co2 emissions and income dynamics what does the global evidence tell us this paper analyzes the co evolution of two major determinants of social welfare namely income and carbon emissions in particular by using a distribution dynamics approach based on markov chains we investigate the shape and behavior of the joint distribution of per capita income and carbon dioxide emissions we arrive at several interesting conclusions especially in the context of international negotiations on climate change first evidence does not support theoretical models predicting the existence of a poverty environment trap specifically in the long run two main groups of countries will emerge poor versus polluting countries second the typical development path leads initially to high emission levels and subsequently to high income third the convergence process towards the stationary distribution is very slow finally for carbon emissions whenever it is observed the environmental kuznets curve seems to be only a transitory phenomenon

growth and environmental quality testing the double convergence hypothesis abstract this paper discusses the double convergence hypothesis dch that the uncritical analysis of the so called environmental kuznets curve ekc implicitly implies according to the ekc empirical evidence would support the hypothesis that economic growth through a deterministic sequence of phases would produce cross country convergence in per capita output and as a by product convergence in the demand for environmental quality however factual analysis seems to reject the general hypothesis of convergence in per capita output limiting the validity of such an assessment to the case of homogeneous groups of countries this is why to test the dch the paper focuses on the original group of oecd countries for which the economic convergence turned out to be true this allows us to verify whether green and convergence follows as a consequence of economic convergence the paper also tests for a more equitable distribution of protection policies among countries unlike other studies which do not make the dch explicit and have focused on pollutant emissions this research explicitly tests for the double convergence using as a proxy for the demand for environmental quality the territory set aside for protected areas the results confirm that for the selected homogenous group of countries growth has accompanied the demand for environmental quality this happens both in terms of conditional and stochastic convergence

energy consumption and co2 emissions convergence in european union member countries a tonneau des danaides abstract as the consumption of energy is responsible for approximately 80 of ghg in eu iea 2008 the impact of energy activity on the environment has received increasing attention over the last decades from scholars researchers politicians and society as a whole within eu member countries it is commonly accepted that the design of energy and mitigation policies either at national or at european level require a detailed and integrated investigation of convergence divergence pattern among the participating countries in this paper we examine the distribution dynamics of energy consumption and co2 emissions their intensities as well as the carbonization index in 23 european countries over a forty one year period in particular from 1970 to 2010 for this purpose we used quah s methodology which is based on the dynamics of cross section distributions the main conclusion is that for all the examined variables the hypothesis of convergence patterns for the eu sample is not valid moreover regarding each examined variable different groups of polarization established important differences occur across eu countries according to the climate type with respect to the examined variables our analysis provides strong evidence supporting the fact that national and european energy and mitigation policies should be implemented according to the non convergence paradigm the body of evidence provided by our analysis is of great importance to energy policy makers and for issues related to climate change

persistence mean reversion and non linearities in emissions evidence from the brics and g7 countries the ministerio de economia y competitividad eco2014 55236 juncal cunado gratefully acknowledges financial support from the ministerio de economia y competitividad eco2014 55496

club convergence in carbon dioxide emissions we examine convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among 128 countries for the period 1960 2003 by means of a new methodology introduced by phillips and sul econometrica 75 6 1771 1855 2007a contrary to previous studies our approach allows us to examine for evidence of club convergence i e identify groups of countries that converge to different equilibria our results suggest convergence in per capita co2 emissions among all the countries under scrutiny in the early years of our sample however there seem to be two separate convergence clubs in the recent era that converge to different steady states interestingly we also find evidence of transitioning between the two convergence clubs suggesting either a slow convergence between the two clubs or a tendency for some countries to move from one convergence club to the other

a club convergence analysis of per capita energy consumption across australian regions and sectors we examine convergence in per capita energy consumption across nine sectors and seven states and territories in australia over the period 19902016 using the phillips sul club convergence approach we find evidence of multiple convergence clubs for aggregate energy consumption per capita and for energy consumption per capita in eight of the nine sectors with full club convergence in the case of electricity the presence of multiple equilibria for most sectors reflect that states with similar features in terms of climate economic activities and population size among others tend to exhibit similar energy consumption patterns our results highlight the need to tailor policies designed to reduce energy consumption in specific sectors to the consumption convergence paths unique to particular clusters of states

non hbox co _2 co 2 generating energy shares in the world cross country differences and polarization the aim of this paper is to examine the spatial distribution of non hbox co 2 generating energy sources in the world for the period 1990 2009 paying special attention to the evolution of cross country disparities to this end after carrying out a classical convergence analysis a more thorough investigation of the entire distribution is presented by examining its external shape the intra distribution dynamics and the long run equilibrium distribution this analysis reveals the existence of a weak rather insignificant convergence process and that large cross country differences are likely to persist in the long run next as polarization indicators are a proper way of appraising potential conflict in international environmental negotiations we test whether or not the distribution dynamics concurs with the presence of polarization our results indicate that two poles can be clearly differentiated one with high and other with low non hbox co 2 generating energy shares in view of these findings and to ensure a fair transition to a sustainable energy system the paper calls for the development of an ambitious clean energy agenda especially in countries with low non hbox co 2 generating energy shares

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a bayesian robust structural model we address international convergence in carbon dioxide emissions per capita and per value added derived from emission inventories based on production and consumption patterns we propose a bayesian structural model that accounts for heteroscedasticity and endogeneity between emissions and economic growth and tests for the existence of group specific convergence via shrinkage priors we find evidence for country specific conditional convergence in all emission inventories implying a half life of 2 7 3 1 years for production based emissions and 3 6 4 7 years for consumption based emissions when testing for global convergence without allowing for individual specific convergence paths the half life of hbox co 2 per capita increases to 15 26 years whereas emission intensities show a half life of 44 45 years our results highlight the current incompatibility between emission targets and economic growth and the need for faster diffusion of green technologies moreover there is no evidence for specific convergence dynamics in the european union the oecd or the countries that are subject to binding emission constraints specified in the kyoto protocol the institutional frameworks implemented in industrialized countries did not induce faster convergence among developed economies

divergence in technical efficiency of electric utilities evidence from the sapp abstract this paper investigates the convergence pattern of technical efficiency of the south africa power pool sapp utilities over the period april 2003 march 2010 by means of parametric and non parametric techniques technical efficiency scores are computed via both stochastic frontier analysis and data envelopment analysis mixed results are obtained from the neoclassical convergence approaches in addition distribution dynamics methods reveal some evidence of club formation and this result is supported with the occurrence of divergence taken as a whole technical efficiency is found to diverge among the utilities operating in the power pool

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the eu legend or reality abstract designing appropriate environmental and energy policies in order to meet the kyoto protocol s carbon dioxide co 2 reduction targets in the european union eu requires a detailed examination and thorough understanding of co 2 emission trends across the eu member states this paper investigates whether co 2 emissions have converged across 22 european countries over the 1971 to 2006 period the bayesian shrinkage estimation method is employed to do this work and the results reveal the following first the hypothesis of absolute convergence in per capita co 2 emissions is supported and a slight upward convergence is observed second the fact that countries differ considerably in both their speed of convergence and volatility in emissions makes it possible to identify different groups of countries third the results with respect to convergence do not vary much once the share of industry in gdp is accounted for in a conditional convergence analysis however a decreasing share of industry in gdp seems to contribute to a decline in per capita emissions these findings may carry important implications for both national and eu environmental policies

have air pollutant emissions converged among u s regions evidence from unit root tests previous studies of income distribution have found evidence indicating that incomes across u s regions have converged supporting the prediction of the neoclassical growth model a potential shortcoming in these studies is that only one measure of well being is considered a measure of wealth linked to incomes or production this paper examines whether income convergence was accompanied by air pollutant emission convergence results from unit root tests provide some evidence that indicators of environmental quality have converged across u s regions during the 1929 1994 period

carbon intensity and economic development 1962 1991 a brief exploration of the environmental kuznets curve the relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity co2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991 the inverted u curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982 this is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle income countries the curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy

energy security under de carbonization scenarios an assessment framework and evaluation under different technology and policy choices abstract how would a low carbon energy transformation affect energy security this paper proposes a framework to evaluate energy security under long term energy scenarios generated by integrated assessment models energy security is defined as low vulnerability of vital energy systems delineated along geographic and sectoral boundaries the proposed framework considers vulnerability as a combination of risks associated with inter regional energy trade and resilience reflected in energy intensity and diversity of energy sources and technologies we apply this framework to 43 scenarios generated by the message model as part of the global energy assessment including one baseline scenario and 42 low carbon scenarios where the global mean temperature increase is limited to 2 c over the pre industrial level by and large low carbon scenarios are associated with lower energy trade and higher diversity of energy options especially in the transport sector a few risks do emerge under low carbon scenarios in the latter half of the century they include potentially high trade in natural gas and hydrogen and low diversity of electricity sources trade is typically lower in scenarios which emphasize demand side policies as well as non tradable energy sources nuclear and renewables while diversity is higher in scenarios which limit the penetration of intermittent renewables

decomposing inequality in energy related co2 emissions by source and source increment the roles of production and residential consumption abstract using provincial data on energy related co2 emissions in china from 1997 to 2014 and the co2 emission gini coefficient ceg this study evaluates china s spatial inequality in energy related co2 emissions further we decompose this inequality and its variation from the perspectives of production and residential energy consumption using the source decomposition and source increment decomposition methods this paper presents a new ceg source increment decomposition method that can achieve complete decomposition the results reveal a downward trend in china s overall production sector and residential sector co2 emissions inequality although the gini coefficient of co2 emissions from the residential sector is larger than that from the production sector the contribution of the latter to the overall ceg is higher the impacts of the spatial inequality of co2 emissions from china s production and residential sectors depend on the type of energy the concentration effect is the primary factor responsible for inducing changes in china s overall and production sector co2 emissions inequality but it is not the only dominant factor for the residential sector co2 emissions inequality

international ecological footprint inequality a methodological review and some results scarcities of environmental services are no longer merely a remote hypothesis consequently analysis of their inequalities between nations becomes of paramount importance for the achievement of sustainability this paper aims on the one hand at revising methodological aspects of the inequality measurement of certain environmental data and on the other at extending the scarce empirical evidence relating to the international distribution of ecological footprint ef most of the techniques currently important in the literature are revised and then tested on ef data with interesting results we consider the underlying properties of different inequality indices those indices which fit best with environmental inequality measurements are cv 2 and ge 2 because of their neutrality property subgroup and source decompositions are also discussed from a methodological perspective empirically this paper contributes to the environmental inequality measurement of ef this inequality has been quite stable subgroup decomposition by using exogenous country groups world bank classification conclude that between group inequality explains almost the totality of international ef inequality source decomposition warns of the dangers of confining co 2 emissions reduction to crop based energies because of the implications for basic needs satisfaction

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

the building blocks of international ecological footprint inequality a regression based decomposition this paper carries out an empirical decomposition of international inequality in the ecological footprint with a view to quantifying the extent of the contribution of explanatory variables such as countries affluence economic structure demographic characteristics climate and technology using data for the period 1993 2007 the regression based inequality decomposition methodology we use allows us to extend the results obtained in standard environmental impact regressions stirpat models and to deal with an often neglected aspect of such models that of equity within generations the results obtained point towards the prioritization of policies which take into account both future and present generations in this regard economic redistribution should be considered as a primary environmental policy

is the environmental performance of industrialized countries converging a sure approach to testing for convergence abstract in this paper we test for convergence in the environmental performance of a sample of oecd countries with data ranging from 1971 to 2002 first we use data envelopment analysis dea to compute two environmental performance indicators epis in the production theory framework second we propose the use of a sequential multivariate approach to test for convergence in environmental performance these tests allow us to reconcile the time series literature with the cross sectional dimension which is basic when testing for convergence in regional blocs the sure technique is used which allows for the existence of correlations across the series without imposing a common speed of mean reversion the empirical results show that the group of countries as a whole as well as the majority of countries considered on an individual basis results for some countries vary between epis are catching up with switzerland the benchmark country

searching for a kuznets curve in environmental efficiency using kernel estimation abstract the paper constructs environmental efficiency indexes for a sample consisting of high and low income countries using nonparametric production frontier techniques and then establishes an environmental kuznets relationship for environmental efficiency by nadaraya watson kernel estimation methodology

income and co2 emissions evidence from panel unit root and cointegration tests abstract this paper re investigates the stationarity properties of per capita carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 109 countries within seven regional panel sets covering 1971 2003 we apply the recent unit root test of the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller suradf test developed by breuer et al 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 482 493 2002 series specific unit root tests with panel data oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 64 527 546 the panel suradf test accounts for the presence of cross country correlations in the data and the parameters in the panel specification vary across countries more importantly this test allows us to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root overall our empirical results illustrate that real gdp and co 2 emissions in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 processes and that the traditional panel unit root tests could lead to misleading inferences as well as the conduct of cointegration analysis being perhaps inappropriate the results of our analysis carry critical implications for the modeling of co 2 emissions and gdp because of the different orders of integration for the two variables

generational accounting a new approach for understanding the effects of fiscal policy on saving working pa er 9107 generational accounting a new approach for understanding the effects of fiscal policy on saving by alan j auerbach jagadeesh gokhale and laurence j kotlikoff alan j auerbach is a professor of economics at the university of pennsylvania and an associate of the national bureau of economic research jagadeesh gokhale is an economist at the federal reserve bank of cleveland and laurence j kotlikoff is a professor of economics at boston university and an asso ciate of the national bureau of economic research working papers of the federal reserve bank of cleveland are preliminary materials circu lated to stimulate discussion and critical comment the views stated herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the federal reserve bank of cleveland or of the board of governors of the federal reserve sys tem may 1991

the causal factors of international inequality in hbox co _ 2 emissions per capita a regression based inequality decomposition analysis this paper uses the possibilities provided by the regression based inequality decomposition fields in res labor econ 22 1 38 2003 to explore the contribution of different explanatory factors to international inequality in hbox co 2 emissions per capita in contrast to previous emissions inequality decompositions which were based on identity relationships this methodology does not impose any a priori specific relationship thus it allows an assessment of the contribution to inequality of different relevant variables in short the paper appraises the relative contributions of affluence sectoral composition demographic factors and climate the analysis is applied to selected years of the period 1993 2007 the results show the important though decreasing share of the contribution of demographic factors as well as a significant contribution of affluence and sectoral composition

dynamics and drivers of per capita co2 emissions in asia abstract the aim of this paper is to document recent trends in asia s co2 emissions and explore the mechanisms that drive those emissions for fourteen countries over the period 1971 to 2017 we apply a sequential method which has a strong relationship to policy indicators first an analysis of the dynamics is undertaken to identify if convergence is occurring followed by a study of the determinants of those dynamics this approach overcomes some of the limitations of previous work analyzing emission convergence by focusing on country specific characteristics such as energy mix and energy efficiency the analysis reveals per capita co2 emissions energy intensity carbonization and per capita incomes are slowly converging over the full sample yet this behavior is not uniform there were differences in transition paths prior to and after the asian financial crisis the per capita income driver was the most important driver in explaining the dynamics and variation of emissions while carbonization and energy intensity drivers were less pronounced the analysis reveals that the energy needs of the region s extraordinary economic growth favored fossil fuels and a surprising revelation is that despite having different per capita income levels china korea and vietnam all share a common convergence path this paper provides further evidence against using carbon intensity solely as a target for climate policy

distribution dynamics of co2 emissions this paper uses nonparametric methods to examine the convergence in co2 emissions per capita on a sample of 100 countries for the period 1966 1996 industrial countries show a convergence pattern however there is little evidence of convergence for the whole sample

convergence of carbon dioxide performance across swedish industrial sectors an environmental index approach the overall objective of the paper is to analyze convergence of co2 emission intensity across manufacturing sectors in sweden our approach differs from previous work on carbon convergence in that

convergence of per capita sulphur dioxide emissions across us states this study examines the stochastic conditional convergence of sulphur dioxide so2 emissions using the residual augmented least squares lagrange multiplier rals lm unit root test with structural breaks this procedure allows the data to account for trend breaks and nonnormal errors that have been ignored or deemphasized in previous studies the study finds that per capita sulphur dioxide emissions exhibits stochastic conditional convergence across us states

co fluctuation patterns of per capita carbon dioxide emissions the role of energy markets abstract this paper applies principal component analysis to investigate the linkages or dominant co fluctuation patterns of per capita carbon dioxide emissions across countries for the time period 1950 2000 energy resource world markets are investigated as an offsetting mechanism possibly coordinating emission fluctuations between countries the results of the analysis provide evidence that world energy resource markets are acting as a coordinating mechanism for emission fluctuations in most cases the results also suggest that until recently the dominant emission co fluctuation pattern for developed countries differs from the dominant emission co fluctuation pattern for developing countries the common fluctuation pattern found in the 1984 2000 time period suggests that an offsetting mechanism does exist and will help contain global per capita emissions into the future the strong degree that emissions are linked between countries and energy markets acting as an offsetting mechanism suggests that to be successful a global agreement to address climate change must require emission reductions by all major emitters not just the developed countries

growth and pollution convergence theory and evidence stabilizing pollution levels in the long run is a pre requisite for sustainable growth we develop a neoclassical growth model with endogenous emission reduction predicting that along optimal sustainable paths pollution growth rates are i positively related to output growth scale effect and ii negatively related to emission levels defensive effect this dynamic law reduces to a convergence equation that is empirically tested for two major and regulated air pollutants sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides with a panel of 25 european countries spanning the years 1980 2005 traditional parametric models are rejected by the data more flexible regression techniques confirm the existence of both the scale and the defensive effect supporting the model predictions

global convergence in per capita co2 emissions national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013 new huadu business school research fund

a nonparametric analysis of income convergence across the us states abstract in this paper i apply the nonparametric methods proposed by quah to data on us state relative income levels in contrast to quah s results using cross country data i find no evidence of polarization in the cross state income distribution the long run density implied by the estimates is strongly unimodal this finding is consistent with the results of previous analyses of convergence in state income levels using other methods