defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

the search for economics talent doctoral completion and research productivity economists hold an annual talent search in which students from around the world apply to doctoral programs and economics departments top economics phd programs seek candidates with the preparation aptitude drive and creativity to become academic professionals whose research will advance the frontiers of the discipline admission committee members must judge students potential economic talent based on the evidence provided in the application folders which includes standardized test scores course selection and grades quality of the undergraduate institution fellow economists evaluations and other relevant information due to the nonobservability of important characteristics the admission committee s task of matching opportunity with talent constitutes a signaling problem as modeled by michael a spence 1973 what information then credibly signals otherwise unobservable economics talent viewing quantitative graduate record examination gre scores as a proxy for ability ronald g ehrenberg and panagiotis g mavros 1995 found that these scores failed to predict phd completion or time to degree for 25 years of economics phd students at cornell university attributing that result to a poor proxy for ability they recommended obtaining a richer set of information about a student s true ability by using for example the quality of applicants undergraduate institution information from letters of recommendation and the graduate committee s ranking the search for economics talent doctoral completion and research productivity

general equilibrium rebound from energy efficiency innovation abstract energy efficiency improvements rebound when economic responses undercut their direct energy savings i show that general equilibrium channels typically amplify rebound by making consumption goods cheaper but typically dampen rebound by increasing demand for non energy inputs to production and by changing the size of the energy supply sector improvements in the efficiency of the energy supply sector generate especially large rebound because they make energy cheaper in all other sectors quantitatively general equilibrium channels reduce rebound in u s consumption good sectors from 39 to 28 but increase rebound in the energy supply sector from 42 to 80

the symbiotic rebound effect in the circular economy abstract the circular economy has emerged as an important approach in addressing how society can use its resources more efficiently theoretical advancements in the circular economy have yielded benefits for both practice and policymaking however if the eco efficiency of resource use is to be improved then certain challenges that face the circular economy must be resolved one of these challenges concerns the rebound effect by investigating resource flow with a circular rather than linear system as well as within a producer producer rather than producer consumer type of relationship we identify a rebound effect that we term symbiotic rebound we differentiate it from other forms of rebound effect on the basis of its main driver opportunity costs drive a higher than expected use of resources in a circular economy rather than the usual driver of demand as found in other types of rebound in identifying describing and illustrating a symbiotic rebound effect we make two contributions first to the rebound literature and second to theory development on the circular economy

evidence of direct and indirect rebound effect in households in eu 27 countries abstract this research estimates the direct and indirect rebound effect of energy efficiency in households for the eu 27 countries the first twenty seven member states of the european union a hybrid methodology that combines econometric estimates environmental extended input output analysis and re spending models has been developed although most of the economies present values below 100 there are seven countries situated above this critical threshold by weighting individual estimates by gdp an average value for the overall eu 27 economy has been found between 73 62 and 81 16 these results suggest that the energy policy at the european level should be rethought if efficiency measures pursue reducing energy consumption and tackling climate change

patterns of research output and author concentration in the economics literature this study finds that a strong bibliometric regularity exists in the publication pattern in the economics literature the number of authors publishing n papers is approximately 1 n superscript c of those publishing one paper the economics literature conforms very well to the model with c 1 84 if data are taken from a large collection of journals when applied to individual journals the result shows that values of c range from 2 04 to 3 11 this paper also reports the degree of author concentration among leading economics journals finally this study finds that the graduates of three graduate programs account for more than half of the top 100 authors indicates strong institutional dominance in the production of the most prolific authors copyright 1991 by mit press

rebound effect in china evidence from the power generation sector abstract when talking about energy conservation rebound effect re is always concerned which defined as the increasing energy consumption relative to the counterfactual predicted by technological progress because of efficiency induced decrease in the real price of energy services in this paper we try to find a way to figure out the re through calculating the substitution relations accord with the definition based on the trans log cost function and considering the asymmetric impact on energy cost share equation the paper applies allen uzawa substitution elasticity to establish the price oriented analysis diagram of fossil energy consumption re using time series data applying the joint method of the dynamic ols dols and the seemingly unrelated regressions sur the re in china s electricity generation sector is estimated the results showed that the re is 11 6 in china s electricity generation sector if allowing for asymmetric price effects which indicates that china s power generation sector generally displays a feature of energy saving

technological change and the rebound effect in the stirpat model a critical view abstract technological change is key to understand the explanatory variables behind environmental impacts in the context of the stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model an adequate representation and analysis of the significance of the technology variable t in the stirpat model becomes crucial even more if one aims to better understand underlying processes such as the environmental rebound effect e re a critical review of the application of the stirpat model has been conducted to understand the diversity and value of the variables scopes assumptions statistical approaches and the environmental impacts commonly studied the findings highlight that despite the multiple applications and the high potential of the stirpat model inconclusive results and or knowledge gaps remain notably 1 a geographical imbalance in the scope of studies 2 the almost exclusive focus on carbon emissions 3 a lack of agreement on the choice of data additional explanatory variables and regression models 4 a lack of consensus on how to approximate t and 5 a lack of explicit analyses of the e re our findings are useful to both policymakers and academics for method design further research and policy evaluation

patterns of research productivity in the business ethics literature insights from analyses of bibliometric distributions in any academic discipline published articles in respective journals represent production units of scientific knowledge and bibliometric distributions reflect the patterns in such outputs across authors or producers closely following the analysis approach used for similar studies in the economics and finance literature we present the first study to examine whether there exists an empirical regularity in the bibliometric patterns of research productivity in the business ethics literature our results present strong evidence that there indeed exists a distinct empirical regularity it is the so called generalized lotka s law of scientific productivity pattern the number of authors publishing n papers is about 1 n c of those publishing one paper we discuss the likely processes that underlie the productivity pattern postulated by the generalized lotka s law we find that the value of the exponent c is equal to about 2 6 for the comprehensive bibliometric data across the two leading business ethics journals the observed research productivity pattern in the business ethics area a relatively young discipline is interestingly very consistent with those found in much older related business disciplines like economics accounting and finance we discuss the general implications of our findings

environmental efficiency and market segmentation an empirical analysis of china s thermal power industry abstract dominated by state owned administrative monopolistic enterprises china s power industry faces a dilemma that is being provoked by market oriented reforms regional protectionism makes it more difficult for those more efficient but non local power generators to enter into the local market thereby causing significant market segmentation ms in view of regional technology heterogeneity a meta frontier non radial slacks based measure model is used to evaluate the environmental efficiency ee of china s thermal power industry further we utilize a panel data tobit model and apply counterfactual analysis to explore the impacts of ms on ee the results show that 1 technology gaps exist between the group frontier and the meta frontier exhibiting greater potential for improvement 2 the degree of ms in thermal power industry in most provinces fluctuates within a narrow range from 2006 to 2015 and peaks during the period from 2008 to 2010 3 ms negatively affects ee performance both significantly and robustly with up to a 15 loss of thermal power generation due to ms in 2009 4 significant regional technology heterogeneity exists along with a widening technology gap ratio between developed and underdeveloped areas this study provides insightful policy implications for the sustainable development of china s thermal power industry

regional energy rebound effect the impact of economy wide and sector level energy efficiency improvement in georgia usa abstract rebound effect is defined as the lost part of ceteris paribus energy savings from improvements on energy efficiency in this paper we investigate economy wide energy rebound effects by developing a computable general equilibrium cge model for georgia usa the model adopts a highly disaggregated sector profile and highlights the substitution possibilities between different energy sources in the production structure these two features allow us to better characterize the change in energy use in face of an efficiency shock and to explore in detail how a sector level shock propagates throughout the economic structure to generate aggregate impacts we find that with economy wide energy efficiency improvement on the production side economy wide rebound is moderate energy price levels fall very slightly yet sectors respond to these changing prices quite differently in terms of local production and demand energy efficiency improvements in particular sectors epicenters induce quite different economy wide impacts in general we expect large rebound if the epicenter sector is an energy production sector a direct upstream downstream sector of energy production sectors a transportation sector or a sector with high production elasticity our analysis offers valuable insights for policy makers aiming to achieve energy conservation through increasing energy efficiency

useful exergy is key in obtaining plausible aggregate production functions and recognizing the role of energy in economic growth portugal 1960 2009 abstract the role of energy in economic growth is controversial models based on aggregate production functions apf range from the neoclassical which downplay energy due to a cost share theorem but typically rely on exogenous total factor productivity tfp to the ecological economic which acknowledge energy s importance the validity of the apf concept itself is questioned here we apply cointegration analysis to identify apfs between output capital labor and possibly energy measured as primary energy or useful exergy we test for tfp growth by including a time trend we require that plausible apfs verify cointegration non negative output elasticities and granger causality linking inputs to output our method recognizes cases where a plausible apfs do not exist thereby addressing the apf critique b energy impacts growth directly c energy impacts growth indirectly through capital and labor we apply the method to portugal 1960 2009 considering standard and quality adjusted capital labor measures with a time trend or disregarding energy plausible apfs are never found without a trend plausible apfs are found only when considering capital energy labor combinations within these with quality adjusted capital and labor and useful exergy results are consistent with the cost share theorem but energy plays a central role through a constraint on all factors of production

patterns of productivity in the finance literature a study of the bibliometric distributions this study finds a bibliometric regularity in the finance literature that the number of authors publishing n papers is about 1 nc of those publishing one paper we find that the finance literature conforms very well to the inverse square law c 2 if data are taken from a large collection of journals when applied to individual finance journals we find that values of c range from 1 95 to 3 26 we also find that top rated journals have higher concentrations among their contributors this implies that the phenomenon success breeds success is more common in higher quality publications it is frequently observed in bibliometric matters and in various social phenomena that success breeds success a frequently cited paper is more likely to be cited again than one little cited an author of many papers is more likely to publish again than one who has published little a journal which has been frequently consulted is more likely to be consulted again than one of previously infrequent use this is analogous to the folk saying the rich get richer and the poor get poorer lotka s law of scientific productivity is an example of such empirical laws lotka 1926 proposes an inverse square law relating authors of scientific papers to the number of papers written by each author specifically using data in the decennial index of chemical abstracts and in the name index of auerbach s geschichtstafeln der physik lotka plots the number of authors against the number of contributions made by each author on a logarithmic scale lotka finds that the points are closely scattered around a straight line having a slope of approximately negative two on the basis of this empirical observation lotka concludes the following in the cases examined it is found that the number of persons making 2 contributions is about one fourth of those making one the number making 3 contributions is about one ninth etc the number making n contributions is about 1 n2 of those making one and of all contributors the proportion that make a single contribution is about 60 percent thus lotka s empirical finding can be summarized by the equation an a1 n2 n 1 2 3 1

investigating meso economic rebound effects production side effects and feedback loops between the micro and macro level abstract research on the rebound effect has so far mainly considered micro economic rebound effects at the level of consumers and households as well as macro economic rebound effects in the sense of energy efficiency induced economic growth effects this article focuses on an area of rebound research that has not yet received sufficient attention namely on meso economic rebound effects as production side and sector level rebounds the article summarizes and systematizes reasons why companies generate rebounds distinguishes market and sector level rebounds from macro economic growth effects identifies a number of feedback loops by which production side and sector level rebounds multiply or nullify consumer side rebound effects and finally discusses some conclusions on the potential quantitative dimension of production side rebound effects

perspective from gaussian to paretian thinking causes and implications of power laws in organizations although normal distributions and related current quantitative methods are still relevant for some organizational research the growing ubiquity of power laws signifies that pareto rank frequency distributions fractals and underlying scale free theories are increasingly pervasive and valid characterizations of organizational dynamics when they apply researchers ignoring power law effects risk drawing false conclusions and promulgating useless advice to practitioners this is because what is important to most managers are the extremes they face not the averages we show that power laws are pervasive in the organizational world and present 15 scale free theories that apply to organizations next we discuss research implications embedded in pareto rank frequency distributions and draw statistical and methodological implications

toward a neoclassical theory of sustainable consumption eight golden age propositions abstract popular trends in ecological economics increasingly consign neoclassical economics to the sidelines of modern day relevancy the neoclassical tradition is often seen as reliant for its authenticity on a presumption of human avarice both unbridled consumerism and corporate cupidity and demanding for its real world applicability an assumption of continuous economic growth in a world of hard limits this article examines the question of whether neoclassical theory could instead provide keys to deeper understanding of sustainable consumption by combining in a single framework neoclassical growth theory general equilibrium theory and duality theory and by explicitly considering leisure time the analysis demonstrates that neoclassical economics yields several useful insights bearing on long term sustainability the analysis confirms several tenets of ecological economics and challenges others eight propositions emerge from this analysis that could help speed the development of a robust neoclassical theory of sustainable consumption here branded golden age propositions as they strongly echo the golden rule discoveries of edmund phelps

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

does predicted rebound depend on distinguishing between energy and energy services pour analyser le role des services energetiques et des combustibles dans l effet de relance de la consommation d energie liee a des actions d amelioration de l efficacite energetique plusieurs approches sont utilisees et comparees celle de cobb douglas celle de leontief et celle de la croissance equilibree

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 1 theoretical framework abstract this is the first part of a two part paper providing an analytical model of the indirect rebound effect given a direct rebound estimate that integrates consumer demand theory with the embodied energy of household spending from environmentally extended input output analysis the second part applies the model developed in part one to simulate the direct and indirect rebound for the average u s household in terms of primary energy co2e nox and so2 emissions and for energy efficiency investments in electricity natural gas or gasoline services part one provides a critical review of the largely independent economic and industrial ecology literatures on the indirect rebound by studying the two goods case and the n goods case we demonstrate that the indirect rebound is bounded by the consumer budget constraint and inversely related to the direct rebound we also compare the common proportional spending and income elasticity spending assumptions with our model of cross price elasticities including both substitution and income effects for the indirect rebound by assuming zero incremental capital costs and the same embodied energy as conventional technologies for efficient appliances we model an upper bound of the indirect rebound future work should also consider the increase in consumer welfare possible through the rebound effect

modeling the nutritional and distributional effects of taxing export crops it has been argued that the proximate causes of poverty among smallholders and its manifestation in extraordinarily high levels of malnutrition among preschool aged children emanate largely from the inadequate size of landholdings which produce insufficient food for the nutritional needs of the household 3 it has virtually become a convention in malawi to define poverty by landholding size 4 as a consequence a key element of the strategy to alleviate poverty and ensure food security in rural malawi has been to promote at least a subsistence level of maize production by smallholders through increasing or at

an empirical study of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china transport sector accounts for about 8 of total energy consumption in china and this share will likely increase in the visible future improving energy efficiency has been considered as a major way for reducing transport energy use whereas its effectiveness might be affected by the rebound effect this paper estimates the direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china by using the linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system model and simulation analysis our empirical results reveal the existence of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china a majority of the expected reduction in transport energy consumption from efficiency improvement could be offset due to the existence of rebound effect we have further investigated the relationship between the magnitude of direct rebound effect and households expenditure it was found that the direct rebound effect for passenger transport tends to decline with the increase of per capita household consumption expenditure

impact of energy efficiency gains on output and energy use with cobb douglas production function abstract a special issue of energy policy 28 2000 was devoted to a collection of papers edited by dr lee schipper the collection included a paper entitled a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes in which it was argued that the impact of fuel efficiency gains on output roughly gdp is likely to be relatively small by cobb douglas production function however an error in the analysis leads to under estimation of the long term impact this paper first provides a partial equilibrium analysis by an alternative method for the same case and then proceeds to an analysis on the issue in a two sector general equilibrium system in the latter analysis energy price is internalized both energy use efficiency and energy production efficiency are involved

imposing local concavity in the translog and generalized leontief cost functions abstract we propose and illustrate a method for imposing concavity at a single point which may result in concavity at many points in the familiar translog and generalized leontief cost functions while at the same time maintaining flexibility of the forms

the rebound effect in swedish heavy industry energy efficiency improvement eei benefits the climate and matters for energy security the potential emission and energy savings due to eei may however not fully materialize due to the rebound e

publish or perish what the competition is really doing this study provides comprehensive publications performance data over a twenty five year period for finance doctorates these data indicate that publishing one article per year in any finance journal or finance accounting economics or business journal over any prolonged period of time is a truly remarkable feat met by only 5 percent of the graduates tenure screens combining various quantity and quality requirements are examined to assess their ability to predict future publication productivity faculty and administrators seeking defensible benchmarks for evaluating faculty research productivity in finance will find that these data and results are particularly useful copyright 1992 by american finance association

a general equilibrium assessment of rebound effects in this paper we use a general equilibrium model applied to a national economy norway to explore the potential for energy efficiency improvements to trigger economic forces that offset potential savings from using more efficient technologies rebound effects two types of energy efficiency improvements electricity and oil are introduced into various sectors of the economy our results suggest significant and surprising differences across sectors concerning both energy use and consequences for the build up of greenhouse gases rebound effects are found to be quite significant for manufacturing sectors since long term consumption of energy undergoes minor reductions or increases in response to efficiency improvements in other sectors rebound effects appear to be weak or almost absent

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

energy use in the service sector an international perspective abstract this study presents the first international comparison of energy use and structure in the service sector of major oecd countries this sector includes offices hospitals schools stores and other buildings commonly referred to as commercial buildings the authors separate service sector energy use from other sectors examine differences in fuel mix energy intensity electricity use and conservation experience as well as fundamental differences in the extent and make up of the building stock and the climate most countries are seen to have reduced energy intensity since 1973 all have reduced the share of heating oil and increased the use of electricity both for space conditioning as well as for other building services the authors find that energy intensity in us commercial and institutional buildings is among the highest in the oecd while electricity intensities in norway canada the usa and sweden are well above those in other countries

an improved approach to estimate direct rebound effect by incorporating energy efficiency a revisit of china s industrial energy demand abstract the rebound effect or the response to energy efficiency improvement has drawn considerable attention from economists and policymakers however the magnitude remains quite controversial because of the differences in the definitions and methods being used originating from the definition of direct rebound effect we develop an improved approach incorporating energy efficiency the main advantages of the proposed approach are twofold first it enables us to estimate the demand elasticity of useful energy service with respect to energy service price the estimates are more consistent with the definition of rebound effect and are more effective second it decomposes direct rebound effect into substitution and output channels enabling us to further understand the microeconomic mechanisms applying this method we assess the direct energy rebound effect in china s industrial sectors we find that the direct rebound effect for the industry is 37 0 and the substitution and output channels contribute to 13 1 and 23 9 respectively substantial variations in the magnitudes and mechanisms occur by sector for heavy industry most energy rebound is induced by output expansion because of its sizeable cost decrease from efficiency improvements unlike heavy industry most energy rebound in light industry comes from substituting energy service for other inputs because firms in light industry are more flexible in adjusting production inputs our results provide evidences for the importance of energy efficiency measures and highlight the necessity of differentiated measures according to the sectoral characteristics

measurement of energy rebound effect in households evidence from residential electricity consumption in beijing china abstract energy efficiency improvement policies have special significance for carbon emissions reduction and the mitigation of the effects of climate change however the energy rebound effect caused by technological progress will indirectly increase energy consumption the magnitude of the rebound effect largely determines the effectiveness of energy efficiency in mitigating energy consumption this study reviews the main theory behind estimated methods of energy rebound effect measurement focuses on constructing a double logarithm energy demand model and an error correction model of the asymmetric demand responses of electricity price changes to empirically analyse the direct rebound effect on residential electricity use in beijing it integrates consumer s demand theory with the embodied electricity of household spending from a seven sector environmental energy input output e i o analysis to estimate the indirect rebound effect the three income elasticity weight change and proportional re spending scenario simulation results show that residential electricity use in beijing exhibits a partial rebound effect and the long term direct and indirect rebound effects are 46 to 56 and the short term direct rebound effect is 24 to 37 finally the direct and indirect energy rebound effect for various income groups needs further research an appropriate policy mix should be adopted to mitigate effectively the rebound effect in china s current lower energy price and lower energy efficiency market

technological progress and rebound effect in china s nonferrous metals industry an empirical study as one of china s mainstay and six major energy intensive industries the nonferrous metals industry faces the intense contradiction between economic growth and energy environment constraints technological progress does not only realize the energy savings but also causes rebound effect by promoting output growth although the rebound effect is an important topic there is still very little empirical research that focuses on the nonferrous metals industry in china using the lmdi method and the total factor productivity model to calculate parameters we estimate the size of the rebound effect in china s nonferrous metals industry over the period 1985 2014 according to the results the average rebound effect is approximately 83 02 with a downward trend which indicates that most of the expected energy savings are mitigated the rebounds with a strong fluctuation are comparatively discussed in various periods suggesting that china cannot count only on technological progress to save energy and reduce emission furthermore the government should apply economic instruments such as energy pricing mechanism reform resource tax and carbon tax as supplements to realize the targets of energy conservation and emission reduction additionally optimizing sub sector structure and promoting substitution also play a significant role in the mitigation of the rebound effect

energy productivity convergence within the australian construction industry a panel data study abstract energy productivity reflecting the volume of goods and services with one unit consumption of energy has become an important indicator of production and competitiveness within the construction industry in order to understand the long run growth patterns of energy productivity in the australian construction industry this study investigates the convergence of the construction energy productivity across a sample of seven australian regions from 1987 to 2014 and identifies regional clubs for future effective energy consumption strategy of production using a panel data approach the study presents a picture of the impacts of the influential components on the equilibrium and growth patterns of construction energy productivity across the studied regions the findings provide a better understanding of the impact of booms and busts on the australian construction energy productivity at the state level this adds to the body of knowledge on construction productivity by adapting a panel data approach of the convergence study into construction energy productivity

a new approach to measuring the rebound effect associated to energy efficiency improvements an application to the us residential energy demand this paper brings attention to the fact that the energy demand frontier model introduced by filippini and hunt 2011 2012 is closely connected to the measurement of the so called rebound effect associated with improvements in energy efficiency in particular we show that their model implicitly imposes a zero rebound effect which contradicts most of the available empirical evidence on this issue we relax this restrictive assumption through the modelling of a rebound effect function that mitigates or intensifies the effect of an efficiency improvement on energy consumption we illustrate our model with an empirical application that aims to estimate a us frontier residential aggregate energy demand function using panel data for 48 states over the period 1995 to 2011 average values of the rebound effect in the range of 56 80 are found therefore policymakers should be aware that most of the expected energy reduction from efficiency improvements may not be achieved

solow meets leontief economic growth and energy consumption abstract this paper proposes a methodology that integrates a growth model with an input output model to analyze the impacts of economic growth on the consumption of energy the integration between the models is carried out by calibrating the growth module which incorporates energetic inputs renewable and nonrenewable in the production function and implementing shocks by the supply side capital labor renewable and nonrenewable energy in the input output model this allows us to verify the pattern of energy consumption for each sector in the input output matrix we apply this methodology to study the energy consumption of eleven economic sectors in brazil using data from the brazilian national accounts and input output matrix ibge and the national energy report ben we conduct experiments involving changes in technological progress growth rate extraction and regeneration rates of both renewable and nonrenewable resources and population growth to analyze the impact of changes in the parameters of the model on the sectoral output growth rate and consequently on the consumption of energy in each economic sector

environmental rebounds backfires macroeconomic implications for the promotion of environmentally friendly products abstract this paper develops a dynamic two good clean and dirty goods two sector model to explore the implications of the macroeconomic environmental rebound backfire effect for environmentally friendly product promotions on not only the demand side a subsidy on the clean good consumption but also the supply side a technology promotion in the clean good production the macroeconomic environmental rebound backfire is decomposed into three effects the substitution wealth and sectoral reallocation effects we show that the steady state pollution stock exhibits a u shaped relationship with either demand side or supply side green promotions our calibrated result indicates that in terms of pollution the macroeconomic rebound effectfor the economy as a whole appears to be substantial more pronounced rebound effects are present when the elasticity of substitution between the clean and dirty good consumption is lower the labor supply is more elastic the environmental efficiency of clean goods is lower and the technology level in the clean good production is higher we also show that a pollution rebound can result in a social welfare improvement implying that the rebound effect somewhat improves economic efficiency and so policies aimed at mitigating the rebound effect may be counterproductive from a welfare perspective

communication energy efficiency and economic fallacies abstract the sharpening energy efficiency debate has revived claims that the apparent savings from using more efficient technologies would be largely offset by the macroeconomic response the tendency to use more energy services because they are made cheaper when energy price or availability constrains demand this is correct in more normal circumstances it may be true for efficiency changes which occur as part of general economic trends but not for policy driven measures aimed at bringing more efficient technologies into imperfect markets in such cases there will usually be real net energy savings only slightly smaller than those suggested by a simple engineering analysis and clear economic benefits

exchange rate fiscal and agricultural policies in africa does adjustment hurt the poor abstract trade exchange rate fiscal and agricultural sector policy reforms are the pillars of structural adjustment programs in africa results indicate that trade and exchange rate reforms are associated with a large decline in economic rents and a shift in relative prices that favor the rural and urban poor fiscal reforms have not brought about draconian belt tightening measures although the incidence of public spending particularly in the social sectors and in terms of public sector employment remains far from progressive reduction of export crop taxation contributes to higher incomes for the poor and domestic food crop liberalization has not led to increases in purchase prices of staple commodities for most low income households

measuring energy rebound effect in the chinese economy an economic accounting approach estimating the magnitude of china s economy wide rebound effect has attracted much attention in recent years most existing studies measure the rebound effect through the additional energy consumption from technological progress however in general technological progress is not equivalent to energy efficiency improvement consequently their estimation may be misleading to overcome the limitation this paper develops an alternative approach for estimating energy rebound effect based on the proposed approach china s economy wide energy rebound effect is revisited the empirical result shows that during the period 1981 2011 the rebound effects in china are between 30 and 40 with an average value of 34 3

decomposition analysis of debt s impact on china s energy consumption abstract debt can influence the energy consumption of private sectors and public agencies by changing their fiscal budget constraints from 1996 to 2016 china has had rapid debt growth and become the second largest borrower in the world additionally china has been the largest energy consumer since 2009 the impact of debt growth on its energy consumption however is not much addressed in the literature using an extended lmdi model we investigate the impact of china s debt on its energy consumption from 1996 to 2016 in a new way the results show that 1 among the closed set of debt related factors and other conventional variables studied private debt per capita makes the strongest contribution to china s energy consumption and population has a moderate impact on the growth of energy consumption 2 energy efficiency improvement output efficiency of government debt debt structure adjustment and increased tertiary industry share are mitigating forces of energy consumption these results provide a new holistic perspective for the chinese government to formulate synergistic policies of risk control and pollution control

how large is the economy wide rebound effect abstract the size of the economy wide rebound effect is crucial for estimating the contribution that energy efficiency improvements can make to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for understanding the drivers of energy use economy wide rebound from an energy efficiency improvement includes changes in the use of energy to produce complementary and substitute goods or inputs and other flow on effects that affect energy use across the economy as well as the direct rebound due to energy users using more of an energy service that has become less costly as result of improved energy efficiency jevons first argued in 1865 that improvements in energy efficiency increase total energy use and in recent decades researchers have argued for and against this backfire hypothesis theory provides some guidance on the factors affecting rebound but does not impose much constraint on the range of possible responses historical evidence suggests that the improved energy efficiency of recent technology has not reduced energy use because consumption has shifted to more energy intensive goods and services simulations and econometric research have produced mixed results some recent general equilibrium studies find large rebound around 100 but more research is needed to confirm or refute these findings

negative rebound and disinvestment effects in response to an improvement in energy efficiency in the uk economy this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge framework to investigate the conditions under which rebound effects may occur in response to increases in energy efficiency in the uk national economy previous work for the uk has suggested that rebound effects will occur even where key elasticities of substitution in production are set close to zero the research reported in this paper involves carrying out a systematic sensitivity analysis where relative price sensitivity is gradually introduced into the system focusing specifically on elasticities of substitution in production and trade parameters in order to determine conditions under which rebound effects become a likely outcome the main result is that while there is positive pressure for rebound effects even where direct and indirect demands for energy are very price inelastic this may be partially or wholly offset by negative income competitiveness and disinvestment effects which also occur in response to falling energy prices the occurrence of disinvestment effects is of particular interest these occur where falling energy prices reduce profitability in domestic energy supply sectors leading to a contraction in capital stock in these sectors which may in turn lead to rebound effects that are smaller in the long run than in the short run a result that runs contrary to the predictions of previous theoretical work in this area

substitution and price elasticity estimates using inter country pooled data in a translog cost model pooled data across several developing countries and the u s were used to estimate long run substitution and price elasticities ina translog framework for the paper iron and steel and aggregatemanufacturing industries while the quality of the estimates variesacross the several industry specific models the results suggest highervalues for these elasticities than appear commonly used in integratedassessment models estimates of own price elasticities of energy rangefrom 0 80 to 1 76 and are comparable to estimates from previouseconometric studies in the context of developed countries 0 77 to 0 87 substitution elasticities show wider variation across countriesand industries for energy and capital they range from 1 96 to 9 80 forlabor and energy from 2 61 to 7 11 and for energy and material from 0 26 to 2 07

rebound effect of improved energy efficiency for different energy types a general equilibrium analysis for china abstract this paper explores the rebound effect of different energy types in china based on a static computable general equilibrium model a one off 5 energy efficiency improvement is imposed on five different types of energy respectively in all the 135 production sectors in china the rebound effect is measured both on the production level and on the economy wide level for each type of energy the results show that improving energy efficiency of using electricity has the largest positive impact on gdp among the five energy types inter fuel substitutability does not affect the macroeconomic results significantly but long run impact is usually greater than the short run impact for the exports oriented sectors those that are capital intensive get big negative shock in the short run while those that are labour intensive get hurt in the long run there is no backfire effect however improving efficiency of using electricity can cause negative rebound which implies that improving the energy efficiency of using electricity might be a good policy choice under china s current energy structure in general macro level rebound is larger than production level rebound primary energy goods show larger rebound effect than secondary energy goods in addition the paper points out that the policy makers in china should look at the rebound effect in the long term rather than in the short term the energy efficiency policy would be a good and effective policy choice for energy conservation in china when it still has small inter fuel substitution

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

on the rebound feedback between energy intensities and energy uses in iea countries abstract the interaction or feedback between energy efficiencies or energy intensities and energy use has long been the topic of debate some have argued that energy efficiency improvements by reducing energy intensities and therefore lowering the cost of energy services would lead to rebound effects offsetting much or all of any initial savings in energy in this paper we analyse historical data on energy use efficiency and pricing in different sectors to try and identify rebounds for the period of our data since about 1970 we show that key measures of activity car use manufacturing output and structure house area etc have changed little in response to changes in energy prices or efficiency instead continuing their long term evolution relative to gdp or other driving factors while our analysis cannot disentangle more macro level economic feedbacks in a detailed way we show indirectly that such effects also appear to have been small over the 1970s and 1980s overall our analysis of disaggregated sectoral and subsectoral energy use and activity trends in a variety of iea economies suggests that any feedback effect is small compared to both the effects on energy use of changes in energy intensities and overall economic growth we conclude that most of the improvements in energy efficiencies led to reductions in energy intensities observed in the 1970s and 1980s weighted by 1990 activity levels intensities were roughly 15 20 lower in 1994 5 than in 1973 which in turn meant real savings of energy energy demand in iea countries is roughly this much below what it would have been for the same gdp had these savings not occurred rebounds may have taken back some of the overall savings but most remain even after the fall of oil prices in 1986 any boost to gdp as a result of these savings could not have been sufficient to increase energy demand enough to significantly alter these conclusions that the savings remained after the fall in oil prices supports the notion that net savings restrained energy growth relative to gdp in some formulations arise from technological progress even if energy prices do not increase how far this effect can reach however is a matter of considerable debate

decomposing energy demand across briic countries energy plays an important role within the production technology of fast emerging economies such that firms reaction to changes in energy prices provides useful information on factor productivity and factor intensity as well as the likely outcome of energy policy initiatives among other things drawing on duality theory this paper decomposes changes in energy demand into substitution and output effects using annual sector level production data for brazil russia india indonesia and china briic for the period 1995 2009 unlike previous studies this study analyzed the economic properties of the underlying production technology results indicate that changes in energy demand are strongly dominated by substitution effects more importantly an intriguing finding that emerges from our analysis is the role of economies of scale and factor accumulation as opposed to technical progress in giving rise to the growth performance of sampled economies

direct rebound effect on urban residential electricity use an empirical study in china abstract though improving energy efficiency is an important approach to decrease the energy consumption the rebound effect caused by technology progress negatively affects the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies this paper empirically investigates direct rebound effect of urban residential electricity use in china using china s 30 provincial government panel data from1996 to 2010 we build a co integration equation and a panel error correction model to analyze the direct rebound effect the results indicate that an obvious rebound effect in the chinese urban residential electricity consumption does exist specifically the long term rebound effect is 0 74 while the short term rebound effect is 0 72 therefore the rebound effect significantly impairs functions of energy efficiency policies for this reason chinese government should take the rebound effect into consideration when formulating energy policies

a general equilibrium view of global rebound effects abstract how do energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption the effects are generally called rebound effects in the literature previous studies have extensively focused on only part of the global economy to study rebound effects e g energy consumption by households one industry or one country however since the global economy is highly connected among countries these studies may lead to misleading conclusions if the rebound effects in the rest of the economy are significant recently saunders 2008 analyzes the demand side by taking the global economy as a whole wei 2007 also provides a general analysis by using cobb douglas production functions for the global economy the present article expands wei 2007 general analysis to explore the rebound effects from an economist s viewpoint by taking the global economy as a whole and applying general forms of production functions the analysis provides new insights related to rebound effects we highlight the role of energy supply as a determinant of rebound we show that the substitution between energy resources and other productive resources is more relevant to long term rebound we predict that long term rebound may be lower than short term rebound and we also discover that super conservation can happen in both the short term and the long term

zipf s law for cities an explanation zipf s law is a very tight constraint on the class of admissible models of local growth it says that for most countries the size distribution of cities strikingly fits a power law the number of cities with populations greater than s is proportional to 1 s suppose that at least in the upper tail all cities follow some proportional growth process this appears to be verified empirically this automatically leads their distribution to converge to zipf s law

fuel conserving and using production functions abstract this article compares eight production cost functions used or potentially useful for exploring how energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption we show the practitioner s choice of function can inadvertently pre determine results and make recommendations as to which functions are flexible enough to prevent this we also show pre selected factor substitution elasticities can similarly pre determine results to aid the comparison we decompose the energy consumption rebound effect into intensity and output income effects which also delivers insight into the mechanisms of rebound we conclude by recommending practitioners restrict themselves to either the gallant fourier or the generalized leontief symmetric generalized barnett cost functions as being sufficiently rebound flexible the translog cost function may be suitable given certain conditions and a particular form of the ces solow function is a possible but problematic candidate along the way the article provides a general methodology for similarly examining any arbitrarily defined constant returns to scale production or cost function

rethinking economy wide rebound measures an unbiased proposal in spite of having been first introduced in the last half of the ninetieth century the debate about the possible rebound effects from energy efficiency improvements is still an open question in the economic literature this paper contributes to the existing research on this issue proposing an unbiased measure for economy wide rebound effects the novelty of this economy wide rebound measure stems from the fact that not only actual energy savings but also potential energy savings are quantified under general equilibrium conditions our findings indicate that the use of engineering savings instead of general equilibrium potential savings downward biases economy wide rebound effects and upward biases backfire effects the discrepancies between the traditional indicator and our proposed measure are analysed in the context of the spanish economy

monetary compensations in climate policy through the lens of a general equilibrium assessment the case of oil exporting countries this paper investigates the compensations that major oil producers have claimed for since the kyoto protocol in order to alleviate the adverse impacts of climate policy on their economies the amount of these adverse impacts is assessed through a general equilibrium model which endogenizes both the reduction of oil exportation revenues under international climate policy and the macroeconomic effect of carbon pricing on middle east s economy we show that compensating the drop of exportation revenues does not offset gdp and welfare losses because of the time profile of the general equilibrium effects when considering instead compensation based on gdp losses the effectiveness of monetary transfers proves to be drastically limited by general equilibrium effects in opened economies the main channels of this efficiency gap are investigated and its magnitude proves to be conditional upon strategic and policy choices of the middle east this leads us to suggest that other means than direct monetary compensating transfers should be discussed to engage the middle east in climate policies

do increases in energy efficiency improve environmental quality and sustainability governments world wide increasingly see energy efficiency as an important aspect of sustainability however there is a debate in the literature as to whether the impact of improved energy efficiency on reducing energy use might be partially or more than wholly offset through rebound and backfire effects this paper clarifies the theoretical conditions under which such effects would occur and explores their likely significance using a computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy we find that for scotland a general improvement in energy efficiency in the production sectors of the economy initially produces rebound effects that eventually grow into backfire energy use ultimately increases in response to an efficiency gain and the ratio of gdp to co2 emissions falls the economic factors underpinning rebound effects are straightforward energy efficiency improvements result in an effective cut in energy prices which produces output substitution competitiveness and income effects that stimulate energy demands however the presence of strong rebound or even backfire does not mean that efficiency enhancing policies are irrelevant rather it suggests that such policies operating alone are insufficient to generate environmental improvements the implication is that a co ordinated portfolio of energy policies is required

economic structure and energy savings from energy efficiency in households when an energy efficiency improvement occurs at the household level several mechanisms grouped under the name of the rebound effect increase the available income and consumption increasing the total energy consumption of the economic structure the present research analyses the links between energy efficiency improvements in households consumption and the economic structure in an input output framework we examine from an empirical perspective the relationship between energy efficiency improvements and the economic structure and between the direct and the indirect rebound effect the limits of the input output methodology in assessing the direct and indirect rebound effect have been empirically tested with respect to efficiency improvements of electricity uses in households in catalonia

modelling energy and non energy substitution a brief survey of elasticities estimating the degree of substitution between energy and non energy inputs is the key for any evaluation of environmental and energy policies yet given the variety of substitution elasticities the central question arises as to which measure would be most appropriate apparently allen s elasticities of substitution have been the most used measures in applied production analysis in line with frondel 2004 this paper argues that cross price elasticities are preferable for many practical purposes this conclusion is based on a survey of classical substitution measures such as those from allen morishima and mcfadden the survey highlights the fact that cross price elasticities are their essential ingredients

reform of refined oil product pricing mechanism and energy rebound effect for passenger transportation in china new huadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program of the energy foundation g 1203 15828 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013

safety nets gap filling and forests a global comparative perspective summary in the forest livelihoods literature forests are widely perceived to provide both common safety nets to shocks and resources for seasonal gap filling we use a large global comparative dataset to test these responses we find households rank forest extraction responses to shocks lower than most common alternatives for seasonal gap filling forest extraction also has limited importance the minority of households using forests for coping is asset poor and lives in villages specialized on forests in particular timber extraction overall forest resources may be less important as a buffer between agricultural harvests and in times of unforeseen hardship than has been found in many case studies 2014 published by elsevier ltd

empirical analysis on energy rebound effect from the perspective of technological progress a case study of china s transport sector abstract energy rebound effect is a major issue in energy economics global energy and environmental problems have compelled the need for simultaneous attainment of economic development and energy conservation technological progress increases energy efficiency and saves energy but it also causes energy rebound effect which discounts the expected energy conservation china s transport sector is energy intensive therefore investigating rebound effect in china s transport sector has a very important significance for energy conservation and the formulation of related policies taking china s transport sector as a case study we used translog production function to measure the contribution rate of technological progress to output growth and estimated the rebound effect the results show that the average rebound effect was about 68 3 during 1981 2015 finally we provided relevant policy recommendations on the rebound effect based on the characteristics of energy use in china s transport sector

the economy wide rebound effect from improved energy efficiency in swedish industries a general equilibrium analysis the objective of this paper is to analyse the rebound effect from increased efficiency in industrial energy use in sweden energy efficiency improvements can have significant micro and macroeconom

resettlement for food security s sake insights from a malawi land reform project in several african contexts households are unable to enhance agricultural production due to land constraints few governments have explored the use of resettlement to alleviate land scarcity and facilitate rural to rural migration we examine whether a resettlement project in southern malawi improved food security in the long term our findings indicate resettled households achieved greater long term food security owing to additional land coupled with a more diversified crop portfolio we also find the formalization of property rights improved land security for male and female household heads but resettlement jeopardized the land security of women in male headed households

rebound and disinvestment effects in refined oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the scottish commercial transport sector in this paper we use an energy economy environment computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial transport sector on the supply and use of energy we focus our analysis on scottish refined oil as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity we find that a 5 increase in energy efficiency in the commercial transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil based energy commodities in all time periods in the target sector and at the economy wide level however our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the scottish refined oil supply sector this disinvestment effect acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects however the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector particularly the substitutability of energy for non energy intermediate inputs to production

estimation of global rebound effect caused by energy efficiency improvement abstract rebound effect refers to the phenomenon that the actual reduction in energy use and emissions is less than the expected reduction caused by an energy efficiency improvement due to induced behavior adjustment of relevant economic agents this article studies the global rebound effects on energy use and related emissions caused by an energy efficiency improvement we adopt a global computable general equilibrium cge model to design a scenario of energy efficiency improvement which is compared to a business as usual bau scenario to identify the global rebound effect our results show very large rebound effect on energy use 70 and related emissions 90 in 2040 at the global level with regional and sectoral differences important determinants among others are induced labor movement among economic activities and labor supply and substitution elasticity between energy and other goods labor mobility has a marked impact on both rebound effects and on fuel mix the global rebound effect is still considerable even with a low substitution elasticity between energy and other goods the effect of capital accumulation over time contributes marginally to the global rebound effect as it is utilized to promote economic growth by using energy input more efficiently

how disagreement about social costs leads to inefficient energy productivity investment public energy productivity investment influences the amount of future energy consumption if a present government expects its successor to value the social costs of fuel usage differently this adds a strategic component to its investment considerations we analyze this governmental time inconsistency situation as a sequential game in particular we show how the expectation of a more conservative party taking over makes a green government choose an investment level that is inefficient in that neither of the parties would prefer it to the investment level of a permanent green government under some circumstances the opposition would even prefer the government definitely to stay in power the gain from avoiding a strategic investment then outweighs the loss of not being able to regulate energy consumption we also analyze the welfare gains from binding agreements

do sticky energy prices impact the time paths of rebound effects associated with energy efficiency actions abstract there is broad consensus in the policy and academic communities regarding the importance of energy efficiency actions in reducing energy requirements and subsequent greenhouse gas emissions however there is also a requirement to understand the extent to which the technically possible energy savings from exogenously introduced efficiency improvements might be eroded by knock on economic effects which will further change energy use these effects strongly influence the way this rebound phenomenon evolves over time while economy wide drivers of rebound effects are well understood there has been some controversy over the relative sizes of the short and long run rebound effects associated with energy efficiency improvements theoretical analysis predicted that rebound effects would always be greater in the long run than in the short run however numerical general equilibrium simulations have contradicted this result a principal driver of the simulation results is the fully flexible response of energy supply prices to shifting demand however in practice there are a number of reasons for arguing that energy prices are likely to be sticky in this paper we systematically explore the effects of energy price stickiness on the evolution of rebound effects we find that price stickiness is an important determinant of the time path of rebound effects and of their relative size in the short and long runs moreover there is considerable variation in the scale of rebound effects through time especially where short run rebound is lower than its long run counterpart however the most significant overall finding is that rebound reflects the system wide interaction between energy producing and energy using sectors

the impact of increased efficiency in the industrial use of energy a computable general equilibrium analysis for the united kingdom the conventional wisdom is that improving energy efficiency will lower energy use however there is an extensive debate in the energy economics policy literature concerning rebound effects these occur because an improvement in energy efficiency produces a fall in the effective price of energy services the response of the economic system to this price fall at least partially offsets the expected beneficial impact of the energy efficiency gain in this paper we use an economy energy environment computable general equilibrium cge model for the uk to measure the impact of a 5 across the board improvement in the efficiency of energy use in all production sectors we identify rebound effects of the order of 30 50 but no backfire no increase in energy use however these results are sensitive to the assumed structure of the labour market key production elasticities the time period under consideration and the mechanism through which increased government revenues are recycled back to the economy

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

the macroeconomic rebound effect in china the rebound effect measures the fraction of an energy efficiency improvement that is offset by increased energy consumption a rebound effect can arise at both the microeconomic level and the macroeconomic level the macroeconomic rebound effect measures the effect of an increase in energy efficiency on overall energy demand after markets adjust and re equilibrate at the macroeconomic level energy efficiency gains can increase energy consumption through two channels the macroeconomic price effect and the macroeconomic growth effect in this paper we econometrically estimate the macroeconomic energy rebound effect in china our results show that there is a statistically significant macroeconomic price rebound effect for china for each province and for the short run intermediate run and the long run we also find some evidence of a macroeconomic growth rebound in the short run and the intermediate run for some years either nation wide or for some provinces in china moreover for some years and some provinces we cannot reject backfire the rebound effect is an important phenomenon that the government of china should not neglect when making energy policy as it affects how improvements in energy efficiency translate into changes in energy consumption

the journals of economics we examine the principal journals of economics with particular attention to the communication between journals as reflected by the network of interjournal citations during 1987 90 and the changes over the past century in the characteristics of the authors and the techniques they have used the numerical results and those of the statistical modeling of these results reinforce the importance of economic theory as an exporter of intellectual influence to applied economics the study includes an examination of the degree of specialization among different subfields of economics a statistical model is presented for measuring the flow of intellectual influence as measured by citations in terms of simple univariate scores

energy efficiency fallacies revisited abstract a number of governments including that of the uk subscribe to the belief that a national program devoted to raising energy efficiency throughout the economy provides a costless indeed profitable route to meeting international environmental obligations this is a seductive policy it constitutes the proverbial free lunch not only avoiding politically unpopular measures like outlawing taxing or rationing offending fuels or expanding non carboniferous sources of energy like nuclear power but doing so with economic benefit the author of this contribution came to doubt the validity of this solution when it was offered as a way of mitigating the effect of the opec price hikes of the 1970 maintaining that economically justified improvement in energy efficiency led to higher levels of energy consumption at the economy wide level than in the absence of any efficiency response more fundamentally he argues that there is no case for preferentially singling out energy from among all the resources available to us for efficiency maximization the least damaging policy is to determine targets enact the restrictive measures needed to curb consumption and then leave it to consumers intermediate and final to reallocate all the resources available to them to best effect subject to the new enacted constraints and any others they might be experiencing there is no reason to suppose that it is right for all the economic adjustment following a new resource constraint to take the form of improvements in the productivity of that resource alone as many others have argued any action to impose resource constraint entails an inevitable economic cost in the shape of a reduction in production and consumption possibilities there would be no free lunch in the last few years debate about the validity of these contentions has blossomed especially under the influence of writers on the western side of the atlantic in this contribution the author outlines the original arguments for questioning whether raised efficiency leads to lower consumption reports more recent developments and offers some insights as food for further thought