co2 emissions of china s food industry an input output approach in a joint u s china statement on climate change the chinese government declared to peak co2 emissions around 2030 this demonstrates the government s determination to deal with carbon emission and climate change although the food industry is not a carbon emission intensive industry its large scale makes the emission reduction in the industry very important based on the input output structural decomposition method this paper calculates the co2 emissions of china s food industry from 1991 to 2012 and decomposes the change in co2 emissions of the industry during 1992 1997 1997 2002 2002 2007 and 2007 2010 into four main effects emission factor energy structure energy intensity and total output including four sub effects intermediate use domestic final demand import substitution and export extension the results show that changes in co2 emissions in the food industry mainly depends on total output effect and energy intensity effect energy intensity effect is the most important factor reducing co2 emissions as it reduced cumulative 213 million tons mt co2 emissions of the industry among total output effect the effects of intermediate use and domestic final demand are the two biggest contributors to carbon emissions finally we provide some policy advices for constraining and reducing co2 emissions of china s food industry the advices include increasing r d investment and the substitution of energy with other input factors to decrease energy intensity increasing the added value of the food industry optimizing the energy structure with more clean and low carbon energy and maintaining the prices of raw materials of the food industry i e agricultural products with taxes or subsidies

the tragedy of tourism resources as the outcome of a strategic game a new analytical framework abstract game theory is rarely used to deal with the overuse and misuse of tourism resources when it happens the issue is normally explained within a non cooperative setting in which because of the free riding option a problem emerges as the socially irrational outcome of an individually rational behaviour social dilemma in some cases the assumptions upon which this explanation rests risk lacking both descriptive accuracy and predictive power since tourism is the encounter of a stable residents with a changing tourists population the paper asserts that in many cases the issue may be better investigated within a strategic game in which the players do not know an aspect of their environment that is important for their choice bayesian game building on this the paper demonstrates why an unsustainable path may emerge even when both players prefer preservation to exploitation and no free ride incentive exists then it addresses some policy issues to prevent the dreaded result that non cooperative behaviour would yield

commensurability and sustainability triple impact assessments of a tourism event abstract in this study a model for measuring impacts of a tourist event from sustainability perspectives and in a common monetary metric is developed the aim is to achieve commensurability the proposed model is tested on a three day music festival and the results demonstrate a possibility to produce a sustainability impact analysis in a uniform metric measured in monetary terms socio cultural impacts carry weight just as economic impacts do whereas environmental impacts have little importance for the total assessment this illustrates how the low market value of emission rights make environmental concerns negligible from an economic perspective finally issues related to scope of the assessment commensurability and opportunity cost are discussed and possibilities for future studies are suggested

interpreting euro area inflation at high and low frequencies abstract several authors have recently interpreted the european central bank s ecb s two pillar framework as separate approaches to forecast and analyse inflation at different time horizons or frequency bands the ecb has publicly supported this understanding of the framework this paper presents further evidence on the behaviour of euro area inflation using band spectrum regressions which allow for a natural definition of the short and long run in terms of specific frequency bands and causality tests in the frequency domain the main finding is that variations in inflation are well explained by low frequency movements of money and real output growth and high frequency fluctuations of the output gap

the risk in hedge fund strategies theory and evidence from trend followers hedge fund strategies typically generate option like returns linear factor models using benchmark asset indices have difficulty explaining them following the suggestions in glosten and jagannathan 1994 this article shows how to model hedge fund returns by focusing on the popular trend following strategy we use lookback straddles to model trend following strategies and show that they can explain trend following funds returns better than standard asset indices though standard straddles lead to similar empirical results lookback straddles are theoretically closer to the concept of trend following our model should be useful in the design of performance benchmarks for trend following funds

economic incentives for tourism firms to undertake voluntary environmental management abstract the management of natural assets at tourism destinations has relied strongly on the traditional assumption that agents free ride tourism firms are expected to overuse resources for their private interest and be subject to a trade off between being green and being competitive however there are many examples of voluntary environmental actions undertaken by the tourism industry the present paper reviews the literature on the economic consequences of voluntary environmental action taken by tourism firms and presents three challenges to the commonly held tragedy expectations these results suggest the viability of alternative environmental policymaking that takes potential voluntary action under consideration

environmental management of a tourist destination a factor of tourism competitiveness although research to date has addressed various elements of destination competitiveness there has been little attempt to systematically and comprehensively study the environmental competitiveness from the managerial perspective since the calgary tourism competitiveness model brought a systematic approach to tourism competitiveness research this paper selectively uses its management element as a tool to link the competitiveness and environmental management following the model the destination management is divided into two parts 1 managerial and 2 marketing e orts this paper studies them from environmental perspective first destination environmental competitiveness can be increased by appropriate managerial e orts related to environmental impact ei and environmental quality eq management second the destination competitiveness can be enhanced through certain environmental marketing activities further environmental management is categorised into groups management by codes of conduct by self developed environmental practice by certi ed or awarded best practice and by accreditation schemes their usefulness for environmental destination management and competitiveness is evaluated 1999 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

a dynamic approach to voluntary environmental contributions in tourism abstract in an evolutionary game theoretical model of tourism firms that use an endogenous natural common pool resource cpr we show that stable equilibria with voluntary environmental initiatives may coexist with other equilibria where voluntary abatement is absent the basins of attraction of the equilibria are identified and a bifurcation analysis is carried out producing two results with policy implications first there is a highly non linear relationship between the cost of abatement required to be green and the share of green firms second increases in the number of the cpr s users will ultimately dissipate the incentives to make abatement beyond regulation

tourism development and economic growth a closer look at panels abstract this paper applies the new heterogeneous panel cointegration technique to re investigate the long run comovements and causal relationships between tourism development and economic growth for oecd and nonoecd countries including those in asia latin america and sub sahara africa for the 1990 2002 period on the global scale after allowing for the heterogeneous country effect a cointegrated relationship between gdp and tourism development is substantiated it is also determined that tourism development has a greater impact on gdp in nonoecd countries than in oecd countries and when the variable is tourism receipts the greatest impact is in sub sahara african countries additionally the real effective exchange rate has significant effects on economic growth finally in the long run the panel causality test shows unidirectional causality relationships from tourism development to economic growth in oecd countries bidirectional relationships in nonoecd countries but only weak relationships in asia our empirical findings have major policy implications

a simple adaptive measure of core inflation this paper proposes a new measure of core inflation and compares it with several existing measures the new measure is adaptive and is designed to track sudden and persistent movements in inflation such as those arising from changes in monetary policy regimes the adaptive measure filters out transients more effectively than existing measures and it is a superior predictor of locally mean reverting components of inflation

hedge fund performance 1990 2000 do the money machines really add value we investigate the claim that hedge funds offer investors a superior risk return tradeoff we do so using a continuous time version of dybvig s 1988a 1988b payoff distribution pricing model the evaluation model which does not require any assumptions with regard to the return distribution of the funds to be evaluated is applied to the monthly returns of 77 hedge funds and 13 hedge fund indices from may 1990 april 2000 the results show that as a stand alone investment hedge funds do not offer a superior risk return profile we find 12 indices and 72 individual funds to be inefficient with the average efficiency loss amounting to 2 76 per annum for indices and 6 42 for individual funds part of the inefficiency cost of individual funds can be diversified away funds of funds however are not the preferred vehicle for this as their performance appears to suffer badly from their double fee structure looking at hedge funds in a portfolio context results in a marked improvement in the evaluation outcomes seven of the 12 hedge fund indices and 58 of the 72 individual funds classified as inefficient on a stand alone basis are capable of producing an efficient payoff profile when mixed with the s p 500 the best results are obtained when 10 20 of the portfolio value is invested in hedge funds

consistency between contingent valuation estimates a comparison of two studies of uk national parks bateman i willis k and garrod g 1994 consistency between contingent valuation estimates a comparison of two studies of uk national parks reg studies 28 457 474 recent years have seen a significant increase in the application of the contingent valuation method to the evaluation of environmental preferences in the uk recent theoretical and methodological developments suggest that this increase is likely to be sustained for the foreseeable future this paper examines the issue of consistency across studies carried out to date in the uk attention is initially focused upon two major studies which allow the comparison of a number of findings analysis is then extended to a large number of smaller studies these comparisons suggest that the results obtained to date are both consistent and logically ordered with reference to the environmental good and the change in provision under consideration across studies bateman i willis k et garrod g 1994 la coherence des estimations contingentes une

factors behind the environmental kuznets curve a decomposition of the changes in air pollution the environmental kuznets curve theory suggeststhat economic growth in the long run may reduceenvironmental problems in this article we usea decomposition analysis to isolate eightdifferent factors in order to investigate theorigins of changes in emissions to air over theperiod from 1980 to 1996 among these factorsare economic growth changes in the relativesize of production sectors and changes in theuse of energy given constant emissions perproduced unit economic growth alone would havecontributed to a significant increase in theemissions this potential degradation of theenvironment has been counteracted by first ofall more efficient use of energy and abatementtechnologies in addition the substitution ofcleaner for polluting energy types and othertechnological progressions and politicalactions have reduced the growth in emissions consequently the growth in all emissions hasbeen significantly lower than economic growth and negative for some pollutants the results indicate that policymakers mayreduce emissions considerably through creatingincentives for lower energy use andsubstitutions of environmental friendly forenvironmental damaging energy types inaddition to support environmental friendlyresearch or to conduct direct emission reducingactions such as abatement requirements orbanning of environmental damaging products this is particularly relevant to countries andsectors with relatively high energy intensitiesand low pollution abatement

energy consumption and economic growth in central america evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for six central american countries over the period 1980 2004 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship based on the heterogeneous panel cointegration test by pedroni pedroni p 1999 critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 61 653 670 pedroni p 2004 panel cointegration asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the ppp hypothesis new results econometric theory 20 597 627 cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate the presence of both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis

money at low frequencies many central banks have abandoned monetary targeting because the link between money growth and inflation seemed to disappear in the 1980s using spectral regression techniques we show that for the euro area japan the uk and the us there is a unit relationship between money growth and inflation at low frequencies when the impact of interest rate changes on money demand is accounted for we estimate phillips curve equations in which the low frequency information from money growth is combined with high frequency information from the output gap to explain movements in inflation jel c22 e3

is the price level tied to the m2 monetary aggregate in the long run a long run link between money and prices is evident for the united states since the korean war if the m2 measure of money is used and the velocity of m2 v2 is modeled as a mean reverting series this link between m2 and prices is the basis for a dynamic model of inflation that compares favorably in forecasting exercises with phillips curve and more typical monetarist approaches the behavior of v2 is examined from 1870 to the present providing a basis for reconsidering previous findings that v2 follows a random walk copyright 1991 by american economic association

are sustainable tourists a higher spending market abstract resistance to sustainability practices often stems from the industry s view that sustainable tourism requires a profitability tradeoff where the additional costs associated with sustainability do not pay off in increased economic returns yet few studies have been attempted to prove or disprove this viewpoint this study analyzed spending patterns and length of stay of visitors to montana usa to determine if strong geotravelers higher sustainable behaviors were different than those with less sustainable behaviors results found that total trip spending by strong geotravelers us 1164 was significantly higher than the overall spending of both moderate us 866 and minimal geotravelers us 668 these findings suggest that sustainable travelers are a travel market to be reckoned with in the tourism marketing and business world the combination of their pro sustainable behavior and increased spending provides evidence of a market segment in which destinations can benefit

the two pillars of the european central bank i interpret the european central bank s two pillar strategy by proposing an empirical model for inflation that distinguishes between the short and long run components of inflation the latter component depends on an exponentially weighted moving average of past monetary growth and the former on the output gap estimates for the 1971 2003 period suggest that money can be combined with other indicators to form the broadly based assessment of the outlook for future price developments that constitutes the ecb s second pillar however the analysis does not suggest that money should be treated differently from other indicators while money is a useful policy indicator all relevant indicators should be assessed in an integrated manner and a separate pillar focused on monetary aggregates does not appear necessary stefan gerlach

investigating the influence of tourism on economic growth and carbon emissions evidence from panel analysis of the european union the study investigates the influence of tourism on economic growth and co2 emissions in the empirical analysis unit root and cointegration tests using panel data of european union countries from 1988 to 2009 are performed to examine the long run equilibrium relationship among tourism co2 emissions economic growth and foreign direct investment fdi results from panel cointegration techniques and fixed effects models indicate that a long run equilibrium relationship exists among these variables furthermore tourism co2 emissions and fdi have high significant positive effect on economic growth economic growth in turn shows a high significant positive impact on co2 emissions while tourism and fdi incur a high significant negative impact on co2 emissions

decomposing industrial co2 emissions of southern european countries into production and consumption based driving factors abstract industry is a leading economic sector in european countries as well as a major carbon emitter european industry has been quite successful in abating the environmental pressures and carbon emissions and increasing its energy efficiency from production over the last years however focusing only on the production side may not lead to the desired sustainable development since there are other forces such as the international trade and consumption patterns which also shape the evolution of industrial co 2 emissions the aim of this study is to investigate how changes in production and consumption of industrial products affect the co 2 emissions of industries in four southern european countries during the period 2000 2011 to this purpose a new model of index decomposition analysis is developed in order to decompose the change in co 2 emissions of the industrial sectors of greece italy spain and portugal moreover the examined period in this study is split into two sub periods 2000 2008 and 2008 2011 in order to investigate the impact of the recent economic crisis on both the driving factors and industrial co 2 emissions the overall evolution of industrial co 2 emissions was quite similar in all the countries and the decomposition results of the two sub periods revealed substantial homogeneity across countries two production based driving factors the economic activity and the energy intensity were the main driving factors which shaped the total change in co 2 emissions of industries in the examined countries the consumption based driving factors contributed mostly to the increase in industrial co 2 emissions but not at the same level as the production based ones furthermore industrial production was more significantly affected by the economic crisis than consumers expenditures the decomposition results performed at a sectoral level revealed that it was difficult for southern european consumers to switch to a more environmentally conscious use of industrial products and their consumption preferences were not significantly affected by the consequences of the economic crisis

costly search and mutual fund flows this paper studies the flows of funds into and out of equity mutual funds consumers base their fund purchase decisions on prior performance information but do so asymmetrically investing disproportionately more in funds that performed very well the prior period search costs seem to be an important determinant of fund flows high performance appears to be most salient for funds that exert higher marketing effort as measured by higher fees flows are directly related to the size of the fund s complex as well as the current media attention received by the fund which lower consumers search costs

cradle to cradle design creating healthy emissions a strategy for eco effective product and system design eco effectiveness and cradle to cradle design present an alternative design and production concept to the strategies of zero emission and ecoefficiency where eco efficiency and zero emission seek to reduce the unintended negative consequences of processes of production and consumption eco effectiveness is a positive agenda for the conception and production of goods and services that incorporate social economic and environmental benefit enabling triple top line growth eco effectiveness moves beyond zero emission approaches by focusing on the development of products and industrial systems that maintain or enhance the quality and productivity of materials through subsequent life cycles the concept of eco effectiveness also addresses the major shortcomings of eco efficiency approaches their inability to address the necessity for fundamental redesign of material flows their inherent antagonism towards long term economic growth and innovation and their insufficiency in addressing toxicity issues a central component of the eco effectiveness concept cradle to cradle design provides a practical design framework for creating products and industrial systems in a positive relationship with ecological health and abundance and long term economic growth against this background the transition to eco effective industrial systems is a five step process beginning with an elimination of undesirable substances and ultimately calling for a reinvention of products by reconsidering how they may optimally fulfill the need or needs for which they are actually intended while simultaneously being supportive of ecological and social systems this process necessitates the creation of an eco effective system of nutrient management to coordinate the material flows amongst actors in the product system the concept of intelligent materials pooling illustrates how such a system might take shape in reality 2006 published by elsevier ltd

decomposition of tourism greenhouse gas emissions revealing the dynamics between tourism economic growth technological efficiency and carbon emissions abstract this study proposes an analytical framework for decomposing the national tourism carbon footprint and carbon efficiency to identify the dynamics between economic growth technological efficiency and environmental externality using the environmentally extended input output model and decomposition methods tourism carbon changes are decomposed into the economic factors of total consumption and purchasing patterns and the production factors of industry input structure and technological improvement this macro level approach provides a basis for 1 assessing whether total tourism emissions increase in direct proportion to tourism consumption over time 2 tracing the underlying determinants and their effects on tourism emissions expansion and eco efficiency performance and 3 comparing the carbon performance of the tourism industry against the national average based on the example of taiwan the results demonstrate that we are a long way from the goal of using the technological efficiencies of production to offset tourism based carbon emissions

oil prices tourism income and economic growth a structural var approach for european mediterranean countries abstract in this study a structural var model is employed to investigate the relationship among oil price shocks tourism variables and economic indicators in four european mediterranean countries in contrast with the current tourism literature we distinguish between three oil price shocks namely supply side aggregate demand and oil specific demand shocks overall our results indicate that oil specific demand shocks contemporaneously affect inflation and the tourism sector equity index whereas these shocks do not seem to have any lagged effects by contrast aggregate demand oil price shocks exercise a lagged effect either directly or indirectly to tourism generated income and economic growth the paper does not provide any evidence that supply side shocks trigger any responses from the remaining variables results are important for tourism agents and policy makers should they need to create hedging strategies against future oil price movements or plan for economic policy developments

analysis of electricity consumption in the tourism sector a decomposition approach abstract index decomposition analysis ida has become a common tool for studying the evolution of energy consumption in its initial form it comprises three contributions namely activity structure and intensity effects various sectors of activities were studied in the literature by employing ida approach and the present work proposes its application to the electricity consumption in the tourism sector the proposed decomposition analysis is developed on the basis of seven indexes grouped in three macro contributions namely energy intensity economic structure and industrial structure the decomposition is performed in the period 1995 2017 and italy was used as test case for the methodology the analysis highlights that overall the changes in electricity intensity and in the industrial structure were responsible for an increase of the electricity consumption of 5 581 gwh whereas the economic structure was responsible for a decrease of 1 337 gwh their contemporary effect determined a total variation of electricity consumption between 1995 and 2017 of 4 244 gwh results demonstrated that the proposed ida equation specifically tailored for the tourism sector allows to provide a detailed analytical explanation of the factors affecting electricity consumption in the italian tourism sector the same framework can be applied to any other country and source of energy

developing indicators for managing tourism in the face of peak oil abstract in its present form tourism is dependent on the availability of oil and is comparatively oil intensive while forecasts for future tourism growth are optimistic there is also increasing evidence about the imminence of a peak in oil production and the economic effects that this would cause globally and on a destination level it will be necessary to consider how a transition towards fossil fuel free economies might look like for tourism it is therefore timely and prudent for the tourism sector to consider its current oil requirements and derive indicators for monitoring its oil consumption in particular destinations need indicators of the amount of oil consumed by the various markets from which they receive visitors new zealand is used as an example for assessing the oil intensity of its top 10 countries of origin based on the 10 indicators overall the least exposed markets for new zealand with respect to oil are australia china singapore and taiwan although a more detailed analysis would be required for markets that display very heterogeneous travel behaviour among the indicators eco efficiency is particularly important as it allows comparison of resource inputs with economic outputs

voluntary eco labeling and the price premium international environmental organizations propose voluntary eco labeling as a market incentive to promote industry to operate in an ecologically sustainable and environmentally friendly manner a microeconomic analysis questions whether voluntary eco labeling will cause producer profits in a competitive industry to decline and whether eco labeling will necessarily generate different prices for labeled and unlabeled product using wood product as an example results identify conditions that may exist when firms lose profits even under a voluntary system and where existing production constraints may lead to a single price regardless of labeling

real time prediction with u k monetary aggregates in the presence of model uncertainty a popular account for the demise of the u k s monetary targeting regime in the 1980s blames the fluctuating predictive relationships between broad money and inflation and real output growth yet ex post policy analysis based on heavily revised data suggests no fluctuations in the predictive content of money in this paper we investigate the predictive relationships for inflation and output growth using both real time and heavily revised data we consider a large set of recursively estimated vector autoregressive var and vector error correction models vecm these models differ in terms of lag length and the number of cointegrating relationships we use bayesian model averaging bma to demonstrate that real time monetary policymakers faced considerable model uncertainty the in sample predictive content of money fluctuated during the 1980s as a result of data revisions in the presence of model uncertainty this feature is only apparent with real time data as heavily revised data obscure these fluctua

is there a role for monetary aggregates in the conduct of monetary policy abstract we examine the potential policy role of monetary aggregates by attempting to use them as effectively as possible in the analysis of empirical relationships we focus on their role as information variables since any more ambitious use such as in a policy rule would presuppose some information content in the aggregates our results show that in the united states since 1979 the monetary aggregates fall considerably short of those requirements and results with german m3 are hardly more favorable we also investigate whether empirical relationships are not reflective of information relationships because of the use of these variables in countercyclical policy the results are not consistent with that interpretation

oil price inflation pass through in romania during the inflation targeting regime abstractin the wake of the inflation targeting strategy in romania we estimate the impact of international oil prices upon the consumer price index cpi and core inflation the inflation target was systematically missed by the monetary authorities who explain this failure by exogenous factors using a frequency domain framework we show that the oil price inflation pass through can be observed only for those components of inflation which include volatile prices and only in the medium run our results put forward that the constant missing of the target cannot be explained by the oil price inflation pass through and the credibility of the strategy is put into question

the eco efficiency of tourism the use of fossil energy is one of the major environmental problems associated with tourism and travel consequently the need to limit fossil energy use has been highlighted as a precondition for achieving sustainable tourism development however tourism is also one of the most important sectors of the world economy and fears have thus been expressed by the tourist industry and its organisations that increasing energy prices for example as a result of eco taxes could substantially decrease the economic welfare of countries and destinations in this article the interplay of environmental damage and economic gains is thus analysed within the context of tourism carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are assessed in relation to the revenues generated allowing for conclusions about the eco efficiency of tourism

use value of cultural experiences a comparison of contingent valuation and travel cost abstract few applications to assess the value of cultural experiences exist this is particularly frustrating for cultural institutions as it provides them with few opportunities to reveal their importance in terms of attractiveness and thus what drives tourism demand this study applies the travel cost method tcm and contingent valuation method cvm to assess the value of two rural cultural institutions in order to compare the results of the valuation methods the results reveal that visitor experiences consist of a core cultural experience as well as other valuable experiences before and after whereas cvm allows for a valuation of the core cultural experience separately from other experiences the tcm is limited to an overall assessment the tcm is therefore an inappropriate measure of the value of the cultural experiences when the total experience includes several other experiences if visitors travel for the sake of only one cultural experience tcm may be preferable due to its simple applicability and cost efficiency if however as is most often the case a cultural experience is part of a bundle of experiences the application of cvm is recommendable this is also the case if only visitors who state the cultural experience to be the primary reason for travelling are included

an econometric study of co2 emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade in turkey abstract this study attempts to empirically examine the dynamic causal relationships between carbon emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of turkey using the time series data for the period 1960 2005 this research tests the interrelationship between the variables using the bounds testing to cointegration procedure the bounds test results indicate that there exist two forms of long run relationships between the variables in the case of first form of long run relationship carbon emissions are determined by energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of second long run relationship income is determined by carbon emissions energy consumption and foreign trade an augmented form of granger causality analysis is conducted amongst the variables the long run relationship of co2 emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade equation is also checked for the parameter stability the empirical results suggest that income is the most significant variable in explaining the carbon emissions in turkey which is followed by energy consumption and foreign trade moreover there exists a stable carbon emissions function the results also provide important policy recommendations

hedge funds risk and return from a database that is relatively free of bias this article provides measures of the returns of hedge funds and of the distinctly nonnormal characteristics of the data the results include risk adjusted measures of performance and tests of the degree to which hedge funds live up to their claim of market neutrality the substantial attrition of hedge funds is examined the determinants of hedge fund demise are analyzed and results of tests of return persistence are presented the conclusion is that hedge funds are riskier and provide lower returns than is commonly supposed

a cge assessment of singapore s tourism policies abstract the extraordinary performance of the singapore tourism industry is attributed among other factors to the active tourism policies of the singapore government but the effectiveness of singapore tourism policies has never been quantified by building a cge model for the singapore economy with an emphasis on tourism and utilising the recently published singapore input output tables and tourism survey data this study has gauged economic impact of singapore inbound tourism and the effectiveness of singapore tourism policies based on the simulated macroeconomic and sectoral effects the modelling results show that in terms of both real gdp and total tourism expenditure tourism gst deduction is the most effective policy followed by the tourism activity subsidy policy the tourism industry subsidy policy is proven to be the least effective since different tourism policies have different strengths and weaknesses a balanced and focused approach to tourism policy is suggested for policy makers

higher risk lower returns what hedge fund investors really earn abstract the returns of hedge fund investors depend not only on the returns of the funds they hold but also on the timing and magnitude of their capital flows in and out of these funds we use dollar weighted returns a form of internal rate of return irr to assess the properties of actual investor returns on hedge funds and compare them to buy and hold fund returns our main finding is that annualized dollar weighted returns are on the magnitude of 3 to 7 lower than corresponding buy and hold fund returns using factor models of risk and the estimated dollar weighted performance gap we find that the real alpha of hedge fund investors is close to zero in absolute terms dollar weighted returns are reliably lower than the return on the standard poor s s p 500 index and are only marginally higher than the risk free rate as of the end of 2008 the combined impression from these results is that the return experience of hedge fund investors is much worse than previously thought

environmental policy in a green market this paper studies the impact of some frequently used environmental policies in a duopolistic market where purchasers are willing to pay more for less polluting goods when consumers differ in their environmental awareness a cleaner and a dirtier variant coexist in equilibrium the higher the average willingness to pay for the good the lower are variants unit emissions but the higher are industrial aggregate effluents a maximum unit emission standard reduces unit emissions of both variants but boosts firms sales and consequently increases industrial aggregate emissions as a result social welfare may be reduced we also explore the effects of technological subsidies and product charges including differentiation of charges

measuring the immeasurable a survey of sustainability indices sustainability indices for countries provide a one dimensional metric to valuate country specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development economic environmental and social conditions at the policy level they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country s development can be measured and even a cross country comparison can be performed this paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice we show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice

do people play nash equilibrium lessons from evolutionary game theory evolutionary game theory provides an answer to two of the central questions in economic modeling when is it reasonable to assume that people are rational and when is it reasonable to assume that behavior is part of a nash equilibrium and if it is reasonable which equilibrium the traditional answers are not compelling and much of evolutionary modeling is motivated by the need for a better answer evolutionary game theory suggests that in a range of settings agents do eventually play a nash equilibrium moreover evolutionary modeling has shed light on the relative plausibility of different nash equilibria

money in monetary policy design a formal characterization of ecb style cross checking the european central bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision the case against including money in the central bank s interest rate rule is based on a st andard model of the monetary transmission process that underlies many contributions to research on monetary policy in the last two decades in this paper we develop a justifi cation for including money in the interest rate rule by allowing for imperfect knowledge regarding unobservables such as potential output and equilibrium interest rates we formulate a novel characterization of ecb style monetary cross checking and show that it can generate substantial stabilization benefits in the event of persistent policy mis perceptions regarding potential output

constructing historical euro zone data existing methods of reconstructing historical euro zone data by aggregation of the individual countries aggregate data raises numerous difficulties especially due to past exchange rate changes the approach proposed here is designed to avoid such distortions and aggregate exactly when exchange rates are fixed we first compute growth rates within states aggregate these then cumulate this euro zone growth rate to obtain the aggregated levels variables the aggregate of the implicit deflator plice index coincides with the implicit deflator of our aggregate nominal and real data we apply the method to euro zone m3 gdp and prices over the previous two decades 1 background with the introduction on 31 december 1998 of the irrevocably fixed euro exchange rates eleven countries of the european union entered a new monetary union from that date onwards monetary policy for these countries is set by the newly formed european central bank ecb the governing council of the ecb bases its monetary policy on medium term assumptions regarding real gdp growth and the trend decline in the velocity of circulation of m3 ecb 1999a p 40 therefore the construction of historical data for aggregate m3 and gdp for the euro zone is of practical relevance to policy makers in addition any econometric model for euro zone countries requires such historical data this paper describes an approach to doing so from the aggregate data of the individual member states a number of previous reconstructions are noted but as these have important drawbacks an approach related to that in t6rnqvist 1936 is proposed and its properties are discussed although there have been many important contributions to index number theory see section 4 few are directly relevant to the problem confronted here where we wish to use the national aggregates from member states not the individual item data usually input into index calculations to construct a euro zone aggregate moreover the inherently non stationary nature of those national aggregates both from unit roots inducing integrated time series

national natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept abstract there is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital however progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable therefore to overcome this obstacle assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed this study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting it demonstrates using the example of italy an accounting framework which tracks national economies energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows this calculation has been applied to over 52 countries with this framework based on the ecological footprint concept human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level using existing data

inter market variability in co2 emission intensities in tourism implications for destination marketing and carbon management there is a growing gap between tourism s rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions and the sector s aspirational emission reduction targets as well as the international policy consensus to reduce emissions from this and all other sectors of the economy the transport component is the largest ghg contributor to the global tourism system in the absence of supranational policy agreements to curb emissions from international aviation and cruise tourism as well as limited national policy initiatives there has been a recent shift in research to the potential role of market based carbon management for destinations to reduce emissions air travel is the most important subsector generating ghgs in international tourism this article analyses the composition of international tourism markets arriving by air and their respective contribution to emissions at 11 selected countries with distinctly different tourism economies the implications of changes in the market composition of these countries between 1995 and 2010 for average tourist carbon intensity and total emissions are examined results indicate variations in inter market emission intensities of up to a factor 30 127 3930 kg co2 tourist if comparing individual markets for the whole range of destinations and up to a factor 5 370 1830 kg co2 tourist if comparing average emission intensities between destinations findings are discussed with regard to the potential for destinations to reduce emissions from tourism by strategically fostering specific markets c 2014 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

do hedge funds deliver alpha a bayesian and bootstrap analysis abstract using a robust bootstrap procedure we find that top hedge fund performance cannot be explained by luck and hedge fund performance persists at annual horizons moreover we show that bayesian measures which help overcome the short sample problem inherent in hedge fund returns lead to superior performance predictability sorting on bayesian alphas relative to ols alphas yields a 5 5 per year increase in the alpha of the spread between the top and bottom hedge fund deciles our results are robust and relevant to investors as they are neither confined to small funds nor driven by incubation bias backfill bias or serial correlation

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

on the sustainability of common property resources abstract we provide a model where a common property resource is managed by two types of agents cooperators and non cooperators who adjust their extraction strategies in response to persistent differential payoffs in our model the social approval of cooperators works as a reward mechanism which as we show favors both the pervasiveness of cooperative behavior and the sustainable management of natural resources specifically we show that in the presence of such a reward mechanism a stable equilibrium can be reached with both strategies being practiced simultaneously and a decentralized and sustainable management of common property resources is possible

the evolution of social norms in common property resource use the problem of extracting commonly owned renewable resources is examined within an evolutionary game theoretic framework it is shown that cooperative behavior guided by norms of restraint and punishment may be stable in a well defined sense against invasion by narrowly self interested behavior the resource stock dynamics are integrated with the evolutionary game dynamics effects of changes in prices technology and social cohesion on extraction behavior and the long run stock are analyzed when threshold values of the parameters are crossed social norms can break down leading generally to the lowering of the long run stock and possibly to its extinction copyright 1996 by american economic association

the future of monetary aggregates in monetary policy analysis this paper considers the role of monetary aggregates in modern macroeconomic models of the new keynesian type the focus is on possible developments of these models that are suggested by the monetarist literature and that in addition seem justified empirically both the relation between money and inflation and between money and aggregate demand are considered regarding the first relation it is argued that both the mean and the dynamics of inflation in present day models are governed by money growth this relationship arises from a conventional aggregate demand channel claims that an emphasis on the link between monetary aggregates and inflation requires a direct channel connecting money and inflation are wide of the mark the relevance of money for aggregate demand in turn lies not via real balance effects or any other justification for money in the is equation but on money s ability to serve as a proxy for the various substitution effects of monetary policy that exist when many asset prices matter for aggregate demand this role for monetary aggregates which is supported by empirical evidence enhances the value of money to monetary policy

do monetary indicators lead euro area inflation abstract this paper assesses based on euro area data whether the strong in sample long run link between money growth and inflation that has been highlighted by a number of recent empirical studies is exploitable to predict inflation out of sample the results from standard bivariate forecasting models suggest that no monetary nor any other single indicator significantly outperforms a simple benchmark forecast the further analysis shows that it would be premature however to discard based on such evidence the usefulness of monetary and all other indicators first it is shown that based on judgemental adjustments to monetary indicators correcting for the effects of identifiable persistent velocity shifts it appears possible to significantly improve predictive ability in real time second i find that a factor forecasting model combining monetary and economic indicators which can be regarded as a generalized quantity theory or two pillar phillips curve forecasting model delivers a fairly good and stable forecasting performance

energy decomposition analysis iea model versus other methods abstract in energy decomposition analysis the international energy agency iea model which is based on the laspeyres index method is included in a recent international collaborative initiative on energy indicators for sustainable development for possible adoption iaea 2005 energy indicators for sustainable development guidelines and methodology international atomic energy agency vienna www pub iaea org mtcd publications pdf pub1222 web pdf from an empirical analysis using the data of the united states we found that the residual term given by the iea model could be significant and that the estimates of the impacts of structure and intensity changes given by the model could be quite different from those given by other decomposition methods the residual term tends to be large when changes in structure and or energy intensity variables are significant since changes in these variables over time are generally larger in the developing countries than in the iea countries there is the question about whether the iea model is an appropriate decomposition method for the developing countries

accounting for the carbon associated with regional tourism consumption this paper examines the carbon footprint associated with tourism spending in a regional economy using an input output framework the method adopted permits an analysis of the carbon embodied in both domestically produced and imported goods and services consequent on tourism consumption in the region in this way the analysis comprises a statement of environmental externalities which can be set beside a developing tourism satellite account tsa framework and which also provides useful information on selected externalities associated with tourism consumption

using the concept of yield to assess the sustainability of different tourist types abstract sustainability assessments have become important tools for decision makers this research assesses the sustainability of different types of tourists in new zealand by using the concept of yield and by developing yield indicators in the areas of financial public sector and sustainable yield the concept and indicators have been developed in cooperation with the new zealand tourism sector and therefore provide a sector driven approach to implement a sustainability assessment the analysis shows that there are numerous trade offs between indicators when attempting to define the ideal visitor type coach tourists for example are the largest spenders and generate the greatest value added in tourism on a per day basis but they contribute less to the financial sustainability of tourism when the costs of capital are accounted for coach tourists are highly concentrated in a few key destinations and at the same time produce substantial amounts of co2 emissions due to their air travel component in contrast backpacker and camping tourists provide greater financial yield and are more dispersed but they are also the greatest user of publicly provided tourist attractions and therefore come at a higher cost to government than other tourist types camping tourists are also contributing considerably to co2 emissions the yield analysis proposed in this paper could be a valuable tool for complex policy decision making and identifying strategies that lead to high yield tourism

two illustrations of the quantity theory of money of two central implications of the quantity theory of money that a given change in the rate of change in the quantity of money induces i an equal change in the rate of price inflation and ii an equal change in nominal rates of interest the illustrations were obtained by comparing moving averages of the three variables in question using quarterly u s time series for the period 1953 77 readers may find the results of interest as additional confirmation of the quantity theory as an example of one way in which the quantity theoretic relationships can be uncovered via atheoretical methods from time series which are subject to a variety of other forces or as a measure of the extent to which the inflation and interest rate experience of the postwar period can be understood in terms of purely classical monetary forces the theoretical background of the study is reviewed very briefly as it is familiar material in the next section the data processing methods are described and rationalized in section ii the illustrations

voluntary environmental agreements good or bad news for environmental protection abstract there has been growing interest in the use of voluntary agreements vas as an environmental policy tool this article uses a simple model to determine whether vas are likely to lead to efficient environmental protection we consider cases where polluters are induced to participate either by a background threat of mandatory controls the stick approach or by cost sharing subsidies the carrot approach the results suggest that the overall impact on environmental quality could be positive or negative depending on a number of factors including the allocation of bargaining power the magnitude of the background threat and the social cost of funds

non mandatory approaches to environmental protection the approach to environmental protection has been evolving from a regulation driven adversarial government push approach to a more proactive approach involving voluntary and often business led initiatives to self regulate their environmental performance this has been accompanied by increasing provision of environmental information about firms and products to enlist market forces and communities in creating a demand for corporate environmental self regulation by signaling their preferences for environmentally friendly firms this paper provides an overview of the non mandatory approaches being used for environmental protection and surveys the existing theoretical literature analyzing the economic efficiency of such approaches relative to mandatory approaches it also discusses empirical findings on the factors motivating self regulation by firms and its implications for their economic and environmental performance it examines the existing evidence on the extent to which information disclosure is effective in generating pressures from investors and communities on firms to improve their environmental performance

money growth output gaps and inflation at low and high frequency spectral estimates for switzerland abstract while central banks generally have abandoned monetary targeting many continue to attach weight to monetary aggregates in setting policy this raises the issue of how money can be combined with other variables when analysing inflation we decompose inflation in switzerland into two frequency bands and show that inflation is granger caused by monetary factors at low frequencies defined as those corresponding to periodicities of more than 4 years but is granger caused by the output gap at high frequencies we also estimate phillips curve models that are augmented by the low frequency components of the monetary factors

money still makes the world go round the zonal view many leading monetary economists have come to regard the monetary aggregates as obsolete measures of the monetary policy stance this critique has led some to view money as having lost its central role in the conduct of monetary policy we say to those advocating excising money from monetary policy not so fast to better understand the potential role for money we develop a zonal view of monetary policy which reflects the historical regularity for the relative informativeness of the quantitative measures of monetary policy such as the monetary aggregates and real interest rates to depend on the inflation zone in which a central bank finds itself the zones range from high inflation zone 1 to deep deflation zone 5 with intermediate zones of moderate inflation zone 2 low inflation zone 3 and low deflation zone 4 we find considerable support for this view in the historical data which stretches back to the 19 th century seen from this perspective the past experience of central banks casts doubt on the singular importance often attributed to the short term real interest rate as an indicator of the stance of monetary policy this applies especially in the current low inflation environment in which many central banks find themselves the zonal view has far reaching implications for monetary policy frameworks for the analytical efforts to understand the monetary policy transmission mechanism and for central bank communication strategies this paper was prepared for the 21 st congress of the european economic association held in vienna on august 27 2006 the views expressed in the paper are solely those of the authors

why has u s inflation become harder to forecast we examine whether the u s rate of price inflation has become harder to forecast and to the extent that it has what changes in the inflation process have made it so the main finding is that the univariate inflation process is well described by an unobserved component trend cycle model with stochastic volatility or equivalently an integrated moving average process with time varying parameters this model explains a variety of recent univariate inflation forecasting puzzles and begins to explain some multivariate inflation forecasting puzzles as well

energy consumption carbon dioxide emissions and economic development evaluating alternative and plausible environmental hypothesis for sustainable growth abstract pursuit of excellence in economic development in the midst of damaging the natural environment is a shameless growth the economic impacts on environmental degradation are quite visible in industrialized economies where human health is compromised by rapid economic growth and energy induced emissions this study examines the interrelationship between energy consumption economic growth and carbon dioxide co2 emissions under the six alternative and plausible hypothesis including environmental kuznets curve ekc pollution haven hypothesis phh population based emissions ipat energy led emissions sectoral growth emissions and emissions emancipated human development index ehdi in the context of low and middle income countries high income countries and in aggregated panel over the period of 1975 2015 the results supported the ekc hypothesis ipat hypothesis energy induced emissions and sectoral growth emissions in different regions of the world while phh and ehdi hypothesis does not confirm across regions this study exclusively determines the key socio economic and environmental problems in a large pool of the world economies to understand the need of development policy agenda for sustainable growth

toward a theoretical model of voluntary overcompliance abstract we explain why some firms voluntarily overcomply with environmental regulation in our model all consumers value environmental quality but differ in their willingness to pay which depends on their income levels publicly available information on environmental performance of firms enables consumers to identify clean firms firms participate in a two stage duopoly game where they first choose their levels of cleaning technology and next engage in price competition the market gets segmented by income levels a minimum standard binding on the dirty firm has the effect of improving the performance of the cleaner firm a subsidy obtains the same competitive outcome

is carbon emission growth decoupled from economic growth in emerging countries new insights from labor and investment effects abstract as emerging countries are both major contributors to global carbon emissions growth and global economic growth the sharp contradiction between economy and carbon emissions has seriously hindered the sustainable development of emerging countries and is not conducive to the realization of global emission reduction targets this work takes brics brazil russia india china and south africa the representatives of emerging countries as an example to investigate the decoupling state between economic growth and carbon emissions and to uncover the driving factors behind these decoupling the results show i russia and south africa have experienced the longest time of strong decoupling indicating that the decoupling in these two countries is better than that in other countries china india and south africa was characterized by expansive coupling weak decoupling and expansive negative decoupling respectively ii the labor effect and investment effect have contributed to the carbon emissions growth in the brics and the reasons for the carbon emissions changes in russia india china and south africa are strongly consistent while brazil has a different performance iii the investment decoupling effect has hindered the decoupling process in russia south africa china and india but has promoted the decoupling process in brazil while the energy intensity effect is the driving force in the decoupling process in most countries finally the policy recommendations for the different decoupling status of each country were put forward

change in energy related co2 carbon dioxide emissions in portuguese tourism a decomposition analysis from 2000 to 2008 abstract tourism is an activity with great potential in portugal at a time of economic crisis tourism is seen as an opportunity to boost the economy and provide sustainable economic growth this strategic path based on tourism has to be accomplished in order to make better use of the economic advantages but at the same time respecting the environment and environmental goals to which portugal is committed so it becomes important to analyze what effects contribute more to emissions in this sector as well as which tourism subsectors are more responsible for the increase of emissions the objective of this work is to identify the effects in which co2 carbon dioxide emissions in tourism can be broken down and analyzed as well as their evolution and which of them has more importance in determining emissions for that in this study a decomposition technique based on logarithmic mean divisia index was used in the 2000 2008 period for five tourism subsectors in portugal in general tourism activity is the most important effect energy mix carbon intensity and energy intensity effects also proved important

can ecolabeling schemes preserve the environment a three stage game of production technology signal and price competition is developed to study the impact of eco labeling in a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation the production technology and the subsequent pollution level are non observable by consumers the only way to inform consumers about the environmental quality of the product is to stick an ecolabel on it however a polluting firm may also usurp the ecolabel by incurring a certain cost by assuming that consumers are altruistic and willing to pay for environmental quality we show that ecolabels can reduce the pollution level finally and importantly under restrictive conditions on labeling cost ecolabeling can constitute to some extent an environmentally effective and economically efficient policy however ecolabeling cannot alone internalize the whole negative externality until the optimum point

central bank misperceptions and the role of money in interest rate rules research with keynesian style models has emphasized the importance of the output gap for policies aimed at controlling inflation while declaring monetary aggregates largely irrelevant critics however have argued that these models need to be modified to account for observed money growth and inflation trends and that monetary trends may serve as a useful cross check for monetary policy we identify an important source of monetary trends in form of persistent central bank misperceptions regarding potential output simulations with historical output gap estimates indicate that such misperceptions may induce persistent errors in monetary policy and sustained trends in money growth and inflation if interest rate prescriptions derived from keynesian style models are augmented with a cross check against money based estimates of trend inflation inflation control is improved substantially

the lmdi approach to decomposition analysis a practical guide in a recent study ang energy policy 32 2004 compared various index decomposition analysis methods and concluded that the logarithmic mean divisia index method is the preferred method since the literature on the method tends to be either too technical or specific for most potential users this paper provides a practical guide that includes the general formulation process summary tables for easy reference and examples

eco resorts vs mainstream accommodation providers an investigation of the viability of benchmarking environmental performance abstract per capita energy and water consumption figures of five fully accredited eco resorts were benchmarked against 11 hotels 13 condominium complexes and six caravan parks located in three major tourist destinations in queensland australia somewhat surprisingly it appears some eco resorts fail to achieve above average standards with respect to these dimensions of environmental performance the most efficient resource consumption outcomes were evident where resource use efficiency was factored in at the early stage of resort planning a noteworthy observation was that none of the businesses investigated could provide data for waste and wastewater production the problems of developing a benchmarking process for the consumption of water and electricity by accommodation providers are discussed a major obstacle was found in the fact that consumption rates are influenced by a multitude of site specific characteristics such as age of building building size and layout nature of operation extent of communal facilities climate etc with such a large number of factors affecting energy and water consumption one is drawn into the problem of how many benchmarking groups need to be developed in order for benchmarking accommodation complex resource consumption to be a meaningful exercise this also renders problematic the development of environmental compliance accreditation criteria the study s findings renew concerns about the focus of some industry administered green accreditation schemes and the emphasis placed on their role as a key instrument for promoting more sustainable outcomes for the tourist accommodation sector

dynamic linkages between sustainable tourism energy health and wealth evidence from top 80 international tourist destination cities in 37 countries this study examines the relationship between sustainable tourism energy health and wealth in a panel of 37 tourists induced countries that covered around top 80 international tourist destination cities the panel generalized method of moments gmm estimator is used to evaluate the dynamic linkages between the variables the results show that inbound tourism has a positive relationship with energy demand health expenditures per capita income fdi inflows trade and carbon dioxide co2 emissions while outbound tourism increases health expenditures international tourism receipts and global financial crisis increases greenhouse gas ghg emissions and co2 emissions respectively economic growth and trade openness both increases inbound tourism while fdi inflows increase tourism receipts the study confirms environmental kuznets curve ekc for co2 emissions and ghg emissions which eventually indicates that growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity in the premises of international tourism indicators the results further validate the tourism led growth hypothesis in a panel of selected countries

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

to what extent are eu steel companies susceptible to competitive loss due to climate policy abstract in recognition of their competitive vulnerability a set of special rules have been devised for managing sectors such as iron and steel within the eu ets under these rules the eu steel sector has received free allocations in excess of their compliance needs to now and will continue to receive some free allowances up to 2020 however perceptions of the sector s competitive vulnerability have been largely based on inherently hypothetical analyses which rely heavily on counterfactual scenarios and abatement cost estimates often provided by firms themselves this paper explores how the three largest steel firms in the eu acerlormittal corus and thyssenkrupp have sought to strategically exaggerate their vulnerability to carbon pricing to the effect of an inefficient policy outcome we conduct a qualitative assessment of two of the key narratives underpinning the competitive vulnerability argument of eu steel companies lack of abatement opportunities and inability to pass through cost increases based on interviews case studies and publicly available data we find that these arguments provide only partial and weak justifications for competitive loss and preferential treatment under the eu ets the strategy however remains successful due to information asymmetry and the peculiar political economy of eu climate regulation

the information content of money in forecasting euro area inflation this article contributes to the debate on the role of money in monetary policy by analysing the information content of money in forecasting euro area inflation we compare the predictive performance within and among various classes of structural and empirical models in a consistent framework using bayesian and other estimation techniques we find that money contains relevant information for inflation in some model classes money based new keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge models and vector autoregressions vars incorporating money perform better than their cashless counterparts but there are also indications that the contribution of money has its limits the marginal contribution of money to forecasting accuracy is often small money adds little to dynamic factor models and it worsens forecasting accuracy of partial equilibrium models finally nonmonetary models dominate monetary models in an all out horserace

the abcs of hedge funds alphas betas and costs the authors decomposed their estimated pre fee 1995 2009 hedge fund return of 11 13 percent into fees 3 43 percent an alpha 3 00 percent and a beta 4 70 percent the year by year results show that alphas were positive during every year of the past decade even during the recent financial crisis

regional analysis across colombian departments a non parametric study of energy use abstract the analysis of energy use is important in emerging economies and especially in the manufacturing industries as energy is a key factor of sustainable development this research analyses and evaluates the features of regional energy use and efficiency across colombian departments in the manufacturing industries for the period between 2005 and 2013 by applying two malmquist data envelopment analysis models the results indicate significant difference in energy use and efficiency across colombian departments in the manufacturing industries the results of the malmquist indexes determine that various manufacturing industries across colombian departments have a high potential to increase energy efficiency several manufacturing industries across colombian departments have experienced gains in productivity a growth in efficiency an improvement in the relationship between inputs and outputs and scale production and advances in innovation through new technologies this technique allows to make comparisons and improves energy policies to increase energy efficiency and decrease co 2 emissions the application of panel data models indicate that increases in energy prices exports and productivity lead to better energy use while a higher presence of energy intensive sectors and small and medium enterprises across colombian departments reduce energy efficiency the methods selected in this research generated consistent robust and reliable estimates related to energy use and co 2 emissions for regional studies the findings of this study indicate that diverse energy policies should implement in the industrial sector across colombian departments and that they should contribute to improvements in energy use especially in small and medium companies and energy intensive sectors

energy related ghg emission in agriculture of the european countries an application of the generalized divisia index abstract sustainable agriculture food security and welfare of the farmers require an integrated analysis of the performance of the agricultural sector in this paper we follow the energy environment economy framework and focus on decomposition of changes in the energy related greenhouse gas ghg emission in agricultural sectors of the selected european union eu countries the research relies on country level data from fao and eurostat describing economic activity energy use and ghg emission in the agricultural sectors of the european countries during 1995 2012 the main drivers carbon factor of energy consumed in agriculture energy intensity of agricultural production and growth in agricultural production and their impacts on the energy related ghg emissions in agriculture are analysed for selected countries the generalized divisia index is applied to decompose the changes in the energy related ghg emissions france latvia and belgium appeared as the only countries with increase in ghg emissions during 1995 2012 in the case of france energy intensity went up along with increase in the scale of agricultural production in latvia and belgium an increase in carbon factor appeared as the major factor driving an increase in ghg emissions the appropriate policies need to be employed in these countries seeking to reduce ghg emissions from energy consumption in agriculture improvements in energy efficiency appear to be a more feasible mean for ensuring further reductions in ghg emission

long run waves or short run fluctuations what establishes the correlation between oil and food prices abstractthe strong correlation between food prices and energy prices has gained much attention in the public debate in this article we focus on the so called excess co movement which is the correlation between crude oil price and the prices of food commodities after controlling for economic activity we use a frequency domain granger causality test to analyse short run and long run relationships between crude oil prices and prices of food commodities for important biofuel inputs like maize soybeans rapeseed and eu sugar we find evidence for long run granger causality in particular for the period after 2007 this supports the hypothesis that the increasing biofuel production creates the link between the prices of crude oil and food commodities however we also find short run granger causality for various food commodities this result is more in line with herd behaviour or speculation in commodity markets

the effects of money growth on inflation and interest rates across spectral frequency bands band spectral regression techniques are used to identify the frequency bands that are most important in the relationships between money growth and inflation and between money growth and the nominal interest rate the results show that cycles in the growth rate of m1 from one to two years long produce higher frequency cycles in inflation and two distinct sets of higher frequency cycles in changes in the nominal interest rate the results support models where predictable changes in money growth produce liquidity and anticipated inflation effects on nominal interest rates copyright 1994 by ohio state university press

demand elasticity estimates for new zealand tourism demand elasticities for new zealand tourism are estimated for 16 different international visitor segments segments are differentiated by origin purpose of visit and travel style elasticities for both international visitor arrivals and on the ground expenditure per arrival are estimated for each segment using time series data in general on the ground consumption per arrival is more price sensitive than number of arrivals and asian market segments are found to be more price sensitive both in terms of arrivals and on the ground expenditure compared to international visitors from other regions an application of the results is presented giving the total effect of exchange rate changes on expenditure by international visitors in new zealand and management implications are discussed

critical reflections on the economic impact assessment of a mega event the case of 2002 fifa world cup abstract sport tourism has received growing attention as a source of generating significant revenue and contributing major economic benefits to host cities regions and countries however current methods for assessing economic impact have had variable success in estimating tourist numbers and expenditure directly attributable to a sport tourism mega event this paper reports on the assessment of one such event the 2002 fifa world cup in south korea using an estimation method that excluded tourists whose travel was non event related the survey research conducted during the event established that 57 7 of total tourist arrivals during the period of the event could be classified as either directly and indirectly attracted by the world cup using this data it was calculated that the world cup generated an economic impact of us 1 35 billion of output sales us 307 million of income and us 713 million of value added for south korea the results also showed that foreign world cup tourists provided a much higher yield compared with foreign leisure tourists spending an estimated 1 8 times as much inclusion of the expenditure by non world cup tourists 42 3 in the calculations of impact would have resulted in a significant overestimation due to the further multiplication of the expanded figures by an input output model misleading the net economic impact of the event the use of survey data to distinguish event from non event tourists and their respective expenditure clearly illustrates some of the methodological pitfalls associated with forecasting that is simply based on generic tourist data furthermore the data generated by this assessment of net direct expenditure and economic impact using the input output analysis can be used as a comparison point for other mega sport events in terms of further research it is evident that existing models of impact assessment have not adequately conceptualized aversion and diversion effects and this begs the future inclusion of these concepts in economic impact forecasting for mega events