environmental policy vs public pressure innovation and diffusion of alternative bleaching technologies in the pulp industry abstract in the late 1980s and early 1990s concern over dioxin in both paper products and wastewater led to the development of techniques that reduced the use of chlorine in the pulp industry both regulatory and consumer pressure motivated this change unlike previous studies we use patent data to examine the evolution of two competing bleaching technologies in five major paper producing countries both of which reduce the use of chlorine in the pulping process the use of patent data allows us to focus on the invention stage however adoption data are also presented and by the end of the 1990s nearly all pulp production in these countries used one of these technologies while previous studies emphasize the importance of regulation for inducing innovation here we find substantial innovation occurring before regulations were in place instead pressure from consumers and the public at large to reduce the chlorine content of paper drove invention prior to the introduction of environmental policies in any of the countries concerned

does foreign environmental policy influence domestic innovation evidence from the wind industry this paper analyses the relative influence of domestic and foreign demand pull policies in wind power across oecd countries on the rate of innovation in this technology we use annual wind power generation to capture the stringency of the portfolio of demand pull policies in place e g guaranteed tariffs investment and production tax credits and patent data as an indicator of innovation activity we find that wind technology improvements respond positively to policies both home and abroad but the marginal effect of domestic policies is 12 times greater the influence of foreign polices is reduced by barriers to technology diffusion in particular lax intellectual property rights reducing such barriers therefore constitutes a powerful policy leverage for boosting environmental innovation globally

regional innovation systems theory empirics and policy asheim b t lawton smith h and oughton c regional innovation systems theory empirics and policy regional studies interest in regional innovation systems has grown significantly over the past three decades driven partly by advances in theoretical analysis partly by the growing interest in innovation as a source of competitive advantage and partly by the need for new policies to address regional inequalities and divergence this article explores the elements and characteristics that exemplify the regional innovation systems approach it provides an appraisal and synthesis of the regional innovation systems paradigm and aims to shed light on a number of areas where theoretical empirical and policy based questions remain unanswered it outlines and assesses the major strands in recent theoretical and empirical debates and discusses how they might be developed to contribute to the further advancement of the regional innovation systems literature three interrelated questions form the key themes arou

demand pull technology push and government led incentives for non incremental technical change abstract rising expectations about future demand for new technologies increase the incentives for investments in innovation by enlarging payoffs to successful innovations how well does this notion of demand pull apply to non incremental technological change when demand is largely attributable to actions by governments in this case inventors of the most important inventions did not respond positively to strong demand pull policies filing of highly cited patents declined precipitously just as demand for wind power created a multi billion dollar market three explanations for this apparent inconsistency with the demand pull hypothesis played a role 1 the rapid convergence on a single dominant design limited the market opportunity for non incremental technical improvements 2 even though the policies implemented were stringent enough to stimulate demand uncertainty in their longevity dampened the incentives for inventions that were likely to take several years to pay off and 3 alternative explanations such as declining r d funding and weakening presidential engagement on energy appear to have been important

the impacts of petroleum price fluctuations on income distribution across ethnic groups in malaysia crude oil price hikes have compelled governments of developing countries to let domestic prices of energy increase fiscal priorities made it impossible to fully compensate the hikes by raising energy subsidies this paper examines the potential impacts of a limited deregulation of the petroleum price on the income distribution in malaysia paying specific attention to differences in impacts on major ethnic groups we introduce an extended social accounting matrix sam model which not only incorporates substitution possibilities among production inputs and consumption goods but also allows for the exogenous determination of the price of intermediate inputs the results of simulations indicate that distributional impacts of rising petroleum prices tend to be regressive affecting poor people more severely than richer people all ethnic groups experience income loss with the real incomes of malay households which are relatively poor on average more than the chinese and indian households which are the generally richer

an empirical investigation of paradoxes reswitching and reverse capital deepening in capital theory this paper examines the empirical relevance of the capital controversy the price model of sraffa and the dual models of the price and quantity systems of von neumann become the basis of the investigation in the course of the controversy it proved easy to construct theoretical examples which contradicted the fundamental neoclassical hypothesis of an inverse capital demand function this paper presents empirical examples for the first time thiry two input output tables from the oecd database serve as data as a result one envelope is found which involves reswitching reverse substitution of labour or reverse capital deepening are observed in about 3 65 of tested cases they involve at least two switchpoints copyright 2006 oxford university press

potential impacts of electricity price changes on price formation in the economy a social accounting matrix price modeling analysis for turkey recent reforms in the turkish electricity sector since 2001 aim to introduce a tariff system that reflects costs this is expected to affect the production and consumer prices of electricity the changes in electricity prices are then reflected in production costs in other segments of the economy subsequently producer and consumer prices will be affected the potential impact of the changes in electricity prices that the ongoing electricity reforms in turkey will bring about may have important implications on the price formation in economic activities and the cost of living for households this paper evaluates the potential impacts of changes in electricity prices from a social accounting matrix sam price modeling perspective it is found that based on the estimated price multipliers that prices in the energy producing sectors mining and iron and steel manufacturing sectors would be affected more severely than the remaining sectors of the economy consumer prices are affected slightly less than producer prices

local demand pull policy and energy innovation evidence from the solar photovoltaic market in china abstract market demand is an important driver for inducing innovation with many empirical studies supporting the demand induced innovation hypothesis critiques of such studies however emphasize that new empirical evidence that can address existing empirical challenges is needed furthermore existing literature disagrees about whether the locus of demand pull policy matters in this paper we use empirical evidence from the distributed solar photovoltaic pv market in china to address the following questions 1 is there evidence of demand induced innovation 2 does the effect of local demand pull policy differ from the effect of non local demand pull policy on demand induced innovation to address these questions we develop and analyze an original database of pv balance of system bos patents in the distributed pv market filed between 2005 and 2014 in china our results support the demand induced innovation hypothesis and suggest that only local demand significantly induces pv bos innovations in the distributed pv market in china the different effects of local demand and non local demand emphasize the importance of local markets and local policies lending some support to bottom up approaches to clean energy governance

behind the recent surge of chinese patenting an institutional view abstract this paper examines a number of forces that have possibly contributed to the explosive growth of chinese patenting over the past decade after a review of previous hypotheses and conventional wisdom this study proposes an additional explanation and argues that patent subsidy programs implemented by each provincial region have played an important role in the growth of chinese patenting this institutional change taking place at the province level has induced an increase in patent propensity among not only firms universities and research institutes but also individuals empirical evidence based on publicly available data provides solid support for this argument it was also found that a larger fraction of applications are granted patent rights since the implementation of such programs suggesting that reduction in patent application quality may not be a serious concern unless the criteria used for patent examination have been lowered

the aggregate production function is not neoclassical standard postulates concerning the aggregate production function are about marginal productivities and the associated demands for labour and capital these demands are supposed to be negatively related to the factor prices namely the wage rate and the interest rate the theoretical cases in which these neoclassical properties fail to hold are regarded as anomalies we compute the aggregate values for production capital and labour and find that the neoclassical postulates do not hold for the detailed dataset that we consider the obvious implication of this result is that the models and analysis based on the aggregate neoclassical production functions are ill founded as they are based on something that does not exist

assessing the influence of manufacturing sectors on electricity demand a cross country input output approach abstract the production and consumption of electricity is a major source of co2 emissions in europe and elsewhere in turn the manufacturing sectors are significant end users of electricity in contrast to most papers in the literature which focus on the supply side this study tackles the demand side of electricity an input output approach combined with a sensitivity analysis has been developed to analyse the direct and indirect consumptions of electricity by eighteen manufacturing sectors in fifteen european countries with indirect electricity demand related to the purchase of industrial products from other sectors which in turn require the consumption of electricity in their manufacturing processes we identify the industrial transactions and sectors which account for a greater share of electricity demand in addition the impact of an electricity price increase on the costs and prices of manufacturing products is simulated through a price model allowing us to identify those sectors whose manufacturing costs are most sensitive to an increase in the electricity price

impacts of a rise in electricity tariff on prices of other products in vietnam abstract this study examines the impacts of increasing electricity tariff to the long run marginal cost on prices of other products using a static input output approach it is found that such an increase would drive up the prices of all other products although the aggregate price impact from such an increase is not large it would be socially difficult to implement this increase at one time particularly given that vietnam is facing high inflation rate a roadmap for electricity tariff increase is thus discussed

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

ownership and firm innovation in a transition economy evidence from china we examine innovation performance of firms in a transition economy from an ownership perspective we focus specifically on the relationship between ownership structures and firm innovation performance drawing on data from 548 chinese firms we find volume of patent registration to be most strongly influenced by foreign ownership in the firm along with firm affiliation within a business group the influence of state and institutional ownership on innovation performance is positive but lagged contrary to expectations insider ownership leads to lower innovation performance and concentrated ownership has no significant impact our study has two principal contributions firstly we utilize a comprehensive treatment of ownership characteristics overcoming weakness in previous studies that have used a more narrow focus on ownership type secondly we contribute to understanding of how firms in transition economies build indigenous capabilities for innovation by drawing attention to the interplay of foreign and domestic control of agents innovation

behavior of the firm under regulatory constraint a recent article by akira takayama discusses an earlier paper by harvey averch and leland l johnson on fair rate of return regulation of public utilities although takayama p 255 agrees with averch and johnson s general conclusions that a firm will tend to increase its investment with the introduction of an active constraint on its rate of return he criticizes the a j argument as being confusing ambiguous and in error takayama then attempts a clarification and presents a new formulation which leads to the a j result quoted above this comment will discuss several of takayama s criticisms in addition to showing that the so called a j effect cannot be derived from the basic assumptions made by both averch and johnson and takayama 1 we will show that the very assumptions used to prove the a j effect by defining the region of x require an assumption that the a j effect exists in the first place

education and innovation adoption in agriculture evidence from hybrid rice in china this paper uses the diffusion of f1 hybrid rice as a case for examining the effects of education on the adoption of new technology in china a simple behavioral model that treats the adoption of hybrid rice as a portfolio selection problem is presented the implications of the model are tested with farm level data collected from a sample of 500 households in hunan province the results from a dichotomous probit model and a two limit tobit model are consistent with the hypothesis that education has a positive impact on the adoption of new technology

the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments a typical case of the blind men and the elephant abstract in this paper we examine the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments in four literatures theoretical models on incentives for eco innovation econometric studies based on observed data survey analysis based on stated information and technology case studies the aim of this paper is to critically examine the methods and the results we argue that the case studies literature even when its results are specific and difficult to generalise is a necessary source of empirical evidence about policy impacts and the factors responsible for these impacts pointing to issues that are neglected in the theoretical and econometric literature such as the specifics of the innovation context and policy interaction effects the paper states five synthesised findings and makes a plea for multi method analysis one other important synthesised finding is that the influence of market based instruments on innovation such as emission trading and taxes is far weaker than assumed

modeling prices in a sam structure the aim of this paper is to develop an intersectoral price model in a social accounting matrix traditionally the emphasis of the social accounting methodology has been on quantity oriented models and their income effects in contrast the authors use the social accounting matrix to develop a price model that captures the interdependence among activities households and factors and provides a complete set of accounting prices furthermore they use decomposition techniques to trace underlying general equilibrium effects copyright 1995 by mit press

the politics of regulation in the turkish electricity market abstract turkey began reforming the electricity market in 2001 the regulatory reform aimed to liberalize the market however the institutional and political structure was not ready for creating an efficiently working competition the independent regulator did not have both experience and will to direct the industry to a more competitive environment currently the reform has slowed down and political preferences drive the industry this paper studies the reasons for the slowdown in the reform efforts by focusing on the relationships between the government judiciary and the independent regulator we conclude that strategic behaviors of players in the market including the judiciary the government and the regulator have made the introduction of competition to the market more costly

structural path analysis and multiplier decomposition within a social accounting matrix framework the main purpose of this paper is to apply structural path analysis to a social accounting matrix sam framework because the sam is a comprehensive essentially general equilibrium data system the whole network through which influence is transmitted can be identified and specified through structural path analysis the latter provides an alternative and much more detailed way to decompose multipliers as compared with the traditional treatment of stone 1978 and pyatt and round 1979 this paper consists of five sections the first one reviews the sam framework as a basis for multiplier analysis and multiplier decomposition in particular the additive decomposition in terms of transfer open loop and closed loop effects is succinctly presented section ii applies this conventional decomposition to a sam of south korea to illustrate with eleven specific cases the effects of an exogenous injection on the endogenous accounts of the sam i e the incomes of the factors household groups and production activities section iii is devoted to the presentation of the elements of structural analysis and more particularly the transmission of economic influence within a structure finally section iv applies structural path analysis to the south korean sam and compares and contrasts the multiplier decomposition which it yields with the alternative decomposition discussed in section ii the comparison is the more significant in that the two decomposition methods are applied to the same eleven selected cases spanning a variety of sectors i e poles of origin for the injection and sectors poles of destination the empirical analysis in section iv suggests that structural path analysis applied to a sam is a potentially operationally useful technique within which a whole series of policy issues can be addressed the final section is devoted to a brief summary and conclusions

the economy wide impact of controlling energy consumption in indonesia an analysis using a social accounting matrix framework escalating oil prices and the need to control carbon emissions sound the alarm for indonesia to reduce or be more efficient in its energy use instead of eliminating the fuel oil subsidy to promote better and more efficient use of energy the indonesian government seems to be more in favour of restricting energy use by for example requiring all hotels restaurants night clubs and other business activities to close down by 1 am societies need to understand the full consequences of adopting restricting energy use and more efficient energy use strategies toward their incomes this paper aims to analyse the impact on the economy of energy policies aiming to reduce and to improve the efficiency of energy use particularly on the income of various household groups this paper will first construct a social accounting matrix for indonesia with detailed energy sectors and second utilise various multiplier analyses to observe and understand the impact of these energy policies

effects and mechanism of influence of china s resource tax reform a regional perspective abstract china s resource tax reform beginning with xinjiang as a pilot area in june 2010 marked a new stage in the progression of china s resource tax system based on the 2007 social accounting matrix sam for xinjiang constructed by ourselves this paper takes a regional perspective on china s resource tax reform to quantitatively calculate its degree of influence and qualitatively analyze its mechanism of influence by adopting an energy computable general equilibrium cge model and a sam price model the results show that the main significance of the reform lies in bolstering local government finances rather than energy conservation or carbon reduction this is because revenue will be transferred from resource enterprises and the central government to the local government while simultaneously the low tax rate narrow tax scope and unreasonable price mechanism will combine to prevent the reform from reaching its environmental goals promoting resource price mechanism reform and deepening resource tax reform will be two key elements of china s future energy strategies because resource enterprises will bear the increased burden caused by the reform the degree of sectoral price increases will be limited therefore the fear that resource tax reform will push up inflation is unnecessary and should not be a barrier to reform

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

the surrogate wage function and capital theory with measurement technological change induces a structural change in both the values tableau and the prices tableau of an economy the measurable change in the values tableau reveals the labor saving effect and the measurable change in the prices tableau reveals the cost reducing effect a measure preserving transformation between the values tableau and the prices tableau provides the basis for an unambiguous definition of the aggregate capital labor ratio notion as a function of the rate of profit the paper shows that the direction of shifts in the capital functions of an economy depend on the relative strength of the labor saving effect versus the cost reducing effect of technological change if the cost reducing effect of technological change is greater less than the labor saving effect then the capital labor ratio decreases increases and the system generates a rising falling tendency for the rate of profit

technological change in canada 1961 80 an application of the surrogate wage function this paper applies c ozol s surrogate wage function to canadian input output data to analyz e the general properties of technological change during the 1961 80 p eriod technological change manifests itself in the shifts of the est imated surrogate wage curves which indicate the changing capital and labor intensities of the production system the empirical results of this study imply that technological progress in canada is generally l abor saving over the entire 1961 80 period and capital saving over th e 1961 66 period the actual tendencies of the technological evolutio n investigated appear to be explained by the continuous mechanization of the production process

an integrated economic and distributional analysis of energy policies most public policies particularly those in the energy sphere have not only efficiency but also distributional effects however there is a trade off between modelling approaches suitable for calculating those impacts on the economy for the former most of the studies have been conducted with general equilibrium models whereas partial equilibrium models represent the main approach for distributional analysis this paper proposes a methodology to simultaneously carry out an analysis of the distributional and efficiency consequences of changes in energy taxation in order to do so we have integrated a microeconomic household demand model and a computable general equilibrium model for the spanish economy we illustrate the advantages of this approach by simulating a revenue neutral reform in spanish indirect taxation with a large increase of energy taxes that serve an environmental purpose the results show that the reforms bring about significant efficiency and distributional effects in some cases counterintuitive and demonstrate the academic and social utility of this approximation

measuring the influence of energy prices in the price formation mechanism abstract environmental economics has proposed taxation on energy as a way of mitigating the pollution caused by the production and use of energy based on fossil fuels however it is generally assumed that energy is an important component of production costs and that taxes on energy have a detrimental impact on the economy this paper provides a method of analysing the extent to which energy prices influence the price formation mechanism the model used is based on a social accounting matrix sam the sam price model identifies the role of energy prices in the cost and price definition processes the empirical application is for the catalan economy and shows that energy prices have a considerable influence on both production and final prices and that different forms of energy exert asymmetric impacts on costs for sectors and consumers

oil prices and the south african economy a macro meso micro analysis abstract three levels of analysis are used to track the channels by which south africa and its people are impacted by an increase of oil prices namely the macro economic level the meso economic level and the micro economic household level the paper uses an economy and energy integrated approach to quantify these different channels the approach combines a household survey dataset and an input output dataset to implement the models results indicate that the impacts on the macroeconomy are negative with gross domestic product falling and the current account balance worsening all of the industries falling into the high intensive oil use group witness an increase of their input cost that is above the economy wide average the impact of doubling paraffin prices results in poor households in rural areas and among the black population in particular witnessing an increase of their cost of living which is much higher than their corresponding highest expenditure quintile groups an increase of transport fuel hits the richer households much harder the distributional impacts of rising transport cost as a consequence of high oil and oil products prices shows that median quintile expenditure groups observe the highest impact both in urban and rural areas and especially among the black population

cost function estimates scale economies and technological progress in the turkish electricity generation sector abstract turkish electricity sector has undergone significant institutional changes since 1984 the recent developments since 2001 including the setting up of a regulatory agency to undertake the regulation of the sector and increasing participation of private investors in the field of electricity generation are of special interest this paper estimates cost functions and investigates the degree of scale economies overinvestment and technological progress in the turkish electricity generation sector for the period 1984 2006 using long run and short run translog cost functions estimations were done for six groups of firms public and private the results indicate existence of scale economies throughout the period of analysis hence declining long run average costs the paper finds empirical support for the averch johnson effect until 2001 i e firms overinvested in an environment where there are excess returns to capital but this effect was reduced largely after 2002 technological progress deteriorated slightly from 1984 1993 to 1994 2001 but improved after 2002 overall the paper found that regulation of the market under the newly established regulating agency after 2002 was effective and there are potential gains from such regulation

fostering a renewable energy technology industry an international comparison of wind industry policy support mechanisms this article examines the importance of national and sub national policies in supporting the development of successful global wind turbine manufacturing companies we explore the motivations behind establishing a local wind power industry and the paths that different countries have taken to develop indigenous large wind turbine manufacturing industries within their borders this is done through a cross country comparison of the policy support mechanisms that have been employed to directly and indirectly promote wind technology manufacturing in 12 countries we find that in many instances there is a clear relationship between a manufacturer s success in its home country market and its eventual success in the global wind power market whether new wind turbine manufacturing entrants are able to succeed will likely depend in part on the utilization of their turbines in their own domestic market which in turn will be influenced by the annual size and stability of that market consequently policies that support a sizable stable market for wind power in conjunction with policies that specifically provide incentives for wind power technology to be manufactured locally are most likely to result in the establishment of an internationally competitive wind industry