abstract this article shows that fuel taxes serve a very important role for the environment and that we risk a backlash of increased emissions if they are abolished fuel taxes have restrained growth in fuel demand and associated carbon emissions although fuel demand is large and growing our analysis shows that it would have been much higher in the absence of domestic fuel taxes people often assert that fuel demand is inelastic but there is strong research evidence showing the opposite the price elasticity is in fact quite high but only in the long run in the short run it may be quite inelastic which has important implications for policy makers had europe not followed a policy of high fuel taxation but had low us taxes then fuel demand would have been twice as large hypothetical transport demand in the whole oecd area is calculated for various tax scenarios and the results show that fuel taxes are the single most powerful climate policy instrument implemented to date yet this fact is not usually given due attention in the debate

testing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis across the u s evidence from panel mean group estimators abstract it is widely believed that greenhouse gases contribute to a warmer climate since global warming is a serious threat and greenhouse gas emissions are one of the main causes of it analyzing the effects of economic development on environment have great importance in this study the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for the 50 u s states during the 1960 2010 period using recent panel data estimators that take cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity into account accordingly the cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity robust estimators augmented mean group amg and common correlated effects mean group estimator ccemg provide mixed results the amg estimator strongly validates the ekc hypothesis asserting that the ekc holds in 30 of the 50 states with turning points for income per capita lie between 1292 and 48597 on the contrary the ccemg estimator provides only weak evidence on the ekc hypothesis and the ekc holds only in 10 states with turning points between 2457 and 14603

investigating the influence of tourism on economic growth and carbon emissions evidence from panel analysis of the european union the study investigates the influence of tourism on economic growth and co2 emissions in the empirical analysis unit root and cointegration tests using panel data of european union countries from 1988 to 2009 are performed to examine the long run equilibrium relationship among tourism co2 emissions economic growth and foreign direct investment fdi results from panel cointegration techniques and fixed effects models indicate that a long run equilibrium relationship exists among these variables furthermore tourism co2 emissions and fdi have high significant positive effect on economic growth economic growth in turn shows a high significant positive impact on co2 emissions while tourism and fdi incur a high significant negative impact on co2 emissions

the effects of transport regulation on the oil market does market power matter instruments used to regulate the consumption of oil in the transport sector include fuel taxes biofuel requirements and fuel efficiency standards however the effects that these have on oil consumption and price vary if market power is present in the oil market the directions of change in consumption and price might contrast with those in a competitive market as a result the market structure affects not only the effectiveness of the policy instruments used to reduce oil consumption but also the terms of trade and carbon leakage in particular reduced oil consumption as a result of increased fuel efficiency standards will unambiguously increase the price of oil under a monopoly

on the relationships between co2 emissions energy consumption and income the importance of time variation abstract the environment that governs the relationships between energy consumption carbon dioxide co2 emissions and gross domestic product gdp in the g7 countries changes over time due to variations in economic growth regulatory policy and technology using a novel approach that may detect causalities when the time constant hypothesis is rejected we find significant time varying granger causalities among the variables under consideration there is bidirectional causality between gdp and energy consumption for japan unidirectional causality running from gdp to energy consumption for italy and unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to gdp for the resource country canada moreover the results also show a bidirectional time varying causality between energy consumption and co2 emissions for the united states and causality from energy consumption to co2 emissions for france finally while we find significant time varying causalities running from gdp to co2 emissions for italy and japan the finding of inverted n shaped curves italy and japan lends no support to the traditional environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for these countries it implies that environmental policy and economic growth should go hand in hand other policy implications of the empirical results have been proposed

short run fuel price responses at the pump and on the road abstract we provide evidence that motorists respond to short run fluctuations in fuel prices at the gas pump and not on the road employing variants of censored panel regression to control for censoring of the dependent variable we find that the fuel price has a negative impact on the quantity of fuel purchased but no consistently significant impact on the subsequent distance driven until the next refill over the short run drivers thus appear to cope with high fuel prices by adjusting fuel purchases with each visit to the filling station but without altering their daily mileage

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

exploring the effects of international tourism on china s economic growth energy consumption and environmental pollution evidence from a regional panel analysis abstract this study explores the effects of international tourism on china s economic growth energy consumption and environmental pollution as proxied by co 2 emissions in a multivariate framework using regional panel data over the period 1995 2011 our findings suggest that the tourism induced ekc hypothesis does not exist in central china and is merely weakly supported in eastern and western china however results show that tourism has a negative impact on co 2 emissions in the eastern region which contradicts with our perception to some extent panel causality tests show that the directions of causality in both short and long runs are mixed among regions nevertheless our findings reveal that tourism causally affects economic growth and co 2 emissions in the long run thus tourism led growth hypothesis is verified under all three scenarios our findings also suggest that in all three regions there is bidirectional causality between economic growth and co 2 emissions overall these results imply that low carbon tourism in china should be continuously supported which provides significant insights to policy makers at various government levels

exploring the relationship between energy use and economic growth with bivariate models new evidence from g 7 countries abstract there is a rapidly growing literature on the interaction between energy use and economic development with many analysts drawing policy conclusions on the basis of granger causality tests that involve only an energy and an economic variable this paper attempts to demonstrate empirically that such studies although useful for certain applications may be of limited use for policy purposes after outlining theoretical and methodological issues associated with such approaches i apply bivariate energy economy causality tests for canada france germany italy japan the united kingdom and the united states using aggregate and sectoral data and three different modern econometric methods the results which are often contradictory or economically implausible illustrate explicitly that one should be cautious when drawing policy implications with the aid of bivariate causality tests on small samples i therefore underline the importance of utilizing as large sample sizes as possible and using multivariate models which are closer to economic theory accommodate several mechanisms and causality channels and provide a better representation of real world interactions between energy use and economic growth

tourism and temperature effects on the electricity consumption of the hospitality sector abstract the european union has recently presented a strategic long term vision for a climate neutral economy by 2050 considering that climate change is a serious concern for europeans a great socio economic transformation is necessary affecting all economic sectors on the one hand the european union considers that it is necessary to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 on the other hand sectors need to adapt to a warming climate focusing on the tourism sector and using panel data referring to 12 spanish mediterranean provinces and the 1999 2014 time period this study tests the tourist stays and temperature effects on the electricity consumption of the hospitality sector by estimating extended energy environmental kuznets curves for the sector the results show that this curve is not supported instead electricity consumption progressively increases as tourism grows in addition the results indicate that temperature variables have notable influence over electricity use with a positive influence of global warming on electricity consumption finally results also show positive relationships between overnight stays in hotels with higher star ratings and electricity use while no significant price effects are observed electricity saving measures and renewable electricity generation promotion are recommended especially in the highest energy consuming establishments

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

exploring methods and practicalities of conducting sector wide energy consumption accounting in the tourist accommodation industry abstract sector wide environmental accounting is an important mechanism for determining areas of poor environmental performance that need to be targeted to reduce resource consumption and the production of waste output however to date little attention has been paid to the practicalities of conducting sector wide environmental accounting in fragmented service oriented industry sectors that comprise a diversity of small to medium sized enterprises smes this study explores such practicalities through a series of independent energy audits conducted in the australian tourist accommodation industry three distinct energy consumption accounting techniques are reviewed in the light of findings made from 35 energy audits and more than 200 telephone and face to face interviews held with various accommodation sector representatives the three sector wide energy consumption accounting methods reviewed are the floor area method the multiple regression method and the mandatory reporting method in light of different business structures different in house environmental accounting practices and other major factors affecting resource consumption mandatory reporting is found to be the most efficient and effective method to facilitate its use it is recommended that a governments consider requiring commercial resource consumption or waste production figures to be made generally accessible b businesses are required to collect energy consumption data over several years to provide the basis for calculating relatively accurate models that capture the factors driving energy consumption and c standardised accounting spreadsheets are developed to facilitate data collection for different types of enterprises

the relationship between energy and gnp further results this paper reexamines the casuality between gnp and energy consumption by using updated us data for the period 1947 1979 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and employment applying sims technique we find no causal relationship between gnp and energy consumption we find further that there is a slight unidirectional flow running from employment to energy consumption economic interpretations of the empirical results are also presented

energy efficiency and the slump in labour productivity in the usa energy consumption is included in an aggregate cobb douglas production function for the usa the data suggest that energy conservation has not reduced the growth rate for real gnp by more than 0 3 percentage points and that less than one fifth of the overall slump in labour productivity since 1973 should be attributed to higher energy prices

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

ecotourism demand and differential pricing of national park access in costa rica ecotourism presents developing countries with growing opportunities for enhancing resource conservation and economic growth but also raises pressing management and policy challenges this paper presents a conceptual framework and empirical analysis of the impacts of introducing a differential entrance fee policy at three national parks in costa rica data are collected using a contingent behavior methodology designed to elicit information on foreign tourists hypothetical park visitation behaviors at alternative entrance fee levels park visitation demand functions and price and income elasticities are estimated revenue maximizing fees are calculated and applications of differential pricing principles to park management are discussed

international tourism higher education and economic growth the case of north cyprus this study investigates the long run equilibrium relationship between international tourism higher education growth real income growth and the direction of causality among these variables for the turkish republic of northern cyprus which is not recognised by any country other than turkey results reveal that international tourism and higher education are in a long run equilibrium relationship with real income growth international tourism and higher education have an inelastic yet positively significant impact on real income growth in the long run period finally the results of the present study reveal that both the tourism led growth and the higher education led growth hypotheses are confirmed for north cyprus

causality between income and emission a country group specific econometric analysis abstract empirical studies of the environmental kuznets curve ekc examine the presence or otherwise of an inverted u shaped relationship between the level of pollution and the level of income customarily in the diagram of ekc the level of income is shown on the horizontal axis and that of pollution on the vertical axis thus it is presumed that the relationship between income and pollution is one of unidirectional causality with income causing environmental changes and not vice versa the validity of this presumption is now being questioned it is being asserted that the nature and direction of causality may vary from one country to the other in this paper we present the results of a study of income co 2 emission causality based on a granger causality test to cross country panel data on per capita income and the corresponding per capita co 2 emission data briefly our results indicate three different types of causality relationship holding for different country groups for the developed country groups of north america and western europe and also for eastern europe the causality is found to run from emission to income for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan causality from income to emission is obtained finally for the country groups of asia and africa the causality is found to be bi directional the regression equations estimated as part of the granger causality test further suggest that for the country groups of north america and western europe the growth rate of emission has become stationary around a zero mean and a shock in the growth rate of emission tends to generate a corresponding shock in the growth rate of income in contrast for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan a shock in the income growth rate is likely to result in a corresponding shock in the growth rate of emission finally causality being bi directional for the country groups of asia and africa the income and the emission growth rates seemed to reinforce each other

international tourism energy consumption and environmental pollution the case of turkey abstract this study investigates the long run equilibrium relationship between tourism energy consumption and environmental degradation as proxied by carbon dioxide co 2 emissions in turkey which attracts more than 30 million tourists per year making it the sixth most visited country in the world the study results reveal that tourism and energy consumption are in a long term equilibrium relationship with co 2 emissions in the tourism induced model co 2 emissions converge to the long term equilibrium path by a 91 01 percent speed of adjustment every year through the channels of tourism energy consumption and aggregate income further the results of the impulse response and variance decompositions reveal that the reaction of energy consumption and therefore co 2 emissions to changes in tourism development is positive and gains strength in the longer periods this implies that tourism development in turkey has resulted not only in considerable increases in energy use but also considerable increases in climate change as demonstrated by the econometric analysis of this study

technological progress and sustainable development what about the rebound effect abstract sustainability concepts that rest on the idea of resource or energy efficiency improvements due to technological progress tend to overestimate the potential saving effects because they frequently ignore the behavioral responses evoked by technological improvements efficiency improvements also affect the demand for resources and energy and often an increase in efficiency by 1 will cause a reduction in resource use that is far below 1 or sometimes it can even cause an increase in resource use this phenomenon is commonly labeled the rebound effect which is well known among energy economists but never attracted much attention in ecological economics the paper starts with the traditional neoclassical analysis of the rebound effect in a partial equilibrium framework that concentrates on the demand of one particular energy service such as mobility or room temperature it also provides an overview of some of the main empirical studies based on this model that mostly confirm the existence of the rebound effect but are controversial about its actual importance however we have to go beyond the neoclassical single service model in order to take care of the variety of possible feedback affecting energy use the paper presents two important expansions of the single service model in order to show the potential relevance of the rebound effect to ecological economics first it is shown that in a multi services model it proves to be difficult to make general statements about the relevance of the rebound effect in this case the overall effect of an increase in energy efficiency on total energy use depends on the on the assumptions about the substitutability between the services considered and the direction of the income effect second the paper also tries to take care of the fact that changes in resource use or energy use are frequently just side effects of other forms of technological progress especially technological change of a time saving nature can have a large influence on energy use as many time saving devices for example faster modes of transport require an increase in energy consumption that is frequently reinforced by a rebound effect with respect to time this effect will be especially strong when wages are high and at the same time energy prices are low as is currently the case in most industrialized countries consequently the paper also provides a strong argument for the introduction of energy taxes

analysis of electricity consumption in the tourism sector a decomposition approach abstract index decomposition analysis ida has become a common tool for studying the evolution of energy consumption in its initial form it comprises three contributions namely activity structure and intensity effects various sectors of activities were studied in the literature by employing ida approach and the present work proposes its application to the electricity consumption in the tourism sector the proposed decomposition analysis is developed on the basis of seven indexes grouped in three macro contributions namely energy intensity economic structure and industrial structure the decomposition is performed in the period 1995 2017 and italy was used as test case for the methodology the analysis highlights that overall the changes in electricity intensity and in the industrial structure were responsible for an increase of the electricity consumption of 5 581 gwh whereas the economic structure was responsible for a decrease of 1 337 gwh their contemporary effect determined a total variation of electricity consumption between 1995 and 2017 of 4 244 gwh results demonstrated that the proposed ida equation specifically tailored for the tourism sector allows to provide a detailed analytical explanation of the factors affecting electricity consumption in the italian tourism sector the same framework can be applied to any other country and source of energy

economic prosperity biodiversity conservation and the environmental kuznets curve many conservationists contend that economic growth and biodiversity conservation are incompatible goals some economists contest this viewpoint arguing that wealthier countries have the luxury of investing more heavily in efforts to conserve biodiversity under this assumption we expect a u shaped relationship between per capita wealth and proportion of species conserved we test this environmental kuznets curve ekc using estimates of per capita income and deforestation rates index of biodiversity threat for 35 tropical countries a prior analysis dietz s adger w n 2003 economic growth biodiversity loss and conservation effort journal of environmental management 68 23 35 using conventional regression techniques failed to provide any support for the parabolic relationship predicted by the ekc hypothesis here we introduce the use of quantile regression and spatial filtering to reanalyze this data addressing issues of heteroskedasticity and spatial autocorrelation we note that preliminary analysis using these methods provides some initial evidence for an ekc however a series of panel analyses with country specific dummy variables eliminated or even reversed much of this support a closer examination of conservation practices and environmental indicators within the countries particularly those countries that drove our initial support suggests that wealth is not a reliable indicator of improved conservation practice our findings indicate that an ekc for biodiversity is overly simplistic and further exploration is required to fully understand the mechanisms by which income affects biodiversity

introduction to the special issue things we do and don t understand about the household and the environment environmental economics has been slow to incorporate the full and complex nature of the household into its analytical structures and to reflect empirical evidence on household decision making this paper provides an overview of some of the main unanswered questions

moving beyond commitments creating durable change through the implementation of asia pulp and paper s forest conservation policy abstract campaigns by non governmental organizations ngos pressuring companies to adopt sustainability standards have caught academic interest in recent years critics of this approach toward increasing biodiversity protection and social justice argue that campaign successes are often short lived while proponents emphasize the potential of ngo campaigns to achieve positive environmental and social change in the absence of governmental legislation focusing on the recent forest conservation policy of asia pulp and paper app a leading pulp and paper company operating in southeast asia we analyze the challenges companies face in implementing sustainability commitments made as a result of ngo and market pressure drawing from research on policy implementation and corporate greening we identify key activities to help entrench app s commitments in the company s operations furthermore we suggest that a range of actions by different stakeholder groups can achieve broader effects of app s commitments toward better environmental and social stewardship in the region s pulp and paper sector

the simple economics of motor vehicle pollution a case for fuel tax the volume of pollution produced by an automobile is determined by driver s behavior along three margins i vehicle selection ii kilometers driven and iii on road fuel economy the first two margins have been studied extensively however the third has received scant attention how significant is this intensive margin what would be the optimal policies when it is taken into account the paper develops and analyzes a simple model of the technical and behavioral mechanisms that determine the volume emissions produced by a car the results show that an optimal fuel tax would provide drivers with appropriate incentives along all three margins and that only public information is needed for a fuel tax to be set optimally in contrast an optimal distance tax would require private information lastly relative to the optimal fuel tax a simple uniform fuel tax is shown to be progressive thus being already deployed worldwide a uniform fuel tax is an attractive second best policy these findings should be accounted for when designing new mechanisms to alleviate motor vehicle pollution

do high oil prices matter evidence on the mobility behavior of german households focusing on travel survey data from germany this paper investigates the determinants of automobile travel with the specific aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices and fuel economy the analysis is predicated on the notion that car mileage is a two stage decision process comprising the discrete choice of whether to own a car and the continuous choice of distance traveled to capture this process we employ censored regression models consisting of probit and ols estimators which allows us to gauge the extent to which sample selectivity may bias the results our elasticity estimates indicate a significant positive association between increased fuel economy and increased driving and a significantly negative fuel price elasticity which ranges between 35 and 41 taken together these results suggest that fuel taxes are likely to be a more effective policy measure in reducing emissions than fuel efficiency standards

economic growth and liquidation of natural capital the case of forest clearance the importance of natural capital to economic systems is increasingly recognized previous empirical models of economic growth rates however have emphasized accumulation of physical and human capital this paper shows that the economic growth of over 70 countries has been positively affected by liquidation of one aspect of natural capital forests while controlling for factors typically associated with national growth rates the positive association was robust to additions of various covariates such as forest exports level of economic development agricultural area and geographical position these results suggest that conversion of forests has partially fuelled the economic expansion of countries

sectoral energy consumption by source and economic growth in turkey this paper provides a detailed analysis of the energy consumption in turkey during the last 40 years it investigates the causal relationships between income and energy consumption in two ways first the relationship is studied at the aggregate level then we focus on the industrial sector previous findings suggest that in the case of turkey there is a unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to growth however our findings suggest that in the long run income and energy consumption appear to be neutral with respect to each other both at the aggregate and at the industrial level we also find a strong evidence of instantaneous causality which means that contemporaneous values of energy consumption and income are correlated furthermore a descriptive analysis is conducted in order to reveal the differences in the use of energy resources we conclude that energy conservation policies are necessary for environmental concerns and our empirical results imply that such policies would not impede economic growth in the long term

energy consumption and economic growth the experience of african countries revisited abstract the aim of this paper is to re examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for seventeen african countries in a multivariate framework by including labor and capital as additional variables we apply the variance decomposition analysis due to pesaran and shin pesaran m h and shin y generalised impulse response analysis in linear multivariate models economics letters 1998 58 17 29 to evaluate how important is the causal impact of energy consumption on economic growth relative to labor and capital the results of our multivariate modified granger causality analysis due to toda and yamamoto toda h y and yamamoto t statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated process journal of econometrics 1995 66 225 250 tend to reject the neutrality hypothesis for the energy income relationship in fifteen out of the seventeen countries in contrast results of our variance decomposition analyses show that in eleven out of the seventeen countries energy is no more than a contributing factor to output growth and not an important one when compared to capital and labor labor and capital are the most important factors in output growth in fifteen out of the seventeen countries however these results should be interpreted with care as they may not be sufficiently robust enough to support the inference that energy consumption plays a minor role in the economic growth of african countries

energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth in china abstract this paper investigates the existence and direction of granger causality between economic growth energy consumption and carbon emissions in china applying a multivariate model of economic growth energy use carbon emissions capital and urban population empirical results for china over the period 1960 2007 suggest a unidirectional granger causality running from gdp to energy consumption and a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to carbon emissions in the long run evidence shows that neither carbon emissions nor energy consumption leads economic growth therefore the government of china can purse conservative energy policy and carbon emissions reduction policy in the long run without impeding economic growth

does foreign direct investment drive environmental degradation in china an empirical study based on air quality index from a spatial perspective abstract a growing literature on the pollution haven hypothesis has surged for decades in this paper we employ a city level data set of 150 chinese cities in 2014 and take spatial spillovers into account by using spatial econometric models to investigate whether foreign capital inflows drive environmental degradation in china the results suggest that foreign direct investment is negatively related to air pollution in china indicating evidence of pollution halo hypothesis moreover foreign direct investment has significant spatial technological spillovers improving air quality in china this study also finds that there is no evidence of an inverted u shaped curve between income and air pollution as income levels increase air quality continues to worsen the development of the tertiary industry is found to have a positive effect on air pollution densely populated cities tend to demand for better environmental quality from the above analysis it follows that policies handles are urgently needed to improve air quality in china

let them eat cake a note on comparing alternative models of the demand for medical care this article comments on the rand econometric approach to estimating and testing models of the demand for medical care as typified in duan et al 1983 the rand methodology is contrasted with more mainstream econometric approaches to similar empirical problems as developed in the sample selection literature it is shown that despite rand s claim their approach requires some fairly unusual assumptions on the model joint error distribution and functional form alternatively their model likelihood functions may be interpreted as being nested in more general sample selection model likelihood functions with easily testable parameter restrictions

former soviet union oil production and gdp decline granger causality and the multi cycle hubbert curve abstract this paper discusses the transition of the former soviet union fsu within the context of a 1987 1996 soviet and fsu oil production decline the conventional explanation of the break up is that economic inefficiencies and the cold war defense build up caused it another possible explanation one that is examined at length here is that declining oil production was a contributing factor the econometric analysis suggests that the fall in soviet and former soviet gdp in the 1980s and 1990s did not granger cause the decline in oil production but the decline in oil production did granger cause the fall in gdp coal and natural gas to gdp relationships show alternative granger causalities that we would expect to see with oil but do not a multi cycle hubbert trend that may be used to forecast future fsu oil production is also shown

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

the saving and investment nexus for china evidence from cointegration tests the saving and investment nexus as postulated by feldstein and horioka fh 1980 is revisited the saving investment correlation for china is estimated over the periods 1952 1998 and 1952 1994 the latter culminating in a period of fixed exchange rate regime amongst the key results it is found that saving and investment are correlated for china for both the period of the fixed exchange rate and the entire sample period with high saving investment correlation the results suggest that the chinese economy is in conformity with the fh hypothesis this is a valid outcome for in china capital mobility was fairly restricted over the 1952 1994 period as indicated by the relatively low foreign direct investment

tourist arrivals energy consumption and pollutant emissions in a developing economy implications for sustainable tourism sustainable tourism management policies should aim at maximising economic benefits from tourist arrivals while minimising associated adverse impacts on the environment this study assesses the short run and long run relationships between tourist arrivals per capita economic output emissions energy consumption and capital formation citing nepal as a specific case study we developed four hypotheses and tested them using time series econometrics based on the autoregressive distributed lag model and granger causality tests the results provide strong evidence of an economy driven tourism sector where expansion in economic output leads to expansion in tourist arrivals more tourist arrivals in turn generate positive impacts on gross capital formation energy consumption negatively affects tourist arrivals calling for increased attention towards improving energy efficiency and energy diversity we conclude that national policies to increase tourist arrivals should be integrated with national energy and environmental policies in order to facilitate the transition towards a sustainable tourism sector

energy consumption and gdp in turkey is there a co integration relationship energy consumption and gdp are expected to grow by 5 9 and 7 annually until 2025 in turkey this paper tries to unfold the linkage between energy consumption and gdp by undertaking a co integration analysis for turkey with annual data over the period 1970 2003 the analysis shows that energy consumption and gdp are co integrated this means that there is a possibly bi directional causality relationship between the two we establish that there is a unidirectional causality running from gdp to energy consumption indicating that energy saving would not harm economic growth in turkey in addition we find that energy consumption keeps on growing as long as the economy grows in turkey

co2 emissions energy consumption and output in france abstract this paper examines the dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for france using cointegration and vector error correction modelling techniques we argue that these variables are strongly inter related and therefore their relationship must be examined using an integrated framework the results provide evidence for the existence of a fairly robust long run relationship between these variables for the period 1960 2000 the causality results support the argument that economic growth exerts a causal influence on growth of energy use and growth of pollution in the long run the results also point to a uni directional causality running from growth of energy use to output growth in the short run

differences in relative prices and international differences in growth rates the new growth literature following paul m romer 1986 and robert e lucas jr 1988 has formulated models in which growth rates can differ systematically across countries a large empirical literature has used cross sectional techniques to examine the cause of international differences in growth rates this paper examines whether this work has used data which have been constructed in such a way as to introduce inadvertently a spurious correlation between growth and income levels this effect occurs because relative prices evolve because of different rates of technological progress in different industries many of the new growth models assume single goods or goods produced by the same technology so this phenomenon has so far escaped analysis if technological progress is more rapid in some sectors than others relative prices will change during the process of development the change of relative prices has two effects on measured growth rates first the choice of base prices affects the growth rate this phenomenon is sometimes called the gerschenkron effect second using any base prices or weights introduces a spurious correlation between income and growth less developed countries would tend to have lower growth rates not because they grew more slowly but because of data construction techniques for the sake of simplicity these phenomena will be called the gerschenkron or the level effect and the spurious correlation effect 3 this paper examines the international comparison program icp and the penn world tables pwt which are based on the icp the penn world tables are the data most widely used in empirical studies of international differences in economic growth both the icp and pwt use international prices to adjust for differences in the purchasing power of currencies these prices most closely resemble hungarian prices using such prices tends to produce time series with lower growth rates than those in the national accounts for countries less developed than hungary conversely the growth rates would be higher for countries more developed than hungary however the growth rates of poorer countries are not systematically lower in the penn world tables the paper examines why the growth rates are not distorted and makes some specific recommendations for data construction and use virginia polytechnic institute and state university blacksburg va 24061 0316 part of this work was supported by a grant from the institute of international studies at brown university and by a summer internship at the division of international finance at the federal reserve board i am grateful to peter garber david weil oded galor and anonymous referees for helpful comments alan heston and robert summers have also helped me understand icp and pwt methodology of course i alone am responsible for any mistakes in this paper iexamples include steve dowrick and duc tho nguyen 1989 robert j barro 1991 j bradford de long and lawrence h summers 1991 and n gregory mankiw et al 1992 2a series of papers by christina d romer 1986a b 1989 has already emphasized the importance of data construction techniques in another context 3there is a third effect a real acceleration effect caused by shifting consumption patterns and the reallocation of resources between sectors growth accountants such as angus maddison 1987 adjust estimates of total factor productivity for this sort of shift william j baumol et al 1989 have also referred to this phenomenon for an analysis in terms of a simple multisector solow model see nuxoll 1992a

energy consumption and economic growth in central america evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for six central american countries over the period 1980 2004 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship based on the heterogeneous panel cointegration test by pedroni pedroni p 1999 critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 61 653 670 pedroni p 2004 panel cointegration asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the ppp hypothesis new results econometric theory 20 597 627 cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate the presence of both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis

are causal relationships sensitive to causality tests 1987 are causal relationships sensitive to causality tests applied economics vol 19 no 4 pp 459 465

distributional effects of alternative vehicle pollution control policies abstract previous work shows that policies that subsidize new vehicles and tax size miles or gasoline efficiently reduce pollution less is known about their distributional effects this paper examines distributional effects by estimating the joint demand for vehicles and miles using the consumer expenditure survey greater price responsiveness among low income households enhances progressivity of gas or miles taxes across lower incomes and mitigates regressivity across upper incomes taxes on engine size or subsidies to new vehicles are significantly more regressive than gas or miles taxes

oil and the macroeconomy when prices go up and down an extension of hamilton s results in an important paper hamilton 1983 demonstrated a strong correlation between oil price changes and gross national product growth in u s data however his study pertained to a period in which all the large oil price movements were upward and thus it left unanswered the question whether the correlation persists in periods of price decline moreover the price variable he used was somewhat distorted by price controls in the 1970s this note investigates whether hamilton s results continue to hold when the sample is extended to include the recent oil market collapse and the oil price variable is corrected for the effects of price controls particular attention is given to the possibility of asymmetric responses to oil price increases and decreases as suggested in the structural employment literature loungani 1986 davis 1987 hamilton 1988 like hamilton i based my investigation on the gnp equation in sims s 1 980b six variable quarterly vector autoregressive model