the environmental kuznets curve environmental protection policy and income distribution abstract the effect of economic growth on pollution emissions differs substantially among high income countries i address this issue by analyzing public environmental policy decisions individual heterogeneity relative income effect and the political framework in which policy decisions are taken determine the emergence of the downward sloping segment of the environmental kuznets curve ekc income inequality produces a gap between the country s ability to pay for environmental protection and a country s willingness to pay i test this result by using oecd data on public r d expenditure for environmental protection the conclusion is that contrary to the ek hypothesis moments of the income distribution function other than the mean may be important for the emergence of a virtuous path of sustainable growth in high income countries

dynamics and determinants of energy intensity in the service sector a cross country analysis 1980 2005 we present a detailed analysis of energy intensity developments across 23 service sectors in 18 oecd countries over the period 1980 2005 we find that the shift towards a service economy has contributed to lower overall energy intensity levels in the oecd but this contribution would have been considerably larger if the service sector had realized the same degree of energy efficiency improvements as the manufacturing sector in most oecd countries energy intensity levels in services tend to decrease relatively slow especially after 1995 if we control this trend for the impact of structural changes within the services sector by means of a decomposition analysis we find that in about one third of the oecd countries energy intensity levels in services have increased over time the impact of structural changes on aggregate energy intensity dynamics in services has increased considerably after 1995 highlighting a relatively poor energy efficiency performance within a wide range of service sectors we show that the introduction of information and communication technology ict plays a potentially important role here using panel data regression analysis we find a limited role for energy prices in explaining variation in energy productivity while climate conditions clearly impact energy productivity

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

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

capture by threat we analyze a simple stochastic environment in which policy makers can be threatened by nasty interest groups in the absence of these groups the policy maker s desire for reelection guarantees that good policies are implemented for every realization of the shock when pressure groups can harass the policy maker good policies will be chosen for only a subset of states of nature hence honest and able leaders might implement bad policies and needed reforms could be delayed in order to make good policies more likely the public will want to increase the cost of exerting pressure for nasty groups and provide rents to those in power this last result can be used to explain the existence of political parties they play a role resembling that of the supervisor in the literature on collusion in hierarchical agency a rational public may also choose to ignore negative media reports on a politician s personal life and in general elect strong political leaders the prevalence of coercive methods of infl

will small energy consumers be faster in transition evidence from the early shift from coal to oil in latin america abstract this paper provide evidence of the early transition from coal to oil for 20 latin american countries over the first half of the 20th century which does not fit the transition experiences of large energy consumers these small energy consumers had earlier and faster transitions than leading nations we also provide evidence for alternative sequences inverse revertible in the transition from coal to oil furthermore we demonstrate that leapfrogging allowed a set of follower economies to reach the next rung of the energy ladder oil domination 30 years in advance of the most developed economies we examine these follower economies where transition took place earlier and faster than the cases historically known in order to understand variation within the energy transitions and to expand the array of feasible pathways of future energy transitions we find that being a small energy consumer makes a difference for the way the energy transition takes place but also path dependence including trade and technological partnerships domestic energy endowment which dictates relative prices and policy decisions seem to be the variables that shaped past energy transitions

evolutionary theories in environmental and resource economics approaches and applications recent advances in evolutionary theory have important implications for environmental economics a short overview is offered of evolutionarythinking in economics subsequently major concepts and approaches inevolutionary biology and evolutionary economics are presented andcompared attention is devoted among others to darwinian selection punctuated equilibrium sorting mechanisms lamarckian evolution coevolution and self organization basic features of evolution such assustained change irreversible change unpredictability qualitativechange and disequilibrium are examined it is argued that there are anumber of fundamental differences as well as similarities betweenbiological and economic evolution next some general implications ofevolutionary thinking for environmental economics are outlined this isfollowed by a more detailed examination of potential uses ofevolutionary theories in specific areas of environmental economics including sustainability and long run development theories technologyand environment ecosystem management and resilience spatial evolutionand environmental processes and design of environmental policy

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

economic growth and climate the carbon dioxide problem in contemplating the future course of economic growth in the west scientists are divided between one group crying wolf and another which denies that species existence one persistent concern has been that man s economic activities would reach a scale where the global climate would be significantly affected unlike many of the wolf cries this one in my opinion should be taken very seriously the present article will first give a brief overview of the climatic implications of economic activity with special reference to carbon dioxide and then will present possible strategies for control a more complete report with references to the literature on climatic change is contained in nordhaus 1976 it is thought that the economic activities which most affect climate are agriculture and energy of these the latter is probably more significant is certainly more easily analyzed and will be discussed here in the energy sector emissions of carbon dioxide particulate matter and heat are of significance for the global climate

a theory of economic growth with material energy resources and dematerialization interaction of three growth mechanisms the nature of energy and material resources in a non optimizing growth theory framework is clarified this involves two modifications of the conventional theory firstly multiple feedback mechanisms or growth engines are identified such that the impact of the cost of production through demand on growth is accounted for secondly a production function distinguishes between resource use technical efficiency and value creation the resulting model is analytically solved under the condition of a constant growth rate given model complexity numerical experiments are performed as well providing relevant insights to the academic and political debates on environmental kuznets curves and dematerialization

plata o plomo bribe and punishment in a theory of political influence we present a model where groups attempt to influence policies using both bribes plata spanish for silver and the threat of punishment plomo spanish for lead we then use it to make predictions about the quality of a country s public officials and to understand the role of institutions granting politicians with immunity from legal prosecution the use of punishment lowers the returns from public office and reduces the incentives of high ability citizens to enter public life cheaper plomo and more resources subject to official discretion are associated with more frequent corruption and less able politicians this predicts that violence in a country will typically go together with corruption and worse politicians moreover the possibility of punishment changes the nature of the influence game so that even cheaper plata can lower the ability of public officials protecting officials from accusations of corruption immunity will decrease the frequency of corruption if the judiciary is weak and may increase the quality of politicians these predictions cannot emerge from a traditional model where only bribes are used the positive evils and dangers of the representative as of every other form of government may be reduced to two heads first general ignorance and incapacity or to speak more moderately insufficient mental qualifications in the controlling body secondly the danger of its being under the influence of interests not identical with the general welfare of the community

the environment as a luxury good or too poor to be green abstract this paper discusses the views of different authors on the relations between economic growth and environmental scarcities it lays out the common assumptions behind inglehart s postmaterialist thesis in environmental sociology krutilla s criterion for the valuation of environmental amenities hirsch s notion of the positional economy and pearce s numerical results on weak sustainability the paper shows how different views on the environmental consequences of economic growth imply at the same time different theories about environmental movements in rich countries there is an increasing demand for environmental amenities which cannot be substituted by products of the material economy and there are also environmental movements against the effluents of affluence in poor countries there are environmental movements characterized as the environmentalism of the poor

a review of recent multi region input output models used for consumption based emission and resource accounting abstract the interest in consumption based emission and resource accounting has grown significantly many studies juxtapose consumer emissions carbon footprint and producer territorial emissions of greenhouse gases in order to demonstrate the effects of trade on the national emission budget to this end a respectable number of studies have been undertaken worldwide in order to estimate emissions embedded in international trade of numerous countries and world regions input output approaches and increasingly multi region input output mrio models are commonly chosen as they provide an appropriate methodological framework for complete carbon footprint estimates at the national and supra national level with increasing processing capabilities of computers and a wider availability of economic accounts environmental accounts and trade data such models are now being implemented on a wide scale after a brief overview of salient single region input output studies i provide an in depth review of the most recent multi region input output models used for the purpose of consumption based environmental accounting the main methodological features and important results are described for around twenty studies covering the years 2007 to 2009 this is followed by a detailed review of studies dealing with uncertainty in mrio analysis an area which has not received a lot of attention so far i conclude that further research is mainly needed in two areas a improvements in data availability and quality and b improvements in the accuracy of mrio modelling

comparing structural decomposition analysis and index to analyze and understand historical changes in economic environmental employment or other socio economic indicators it is useful to assess the driving forces or determinants that underlie these changes two techniques for decomposing indicator changes at the sector level are structural decomposition analysis sda and index decomposition analysis ida for example sda and ida have been used to analyze changes in indicators such as energy use co2 emissions labor demand and value added the changes in these variables are decomposed into determinants such as technological demand and structural effects sda uses information from input output tables while ida uses aggregate data at the sector level the two methods have developed quite independently which has resulted in each method being characterized by specific unique techniques and approaches this paper has three aims first the similarities and differences between the two approaches are summarized second the possibility of transferring specific techniques and indices is explored finally a numerical example is used to illustrate differences between the two approaches

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

how do elections affect international cooperation evidence from environmental treaty participation is there a strategically beneficial time for political leaders to make international environmental commitments based on the political cycles theory we argue that leaders have incentives to delay costly ratification of international environmental agreements to the post electoral period however the cost of participating in these agreements is often lower for developing countries and they may enjoy indirect advantages which may make them more prone to ratifying in the pre electoral period these hypotheses are assessed empirically by studying the ratification process of 41 global environmental agreements censused in the environmental treaties and resources indicators database from 1976 to 1999 we use a duration model in which time is measured on a daily basis enabling us to precisely identify pre and post electoral periods a significant challenge in political cycles studies our investigation reveals the existence of political ratification cycles that are of substantial magnitude and non linear over the pre and post electoral years

lobbying and welfare in a representative democracy this paper studies the impact of lobbying on political competition and policy outcomes in a framework which integrates the citizen candidate model of representative democracy with the menu auction model of lobbying positive and normative issues are analysed on the positive side lobbying need have little or no effect on policy outcomes because voters can restrict the influence of lobbyists by supporting candidates with offsetting policy preferences on the normative side coordination failure among lobbyists can result in pareto inefficient policy choices in addition by creating rents to holding office lobbying can lead to excessive entry into electoral competition

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

colombian international trade from a physical perspective towards an ecological prebisch thesis abstract prebisch s approach to economic development was based on the notion that there is an international historical division of labour peripheral countries are specialised in exporting primary goods while centre countries export industrial goods the terms of trade for peripheral countries tend to deteriorate this approach can be extended to ecological issues the international centre periphery division does not only involve the monetary exchange of goods and capital but also the physical exchange in which southern countries provide materials and energy so that northern countries can develop their socioeconomic metabolism this metabolic process is guaranteed through cheap prices for primary goods this paper aims to apply and extend prebisch s thought on unequal exchange both monetary and ecological in relation to colombian trade in the period 1970 2002 using material flow analysis

trade the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve examining the linkages abstract this paper examines the extent to which the ekc inverted u relationship can be explained by trade and specifically the migration or displacement of dirty industries from the developed regions to the developing regions the pollution haven hypothesis phh using detailed data on north south trade flows for pollution intensive products the evidence for the phh is assessed emissions of 10 air and water pollutants are then estimated controlling for trade openness structural change and dirty north south trade flows evidence of pollution haven effects is found although such effects do not appear to be widespread and appear to be relatively small compared to the roles played other explanatory variables

electoral terms and terrorism many terror attacks occur at the beginning of electoral terms we present a game theoretical model with incomplete information to account for this empirical pattern both terrorists and governments can be of weak or strong types we find that the risk of terror attacks is highest at the beginning of electoral terms because striking early allows the terrorists to collect valuable information about the government s type and also because terrorists know that even initially weak governments sometimes retaliate to show toughness closer to an upcoming election the model s predictions are consistent with anecdotal evidence

political competition and violence in mexico hierarchical social control in local patronage structures many countries that have recently undergone transitions to democracy have experienced increases in violent crime yet sociological theories have generally failed to consider the impact of political factors on crime the author examines the relation between greater electoral competition and homicide at the subnational level in a country undergoing an uneven transition to democracy in societies characterized by the presence of patronage networks social and political changes that undermine the source of unequal exchange between actors at different levels in the social hierarchy result in a temporary loss of social control and an increase in crime the relation between electoral competition and homicide is tested using electoral results from a sample of 1 800 mexican municipalities greater electoral competition is associated with higher homicide rates across municipalities and over time even after controlling for standard correlates of violent crime consistent with the hypothesis that the increase is due to the disruption of patronage networks this association is present only in rural areas where patron client relations are more common

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

organised crime institutions and political quality empirical evidence from italian municipalities this article assesses how legal institutions affect the influence of politically active criminal organisations on the human capital of elected politicians using data from over 1 500 southern italian municipalities in the period 1985 2011 it exploits municipal government dissolutions imposed by the national government for presumed mafia infiltration as a source of exogenous variation in the presence of politically active criminal organisations the results support theoretical predictions that the average education level of local politicians significantly increases when active mafia infiltration of local politics is remedied through the implementation of a stricter legal institutional framework

the modest environmental relief resulting from the transition to the service economy a service transition is supposed to lead to the decline of energy intensity energy gdp we argue that this interpretation is overly optimistic because the shift to a service economy is somewhat of an illusion in terms of real production several recent studies of structural effects on energy intensity have made the error of using sector shares in current prices combined with gdp in constant prices which is inconsistent and ignores the different behaviour of prices across sectors we use the more correct method of sector shares in constant prices and make an attempt to single out the effect from the real service transition by using two complementary methods shift share analyses in current and constant prices and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi for 10 developed and 3 emerging economies a service transition is rather modest in real terms the major driver of the decline in energy intensity rests within the manufacturing sector meanwhile the transition to a service sector had a small downward impact on energy intensity in 7 of the developed countries and no impact in the others for emerging economies like brazil mexico and india it is the residential sector that drives energy intensity down because of the declining share of this sector as the formal economy grows and as a consequence of switching to more efficient fuels less

knowledge dynamics structural change and the geography of business services the article provides a review of and presents some empirical evidence on the dynamics of knowledge structural change and spatial concentration of economic activities focusing on the case of business services it explores how the role of knowledge has evolved in relation to the dimensions of i science technology and structural change ii the long term processes of tertiarisation of the economy in particular the growth of business services iii the spatial concentration of business services as an outcome of the increasing volume and complexity of knowledge and the need to manage it through spatial proximity our arguments are supported by empirical evidence on the spatial concentration of business services in the european regions

mafia elections and violence against politicians organized crime uses political violence to influence politics in a wide set of countries this paper exploits a novel dataset of attacks directed towards italian local politicians to study how and why criminal organizations use violence against them we test two complementary theories to predict the use of violence i before elections to affect the electoral outcome and ii after elections to influence politicians from the beginning of their term we provide causal evidence in favor of the latter hypothesis the probability of being a target of violence increases in the weeks right after an election in areas with a high presence of organized crime especially when elections result in a change of local government

kyoto and carbon leakage an empirical analysis of the carbon content of bilateral trade abstract has the kyoto protocol induced carbon leakage we conduct the first empirical ex post evaluation of the protocol we derive a theoretical gravity equation for the carbon dioxide content of trade which accounts for intermediate inputs both domestic and imported the structure of our new panel database of the carbon content of sectoral bilateral trade flows allows controlling for the endogenous selection of countries into the kyoto protocol binding commitments under kyoto have increased committed countries embodied carbon imports from noncommitted countries by around 8 and the emission intensity of their imports by about 3 hence kyoto has indeed led to leakage

the monopoly of violence evidence from colombia many states in latin america africa and asia lack the monopoly of violence even though this was identified by max weber as the foundation of the state and thus the capacity to govern effectively in this paper we develop a new perspective on the establishment of the monopoly of violence we build a model to explain the incentive of central states to eliminate nonstate armed actors paramilitaries in a democracy the model is premised on the idea that paramilitaries may choose to and can influence elections since paramilitaries have preferences over policies this reduces the incentives of the politicians they favor to eliminate them we then investigate these ideas using data from colombia between 1991 and 2006 we first present regression and case study evidence supporting our postulate that paramilitary groups can have significant effects on elections for the legislature and the executive next we show that the evidence is also broadly consistent with the implication of the model that paramilitaries tend to persist to the extent that they deliver votes to candidates for the executive whose preferences are close to theirs and that this effect is larger in areas where the presidential candidate would have otherwise not done as well finally we use roll call votes to illustrate a possible quid pro quo between the executive and paramilitaries in colombia language en

green industrial policy green growth requires green technologies production techniques that economize on exhaustible resources and emit fewer greenhouse gases the availability of green technologies both lowers social costs in the transition to a green growth path and helps achieve a satisfactory rate of material progress under that path the theoretical case in favour of using industrial policy to facilitate green growth is quite strong economists traditional scepticism on industrial policy is grounded instead on pragmatic considerations having to do with the difficulty of achieving well targeted and effective interventions in practice while these objections deserve serious attention i argue that they are not insurmountable a key objective of this paper is to show how the practice of industrial policy can be improved by designing institutional frameworks that counter both informational and political risks

trafficking networks and the mexican drug war abstract drug trade related violence has escalated dramatically in mexico since 2007 and recent years have also witnessed large scale efforts to combat trafficking spearheaded by mexico s conservative pan party this study examines the direct and spillover effects of mexican policy toward the drug trade regression discontinuity estimates show that drug related violence increases substantially after close elections of pan mayors empirical evidence suggests that the violence reflects rival traffickers attempts to usurp territories after crackdowns have weakened incumbent criminals moreover the study uses a network model of trafficking routes to show that pan victories divert drug traffic increasing violence along alternative drug routes jel d72 d85 k42 o17 z13

interest groups campaign contributions and probabilistic voting this essay develops a simple model to analyze the impact of campaign contributions on electoral policy decisions of candidates for office interest groups here are firms that select contributions under the assumption that candidates policies and opposing groups donations remain unaltered candidates however recognize that their policy choices affect contributions campaign contributions are used by candidates to affect policy oriented voters perceptions of candidates positions in this framework the introduction of campaign contributions may affect candidates electoral policies and if they do then they benefit surely exactly one of the two interest groups

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

the game of trading jobs for emissions following the debate on the implications of international trade for global climate policy this paper introduces the topic of the economic benefits from trade obtained by exporting countries in relation to the emissions generated in the production of exports in 2008 24 of global greenhouse gas ghg emissions and 20 of the employment around the world were linked to international trade china exported 30 of emissions and hosted 37 5 of the jobs generated by trade worldwide the european union and the united states of america were the destination of 25 and 18 4 of the ghg emissions embodied in trade the imports of these two regions contributed to the creation of 45 of the employment generated by international trade this paper proposes the idea of including trade issues in international climate negotiations taking into account not only the environmental burden generated by developed countries when displacing emissions to developing countries through their imports but also the economic benefits of developing countries producing the goods exported to developed countries

causality between energy and output in the long run though there is a very large literature examining whether energy use granger causes economic output or vice versa this literature is fairly inconclusive almost all existing studies use relatively short time series or panels with a relatively small time dimension additionally many recent papers continue to use what seem to be misspecified models we apply granger causality and cointegration techniques to a swedish time series data set on energy and economic growth spanning 150 years to test whether increases in energy use and energy quality have driven economic growth we show that these techniques are very sensitive to variable definition choice of additional variables in the model and sample periods all of the following appear to make a finding that energy causes growth more likely using multivariate models defining variables to better reflect their theoretical definition using larger samples and including appropriate structural breaks however it is also possible that the relationship between energy and growth has changed over time and that results from recent smaller samples reflect this energy prices have a significant causal impact on both energy use and output

foreign trade and declining pollution in sweden a decomposition analysis of long term structural and technological effects this article examines whether there exists any causal relationship between foreign trade and declining pollution in developed countries in other words do developed countries outsource their problems to less developed countries rather than solve them the case study is the swedish economy and the two environmental indicators employed are energy consumption and co2 emissions no causal relationships are found since sweden has long been a net exporter of embodied energy and co2 and continues to be so after 1970 when energy consumption stabilizes and co2 emissions decline in addition the ratios of net exported energy and co2 to total consumption remain stable which means there were no effects on the energy intensity or co2 intensity either these results suggest that internal forces like efficiency improvements changed consumption patterns and transformation of the energy system have been crucial for relative environmental improvement in sweden while foreign trade has played no role

income inequality and the development of environmental technologies within rich countries a large dispersion in the capacity of generating environmental innovations appears correlated to the level of inequality previous works analyze the relationship between inequality and environmental quality in a static setting this paper builds a dynamic model more suitable to analyze technological externalities driven by the emergence of a new demand for green products under fairly general assumptions on technology and preferences we show that 1 the relationship between inequality and environmental innovation is highly non linear and crucially depends on per capita income 2 an excessive inequality harms the development of environmental technologies especially in rich countries key to our results is the fact that externalities generated by pioneer consumers of green products benefit the entire population only for relatively low income distances the empirical analysis robustly confirms our theoretical results that is whereas for rich countries inequality negatively affects the diffusion of innovations per capita income is paramount in poorer ones

quo vadis mrio methodological data and institutional requirements for multi region input output analysis abstract in order to understand wider sustainability impacts of consumption and to successfully promote and implement sustainable consumption and production policies there is a need to capture the whole life cycle impact of products and services across international supply chains multi region input output mrio databases are a well described and suitable foundation for global sustainability analyses addressing a wide range of policy and research questions in this paper we reflect on the reasons for the recent boom in mrio compilation summarise the current state of development and discuss future options for mrio analysis we list in detail the requirements for efficient and effective mrio research and propose systemic and institutional changes we deliberately try to go beyond existing ambitions for mrio compilation and thus intend to stimulate discussion and to lay out the options for the future of mrio research

spatial housing economics a survey this introduction to the virtual special issue surveys the development of spatial housing economics from its roots in neoclassical theory through more recent developments in social interactions modelling and touching on the role of institutions path dependence and economic history the survey also points to some of the more promising future directions for the subject that are beginning to appear in the literature the survey covers elements of hedonic models spatial econometrics neighbourhood models housing market areas housing supply models of segregation migration housing tenure subnational house price modelling including the so called ripple effect and agent based models possible future directions are set in the context of a selection of recent papers that have appeared in urban studies nevertheless there are still important gaps in the literature that merit further attention arising at least partly from emerging policy problems these include more research on housing and biodiversity

opportunistic political cycles test in a young democracy setting this paper tests the theory of opportunistic cycles in a decade old democracy russia finds strong evidence of cycles and provides an explanation for why previous literature often found weaker evidence using regional monthly panel data we find that 1 the budget cycle is sizable and short lived public spending shifts toward direct monetary transfers to voters 2 the magnitude of the cycle decreases with democracy government transparency media freedom voter awareness and over time and 3 preelectoral manipulation increases incumbents chances for reelection the short length of the cycle explains underestimation of its size by previous literature because of low frequency data used in previous studies

electoral competition with informed and uninformed voters i present a model of electoral competition in which candidates raise campaign contributions by choosing policies that benefit interest groups and then expend those contributions to influence voters who are uninformed about the policies informed voters however vote based on those policies so candidates face a trade off between choosing a policy to generate funds to attract the uninformed vote and choosing a policy to attract the informed vote electoral equilibria are characterized for two categories of policies particularistic and collective in the case of particularistic policies the equilibrium policies of the candidates are separated if the proportion of uninformed voters is sufficiently high and the degree of separation is an increasing function of that proportion the model is extended to include the public financing of elections and incumbency advantages for the case of collective policies the candidates locate at the median of the ideal points of the informed voters and contributions are zero

on the north south trade in the americas and its ecological asymmetries there has been a long and intensive debate within the scientific community about the role of international trade in the development of countries during the last decades the focus of attention has moved from the pure economic level to the environmental aspects of international trade establishing a simplified system of north south trade for one reference period 2003 this paper attempts to test empirically the extent of potential asymmetries with regard to extracted material flows and contrasts the results with the economic benefits from trade in terms of value added the south is thereby represented by a selection of latin american countries brazil chile colombia ecuador and mexico the north comprises one of their main commercial partners the united states at the methodological level a multi regional input output analysis is used as the tool of investigation results generally support the hypothesis that the south was feeding the north s societal metabolism south north material exports were 1 6 times larger than north south material exports resulting in a net deficit for the south of 324 million tons moreover material intensity of exported commodities from the south was twice as high as that from the north it is worth highlighting however that part of the north south hypothesis fails for the sample of countries since the larger part of the economic surplus has remained in the south contrarily to what would have been expected