brazilian energy efficiency and energy substitution a road to cleaner national energy system abstract recognizing the need to increase energy efficiency across various sectors of the economy the brazilian government through the national energy efficiency plan adopted in 2011 seeks to avoid 30 million tons of co2 emissions through a reduction in electricity consumption of about 10 by 2030 notwithstanding we believe that a complete realization of such initiative will be dependent on the level of substitutability between different production factors and fuel types using the translog production function method this paper first provides insight on the economic impact of both factor and fuel inputs in brazil most importantly we examine the possibility of substitution among capital labor petroleum and electricity the ridge regression technique was used to estimate the parameters after our data depicted the existence of multicollinearity our results show that capital and labor are positively linked to output however petroleum and electricity contribute negatively to economic output in brazil of which corruption is a plausible reason again all variable inputs are substitutes with their relative technological progress depicting features of convergence this implies that brazil can achieve a cleaner energy system without much challenges due to the possibility of switching from greenhouse gas ghg emitting petroleum to a cleaner energy electricity our findings also highlight the importance of policies that advance merger of enterprises and renewable energy use

electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa a trivariate causality test abstract in this paper we examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa we incorporate the employment rate as an intermittent variable in the bivariate model between electricity consumption and economic growth thereby creating a simple trivariate causality framework our empirical results show that there is a distinct bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa in addition the results show that employment in south africa granger causes economic growth the results apply irrespective of whether the causality is estimated in the short run or in the long run formulation the study therefore recommends that policies geared towards the expansion of the electricity infrastructure should be intensified in south africa in order to cope with the increasing demand exerted by the country s strong economic growth and rapid industrialisation programme this will certainly enable the country to avoid unprecedented power outages similar to those experienced in the country in mid january 2008

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

energy consumption and economic growth in south africa reexamined a nonparametric testing apporach this paper is an effort to investigate claims concerning granger causality relationship from energy consumption to economic growth in south africa we adopt a nonparametric bootstrap method to reassess evidence supporting granger causality and unravel findings of long run unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic growth this implies that energy conservation policies will negatively impact economic growth in south africa in addition the results of this study have implications on co2 emissions in south africa given that coal accounts for about 72 of energy this suggests that energy use would have a long run effect of raising the country s co2 emission levels hence there might be a need to develop a more balanced energy structure which will include higher share of renewable energy a further monte carlo experiment performed reveals that asymptotic granger causality test suffers size distortion problem for south african data these findings provide support for use of a bootstrap methodology and also imply that the results presented in this study are likely to be more reliable

energy consumption and economic development in sub sahara africa sub saharan african countries economic development is dependent on energy consumption this paper assesses total energy demand which is composed of traditional energy wood fuel and commercial energy electricity and petroleum in the central east south and west regions of sub saharan africa cross sectional time series data for 20 countries in 25 years are analyzed and the results of the study show that wood fuel accounts for 70 of energy consumption followed by petroleum with most industrial activities utilizing some form of wood fuel regression results suggest that energy demand is inversely related to the price of petroleum and industrial development but positively related to gdp population growth rate and agricultural expansion and that price elasticity is less than one the model results also show that there are regional differences in energy demand in addition the interaction of population growth rates by regions generates mixed results and there are regional differences in the use of commercial energy consumption and gdp growth the findings of this study suggest that countries must diversify their energy sources and introduce energy efficient devices and equipment at all levels of the economy to improve gdp growth rate and gdp per capita

the effect of capital gains taxation on home sales evidence from the taxpayer relief act of 1997 the taxpayer relief act of 1997 tra97 significantly changed the tax treatment of housing capital gains in the united states before 1997 homeowners were subject to capital gains taxation when they sold their houses unless they purchased replacement homes of equal or greater value since 1997 homeowners can exclude capital gains of 500 000 or 250 000 for single filers when they sell their houses such dramatic changes provide a good opportunity to study the lock in effect of capital gains taxation on home sales using 1982 2008 transaction data on single family houses in 16 affluent towns within the boston metropolitan area i find that tra97 reversed the lock in effect of capital gains taxes on houses with low and moderate capital gains specifically the semiannual sales rate of houses with positive gains up to 500 000 increased by 0 40 0 62 percentage points after tra97 representing a 19 24 percent increase from the pre tra97 baseline sales rate in contrast i do not find tra97 to have a significant effect on houses with gains above 500 000 moreover the short term effect of tra97 is much larger than the long term effect suggesting that many previously locked in homeowners took advantage of the exclusions immediately after tra97 in addition i exploit the 2001 and 2003 legislative changes in the capital gains tax rate to estimate the tax elasticity of home sales during the post tra97 period the estimation results suggest that a 10 000 increase in capital gains taxes reduces the semiannual home sales rate by about 0 1 0 2 percentage points or 6 13 percent from the post tra97 average sales rate

pressure groups and redistribution abstract the simple pressure group model of political redistribution can predict more with less restrictive assumptions instead of ready made pressure groups composed of individuals who vote their pocketbooks we posit heterogeneous agents each of whom decides which group to join and how much effort to expend on political activity our model then examines social affinity conditions that foster pressure group formation political sympathies based on social affinity imply testable effects of growth rate and income distribution on progressive transfers effects that prove substantial in pooled time series cross section regressions for 13 oecd countries 1960 1981

estimates of inter fuel substitution possibilities in chinese chemical industry abstract the chemical sector is a key driver of china s remarkable growth record and accounts for about 10 of the country s gdp this has made the industry energy intensive and consequently a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions ghg and other pollutants this study has attempted to investigate the potential for inter fuel substitution between coal oil natural gas and electricity in chinese chemical sector by employing a translog production and cost function ridge regression procedure was adopted to estimate the parameters of the function estimation results show that all energy inputs are substitutes in addition the study produces evidence that the significant role of coal in the chinese chemical fuel mix converges over time albeit slowly these results suggest that price based policies coupled with capital subsidy programs can be adopted to redirect technology use towards cleaner energy sources like electricity and natural gas hence retaining the ability to fuel the chemical sector while also mitigating ghg emissions notwithstanding one must understand that the extent to which substituting electricity for coal will be effective depends on the extent to which coal or oil is used in generating electricity the findings of this study provide general insights and underscore the importance of chinese government policies that focus on installed capacity of renewable electricity energy intensity targets as well as merger of enterprises

tests of a rational theory of the size of government in many countries the political party holding power changes more frequently than the trend growth rates in government spending and taxes shifts of political power are often preceded by rhetoric about meeting needs or cutting taxes which post election performances rarely match yet changes in the size of government up and down occur on average the size of government measured by the share of taxes or spending to output has increased in many countries during the past century but changes in size occur at diffrent rates and at times the relative size of government declines

causality analysis of diesel consumption and economic growth in cameroon abstract this study examines the causal relationship between diesel consumption and economic growth in cameroon by using a three step modern time series technique tests for unit roots cointegration and granger causality based on error correction model are employed on annual data covering the period 1975 2008 empirical results of the study confirm the presence of a long run equilibrium relationship between diesel consumption and economic growth the error correction model shows that an estimated 1 increase in economic growth causes a rise in diesel consumption of 1 30 in the long run the overall results show that there exists bidirectional causality in the long run relationship and no causality in the short run relationship between diesel consumption and economic growth at the 5 level of significance thus the energy policies in cameroon should place priority on the discovery of new oil field and building capacity additions of the refinery to increase production of petroleum products as this would propel the economic growth of the country

causal independence between energy consumption and economic growth in liberia evidence from a non parametric bootstrapped causality test abstract this contribution investigates causal interdependence between energy consumption and economic growth in liberia and proposes application of a bootstrap methodology to better reflect causality employment is incorporated as additional variable the study demonstrates evidence of distinct bidirectional granger causality between energy consumption and economic growth additionally the results show that employment in liberia granger causes economic growth and apply irrespective of the short run or long run evidence from a monte carlo experiment reveals that the asymptotic granger causality test suffers size distortion problem for liberian data suggesting that the bootstrap technique employed in this study is more appropriate given the empirical results implications are that energy expansion policies like energy subsidy or low energy tariff for instance would be necessary to cope with demand exerted as a result of economic growth in liberia furthermore liberia might have the performance of its employment generation on the economy partly determined by adequate energy therefore it seems fully justified that a quick shift towards energy production based on clean energy sources may significantly slow down economic growth in liberia hence the government s target to implement a long term strategy to make liberia a carbon neutral country and eventually less carbon dependent by 2050 is understandable

a bargaining theory of inefficient redistribution policies when two policies are available to achieve the same goal why is the relatively inefficient one often observed we address this question in the context of policies used to redistribute income towards special interest groups sigs in a two stage model in the first stage the set of constraints on policy instruments is chosen in the second stage the government and sigs bargain over the level of the available transfer policies restrictions on the use of efficient policies and the use of inefficient ones reduce the surplus over which sigs and governments can bargain there is however an offsetting effect not generally recognized in models of inefficient redistribution an improvement in the government s bargaining position which allows it to capture a larger share of the surplus we show that this positive effect for the government dominates under plausible conditions inefficient policies are the equilibrium outcome under alternative first stage mechanisms for policy selection such as the election of policymakers or in some cases bargaining between sigs and the government jel classification d7 f13 c70 h23

economic growth and electricity consumption in cote d ivoire evidence from time series analysis this paper examines the causal relationship between the electric power industry and the economic growth of cote d ivoire using the data from 1971 to 2008 a test was conducted for the cointegration and granger causality within an error correction model results from these tests reveal a bidirectional causality between per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp a unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to industry value added appears in the short run economic growth is found to have great effects on electricity consumption and a reverse causality from electricity to economic growth may also appear in the long run there is a unidirectional causality between electricity and both gdp and industry value added from these findings we conclude that the country will be energy dependent in the long run and must therefore secure the production network from shortfalls to ensure a sustainable development path accordingly government should adopt policies aimed at increasing the investment in the sector by stepping up electricity production from existing and new energy sources

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from 11 sub sahara african countries abstract the paper examines the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries in sub saharan africa using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test the study finds that energy consumption is cointegrated with economic growth in cameroon cote d ivoire gambia ghana senegal sudan and zimbabwe moreover this test suggests that energy consumption has a significant positive long run impact on economic growth in ghana kenya senegal and sudan granger causality test based on vector error correction model vecm shows bi directional relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for gambia ghana and senegal however granger causality test shows that economic growth granger causes energy consumption in sudan and zimbabwe the neutrality hypothesis is confirmed in respect of cameroon and cote d ivoire the same result of no causality was found for nigeria kenya and togo the result shows that each country should formulate appropriate energy conservation policies taking into cognizance of her peculiar condition

energy consumption fuel substitution technical change and economic growth implications for co2 mitigation in egypt abstract energy consumption propels economic growth but the level of co2 emissions associated with a fossil dominated energy structure raises concerns for the fight against climate change to draw consensus this study develops a translog causality based model in order to study causation between electricity natural gas petroleum and economic growth in egypt in addition the models results are used to estimate the substitution possibilities between various energy pairs and to subsequently test the co2 mitigation benefits arising from fuel substitution results support a bidirectional relationship between all energy types and economic growth in egypt and suggest also that these energy types are substitutes although technical progress is estimated to be a bit slow varying between 4 5 and 7 5 there appears to be substantial co2 emissions mitigation benefits from fuel substitution amounting to reductions in the range of 1 5 and 2 2 million metric tons under a 5 investment scenario and 2 5 and 4 5 million metric tons under a 10 investment scenario these results have broader implications for energy conservation policies and industrial merger policies in developing countries moreover by studying technical change insights are provided on future co2 mitigation potential driven by energy efficiency

ghanaian energy economy inter production factors and energy substitution abstract industries in ghana depend highly on petroleum to fuel their operations which has brought immerse environmental threat from greenhouse emission gas ghg this study tried to investigate potential substitutability of factor inputs and fuel inputs among capital labor petroleum and electricity in ghana by adopting the translog production and cost function approach we used ridge regression technique to estimate the parameters after our data show possibility of multicollinearity our result shows that all inputs are substitutes with their relative technological progress also showing evidence of convergence this suggests that redirecting resources into the improvement of technology towards cleaner energy production like electricity will be a success over time and this will mean that the fueling of the economy will be done in a cleaner environment and mitigating mitigate co2 emissions as well the improvement of electricity production and the promotion of its use require government policies that will enable industries to adjust to the switch from one input to the other through capital subsidies and tax rebates also energy labor and capital energy being substitutes in our findings suggest that removal of all energy subsidies will reduce the use of energy and increase capital and labor intensiveness input switch by industries will promote merger of smaller firms with bigger firms that have cost advantage during the switch period and requires a clear government merger control policies in a nutshell our findings provide an insight into policies to promote the use of renewable energy energy intensity and merger policies

energy consumption political regime and economic growth in sub saharan africa abstract in this paper we examine the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth and how democracy moderates this relationship using panel data of 16 sub saharan african ssa countries for the period 1971 2013 employing a panel vector autoregressive model pvar in a generalized method of moments gmm framework the findings support the feedback hypothesis for energy consumption and growth second the interaction variable energy consumption and democracy is positively and significantly related to economic growth supporting the view that democracy moderates the energy consumption and growth nexus further the results provide strong evidence of a uni directional relationship from trade openness to energy consumption additionally impulse responses and variance decompositions also confirm positive feedback relationships between energy consumption and economic growth energy prices and economic growth

energy consumption prices and economic growth in three ssa countries a comparative study in this paper we examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in three sub saharan african countries namely south africa kenya and congo drc we incorporate prices as an intermittent variable in a bivariate setting between energy consumption and economic growth thereby creating a simple trivariate framework using the ardl bounds testing procedure we find that the causality between energy consumption and economic growth varies significantly across the countries under study the results show that for south africa and kenya there is a unidirectional causal flow from energy consumption to economic growth however for congo drc it is economic growth that drives energy consumption these findings have important policy implications insofar as energy conservation policies are concerned in the case of congo drc for example the implementation of energy conservation policies may not significantly affect economic growth because the country s economy is not entirely energy dependent however for south africa and kenya there is a need for more energy supply augmentations in order to cope with the long run energy demand in the short run however the two countries should explore more efficient and cost effective sources of energy in order to address the energy dependency problem

the flypaper effect what happens to a state s spending when it receives an unconditional grant from the federal government the standard theoretical analysis predicts that the increase in spending will be the same as that generated by an equivalent increase in local incomes or roughly 5 10 percent for most states in contrast numerous empirical analyses have found that spending increases by much more with some estimates near 100 percent this result is known as the flypaper effect since the money appears to stick where it hits the authors review this evidence as well as other studies that find similar behavior in firms

taxation and the structure of labor markets the case of corporatism we propose an explanation for the wide variation in rates of taxation across developed economies based on differences in labor market institutions in corporatist economies which feature centralized labor markets taxes on labor input will be less distortionary than when labor supply is determined individually since the level of labor supply is set by a small group of decision makers these individuals will recognize the linkage between the taxes that workers pay and the benefits that they receive labor tax burdens are indeed higher in more corporatist nations while nonlabor taxes are actually lower there is also some evidence that the distortionary effects of labor taxes are lower in more corporatist economies

average marginal tax rates revisited abstract i revise and update through 1994 the estimated average marginal income and social security tax rates of seater 1982 marginal federal personal and corporate income tax rates in the us 1909 1975 journal of monetary economics 10 361 381 seater 1985 on the construction of marginal federal personal and social security tax rates in the us journal of monetary economics 15 121 135 and barro and sahasakul 1983 measuring the average marginal tax rate from the individual income tax journal of business 56 419 452 and barro and sahasakul 1986 average marginal tax rates on social security and the individual income tax journal of business 59 555 566 and i introduce a return weighted social security tax rate since 1981 the average marginal effective income tax rate has declined from about 16 to 12 however the combined federal tax burden remains high by historic standards because the average marginal social security tax rate has increased from about 5 to about 6 5

rentierism energy and economic growth the case of algeria and egypt 1965 2010 abstract the algerian economy is an example of a high level of rentierism while the egyptian economy shows a low moderate level of rentierism the ardl bounds test approach was used upon annual time series data from 1965 to 2010 the results suggest cointegration for both countries bi causality between energy consumption and growth in the long run was found for algeria there is a reversed negative energy growth nexus adding a new relationship to the traditional four causal hypotheses on the energy growth nexus for egypt we found positive elasticity both of oil price and energy which is in line with the mainstream

the incidence of transaction taxes evidence from a stamp duty holiday this paper exploits the 2008 09 stamp duty holiday in the united kingdom to estimate the incidence of a transaction tax on housing the average reduction in the after tax sale price is found to be around 900 against the backdrop of an average tax reduction of about 1500 while we estimate an increase in transactions of properties affected by the tax holiday around 8 most of this effect appears to have reversed rapidly after the policy was withdrawn suggesting mostly a short term retiming of transactions the findings are calibrated to a simple bargaining model to show they imply that about sixty percent of the surplus generated by the holiday accrued to buyers

equilibrium in a market with sequential bargaining this paper considers a market where pairs of agents who are interested in carrying out a transaction are brought together by a stochastic process and upon meeting initiate a bargaining process over the terms of the transaction the basic bargaining problem is treated with the strategic approach the paper derives the steady state equilibrium agreements analyzes their dependence on market conditions such as the relative numbers of agents of different types and discusses their relations with the competitive equilibrium outcome and other results in the search equilibrium literature this paper considers a market that operates in the following way pairs of agents who have mutual interest in carrying out a transaction are brought together by a stochastic process when two agents meet they initiate a bargaining process over the terms of the transaction if two agents reach an agreement a transaction takes place and they leave the market of course the bargaining positions and hence the agreement reached in any particular meeting will be affected by the conditions prevailing in the market these will include the chances that each of the negotiating parties have of meeting other partners in the event that the agreement in the current negotiations is delayed also the expected length of time required to achieve an alternative transaction and the expected behavior of alternative partners the study of such a market mechanism is of interest for two reasons firstly it captures some realistic aspects of the trade in certain specific markets e g asset markets such as housing and some labor markets secondly it contributes to an understanding of the micro mechanisms of price formation and their role in shaping market outcomes in both cases the features studied are largely neglected in the traditional market equilibrium analyses the related literature includes the articles by diamond 4 5 diamond and maskin 6 mortensen 8 9 and zusman and bell 13 these articles consider markets of the type described above in which transactions are concluded at pairwise meetings of agents the major difference between our work and these articles is in the approach to the basic bargaining problem in the cited articles it is assumed that a meeting is concluded with an instantaneous agreement which divides the associated surplus in an arbitrary predetermined way when the surplus is assumed to be divided equally the division rule is in fact nash s axiomatic bargaining solution in contrast the present paper treats the basic bargaining problem with the strategic approach see rubinstein 19 which constitutes an attempt to look into the bargaining black box this approach explicitly models the time dimension of the bargaining process describes in detail the bargaining procedure and justifies the agreement as a perfect equilibrium in

energy consumption and economic growth revisited in african countries abstract the aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for 21 african countries over the period from 1970 to 2006 using recently developed panel cointegration and causality tests the countries are divided into two groups net energy importers and net energy exporters it is found that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between energy consumption real gdp prices labor and capital for each group of countries as well as for the whole set of countries this result is robust to possible cross country dependence and still holds when allowing for multiple endogenous structural breaks which can differ among countries furthermore we find that decreasing energy consumption decreases growth and vice versa and that increasing energy consumption increases growth and vice versa and that this applies for both energy exporters and importers finally there is a marked difference in the cointegration relationship when country groups are considered

electricity consumption and economic growth a time series experience for 17 african countries abstract while the availability of electricity by itself is not a panacea for the economic and social problems facing africa the supply of electricity is nevertheless believed to be a necessary requirement for africa s economic and social development this paper tests the long run and causal relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 17 african countries for the period 1971 2001 using a newly developed cointegration test proposed by pesaran et al 2001 and using a modified version of the granger causality test due to toda and yamamoto 1995 the advantage of using these two approaches is that they both avoid the pre testing bias associated with conventional unit root and cointegration tests the empirical evidence shows that there was a long run relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gdp per capita for only 9 countries and granger causality for only 12 countries for 6 countries there was a positive uni directional causality running from real gdp per capita to electricity consumption per capita an opposite causality for 3 countries and bi directional causality for the remaining 3 countries the result should however be interpreted with care as electricity consumption accounts for less than 4 of total energy consumption in africa and only grid supplied electricity is taken into account

electricity consumption and economic growth in burkina faso a cointegration analysis abstract this study empirically establishes the direction of causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in burkina faso for the period 1968 2003 the bounds test yields evidence of cointegration between electricity consumption gdp and capital formation when electricity consumption and gdp are used as dependent variable causality results indicate that there is no significant causal relationship between electricity consumption and investment estimates however detect in the long run a bidirectional causal relationship between electricity use and real gdp there is also evidence of a positive feedback causal relationship between gdp and capital formation burkina faso is therefore an energy dependent country it is also a country in which electricity consumption is growing with the level of income all of this shows that electricity is a significant factor in socio economic development in burkina faso as such energy policy must be implemented to ensure that electricity generates fewer potential negative impacts

inefficiency in legislative policymaking a dynamic analysis this paper develops an infinite horizon model of public spending and taxation in which policy decisions are determined by legislative bargaining the policy space incorporates both productive and distributive public spending and distortionary taxation the productive spending is investing in a public good that benefits all citizens e g national defense and the distributive spending is district specific transfers e g pork barrel spending investment in the public good creates a dynamic linkage across policymaking periods the analysis explores the dynamics of legislative policy choices focusing on the efficiency of the steady state level of

the welfare state and competitiveness in all industrial countries fiscal policy is increasingly about redistribution in this paper the authors study redistribution across different types of agents in a world characterized by the presence of labor unions and distortionary taxation they show that an increase in transfers financed by distortionary taxation has nonlinear effects on unit labor costs relative to the other countries depending on the degree of centralization of the wage setting process in the labor market the authors find considerable empirical support for the model in a sample of fourteen oecd countries copyright 1997 by american economic association

constitutional rules and fiscal policy outcomes we investigate the effect of electoral rules and forms of government on fiscal policy outcomes in a large sample of democracies we rely on different estimation methods to address prospective problems of statistical inference due to non random selection of these constitutional rules the findings are consistent with our theoretical priors presidential regimes induce smaller governments than parliamentary democracies while majoritarian elections lead to smaller governments and smaller welfare programs than proportional elections

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from the economic community of west african states ecowas access to modern energy is believed to be a prerequisite for sustainable development poverty alleviation and the achievement of the millennium development goals however theoretical models and empirical results offer conflicting evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth that we remain largely unsure of the cause and effect nature of this relationship if indeed a relationship exists at all this paper tests in a panel context the long run relationship between energy access and economic growth for fifteen african countries from 1980 to 2008 by using recently developed panel cointegration techniques we adopt a three stage approach consisting of panel unit root panel cointegration and granger causality tests to study the dynamic causal relationships between energy consumption energy prices and growth as well as relationship between electricity consumption prices and growth results show that gdp and energy consumption as well as gdp and electricity move together in the long run by estimating these long run relationships and testing for causality using panel based error correction models we found unidirectional long run and short run causality the causality is running from gdp to energy consumption in the short run and from energy consumption to gdp in the long run there is also evidence of unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to gdp in the long run this study thus provides empirical evidence of long run and causal relationships between energy consumption and economic growth for our sample of fifteen countries suggesting that lack or limited access to modern energy services could hamper economic growth and compromise the development prospects of these countries

effects of energy consumption on per worker output a study of kenya and south africa the paper investigates the long run cointegration relationship and energy elasticities for kenya and south africa over the periods 1978 2009 and 1971 2009 respectively using the ardl procedure developed by pesaran et al 2001 with recomputed critical bounds from narayan 2005 and the solow 1956 framework extended by rao 2010 we also conduct the toda and yamamoto 1995 test for granger non causality the regression results show that short run and long run energy elasticities are 0 50 and 1 71 respectively for kenya and 0 17 and 0 34 respectively for south africa the causality results indicate a unidirectional granger causality running from capital per worker and energy per capita to output per worker for both countries moreover in kenya we detect a strong unidirectional causality a on output from joint consideration of capital stock and energy and b on capital stock from joint consideration of energy and output in south africa the joint causations are neutral hence while energy and capital stock spurs growth in both countries kenya has a greater potential to harness growth and capital productivity via joint consideration of energy with capital and output respectively

improving electricity supply security in ghana the potential of renewable energy for decades ghana s economy has been fuelled by abundant inexpensive hydropower as a developing economy ghana s electricity demand has long been relatively low though rising in recent times due to increasing economic growth urbanization and industrial activities however the rapid demand growth as well as periodic hydrological shocks leaves the country increasingly reliant on expensive oil and gas based generation power plants with a resultant drain on the national economy the main electricity generation company the volta river authority is not able to generate enough electricity for all the demand sectors the electricity supply demand margins the difference between peak demand and available supply of the country fall short of the recommended engineering practice and thus presents a high supply security risk the country has been experiencing an increase in the frequency of power cuts over the last ten years it is clear that ghana will have to expand and diversify its generation capacity in order to improve supply security this paper provides a review of the assessed potential renewable energy resources their current exploitation status and their potential contribution to the electricity supply of the country the paper also presents the barriers to their utilization and the existing policy and regulatory instruments to overcome those barriers plus the current and expected future impacts of these instruments the results show that ghana has several res such as wind solar pv mini hydro and modern biomass that can be exploited for electricity production while their exploitation for electricity generation is currently very low providing just 0 13 of the country s generation the review shows a great potential for res generation to increase substantially over the next decade looking at the government commitment and legal frameworks that are being put in place

the cartelization of local governments intergovernmental competition can enhance efficiency centralization of government expenditures inhibits intergovernmental competition because it makes governments more homogeneous and so cartelizes local governments cartelization reduces tiebout competition and limits benchmark competition in which one government s performance can be compared with neighboring governments measuring fiscal centralization as the ratio of local to state and local government expenditures within the state the evidence shows that more fiscal decentralization is associated with higher levels of state per capita income cartelization of local governments negatively impacts income

output and substitution elasticities of energy and implications for renewable energy expansion in the ecowas region abstract this study estimates output and substitution elasticities of renewable energy and nonrenewable energy for the economic community of west african states ecowas and discusses implications for expanding the former the results show that nonrenewable energy promises greater benefits for ecowas economic transition with output elasticities averaging between 0 052 0 579 and 0 055 to 0 223 for nonrenewable energy and renewable energy respectively overall estimated technological progress is low 0 5 to 2 6 the bulk coming from input efficiency substitution elasticities 0 02 0 94 suggest potential for switching towards renewable energy notwithstanding scale economics and sitting problems inherent in renewable power generation challenge the opportunities for energy substitution a sustainable policy solution therefore appears to be one favoring scaled and efficient electricity generation from fossil energy in the short run with a gradual switch towards renewable power in the long run in general the applied model provides insights that energy efficiency enhances sustainable growth by propelling technological advancement especially when technical change is scale biased and factor augmenting the study also provides insights that impacts of exogenous shocks to inputs are temporary and hence do not jeopardize efforts aimed at scaling output through increased and efficient use of labor capital and energy especially nonrenewable energy

can african countries efficiently build their economies on renewable energy abstract the translog production model is estimated to provide insights on the effectiveness of renewable energy for africa the analysis shows that capital labor renewable energy and nonrenewable energy drive output in african countries with renewable energy being a higher driver of growth than the conventional fossil fuels over the sample period this finding is reflective of the fact that renewable sources like wind hydro and solar account for a greater share of power generation in most african countries output elasticities computed for both energy types reaffirm the results and suggest that eastern and central african countries are more renewable energy dependent than the other three regions in addition technological progress is driven mainly by the efficiency with which various factors and energy inputs are used while africa has great potential of facing out conventional fossil energy the discussion provided in this study suggests that such transition is limited in practice due to issues of scale economics and sitting problems

energy economic growth and causality in developing countries a case study of tanzania and nigeria the debate about the precise role of energy in economic development remains contentious existing empirical studies have produced varying results some have argued the complementarity between energy and other factors of production and others have indicated that energy can be substituted for other factors of production commonly these studies have focused primarily on the developed countries one explanation being that supply constraints and price rigidities render any study on factor substitutions in developing countries meaningless however the functional relationship between energy consumption and income in developing countries is constantly investigated with the use of regression techniques while such techniques are useful in empirical analysis no mechanism exists for indicating causal directions between variables this limits the scope for policy analysis and prescription the need to identify causal direction between energy consumption and income growth in developing countries is overwhelming apart from providing further insights into the role of energy in economic development it provides policy analysts with a clearer understanding of the likely impact of energy supply constraints on economic growth this article examines the causal directions between energy consumption and economic growth proxied by gdp and gnp for nigeria and tanzania the results show a simultaneous causal relationship between energy and economic growth for both countries the implication being that unless energy supply constraints are eased economic growth and development will remain elusive to these countries given similar economic characteristics and profiling the same energy scenario for other developing countries our finding supports the view that energy plays a key role in economic development

tax rates and tax evasion evidence from missing imports in china tax evasion by its very nature is difficult to observe we quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in china between the tariff schedule and the evasion gap which we define as the difference between hong kong s reported exports to china at the product level and china s reported imports from hong kong our results imply that a one percentage point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion furthermore the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher taxed categories to lower taxed ones in addition to underreporting the value of imports

deadweight costs and the size of government abstract we provide a model for analyzing effects of the tax system and spending programs on the determination of government spending and taxpayer welfare an improvement in the efficiency of either taxes or spending would reduce political pressure for suppressing the growth of government and thereby increase total tax revenue and spending we demonstrate the similarity of the political responses to revenue shocks spending shocks changes in tax efficiency and changes in spending program efficiency empirical analysis of oil shocks intergovernmental grants and other autonomous changes in taxes or spending indicates that cause and effect is not only from spending to tax structures

costs of taxation and the size of government existing theory on the form of government suggests that a parliamentary system promotes a larger size of government than does a presidential system this paper extends the existing theory by allowing for distortionary taxation a main result is that if taxation is sufficiently distortionary the parliamentary system may promote a smaller size of government than the presidential system the proposed mechanism appears consistent with several empirical patterns in the data that cannot be explained by other theories

incumbent performance and electoral control in the pure theory of electoral competition citizens compare the platforms of the candidates and vote for the one whose platform is preferred candidate strategies are identified with promises about future performance in office models of this sort have been developed in both static mckelvey 1975 and dynamic kramer 1977 i settings and all appear to have the property that if the set of alternatives is large enough in some sense equilibrium platforms rarely exist but these models have another feature that is quite as disturbing as their instability in the static setting discussed by mckelvey little attention is paid to the possibility that once in office the politician s preferences may diverge from those of his constituents and that he may therefore choose policies at variance from his platform instead it is simply assumed that promises will be kept whether or not such behavior is congruent with the interest of the officeholder it is sometimes argued that an enforcement mechanism may exist to discipline politicians for failing to keep promises but without a specification of the mechanism it is not obvious that it would be in the interests of the

the size of government most research on the causes of growth in government expenditure has focused on the demand for government services in this paper we argue that in fact this growth may have occurred because of changes in supply changes in technology leading to increased specialization and thus increased opportunity costs of self production have led to increased market production and increased record keeping also female labor force participation has increased both of these factors serve to reduce the efficiency cost of collecting taxes if the demand for government spending has not changed this increase in supply would lead to a larger public sector we estimate a system of simultaneous equations for the period 1929 1970 incorporating this hypothesis and the results are consistent with the theory we are able to explain virtually all of the growth of government increases in female labor force participation seems to be a very important variable in this explanation

comparative politics and public finance we propose a model with micropolitical foundations to contrast different political regimes compared to a parliamentary regime the institutions of a presidential congressional regime produce fewer incentives for legislative cohesion but more separation of powers these differences are reflected in the size and composition of government spending a parliamentary regime has redistribution toward a majority less underprovision of public goods and more rents to politicians a presidential congressional regime has redistribution toward powerful minorities more underprovision of public goods but less rents to politicians the size of government is smaller under a presidential regime this last prediction is consistent with cross country data

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

the behavioral response to housing transfer taxes evidence from a notched change in d c policy abstract this paper estimates the behavioral response to residential real estate transfer taxes by studying notched tax rate changes in washington d c exploiting both a price and time notch as identifying variation we provide evidence that there is manipulation of the sales price to the lower tax rate region around the price notch and use this manipulation to show that there was significant awareness of the tax changes and the incentives they created we then construct difference in difference estimates to examine whether there is a lock in effect in the volume of house sales away from the price and time notches we find no evidence of a lock in effect in this setting taken together our results suggest that the welfare costs of a state introducing or eliminating a housing transaction tax are small

cointegration and causality between electricity consumption and gdp empirical evidence from malawi abstract the granger causality gc and error correction ecm techniques were applied on 1970 1999 data for malawi to examine cointegration and causality between electricity consumption kwh and respectively overall gdp agricultural gdp agdp and non agricultural gdp ngdp cointegration was established between kwh and respectively gdp and ngdp but not with agdp the gc results detect bi directional causality between kwh and gdp suggesting that kwh and gdp are jointly determined but one way causality running from ngdp to kwh the ecm results detect causality running one way from gdp also from ngdp to kwh suggesting that a permanent rise in gdp may cause a permanent growth in electricity consumption

estimating bargaining power in the market for existing homes although bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods it has largely been ignored in the hedonic literature in a break from that tradition we establish sufficient conditions that permit one to identify the effect of buyer and seller bargaining on hedonic models our model is estimated using a previously overlooked feature of the american housing survey that permits us to observe characteristics of both buyers and sellers results suggest that household wealth gender and other demographic traits influence bargaining power in addition variation in bargaining power arising from the presence of school age children accounts for anomalous seasonal patterns reported in various widely cited indices of quality adjusted house prices

carbon emissions energy consumption and output a threshold analysis on the causal dynamics in emerging african economies abstract following the recent global economic downturn attention has gradually shifted towards emerging economies which have experienced robust growth amidst sluggish growth of the world economy a significant number of these emerging economies are in africa rising growth in these economies is associated with surging demand for energy to propel the engines of growth with direct implications on emissions into the atmosphere further these economies are constantly being shaped by series of structural reforms with direct and indirect effects on growth demand for energy etc to this end this paper examines the causal dynamics among energy use real gdp and co2 emissions in the presence of regime shifts in six emerging african economies using the gregory and hansen 1996a j econ 70 99 126 threshold cointegration and the toda and yamamoto 1995 j econometrics 66 225 250 granger causality techniques results confirm the presence of regime shift effects in the long run inter linkages among energy use real gdp and co2 emissions in the countries considered thus indicating that structural changes have both economic and environmental effects hence integration of energy and environmental policies into development plans is imperative towards attaining sustainable growth and development

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from cameroon abstract the aim of this paper is to study the nature of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in cameroon through a three step approach i study the stationarity of the chronic ii test of causality between variables and iii estimate the appropriate model the study concludes in a non stationarity of the series using the data in first difference the granger causality test yields a strong evidence for unidirectional causality running from oil to gdp cointegration tests also show that these two series are co integrated and the error correction model ecm reveals that every percentage increase in oil products consumption increases economic growth by around 1 1 this result confirms the intuition that an economic policy aimed at improving energy supply will necessarily have a positive impact on economic growth on the other side a lack of energy is a major bottleneck for further economic development in cameroon

using notches to uncover optimization frictions and structural elasticities theory and evidence from pakistan we develop a framework for nonparametrically identifying optimization frictions and structural elasticities using notches discontinuities in the choice sets of agents introduced by tax and transfer policies notches create excess bunching on the low tax side and missing mass on the high tax side of a cutoff and they are often associated with a region of strictly dominated choice that would have zero mass in a frictionless world by combining excess bunching observed response attenuated by frictions with missing mass in the dominated region frictions it is possible to uncover the structural elasticity that would govern behavior in the absence of frictions and arguably capture long run behavior we apply our framework to tax notches in pakistan using rich administrative data while observed bunching is large and sharp optimization frictions are also very large as the majority of taxpayers in dominated ranges are unresponsive to tax incentives the combination of large observed bunching and large frictions implies that the frictionless behavioral response to notches is extremely large but the underlying structural elasticity driving this response is nevertheless modest this highlights the inefficiency of notches by creating extremely strong price distortions they induce large behavioral responses even when structural elasticities are small

constitutions politics and economics a review essay on persson and tabellini s the economic effects of constitutions in this essay i review the new book by torsten persson and guido tabellini the economic effects of constitutions which investigates the policy and economic consequences of different forms of government and electoral rules i also take advantage of this opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a number of popular empirical strategies in the newly emerging field of comparative political economy

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

imperfect information and the meltzer richard hypothesis standard majority voting models predict that redistribution is positively linked to the mean to median income ratio but empirical evidence is mixed this paper shows that the different empirical reactions to rising mean to median income ratios can be rationalized in a simple romer roberts meltzer richard framework with imperfect information in such a model it is important to consider the source of rising mean to median ratios income growth of the poor can lead to less redistribution as more agents perceive themselves to be rich which tends to reduce the support for redistribution an empirical application reveals that the model can explain a substantial part of the first reagan tax cut

renewable energy electricity development in ghana observations concerns substitution possibilities and implications for the economy abstract can ghana build its economy on renewable energy is it possible to substitute nonrenewable for renewable energy what is the impact of renewable energy on the economy of ghana these questions are relevant and worth considering as far as the renewable energy development agenda in ghana is concern using the translog production function approach this study primarily investigates whether ghana can move away from nonrenewable electricity generation to renewable power generation in particular we provide estimates for the relationship between the two energy types and output the estimates are then used to calculate the output and substitution elasticities between renewable and nonrenewable energy our findings show that while the impact of nonrenewable energy on ghana s economy is negative that of renewable energy is insignificant with output elasticities for both energy types averaging 0 139 and 1 875 respectively even though substitution elasticity suggests the possibility of moving towards a renewable power generation system this study also highlights the limitations associated with such transition citing inherent problems such as scale cost and location based on the analysis done in the context of the findings this study recommends a policy that supports an optimal energy matrix with both renewable and nonrenewable sources

matching with contracts we develop a model of matching with contracts which incorporates as special cases the college admissions problem the kelso crawford labor market matching model and ascending package auctions we introduce a new law of aggregate demand for the case of discrete heterogeneous workers and show that when workers are substitutes this law is satisfied by profit maximizing firms when workers are substitutes and the law is satisfied truthful reporting is a dominant strategy for workers in a worker offering auction matching algorithm we also parameterize a large class of preferences satisfying the two conditions

an international literature survey on energy economic growth nexus evidence from country specific studies in this paper an extensive review of the rapidly growing in the literature on the nexus between economic growth and four types of energy consumption total energy consumption electricity consumption nuclear consumption and renewable consumption the various hypotheses associated with the causal interaction between these variables along with a survey of the empirical literature are also discussed the survey focuses on country coverage periods modeling techniques and empirical conclusions a general observation from these studies that results are found to be sensitive to methodology and type of energy considered the empirical results for the specific countries surveyed show that i for energy consumption growth nexus 29 supported the growth hypothesis 27 the feedback hypothesis 23 the conservation hypothesis and 21 the neutrality hypothesis ii for the electricity consumption growth nexus 40 supported the growth hypothesis 33 the feedback hypothesis and 27 conservation hypothesis iii for the nuclear consumption growth nexus 60 supported the neutrality hypothesis and 40 the growth hypothesis and iv for the renewable consumption growth nexus 40 supported the neutrality hypothesis 40 the conservation hypothesis and 20 the growth hypothesis these mixed results may be attributed to the different used data selected variables and econometric approaches undertaken

trivariate causality between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption in angola cointegration and causality analysis abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption in the case of angola while utilizing the data over the period of 1971 2009 we have applied lee and strazicich 2003 the review of economics and statistics 63 1082 1089 2004 working paper department of economics appalachian state university unit root tests to examine the stationarity properties of the series using the gregory hansen structural break cointegration procedure as a complement we employ the ardl bounds test to investigate long run relationships the vecm granger causality test is subsequently used to examine the direction of causality between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption our results indicate the existence of long run relationships we further observe evidence in favour of bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth the feedback hypothesis is also found between urbanisation and economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption granger cause each other we conclude that angola is energy dependent country consequently the relevant authorities should boost electricity production as one of the means of achieving sustainable economic development in the long run

tax avoidance and the deadweight loss of the income tax traditional analyses of the income tax greatly underestimate deadweight losses by ignoring its effect on forms of compensation and patterns of consumption the full deadweight loss is easily calculated using the compensated elasticity of taxable income to changes in tax rates because leisure excludable income and deductible consumption are a hicksian composite good microeconomic estimates imply a deadweight loss of as much as 30 of revenue or more than ten times harberger s classic 1964 estimate the relative deadweight loss caused by increasing existing tax rates is substantially greater and may exceed 2 per 1 of revenue

housing capital gains taxation and homeowner mobility evidence from the taxpayer relief act of 1997 abstract we provide new evidence on the impact of housing capital gains taxation on homeowner behavior by examining residential mobility before and after the taxpayer relief act of 1997 tra97 which generated the most sweeping reform of capital gains taxation in the last two decades in addition to lowering marginal tax rates on long term capital gains for all assets tra97 also eliminated any differential treatment of housing gains above and below age 55 allowing all homeowners to qualify for capital gains exclusions utilizing data drawn from the current population survey cps on either side of the law change 1996 and 1998 on homeowners just above 56 58 year olds and below 52 54 year olds the age 55 threshold and a reduced form difference in difference empirical approach our estimates suggest that the repeal of the differential capital gains tax treatment by age embodied in tra97 had an economically important and statistically significant impact on the residential mobility of under 55 homeowners across a variety of specifications the repeal raised the mobility rate by around 1 1 4 percentage points which for a mean mobility rate of 4 percentage points represented an increase in the mobility rate of homeowners in their early 50s by 22 31 furthermore the bulk of this effect was concentrated among highly mobile homeowners who a priori were more likely to have wanted to trade down e g divorced empty nesters those facing higher capital gains tax rates and those living in states that had experienced higher rates of nominal appreciation

preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities this paper explores how individual preferences for redistribution depend on future income prospects in addition to estimating the impact of individuals socioeconomic background and of their subjective perceptions of future mobility we employ panel data to construct dobjectivet measures of expected gains and losses from redistribution for different categories of individuals we find that such measures have considerable explanatory power and perform better than dgeneral mobilityt indexes we also find that preferences for redistribution respond to individual beliefs on what determines one s position in the social ladder ceteris paribus people who believe that the american society offers equal opportunities are more averse to redistribution d 2004 published by elsevier b v

investigating the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth evidence from south africa abstract this paper explores the causal relationship among electricity consumption economic growth financial development and co 2 emissions for south africa over the period 1971 2012 the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test is used to test for the presence of cointegration whereas the toda and yamamoto augmented granger causality test is used for direction of causality the results of ardl bounds test validate the existence of cointegration among the included variables further the toda and yamamoto granger causality test affirms that there is no causality between electricity consumption and economic growth this signifies that neutrality hypothesis holds for south africa during the period under the study additionally there is a unidirectional causality running from co 2 emissions to electricity consumption as well as a unidirectional causality running from financial development to co 2 emissions the empirical finding suggests that policy makers should establish concrete plans to increase investment in the electricity sector to ensure reliability of supply moreover policy makers need to address the pressing environmental concern by tapping into the sizeable renewable energy potential of the country consequently it will assist in promoting sustainable economic growth and development

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

energy consumption pollutant emissions and economic growth in south africa article i nfo article history this paper examines the long run and the causal relationship between economic growth pollutant emissions and energy consumption for south africa for the period 1965 2006 in a multivariate framework which includes labour and capital as additional variables using the bound test approach to cointegration we found a short run as well as a long run relationship among the variables with a positive and a statistically significant relationship between pollutant emissions and economic growth further applying a modified version of the granger causality test we also found a unidirectional causality running from pollutant emissions to economic growth from energy consumption to economic growth and from energy consumption to co2 emissions all without a feedback the econometric evidence suggests that south africa has to sacrifice economic growth or reduce its energy consumption per unit of output or both in order to reduce pollutant emissions in the long run however it is possible to meet the energy needs of the country and at the same time reduce co2 emissions by developing energy alternatives to coal the main source of co2 emissions however the econometric results upon which the policy suggestions are made should be interpreted with care as they may not be sufficiently robust enough to categorically warrant the choice of an unpalatable policy option by south africa

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

delving into liberia s energy economy technical change inter factor and inter fuel substitution abstract the industrial energy mix of liberia is dominated by petroleum products this has generated serious environmental problems contributing immensely to co 2 emissions and other pollutants in the country this study has attempted to investigate the potential for inter factor and inter fuel substitution between capital labor petroleum and electricity in liberia by employing a translog production and cost function approach ridge regression procedure has been adopted to estimate the parameters of the function due to multicollinearity in the data estimation results show that all inputs are substitutes these suggest that price based policies coupled with capital subsidy programs can be adopted to redirect technology use towards cleaner energy sources like electricity hence retaining the ability to fuel the economy while also mitigating greenhouse gas ghg emissions substitution between energy and labor and energy and capital implies that removal of price ceilings on energy in liberia would tend to reduce energy use and increase capital and labor intensiveness notwithstanding the study seems to show no evidence of convergence in relative technological progress of the four inputs implying that petroleum will continue to play a dominant role in the energy consumption mix of liberian industry while labor investment will continue to outweigh capital inputs finally the findings of this study provide general insights and underscore the importance of policies that focus on installed capacity of renewable electricity energy intensity targets as well as merger of enterprises

output renewable energy consumption and trade in africa abstract we use panel cointegration techniques to examine the relationship between renewable energy consumption trade and output in a sample of 11 african countries covering the period 1980 2008 the results from panel error correction model reveal that there is evidence of a bidirectional causality between output and exports and between output and imports in both the short and long run however in the short run there is no evidence of causality between output and renewable energy consumption and between trade exports or imports and renewable energy consumption also in the long run there is no causality running from output or trade to renewable energy in the long run our estimations show that renewable energy consumption and trade have a statistically significant and positive impact on output our energy policy recommendations are that national authorities should design appropriate fiscal incentives to encourage the use of renewable energies create more regional economic integration for renewable energy technologies and encourage trade openness because of its positive impact on technology transfer and on output

independent and competing agencies an effective way to control government controlling government is a primary focus of the politico economic literature recently various political institutions have been analyzed from this perspective most importantly balanced budget rules fiscal federalism and direct democracy however one type of institution has been neglected so far elected competitors to the government such institutional competition between the government and an independent agency can be found at the swiss local level where finance commissions compete with the government in some parts of switzerland local finance commissions can ex ante criticize government projects and bring alternative policy proposals onto the political agenda which are then voted on by the citizens thus they become strong competitors to the government we econometrically investigate this institutional setting by comparing the 26 swiss cantons we find the power of the local finance commission to have an economically relevant statistically significant and robust negative effect on the tax burden and on public expenditures

property taxes mobility and home ownership abstract in contrast with the conventional property tax which is based on current market value the acquisition value property tax is based on the market value of the property at the time it was purchased a switch to an acquisition value tax i decreases household mobility ii increases the likelihood of home ownership among infrequent movers at the expense of frequent movers and iii attracts infrequent movers and repels frequent movers we use a simple simulation model to compute the excess burden of the acquisition value tax with a tax rate of 3 the excess burden is about 4 5 of tax revenue the transfer tax has much larger distortionary effects