employment impacts of eu biofuels policy combining bottom up technology information and sectoral market simulations in an input output framework this paper analyses the employment consequences of policies aimed to support biofuels in the european union the promotion of biofuel use has been advocated as a means to promote the sustainable use of natural resources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions originating from transport activities on the one hand and to reduce dependence on imported oil and thereby increase security of the european energy supply on the other hand the employment impacts of increasing biofuels shares are calculated by taking into account a set of elements comprising the demand for capital goods required to produce biofuels the additional demand for agricultural feedstock higher fuel prices or reduced household budget in the case of price subsidisation price effects ensuing from a hypothetical world oil price reduction linked to substitution in the eu market and price impacts on agro food commodities the calculations refer to scenarios for the year 2020 targets as set out by the recent renewable energy roadmap employment effects are assessed in an input output framework taking into account bottom up technology information to specify biofuels activities and linked to partial equilibrium models for the agricultural and energy sectors the simulations suggest that biofuels targets on the order of 10 15 could be achieved without adverse net employment effects

focus on situation and policies for biomass power generation in china abstract nowadays china is faced with many issues such as increasing farmers income protecting environment and adjusting energy structure which may be solved by developing the biomass power generation industry however the lack of technical capability inadequate raw materials and challenges for grid feed in are all obstacles that prevent large scale production and industrialization in the biomass power generation industry therefore government should provide necessary policies to support and advance the biomass power generation industry this paper systematically analyzes the current laws regulations and policies implemented recently in china and provides a comprehensive review of the fiscal subsidies reduction and exemption of taxes tariff concessions the policies of investment and financing and the support of r d suggestions for relevant policies are proposed to address the existing problems

electricity intensity convergence in iea oecd countries aggregate and sectoral analysis convergence in electricity intensity is analyzed among a sample of iea countries sigma convergence the narrowing of the distribution and to a lesser degree gamma convergence movement within the distribution are detected however electricity intensity convergence is less dramatic than energy intensity convergence convergence within the end use sectors is more diverse in terms of the rates timing extent and ultimate modal structure of the distributions commercial electricity intensity has more recently converged toward a bell shape distribution by contrast industry electricity intensity is largely converging toward two distinct groups of countries one with relatively high electricity intensity and another one with relatively low electricity intensity different still is related residential electricity consumption per capita where a small group of countries has stopped growing another group has slowed considerably while a third group experienced rapid growth

international asset pricing and portfolio diversification with time varying risk we test the conditional capital asset pricing model capm for the world s eight largest equity markets using a parsimonious generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch parameterization our methodology can be applied simultaneously to many assets and at the same time accommodate general dynamics of the conditional moments the evidence supports most of the pricing restrictions of the model but some of the variation in risk adjusted excess returns remains predictable during periods of high interest rates our estimates indicate that although severe market declines are contagious the expected gains from international diversification for a u s investor average 2 11 percent per year and have not significantly declined over the last two decades

tastes and technology in a two country model of the business cycle explaining international trade on international financial markets allows people to insure country specific risk and smooth consumption intertemporally equilibrium models of business cycles with trade on global financial markets typically yield international consumption correlations near one and excessive volatility of investment the authors incorporate nontraded goods in the model and find that the implications for aggregate consumption investment and the trade balance are consistent with business cycle properties of industrialized countries however the model driven by technology shocks alone yields counterfactual implications for comovements between consumption and prices at the sectoral level taste shocks produce price quantity relationships more consistent with the data copyright 1995 by american economic association

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

the asia pacific natural gas market large enough for all abstract among natural gas producing nations there has been some concern about how the asia pacific will meet future demand for energy we argue that natural gas both regional and global will play a vital role estimates of potential gas consumption in the region are analyzed and used to develop consensus projections to 2030 these consumption profiles are compared with gas supply estimates including indigenous pipeline and lng for the asia pacific market from this analytical framework we find that demand will be sufficiently large to accommodate supplies from diverse sources including north america the middle east central asia russia and the asia pacific itself an important policy implication is that gas producing and consuming nations should benefit from promoting gas trade and not be concerned about a situation of potential lack of demand coupled with oversupply

a cost benefit analysis of generating electricity from biomass abstract a key challenge internationally is the design of future electricity systems which will bring about emissions savings and fuel security at least cost peat is used to generate electricity in several eu countries mainly to take advantage of indigenous resources and increase fuel mix diversity the irish government has introduced a target of 30 cofiring of peat and biomass by 2015 this paper assesses the feasibility of achieving this target by calculating the available indigenous biomass resource capable of being cofired the cost of meeting the target the benefits in terms of carbon abatement and finally the present value in economic terms of meeting the target results demonstrate that ireland has only half the necessary resource to meet the 30 target and that the net cost of doing so is greater than the cost of what is currently being paid for peat in all of the scenarios considered thus it is concluded that while it may be technically possible to meet the target by combining national resources with imported biomass this is never the least cost option and as a result the targeted focus of government policy may need to be reconsidered

the development of a natural gas transportation logistics management system abstract efficient management of the natural gas business chain based on pipeline transmission networks and taking into consideration the interaction among the main players e g shippers suppliers transmission companies and local distribution companies requires the use of decision making support systems these support systems maximise resources and mitigate contingencies due to gas supply shortfalls operational contingencies from scheduled and non scheduled equipment outages and market demand shortfalls this study presents a practical use for technologies such as a thermohydraulic simulation of gas flow through pipelines a monte carlo simulation for compressor station availability studies an economic risk evaluation related to potential revenue losses and contractual penalties and linear programming for the maximisation of income and the minimisation of contractual penalties the proposed system allows the optimum availability level to be defined and maintained by the transporter by installing reserve capacity to mitigate losses related to revenue and contractual penalties it also economically identifies quantifies and justifies the installation of stand by compressor units that can mitigate the transporter s exposure to losses caused by capacity shortfalls as a consequence of scheduled and non scheduled outages

long term behaviour of co2 emissions from cement production in spain scenario analysis using an energy optimisation model abstract during the past decade the spanish cement production industry has experienced constant technological updates nevertheless meeting current and future environmental policy goals requires extra efforts the spanish case is significant because cement production went down dramatically due to the last economic crisis this brought an important but temporary reduction of co2 emissions therefore there is an interesting opportunity for cement producers and policymakers to adjust the long term targets this work discusses the evolution of the cement industry in spain from a realistic point of view using recent cement demand projections and the times spain energy optimisation model several environmental friendly options were implemented in times spain following a literature review these measures aimed at contributing to the decrease of emissions to meet the established policy goals include energy efficiency improvements substitution scenarios both for fuel and materials and co2 capture post combustion and oxyfuel from a policy approach the deployment of the eu ets directive entails that co2 emissions from cement production will decrease by 8 mt per year from 2030 with respect to the case without directive in a more technology specific analysis a remarkable decrease of 2 2 4 mt co2 was obtained in the material substitution scenario beyond 2030 additionally taking into account current projections for cement demand co2 capture technology does not emerge as a feasible option only if cement demand grew back to the pre crisis level by 2050 and the co2 emission allowances remained fixed would the co2 capture via post combustion start to be a reasonable alternative

least cost 100 renewable electricity scenarios in the australian national electricity market least cost options are presented for supplying the australian national electricity market nem with 100 renewable electricity using wind photovoltaics concentrating solar thermal cst with storage hydroelectricity and biofuelled gas turbines we use a genetic algorithm and an existing simulation tool to identify the lowest cost investment and operating scenarios of renewable technologies and locations for nem regional hourly demand and observed weather in 2010 using projected technology costs for 2030 these scenarios maintain the nem reliability standard limit hydroelectricity generation to available rainfall and limit bioenergy consumption the lowest cost scenarios are dominated by wind power with smaller contributions from photovoltaics and dispatchable generation cst hydro and gas turbines the annual cost of a simplied transmission network to balance supply and demand across nem regions is a small proportion of the annual cost of the generating system annual costs are compared with a scenario where fossil fuelled power stations in the nem today are replaced with modern fossil substitutes at projected 2030 costs and a carbon price is paid on all emissions at moderate carbon prices which appear required to address climate change 100 renewable electricity would be cheaper on an annual basis than the replacement scenario

are australia s tourism markets converging in this paper we make an important contribution towards understanding australia s tourism industry by examining whether or not australia s tourism markets are converging we define convergence as the reduction in tourist arrivals differential which is calculated as the difference between total visitor arrivals to a country and visitor arrivals from a particular tourist source market we analyze australia s thirteen major tourist source markets using monthly data over the period january 1991 to september 2003 to test for convergence we use the univariate and panel lagrange multiplier lm tests our main finding is that when we allow for two structural breaks in the data series both univariate and panel lm tests provide strong evidence for convergence of australia s tourism markets this implies that policies aimed at attracting visitor arrivals from any one of australia s thirteen tourist source markets will boost the volume of tourists coming into the country

stochastic divergence or convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions re examining the evidence this paper revisits the time series literature on the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions and examines the robustness of previous results using a sample of oecd countries for the period 1950 2002 we employ a battery of stationarity and unit root tests including those that allow for cross sectional dependencies within the panel we also correct for inaccuracies in previous studies that could result in a trend stationary series being labelled as converging even if it were actually diverging from the international average the body of evidence provided by our analysis suggests that per capita co2 emissions have not converged among oecd countries during the period under consideration this finding is of importance to both climate change policy makers and to those who construct climate change models

commodity trade and international risk sharing how much do financial markets matter abstract this paper evaluates the social gains from international risk sharing in some simple general equilibrium models with output uncertainty a simulation model calibrated to selected moments of u s and japanese data estimates the incremental loss from a ban on international portfolio diversification to be on the order of 0 20 percent of output per year even the theoretical gains from asset trade may disappear under alternative sets of assumptions on preferences and technology the paper argues that the small magnitude of potential trade gains may help explain the apparently inconsistent findings of empirical studies on the degree of international capital mobility

convergence in per capita energy use among oecd countries abstract unlike previous studies which mainly focus on the integration properties of energy consumption and production this study examines the convergence of per capita energy use among 25 oecd countries over the period 1960 to 2010 in particular newly developed lm and rals lm unit root tests with allowance for two endogenously determined structural breaks are employed the results indicate significant support for per capita energy use convergence among oecd countries

the social economic and environmental implications of biomass ethanol production in china a multi regional input output based hybrid lca model abstract as an alternative to conventional liquid fuels bioethanol holds the promise of transitioning to a clean and low carbon energy future china s bioethanol industry is at its nascent stage in this study we developed a hybrid life cycle assessment model that integrates the multi regional input output mrio approach and specific production data to evaluate the social economic and environmental i e the triple bottom line tbl impacts of the bioethanol sector in china s economic systems the mrio model was constructed using the 2012 mrio table and the data for the typical technologies of bioethanol production were leveraged to be specific we evaluated employment creation economic stimulus and energy use of bioethanol production in 28 scenarios in henan province the results show that compared to petroleum refining bioethanol production is more effective for economic stimulus and energy saving but less effective at job creation the impact of bioethanol production varies by technologies for every 1 million yuan of bioethanol production in china economic system first generation technology offers a projected 1 92 million yuan in economic growth and job creation of 2 06 full time equivalent while the second generation technology offers a lower energy consumption 1 19 tj in most scenarios the upstream sectors account for more than half of the tbl impacts of biofuel production this study helps to quantify the tbl impacts associated with the gasoline to bioethanol transition in china envisions the green opportunities for impact mitigation and sheds light on the potential direction for robust planning and policy making to advance the bioethanol industry s development

explaining international stock correlations with cpi fluctuations and market volatility this paper investigates the dynamic correlations among six international stock market indices and their relationship to inflation fluctuation and market volatility the current research uses a newly developed time series model the double smooth transition conditional correlation with conditional auto regressive range dstcc carr model findings reveal that international stock correlations are significantly time varying and the evolution among them is related to cyclical fluctuations of inflation rates and stock volatility the higher lower correlations emerge between countries when both countries experience a contractionary expansionary phase or higher lower volatilities

carbon footprint scenarios for renewable electricity in australia abstract despite considerable mitigation efforts global emissions from the electricity sector continued to grow in recent years in australia the electricity sector is the largest co 2 emitting industry contributing 35 of the country s total greenhouse gas emissions the australian government targets an 80 reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 relative to 2010 with a large variety and quantity of renewable energy resources it is technically feasible and seems indispensable that australia s electricity sector be largely decarbonised by 2050 in order to achieve this target in this paper scenario based hybrid life cycle assessment is applied to calculate the economy wide carbon footprints of seven electricity generation technologies in scenarios with differing renewable electricity penetration this work is the first to apply a full life cycle approach to scenario analysis of electricity generation in australia the findings are at the higher end of previously reported carbon footprint intensity ranges and above median values however even when taking into account indirect emissions along the technologies life cycles the results indicate that the employment of different renewable energy technologies can potentially save a considerable fraction of australia s greenhouse gas emissions this makes renewables an essential option for climate change mitigation

constructing physical input output tables for environmental modeling and accounting framework and illustrations abstract a physical input output table piot provides a framework in which all the physical flows associated with an economy can be recorded this makes it a valuable tool for environmental economic modeling and accounting during the 1990 s piots were constructed for a number of countries subsequently the piot and related physical supply and use tables have been taken up in the system of environmental and economic accounting un united nations 2003 system of environmental and economic accounting united nations new york this paper reviews piots for the netherlands germany denmark italy finland and the european union these studies applied the basic and extended piot frameworks this paper elaborates these frameworks with packaging residuals wastes and emissions recycling and stock changes in order to create a full piot the production process of the extended and full piot is split into structural and auxiliary production processes modeling applications and ways of deriving environmentally relevant information from the full piot are illustrated using a numerical example

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

the development situation of biomass gasification power generation in china abstract this work presents the development situation of biomass gasification power generation technology in china and analyzes the difficulty and challenge in the development process for china a large agricultural country with abundant biomass resources the utilization of biomass gasification power generation technology is of special importance because it can contribute to the electricity structure diversification under the present coal dominant electricity structure ameliorate the environmental impact provide energy to electricity scarce regions and solve the problems facing agriculture up to now china has developed biomass gasification power generation plants of different types and scales including simple gas engine based power generation systems with capacity from several kw to 3 mw and integrated gasification combined cycle systems with capacity of more than 5 mw in recent years due to the rising cost of biomass material transportation manpower etc the final cost of biomass power generation has increased greatly resulting in a serious challenge in the chinese electricity market even under present preferential policy for biomass power price however biomass gasification power generation technology is generally in accord with the characteristics of biomass resources in china has relatively good adaptability and viability and so has good prospect in china in the future

have air pollutant emissions converged among u s regions evidence from unit root tests previous studies of income distribution have found evidence indicating that incomes across u s regions have converged supporting the prediction of the neoclassical growth model a potential shortcoming in these studies is that only one measure of well being is considered a measure of wealth linked to incomes or production this paper examines whether income convergence was accompanied by air pollutant emission convergence results from unit root tests provide some evidence that indicators of environmental quality have converged across u s regions during the 1929 1994 period

thinking big politics progress and security in the management of asian and european energy megaprojects this article examines four energy megaprojects two in europe and two in asia for each region a large natural gas pipeline project and an international project involving solar power from the desert is studied the natural gas projects are the nabucco project in europe and the trans asean gas pipeline network in asia the solar power from the desert projects are desertec in europe and gobitec in asia the article probes explanations of megaproject failure along social technical economic political and psychological dimensions we find that these projects though they are very different in nature and pertain to different regions all suffer from a similar set of problems too many stakeholders and stakeholder fragmentation cost overruns and the risk of accidents and attacks massive externalization of costs to third party stakeholders concentration of wealth and corruption and inflated expectations and biased projections we conclude by reflecting on lessons for not only the involved institutions and investors but energy analysts and the public at large

systemic risk and international portfolio choice returns on international equities are characterized by jumps moreover these jumps tend to occur at the same time across countries leading to systemic risk we capture these stylized facts using a multivariate system ofjump diffusion processes where the arrival of jumps is simultaneous across assets we then determine an investor s optimal portfolio for this model of returns systemic risk has two effects one it reduces the gains from diversification and two it penalizes investors for holding levered positions we find that the loss resulting from diminished diversification is small while that from holding very highly levered positions is large returns on international equities are characterized by jumps 1 moreover these jumps tend to occur at the same time across countries implying that conditional correlations between international equity returns tend to be higher in periods of high market volatility or following large downside moves 2 our objective in

will history repeat itself economic convergence and convergence in energy use patterns in this paper a difference in differences estimator on panel data for 30 developing and 21 industrialized countries is employed over the period 1971 2005 to examine how patterns of energy use characterized by the consumption of primary energy carriers sectoral energy use and carbon emissions are changing in the process of economic development for the average developing country in our sample the results indicate that economic catch up has been accompanied by above average growth of the use of most primary energy carriers the consumption of final energy in most sectors and total co2 emissions for industrialized countries we find that economic growth is partially decoupled from energy consumption and that above average rates of economic growth were accompanied by larger improvements in energy efficiency these results emphasize the need to identify the relevant engines of economic growth their implications for energy use and possibilities to achieve low carbon growth centered on productivity and efficiency improvements rather than on capital accumulation

convergence in energy consumption per capita among asean countries abstract we test for convergence in energy consumption per capita among asean countries over the period 1971 to 2011 using the panel kpss stationarity test and panel lagrange multiplier lm unit root test the results for the panel stationarity and unit root tests with structural breaks find support for energy convergence in asean

simulating the impact of new industries on the economy the case of biorefining in australia abstract we investigate the economic and employment consequences of introducing a new sugarcane based biofuel industry into australia we model the new biofuel industry on the production recipe of the existing large scale gasoalcohol and alcohol sectors in the brazilian economy to this end we utilise a hybrid io lca input output life cycle assessment approach which involves inserting data on new processes and or sectors into an existing io table in particular we develop and test an analytical and a numerical approach for re balancing an io table augmented with rows and columns representing large new biofuel industries we quantify changes in economic output and employment in the australian economy we conclude that a future biofuel industry will be employment positive for australia

are correlations of stock returns justified by subsequent changes in national outputs abstract in an integrated world capital market the same pricing kernel is applicable to all securities we apply this idea to the stock returns of different countries we investigate the underlying determinants of cross country stock return correlations first we determine for a given measured degree of commonality of country outputs what should be the degree of correlation of national stock returns we propose a framework that contains a statistical model for output and an intertemporal financial market model for stock returns we then attempt to match the correlations generated by the model with measured correlations our results show that under the hypothesis of market segmentation the model correlations are much smaller than observed correlations however assuming world markets are integrated our model correlations can be matched with observed correlations

design limitations in australian renewable electricity policies abstract renewable electricity is pivotal to the medium and long term reduction of australia s greenhouse gas ghg emissions if deep cuts in them are eventually implemented this paper examines the effectiveness of the principal existing policies that could potentially promote the expansion of renewable electricity relec in australia the expanded renewable energy target ret the proposed emissions trading scheme ets and the state and territory based feed in tariffs we find the effectiveness of ret is severely eroded by the inclusion of solar and heat pump hot water systems by the inclusion of phantom tradable certificates and by high electricity consumption growth we also find that the ets will not produce a high enough carbon price to assist most relec technologies before 2020 and that most of the feed in tariffs exclude large scale relec and will give little assistance to small scale relec because they are mostly net tariffs unless there is a major revision of its relec policy mechanisms australia will fail to reach its renewable electricity target and in particular will fail to build up its solar generation capacity which could be a major source of future deep cuts in the country s electricity generation emissions

present situation problems and solutions of china s biomass power generation industry abstract with the reduction of global oil reserves developing renewable energy has become an important issue for each country biomass power is an important kind of clean energy as it has abundant resource and is environmental friendly in the past few years china biomass power industry has developed rapidly accompanied with some problems this paper analyzes the current situation of china biomass power generation from several aspects such as power structure resource distribution investment strength and policy environment etc we focus on the problems existed in practical operation and analyze the outstanding problems at last this paper offers several suggestions for future development on the relevant fields such as cost strategic planning and policy

the need for improved financial reporting of a developing country energy utility abstract some consideration has been given to regulatory and institutional reforms to facilitate sustainable development in electricity usage in papua new guinea but little attention has been paid to bringing about full compliance of financial reporting expectations of the country s main energy utility examining documentary evidence of the audit reports of the auditor general s office of papua new guinea this study considers the financial reporting compliance of png power for the period 2007 2013 and the means by which compliant reporting may be improved the results of the study reveal that the financial statements of png power are late and receive disclaimers of opinion from the auditor general s office which suggest that png power s stakeholders are not receiving accurate and reliable financial information to make informed decisions about sustainable development of electricity usage and planning in papua new guinea the study reveals that it would take little resources to improve png power s reporting which in turn could enhance national energy policy decision making and energy utility accountability

biomass direct fired power generation system in china an integrated energy ghg emissions and economic evaluation for salix abstract to gain a better understanding of the options of biomass power generation in china this study presented an integrated energy environmental and economic evaluation for salix in china and a typical salix direct fired power generation system sdpgs in inner mongolia was selected for case study a tiered hybrid life cycle assessment lca model was developed to calculate the planting to wire ptw energy consumption greenhouse gas ghg emissions and economic cost and profit of the sdpgs including feedstock cultivation power plant construction and operation and on grid price with without government subsidies the results show that the ptw energy consumption and ghg emissions of salix are 0 8 mj kwh and 114 g co2 eq kwh respectively indicating an energy payback time epbt of 3 2 years the sdpgs is not economically feasible without government subsidies the ptw costs are dominated by feedstock cultivation the energy saving and ghg mitigation benefits are still robust even when the power plant runs at only 60 design capacity for future development of biomass power in china scientific planning is necessary to guarantee a sufficient feedstock supply in addition technology progress mature industrial chains and reasonable price setting policy are required to enable potential energy and environmental advantages of biomass power moving forward

a general equilibrium impact study of the emissions reduction fund in australia by using a national environmental and economic model abstract several climate change policies such as emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes have been implemented in many countries and regions around the world however the current coalition government in australia does not prefer such methods and has argued that these policies would substantially increase the electricity price and weaken the australian competitiveness and the whole economy subsequently the government replaced the carbon tax policy in july 2014 with its emissions reduction fund which fundamentally uses the government budget of a 2 55 billion to buy emission abatements from polluters there are major arguments among the australian public about the efficiency and the effects of this approach but the economic effects are still unidentified this study aims to examine the economy wide effects of this policy on the australian economy by employing a national environmental and economic general equilibrium model so that australians and international audience would be aware of the impacts and how the reverse auction and carbon subsidy work as a policy to reduce emissions at large scales across all sectors in a country results show that australia only experiences relatively small impact on its economy real gdp only declines by 0 3 0 4 over all scenarios industrial and private sectors also experience relatively small unfavourable impacts but the output and export level of the agricultural commodity will decline substantially the renewable sectors are expanded to compensate output reductions in fossil fuel electricity generation sectors though the expansion is insufficient to compensate for the losses

risk sharing and counter cyclical variation in market correlations abstract i present a consumption based dynamic asset pricing model in which international market correlations vary counter cyclically over time the driving force in the model is the time varying effective risk aversion induced by external habit formation market returns are driven by fundamental outputs and discount rates when risk aversion is high the effect of discount rates on market returns rises with the market price of risk to the extent that countries share risk the cross country correlation of discount rates exceeds the cross country correlation of fundamental outputs in bad times market correlations rise as returns are mostly driven by discount rates thus consistent with the empirical evidence periods of high risk aversion are associated with high market correlations and high market volatility after calibration my model is consistent with the observed variation in market correlations as well as other features of asset prices including the equity premium and market volatility

flexible multivariate garch modeling with an application to international stock markets this paper offers a new approach to estimating time varying covariance matrices in the framework of the diagonal vech version of the multivariate garch 1 1 model our method is numerically feasible for large scale problems produces positive semidefinite conditional covariance matrices and does not impose unrealistic a priori restrictions we provide an empirical application in the context of international stock markets comparing the new estimator with a number of existing ones

are shocks to energy consumption permanent or temporary evidence from 182 countries this article applies univariate and panel data unit root tests to annual panel data for 182 countries over the period 1979 2000 to examine the stationarity properties of per capita energy consumption the univariate unit root test can only reject the unit root null for 56 countries or 31 of the sample at the 10 level or better however univariate unit root tests have low power with short spans of data and therefore failure to reject the unit root null should be treated with caution when we apply the panel data unit root test we find overwhelming evidence that energy consumption is stationary we discuss the policy implications of these findings and offer suggestions for future research

woody biomass processing potential economic impacts on rural regions abstract this paper estimates the economic and environmental impacts of introducing woody biomass processing wbp into a rural area in central appalachia wbp is among the most promising additions to energy generation portfolios for reducing import dependency while at the same time providing economic opportunity to stimulate regional economies especially in rural regions where economic development options are often limited we use an input output framework to assess wbp under three different pathways fast pyrolysis ethanol and coal biomass to liquids we find that the proposed wbp will increase regional output by 0 5 1 3 of gross regional product it will increase income by 17 32 to 51 31 million dollars each year and regional employment by 218 1 1127 8 jobs depending on the chosen pathway of these impacts the direct portions are 63 77 of the total impact depending on the chosen pathway the economic analysis and the results from the accompanying environmental assessment show that only the ethanol pathway has both economic and environmental benefits we conclude that because long run economic development strategies in rural regions are limited and negative impacts do not alter dramatically the regional environmental profile regional policymakers should include wbp among their development portfolio options

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

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

do market capitalization and stocks traded converge new global evidence abstract in this paper we examine convergence of stock markets our empirical exercise is based on 11 different panels which together consist of 120 countries the richness of the dataset allows us to disaggregate countries into panels such as high income middle income low income oecd csi and developing country panels in addition we construct regional panels such as those representing the arab states east asia and the pacific south asia latin america and the caribbean and sub saharan africa our main finding is that based on the conditional convergence model convergence of stock market capitalization and stocks traded is found for four panels namely the high and low income panels the oecd panel and the sub saharan african panel the speed of convergence is high in most cases between 20 and 30

development goal of 30 gw for china s biomass power generation will it be achieved abstract china currently is engaged in resolving many issues which involve increasing peasants income protecting environment and adjusting energy structure which are able to be solved by developing the biomass power generation industry this paper focuses on the development goal of 30 gw for china s biomass power generation summarizes the industrial situation and policy environment discusses the possibility of achieving the development goal and introduces the way to achieve the goal we draw the following conclusions 1 there are still some obstacles to be overcome such as the insufficient raw material supply the low feed in tariff and the poor ability of technical research 2 according to china s current industrial situation it is possible to achieve the development goal 3 china s policy tools is able to guarantee the industry development goal at last we offer several policy recommendations for adjusting the feed in tariff and completing the tradable green certificate system

asset prices and real exchange rates with deep habits i introduce an external habit for each consumption good known as deep habits into an otherwise standard international equilibrium model with multiple consumption goods and multiple countries i show that deep habits coupled with consumption home bias account for a wide range of asset pricing and exchange rate moments calibrated to a set of ten countries the model reproduces the cross sectional evidence on currency risk premiums when sorting on interest rates interest rate volatility innovations to global exchange rate volatility and value hence the model provides an equilibrium interpretation of these empirical regularities

the composition of international capital flows risk sharing through foreign direct investment abstract evidence on international capital flows suggests that foreign direct investment fdi is less volatile than other financial flows to explain this finding i model international capital flows under the assumptions of imperfect enforcement of financial contracts and inalienability of fdi imperfect enforcement of contracts leads to endogenous financing constraints and the pricing of default risk inalienability implies that it is not as advantageous to expropriate fdi relative to other flows these features combine to give a risk sharing advantage to fdi over other capital flows this risk sharing advantage of fdi translates into a lower default premium and lower sensitivity to changes in a country s financing constraint the model offers the new implication that financially constrained countries should borrow relatively more through fdi this is because fdi is harder to expropriate and not because fdi is more productive or less volatile using several creditworthiness and country risk ratings to measure financing constraints i present new evidence linking fdi and financing constraints moreover numerical simulations of the model generate stronger serial correlation for fdi than for other flows into developing countries this corroborates the view that non fdi flows are more short term and more likely to change direction

the impacts of the german biofuel quota on sectoral domestic production and imports of the german economy abstract this study analyses the impacts of the german biofuel quota on sectoral domestic production and imports of the german economy the effects are calculated as net effects i e accounting for the direct and indirect effects of both the additional demand for biofuels and the reduced demand for fossil fuels the analysis uses an input output model and information on quantities production processes import quotas etc to calculate the impacts for the agricultural sector which is obviously of high relevance for biofuel production two cases are differentiated first and in line with classical input output assumptions we propose that agricultural production is not constrained by the availability of agricultural land thus biofuel production is basically added to other agricultural outputs in the second case agricultural land is considered a limiting factor for production as a consequence biofuel production substitutes other agricultural outputs the results indicate a clear increase of domestic production and a decline of net imports in the first case in the second case gains in domestic production are smaller and net imports are in contrast to the first case increasing

exploring the challenges of energy and resources network governance while a growing amount of literature has recently emerged describing network governance less attention has been paid to evaluating the actual performance of networks our paper looks at the challenges facing network governance for natural resources primarily logging and forestry and energy primarily renewable energy and energy efficiency in asia the paper investigates what network governance is and what types of challenges networks have to tackle it then develops a qualitative analytical framework to evaluate the effectiveness of networks consisting of five criteria 1 clarity of roles and objectives among members 2 having strong independent continual sources of funding 3 institutional formality having a permanent secretariat budget full time staff etc 4 efficacy ability to accomplish its mission and goals at the least possible cost and 5 level of interdependency among members finally we apply this framework to four case studies the association of southeast asian nations asean centre for energy renewable energy and energy efficiency partnership reeep asean regional knowledge network on forests and climate change fcc and asean regional knowledge network on forest law enforcement and governance fleg these cases illustrate effective or ineffective environmental and energy networks and the factors that are associated with network governance

energy policy and cooperation in southeast asia the history challenges and implications of the trans asean gas pipeline tagp network this article explores the proposed multibillion dollar trans asean gas pipeline tagp network in southeast asia focusing on the interests that have promoted the tagp and why based on extensive field research textual analysis of government reports and more than 100 research interviews at government institutions multilateral development banks universities consulting firms energy companies and nongovernmental organizations this article assesses the challenges facing the tagp in terms of promotion implementation and operation it explores the genesis of the tagp project and the drivers pushing southeast asian investment in natural gas with a special emphasis on the development needs of the region it also investigates the numerous technical economic legal political social and environmental impediments to the tagp project the article concludes that the rhetoric of regional energy cooperation touted by the association of southeast asian nations asean does not match its actual practice and that in many cases discussions of regionalism and energy security are intended to obscure opportunistic thinking within individual countries

implementation of industrial waste heat to power in southeast asia an outlook from the perspective of market potentials opportunities and success catalysts as an important way to increase industrial energy efficiency waste heat to power whp technologies have been gaining popularity in recent years in order to appraise the market potential of whp technologies in southeast asia a techno economic assessment for whp technologies is conducted in this paper the technical and economic market potential of whp in southeast asia is estimated to be 1788 mw and 1188 mw respectively the main market drivers and barriers for whp market expansion in southeast asia are also analyzed given the fact that whp is a far cheaper power generation technology as compared with traditional and renewable power generation the whp market is expected to increase fast in the coming years mounting electricity price from grid government emissions regulations and subsidies the integration of whp products with original equipment manufacturer capital cost reduction induced by technology development are identified as the key drivers for the market growth the above arguments are proofed through the analysis of a power plant whp project in southeast asia

a general equilibrium model of international portfolio choice we investigate in a two country general equilibrium model whether a bias in consumption towards domestic goods will necessarily lead to a preference for domestic securities we develop a model where investors are constrained to consume only from their domestic capital stock and where it is costly to transfer capital across countries in this model investors less risk averse than an investor with log utility bias their portfolios towards domestic assets investors more risk averse than log however prefer foreign assets thus this model suggests that it is unlikely that the portfolios observed empirically can be explained by the high proportion of domestic goods in total consumption we investigate in a two country general equilbrium model whether a bias in consumption toward domestic goods will necessarily lead to a preference for domestic assets in an investor s optimal portfolio we constrain investors to consume only from their domestic capital stock and introduce a proportional cost for transferring goods from one country this cost gives rise to endogenous deviations from the law of one price lop thus the home and foreign investors do not hold identical portfolios we show that an investor s optimal portfolio is biased towards domestic equity only if she is less risk averse than an investor with log utility investors with relative risk aversion greater than one exhibit a preference for the foreign asset this is because the exchange rate derived endogenously is negatively correlated with the return on the foreign asset and therefore the translated return on the foreign stock is less risky than that on the domestic stock thus the results of this model suggest that it is unlikely that the preference for domestic assets that is observed empirically can be explained by the high proportion of domestic goods in total consumption there exists a considerable body of literature documenting the gains from international diversification grubel 1968 was the first to propose that international diversification allows investors to attain lower return variances than those achievable by diversifying domestically this proposition relies on the correlation between stock indices across countries being significantly less

determinants of the performance of japanese financial institutions in australia 1987 1992 this paper constructs a model that attempts to explain the performance of japanese financial institutions in australia in general the model proposed performs well for size measures but comparatively poorly for measures of profitability size as measured by home country equity was found to increase both australian assets and australian profitability institutional features in both australia and japan were found to have their greatest impact upon size measures net interest margin differences were found to have no significant relationship with any performance measure used however the results are not sufficiently conclusive to produce a definitive model to explain the performance of foreign owned banks in australia

is biomass power a good choice for governments in china abstract to fulfill the target of emissions reduction the chinese government has made many efforts to develop renewable energy biomass power can provide stable power supply avoid wasting straw resources and protect rural environment at the same time however the development of renewable power requires subsidies from the government but increased subsidies placed heavy burden on the governments whereas these governments want to develop renewable energy with minimum costs this paper attempts to answer the question that whether the development of biomass power is a good choice for local governments in china for this purpose the goal of emissions reduction and subsidies of renewable energy powers were discussed the main conclusion is that although the subsidies for biomass power were slightly higher than those for wind power biomass power is a good choice for governments considering other benefits especially for regions with rich agricultural and forest residues in the future regional and local conditions should be considered in the planning of biomass power development

the world per capita electricity consumption distribution signs of convergence abstract considering residential per capita electricity consumption as one of the most suitable economic welfare indicators the aim of this paper is to explore worldwide differences on this variable over the period 1980 2007 the paper adds to the standard practice of and convergence analysis by tracking the external shape and time evolution of the entire distribution applying nonparametric techniques density functions and stochastic kernels to a sample of 98 countries the main finding is that a weak process of electricity consumption convergence has taken place this reduction of disparities is clearly related to at least three issues firstly the rapid economic changes experienced by some developing countries secondly the energy conservation policies implemented by most developed countries following the first oil shock and thirdly the growing awareness on energy issues in rich countries notwithstanding this the ergodic distribution on per capita electricity consumption indicates that large cross country disparities will persist in the long run

review on fuel economy standard and label for vehicle in selected asean countries abstract sustainable supply of energy at affordable prices is vital to ensure the human development asean is committed pursuing for a clean and green region with fully established mechanisms for sustainable development to ensure the protection of regional environment resources and the high quality of people s life nowadays energy use in the transportation sector represents an important issue in asean countries therefore it is believed that the introduction of fuel economy standards and labels is the key to save energy in this sector fuel economy standards and labels are relatively cheap measure to influence consumer behaviour and to induce car manufacturers to produce more efficient vehicles fuel economy standards and labels for vehicle are being implemented in many countries around the world to save fuel consumption and mitigate co2 emission this paper is a review on fuel economy standard and labels for vehicle in some selected asean countries such as singapore indonesia malaysia philippines thailand and vietnam it has been found that singapore is the leading country in asean that has implemented fuel economy standards and labels moreover it has been found that the implementation of cleaner fuels standard play a crucial role in protecting public health and the environment from transportation sector emissions the most common alternative fuels used in asean are biodiesel ethanol methanol propane hydrogen and natural gas

green growth planning a multi factor energy input output analysis of the canadian economy abstract incorporating socioeconomic and environmental considerations into energy decisions is necessary when tackling climate change and accelerating green growth in this work we propose a novel extension of the multi factor energy input output model to support evidence informed energy policy making and green growth planning through the introduction of eight different multipliers and two green growth indexes we demonstrate the approach through application at the national scale in canada in particular we quantitatively assess the extent to which changes in final demand impact the domestic and imported primary and renewable energy flows co2 emissions economic expansion and energy job earnings the results point to a potential path of green growth in canada prioritizing activities that generate economic and job growth at minimal environmental pressure i e fewer co2 emissions economic activities that are critical for stimulating green growth in the short to medium run are identified and recommendations are made regarding a longer structural change path for improving the supply chains of other economic activities this work provides insights to decision makers seeking strategies e g policy reforms or targeted public expenditure strategies to accelerate green growth planning on a national scale

energy intensity and embodied energy flow in australia an input output analysis abstract decoupling energy use from economic growth is critical for improving energy productivity and mitigating climate change input output databases have been increasingly utilised for consumption based energy accounting and for exploring both the direct and indirect influence of energy use this study performed an environmentally extended input output analysis of energy use in australia from 2006 to 2015 to investigate the total energy intensity of industry sectors and the embodied energy flow from sources of energy use to the final consumption of commodities between 2006 and 2015 the national direct energy intensity reduced by an average of 2 per annum nearly all industry sectoral groups reduced their total energy intensity because of direct energy intensity reduction from other or within industry sectoral groups the difference between the embodied energy use in the import and the export had widened making australia a greater net importer of embodied energy with significant outsourcing of direct energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions despite a slight reduction in per capita direct household energy use 3 the per capita indirect energy use embodied in household commodity consumption increased by 7 as indirect household energy use is more than three times direct household energy use improving end use energy efficiency should also consider the embodied energy in commodities structural decomposition analysis shows that for the studied period population growth and per capita demand for imported commodities are two major contributors for the increased total embodied energy in australia

why do markets move together an investigation of u s japan stock return comovements this article explores the fundamental factors that affect cross country stock return correlations using transactions data from 1988 to 1992 we construct overnight and intraday returns for a portfolio of japanese stocks using their nyse traded american depository receipts adrs and a matched sample portfolio of u s stocks we find that u s macroeconomic announcements shocks to the yen dollar foreign exchange rate and treasury bill returns and industry effects have no measurable influence on u s and japanese return correlations however large shocks to broadbased market indices nikkei stock average and standard and poor s 500 stock index positively impact both the magnitude and persistence of the return correlations stock return cross country covariances play a key role in international finance changes in these covariances affect the volatility of portfolios and asset prices as these covariances increase one expects that a fewer domestic risks are internationally diversifiable so portfolio volatility increases b the risk premium on the world market portfolio increases 1 c the cost of capital increases for individual firms and d the domestic version of the capm becomes increasingly inadequate 2 despite the important economic consequences of changes in cross country covariances the determinants of the levels and dynamics of these covariances have been little studied from an academic