the impact of r d expenditures on co2 emissions evidence from sixteen oecd countries abstract this study analyzes the impact of research and development r d expenditures on co2 emissions in 16 organisation for economic co operation and development oecd countries for the period between 1981 and 2014 the estimates of long run regression models show that the expected average effect of r d expenditures on co2 emissions is negative growth of r d investments by 1 reduces co2 emissions by 0 09 0 15 on average however estimated country specific regressions indicate that the long run effect of r d expenditures on co2 emissions can be both positive and negative and they vary from 0 79 in denmark to 0 52 in belgium in other words in most cases viewed from a long term perspective higher r d expenditures reduce co2 emissions but this does not apply to about 40 of countries in addition the estimation of the short run time varying coefficient panel data models indicated that r d impact can be positive negative but also neutral insignificant for many years such findings suggest a conclusion that the effect of r d investments on co2 emissions cannot be characterized as negative in advance as pointed out by numerous analysis but must be empirically estimated the practical significance of this study is reflected in the fact that it directs decision makers to concentrate their efforts on promoting r d programs such as those in the us and germany which are directly focused on reducing co2 emissions and increasing the use thereof

the impact of natural disaster on energy consumption international evidence abstract this research shows that natural disasters may hurt energy consumption by using data on 123 countries over the period 1990 2015 and classifying them according to their economic development level and region based on world development indicators we employ a two step system gmm method to examine the effect of natural disasters on energy consumption presenting findings that support our hypotheses in the models and show a strong negative effect for low income countries or those in the africa region after considering an alternative proxy for natural disaster we implement quantile regression methods their results find that natural disasters exhibit a negative and significant impact on oil renewable and nuclear energy consumptions the quantile regression models used in the robustness check present that the effects are stronger for low level energy consumption economies

does trade liberalization increase national energy use abstract this paper utilises the theoretical principles of antweiler et al antweiler w b r copeland and m s taylor 2001 is free trade good for the environment american economic review 91 4 pp 877 908 to estimate empirically the linkages between trade liberalization and energy use focusing on scale technique and composition effects results suggest that trade will increase energy use for the mean country in the sample

industrial structure energy saving regulations and energy intensity evidence from chinese cities abstract exploring the drivers of declining energy intensity is necessary in order to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy in china to date studies have typically adopted case analysis to link enterprise features and energy saving performance the impact of internal industrial configuration in terms of size and ownership structure on aggregate energy intensity remains to be examined to fill this research gap this paper tests the impact of the internal structure of industries on city level energy intensity by employing a unique panel dataset of 283 cities for the period 2005 to 2010 the driscoll kraay method and instrumental variable are used to treat residual cross sectional dependence and endogeneity respectively results suggest that small scale enterprises exerts a negative effect on energy intensity a 1 increase in the output value proportion of small sized firms will lead to a decrease in total energy intensity of 0 067 in contrast the same change by medium enterprises will raise energy intensity by 0 031 a negative and or non significant coefficient suggests that for most energy intensive large and state owned enterprises china s 2006 top down energy saving regulation has been quite effective in targeting key energy intensive enterprises in china the findings reveal that state owned enterprises soes can act as promoters of rather than barriers to low carbon policy implementation in china given that the effectiveness of energy saving regulation will be undermined as a result of diluted regulatory strength in each enterprise market oriented energy price reform is proposed as a fundamental driver for guaranteeing a continual decline in energy intensity

underlying causal factors of the european union energy intensity econometric evidence abstract the aim of the research is to determine the main factors that define the level of energy intensity in the countries of the european union the research was conducted by estimation of six baseline and six auxiliary regressions with and without time lags in form of one way fixed and random effects error component models on different unbalanced panel data samples covering the period 1995 2015 the obtained baseline regressions results generate three sets of findings the first set consists of extremely robust findings relating to the positive influence of gross fixed capital formation and industrial gross value added and negative effects of real per capita gross domestic product and oil products retail price these variables are statistically significant in all 36 baseline empirical models the second set of results consists of quite robust findings relating to insignificant influence of foreign direct investment and negative influence of coal price according to the results it cannot be confirm the hypothesis of energy saving technology transfer via foreign direct investments in european union member states the third set of results shows that the research has failed to generate any robust findings for economic openness import ratio urbanization and natural gas price which means that the effect of these determinants on energy intensity in european union member states is unspecified finally auxiliary regressions estimation results show that changes in the sectorial composition within the european union member states economies have not enhanced energy saving technological transfer via foreign direct investments

the influential factors of china s regional energy intensity and its spatial linkages 1988 2007 abstract a large amount of literature on china s energy intensity seldom considers the regional differences of energy intensity inside china and the spatial effects based on spatial statistics methods this paper explores the regional imbalance of china s provincial energy intensity and the spatially correlation of energy intensity among provinces using spatial panel data models this paper finds that gdp per capita transportation infrastructure the level of marketization and scientific and technological input significantly reduce the energy intensity the ratio of heavy industries to total industries and the ratio of coal consumption to total energy consumption significantly expand the energy intensity meanwhile the coefficient of the ratio of export to gdp is not significant then the spillover and convergence of china s regional energy intensity have been tested the results indicate that the spillover effect between the eastern and western china is remarkable and there exist absolute convergence of provincial energy intensity moreover gdp per capita transportation infrastructure the level of marketization and scientific technological input are conducive to conditional convergence after the spatial effects are controlled according to the empirical results this paper proposes some policy suggestions on reducing china s energy intensity

the energy intensity of transition countries the economies of central and eastern europe and the former soviet union have traditionally been very energy intensive energy intensity defined as energy use per gdp has decreased in the course of transition but progress has been uneven and most transition countries still use several times as much energy per unit of output as their western peers this paper decomposes energy data to identify the main factors behind the improvements in energy intensity it shows that energy prices and progress in enterprise restructuring are the two most important drivers for more efficient energy use

what drives the change in china s energy intensity combining decomposition analysis and econometric analysis at the provincial level abstract we employ decomposition analysis and econometric analysis to investigate the driving forces behind china s changing energy intensity using a provincial level panel data set for the period from 1995 to 2009 the decomposition analysis indicates that a all of the provinces except for a few experienced efficiency improvement while around three fourths of the provinces economics became more energy intensive or remained unchanged b consequently the efficiency improvement accounts for more than 90 of china s energy intensity change as opposed to the economic structural change the econometric analysis shows that the rising income plays a significant role in the reduction of energy intensity while the effect of energy price is relatively limited the result may reflect the urgency of deregulating the price and establishing a market oriented pricing system in china s energy sector the implementation of the energy intensity reduction policies in the eleventh five year plan fyp has helped reverse the increasing trend of energy intensity since 2002 although the chinese government intended to change the industry led economic growth pattern it seems that most of the policy effects flow through the efficiency improvement as opposed to the economic structure adjustment more fundamental changes to the economic structure are needed to achieve more sustainable progress in energy intensity reduction

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

foreign direct investment and decoupling between energy and gross domestic product in developing countries on a sample of 20 developing countries we noticed a clear decline in the energy intensity as foreign direct investment increases the reason for that probably is the use of modern technologies that came with foreign direct investment i e a leapfrogging over the old fashioned traditional technologies in use in these countries

characterizing nonlinearities in business cycles using smooth transition autoregressive models during the past few years investigators have found evidence indicating that various time series representing business cycles such as production and unemployment may be nonlinear in this paper it is assumed that if the time series is nonlinear then it can be adequately described by a smooth transition autoregressive star model the paper describes the application of these models to quarterly logarithmic production indices for 13 countries and europe tests reject linearity for most of these series and estimated star models indicate that the nonlinearity is needed mainly to describe the responses of production to large negative shocks such as oil price shocks

asymmetric impacts of the determinants of energy intensity in nigeria abstract this study analysed the problem of energy intensity determinants in nigeria based on the fully modified ols and canonical cointegration regressions these methods were preferred since they are able to deal effectively with the second order bias problems an often characteristics of time series data the impacts of price of crude oil fdi trade openness and industry structure are asymmetric which suggests the presence of structural effects in parameters the impact of crude oil price is negative but becomes stronger post 1989 saving 126 more in energy consumption relative to pre 1989 also the impacts of fdi and trade openness are negative and significant but become stronger post 1989 saving 11 2 and 0 8 more in energy consumption relative to the baseline respectively for every one percentage point increase in fdi and trade openness the impact of industry value added is positive and significant but weakens after 1989 consuming 1 8 less in energy for every one percentage point increase in industry value added relative to the baseline the energy reducing effect of industry value added post 1989 reflects improvements in the technical characteristics of industrial sector in nigeria last the result showed that the absorptive capability and industry characteristics of nigeria are important determinants of how fdi affects energy intensity this implies that a more integrated fdi programme considering the country characteristics rather than a one fit all programme is preferable

does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower co2 emissions a cross country analysis despite the relationship between urbanization energy use and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to differences in development stages or income levels most previous studies have implicitly assumed that the impact of urbanization is homogenous for all countries this assumption can be questionable as there are many characteristic differences among countries of different levels of affluence this paper investigates empirically the effects of urbanization on energy use and co2 emissions with consideration of the different development stages using the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model and a balanced panel dataset of 99 countries over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that the impact of urbanization on energy use and emissions varies across the stages of development surprisingly urbanization decreases energy use in the low income group while it increases energy use in the middle and high income groups the impact of urbanization on emissions is positive for all the income groups but it is more pronounced in the middle income group than in the other income groups these novel findings not only help advance the existing literature but also can be of special interest to policy makers and urban planners

energy demand fdi nexus in africa do fdis induce dichotomous paths abstract this study investigates the nexus between energy demand and foreign direct investment fdi in africa using the simultaneous system generalized method of moments estimator and panel data that consists of 27 african countries over the period 2000 2014 specifically the study hypothesizes a non linear relationship between energy demand and fdi which imposes the assumption that conditions such as the level of technology absorptive capacity the level and stage of development and adjustment cost are likely to be heterogeneous across cross section and over time several empirical strategies such as changing the structure of the model set up using different sample groupings and applying different estimators with different assumptions were employed to substantiate the robustness nature of the hypothesized relationship the findings revealed a robust concave effect of fdi on energy consumption this suggests that there are learning and imitation experiences associated with fdi and these experiences produce dichotomous paths in terms of realizing the energy saving benefits of fdi

prices technology development and the rebound effect abstract energy efficiency is the critical parameter for policies that aim at reducing energy consumption while maintaining or even boosting economic growth the two main options to influence energy efficiency are changes in relative prices i e raising the price of energy through economic instruments or to introduce new technologies which increase the productivity of each unit of energy this paper is based on the notion that in an equilibrium economy the marginal economic productivity is identical for all factors i e energy labour knowledge and capital from this premise two main conclusions can be drawn first any change in price or technology will have an impact on the whole economy by creating feedbacks through the substitution of factors of production and goods as well as increased wealth second the two policy approaches changing relative prices and technology development are not opposite to each other they are the two faces of the same reality and should be developed and promoted simultaneously and consistently

the effect of increasing exports on industrial energy intensity in china abstract given china s heavy reliance on fuel energy and the dominance of its industrial sector in the economy improving energy efficiency remains one of the practical means for the country to decrease energy intensity and to fulfill its commitment made at the copenhagen climate change conference to achieve a 40 45 percent reduction in co 2 emission intensity by 2020 this study investigates the impact of exports on industrial energy intensity to explore the possibility of reducing energy intensity through greater exports a panel varying coefficient regression model with a dataset of china s 20 industrial sub sectors over 1999 2007 suggests that in general greater exports aggravate energy intensity of the industrial sector and that great divergences exist in the impact of exports on energy intensity across sub sectors a panel threshold model further estimates the thresholds for the major determinants of energy intensity exports input in technological innovations and foreign direct investment fdi intensity given the great differences in specific sub sector characteristics and the changing roles played by different factors across sub sectors there is no general export policy that would work for all sub sectors in reducing sub sector energy intensity instead policies and measures aiming to encourage more efficient use of energy should take into full consideration the characteristics and situations of individual sub sectors

the transition between energy efficient and energy inefficient states in cameroon i use a two state energy efficient inefficient markov switching dynamic model to study energy efficiency in cameroon in a novel manner employing yearly data covering 1971 to 2012 i find that th

does the need for economic growth influence energy consumption and co2 emissions in nigeria evidence from the innovation accounting test abstract developing economies like nigeria are competing strategically to ensure a rise in sustainable economic growth and reduction in co2 emission the question is could this be possible amidst the series of energy crises facing the country it is against this development that this paper investigates empirically if the nexus between economic growth energy consumption financial development trade openness and co2 emissions in nigeria could provide a clue the study used time series data from 1971 to 2011 to ensure a robust result the study applied the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration the zivot andrew structural break test and the bayer hanck combine cointegration analysis the causality analysis was checked using the vecm model and this was validated using the innovative accounting and the impulse response test the findings of the study revealed that financial development stimulates energy demand but lowers co2 emissions economic growth lowers energy demand but increases co2 emissions in addition to that the study discovered how trade openness increases energy consumption but improves environmental quality by lowering co2 emissions energy consumption was on the other hand found to have significant increase on co2 emissions the granger causality analysis revealed a bidirectional causal relationship between financial development and energy consumption and the same inference was found in financial development and co2 emissions in this study trade led energy hypothesis and the existence of a feedback effect between economic growth and co2 emissions were discovered the study recommends massive investment in nigeria s financial sector with the motivation for these sectors to invest in efficient and sustainable renewable energy system how it should be done and why it should be done are carefully outlined in this study

an empirical analysis of energy intensity and the role of policy instruments abstract the reduction of energy intensity is important for sustainable economic growth especially in non oecd countries where energy demand growth is high understanding the impact of policies on energy intensity can help policy makers to reduce energy intensity using empirical methods and cross country data from 44 countries over the period 1990 2016 we study the determinants of energy intensity the common correlated effects mean group estimator is employed since it addresses nonstationarity cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity all three of which exist in the data both gdp per capita and economy wide energy prices are shown to be negatively associated with energy intensity the empirical results provide evidence that several policy instruments are effective in reducing energy intensity i standards and labeling ii government direct investment iii strategic planning and support iv fiscal measures taxes and v grants and subsidies the duration of the policy is more important than the mere existence of the policy in demonstrating the policy s effectiveness

local food prices and international price transmission world food prices spiked in the periods 2007 8 and 2010 11 the impact of these spikes in world food prices on local food prices and thus on local consumers is determined by the food price pass through pass through is defined as the extent to which changes in world food prices lead to changes in local food prices we examine the determinants of variation in food price pass through from global to local consumer prices in a global sample of 147 countries using fao data on world food prices and ilo data on food prices for consumers while market integration matters our study finds that income per capita is the dominant factor explaining cross country variation in pass through of food prices we estimate an elasticity of about 0 3 of pass through with respect to income per capita this means far greater price transmission of food price shocks at the commodity level to final consumers in low income countries than in high income countries the implication is that future swings in world food prices will in particular jeopardize food security in poor countries trade policy measures of market integration also affect the pass through significantly whereas infrastructure and geography measures play no significant role

effects of changing trade structure and technical characteristics of the manufacturing sector on energy intensity in ghana abstract this study examined the effects of changing trade structure and changing technical characteristics of the manufacturing sector alongside the effects of foreign direct investment and urbanization on energy intensity in ghana in order to produce a result that is not biased towards non rejection the zivot andrews unit root test with structural break was used the study applied the phillip hansen park and stock watson cointegration models which are more robust to serial correlation and exogeneity problems preliminary findings showed evidence of cointegration the study concludes that the changing technical characteristics of the manufacturing sector after the reform and changing production mix in favor of less energy intensive improved energy efficiency however energy consumption via exports which outweighed the energy saving via imports of capital goods after the reform in 1983 worsened energy efficiency growing urbanization significantly increases energy intensity in all technological diffusion via trade exerts significant influence on energy intensity than technological diffusion via foreign direct investment these results are robust to the cholesky variance decomposition analysis

how do industrialization and trade openness influence energy intensity evidence from a path model in case of bangladesh abstract nowadays multifaceted interdependence between macroeconomic variables results in an extended list of factors that have diverse impacts on energy intensity thus sustaining energy intensity at a desired level demands advanced studies to investigate the multifarious influences of its factors and ensure proactive measures to deal with them this paper aims to set up a path model to analyze the direct and indirect impacts of industrialization and trade openness on energy intensity in bangladesh the results corroborate that industrialization has a direct positive influence on energy intensity where trade openness shows a direct negative effect on it and both industrialization and trade openness have negative indirect impact on energy intensity through technological innovation and economic growth respectively in case of individual total impacts only industrialization affects energy intensity positively where trade openness technological innovation and economic growth negatively do based on the empirical results some policy implications regarding energy intensity and effects of its factors on it are also presented

tariffs subsidies and welfare with endogenous policy abstract it is a well established proposition of trade theory that in the absence of directly trade related distortions or policy goals subsidies are superior to tariffs for achieving any economic or non economic objective this paper shows that once the endogeneity of the distortion or non economic objective is allowed for the welfare ranking of various policies can be reversed the particular model analyzed is one where the level of non economic objectives that have to be fulfilled itself depends on the policy tools considered to fulfill them with this arises from the public good nature of tariffs compared to subsidies

the impacts of energy prices on energy intensity evidence from china in this paper we present a review of the deregulation of energy prices in china between 1985 and 2004 and assess the impacts of changes in energy prices on aggregate energy intensity and coal oil electricity intensity we used time series data to provide estimates of energy price elasticities empirical results showed that 1 the own price elasticities of coal oil and aggregate energy were negative in periods both before and after 1995 implying that higher relative prices of different energy types lead to the decrease in coal oil and aggregate energy intensities however the positive own price elasticity of electricity after 1995 probably indicates that the price effect was weaker than other factors such as income effect and population effect 2 the impacts of energy prices were asymmetric over time 3 sectoral adjustment also drove the decrease in aggregate energy intensity although raising energy prices to boost efficiency of energy use seems to be an effective policy tool other policy implications concerned with energy prices such as energy supply security and fuel poverty must also be considered