monitoring changes in economy wide energy efficiency from energy gdp ratio to composite efficiency index since the 1973 world oil crisis monitoring trends in energy efficiency at the economy wide level has been an important component of energy strategy in many countries to support this effort various energy efficiency related indicators have been developed we examine some classical indicators which are often found in national and international energy studies in the 1970s and 1980s we then describe the recent developments in using the index decomposition analysis to give an economy wide composite energy efficiency index based on a bottom up approach this composite index is superior to the classical indicators as an economy wide energy efficiency measure and has lately been adopted by a growing number of countries for national energy efficiency trend monitoring

determinants of energy productivity in 39 countries an empirical investigation abstract this paper uses three types of analysis to investigate the drivers of energy productivity changes occurring in 39 countries during 1995 2009 we find that increases in sectoral energy productivity were the primary driver behind economy wide energy productivity improvements structural economic shifts away from industry and towards service oriented sectors played a lesser role in aggregate energy productivity improvements nations with similar demographic and economic characteristics showed similar levels of energy productivity and rates of improvement most notably former communist countries and nations undergoing economic liberalization exhibited the highest rate of improvement although they are still less energy productive than developed nations moreover the econometric analysis reinforces the long standing hypothesis that higher levels of income per capita and higher energy prices are associated with greater energy productivity while a greater share of output from industry is associated with lower energy productivity levels in particular higher energy prices and income levels are associated with improvements in sectoral energy productivity

structural changes and sustainability a selected review of the empirical evidence abstract the paper offers a review of selected topics in the empirical literature on structural change and sustainability we focus on aspects of structural change that directly affect emissions and energy intensity changes of the sectoral composition of economies trade and international fragmentation of production technological change and innovation and demand we identify several empirical facts first only a few countries have experienced a decoupling between growth and emissions due to proportionately faster growth rather than greater energy efficiency second the long term shift from manufacturing to services has not led in all cases to the de materialisation of economies and a lower environmental burden exploitation of energy efficiency increases depends on the ability of the service sectors to incorporate technical changes to reduce energy intensity third global trade and energy and emissions intensity trends support the pollution haven hypothesis which predicts displacement of the environmental burden from developed to emerging countries the pursuit by developing countries of a long term strategy of trading jobs for emissions is likely to exacerbate the asymmetry related to emissions intensities between developed and less developed economies the review should inform debate on environmental policy within the broader context of innovation and development policies

emission trading with fiscal externalities the case for a common carbon tax for the non ets emissions in the eu a government is fiscally constrained if it is unable to raise sufficient tax revenue to finance the first best level of public spending when involved in emission trading a fiscally constrained government will potentially seek to close its fiscal gap through emission permit sales this fiscal incentive therefore generates a fiscal externality in the permit market that is endogenous to the extent of fiscal constrainedness among the participating countries our theory explains how and when fiscal externalities may be expected to arise moreover we show that in a permit market equilibrium with fiscal externalities the initial allocation of emission permits between countries will affect 1 the price of emission permits 2 the global distribution of abatement effort and 3 total greenhouse gas mitigation costs this is contrary to the textbook model of emission permit markets our findings are especially relevant for the eu which is about to allow for trading in emission rights between eu member countries for all emissions outside the european emissions trading system

energy justice for all rethinking sustainable development goal 7 through struggles over traditional energy practices in sierra leone abstract with sustainable development goal 7 the united nations has declared its ambition to ensure access to modern energy for all by 2030 aside from broad appeals to differentiated responsibilities and greener technologies however the goal leaves significant procedural questions unaddressed this paper argues that the basic orientation of this approach is problematic undermining possibilities for progress toward energy justice and equitable development first in framing the issue of global energy distribution in broad techno managerial terms it obscures how particular geographies of energy poverty have been shaped by critical political economic influences second in privileging modern forms of energy and focusing on an end state of universal adoption over a broader goal of eliminating energy poverty the approach of sdg7 presents tangible hazards to many of those it seeks to benefit using a case study of sierra leonean rural cooking energy policy we demonstrate how the underlying mentality of sdg7 feeds into existing discourses that marginalise producers and users of traditional energy sources threatening important livelihoods with such evidence we argue that for justice in energy policy to be realised holistically there is a need to question how our knowledge of energy problems have emerged to avoid epistemologically autarchic policy positions

energy savings in nigeria is there a way of escape from energy inefficiency abstract this study estimates the transition probabilities for different energy use states in nigeria using the markov switching regression technique according to the results both energy efficient and energy inefficient states are less persistent but comparatively the energy inefficient state is more persistent thus in nigeria it is much difficult to escape from the energy inefficient state than the energy efficient state several reasons may explain this phenomenon and they include inefficient regulatory system poor institutional structure high corruption proliferation of second hand goods undeveloped markets high incidence of poverty and inefficient pricing in the energy sector pricing policies should be combined with institutional improvement and infrastructural development if nigeria wants to achieve a sustainable energy efficient state in the long term

international inequality in energy intensity levels and the role of production composition and energy efficiency an analysis of oecd countries abstract this paper analyses the inequality of energy intensity levels between oecd countries its causes and evolution the paper develops a methodology which allows the inequality in energy consumption per capita to be decomposed into explanatory factors it also analyses the contribution of different groups of countries to this inequality the results show that although differences in affluence are the most significant factor in explaining inequality in energy consumption per capita the inequality in energy intensity levels plays a prominent role in reducing the inequality in energy consumption per capita over the analysed period the paper also develops a methodology which determines the importance of different production structures and energy efficiency of productive sectors in the differences in energy use per unit of gdp between the countries analysed the results show that sector specialisation becomes increasingly important in explaining the inequality of energy intensity while there is a significant trend towards the convergence of energy efficiency between countries sector by sector this trend would explain the decreasing weight of energy intensity as an explanatory factor of the inequalities in energy consumption per capita

the euro and its impact on the number size performance and regional spread of european mergers and acquisitions mccarthy k j and dolfsma w the euro and its impact on the number size performance and regional spread of european mergers and acquisitions regional studies the macroeconomic effects of the euro have been extensively studied the literature has however paid significantly less attention to the microeconomic consequences and few authors have considered if and how the euro has impacted firm level decision making this paper explores if how and in what way the euro has impacted one firm level decision whether to merge with or acquire another firm this paper builds a sample of 19 362 acquisitions announced in the period 1990 2014 it shows that the euro has dramatically increased the number size and performance of european mergers and acquisitions importantly it also notes that the euro has altered the geographic spread of european acquisitions the paper reports that since the introduction of the euro acquirers have made increasingly distant acquisitions and have preferred targets in periphera

from streets to suites how the anti biotech movement affected german pharmaceutical firms how do social movements affect decisions within corporations such as the commercialization of new technologies we suggest that the effect of movement activism is conditioned by the internal polity and therefore varies across organizations this article examines how the anti genetic movement in germany during the 1980s affected six domestic pharmaceutical firms commercialization of biotechnology we develop a process model of how movements penetrate the relatively closed polity of private organizations external contestation weakened the position of internal champions of biotechnology precipitated divisions among organizational elites and undermined collective commitment to the technology the movement also increased perceptions of investment uncertainty but the consequences of this uncertainty depended on organizational logics of decision making as a result investments in some firms were tilted away from domestic biotechnology projects the model also explains this variation in organization level outcomes of movement contestation

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

the market for tradable ghg permits under the kyoto protocol a survey of model studies abstract this paper gathers results from 25 models of the market for tradable greenhouse gas ghg emission permits under the kyoto protocol due to diverging projections of emissions growth and different modeling approaches the model results differ substantially the average market volume is approximately 17 and 33 billion usd under global trading and annex b trading respectively including non carbon ghg lowers compliance costs and permit prices in the absence of the us permit demand roughly equals hot air from the former soviet union these countries can increase their revenues from selling permits by restricting supply which raises the permit price

hot air in kyoto cold air in the hague the failure of global climate negotiations abstract why did the climate negotiations in the hague fail our contribution is to argue that the conflict between the european union eu and the united states us stems mainly from disagreement on the cost issue we argue that the three main concerns promoted by the eu in the hague first a 50 national emission ceiling the supplementarity principle second the use of carbon sinks and third an international market control system these issues can be solved by removing all restrictions on free greenhouse gas ghg trade and by establishing the world trade organization as an international authority the us will face considerably higher costs than foreseen at the negotiations in kyoto and will have strong incentives to free ride our main hypothesis is that the eu proposal on supplementarity made the us turn to free riding thus to make the us stay in an international ghg emission trading scheme the eu must reconsider and acknowledge us claims for cheaper reduction options and the right to trade hot air this point is important if the us does not participate the increase in emissions will be much higher than the emission reduction following the eu supplementarity proposal

frictions in project based supply of permits emissions trading in climate change can entail large overall cost savings and transfers between developed and developing countries however the search for acceptable ji or cdm projects implies a deviation from the perfect market framework used in previous estimations our model combines the search market for projects with a frictionless permit market to quantify the supply side frictions in the co2 market we also decompose the effects of frictions into the effects of search friction bargaining and bilateralism a calibration using previous cost estimates of co2 reductions illustrate changes in cost savings and allocative implications

inequality across countries in energy intensities an analysis of the role of energy transformation and final energy consumption this paper analyzes the role of the energy transformation index and of final energy consumption per gdp unit in the disparities in energy intensity across countries in that vein we use a theil decomposition approach to analyze global primary energy intensity inequality as well as inequality across different regions of the world and inequality within these regions the paper first demonstrates the pre eminence of divergence in final energy consumption per gdp unit in explaining global primary energy intensity inequality and its evolution during the 1971 2006 period secondly it shows the lower albeit non negligible impact of the transformation index in global primary energy inequality thirdly the relevance of regions as unit of analysis in studying cross country energy intensity inequality and their explanatory factors is highlighted and finally how regions around the world differ as to the relevance of the energy transformation index in explaining primary energy intensity inequality

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

dormancy as a strategic response to detrimental public policy organizations in democratic societies often encounter detrimental public policies that are later reversed through rather predictable political cycles the standard organizational responses to detrimental public policies examined in the literature include exiting the market altogether attempting to change the public policy through various political strategies or passively complying with the policy however these responses might not be suitable when a detrimental policy is likely to be reversed in this paper i consider organizational dormancy which entails a temporary reduction in an organization s level of activity as a viable alternative response i propose that some organizations might be able to undergo a period of strategic inactivity in response to the onset of a detrimental public policy and maintain this inactivity until a favorable public policy returns i also propose that such dormancy is rewarded when the favorable policy returns an investigation of a panel of private commercial banks in the indian banking industry from 1981 to 2004 lends support to this proposal

analyzing the effectiveness of international environmental policies the case of the kyoto protocol we study the effectiveness of emission targets under the kyoto protocol with respect to reducing co2 emissions using country level and us state level panel data and employing the synthetic control method we find very little evidence for an emission reduction effect for the major emitters among the annex b countries with binding emission targets more generally we also show that evaluating the effectiveness of international environmental policies at the country level comes with a number of empirical challenges that may invalidate findings based on more traditional panel data approaches

regulating american industries markets politics and the institutional determinants of fire insurance regulation1 this article assesses three approaches to state regulation capture theory interest group analyses and neoinstitutional research state level event history analyses of fire insurance rate regulation from 1906 to 1930 are used contrary to capture theory regulation was not driven simply by firms interests in market control instead consistent with interest group analyses regulation was more likely when anticompany forces farmers and small businesses could challenge big business politically further as neoinstitutional research suggests regulation was more likely when industry governance evoked legitimacy crises when courts and professions endorsed regulation and its underlying models and when states developed system wide administrative capacities institutional conditions also mediated the effects of markets and politics on regulation using these findings we develop a theory of how political and institutional conditions shape industries governance options

china s industrial energy consumption trends and impacts of the top 1000 enterprises energy saving program and the ten key energy saving projects abstract this study analyzes china s industrial energy consumption trends from 1996 to 2010 with a focus on the impact of the top 1000 enterprises energy saving program and the ten key energy saving projects from 1996 to 2010 china s industrial energy consumption increased by 134 even as the industrial economic energy intensity decreased by 46 decomposition analysis shows that the production effect was the dominant cause of the rapid growth in industrial energy consumption while the efficiency effect was the major factor slowing the growth of industrial energy consumption the structural effect had a relatively small and fluctuating influence analysis shows the strong association of industrial energy consumption with the growth of china s economy and changing energy policies an assessment of the top 1000 enterprises energy saving program and the ten key energy saving projects indicates that the economic energy intensity of major energy intensive industrial sub sectors as well as the physical energy intensity of major energy intensive industrial products decreased significantly during china s 11th five year plan fyp period 2006 2010 this study also shows the importance and challenge of realizing structural change toward less energy intensive activities in china during the 12th fyp period 2011 2015

right to work laws and free riding i introduction section 14 b of the taft hartley act permits state right to work right to work laws which prohibit compulsory payment of union dues by allowing employees to enjoy the benefits of a union contract without the costs of union membership right to work laws can reduce not only the demand for memberships but also the supply as unions lose incentives to organize and maintain bargaining units the significance of right to work laws as a deterrent to membership however is open to dispute olson 1971 88 reasons that right to work laws must be ineffective because the incentive to free ride is so great that large unions could not survive if workers were free not to join olson considers the continued existence of large unions in states with right to work laws as evidence that these laws are not being enforced farber s 1984 finding that the supply of union jobs relative to demand is comparable in right to work and non right to work states also suggests non enforcement hirsh 1980 finds that while right to work laws do not affect coverage they do affect membership he infers that free riders account for the slippage that is right to work laws do not deter unions from organizing firms but they do interfere with unions signing up individual members freeman and medoff 1984 243 bloom and northrup 1981 227 and others point to membership figures indicating that right to work laws create serious free rider problems for unions some 15 5 percent of employees covered by collective bargaining contracts free ride in states with right to work laws about 2 4 times the 6 4 percent who free ride in other states 1 the literature on union membership however makes it clear that such bivariate comparisons neglect other factors that could affect free riding jones 1982 research using the national longitudinal survey reveals that nonmembers covered by union contracts are more likely to be younger to live in the south and to work in white collar jobs than members are moore dunlevy and newman 1986 contend that the same attitudes that give rise to right to work laws also affect union membership when these attitudes are properly controlled for right to work laws have no significant effect on membership moore and newman 1985 provide a good review of the literature on union membership although these studies and others have examined the effects of right to work laws on union membership of all workers the impact on only those workers covered by union contracts has not been as thoroughly explored previous analysis of free riding has been extensive but largely theoretical this study fills a gap in the literature by developing an empirical model of free riding having created a statistical model of free riding we can test the marginal impact of right to work laws we find that after taking into account other factors that affect the decision to free ride right to work laws remain statistically significant although of a smaller magnitude than bivariate analysis would suggest ii causes of free riding the theoretical model used to explain free riding is abstracted from the standard model of the demand for and supply of union membership that moore and newman 1985 describe in detail one of the advantages of focusing on workers covered by union contracts is that we avoid the simultaneity problem inherent in modeling the supply as well as the demand for union services we limit our analysis to the demand for membership because the union as a rule must supply membership to all covered workers 2 the key variables that influence the demand for membership by covered workers include price dues and fees the union wage premium job security and pressures from peers and community as in other studies of union membership data limitations do not allow us to gauge the effect of dues and fees where membership is not compulsory free riders do not face immediate loss of the union wage because by law the union must negotiate the same wages and benefits for nonmembers as for members

the social ecology of speculation community organization and non occupancy investment in the u s housing bubble the housing boom of the mid 2000s saw the widespread popularization of non occupant housing investment as an entrepreneurial activity within u s capitalism in 2005 approximately one sixth of all

energy intensity a decomposition and counterfactual exercise for latin american countries abstract this paper investigates trends in energy intensity over the last 40 years based on a sample of 75 countries it applies the fisher ideal index to decompose the energy intensity into the relative contributions of energy efficiency and economic structure then the determinants of these energy indexes are examined through panel data regression techniques special attention is lent to latin american countries lac by comparing its performance to that of a similar set of countries chosen through the synthetic control method when analyzed by income level energy intensity has decreased in a range between 40 and 54 in low and medium income countries respectively efficiency improvements drive these changes while the structural effect does not represent a clear source of change the regression analysis shows that per capita income petroleum prices fuel energy mix and gdp growth are main determinants of energy intensity and efficiency while there are no clear correlations with the activity component in the case of lac the energy intensity decreased around 20 which could be interpreted as an under performance however the counterfactual exercise suggests that lac has closed the gap with respect to its synthetic control

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

energy efficiency in the manufacturing sector of the oecd analysis of price elasticities abstract we examine the role prices have on energy efficiency in the oecd manufacturing sector between 1980 and 2009 we employ a two step procedure first we decompose manufacturing energy intensity change into two driving effects efficiency and structural change the second step uses panel time series regression techniques to estimate the impacts of prices on the effects driving manufacturing energy intensity the advantage of using these techniques is that they account for heterogeneity and cross section dependence in the data something recent energy intensity research has emphasised the results from this decomposition support existing findings that efficiency is the major driver for observed reduction in energy intensity further the second stage results indicate that rising prices improve efficiency importantly these effects vary across countries

thin versus thick co2 market abstract the idea that trading is more costly the thinner the market is is common in most studies of market exchange with frictions surprisingly this element is lacking from previous attempts to allow for frictions in pollution permit markets this paper considers a co 2 cap and trade model where trading costs develop endogenously as a function of the market size the pre trade allocation of permits determines whether the market size can be strongly influenced by expectations that have a role because of adjustment costs the pre trade allocation also sets preconditions for endogenously vanishing trading costs and thus has nonstandard effects on long run trading levels and market allocations

how institutional and organizational characteristics explain the growth of contingent work in china china s traditional model of long term employment has been undermined by an increased reliance on nonrenewable fixed term and temporary agency employment contracts in this study the author draws

changes in energy efficiency in australia a decomposition of aggregate energy intensity using logarithmic mean divisia approach abstract this paper provides an empirical estimation of energy efficiency and other proximate factors that explain energy intensity in australia for the period 1978 2009 the analysis is performed by decomposing the changes in energy intensity by means of energy efficiency fuel mix and structural changes using sectoral and sub sectoral levels of data the results show that the driving forces behind the decrease in energy intensity in australia are efficiency effect and sectoral composition effect where the former is found to be more prominent than the latter moreover the favourable impact of the composition effect has slowed consistently in recent years a perfect positive association characterizes the relationship between energy intensity and carbon intensity in australia the decomposition results indicate that australia needs to improve energy efficiency further to reduce energy intensity and carbon emissions

allocation of carbon permits within a country a general equilibrium analysis of the united kingdom abstract the kyoto agreement includes international trade in carbon permits from 2008 we have used a cge model to evaluate methods of allocating permits within the uk auctioning is broadly similar to a carbon tax with revenues recycled to reduce other distortions grandfathering some permits free to large firms would mean a loss of recycling and possibly give windfall profits to foreigners alternatively regularly revised allocation using best practice estimates would be similar to recycling revenue as an output subsidy such a system could allow much of the potential double dividend to be realised though an auction system might still be preferable

driving forces for aggregate energy consumption a cross country approach abstract although a cornerstone for development past and current energy use has often posed a major challenge for policymakers with respect to planning and management within this context in this paper an updated multi sectorial cross country assessment of energy consumption trends was undertaken aiming at identifying the main drivers of changes in aggregate energy consumption these drivers have been interpreted in the light of the policy measures that have been implemented over the years by different countries to achieve a sustainable development of the energy sector the cross country assessment encompasses a set of developed united kingdom portugal and spain and emerging brazil china and india countries resorting to the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition method changes in the aggregate energy consumption were decomposed into three main explanatory effects activity structure and intensity the major findings achieved reflect the relevance of intensity and activity effects in detriment of the structural effect the assessment of energy consumption trends using the lmdi decomposition method provides critical information regarding which is the dominant factor that should be focused in policy design

regional energy efficiency evaluation in china a super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs abstract with the rapid development of global economy the demand for energy has increased significantly therefore energy efficiency improvement is essential for global energy and economic transformation in the chinese context study on the energy efficiency of various provinces can contribute to better understand china s energy utilization status and provide policy implications for improving china s energy utilization efficiency in this study based on the super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs the energy efficiency of china s 30 provinces in 2013 and 2014 was investigated then the energy efficiency of the eastern central and western china was compared and further discussed finally according to the results the relevant policy implications were put forward the results showed that china s overall energy efficiency had decreased while taking the undesirable outputs into consideration in addition eastern china had the highest energy efficiency and the energy efficiency of western china was relatively low the energy efficiency gap among china s provinces was still large therefore it was necessary to improve china s overall energy efficiency by developing targeted policies considering regional conditions

class forces political institutions and state intervention subnational economic development policy in the united states 1971 1990 the united states has experienced a major devolution of social and economic policy responsibilities to the states subnational industrial policies to create jobs and qualitative economic growth are key to this devolution the authors examine the development of these policies in terms of 1 the articulation of class interests 2 state level political institutions 3 prior political legacies 4 underlying production regimes and 5 interactions of strong political institutions and class mobilization an annual pooled cross sectional time series analysis of three state level economic development policies entrepreneurial industrial recruitment and labor market regulation shows that in addition to business power and strong state capacities the political legacies of 1930s welfare policy innovations and mezocorporatist bargaining potential condition the effects of business power

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

we can t win this on our own unions firms and mobilization of external allies in labor disputes to cope with steep losses in membership and eroding legal protections some unions have begun to look outward for help scholars likewise point to broad based coalitions as a potential route to lab

political economy of the kyoto protocol the kyoto protocol negotiated in december 1997 is the first international treaty to limit emissions of greenhouse gases but kyoto does not mark the conclusion to international cooperation on climate change it is really just a beginning this paper shows that in the aggregate the benefits of undertaking the kyoto reductions should exceed the corresponding costs provided these are achieved cost effectively but although kyoto seeks to promote cost effectiveness it may yet prove very costly moreover the agreement may not even achieve the reductions that it promises either because emissions will relocate to the countries that are not required to stay within kyoto prescribed ceilings or because paper trades will be promoted by the protocol s mechanisms more fundamentally kyoto does not deter non compliance and it only weakly deters non participation these flaws need to be mended but the nature of the problem makes that an especially difficult task copyright 1998 by oxford university press

how do industrialization and trade openness influence energy intensity evidence from a path model in case of bangladesh abstract nowadays multifaceted interdependence between macroeconomic variables results in an extended list of factors that have diverse impacts on energy intensity thus sustaining energy intensity at a desired level demands advanced studies to investigate the multifarious influences of its factors and ensure proactive measures to deal with them this paper aims to set up a path model to analyze the direct and indirect impacts of industrialization and trade openness on energy intensity in bangladesh the results corroborate that industrialization has a direct positive influence on energy intensity where trade openness shows a direct negative effect on it and both industrialization and trade openness have negative indirect impact on energy intensity through technological innovation and economic growth respectively in case of individual total impacts only industrialization affects energy intensity positively where trade openness technological innovation and economic growth negatively do based on the empirical results some policy implications regarding energy intensity and effects of its factors on it are also presented

green lobbies and transboundary pollution in large open economies abstract we employ a common agency model of policy making to examine how green lobbies affect the determination of trade and environmental policies in two large countries that are linked by trade flows and transboundary pollution we show that the impact of green lobbying on environmental policy outcomes depends crucially on the prevailing trade regime cooperative or non cooperative on whether environmental agencies act in a unilateral or coordinated manner and on the size of the emission leakages and transboundary spillovers under free trade a unilateral increase in pollution taxes reduces domestic emissions at the cost of increased foreign emissions in this case if the emission leakages and the associated transboundary spillovers are large enough green lobbying can create a bias towards lower pollution taxes

the eyes of the needles a sequential model of union organizing drives 1999 2004 this paper models three stages of the union organizing drive using a new dataset covering more than 22 000 drives that took place between 1999 and 2004 the correlated sequential model tracks drives through all of their potential stages holding an election winning an election and reaching first contracts only one seventh of organizing drives that filed an election petition with the nlrb managed to reach a first contract within a year of certification the model which controls for the endogeneity of unfair labor practice ulp charges finds that a ulp charge was associated with a 0 smaller cumulative chance of reaching such a contract ulp charges had less effect on the votes cast than on the decision to hold an election and the ability to reach a first contract a sequential model such as this one could be extended to test between some competing theories about the determinants of union organizing

will opec lose from the kyoto protocol a range of energy economy models forecast losses to members of the organisation of petroleum exporting countries opec should the kyoto protocol come into force these forecasts are a powerful influence in the united nations framework convention on climate change negotiations they are used by opec to advance the agenda on the impacts of response measures covertly arguing for compensation for lost oil revenues arising from implementation of the protocol this paper discusses this issue and explores the key assumptions of these models and their uncertainties assumptions about carbon leakage future availability of oil reserves substitution innovation and capital turnover are considered the paper suggests that losses will not affect opec countries equally and that these losses are not likely to be as substantial as the models forecast a range of policy measures are proposed to lessen any impact the protocol may have on opec

laws of attraction regulatory arbitrage in the face of activism in right to work states past research recognizes that firms exploit regulatory variations to their advantage but depicts such regulatory arbitrage as a dyadic process between firms and regulators we extend this account b

minimum participation rules in international environmental agreements empirical evidence from a survey among delegates in international climate negotiations recent contributions to the theoretical and experimental literature suggest that minimum participation rules mprs are able to reduce free riding incentives and may facilitate cooperation or at least coordination at the extensive margin of international environmental agreements based on a dataset from a world wide survey among delegates in international climate negotiations this paper assesses preferences for different mprs for a future climate treaty among key players the empirical findings provide evidence that small countries with low bargaining power rather opt for large minimum membership requirements while industrialized countries push forward the idea of a small carbon club of the largest emitters only in contrast delegates from countries in transition try to keep emission thresholds rather low which would allow a future agreement to come into force without their signature

the kyoto protocol empirical evidence of a hidden success abstract how effective was the kyoto protocol international environmental agreements iea have been on the rise over the past four decades however thus far their effectiveness is controversial in view of the conflicting results found in the related literature this paper addresses its effectiveness by utilizing for the first time the generalized synthetic control method gscm to compare the emissions of the industrialized countries with a no kyoto counterfactual scenario that represents the expected emissions in the absence of the protocol this method facilitates a robust comparison between treated and control countries as done by almer and winkler 2017 and account for the multiple treated units as done by grunewald and martinez zarzoso 2016 so as to capture the collective nature of the protocol results show that the protocol was successful in reducing the emissions of the ratifying countries approximately by 7 below the emissions expected under a no kyoto scenario confirming the importance of accounting for the collective nature of the agreement

millionaire migration and taxation of the elite evidence from administrative data a growing number of u s states have adopted millionaire taxes on top income earners this increases the progressivity of state tax systems but it raises concerns about tax flight elites migrating from high tax to low tax states draining state revenues and undermining redistributive social policies are top income earners transitory millionaires searching for lower tax places to live or are they embedded elites who are reluctant to migrate away from places where they have been highly successful this question is central to understanding the social consequences of progressive taxation we draw on administrative tax returns for all million dollar income earners in the united states over 13 years tracking the states from which millionaires file their taxes our dataset contains 45 million tax records and provides census scale panel data on top income earners we advance two core analyses 1 state to state migration of millionaires over the long term and 2 a sharply focused discontinuity anal