animal breeding and productivity growth of dairy farms we introduce genetic based technical change into a malmquist productivity index and measure the growth in productivity caused by bovine breeding because breeding is likely to affect milk quality we adjust milk quantities for quality differences we use panel data on icelandic dairy farms from 1997 to 2006 to estimate an input distance function the malmquist productivity index shows that the average productivity growth rate is 1 6 scale effects are the most important source of this growth but 19 of the productivity growth rate is due to breeding if quality differences are ignored the average productivity growth rate is reduced by 83

environmental degradation and real per capita output new evidence at the global level grouping countries by income levels abstract the objective of this research is to examine the relationship between real per capita output and carbon dioxide emissions both globally and by groups of countries we used panel data from 151 countries for the period 1980 2016 the countries are classified according to income levels using the world bank atlas method the argument behind this classification is that the strength of the relationship between the two variables differs according to the income levels of countries based on the theoretical framework of the kuznets environmental curve we found that there is a strong u shaped relationship between the two variables in middle high and low income countries the hypothesis of the kuznets environmental curve holds true in high income and middle high income countries the inclusion of additional covariants shows that urbanization has a positive and significant relationship with carbon dioxide emissions middle high and middle low income countries energy consumption and manufacturing have a positive and statistically significant relationship with carbon dioxide emissions in all the groups of countries a possible implication of economic policy derived from our research is that incentives to production should focus on activities that use environmentally friendly technologies to limit the irreversible damage caused by contamination

pollution and economic growth evidence from central and eastern european countries abstract we investigate the relationships between pollution and growth in eleven central and eastern european cee countries aggregate results robust to different estimators and control variables reveal an increasing nonlinear link between gdp and co2 for the group of cee countries however at a disaggregated country level the relationship between gdp and co2 is characterized by much diversity among cee countries namely n shaped inverted n u shaped inverted u monotonic or no statistical link thus despite an aggregated upward trend some cee countries managed to secure both higher gdp and lower co2 emissions from a policy perspective eu policymakers could pay more attention to these countries and amend the current unique environmental policy to account for country heterogeneities in order to support economic growth without damaging the environment

studying the relationship between economic growth co2 emissions and the environmental kuznets curve in venezuela 1980 2025 abstract this work tries to determine whether it is possible to stabilize co2 emissions under a rapid increase of gross domestic product in a medium term the paper is an effort to study in detail how changes in the driving forces of the economy affect co2 emissions we study the case of venezuela for the period 1980 2025 using the methodology proposed by robalino lopez et al 2014 2013 1 2 which is based on an extension of the kaya identity and on a gdp formation approach that includes the effect of renewable energies we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc 3 hypothesis in a coming future under different economic scenarios considering therefore not only past data but also projections for the coming years we use cointegration techniques 4 and the jaunky 2011 5 specification to test the fulfillment of the ekc hypothesis in venezuela our predictions show that venezuela does not fulfill the ekc hypothesis but however the country could be on the way to achieve environmental stabilization in the medium term this stabilization could be accomplished combining economic growth with increasing use of renewable energy appropriated changes in the energy matrix and in the productive sectoral structure

intertemporal lifestyle changes and carbon emissions evidence from a china household survey abstract this paper examines the endogenous evolution of household consumption patterns and household carbon emissions hces by integrating the analysis methods of income distribution with climate change based on a large scale household survey spanning from 2012 to 2016 in china we estimated the direct and indirect hces observed inverse u shaped carbon kuznets curves ckc and significant changes in hces over the period at the household level applying the oaxaca blinder method we decomposed factors causing the changes in hces and found that income and demographic effects contribute only 25 1 to the total increase of hces the other 74 9 remain unexplained and we define them as the effect of intertemporal lifestyle changes further analysis from multiple perspectives illustrates that the lifestyles of households across various social strata are becoming increasingly higher carbon intensive over time even though the income remains unchanged the findings indicate that existing modeling and projections of carbon emissions based on income and household characteristics may underestimate the future emissions pressure from the household sector hence we conclude that in order to reach more meaningful results the increasing effect of lifestyles should be taken into account when conducting climate change studies and formulating climate policies

fairness in public good provision an investigation of preferences for equality and proportionality a binary public good voting mechanism is designed to test for preferences for income equality and cost benefit proportionality the voting design isolates preferences for equality from those for proportionality and controls for alternative external preferences such as altruism envy and the rawlsian difference principle individuals choose between greater income or fairness in these demand revealing votes treatments vary whether the positions of voters are earned or random whether votes are hypothetical or real and whether they are over gains or losses significant deviations from self interested voting are observed in all treatments testing for equality and in some treatments testing for proportionality

is there agreement between beneficiaries on who should bear the costs of conserving farm landscapes abstract in recent years market based incentives have been regarded as a potential solution for addressing market failure related to environmental externalities determining the optimal payment schedule to facilitate such market mechanism typically involves a valuation exercise to capture the static benefits received by beneficiary groups from the public good in this study we augment the valuation estimates with a notion of fair share by assessing opinions of two beneficiary groups tourists and bed and breakfast owners regarding an acceptable division of the burden of financing the public good we find a significant difference in views tourists believe that their accommodation providers should contribute almost twice the amount that they themselves are willing to pay on the contrary a majority of bed and breakfast owners surveyed were against burdening tourists with any additional payments

carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth panel data evidence from developing countries in this paper we test the environment kuznet s curve ekc hypothesis for 43 developing countries we suggest examining the ekc hypothesis based on the short and long run income elasticities that is if the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run income elasticity then it is evident that a country has reduced carbon dioxide emissions as its income has increased our empirical analysis based on individual countries suggests that jordan iraq kuwait yemen qatar the uae argentina mexico venezuela algeria kenya nigeria congo ghana and south africa approximately 35 per cent of the sample carbon dioxide emissions have fallen over the long run that is as these economies have grown emissions have fallen since the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run elasticity we also examine the ekc hypothesis for panels of countries constructed on the basis of regional location using the panel cointegration and the panel long run estimation techniques we find that only for the middle eastern and south asian panels the income elasticity in the long run is smaller than the short run implying that carbon dioxide emission has fallen with a rise in income

economic development and co2 emissions a nonparametric panel approach we examine the empirical relation between co2 emissions per capita and gdp per capita during the period 1960 1996 using a panel of 100 countries relying on the nonparametric poolability test of baltagi et al baltagi b h hidalgo j li q 1996 a nonparametric test for poolability using panel data journal of econometrics 75 345 367 we find evidence of structural stability of the relationship we then specify a nonparametric panel data model with country specific effects estimation results show that this relationship is upward sloping nonparametric specification tests do not reject monotonicity but do reject the polynomial functional form which leads to the environmental kuznets curve in several studies

carbon pricing efficacy cross country evidence to date there has been an absence of cross country empirical studies on the efficacy of carbon pricing in this paper we present estimates of the contribution of carbon pricing to reducing national carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fuel combustion using several econometric modelling approaches that control for other key policies and for structural factors that are relevant for emissions we use data for 142 countries over a period of two decades 43 of which had a carbon price in place at the national level or below by the end of the study period we find evidence that the average annual growth rate of co2 emissions from fuel combustion has been around 2 percentage points lower in countries that have had a carbon price compared to countries without an additional euro per tonne of co2 in carbon price is associated with a reduction in the subsequent annual emissions growth rate of approximately 0 3 percentage points all else equal while it is impossible to fully control for all relevant influences on emissions growth our estimates suggest that the emissions trajectories of countries with and without carbon prices tend to diverge over time

the impact of economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the economic growth and co2 emissions in azerbaijan a cointegration analysis is conducted over the period 1992 2013 for getting more robust results johansen ardlbt dols fmols and ccr methods are employed to explore cointegration and estimate long run coefficients we use cubic quadratic and linear specifications and conclude that the last one is an adequate representation for the impact of the economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan the results from the different cointegration methods are consistent with each other and show that the economic growth has a positive and statistically significant impact on the emissions in the long run implying that the ekc hypothesis does not hold for azerbaijan the income elasticity of co2 emissions using different methods is found to be between 0 7 and 0 8 moreover we find that any short run imbalance can be adjusted towards the long run equilibrium path within less than one year the paper concludes that measures to increase energy efficiency carbon pricing instruments in production and international domestic trade activities and nationwide social awareness programs to instruct about the negative consequences of pollution can be considered as relevant environmental policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

how economic growth affects emissions an investigation of the environmental kuznets curve in portuguese and spanish economic activity sectors abstract it is a disquieting reality that increased economic growth for many years now in the western world is at odds with environmental degradation in this paper the relationship between economic growth and environmental variables is analyzed under two non linear specifications a quadratic and a cubic specification the study is conducted for portugal and spain in the period 1975 2012 using data for 13 sectors gva is used as proxy for income while energy use and carbon dioxide account for environmental degradation there is evidence for an inverted u shaped ekc however there are also other inverted n shaped functions that explain the relationship between economic growth and emissions altogether empirical results do indicate particular differences between portuguese and spanish sectors the results are of interest not only for researchers but also for policy makers political mitigation measures are also analyzed

consumer supplier government triangular relations rethinking the uk policy path for carbon emissions reduction from the uk residential sector abstract the uk residential household sector is responsible for approximately 30 of total carbon dioxide emissions and is often seen as the most promising in terms of early reductions as most direct household emissions come from only two fuel sources this paper critically examines how existing emissions reduction policies for the sector shape and are shaped by relations between the three main groups of actor in this policy domain central government gas and electricity suppliers and energy users focusing on relations between three dyads government suppliers suppliers consumers and consumers government enables us to examine aspects of demand reduction that have often been overlooked to date by relations we refer to services power relationships and flows of capital and information as well as less easily defined elements such as loyalty trust and accountability the paper argues that the chosen government policy path to deliver demand reduction which heavily emphasises the suppliers role suffers from principal agent problems fails to align consumers and supplier interests toward emissions reduction and does not yet portray a lower carbon future in positive terms it suggests that more attention should be paid to government consumer relations recognising that energy consumers are also citizens

the public private divide in household behavior how far into home can energy guidance reach abstract environmental problems in the energy system often originate from everyday activities and choices everyday activities in the home are part of the private sphere that can be contested in relation to energy policies this article discusses the public private divide in energy policies and how swedish municipal energy consultants understand the divide by analyzing the actions of energy consultants and their efforts to influence households as well as how households perceive this guidance i will discuss the public private discourse in relation to energy policy and how this discourse can be a restriction for the energy consultants to reach their full potential the consultants found it problematic to discuss behavioral issues because they did not know how to relate to people s everyday life activities without intruding on private and personal matters for the households tailored information and feedback was not perceived as the consultant trespassing in the private sphere instead the householders highlight the possibilities of such mapping lessoned learned from sweden is that state subsidies to local energy consultants is a good way to reach households but that they need to develop their methods and use more tailored information

are oil shocks permanent or temporary panel data evidence from crude oil and ngl production in 60 countries this paper examines the unit root properties of crude oil production for 60 countries employing a range of panel data unit root tests for the period 1971 to 2003 the study first employs a number of panel data tests that do not accommodate structural breaks and then proceeds to apply the lagrange multiplier lm panel unit root test with one structural break the results of the panel data tests without a structural break are inconclusive with at best mixed support for joint stationarity the findings from the lm panel unit root test with a structural break however are conclusive suggesting that for a world panel and smaller regional based panels crude oil and ngl production are jointly stationary

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

linking consumer energy efficiency with security of supply most modern energy policies seek to achieve systematic ongoing incremental increases in consumer energy efficiency since this contributes to improved security of supply favourable environmental outcomes and increased economic efficiency yet realised levels of efficiency are typically well below the most cost effective equilibrium due to variety of behavioural and organisational barriers which are often linked to information constraints in addition efficient users are normally unrewarded for collective benefits to system security and to the environment thus reducing the incentives for energy consumers to invest in efficiency improvements this paper examines the dichotomies and symmetries between supply and demand side solutions to energy security concerns and reviews opportunities to overcome barriers to improved consumer efficiency a security market is identified as a mechanism to promote both demand and supply side investments that support electricity system security such a market would assist in setting the optimal quantity of reserves while achieving an efficient balance between supply and demand side initiatives it would also help to smooth overall investment throughout the energy system by encouraging incremental approaches such as distributed generation and demand side alternatives where they provide competitive value although the discussion is applicable to energy systems in general it focuses primarily on electricity in new zealand

innovation and performance evidence at micro level this empirical study aims to shed light on the link between innovation and economic performance at micro level based on a comprehensive survey among dairy and crop farms in the netherlands we estimate a structural multi stage model to deliver evidence on the effect of engagement and investment in innovation on the production of product process and organizational or marketing innovations as well as on the effect of such innovations on farm level productivity the results suggest various market and farm behaviour related factors to stimulate an increase in innovation engagement and production furthermore the study reveals that indeed a greater innovation investment per unit innovation input leads to a higher probability of producing at least one successful product process and or organizational or marketing innovation innovation output the production of process and organizational or marketing related innovation leads to significant productivity gains various recommendations towards a more effective and efficient innovation policy are finally given

economic growth co2 emissions and energy consumption what causes what and where abstract this paper applies panel vector autoregression pvar along with a system generalized method of moment system gmm to examine the dynamic causal relationship between economic growth carbon emissions and energy consumption for 116 countries over the period 1990 2014 using multivariate model the empirical results from this study have established key relationships which have important policy implications first at the global and regional levels economic growth does not cause energy consumption second with the exception of the global and caribbean latin america economic growth has no causal impact on carbon emissions however economic growth has a negative impact on carbon emissions at the global level and the caribbean latin america third carbon emissions positively cause economic growth fourth energy consumption positively causes economic growth in sub saharan africa while it negatively causes economic growth at the global middle east and north africa mena asia pacific and caribbean latin america fifth energy consumption positively causes carbon emissions in mena but causes carbon emissions negatively in sub saharan africa and caribbean latin america lastly with the exception of mena and the global sample carbon emissions do not cause energy consumption the impulse response function shows evidence of environmental kuznets curve at the global scale and sub saharan africa the policy implications of this paper are discussed

the rationale for energy efficiency policy assessing the recognition of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency retrofit policy the rationale for energy efficiency policy can be framed in terms of a variety of different benefits this paper considers how different benefits have been used within the overall rationale for energy efficient retrofit policy in different contexts we posit that different rationales may be used for the same policy response and that the form of rationale used may affect the design delivery or the level of policy support with different rationales making it easier to account for different results considering retrofit policy in the contexts of the uk germany new zealand and ireland we characterise policy rationale in each case assessing what the key perceived benefits have been and whether they have changed over time the analysis identifies some marked differences between cases with the recognition of benefits and the ensuing policy rationale resulting from a complex mix of political social and economic influences we find that recognition of multiple benefits may not equate with multiplied policy support and instead it is more likely that different rationales will have relevance at different times for different audiences the findings highlight that alongside evidence for policy it is important to also consider how the overall rationale for policy is eventually framed

stalemate in energy markets supply extension versus demand reduction abstract a demand curve for electricity intensity of the oecd economies is discussed based on a 1998 sample the long run price elasticity of intensity is assessed at 1 17 clearly not smaller than 1 refuting the allegation that lower prices guarantee lower bills the regression shows that electricity efficiency improvement is stronger than the height of the price and so that industrial nations with a high price tax policy reveal the smaller budget shares of electricity bills in gdp high end use prices taxes are not harmful to the economies but a necessity to trigger efficiency while efficiency seems not feasible without high end use prices nations as an aggregate react on electricity budget shares that they try to keep within acceptable affordable boundaries the analysis confirms that there still exist huge unexploited efficiency potentials but once the physical limits of efficiency are attained that non energy policies must take over to limit energy consumption end use demand reduction is discussed to be also more efficient and more effective than supply extension for meeting the energy needs the final question why the better options are overridden by the worse ones brings us to the discussion of barriers where the discussion is limited to a distinction between natural and artificial barriers to energy efficiency

the effects of electricity consumption economic growth financial development and foreign direct investment on co2 emissions in kuwait abstract this study examined the empirical effects of economic growth electricity consumption foreign direct investment fdi and financial development on carbon dioxide co2 emissions in kuwait using time series data for the period 1980 2013 to achieve this goal we applied the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach and found that cointegration exists among the series findings indicate that economic growth electricity consumption and fdi stimulate co2 emissions in both the short and long run the vecm granger causality analysis revealed that fdi economic growth and electricity consumption strongly granger cause co2 emissions based on these findings the study recommends that kuwait reduce emissions by expanding its existing carbon capture utilization and storage plants capitalizing on its vast solar and wind energy reducing high subsidies of the residential electricity scheme and aggressively investing in energy research to build expertise for achieving electricity generation efficiency

optimal contracting with endogenous social norms research in sociology and ethics suggests that individuals adhere to social norms of behavior established by their peers within an agency framework we model endogenous social norms by assuming that each agent s cost of implementing an action depends on the social norm for that action defined to be the average level of that action chosen by the agent s peer group we show how endogenous social norms alter the effectiveness of monetary incentives determine whether it is optimal to group agents in a single or two separate organizations and may give rise to a costly adverse selection problem when agents sensitivities to social norms are unobservable

decomposition of productivity growth using distance functions the case of dairy farms in three european countries within an output distance function framework the total factor productivity growth index is decomposed into four components technical change technical and allocative efficiency and scale component we estimate stochastic translog output distance functions using panel data from dairy farms over the period 1991 94 for three european countries germany the netherlands and poland results indicate that the change in the productivity growth index in germany 6 and poland 5 are mainly dictated by the technical change component in contrast the productivity growth index in the netherlands 3 is influenced by allocative efficiency components

lifestyle factors in u s residential electricity consumption abstract a multivariate statistical approach to lifestyle analysis of residential electricity consumption is described and illustrated factor analysis of selected variables from the 2005 u s residential energy consumption survey recs identified five lifestyle factors reflecting social and behavioral patterns associated with air conditioning laundry usage personal computer usage climate zone of residence and tv use these factors were also estimated for 2001 recs data multiple regression analysis using the lifestyle factors yields solutions accounting for approximately 40 of the variance in electricity consumption for both years by adding the household and market characteristics of income local electricity price and access to natural gas variance accounted for is increased to approximately 54 income contributed 1 unique variance to the models indicating that lifestyle factors reflecting social and behavioral patterns better account for consumption differences than income geographic segmentation of factor scores shows distinct clusters of consumption and lifestyle factors particularly in suburban locations the implications for tailored policy and planning interventions are discussed in relation to lifestyle issues

estimation of input distance functions a system approach this article offers a methodology to address the endogeneity of inputs in the input distance function idf formulation of the production processes we propose to tackle endogenous input ratios appearing in the normalized idf by considering a flexible simultaneous system of the idf and the first order conditions from the firm s cost minimization problem our model can accommodate both technical and input allocative inefficiencies amongst firms we also present the algorithm for quantifying the cost of allocative inefficiency we showcase our cost system based model by applying it to study the production of norwegian dairy farms during the 1991 2008 period among other things we find both an economically and statistically significant improvement in the levels of technical efficiency among dairy farms associated with the 1997 quota scheme change which a more conventional single equation stochastic frontier model appears to be unable to detect

semiparametric bayesian inference of the kuznets hypothesis abstract in contrast to the parametric quadratic specification used for examining the kuznets hypothesis this study relies on the semiparametric bayesian inference of the partially linear regression to re assess the validity of an inverted u shape of the kuznets curve the simple framework permits us to perform estimation and model comparison in a unified way empirical results using cross sectional data on 75 countries indicate that there exists an approximately inverted hence asymmetric relation between inequality and per capita gdp moreover judged by the bayes factor overwhelming evidence is found in favor of our semiparametric specification finally robustness check using alternative measure of inequality and pool data confirms our findings

economic growth and atmospheric pollution in spain discussing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis posits an inverted u relationship between environmental pressure and per capita income recent research has examined this hypothesis for different pollutants in different countries despite certain empirical evidence showing that some specific environmental pressures have diminished in developed countries the hypothesis could not be generalized to the global relationship between economy and environment at all in this article we contribute to this debate analyzing the trends of annual emission flux of six atmospheric pollutants in spain the study presents evidence that there is not any correlation between higher income level and smaller emissions except for so2 whose evolution might be compatible with the ekc hypothesis the authors argue that the relationship between income level and diverse types of emissions depends on many factors thus it cannot be thought that economic growth by itself will solve environmental problems

the environmental kuznets curve semi parametrically revisited this paper re examines the existence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc across countries using a semi parametric regression estimator which places no restrictions on the functional form our results using cross country panel data on sulfur and carbon dioxide strongly suggest that the relationship between wealth and environmental degradation is not bell shaped as suggested by an ekc rather that there is a positive link for the very poorest countries and no clear relationship for richer countries

the nexus between carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth in middle east countries a panel data analysis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis assumes that there is an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental degradation and income per capita in other words as a country grows it is assumed that its environmental quality improves in this study we aim to test the ekc hypothesis for 12 middle east countries during the period 1990 2008 by employing recently developed panel data methods our results provide evidence contrary to the ekc hypothesis we found evidence favorable to the u shaped ekc for 5 middle east countries whereas an inverted u shaped curve was identified for only 3 middle east countries furthermore there appear to be no causal links between income and co 2 emissions for the other 4 countries regarding the direction of causality there appears to be a unidirectional causality from economic growth to energy consumption in the short run in the long run however the unidirectional causality chain runs from energy consumption and economic growth to co 2 emissions we also suggest some crucial policy implications depending on these results

investigating environmental kuznets curve in china aggregation bias and policy implications abstract aggregation bias may lead to a wrongly estimated environmental kuznets curve ekc and misguide the policy makers this paper aims to test the existence of aggregation bias in the environmental kuznets curve with the sulfur dioxide so2 emission the empirical methods robust to cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity reveals that the estimation of so2 ekc in china suffers from aggregation bias the results with the disaggregate data cannot support the ekc estimated at the aggregate level the finding of aggregation bias has several policy implications first the government should not be misled by the false relationship between the pollutant emission and the real gdp per capita at the aggregate level second the local governments should play more important roles in making environmental protection policies since the more disaggregate data can mitigate the aggregation bias to provide enough incentives to the local government the chinese national government should align the interests of the local governments with those of the national government on the other hand the findings indicate that china can stick to the policy of encouraging foreign direct investment openness and financial development since they have not influenced the so2 emission in china

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in the asean 5 countries a cross sectional dependence approach abstract we re examine the relationship between co2 emissions energy consumption ec and economic growth gdp for the five main association of southeast asian nations asean 5 countries over the period 1980 2016 our main contention is that the findings in previous studies that have examined the relationship between co2 ec and gdp in the asean 5 are biased because they fail to account for cross sectional dependence cd we show that conventional tests applied to our dataset suggest a misleading conclusion about the environmental kuznets curve ekc and granger causal relationship between co2 ec and gdp in the presence of cd when we apply a new panel test of granger non causality that addresses cd and heterogeneity we find considerable heterogeneity we find unidirectional granger causality running from gdp to co2 for malaysia the philippines singapore and thailand unidirectional causality running from gdp to ec in indonesia malaysia and thailand unidirectional causality running from ec to gdp in singapore and bidirectional causality between gdp and ec in the philippines we also find support for the ekc hypothesis for the asean 5 countries

carbon intensity and economic development 1962 1991 a brief exploration of the environmental kuznets curve the relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity co2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991 the inverted u curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982 this is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle income countries the curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy

using the environmental kuznets curve to evaluate energy policy some practical considerations abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc is a widely applied empirical model that is used to assess the effect of country s increased income on its emissions such as co 2 typical estimation is of a reduced form model relating per capita emissions to per capita gdp and sometimes to energy consumption with an eye toward determining whether a country s per capita emissions increase or decrease with per capita gdp in this article we consider a number of practical issues in estimating and using the ekc for energy policy analysis proper estimation procedures should be used if the empirical work is to provide valid estimates of the ekc s shape in addition policymakers should proceed with caution when crafting policy on the basis of reduced form estimates of the ekc because the reduced form model provides limited insight into the policy implications of the relationship between income energy consumption and emissions

environmental kuznets curve and financial development in pakistan abstract in this study we analyzed the effects of financial development per capita real income the square of per capita real income per capita energy consumption and openness on per capita co 2 emissions for pakistan during 1972 2013 the bound f test for cointegration yielded evidence of a long term relationship among these variables the results confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in pakistan for both the short and long term this finding indicates that at the initial stage of development the level of co 2 increases with income and after some threshold level of income this relationship may change from positive to negative as more efficient infrastructure and energy efficient technology are implemented during the development process of the country the findings of this study also reveal a significantly positive sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development has occurred at the expense of environmental quality the results further indicate that the key contributing factors to carbon emissions in pakistan are income energy consumption and financial development in addition the openness variable has no significant influence on carbon emission in either the short or long term

scale economies and inefficiency of u s dairy farms this study employs data drawn from the 2000 agricultural resource management survey a u s department of agriculture sponsored farmers survey the article estimates returns to scale relationships across dairy farms of different sizes and across different regions incorporating variables hypothesized to influence farm performance results point to significant scale economies in u s dairy farms and underscore the importance of taking account of inefficiency when estimating scale economies contrary to previous research the preferred cost function specification does not show a region of decreasing returns to scale this finding helps explain why the average size of dairy farms has been increasing

a new environmental kuznets curve relationship between direct material input and income per capita evidence from industrialised countries abstract many studies have focused on the quantification of the input of materials into the economy however the insights provided by those studies have generally been limited this paper attempts to bring analytical value to the discussion on dematerialization considering direct material input dmi per capita as the dependent variable in a test of the environmental kuznets curve ekc the explanatory variable is as usual gross domestic product per capita the quadratic and cubic versions of the ekc are tested econometrically using panel data ranging from 1960 to 1998 for 16 industrialised countries the results indicate a strong and robust support for both the quadratic and cubic ekc relationships between material input and income in industrialised economies while the statistical support to both types of evolution may seem contradictory it suggests that as industrialised economies grow the intensity of material consumption first increases but eventually starts exhibiting a decreasing trend after a certain income threshold is reached the inverted u or quadratic relationship is confirmed even though for the ranges of income considered in this study the trend is mostly on the increasing part of the inverted u curve however the statistical support to the cubic specification suggests that these results need to be regarded with caution overall the statistically stronger models are the quadratic and cubic models with country random effects and the cubic model with country and year fixed effects

fairness of prices user fee policy and willingness to pay among visitors to a national forest abstract imposing user fees in nature based tourism nbt contexts has been a controversial issue based on the notions of justice and fairness this study extended previous work examining the relationship between attitudes toward user fees and spending support in a proposed structural model of price fairness fee spending support and willingness to pay wtp this paper identified the antecedents of wtp user fees and empirically examined to what extent the data fit the model furthermore the moderating role of place attachment in the model was investigated by using multiple group structural equation modeling subjects n 562 were recreational tourists to a forest area in the southeast u s results revealed that spending support partially played a mediating role in the relationship between perceived price fairness and wtp user fees a multiple group invariance test also demonstrated that while the degree of place identity moderated the effect of price fairness on spending support the degree of place dependence did not influence the relationships among the antecedents of wtp

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

estimating the complete co2 emissions and the carbon intensity in india from the carbon transfer perspective abstract with the impacts of climate change causing widespread concerns many scholars had discussed carbon leakage in the international trade which ignored carbon transfer within domestic sectors departing from them this paper took into account energy related co2 emissions embodied in intermediate production processes we used the srio model to calculate and analyze the carbon footprint of economic sectors in india during the period of 1995 2009 and also investigated the changes in the carbon emission intensity of each sector the results showed that from the production perspective the most famous high carbon sector was egw electricity gas and water supply and this sector accounted for 60 of the co2 emissions of the secondary industry from the consumption perspective this ratio was only maintained at between 10 16 in contrast traditional low carbon sector con construction emitted the largest co2 to other sectors in addition more than 90 of the sectors showed a decreasing trend of carbon emission intensity the conclusions of this paper have important policy implications for the correct allocation of co2 emission responsibility establishment of fair and effective emission reduction policies and the transformation of low carbon economy in india

short and long run adjustments in dairy production a profit function analysis a dual profit model is developed to analyse the structure of dairy technology using farm level data for vermont potential short and long run effects of milk price reductions on output supply input demand farm size and profitability are studied the observed levels of the quasi fixed inputs family labour and herd size are found to be significantly lower than their optimal or long run equilibrium values which is consistent with a continuing shift towards fewer and larger dairy farms the analysis suggests that lower milk prices threaten the short run survival of small and medium size farms and reduce the optimal farm size in the long run

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

internalizing co2 emissions via central banks financials evidence from the world researchers and policy makers have suggested tools to mitigate co2 emissions worldwide however there appears to be uncertainty in terms of policy effectiveness the objective of this paper is to develop an innovatively effective co2 internalizing mechanism worldwide which builds on currency in circulation as its core operational tool the study is based on a large sample of countries findings show that urbanization electric power consumption and trade positively impact on co2 emissions no evidence is found in favour of the environmental kuznets curve while the use of renewable energy reduces the level of co2 emissions the paper proposes a central bank carbon dioxide emissions internalizing fund which rests on quantitative and qualitative tools to ensure a truly effective mechanism in co2 emissions abatement quantitatively this implies the use of a direct tax on currency in circulation and a conversion penalty in the fund qualitatively there is the need to establish a global institution which would ensure that funds flow to the most polluting sectors in each country in view of unleashing the strongest decline in co2 emissions

the effect of supply management on herd size in alberta dairy a supply management program limits the aggregate supply of a commodity often through the use of marketable quota licenses the static aggregate welfare effects of supply controls are well known but the farm level dynamic effects on dairy investment are not a theoretical cost of adjustment model is used to show that supply management reduces the rate of quasi fixed input adjustment at the farm level in fact when a quasi fixed input is complementary to quota licenses investment or disinvestment can be impaired to such an extent that the input moves away from the long run equilibrium as a result overinvestment in this input can significantly reduce productivity growth

environmental degradation in france the effects of fdi financial development and energy innovations abstract this paper explores the determinants of carbon emissions in france by accounting for the significant role played by foreign direct investment fdi financial development economic growth energy consumption and energy research innovations in influencing co 2 emissions function in this endeavour we employ the novel sor shahbaz et al 2017 unit root test on french time series data over the period 1955 2016 to examine the order of integration in the presence of sharp and smooth structural breaks in the variables we also apply the bootstrapping bounds testing approach recently developed by mcnown et al 2018 to investigate the presence of cointegration and the empirical findings underscore the presence of cointegration among the time series moreover we find that fdi has a positive impact while energy research innovations have a negative impact on french carbon emissions financial development lowers carbon emissions thereby improving the french environmental quality fdi degrades the environment and thus supports the pollution haven hypothesis in france similarly financial development suggests that financial stability is a required condition for improving environmental quality so are energy research innovations contrarily energy consumption is positively linked with carbon emissions however the relationship between economic growth and co 2 emissions is an inverted u which is a validation of the environmental kuznets curve ekc

air quality and economic growth an empirical study abstract in the present empirical study we have observed an inverse and sometimes u shaped relationship between environmental degradation and per capita real income as opposed to the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve ekc found in many earlier studies it was felt that a possible explanation of the observed pattern of relationship might be sought in the dynamics of the process of economic growth experienced by the countries concerned thus e g economic development may strengthen the market mechanism as a result of which the economy may gradually shift from non market to marketed energy resources that are less polluting this phenomenon may show up in the form of an inverse relationship as mentioned above also due to the global technical progress the production techniques available to the countries all over the world are becoming more and more capital intensive and at the same time less polluting this may mean that given the income level the pollution level decreases as the capital intensity of an economy rises in the present study it is indeed observed that as capital intensity increases the level of suspended particulate matter spm in the atmosphere decreases per capita real income is also found to be inversely related to spm partially but the interaction effect of per capita income and capital intensity on spm is observed to be positive this suggests that given the level of per capita income capital intensity a more capital intensive production technique a higher per capita income level would cause less pollution for spm a surprising result is also obtained i e a u turn is observed at a very high level of per capita real income i e us 12 500 at 1985 us prices this is possibly indicative of the fact that there are technological limits to industrial pollution control such that beyond a threshold level of income further rise in income cannot be achieved without environmental degradation

carbon dioxide co2 emissions during urbanization a comparative study between china and japan as the world s largest emitter of co2 china is facing increasing domestic and international pressures on emissions mitigation considering japan s leading position in energy conservation this paper conducts a comparative study between china and japan at the urbanization stages to analyze the similarities as well as differences of influencing factors of co2 emissions results indicate that although co2 emissions in japan and china showed the similar characteristics of rigid growth during the urbanization processes significant differences exist in factors such as co2 emissions per capita energy structure and energy intensity between the two countries which are the determinants for co2 emissions growth a cointegration model is constructed to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between co2 emissions and factors including gdp urbanization level energy intensity and cement manufacture empirical results show that there is a quadratic relationship between income growth and co2 emissions granger causality test is then adopted to explore the causal relationships among the variables the future co2 emissions and emission reduction potentials in china are estimated based on scenario analysis finally japan s valuable experience of reducing energy intensity and optimizing energy structure is concluded to provide important policy implications for china s strategic low carbon planning and low carbon transition

quality oriented technical change in japanese wheat breeding abstract the article presents a productivity analysis of japanese wheat breeding research we first estimate a hedonic function to determine the marginal implicit values of japanese wheat characteristics and find that protein contributes substantially to millers price offers to farmers induced innovation theory implies breeders thus should be responding to new protein oriented price policies by developing high protein wheat varieties we test this hypothesis by estimating a distance function relating breeding resources including what we call gene recharge rates to the yield and protein characteristics of discovered varieties new varieties indeed have been protein favoring and yield disfavoring suggesting government research programs have been market oriented

searching for a kuznets curve in environmental efficiency using kernel estimation abstract the paper constructs environmental efficiency indexes for a sample consisting of high and low income countries using nonparametric production frontier techniques and then establishes an environmental kuznets relationship for environmental efficiency by nadaraya watson kernel estimation methodology

parametric decomposition of output growth using a stochastic input distance function midmore peter karagiannis g tzouvelekas v parametric decomposition of output growth using a stochastic input distance function american journal of agricultural economics 2004 86 4 pp 1044 1057

is livestock research unproductive separating health maintenance from improvement research studies of the rates of return to research have usually been based on the implicit assumption that if there were no research then there would be neither growth nor decline in output or productivity in the case of livestock particularly in southern africa which has a sub tropical disease ecology and a long history of disastrous losses due to disease the assumption is especially unreasonable it ignores the losses that would have occurred in the absence of livestock health research resulting in underestimation of rates of return this study draws on data from south africa to illustrate the magnitude of the error by separating the maintenance effects of animal health research from output increases due to animal improvement research this is possible because health and improvements research are conducted at separate research institutes and there are data on cattle deaths due to disease which allows the effects of health expenditures to be calculated explicitly taking the negative effect of diseases into account considerably increases the returns to the livestock research of the south african agricultural research council saarc instead of a ror of 18 for animal research in total the result is a ror of at least 35 for animal health research and 27 for improvements research suggesting a minimum underestimation of about 50 these results suggest that livestock research is productive once it is properly decomposed the implication is that all ror estimates that implicitly assume that with no research there would be no change in output or productivity must be severely biased downwards

reassessing the environmental kuznets curve for co2 emissions a robustness exercise the number of studies seeking to empirically characterize the reduced form relationship between a country economic growth and the quantity of pollutants produced in the process has recently increased significantly in several cases researchers have found evidence pointing to an inverted u benvironmental kuznetsq curve in the case of co2 however the evidence is at best mixed in this paper we reconsider that evidence by assessing how robust it is when the analysis is conducted in a different parametric setup and when using alternative emissions data from the international energy agency relative to the literature our contribution can be viewed as a robustness exercise in these two respects the econometric results lead to two conclusions firstly published evidence on the ekc does not appear to depend upon the source of the data at least as far as carbon dioxide is concerned secondly when an alternative functional form is employed there is evidence of an inverted u pattern for the group of oecd countries with reasonable turning point regardless of the data set employed not so for non oecd countries as the ekc is basically increasing slowly concave according to the iea data and more bellshaped in the case of cdiac data d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

analyzing the effects of energy action plans on electricity consumption in covenant of mayors signatory municipalities in andalusia permitted deposit due to funding body institutional and governmental policy or mandate may be required to comply with embargo periods of 12 months to 48 months

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

renewable non renewable energy consumption economic growth trade openness and ecological footprint evidence from organisation for economic co operation and development countries the purpose of this study is to examine the validity of environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for ecological footprint with the role of renewable energy use non renewable energy use and trade openness in 24 organisation for economic co operation and development countries for this purpose we investigate the period from 1980 to 2014 using with second generation panel data methodologies which allow to cross sectional dependence among countries the group mean results show that the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve hypothesis does not hold in organisation for economic co operation and development countries because we found the u shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint in addition it is concluded that increasing renewable energy consumption reduces ecological footprint and increasing non renewable energy consumption increases environmental degradation

coal consumption urbanization and trade openness linkage in indonesia abstract this paper explores the effects of economic growth urbanization industry and trade openness on coal consumption in indonesia over the period 1970 2015 to closely adhere to the environmental kuznets curve narratives we consider coal consumption which has been scarcely explored in the ekc debate as a proxy of environmental pressure we estimate the autoregressive distributed lag ardl method and confirm that the variables are cointegrated for long run linkage with the presence of structural breaks the empirical evidence showed that economic growth urbanization and trade openness increase coal consumption while decreasing share of secondary industry reduce it we also verify the existence of environmental kuznets curve having a vital role in the energy mix indonesia needs to restrain excessive coal consumption to enhance environmental quality our results also imply urbanization and trade openness are crucial factors on coal consumption consequently it should be taken into consideration in energy policy making process such as energy conservation policies in the residential sector and prioritize foreign investment which brings cutting edge coal technologies

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related

the impact of foreign direct investment on environmental quality a bounds testing and causality analysis for turkey abstract this study aims to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment fdi together with gross domestic product gdp the square of gdp and energy consumption on carbon dioxide co2 emissions in turkey over the period 1974 2010 we employ both the bounds test approach which has superior properties especially in small samples and the hatemi j test which takes structural breaks into consideration in the co integration analysis due to the co integration relationship between co2 emissions and other variables the autoregressive distributed lag ardl model is used in order to investigate short and long run elasticity between the variables the long run coefficients of the ardl model indicate that the effect of fdi on co2 emissions is positive but relatively small while the effects of the gdp and energy consumption on co2 emissions are quite considerable moreover the short run coefficients obtained by the error correction model ecm are found to be similar to those of the long run model the findings support the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis in both time horizons the vector ecm based granger causality test is also applied to investigate the causal link the causality test results indicate the existence of a causality running from all explanatory variables to co2 emissions in the long run overall the findings suggest that turkey should promote energy efficiency with sustainable growth and encourage more fdi inflows particularly in technology intensive and environment friendly industries to improve environmental quality

fuel poverty and energy efficiency obligations a critical assessment of the supplier obligation in the uk energy efficiency obligations or white certificates are increasingly used to reduce carbon emissions while the energy efficiency obligations were originally intended as carbon reduction and not fuel poverty policies due to recognition of the potential for regressive outcomes they often include provisions for vulnerable and low income customers intuitively reducing carbon emissions and alleviating fuel poverty seem to be two sides of the same coin there are however considerable tensions between the two when addressed through energy efficiency obligations particularly arising from the potentially regressive impacts of rising energy prices resulting from such obligations but also the complexity of targeting fuel poor households and the implications for deliverability despite those tensions the uk government decided to use energy efficiency obligations the supplier obligation as the main policy for reducing fuel poverty in light of the proposals this paper provides an analysis of the main tensions between carbon reduction and fuel poverty alleviation within energy efficiency obligations outlines the fuel poverty provisions of the british supplier obligation assesses its rules for identifying the fuel poor and provides a critical analysis of the planned policy changes based on this analysis alternative approaches to targeting fuel poverty within future supplier obligations are proposed

revisiting the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis evidence from the asean 5 countries with structural breaks abstractthis paper tests if the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis exists for asean 5 countries in an annual sample data that covers 1971 2013 by utilizing auto regressive distributed la