the carbon footprint of uk households 1990 2004 a socio economically disaggregated quasi multi regional input output model this paper presents a socio economically disaggregated framework for attributing co2 emissions to people s high level functional needs based around a quasi multi regional input output qmrio model the study in theory takes into account all co2 emissions that arise from energy used in production of goods and services to satisfy uk household demand whether the emissions occur in the uk or abroad results show that co2 emissions attributable to households were 15 above 1990 levels in 2004 and that although absolute decoupling occurred between household expenditure and co2 during the uk s switch from coal to gas in the early 1990s since then only slight relative decoupling is evident the proportion of co2 that arises outside uk borders in support of uk consumption is rising and reducing these emissions is particularly problematic in a global trading system investigation into the carbon footprint of different segments of the uk population shows wide variation the segment with the highest carbon footprint emits 64 more co2 than the segment with the lowest results show that recreation and leisure are responsible for over one quarter of co2 emissions in a typical uk household in 2004 we conclude that expanding lifestyle aspirations are significant factors in driving household co2 emissions but the study also emphasizes that attention must be paid to the infrastructures and institutions that result in considerable amounts of co2 being locked up in basic household activities through which people meet their everyday needs for subsistence protection and communication with family and friends the findings highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing uk policy makers and suggest that policies should be targeted towards segments of society responsible for the highest carbon footprints

a dynamic approach to the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis states that pollution levels increase as a country develops but begin to decrease as rising incomes pass beyond a turning point in ekc analyses the relationship between environmental degradation and income is usually expressed as a quadratic function with the turning point occurring at a maximum pollution level other explanatory variables have been included in these models but income regularly has had the most significant effect on indicators of environmental quality one variable consistently omitted in these relationships is the price of energy this paper analyzes previous models to illustrate the importance of prices in these models and then includes prices in an econometric ekc framework testing energy income and co2 income relationships these long run price income models find that income is no longer the most relevant indicator of environmental quality or energy demand indeed we find no significant evidence for the existence of an ekc within the range of current incomes for energy in the presence of price and trade variables

a bibliometric analysis of research on carbon tax from 1989 to 2014 abstract as one of the most cost effective means of emission reduction carbon tax has attracted considerable attention from economists and international organizations and has led to a large number of related research using the bibliometric method this paper characterizes the carbon tax literature from 1989 to 2014 based on the network database platform of web of science the results indicate that the usa occupies a leading position in the carbon tax field the vrije university amsterdam massachusetts institute of technology and stanford university were the most productive research institutes energy policy 143 has been the most productive journal followed by energy economics 44 and energy 38 in general the cooperation of authors institutes and nations are continuing to strengthen however the growth rate at the author level was significantly higher than the others in addition the current key research areas in the carbon tax field based on co keyword analysis are as follows climate change and relevant policy carbon emissions trading socio economic effects of carbon tax renewable energy endogenous technological change and carbon capture and storage the results of this paper will help researchers grasp the current research in the carbon tax field but also provide a supporting role for future work

consumer search incomplete exchange rate pass through and optimal interest rate policy this paper studies utility maximizing monetary policy in a two country economy with consumer search frictions search frictions provide a microfoundation for incomplete exchange rate pass through and international deviations from the law of one price lop i show that optimal interest rate policy targets deviations from the lop and acts to mitigate the effect of search frictions in a quantitative setting with internationally correlated technology and preference shocks optimal policy generates positive cross country correlation of nominal interest rates

unemployment and the coverage extension of collective wage agreements abstract this paper examines how the extension of collective wage bargaining agreements to non unionized firms affects unemployment testing a large number of econometric specifications on data from 15 oecd countries observed between 1965 and 2007 we find a positive significant and robust interaction between the tax wedge and the degree of coverage extension of collective wage bargaining agreements more specifically our results suggest that the tax wedge has a larger positive effect on unemployment than any other labour market policy in countries with wide extension of collective wage agreements coverage such as france or spain conversely in countries where coverage extension is close to zero as in nordic countries unemployment is essentially insensitive to changes in the tax wedge

relating the environmental impact of consumption to household expenditures an input output analysis in this paper we evaluate the relationships between household expenditures and the environmental impact categories climate change acidification eutrophication and smog formation by combining household expenditures with environmentally extended input output analysis expenditure elasticities are examined with regression analysis and are compared and interpreted on the basis of insight at the product level with data from the netherlands in the year 2000 we find that environmental impact increases with increasing household expenditures although the degree to which the environmental impact increases differs per impact category climate change and eutrophication increase less than proportionally with increasing expenditures acidification increases nearly proportionally with increasing expenditures whereas smog formation increases more than proportionally it appears that the mix of necessities and luxuries to which an environmental impact is related is essential in explaining the relationship

engel functions panel data and latent variables a system of consumer expenditure functions is estimated from norwegian household budget data specific features of the approach are i panel data from individual households are used which offer far richer opportunities for identification estimation and testing than cross section data ii measurement errors are carefully modelled total consumption expenditure is modelled as a latent variable purchase expenditures on different goods and two income measures are used as indicators of this basic latent variable the usual assumption of no measurement error in total expenditure is clearly rejected iii the distribution of latent total expenditure across households and its evolution over time is estimated and important properties tested iv the distribution of individual differences in preferences represented by individual time invariant latent variables are modelled estimated and tested v we test the hypothesis that preferences are uncorrelated with total consumption expenditure which is basic to virtually all cross section studies of consumer demand functions

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

solving exchange rate puzzles with neither sticky prices nor trade costs we present a simple framework in which both the exchange rates disconnect and forward bias puzzles are simultaneously resolved the flexible price two country monetary model is extended to include a consumption externality with habit persistence habit persistence is modeled using campbell cochrane preferences with deep habits along the lines of the work of ravn schmitt grohe and uribe by deep habits we mean habits defined over goods rather than countries the model is simulated using the artificial economy methodology it offers a neo classical explanation of the meese rogoff puzzle and mimics the failure of fundamentals to explain nominal exchange rates in a linear setting finally the model naturally generates the negative slope in the standard forward market regression

asset prices and risk sharing in open economies this paper proposes a two good two country general equilibrium model with external habits and home biased preferences that addresses a number of international nance puzzles speci cally the model reconciles the high degree of international risk sharing implied by relatively smooth exchange rates with the modest cross country consumption growth correlations seen in the data resolving the brandt cochrane and santa clara 2006 puzzle furthermore the model matches the empirically observed low correlation between exchange

are younger generations higher carbon emitters than their elders inequalities generations and co2 emissions in france and in the usa abstract proper understanding of the determinants of household co2 emissions is essential for a shift to sustainable lifestyles this paper explores the impacts of date of birth and income on household co2 emissions in france and in the usa direct co2 emissions of french and american households are computed from consumer budget surveys over the 1980 2000 time period age period cohort estimators are used to isolate the generational effect on co2 emissions i e the specific effect of date of birth independent of the age the year and other control variables the paper shows that french 1935 55 cohorts have a stronger tendency to emit co2 than their predecessors and followers the generational effect is explained by the fact that over their lifespan french baby boomers are better off than other generations and live in energy and carbon inefficient dwellings in the usa the absence of a generational effect on co2 emissions can be explained by the fact that intergenerational income inequalities are weaker than in france persistence of the generational effect once income and housing type is controlled for in france can be explained by the difficulty for french 1935 55 cohorts to adapt to sober energy consumption patterns

embodied carbon in trade a survey of the empirical literature this paper critically reviews the literature on embodied carbon in trade and evaluates our present empirical understanding of these flows a careful comparison of quantitative results from this literature exposes significant inconsistencies for instance estimates for emission embodied in world trade in 2004 range between 4 4 gt and 6 2 gt co2 the difference corresponding to around half of europe s annual emissions a few consistent themes do nevertheless emerge from the literature most importantly emissions in trade constitute a large and growing share of global emissions uncertainty about country level embodied emissions remains large however which presents severe limitations for the practical application of embodied carbon principles in climate policy

decoupling and displaced emissions on swedish consumers chinese producers and policy to address the climate impact of consumption abstract new developments in consumption based emissions accounting suggest that the reductions claimed by wealthy environmentally progressive nations have often come at the expense of increased emissions elsewhere and thus net growth in global ghg concentrations this paper traces sweden s attempts to translate growing recognition of displaced emissions into national environmental policy drawing on multi sited ethnographic research and policy analysis in sweden and china we argue that while the logical implications of consumption based analyses point to the need to address production and consumption as an integrated system complex governance challenges and the political precariousness of these ideas have thus far limited policy to the reinvention of consumer awareness campaigns and an international extension of long standing ecological efficiency efforts we argue that consumption based emissions indicators justify more ambitious demand side policy response

technical efficiency unions and decentralized labor contracts abstract this paper explores the link between the presence of unions in the workplace the adoption of decentralized labor agreements and technical efficiency using a large sample of italian manufacturing firms we apply the data envelopment analysis and its robust version based on bootstrap theory to get reliable estimates of technical efficiency at the firm level in a standard first stage we devote particular attention to the specific technology adopted by distinguishing 20 different sector frontiers as well as to the presence of outliers the obtained efficiency scores are analyzed in a second stage applying a truncated regression model estimated via maximum likelihood following the simar and wilson 2007 2011 methodology our results highlight that the presence of workplace unionization decreases the level of technical efficiency while aspects limiting the unions power such as a strong exposure to international markets high debt levels or the prevalence of flexible assets partially reduce the negative effect however when firms adopt decentralized labor contracts agreements the effect on efficiency is positive and partially compensates the negative unions effect

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

evaluating energy embodied in national products through input output analysis theoretical definition and practical application of international trades treatment methods abstract production activities of modern economies are ultimately sustained by depletion of non renewable fossil fuels in the perspective of non renewables displacement an accurate evaluation of energy embodied in goods and services is crucial in order to select among alternative products or policies economic based input output models are widely used for this purpose however due to the increasing amount of international trades of products definition of appropriate methods to account for the energy embodied in trades is nowadays crucial in this paper international trades treatment methods in input output analysis are comprehensively formalized and applied to a case study based on the world input output database wiod energy embodied in final demand and in detailed products of key national energy sectors have been evaluated for the wiod countries according to single region and multi regional models it is found that an inappropriate use of international trades treatment models may produce very inaccurate estimations of numerical values of embodied energy three country groups has been identified characterized by different ranges of fractions of imported exported primary fossil fuels single region method a returns best results for countries of group 1 with high values of fossil exports and low values of fossil imports multi regional method c is to be preferred for countries of group 2 with high values of fossil imports and low values of fossil exports finally single region method b returns lower deviations compared to other methods for countries of group 3 with low values of fossil imports and exports this paper aims at supporting researchers in the field of life cycle assessment in the application of environmentally extended input output analysis finding the best trade off between the efforts due to data collection and the accuracy of results

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 2 simulation abstract this is the second part of a two part paper that integrates economic and industrial ecology methods to estimate the indirect rebound effect from residential energy efficiency investments we apply the model developed in part one to simulate the indirect rebound given an estimate of the direct rebound using a 2002 environmentally extended input output model and the 2004 consumer expenditure survey in 2002 for the u s we find an indirect rebound of 5 15 in primary energy and co 2 e emissions assuming a 10 direct rebound depending on the fuel saved with efficiency and household income the indirect rebound can be as high as 30 40 in no x or so 2 emissions for efficiency in natural gas services the substitution effect modeled in part one is small in most cases and we discuss appropriate applications for proportional or income elasticity spending assumptions large indirect rebound effects occur as the u s electric grid becomes less carbon intensive in households with large transportation demands or as energy prices increase even in extreme cases there is limited evidence for backfire or a rebound effect greater than 100 enacting pollution taxes or auctioned permits that internalize the externalities of energy use would ensure that rebound effects unambiguously increase consumers welfare

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

indirect carbon emissions of urban households in china patterns determinants and inequality abstract the urban household sector is considered to be an essential source of climate change in order to obtain detailed information concerning the description of household consumption activities this paper combined consumer lifestyle approach and input output analysis to estimate indirect carbon emissions of urban household from 2002 to 2012 besides we further analysed the driving forces and inequality of indirect carbon emissions the results showed that the total indirect carbon emissions during the study period increased rapidly rising from 894 08 mtco2 to 1957 03 mtco2 more than 58 of carbon emissions were from 40 of the high income population the highest income group 10 of total urban households deduced 21 of urban indirect carbon emissions the per capita carbon emissions of different households showed a remarkable disparity and the per capita carbon emissions of high income groups decreased from 2011 to 2012 the effective mitigation efforts should focus on reducing carbon intensity and shifting consumption structure for high inequality consumption activities caused by rich households rich urban households should consume less goods and services from this consumption activities for high inequality consumption activities caused by low income households the redistribution of income from rich to poor and low carbon intensity lifestyles may be better options to reduce carbon emissions and inequalities of urban households

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

profiting from negawatts reducing absolute consumption and emissions through a performance based energy economy abstract current energy and ghg emissions policies either focus directly on emissions or promote renewable production and the implementation of specific efficiency measures meanwhile the fundamental structure of the energy market based on profits through energy throughput remains largely unchallenged this policy oversight prevents the transition to an energy economy in which profits are based on energy services delivered at the lowest energy cost a performance based energy economy pbee the pbee applies the combined concepts of the performance economy and energy services to the energy sector energy service companies escos are discussed as an example of pbee practices the implications for energy suppliers and consumers as well as the conditions for pbee diffusion and consequences for technological change are also explored the expected environmental social and economic benefits are described however absolute consumption and emissions reductions may prove elusive due to the rebound effect in order to forestall rebound led increases complementary policy measures likely to lead to absolute reductions are required

rent sharing holdup and wages evidence from matched panel data rent sharing by workers can reduce the incentives for investment if some of the returns to sunk capital are captured in higher wages we propose a simple measure of this holdup effect based on the size of the wage offset for firm specific capital accumulation using social security earnings records for workers in the veneto region of italy linked to detailed financial data for their employers we find strong evidence of rent sharing with an elasticity of wages with respect to potential rents per worker of around 4 arising mainly at larger firms with higher price cost margins on the other hand we find little evidence that bargaining lowers the return on investment instead firm level bargaining appears to split the rents after deducting the full cost of capital

income inequality and carbon consumption evidence from environmental engel curves abstract i investigate the relationship between income inequality and the carbon dioxide co2 content of consumption i quantify the co2 content of household expenditure using input output analysis and estimate environmental engel curves eecs which describe the income emissions relationship using eecs for the united states between 1996 and 2009 i decompose the change in co2 over time and the distribution of emissions across households in both cases income is an important driver of household carbon finally i describe a potential equity pollution dilemma progressive income redistribution may raise the demand for aggregate greenhouse gas emissions i estimate that transfers raise emissions by 5 1 at the margin and by 2 3 under complete redistribution

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

primary energy and greenhouse gases embodied in australian final consumption an input output analysis input output modeling of primary energy and greenhouse gas embodiments in goods and services is a useful technique for designing greenhouse gas abatement policies the present paper describes direct and indirect primary energy and greenhouse gas requirements for a given set of australian final consumption it considers sectoral disparities in energy prices capital formation and international trade flows and it accounts for embodiments in the gross national expenditure as well as the gross domestic product primary energy and greenhouse gas intensities in terms of mj and kg co2 e are reported as well as national balances of primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions

do works councils inhibit investment theoretische uberlegungen deuten darauf hin dass firmen durch arbeitnehmervertretungen auf betriebsebene wie gewerkschaften mit einem hold up problem konfrontiert werden da letztere sich einen teil der quasi renten aus langlebigen kapitalinvestitionen aneignen konnen deshalb mogen die firmen ihre anfalligkeit fur derartiges rent seeking dadurch verringern dass sie ihre investitionen zuruckfahren wahrend es fur diese hypothese empirische bestatigungen durch firmenstudien aus den usa gibt untersuchen wir ob dies auch in dem unterschiedlichen institutionellen umfeld in deutschland der fall ist wo statt betriebsgewerkschaften betriebsrate eine ahnliche rolle spielen konnen unter verwendung von parametrischen und nichtparametrischen methoden sowie von betriebspaneldaten finden wir keine empirischen hinweise darauf dass die errichtung bzw abschaffung eines betriebsrates einen negativen bzw positiven einfluss auf das betriebliche investitionsverhalten hat

the macroeconomics of specificity specific quasi rents arise in a variety of economic relationships and are exposed to opportunism unless fully protected by contract rent appropriation has important macroeconomic consequences resources are underutilized factor markets are segmented production suffers from technological sclerosis job creation and destruction are unbalanced recessions are excessively sharp and expansions run into bottlenecks while depending on the shock expansions may require reinforcement or stabilization recessions should typically be softened in the long run institutions may evolve to alleviate the problem by balancing appropriation technology choice will also be affected with the appropriated factor partially excluding the other from production to reduce appropriation

a multivariate analysis of the energy intensity of sprawl versus compact living in the u s for 2003 abstract we explore the energy intensity of sprawl versus compact living by analyzing the total energy requirements of u s households for the year 2003 the methods used are based on previous studies on energy cost of living total energy requirement is calculated as a function of individual energy intensities of goods and services derived from economic input output analysis and expenditures for those goods and services we use multivariate regression analysis to estimate patterns in household energy intensities we define sprawl in terms of location in rural areas or in areas with low population size we find that even though sprawl related factors account for about 83 of the average household energy consumption sprawl is only 17 19 more energy intensive than compact living based on how people actually lived we observe that some of the advantages of reduced direct energy use by people living in high density urban centers are offset by their consumption of other non energy products a more detailed analysis reveals that lifestyle choices household type number of vehicles and family size that could be independent of location play a significant role in determining household energy intensity we develop two models that offer opportunities for further analysis

a theory of wages and labor demand with intra firm bargaining and matching frictions this article provides a model of labor market equilibrium with search and within firm strategic bargaining we yield explicit closed form solutions with heterogeneous labor inputs and capital the solution exhibits overemployment we show that higher relative bargaining power for some groups of workers may lead to overemployment relative to other groups with such other groups being underemployed instead if they have a lower relative bargaining power similarly the hold up problem between capitalists and employees does not necessarily lead to underinvestment in physical capital beyond the neo classical analysis firms are the field of several strategic interactions between capital owners and labor between marginal employees and incumbents and more generally between different groups with various bargaining positions within the firm it is usually considered that the bargaining power of workers entails an employment level that is lower than in a competitive labor market and any increase in the bargaining power of workers raises unemployment these results are true for a wide class of models and notably in the now standard framework to analyze unemployment namely search and matching models of pissarides 2000 however stole and zwiebel 1996a 1996b show that the above results are totally changed in the intra firm bargaining model where employees engage in individual wage negotiation with the firm in fact under the assumption that contract incompleteness does not enable either party to commit to future wages and employment decisions they show that intra firm bargaining yields no rent for employees and gives rise to overemployment compared to a competitive labor market the basic idea of stole and zwiebel is that a firm with a diminishing marginal productivity of labor can decrease the bargained wage which increases in the marginal productivity of labor by raising employment in stole and zwiebel s setting firms overemploy strategically up to the point where workers get their reservation wage

trade linked canada united states household environmental impact analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions abstract we compare energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions associated with total household expenditures and activities in canada and us in 1997 the first detailed estimate of environmental burdens for canadian households we estimate direct burdens from published government data and indirect burdens using an industry by commodity bi national economic input output life cycle assessment model developed in this study comparing 30 expenditure and two activity categories per capita us household expenditures were 70 higher while per capita household energy use and ghg emissions were only 10 and 44 higher respectively energy use dollar of expenditure was higher in most canadian categories while the average ratio of ghg emissions energy use was higher in the us 65 vs 50 kg eq co 2 gj due largely to a higher proportion of electricity from nonrenewable sources indirect environmental burdens represented 63 69 of total burdens and 62 70 of total burdens were associated with household operation and transportation key drivers of differences between energy profiles were higher per capita electricity use by canadian households and higher us household private health care expenditures and motor fuel use energy intensive production for export represented a higher proportion of canadian production resulting in less agreement between consumption and production based analyses for canada than us

the carbon footprint of greek households 1995 2012 abstract the goal of this paper is twofold i to investigate the carbon footprint of greek households throughout the period 1995 2012 in order to identify the main socio economic factors that affect ghg emissions and ii to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented policies to tackle climate change in this a consumption based emissions inventory approach is applied the analysis is based on an environmentally extended input output model including direct co2 emissions from households indirect co2 emissions from electricity consumption and indirect co2 emissions from energy used in the production of goods and services purchased by households domestic or imported statistical analysis and appropriate regression models were developed in order to identify the main factors influencing the carbon footprint of greek households the results indicate that the observed trends during the period 1995 2008 can be attributed to the effect of high economic growth this trend is partially counterbalanced by favorable weather conditions and the implementation of greenhouse mitigation policies and measures mainly in the supply side since 2008 the shrinking household income is the dominant driver in addition the effectiveness of energy conservation policies and measures in place is rather low while the effect of imports is limited

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

how does income redistribution affect households material footprint abstract this paper presents a study of the evolution of spanish households material footprint for the period 2006 to 2013 the method proposed combines the multiregional input output model with spanish national data on household consumption according to social group material footprint has been affected by the 2008 economic crisis in relative terms the share of spanish households material footprint with respect to total material footprint decreased drastically from 70 7 in 2006 to 50 8 in 2011 this reduction can be mainly attributed to the construction sector crash 34 4 of the reduction is due to construction materials followed by biomass 29 metals 27 1 and fossil fuels 26 1 by type of household the material footprint exhibits a scale effect while consumption and income levels grow and this is accompanied by a global teleconnection effect which varies from 62 for biomass to 64 for metals to 82 for construction materials to 95 for fossil fuels given the context of increasing income inequality we perform one redistribution simulation from high to middle and low income households finding a material footprint increase in all cases the most materialized consumer basket is that corresponding to households with incomes between 1500 and 1999 euros above that income level the growing weight of expenditures on services reduces the use of materials importantly social income redistribution and environmental material footprint sustainability will become incompatible if responsibility is transferred only to households

integrating sustainability into city level co2 accounting social consumption pattern and income distribution abstract from a sustainability perspective city level co2 emissions require reconsiderations correspondingly the economy environment society nexus should be incorporated into city scale co2 accounting therefore in this study the semi closed io model is integrated with a hem to calculate co2 emissions arising from the social consumption pattern and income distribution and to explore economic drivers behind co2 variations this method is applied to a case study of beijing result demonstrate that beijing in 2012 witnessed something different from that in 2005 1 co2 emissions centred in the internal linkages of a broader class of consumption terms with high economic output mainly driven by interprovincial exports 2 imports increasingly helped decarbonize the mixed net forward and backward co2 linkages of consumption items and 3 income driven co2 emissions excluding demand side parts persisted which were more obvious on the supply side where households have more economy wide effects besides urban households played an essential role in household wide co2 reductions this paper ended with corresponding conclusions policy implications and directions for future work

a bibliometric review energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector residential sector has been one key sector for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions due to its significant contribution to global warming researchers in different countries have studied household energy consumption patterns and greenhouse gas emissions in order to promote low carbon lifestyles however few review papers have been published in this regard leading to a lack of systematic understanding on the related research achievements hence by using a bibliometric approach this paper aims to review the existing literature and examine the evolution of such a field so that the research trends can be uncovered including popular research methods citation analysis is performed to assess the influence of most productive journals countries territories and authors network analysis is also conducted to evaluate the relationship among different countries territories authors and keywords research outcomes of this paper present a comprehensive research picture on residential energy consumption and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions ree related papers published from 1997 to 2016 the most productive journals countries territories authors are also analyzed based on citation analysis and network analysis in addition results also revealed that behavioral analysis input output analysis life cycle assessment and cost benefit analysis are the most commonly used methods in this field results obtained from this study can provide valuable information for researchers interested in the ree related field

calculation of embodied energy in sino usa trade 1997 2011 abstract in order to find efficient trade measures to reduce china s energy consumption and to provide theoretical support for the climate talks between china and america we investigate the impact of sino usa trade on energy consumption from the perspective of embodied energy an environmental input output life cycle assessment eio lca model was established to calculate the total energy consumption coefficient the direct consumption coefficient and the complete consumption coefficient of the sectors of the national economies of china and america after taking into consideration the data of every sector of the national economy in sino usa trade energy embodied in the import and export trade between china and america was calculated to verify the real energy flows in sino usa trade the research results suggest the following china is the net exporter of embodied energy in sino usa trade and coal crude oil and natural gas are the major components in 1997 2011 the net exports of china s embodied energy totaled 1523 082 200 t of standard coal the amount of china s energy consumption increased by 895 527 900 t of standard coal and america s energy consumption decreased by 11 871 200 t of standard coal as a result of sino usa trade on this basis corresponding policies and recommendations are proposed

deep habits and exchange rate pass through abstract habit persistence at the level of individual goods varieties can explain incomplete exchange rate pass through to international prices deep habits give rise to a dynamic import demand function that leads to import price markup adjustments independently of nominal pricing frictions augmenting a two country dsge model with deep habits we obtain low exchange rate pass through to import prices even when nominal local currency price rigidities are negligibly low as nominal pricing frictions become more important the presence of deep habits further impedes the pass through of exchange rate fluctuations estimating model variants with limited information as well as full information methods we find that the deep habits model requires much lower degrees of nominal price rigidities to match empirical measures of the pass through of exchange rate fluctuations to us import prices

the evolution of household induced value chains and their environmental implications abstract the growing fragmentation of production processes and expansion of international trade in the last decades have increased the scope and complexity of value added chains worldwide causing a rearrangement of sectoral linkages intra and inter regionally in terms of economic spillovers this implies that a dollar entering a particular economy nowadays follows a different path than a decade before permeating in longer interregional feedback loops and creating additional multiplier effects outside its region of origin however it also implies that the environmental burden that such this dollar generates has changed in scale and spatial distribution in this paper we explore the evolution of these paths over the period 1997 2008 and highlight the main drivers of observed structural changes that contribute to the surge or decline of the spatial distribution of economic spillovers and greenhouse gases emissions we specifically study the effects of an increase in income in the united states the country with the largest trade volume in the world we introduce an extended version of the temporal leontief inverse tli framework that allows tracing the evolutionary path of the american households multiplier in a quasi dynamic fashion isolating the contribution of expenditure patterns income trade and foreign structural change to the temporal evolution we find similar growing multiplier effects inside and outside the us due to services and manufacturing respectively but a declining local environmental burden due to changes in interindustry relations inside the us with declining manufacturing and a reduced emission intensity we also highlight the fragmentation process with declining foreign intraregional spillovers and increasing trade spillovers

the environmental impact of sharing household and urban economies in co2 emissions abstract studies find that per capita carbon dioxide co 2 emissions decrease with household size and urban density the demographic trends of declining household size and dense urbanization therefore produce countervailing effects with respect to emissions we posit that both household and urban economies are driven by proximity and realized through sharing carbon intensive goods with detailed data from the united states consumer expenditure survey we construct a dataset of co 2 emissions at the household level and leverage a unique measure of residential density to estimate household and urban economies our estimates show that dense urban areas have per capita emissions roughly 20 lower than rural areas and that adding an additional member to a household reduces per capita emissions by about 6 we also find that household economies are about twice as large in rural areas as in dense urban areas and develop an explanation for this phenomenon in theory the carbon benefits of dense urbanization have the potential to offset the effects of declining household size however using historical us census data and extrapolating from our estimates we find that lost household economies have outpaced increased urban economies over the past fifty years

understanding international prices customers as capital the article develops a new theory of pricing to market driven by dynamic frictions of building market shares our key innovation is a capital theoretic model of marketing in which relations with customers are valuable we discipline the introduced friction using data on differences between short run and long run price elasticity of international trade flows we show that the model accounts for several pricing puzzles of international macroeconomics jel e13 f14 f31 f41 f44 m31

climate change policy market structure and carbon leakage abstract the 1997 kyoto protocol on climate change obliges the industrialized countries to initiate the international effort of abating anthropogenic greenhouse gas ghg emissions if such an initiative is to be taken the associated competitive effects may lead to significant relocation of developed countries energy intensive production this paper examines this issue i adopt an oligopolistic structure combined with increasing returns to scale production technologies to represent the strategic interaction among the firms producing energy intensive products this representation is then embedded within a multi regional computable general equilibrium model which in turn is used for quantifying these relocational effects the results suggest that significant relocation of energy intensive industries away from the oecd may occur depending on the type of market structure with leakage rates as high as 130 in which case ghg control policies in the industrialized countries actually lead to higher global emissions

the kyoto protocol and developing countries abstract under the kyoto protocol the world s wealthier countries assumed binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the agreement requires these countries to consider ways to minimize adverse effects on developing countries of these actions transmitted through trade using a general equilibrium model of the world economy we find that adverse effects fall mainly on energy exporting countries for some even greater than on countries that are assuming commitments removing existing fuel taxes and subsidies and using international permit trading would greatly reduce the adverse impacts and also reduce economic impacts on the countries taking on commitments another approach preferential tariff reduction for developing countries would benefit many developing countries but would not target those most adversely affected if instead oecd countries directly compensated developing countries for losses the required annual financial transfer would be on the order of 25 billion 1995 us in 2010

global patterns of materials use a socioeconomic and geophysical analysis abstract human use of materials is a major driver of global environmental change the links between materials use and economic development are central to the challenge of decoupling of materials use and economic growth dematerialization this article presents a new global material flow dataset compiled for the year 2000 covering 175 countries including both extraction and trade flows and comprising four major material categories biomass construction minerals fossil energy carriers and ores industrial minerals first we quantify the variability and distributional inequality gini coefficients in international material consumption we then measure the influence of the drivers population gdp land area and climate this analysis yields international income elasticities of material use finally we examine the coupling between material flows and between income and material productivity measured in economic production per tonne material consumed material productivity is strongly coupled to income and may thus not be suitable as an international indicator of environmental progress a finding which we relate to the economic inelasticity of material consumption the results demonstrate striking differences between the material groups biomass is the most equitably distributed resource economically the most inelastic and is not correlated to any of the mineral materials the three mineral material groups are closely coupled to each other and economic activity indicating that the challenge of dematerializing industrial economies may require fundamental structural transformation our analysis provides a first systematic investigation of international differences in material use and their drivers and thus serves as the basis for more detailed future work

a future for carbon taxes abstract carbon taxes have been frequently advocated as a cost effective instrument for reducing emissions however in the practice of environmental policies only six countries have implemented taxes based on the carbon content of the energy products in this paper we evaluate carbon taxes with regard to their competitiveness distributional and environmental impacts the evidence shows that carbon taxes may be an interesting policy option and that their main negative impacts may be compensated through the design of the tax and the use of the generated fiscal revenues

a carbon footprint proportional to expenditure a case for norway abstract motivated by the importance of consumption as an underlying driver of co 2 emissions we examine the link between consumption and co 2 emissions for norwegian households the main goal is to investigate whether there is a decoupling of consumption expenditures and the environmental impact as we move up the income ladder by combining a 2007 norwegian consumer expenditure survey with emission coefficients from an environmental input output model reflecting emissions embodied in both domestically produced and imported goods and services we calculate the per capita carbon footprint the results from the analysis suggest that the per capita carbon footprint is directly proportional to expenditure with an estimated elasticity close to unity implying no decoupling the finding is partly driven by a near zero emission power sector which leads to comparatively low emissions embodied in domestically produced goods and services

sunk capital unions and the hold up problem theory and evidence from cross country sectoral data abstract in this paper we study the hold up problem by considering the effect of union bargaining power on the level of investment per worker across sectors characterised by different levels of sunk capital investment we develop a search and matching model with heterogeneous sectors and ex post collective wage bargaining and test the predictions of the model using a difference in difference approach on manufacturing sector data in a set of oecd countries during the period 1980 2000 we find that union power reduces investment per worker particularly in sunk capital intensive industries we refine our empirical analysis showing that the underlying hold up problem is exacerbated when strikes are not regulated after a collective contract is signed and there is no arbitration while the presence of social pacts may sustain cooperative equilibria that alleviate the hold up problem our results are robust to a series of controls and possible endogeneity of union power

holdups and efficiency with search frictions a natural holdup problem arises in a market with search frictions firms have to make a range of investments before finding their employees and larger investments translate into higher wages in particular when wages are determined by ex post bargaining the equilibrium is always inefficient recognizing that capital intensive production relations have to pay higher wages firms reduce their investments this can only be prevented by removing all the bargaining power from the workers but this in turn depresses wages below their social product and creates excessive entry of firms in contrast to this benchmark we show that efficiency is achieved when firms post wages and workers can direct their search toward more attractive offers this efficiency result generalizes to an environment with imperfect information where workers only observe a few of the equilibrium wage offers we show that the underlying reason for efficiency is not wage posting per se but the ability of workers to direct their search toward more capital intensive jobs

the regulation of labor author s botero juan djankov simeon la porta rafael lopez de silanes florencio shleifer andrei abstract we investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment collective relations and social security laws in 85 countries we find that the political power of the left is associated with more stringent labor regulations and more generous social security systems and that socialist french and scandinavian legal origin countries have sharply higher levels of labor regulation than do common law countries however the effects of legal origins are larger and explain more of the variation in regulations than those of politics heavier regulation of labor is associated with lower labor force participation and higher unemployment especially of the young these results are most naturally consistent with legal theories according to which countries have pervasive regulaory styles inherited from the transplantation of legal systems

exchange rate pass through when market share matters the authors investigate the pass through from exchange rates to import prices when firms future demands depend on their current market shares they show that profit maximizing foreign firms may either raise or lower their dollar export prices when the dollar appreciates temporarily i e the pass through may be perverse and that current import prices may be more sensitive to expected future exchange rates than to current exchange rates they present evidence that suggests the behavior of expected future exchange rates may provide a clue to the puzzling recent behavior of u s import prices copyright 1989 by american economic association

evaluation of the soft measures effects on ambient water quality improvement and household and industry economies abstract various ecological footprint calculators carbon footprint calculators and water footprint calculators have been developed in recent years the basic concepts of ecological behaviour record notebooks and of carbon dioxide emission calculators have been developed since the late 20th century the first carbon dioxide emission calculator was developed in 1991 likewise water pollutant discharge calculators have been developed to estimate the effects of soft measures introduced into households to reduce pollutant discharge since 2004 the soft measures which have been developed in japan may consist of a wider framework household sustainable consumption which has been developed in europe and can be referred to cleaner consumption in this research summarisation of the short history of ecological behaviour record notebooks and ecological footprint calculators in japan since the 1980s was conducted and the soft measures in households to reduce pollutant discharge were evaluated for their effects on ambient water quality improvement as well as household and industry economies effects of the soft measures on related industry economies were investigated using an input output table analysis and the effects of the imported goods were evaluated with an import effect matrix which was developed in this research the effects of the soft measures on household expenditures were estimated to be a decrease by 2 5 or usd 285 person 1 year 1 in 2003 2006 the results show that the soft measures positively affect the chemical fibre industry and significantly affect the detergent industry analysis of the import effect matrix proved that the six industries were tightly related through extensive amounts of imported goods the soft measures in households may lead to household sustainable consumption and thus reduce disadvantageous human impacts on water environments the effects of the measures introduced to improve the environment should be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated to avoid redundant concerns and discord between the environment and the economy which may be worried when the relationship is not well understood

the effects of border crossing frequencies associated with carbon footprints on border carbon adjustments abstract the fragmentation of production across national boundaries has become an important feature of the world economy this present paper adopts the viewpoint that not only the size and composition of carbon footprints are relevant but also the border crossing frequency associated with these carbon footprints which is defined as the number of borders a product crosses in a supply chain this process will affect the spatial accounting of the carbon emissions produced to support the economic activity the calculation of border crossing frequencies of carbon footprint is accomplished by decomposing the leontief inverse matrix derived from the world input output database we find that the aggregated average border crossing frequencies of carbon footprints show an increasing tendency which is influenced by the economic crisis obviously the policy application focuses on the united states which we assume to levy carbon tariffs on foreign emissions embodied in imports we find that the indirect carbon tariff on emissions embodied in international trade take a significant share the border carbon adjustments are mainly targeted at emissions generated in china which also pays the greatest share of the tariff burden the implication of carbon tariffs faces the problem of multiple taxation

goods prices and exchange rates what have we learned import prices typically change by a smaller proportion than the exchange rate between the exporting and importing country recent research indicates that common currency relative prices for similar goods exported to different markets are highly correlated with exchange rates between those markets this evidence suggests that incomplete pass through is a consequence of third degree price discrimination while distance matters for market segmentation borders have independent effects the source of the border effect has not been clearly identified furthermore there is little evidence yet to suggest substantial market power is implied by the observed price discrimination

exchange rate pass through abstract the resilience of trade balances of the major industrialized economies to changes in their exchange rates has evoked interest in the exchange rate pass through relationship so far there has not been a comprehensive survey of this literature the paper aims to fill this gap in two ways first it pieces together the theoretical literature on exchange rate pass through second it provides a critical survey of the empirical literature on exchange rate pass through emphasis is placed on the data and methodology employed in previous work this is done in order to guide future work in this growing area of research

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

pricing to habits and the law of one price this paper proposes a novel international transmission mechanism based on the assumption of deep habits the term deep habits stands for a preference specification according to which consumers form habits on a good by good basis under deep habits firms face more elastic demand functions in markets where nonhabitual demand is high relative to habitual demand creating an incentive to price discriminate we refer to this type of price discrimination as pricing to habits in the presence of pricing to habits innovations to domestic aggregate demand induce a decline in markups in the domestic country but not abroad leading to a departure from the law of one price in this way the proposed pricing to habit mechanism can explain the observation that prices of the same good across countries expressed in the same currency vary over the business cycle furthermore it can account for the empirical fact that in response to a positive domestic demand shock such as an increase in government spending the real exchange rate depreciates domestic consumption expands and the trade balance deteriorates

to each their own the greenhouse gas impacts of intra household sharing in different urban zones abstract decreasing household size is a global trend driven by urbanization and multiple other socioeconomic trends going solo poses a great environmental challenge as the possibility to benefit from scale economies in consumption and its greenhouse gas impacts is not taken advantage of in other words understanding of intra household sharing patterns of different consumption categories is increasingly important in climate change mitigation this paper explores the relationship between household sizes urban structures and greenhouse gas impacts of lifestyles when urban areas grow outwards the household sizes also grow as a result of this the increase in intra household sharing seems to alleviate the negative ghg implications of urban sprawl which is highly logical but yet not comprehended thus the rise of collaborative consumption offers potential to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of solo dwellers and compensate for the lower intra household sharing with inter household sharing

sustainability assessment of u s final consumption and investments triple bottom line input output analysis the u s final demand categories such as household consumption private fixed investments government purchases and investments and export of goods and services have a wide range of environmental economic and social impacts analysis of these impacts termed as the triple bottom line tbl stimulated a tremendous interest by policy makers over the last decade therefore current research aims to analyze the tbl of u s final demands from a systems perspective to accomplish this goal the supply and use tables published by the u s bureau of economic analysis are merged with a range of environmental economic and social metrics the results show that household consumption has the largest indirect tbl sustainability impacts compared to other final demand categories with shares that range between 43 and 88 industrial sectors including manufacturing utilities agriculture construction transportation and mining are generally found to be responsible for the highest impacts for most of the environmental impact categories service sectors generally have the highest impacts on the economic and social indicators of sustainability analysis results also indicate that while meeting the household demand agriculture utilities and manufacturing sectors have relatively more environmental impacts than their contributions to gross domestic product gdp whereas service sectors contribute to gdp with a higher share than their environmental burdens furthermore it is envisioned that significant reductions in environmental footprints of u s households can be achieved if environmental policies that aim to reduce the household consumption are also supported with sustainable growth through greener and resource efficient economy

income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions the case of chinese urban households abstract this paper draws on chinese survey data to investigate variations in carbon dioxide emissions across households with different income levels rich households generate more emissions per capita than poor households via both their direct energy consumption and their higher expenditure on goods and services that use energy as an intermediate input an econometric analysis confirms a positive relationship between emissions and income and establishes a slightly increasing marginal propensity to emit mpe over the relevant income range the redistribution of income from rich to poor households is therefore shown to reduce aggregate household emissions suggesting that the twin pursuits of reducing inequality and emissions can be achieved in tandem

mechanisms explaining the impact of economic inequality on environmental deterioration abstract rising economic inequality often considered intrinsically harmful is increasingly being viewed as having a number of secondary impacts as well including impacts on health and economic growth the ongoing nature of today s environmental crisis also raises questions about inequality s role in environmental deterioration despite the large number of papers that have been written on this topic no theoretical or empirical consensus presently exists firstly our article identifies that authors conclusions in this area depend on their hypotheses regarding 1 the relationship between individual income and individual environmental pressure 2 the impact of inequality on the social norms that influence individual environmental pressure 3 the interests that social groups have in degrading or protecting the environment 4 how these interests play out in terms of political demands and 5 how these political demands translate into political decisions secondly the study shows that despite enabling a general test of the causal relationship between inequality and the environment the empirical methods utilised do not account for the full range of theoretical mechanisms in play hence the suggestion that a research programme be launched to conduct empirical studies of the five aforementioned hypotheses by applying a recursive approach

income inequality and carbon emissions in the united states a state level analysis 1997 2012 abstract this study investigates the relationship between u s state level co 2 emissions and two measures of income inequality the income share of the top 10 and the gini coefficient each of the inequality measures which focus on unique characteristics of income distributions is used to evaluate the arguments of different analytical approaches results of the longitudinal analysis for the 1997 to 2012 period indicate that state level emissions are positively associated with the income share of the top 10 while the effect of the gini coefficient on emissions is non significant the statistically significant relationship between co 2 emissions and the concentration of income among the top 10 is consistent with analytical approaches that focus on political economy dynamics and veblen effects which highlight the potential political and economic power and emulative influence of the wealthy the null effect of the gini coefficient is generally inconsistent with the marginal propensity to emit approach which posits that when incomes become more equally distributed the poor will increase their consumption of energy and other carbon intensive products as they move into the middle class

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

employment effects of product and labour market reforms are there synergies this article investigates the effect of product market liberalisation on employment allowing for interactions between policies and institutions in product and labour markets using panel data for oecd countries over the period 1980 2002 we present evidence that product market deregulation is more effective at the margin when labour market regulation is high the data also suggest that product market liberalisation may promote employment enhancing labour market reforms

the role of co2 embodiment in us china trade abstract this study examines the influence of us china trade on national and global emissions of carbon dioxide co2 the three basic questions are as follows 1 what amount of co2 emissions is avoided in the us by importing chinese goods 2 how much are co2 emissions in china increased as a result of the production of goods for export to the us and 3 what are the impacts of us china trade on global co2 emissions our initial findings reveal that during 1997 2003 1 us co2 emissions would have increased from 3 to 6 if the goods imported from china had been produced in the us 2 about 7 14 of china s current co2 emissions were a result of producing exports for us consumers and 3 us china trade has increased global co2 emissions by an estimated 720 million metric tons we suggest that the export of us technologies and expertise related to clean production and energy efficiency to china could be a win win strategy for both countries for reducing their trade imbalance and mitigating global co2 emissions improved international accounting methodologies for assigning responsibility for co2 emissions must be designed to account for the dynamic nature of international trade

transitions to sustainable consumption and production in cities this special volume focuses on sustainable production and consumption and especially on transformation processes in the built environment more than 50 and rising of the world population is now living in cities that are both centers of technological and social innovations in sustainable life styles and carriers of unsustainable lifestyles in this special volume contributions can be found on grassroots innovations sharing food energy and waste systems associated with cities the role of corporations in realizing transitions towards sustainable living consumer activism behavioral change and consumer values in driving change and on governance and indicators for measuring all such transformations many of the papers were presented at the second conference of the global research forum on sustainable production and consumption grf spac in shanghai in june 2014 and thus a substantial number of them report on research on sustainable production and consumption in cities in china the authorship also reflects growing collaboration between researchers from developing and industrialized countries the great diversity of contributions on the topic reflects the wealth of insights generated on the topic in recent years but also the need for a better understanding of change processes at the intersection of social and physical systems and at multiple levels of action

central bank independence centralization of wage bargaining inflation and unemployment theory and some evidence abstract this paper proposes a conceptual framework to investigate the effects of central bank independence of the degree of centralization of wage bargaining and of the interaction between those institutional variables on real wages unemployment and inflation in a framework in which unions are averse to inflation this aversion moderates union s wage demands as they attempt to induce the central bank to inflate at a lower rate an increase in the degree of centralization of wage bargaining a decrease in the number of unions triggers two opposite effects on real wages unemployment and inflation it reduces the substitutability between the labor of different unions and therefore the degree of effective competition between them this reduced competition effect raises real wages unemployment and inflation but the decrease in the number of unions also strengthens the moderating effect of inflationary fears on the real wage demands of each union this strategic effect lowers real wages unemployment and inflation for sufficiently inflation averse unions the interaction between those two effects produces a calmfors driffill type relation between real wages and centralization the paper analyzes the effects of central bank independence on the position and the shape of this relation as well as on inflation and unemployment the paper features two mechanisms one of which is novel through which monetary institutions have real effects the model implies that if there is a single union social welfare is maximized when the central bank attaches a zero weight to inflation but when the number of unions is larger than one this result is no longer true in general empirical evaluation of some of the theoretical implications using data from 19 developed economies is for the most part supportive of those implications

the distribution of material footprints in germany this study investigates the within country heterogeneity of material footprints implied by households consumption in germany material footprints are defined as the amount of biomass minerals and fossil fuels extracted to produce the goods that households consume combining input output data with households consumption expenditures from the german sample survey of income and expenditure evs we present the first comprehensive study on the distribution of material footprints among households highlighting hot spots of unsustainable consumption patterns by household groups households in the quartile with the highest consumption expenditures have material footprints three times as large as those in the quartile with the lowest expenditures results of a microeconomic model of household s consumption behaviour estimated on the evs data suggest that price based instruments can reduce material footprints of luxury consumption such as leisure and private transport without imposing large burdens on low affluence households the material footprints caused by energy consumption do not react sensitively to price changes suggesting that non price policies are more effective to reduce them

social groups and co2 emissions in spanish households abstract this paper examines the social factors that underlie the composition of final demand and therefore determine the final volume of emissions the study throws light on the relationships between the parameters characterising spanish households income urban rural residence local population density head of household s level of education and social class and their behaviour with regard to consumption and the demand for goods and services on this basis we determine which consumption patterns are best aligned with sustainable growth and development our main conclusion is that the factors analysed determine the volume of emissions for each household in terms of their correlation with income which is the primary determinant of consumption patterns the methodology proposed combines linear sam models and econometric estimation of emissions elasticity with respect to spending

the carbon footprint of european households and income distribution abstract this paper calculates the carbon footprint of private consumption in the eu27 by five groups of household income using a fully fledged macroeconomic input output model covering 59 industries and five groups of household income for the eu27 due to macroeconomic feedback mechanisms this methodology besides induced intermediate demand also quantifies i private consumption induced in the other household groups ii impacts on other endogenous final demand components and iii negative feedback effects due to output price effects of household demand the carbon footprint is calculated separately for the consumption vector of each of the five income groups the simulation results yield a non linear income elasticity of direct and indirect emissions at each income level the value of the direct footprint income elasticity decreases from 1 32 first quintile to 0 69 fourth quintile the value of the indirect footprint income elasticity is always below unity and decreases from 0 89 to 0 62 the results in general reveal a relative decoupling effect the share of the top income group in income 45 is much larger than its share in the carbon footprint 37 and vice versa for the bottom income group 6 in income and 8 in footprint