opportunity challenges and policy choices for china on the development of shale gas with the highest shale gas reserves worldwide and huge need for energy the chinese government has introduced many incentives to accelerate the development of shale gas including subsidies and reduction or waiver of the related fees or taxes however the challenges posed by a lack of advanced technologies environmental protection a shortage of water in quantity and a knowledge of how to develop a good industry local community relationship are anticipated in the realization of the predicted golden age of the chinese shale gas industry based on the particular situation and available resources in china and with reference to the experiences in countries with a developed shale gas industry such as the u s a and suggestions by the international energy agency recommendations about the choices facing china can be summarized as follows allowing foreign investors directly to hold exploration and mining rights in shale gas could facilitate the obtainment of advanced technologies the improvement of the regulatory arrangements related to environmental protection could make developers more responsible prompting developers to improve their water use efficiency could help in not worsening the water supply to some extent and slo based mechanism guidance could be helpful in developing a mutual trust and benefit relationship between the shale gas industry and the local community

enterprises compliance with government carbon reduction labelling policy using a system dynamics approach abstract a carbon reduction labelling scheme is an effective policy tool for motivating enterprises or organizations to reduce their life cycle based carbon emissions to benefit the environment this paper uses system dynamics to model enterprises compliance with a combined government policy instrument for a carbon reduction labelling scheme that is government subsidies and economic sanctions a case study of paper enterprises in china is provided to demonstrate the application of the proposed model in which two optional technological plans to reduce the enterprises carbon emissions are examined the technological plans are categorized as a low cost and high cost plan the simulation results show that both the technological plans are vulnerable to the combined policy making and the high cost plan shows superior environmental performance for carbon emissions reduction however the enterprises are more inclined to choose the low cost plan because of superior economic performance the study offers insights to help enterprises select optimal actions on carbon emissions reduction and to inform government of possible sustainable policy design to promote low carbon development the model limitations are discussed as a basis for further improvements in low carbon development

can producer currency pricing models generate volatile real exchange rates if the elasticities of substitution between traded and nontraded and between home and foreign traded goods are sufficiently low then the real exchange rate generated by a model with full producer currency pricing is as volatile as in the data

epistemological dominance and ignorance of the comparative advantages of china s shale gas evidence from international scientific journals abstract this paper reports on a critical discourse analysis on a collection of international scientific journal articles which are a critical edge of social epistemology at the textual surface the analysis finds that china s shale gas sg is compared most frequently with coal and energy imports but rarely with conventional natural gas cng and coalbed methane cbm representing a prominent structure of epistemological dominance and ignorance situated in this structure there are four prevailing albeit defective reasoning forms the prevalence of those forms suggests that there is a knowledge deficit on the comparative advantage of china s sg this deficit concretely refers to that the attention paid to the comparative advantage of china s sg toward cng and cbm the number of lifecycle comparisons between energies and the knowledge about the us shale gas boom are significantly insufficient china s energy mix air quality and energy dependence the conspicuousness of energy burning and the nature of human thinking are interwoven factors of this deficit the epistemological structure and thus the knowledge deficit are unfavorable for optimizing china s sg strategy and may delay natural gas penetration into china s energy mix this paper especially its mental model representation is awareness introspection provoking to researchers and policy makers

can the us shale revolution be duplicated in continental europe an economic analysis of european shale gas resources abstract over the past decade the rapid increase in shale gas and shale oil production in the united states has profoundly changed energy markets in north america and has led to a significant decrease in american natural gas prices the possible existence of large shale deposits in continental europe mainly in france denmark the netherlands and germany has fostered speculation on whether the u s shale revolution could be duplicated in europe however a number of uncertainties notably geological technological regulatory and relating to public acceptance make this possibility unclear we present a techno economic model of shale gas production amenable to direct estimation on historical production data to analyze the main determinants of the profitability of shale wells and plays we contribute an in depth analysis of an extensive production dataset covering 40 000 wells and accounting for nearly 90 of shale gas production in the six main plays of the continental united states from 2004 to 2014 we combine this analysis with a discussion of the main differences between the american and european contexts to calibrate our model and conduct monte carlo simulations this enables us to estimate the distribution of breakeven prices for shale gas extraction in continental europe we find a median gross breakeven price before taxes and royalties of 10 1 per mmbtu this would make extraction unprofitable in europe in the current natural gas price environment with

the household responsibility system in china s agricultural reform a theoretical and empirical study the emergence and eventual prevalence of the household responsibility system which replaces the production team system as the unit of production and income distribution has brought about dramatic changes in china s rural areas since 1979 this institutional change has resulted in remarkable growth in agricultural productivity however in the literature on collective farms a theory that is capable of explaining the causes and effects of this change is yet to be developed the formal theory about collective economies developed so far by ward domar sen oi and clayton bradley maurice and ferguson cameron bonin chinn israelsen putterman and others suggests that the allocation of resources in a collective farm is efficient at least in

decentralization and macroeconomic performance in china regional autonomy has its costs abstract we give an empirical examination of the impact of fiscal and economic decentralization in china on the country s economic growth and inflation using a vector autoregressive var model with latent variables our econometric investigation offers strong evidence that there is a connection between decentralization and macroeconomic performance in china economic decentralization appears to be positively related to growth in real output for the entire postwar period in china fiscal decentralization seems to have adverse implications for the rate of inflation especially after the late 1970s decentralization would therefore seem to be good for growth and bad for price stability

the reform of the natural gas industry in the pr of china abstract in light of china s energy revolution reform of the natural gas industry and the acceleration of the natural gas sector development are of strategic significance to ensure china s energy security to optimise the energy consumption structure and to address environmental pollution in recent years the chinese government has introduced numerous policies and developmental plans to speed up natural gas sector reform which have led to considerable progress however china s natural gas industry and reform still encounter many problems and challenges the purpose of this study is to investigate the reform of the natural gas industry in china first the current situation of china s natural gas industry is outlined next four aspects of natural gas industry reform are systematically reviewed natural gas administrative system reform industry structure reform pricing mechanism reform and tax and fee system reform third the major problems and challenges facing further reform of the natural gas industry are analysed in depth finally this study proposes policies and suggestions for china s natural gas sector in the coming future

investment opportunity in china s overseas oil project an empirical analysis based on real option approach abstract china s overseas oil investments uphold national energy security located in the complex international economic and political environment the benefits of overseas oil projects are affected by various uncertainties oil companies call for a set of evaluation method dealing with these uncertainties especially when encountering low oil price conditions it is much more crucial to answer when to optimally invest rather than whether to invest this paper analyzes the investment opportunity of an oil project in the development and production phase considering uncertainty irreversibility and management flexibility the decision making process combines discounted cash flow dcf method and the trinomial tree model of real option approach roa for practical purposes tools of hurdle price cumulative probability and decision tree are adopted in addition results of the case project show the economic feasibility at present and optimal start up timing at the end of 2016 besides the lower cost parameters generally make it easier to meet the opportunity the scenario analysis suggests the higher risk contributes to an earlier start up furthermore the issues of method applicability investment signals and decision lag effects are discussed

a system dynamics approach for the photovoltaic energy market in spain abstract the goal of this paper is to contribute to understanding the behaviour of the photovoltaic pv sector in spain and its expectations under possible scenarios currently pv solar energy is not a profitable sector by itself therefore the spanish government like the governments of other countries has stimulated investment with subsidies the spectacular increase of pv facilities exceeded all forecasts and the government decided to curb the trend the present hypothesis is that continuing with this support to pv energy the technological advances and the economy generated from the production of panels would be able to make the sector profitable in the future without the necessity of subventions based on this hypothesis a computer simulation model was built using the system dynamics methodology to test its utility the model was challenged to fit the historical data and to explore several futures over the next few years the model allows an understanding of the sector s behaviour under the latest policies of the spanish government thus helping to design future public policies the simulation results are different depending on the adopted policy and the scenario therefore these factors will determine the success or failure of the investments in this type of energy

understanding the motivations behind the myanmar china energy pipeline multiple streams and energy politics in china abstract why exactly did china decide to construct the myanmar china energy pipeline while important for china s long term energy strategy very few studies have yet analyzed the project from the standpoint of china s domestic policy process this paper fills the gap by illuminating the broader historical context and presenting how this pipeline fits into energy politics in china the policy making process is fleshed out by using the multiple streams framework msf analysis of this case using msf shows that first local governments and scholars played a key role in facilitating the project especially in raising the proposal to the government agenda second a policy window remains an important element in china s energy policy decisions in light of the china myanmar pipeline idea was not taken seriously in the 1990s when it was first proposed third although this cross border energy project is part of a national strategy of energy security domestic political considerations such as promoting investment in china s underdeveloped southwest were also at work these conclusions are useful for understanding not only the motivations behind such transboundary pipeline projects but also china s energy decisions at large

why countries are fiscally decentralizing this paper models and empirically investigates underlying forces that promote governmental decentralization or effective federalism in the world over the last 25 years a move to a federal system is based on the demand by hinterland regions for local autonomy which increases with national income growth greater relative hinterland population and increasing national population it is influenced as well by the degree of democratization nationally and locally decentralization is measured by both institutional indices indicating greater devolution of power to local governments and the share of local governments in national government consumption empirically the paper finds that decentralization changes in ways predicted in particular it increases with economic growth country size and population institutional structures based on colonial experience and initial constitutional provisions also matter

fracking and environmental in justice in a texas city abstract shale gas development sgd via horizontal drilling and fracking is touted for economic benefits and spurned for health and environmental impacts despite sgd s socioecological salience few peer reviewed empirical studies document the distribution of positive and negative effects the city of denton texas has 280 active gas wells and over a decade of sgd here we use an environmental justice framework to analyze the distribution of sgd s costs and benefits within denton using data on mineral property values from 2002 to 2013 and gas well locations we ask who owns denton s mineral rights i e the greatest financial beneficiaries and how does this ownership pattern relate to who lives near gas wells i e those who shoulder the nuisances and health impacts our results show that denton s mineral wealth is widely distributed around the u s residents own 1 of the total value extracted and the city government is a large financial beneficiary in addition to distributional inequities our analysis demonstrates that split estate doctrine legal deference to mineral owners and sgd s uniqueness in urban centers create disparities in municipal sgd decision making processes the environmental justice issues associated with fracking in denton also provide one possible explanation for residents november 2014 vote to ban hydraulic fracturing

framing the future of fracking discursive lock in or energy degrowth in the netherlands abstract hydraulic fracturing is a technology developed to improve and increase the production of natural gas in many countries including the netherlands it has caused environmental controversies in these controversies futurity framing may open up debates for alternative paradigms such as degrowth which is the pursuing of collective and deliberative downscaled production of natural resources and less consumption for convivial living based on a frame analysis it is demonstrated that opponents and proponents of fracking have envisaged pessimistic energy futures either to promote or devaluate fracking technology in addition the results show that dominant technological enthusiasm has enabled the introduction of degrowth technology which are downscaled decentralized and renewable energy technologies degrowth technology framing may provide a means of access for more radical degrowth thinking in the energy debates this empirical finding also indicates that the degrowth paradigm could include controversies as entry points for creating support for degrowth thinking

the determinants of social conflict in the latin american mining sector new evidence with quantitative data this paper builds on the case study work into conflict between mining firms and nearby communities through a statistical analysis of the determinants of social conflict at the local level in the mining sector in latin america the analysis is based on an original dataset of 640 geo located mining properties at the advanced exploration stage and above which includes gis information on environment and land use patterns around the property sub national socio economic characteristics of the population firm and mining property characteristics as well as information about known social conflicts

u s real exchange rate fluctuations and relative price fluctuations abstract traditional theory attributes fluctuations in real exchange rates to changes in the relative price of nontraded goods this paper studies the relation between the united states bilateral real exchange rate and the associated bilateral relative price of nontraded goods for five of its most important trade relationships we find that this relation depends crucially on the choice of price series used to measure relative prices and on the choice of trade partner the relation is stronger when we measure relative prices using producer prices rather than consumer prices the relation is stronger the more important is the trade relationship between the united states and a trade partner even in cases where there is a strong relation between the real exchange rate and the relative price of nontraded goods however a large fraction of real exchange rate fluctuations is due to deviations from the law of one price for traded goods

forecasting the impact of renewable energies in competition with non renewable sources abstract the diffusion dynamics of traditional and clean energy systems in the energy mix are studied in a competition modeling where their interacting life cycles are jointly described competition has only been considered recently since diffusion competition models are not easy to be implemented data are represented by yearly consumptions in mtoe of traditional sources coal oil gas and nuclear systems and a selection of renewable sources hydroelectric wind and solar power for the us europe china and india from 1965 to 2014 for each case we will investigate whether the diffusion level of traditional sources sustains or prevents the spread of renewables and vice versa for the us and europe we will take into account the link between the 2008 2009 financial crisis and the slowdown in consumptions as a matter of fact the energy sector is characterized by uncertainty due to the depletion of finite energy sources the technological and economical problems of renewables and the hypothesis of shale gas as a possible bridge to renewables that could delay the spread of latter ones in this scenario six year forecasts are provided until 2020

evaluating china s natural gas supply security based on ecological network analysis abstract growing role of natural gas as an effective policy choice has kindled the discussions surrounding the security of its supplies in the policy circles of the chinese government this study tries to evaluate china s natural gas supply security and employs a system oriented modelling approach namely ecological network analysis ena to integrate all the critical compartments of china s natural gas supply system several ena indicators are constructed which disclose that domestic natural gas production contributes significantly to china s natural gas supply system in comparison with all the external natural gas suppliers in addition the variations in a system stability indicator suggest that diversification of external natural gas suppliers has a positive influence on china s natural gas supply security furthermore the results revealed that china s natural gas supply security policy is orchestrated on following features 1 to increase the investment in the upstream natural gas production sector to boost its domestic production in order to reduce its import requirements and 2 to diversify the external natural gas supplies by sources and routes to reduce the level of the economic and supply disruption related risks

the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on regional natural gas markets evidence from the regime switching model this paper investigates the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on price movement regimes in the north american and european gas markets using the markov regime switching model it then measures price spreads between oil and gas from 1998 to 2015 to identify the impact of the revolution on the relationship between oil and regional gas prices the results show that the typical movement regime of henry hub prices changes from slightly upward to sharply downward in addition the clear seasonal effect of henry hub prices has disappeared after the shale gas revolution the typical movement of national balancing point nbp prices has changed gradually from a sharply upward regime to the alternative regimes between sharply downward and slightly upward tending to follow oil prices this indicates that the shale gas revolution has had little impact on nbp price movement meanwhile henry hub prices have decoupled from wti prices while nbp and brent prices have continued to exhibit a long term equilibrium level around which they have swung in the short time frame since the shale gas revolution pertinent energy policy makers and energy market participants should pay attention to these changes and adjust their trade production and investment strategies accordingly

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

high exchange rate volatility and low pass through abstract two specifications of an open economy model are shown to generate high exchange rate volatility and low exchange rate pass through erpt in the model price discrimination causes erpt to be incomplete in both the short and the long run in the short run a small amount of nominal rigidities is enough to reduce erpt sharply still exchange rate depreciation worsens the terms of trade consistent with the evidence possible biases from omitted variables and measurement error in the erpt empirical literature due to data limitations are investigated using model generated time series estimates of erpt coefficients can be quite different from true parameters and are sensitive to the shocks driving the economies estimates can nonetheless detect key structural features of the models

geographies of energy transition space place and the low carbon economy this paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity the paper draws on a seminar series on the geographies of energy transition security climate governance hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011 which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography focussing on the uk government s policy for a low carbon transition the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy six concepts are introduced and explained location landscape territoriality spatial differentiation scaling and spatial embeddedness examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent and contending potential geographical futures are in play more attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low carbon economy will be like it also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available

an option pricing approach to evaluating petroleum projects abstract option pricing applications in capital budgeting decisions are still in the development stage this paper uses concepts and methods from option pricing theory to evaluate real projects rather than financial ones within a petroleum projects context such real options include development and operations of satellite fields break even values of incremental capacity and flexibility value with compound development and operations options the option pricing results may be quite different from those obtained by traditional capital budgeting and decision tree approaches some related papers on real options are also briefly noted

shale gas policy in the united kingdom an argumentative discourse analysis shale gas has become an energy policy priority in the united kingdom in light of profitable extraction activities in the united states since 2012 the coalition government has created key economic drivers to encourage shale exploration whilst growing activism in affected site communities has stirred significant media and academic commentary this study examines the growing national debate as a matter of discourse adopting an argumentative discourse analytic approach to assess data collected from stakeholder interviews n 21 and key policy actor statements quoted in broadsheet newspapers we explore three dominant storylines emerging in relation to shale gas policy 1 cleanliness and dirt concerns the relative framing of the environmental benefits and harms of shale gas 2 energy transitions pathways and diversions concerns geographic metaphors of transitions to carbon intensive and low carbon energy systems and 3 geographies of environmental justice concerns divisions of economic benefit distribution environmental impact and procedural fairness we find that central government policy rhetoric emphasises economic development regulatory oversight and distribution of benefits to site communities whilst minimising discussion of the implications of shale gas for anthropogenic climate change the role of these discourses in influencing shale gas policy is discussed

cross border mergers and acquisitions by oil and gas multinational enterprises geography based view of energy strategy abstract given that global crude oil prices are significantly dropped and business consolidation transactions are markedly increased in recent years this paper to date is the first to examine the cross border merger and acquisition strategy of oil and gas multinational enterprises using a fine tuned sample of 150 large scale oil acquisition transactions us 535 billion announced by oil and gas enterprises from over 50 countries during the period 2005 2015 we endeavor to answer four fundamental research questions who is where what for who is there why who is where and there and who is a serial acquirer to do so we propose an integrated framework of geography based view of energy strategy by leveraging theoretical insights from the energy economic geography international business strategy and corporate finance literature on top of that we discuss the dynamics of the oil and gas industry and show the remarkable trends in the crude oil prices over the past three decades 1990 2016 our geographic analyses highlight that state owned oil companies from asia and a less extent europe have rapidly expanded into resource rich countries such as canada and the us to secure oil reserves as well as acquire industry specific strategic assets this research contributes to the geography based view of energy strategy and discusses policy and managerial implications to sustain the world oil and gas industry

options in the real world lessons learned in evaluating oil and gas investments many firms in the oil and gas business have long used decision analysis techniques to evaluate exploration and development opportunities and have looked at recent development in option pricing theory as potentially offering improvements over the decision analysis approach unfortunately it is difficult to discern the benefits of the options approach from the literature on the topic most of the published examples greatly oversimplify the kinds of projects encountered in practice and comparisons are typically made to traditional discounted cash flow analysis which unlike the option pricing and decision analytic approaches does not explicitly consider the uncertainty in project cash flows in this paper we provide a tutorial introduction to option pricing methods focusing on how they relate to and can be integrated with decision analysis methods and describe some lessons learned in using these methods to evaluate some real oil and gas investments

price stability with imperfect financial integration this paper studies whether the international monetary system can be affected by asymmetries in the cross country positions in the international financial markets i e the fact that some countries are large debtors while others are creditors an important channel that is explored is the interaction between international risk sharing and the stabilization role of monetary policy in each country the main finding is that the welfare costs of incomplete markets and the gains of deviating from a policy of price stability are increasing with the cross country asymmetries in the initial net international positions and in particular they become nonnegligible when the persistence of the shocks increases 1 of a permanent shift in steady state consumption for the welfare costs of incomplete markets and 0 2 for the gains of deviating from a policy of price stability when global imbalances become larger optimal monetary policy requires an increase in the volatilities of the real returns on assets and in particular of the nominal interest rates which should happen to be more correlated across countries

transition and enterprise restructuring the development of individual farming in romania economic reforms have induced enterprise restructuring in transition countries in agriculture the most dramatic form of restructuring is the break up of state and collective farms into individual farms the development of individual farming varies strongly between countries regions and households this paper uses household level data from a 1996 survey in romania to analyze which household and regional characteristics determine the shift to individual farming individual farming is influenced by several household characteristics such as the human capital education age farming experience physical capital endowments ownership of land buildings machinery livestock and access to other finance sources off farm wages pensions furthermore environmental factors such as infrastructure local access to inputs and the pre reform importance of individual farming in the region all affect the development of individual farming

regional decentralization and fiscal incentives federalism chinese style abstract aligning the interests of local governments with market development is an important issue for developing and transition economies using a panel data set from china we investigate the relationship between provincial government s fiscal incentives and provincial market development we report three empirical findings first we find that during the period of fiscal contracting system the discrepancy between ex ante contracts and ex post implementation was relatively small suggesting that the fiscal contracts were credible second we find a much higher correlation about four times between the provincial government s budgetary revenue and its expenditure during 1980s and 1990s as compared to 1970s demonstrating that provincial governments faced much stronger ex post fiscal incentives after reform third we find that stronger ex ante fiscal incentives measured by the contractual marginal retention rate of the provincial government in its budgetary revenue are associated with faster development of the non state sector as well as more reforms in the state sector in the provincial economy this holds even when we control for the conventional measure of fiscal decentralization finally we compare federalism chinese style to federalism russian style

shale gas analysis of its role in the global energy market shale gas revolution that took place in the united states at the beginning of the 21st century has still been shaping our global fossil fuel market in 2012 the u s has surpassed russia in natural gas production for the first time since 1982 at the same year annual average u s henry hub natural gas spot price decreased to 2 75 per million btu which was 8 69 per million btu in 2005 in 2013 proved shale gas reserves of the world is estimated at nearly 2 7 trillion cubic metres tcm and unproved resources at staggering 203 9 tcm as a result there is a global rush to develop most of this resource as possible however shale gas is no miracle fuel it has been suggested that its effects on the environment could be worse than conventional natural gas fugitive methane emissions groundwater pollution and increased seismicity are amongst the most important potential environmental side effects there is also concern about the accuracy of resource potential estimations due to lack of data and specifically designed shale gas reservoir models nonetheless the analysis in this study clearly showed that without developing global shale gas resources we have to consume 66 of our proved natural gas reserves to supply the demand till 2040 this would make most of the world natural gas importers and rules of economy dictate that limited supply and increasing demand would skyrocket natural gas prices therefore shale gas resource development is not an option but a must for the continuance of our global energy market and economy

sustainability in mining minerals and energy new processes pathways and human interactions for a cautiously optimistic future the supply of minerals and energy is critical to global society however this supply is associated with social and environmental impacts leading to concerns of generational and intergenerational equity in light of these concerns a call for papers for a special volume on the mining industry was issued with the view that such academic work could assist in reducing the negative impacts associated with this industry this paper introduces the special volume the sustainability agenda of the minerals and energy supply and demand network an integrative analysis of ecological ethical economic and technological dimensions the special volume contains 84 articles divided into several themes sustainability accounting and reporting corporate social responsibility future mining challenges integrative frameworks for sustainability management aspects mining in a developing context and new frontiers in the oil and gas industry the special volume also includes two letters on contemporary issues with commentaries on these from experts in the fields viz community conflict and land rehabilitation insights obtained across these themes are summarized and recommendations are made of what is needed to build upon the findings of this special volume a research agenda is proposed for the future from the gaps and synergies identified the overall contribution of this special volume is that it renews the debate on the sustainability challenges for the mining industry and provides transdisciplinary insights into resolving some of these challenges

economic theories of the break up and integration of nations abstract this paper surveys the recent political economy literature on the size distribution of nations the main themes of this literature are 1 a the spread of democracy leads to the creation of too many sovereign states 2 b the extent of factor mobility plays a key role in determining the incentives towards separation or integration 3 c economic integration through the development of international trade may require greater political integration to create and effectively maintain a level playing field in international trade at the same time economic integration by reducing the economic costs of separation increases the incentives towards political separation

fiscal decentralization rural industrialization and undocumented labour mobility in rural china 1982 87 chen y p fiscal decentralization rural industrialization and undocumented labour mobility in rural china 1982 87 regional studies this paper explores the relationship between fiscal decentralization which gave greater rural industrialization and fiscal authority to local governments and the emergence of rural rural undocumented inter provincial labour migration during china s initial reform period a heckman model is employed to correct for the zero observation problems and to estimate consistently the labour mobility with a modified gravity equation given the institutional barriers the fiscal decentralization has two contending effects on labour market integration local economic development promotes labour mobility but local public goods crowding restrains the inflow of labour at the destination the crowding effect is stronger at lower levels of government

can foreign direct investment harness energy consumption in china a time series investigation abstract this study assesses the long run relationship and short run dynamics between foreign direct investment fdi and energy consumption in china applying the bounds testing approach to annual data from 1982 to 2012 we find that a stable fdi energy nexus exists in the long run and a 1 increase in fdi reduces energy consumption by 0 21 however this study shows a positive association between fdi and energy consumption in the short run attributing to the dominance of the scale effect our results remain robust to different measurements and estimators it is suggested that the chinese government shall support the inward fdi in the tertiary and energy sectors and strengthen local absorptive capacities to fully internalize fdi related knowledge spillovers in energy conservation

short term variations and long term dynamics in commodity prices in this article we develop a two factor model of commodity prices that allows meanreversion in short term prices and uncertainty in the equilibrium level to which prices revert although these two factors are not directly observable they may be estimated from spot and futures prices intuitively movements in prices for long maturity futures contracts provide information about the equilibrium price level and differences between the prices for the short and long term contracts provide information about short term variations in prices we show that although this model does not explicitly consider changes in convenience yields over time this short term long term model is equivalent to the stochastic convenience yield model developed in gibson and schwartz 1990 we estimate the parameters of the model using prices for oil futures contracts and apply the model to some hypothetical oil linked assets to demonstrate its use and some of its advantages over the gibson schwartz model

what determines china s crude oil importing trade patterns empirical evidences from 55 countries between 1992 and 2015 abstract this study develops a conceptual framework that synthesizes the supply demand price and openness of crude oil trade along with a list of traditional economic political and geographical factors to investigate the determinants of crude oil imports in emerging markets we test the framework using china s crude oil imports from 55 countries for the period from 1992 to 2015 using both static and dynamic panel data models we find that china s crude oil import is associated with exporting country s supply demand and price as well as its bilateral trade relationships these factors were found to affect china s import of crude oil from the middle east however only bilateral trade relationships affect its imports of crude oil from the asia pacific furthermore we do not find substantial evidence in this research to indicate that china s direct investment increases crude oil imports from those countries this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled comparing sustainable energy policies in northeast asia toward the harmonized public private partnership

prohibition of factor market exchanges and technological choice in chinese agriculture this article constructs a model of technological choice in an economy where market exchanges in land and labour are prohibited empirical data on demand for tractors tractor usage and chemical fertilisers in china are employed to test several hypotheses derived from the theoretical model the theory implies that the impact of relative factor scarcity on the pattern of technological choice in such an economy is similar to that in a market economy as postulated by the hicks ruttan hayami binswanger hypothesis of induced technological change the empirical evidence is found to be consistent with the implications of the model

decentralization of governance and development all around the world in matters of governance decentralization is the rage even apart from the widely debated issues of subsidiarity and devolution in the european union and states rights in the united states decentralization has been at the center stage of policy experiments in the last two decades in a large number of developing and transition economies in latin america africa and asia the world bank for example has embraced it as one of the major governance reforms on its agenda for example world bank 2000 burki perry and dillinger 1999 take also the examples of the two largest countries of the world china and india decentralization has been regarded as the major institutional framework for the phenomenal industrial growth in the last two decades in china taking place largely in the nonstate nonprivate sector india ushered in a landmark constitutional reform in favor of decentralization around the same time it launched a major program of economic reform in the early 1990s on account of its many failures the centralized state everywhere has lost a great deal of legitimacy and decentralization is widely believed to promise a range of benee ts it is often suggested as a way of reducing the role of the state in general by fragmenting central authority and introducing more intergovernmental competition and checks and balances it is viewed as a way to make government more responsive and efe cient technological changes have also made it somewhat easier than before to provide public services like electricity and water supply relatively efe ciently in smaller market areas and the lower levels of government have now a greater ability to handle certain tasks in a world of rampant ethnic cone icts and separatist movements decentralization is also regarded as a way of diffusing social and political tensions and ensuring local cultural and political autonomy these potential benee ts of decentralization have attracted a very diverse range

decentralization institutional ambiguity and mineral resource conflict in mindanao philippines based on an analytical framework that builds on theories of incremental institutional change this article interrogates the relationship between decentralization and mineral resource conflict in the philippines here efforts to decentralize control over mineral resource wealth have resulted in a highly ambiguous institutional arena wherein heterogeneous actor coalitions are attempting to influence trajectories of institutional change and the associated distribution of mineral wealth on the ground this institutional renegotiation produces a diverse range of conflicts emerging on top of these institutional struggles are local elected politicians which raises important concerns over elite capture of the decentralization process

federalism as a commitment to reserving market incentives the authors advance a new perspective in the study of federalism their approach views federalism as a governance solution of the state to credibly preserving market incentives market incentives are preserved if the state is credibly prevented from compromising on future economic success and from bailing out future failures the salient features of federalism decentralization of information and authority and interjurisdictional competition help provide credible commitment or these purposes in addition the authors suggest that some federalism are self sustaining

optimal extraction policy when the environmental and social costs of the opencast coal mining activity are internalized mining district of the department of el cesar colombia case study abstract several articles have confirmed the social and environmental consequences of opencast coal mining the main purpose of this study is to simulate the optimal extraction policy of coal mining with and without the internalization of the environmental and social monetary costs that occur in the mining district located in the central part of the department of el cesar using discrete dynamic programming backward recursion discrete state markov decision model and bellman equation results indicate that the private optimal of the overproduction policy for the terminal phase of the resource extraction program can be reduced once the negative externalities produced by mining practices are internalized into the cost function of the mining investment companies in colombia this means that if there is an increase in the total cost of extraction to offset the environmental and social impacts generated the negative externalities would be less than or equal to the current level likewise profits would continue being positive for the mining firms at the mining district

evaluation of social externalities in regional communities affected by coal seam gas projects a case study from southeast queensland this paper examines the evaluation of social externalities in regional communities affected by four major coal seam gas csg projects in the surat basin region of southeast queensland australia using a mixed methods approach cross sectional survey n 428 and structural equation modelling sem the results of this study reveal community perceptions of rising economic inequality collective sense of uncertainty about the future and negative impacts on the standard of living in the affected regions for example the majority of the respondents are concerned about the rising cost of living in the area 83 4 the long term impacts on groundwater 77 4 and how their community is being affected 77 3 we found that perceptions of fairness and inequity weigh heavily especially on farmers and correlate to negative psychosocial effects our analysis shows that unresolved concerns of community residents about environmental and social issues and the loss of confidence in the local government contribute to lower life satisfaction inhibit the community s ability to plan for the future and lead to a weaker local economy

analysis of resource potential for china s unconventional gas and forecast for its long term production growth abstract china is vigorously promoting the development of its unconventional gas resources because natural gas is viewed as a lower carbon energy source and because china has relatively little conventional natural gas supply in this paper we first evaluate how much unconventional gas might be available based on an analysis of technically recoverable resources for three types of unconventional gas resources shale gas coalbed methane and tight gas we then develop three alternative scenarios of how this extraction might proceed using the geologic resources supply demand model based on our analysis the medium scenario which we would consider to be our best estimate shows a resource peak of 176 1 billion cubic meters bcm in 2068 depending on economic conditions and advance in extraction techniques production could vary greatly from this if economic conditions are adverse unconventional natural gas production could perhaps be as low as 70 1 bcm peaking in 2021 under the extremely optimistic assumption that all of the resources that appear to be technologically available can actually be recovered unconventional production could amount to as much as 469 7 bcm with peak production in 2069 even if this high scenario is achieved china s total gas production will only be sufficient to meet china s lowest demand forecast if production instead matches our best estimate significant amounts of natural gas imports are likely to be needed

sustaining wealth simulating a sovereign wealth fund for the uk s oil and gas resources past and future abstract exhaustible resources and the revenues they generate present a number of broad problems for macroeconomic management for example tax revenues can be large and highly volatile and the stream of revenues is finite an increasing number of countries now view resource funds and or fiscal rules for resource revenues as the answer to these challenges in this paper we explore the consequences for the uk if past revenues arising from the depletion of subsoil assets had been channelled into a sovereign wealth fund we show that had a decision been made to establish such a fund in 1975 this could have been substantial in size by 2018 about gbp 354 billion and moreover would have had a number of benefits such as a reduction in volatility of resource revenues flowing to the treasury crucially the fund s value would have substantially boosted the size of the government balance sheet yielding corresponding fiscal benefits we argue this missed opportunity is underlined further by considering the current debate about shale gas development in the uk notwithstanding considerable uncertainties favourable and optimistic projections for key parameters are required for any shale based fund to match what we simulate based on past experience for conventional subsoil assets

estimating coal production peak and trends of coal imports in china more than 20 countries in the world have already reached a maximum capacity in their coal production peak coal production such as japan the united kingdom and germany china home to the third largest coal reserves in the world is the world s largest coal producer and consumer making it part of the big six at present however china s coal production has not yet reached its peak in this article logistic curves and gaussian curves are used to predict china s coal peak and the results show that it will be between the late 2020s and the early 2030s based on the predictions of coal production and consumption china s net coal import could be estimated for coming years this article also analyzes the impact of china s net coal import on the international coal market especially the asian market and on china s economic development and energy security

abandoning the concept of renewable energy abstract renewable energy is a widely used term that describes certain types of energy production in politics business and academia renewable energy is often framed as the key solution to the global climate challenge we however argue that the concept of renewable energy is problematic and should be abandoned in favor of more unambiguous conceptualization building on the theoretical literature on framing and based on document analysis case examples and statistical data we discuss how renewable energy is framed and has come to be a central energy policy concept and analyze how its use has affected the way energy policy is debated and conducted we demonstrate the key problems the concept of renewable energy has in terms of sustainability incoherence policy impacts bait and switch tactics and generally misleading nature after analyzing these issues we discuss alternative conceptualizations and present our model of categorizing energy production according to carbon content and combustion the paper does not intend to criticize or promote any specific form of energy production but instead discusses the role of institutional conceptualization in energy policy

the impact of the shale gas revolution on the u s and japanese natural gas markets we investigated whether the increase in the us shale gas production changed the structures of the us and japanese natural gas markets using market data for the period 2002 5 2012 5 our analysis consists of a structural break test and market integration analysis the bai and perron structural break test detected a break point of natural gas prices and consumption in 2005 as well as other external shocks hurricane katrina and the lehman shock that are irrelevant to shale gas development we eliminated the impact of these shocks by separating the data set using the breaks identified in our analysis we found the breaks skewed the estimation a market linkage existed between the us and japanese markets in the original data set while it did not in the separated data the vector autoregressive var model also indicated a significant change before and after the break point the us market had a one side influence on the japanese market before 2005 but the influence disappeared after 2005 our results implied that the shale gas revolution triggered by the increase in shale gas production in 2005 caused the change in the relationship between the us and japanese natural gas markets

impacts of unconventional gas development on china s natural gas production and import abstract china has become a net importer of natural gas as a result of rapidly increasing consumption in recent years a production peak would exist since natural gas is an exhaustible resource as conventional natural gas production peak approaches the development of unconventional natural gas is attracting increasing attention china s unconventional natural gas reserves are abundant but exploration is still in its infancy stage thus with the increasing quest for low carbon development and china s natural gas price reform studying the impacts of unconventional gas development on china s natural gas supply and price reform under different scenarios has practical significance in this paper we predict china s natural gas production trends in different scenarios and forecast natural gas demand this paper concludes that the exploitation of unconventional natural gas will greatly improve china s annual natural gas production and delay the production peak year this is important for china s natural gas supply security as it can decrease dependence on imported gas furthermore as the cleanest fossil fuel it will enable more time and space for renewable energy development given the many costs and controversies surrounding its development in china

the competition situation analysis of shale gas industry in china applying porter s five forces and scenario model abstract with the increasing of energy demand and environmental pressure china government has been exploring a way to diversify energy supply shale gas development is becoming an important energy strategy in china in recent years due to giant shale gas reserves however the shale gas market is preliminarily shaping in china so that many factors have great influence on its competition to find these factors and to control them rationally is good for the cultivating chinese shale gas market five forces model for industry analysis puts an insight into the competitive landscape of shale gas market by showing the forces of supplier power buyer power threat of substitution barriers to entry and degree of rivalry illustrating the key factors that affect competitive landscape provides a view into the situation of shale gas industry the variation tendency of shale gas industry is analyzed by setting various scenarios finally some suggestions are proposed in order to keep the development of shale gas industry positively

policy recommendations to promote shale gas development in china based on a technical and economic evaluation because of its resource potential and clean burning advantages the development of shale gas can significantly increase the supply of cleaner energy while offering the associated benefits to foster shale gas development many policy incentives have been introduced in china however the current incentives have not been sufficiently aggressive and the shale gas industry has been slow to develop existing policies thus need to be further improved to provide effective support for decision makers in china a technical and economic evaluation is performed in this study to explore the profitability of shale gas production in pilot zones the results show that shale gas production is subeconomic under the current technical and economic conditions based on this evaluation a policy analysis is conducted to investigate the profitability improvement offered by the major policies available in china to elucidate a path toward improving incentive policies the results indicate that policy instruments related to gas prices financial subsidies corporate income taxes or combinations thereof could be used as priority options to improve policy incentives based on these results recommendations are presented to improve the current incentive polices aimed at accelerating shale gas development

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

china s energy security and its challenges towards 2035 abstract within the last twenty years china has become dependent on import of coal oil and natural gas especially oil is now an economic and a security concern by the chinese regime and key international stakeholders until 2035 china will account for one fourth of the global net growth in global gas consumption and more than half of the net growth in oil consumption the future demand cannot be covered by china s own conventional and unconventional sources pipelines from neighboring countries can cover more than half of the needed import of natural gas by 2030 but only 10 percent of the import demand of oil is secured so far even if china attempts to address its insufficient supply of oil by increased investments in overseas oil fields there is still a large gap furthermore the oil import will largely come from politically unstable countries and regions and the bulk of the supplies must be shipped through the potentially insecure hormuz and malacca straits the ongoing territorial disputes with neighboring countries regarding areas with gas and oil reserves in contested waters bear evidence to regional conflict potentials and china appears to engage more actively in energy diplomacy and regional cooperation

avoiding the resource curse indigenous communities and canada s oil sands summary concerns about a resource curse in canada have been raised in response to rapid growth in the petroleum sector in northern alberta in previous research there has been little consideration of how symptoms of the resource curse are experienced and managed at a regional scale and by indigenous communities an analysis of effects and responses is offered using a natural financial human and social capitals framework without consideration of how to manage the symptoms of the resource curse oil and gas activity is likely to further disadvantage indigenous populations already living on the margins of canadian society

local labor markets and natural resources a synthesis of the literature a primary way that natural resources affect a locality is through the demand for labor with greater extraction requiring more workers shifts in labor demand can be measured through changes in employment and earnings the main labor market outcomes or through changes in the population and income more generally these changes may spillover into the nonresource economy leading to greater overall effects or possibly crowd out be spread unequally across the population thereby altering the distribution of income and the poverty rate or influence educational attainment as people choose between additional schooling and work in this review the literature linking natural resources to local labor markets is synthesized by organizing existing studies according to their resource measurement and the outcomes that they consider this synthesis provides an accessible guide to a literature that has boomed in recent years it also identifies promising avenues for future research and lays a foundation to further generalize the evidence through an eventual meta analysis

a compound option model of production and intermediate inventories this article extends the option approach to valuing real assets by modeling the firm as a two stage process with bounded output rates in which the output of the first stage may be held as work in process in this setting the real asset becomes a compound option which if exercised gives the option to finish the work in process and sell the output as its final payoff the existence of intermediate inventories may arise as an optimal investment strategy for exploiting possible future price increases the framework allows us to analyze the effect of uncertainty on output rates and the effect of interest rates changes on inventory levels copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

leaving the countryside rural to urban migration decisions in china this paper employs a simple theoretical model of labor allocation within rural households given existing land arrangements in an attempt to explain why rural chinese do not fully participate in labor migration it first explores the mechanisms by which individual household and community characteristics affect the migration decision empirical results are then presented to substantiate the derived hypotheses the paper further explores the question of whether the migration decision is permanent by analyzing the responses of household consumption to income from migration excerpt

forecasting the development of china s coal to liquid industry under security economic and environmental constraints abstract coal to liquid ctl technology has attracted attention in china as an alternative way to alleviate oil shortages however due to low profits and environmental problems chinese ctl policy is cautious and unstable rendering the future development of ctl technology uncertain considering security economic and environmental constraints this study uses system dynamics models to predict the long term development of the ctl industry in china the results show that ctl production will steadily increase over the next few years and a greater increase will occur after 2021 if the government will not provide support policies for ctl industry we forecast ctl production will be 29 3 million tons by 2030 once government actively supports ctl its production is projected to reach 51 8 million tons which is 45 times greater than that in 2015 when environmental issues are also considered the production is expected to 47 3 million tons the sensitivity analysis shows that under different refined oil prices ctl production ranges from 29 3 to 56 3 million tons at present china s ctl only accounts for 0 2 of its oil consumption and the eroi value of ctl is approximately 0 9 1 the low eroi implies little importance for ctl from a net energy perspective based on these research findings this research offers some relevant policy suggestions

vision 2023 forecasting turkey s natural gas demand between 2013 and 2030 abstract natural gas is the primary source for electricity production in turkey however turkey does not have indigenous resources and imports more than 98 0 of the natural gas it consumes in 2011 more than 20 0 of turkey s annual trade deficit was due to imported natural gas estimated at us 20 0 billion turkish government has very ambitious targets for the country s energy sector in the next decade according to the vision 2023 agenda previously we have estimated that turkey s annual electricity demand would be 530 000 gwh at the year 2023 considering current energy market dynamics it is almost evident that a substantial amount of this demand would be supplied from natural gas however meticulous analysis of the vision 2023 goals clearly showed that the information about the natural gas sector is scarce most importantly there is no demand forecast for natural gas in the vision 2023 agenda therefore in this study the aim was to generate accurate forecasts for turkey s natural gas demand between 2013 and 2030 for this purpose two semi empirical models based on econometrics gross domestic product gdp at purchasing power parity ppp per capita and demographics population change were developed the logistic equation which can be used for long term natural gas demand forecasting and the linear equation which can be used for medium term demand forecasting fitted to the timeline series almost seamlessly in addition these two models provided reasonable fits according to the mean absolute percentage error mape criteria turkey s natural gas demand at the year 2030 was calculated as 76 8 billion m 3 using the linear model and 83 8 billion m 3 based on the logistic model consequently found to be in better agreement with the official turkish petroleum pipeline corporation botas forecast 76 4 billion m 3 than results published in the literature

fiscal decentralization and growing regional disparities in rural china some evidence in the provision of social services this paper provides evidence of inter regional and inter sectoral inequality in china by comparing local government provision of social services an examination of a number of education and health status indicators reveals large disparities in the level and quality of service provision across regions with service provision in poorer regions falling far short of targets enunciated in state policy fiscal centralization has weakened the capacity of government to effect equalization across regions as the fiscal system moved towards self financing fiscal pressures particularly intensified for the county level whose expenditure burdens have generally been increasing with higher level governments themselves under severe fiscal strain and in no position to subsidize services rural governments are forced to seek supplementary funding off budget by imposing a variety of fees and levies in poor regions however access to off budget resources is limited resulting in lower levels of service provided and amplification of regional inequalities copyright 1995 by oxford university press

social licence corporate social responsibility and coal seam gas framing the new political dynamics of contestation abstract this paper explores the contestation dynamics between the unconventional gas mining sector and its challengers through the prism of the social licence to operate social licence is a dominant narrative in the mining sector today and as a signifier of the sector s csr credentials the term is an influential one its capacity to confer project legitimacy and hence avoid the risks of community opposition helps explain why most companies seek to gain one today both gas proponents and opponents talk the language of social licence the former to defend their projects the latter to challenge them yet beyond rhetoric the precise meaning of social licence remains elusive this paper uses a case study of community opposition to primarily coal seam gas projects in an eastern australian region to explore how the absence of a precise meaning for social licence has created a strategic opportunity space for the industry s opponents to invest social licence with a potent democracy frame this democracy framing has proved particularly effective as a contestation tool and helps explain the outcomes in this case

stochastic analysis of a shale gas investment strategy for coping with production uncertainties abstract the soaring demand for natural gas and deteriorating environmental conditions in recent years have together created a significant incentive for china to develop shale gas exploration in this endeavor production capacity is a major uncertainty that substantially affects the net investment return we propose a markov decision process model to explore and determine the desirable investment strategy under such uncertainty our model has the advantage of being able to handle dynamic stochastic market states and it considers not only the value of the project itself net cash flow but also the social welfare environmental cost and financial subsidy our objective is to maximize the long run expected return of investment the methodology was applied to determine the investment strategy for a case study in china we found that the project is feasible only when the production capacity is larger than 8 55 billion cubic meters additional shale gas supply may generate higher sales revenue however the benefits may be neutralized by the decrease in price when domestic demand is inelastic to price we also found that financial subsidy is an effective incentive for shale gas investment because it significantly increases the expected return of investment

does human capital matter for energy consumption in china this article investigates the dynamic relationship between human capital and energy consumption using chinese provincial data over the period 1990 2010 considering for cross sectional dependence and parameter heterogeneity across space and over time we identify a significant and negative human capital energy consumption relationship in china specifically we find that a 1 increase in human capital reduces energy consumption by a range between 0 18 and 0 45 furthermore this negative relationship can be attributed to stronger accumulation of post school human capital in eastern china this finding suggests that energy conservation in china could be achieved by improving post school human capital components such as on the job training experience and learning by doing

devolving fiscal policy migration and tax yields abstractdevolution of taxes to sub national jurisdictions could reduce expected tax revenue if some households move to lower tax regimes constraining devolved government policy this paper develop

natural resource ownership financial gains and governance the case of unconventional gas development in the uk and the us abstract who owns an area s natural resources affects the local financial gains from extraction and participation in resource governance we develop a typology of ownership regimes using two dimensions of ownership private versus public and local versus absentee and apply it to unconventional natural gas development in the united kingdom uk and the state of pennsylvania in the united states we find that local residents in pennsylvania own 53 of the acreage leased for development and capture an estimated 8 5 of the value of production of the typical well more than double what is expected from a well in the uk s public absentee regime despite revenue sharing policies the dollar amount of local payments is also larger in pennsylvania with the difference reflecting policies and institutions not differences in the value of production the pennsylvania case provides a benchmark for public absentee owners considering policies to direct payments to communities hosting extraction it gives the local payments corresponding to the case where subsurface owners voluntarily negotiate lease terms with energy firms and roughly half of ownership revenues accrue locally

shale gas the unfolding story in the early 2000s us gas production was in slow but steady decline despite increasing drilling activity as us natural gas prices rose in response to the resulting tight market the only supply side solution appeared to lie in the development of liquefied natural gas lng projects in the middle east and africa for importation to the north american market almost unnoticed in its early stages the us shale gas phenomenon gathered momentum from 2004 onwards through the combination and application of two proven technologies namely horizontal drilling and pressure induced hydraulic fracturing or fracking the pioneers of this approach were not the majors but the much smaller domestically focused independent upstream companies who together with a well established and adaptable service sector instigated what is now commonly referred to as the shale gas boom and which has increased us natural gas production to the point where only minimal imports of lng are expected to be required for the foreseeable future this paper looks at the genesis of the us shale gas industry the intensive nature of its operations and the factors which have underpinned its success to date it also addresses the question of whether similar developments might be expected in europe and what specific challenges would need to be overcome in a world where increased lng supply has created trade flow and price linkages between regional gas markets the paper also examines the impact us shale production has had on other markets through the re direction of lng originally intended for the us market

the geopolitical impact of the shale revolution exploring consequences on energy prices and rentier states while the shale revolution was largely a us affair it affects the global energy system in this paper we look at the effects of this spectacular increase in natural gas and oil extraction capacity can have on the mix of primary energy sources on energy prices and through that on internal political stability of rentier states we use two exploratory simulation models to investigate the consequences of the combination of both complexity and uncertainty in relation to the global energy system and state stability our simulations show that shale developments could be seen as part of a long term hog cycle with a short term drop in oil prices if unconventional supply substitutes demand for oil these lower oil prices may lead to instability in rentier states neighbouring the eu especially when dependence on oil and gas income is high youth bulges are present or buffers like sovereign wealth funds are too limited to bridge the negative economic effects of temporary low oil prices

risk propensity and firm performance a study of the petroleum exploration industry this paper explores the differences in observed risk propensity among petroleum firms and their impact on firm performance in this work we 1 develop a decision theoretic model which measures a firm s risk propensity in the form of an implied utility function 2 investigate changes in corporate risk propensity with respect to changes in firm size and 3 examine the relationships between firms risk propensities and alternative dimensions of economic performance including ex post risk and return measures we also develop a new risk propensity measure the risk tolerance ratio rtr which controls for firm size and allows firms to be differentiated in terms of relative risk propensity the motivation for this work is managerial concerns regarding appropriate risk taking behavior and the effect of risky choice on firm performance this methodology has importance business strategy implications in that we are able to make strong inferences about causal relationships between ex ante risk taking and performance our findings are compelling in that corporate risk propensity seems to matter and that decisions about corporate risk policy have a significant impact on the petroleum firm s economic performance

a system dynamics analysis of technology cost and policy that affect the market competition of shale gas in china abstract in order to ease environment pressure and alleviate the scarce problem of energy chinese government has begun to exploit and develop shale gas sg since 2009 however the formation of competitive market is bristled with difficulties due to its infancy imperfect and lack of standardization this paper firstly analyzes the status quo of technology policy cost and competition of sg industry in china then a system dynamics sd model is built to show various trends of chinese sg industry under different scenarios which shows that technology policy and cost all have effects on competitiveness at last the simulations reveal that the number of competitors in chinese sg industry will arrive at its peak from 2019 to 2020 the corresponding recommendations have been presented chinese government should pay more attention on the perfection of laws and regulations of sg industry and competitors should focus on increasing r d investment

impact of unconventional natural gas development on regional water resources and market supply in china from the perspective of game analysis abstract this study presents a detailed framework for evaluating water resource constraint and game based supply strategies of unconventional and conventional natural gases in china surface water production pressure and groundwater pollution risk level are used to measure the extent of water resource constraint on shale gas development cournot and stackelberg game models are applied to illustrate the oligopoly mechanism between unconventional and conventional natural gas manufacturing a subsidy multiplier model is then proposed to identify the impact of government subsidy on different game strategies results indicate that high amounts of estimated ultimate recovery and recycling wastewater would significantly reduce water resources consumption during shale gas development an increased subsidy coefficient would increase the amount of unconventional natural gas but decrease the amount of conventional natural gas however the majority of subsidy multiplier values would be less than 1 implying an inconspicuous effect of the subsidy moreover the equilibrium production of unconventional natural gas in the cournot and stackelberg game models would increase with the increased substitution factor m1 but decrease with the increased substitution factor m2 conversely the high amount of equilibrium production of conventional natural gas would increase the substitution factor m2 but reduce the substitution factor m1 within these two models

gas versus oil prices the impact of shale gas abstract what significance will developments in shale gas production have for european gas prices some commentators paint a gloomy picture of the future gas markets but most forecasts for the oil market are positive consequently a view appears to prevail that price trends will differ sharply between oil and gas markets this article looks at developments in us shale gas production and discusses their impact on the movement of european gas prices the relationship between oil and gas prices over time is also analysed

food insecurity income inequality and the changing comparative advantage in world agriculture i would like to argue in this article that in the process of economic development in land poor countries in asia agriculture faces three distinctly different problems food insecurity sectoral income inequality and the declining food self sufficiency associated with the declining comparative advantage in agriculture at the high income stage massive imports of food grains to asia if they occur will aggravate the world food shortage which will have significant implications for the poverty incidence in the world i argue that in order to avoid such a tragedy asia should expand farm size to reduce labor cost by adopting large scale mechanization sub saharan africa should realize a green revolution in grain production and latin america should further expand its grain production capacity

cornucopia or curse reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing fracking this study assesses the overall technical economic environmental and social costs and benefits of the hydraulic fracturing fracking of natural gas drawn from a review of more than 100 studies looking at shale gas in the past 10 years most of them peer reviewed this article begins by briefly explaining the process of hydrofracking and summarizing recent market trends up until late 2013 then the study discusses a series of advantages and disadvantages to hydrofracking it notes that done properly shale gas development can enhance energy security and the availability of energy fuels lower natural gas prices offer a cleaner environmental footprint than some other fossil fuels and enable local economic development however done poorly production can be prone to accidents and leakage contribute to environmental degradation induce earthquakes and when externalities are accounted for produce more net economic losses than profits the study concludes that the pursuit and utilization of shale gas thus presents policymakers planners and investors with a series of pernicious tradeoffs and tough choices

transition pathways for a uk low carbon electricity future abstract achieving long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions such as the uk s legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 80 by 2050 will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands involving radical substitution to low carbon supply technologies and improvements in end use energy efficiency this paper describes the development and high level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a uk low carbon electricity system explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach the pathways use an action space concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors which are influenced by the competing governance framings or logics that different actors pursue the paper sets out three core transition pathways market rules central co ordination and thousand flowers in which market government and civil society logics respectively dominate it summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways and the roles of actors in bringing these about this leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways and of the challenges for individuals businesses social movements and policy makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them

barriers to the development of china s shale gas industry abstract shale gas has become a promising onshore energy prospect in china as much as the country aspires for greater energy independence through the use of its shale gas reserves this process is slowed down by the combined weight of relative inexperience lack of technology geographical complexity a hostile economic environment a disincentive pipeline regime and a complex land ownership system to foster a better understanding of the current circumstances of the country s shale gas sector a panel of scholars and experts shared their perspectives and insider knowledge on china s shale gas industry it was found that some of the country s man made institutional barriers are factors that have been hindering shale gas development in china in addition to natural conditions such as water concerns and the complex geography of shale fields resolving this situation necessitates breaking the monopoly that major state owned oil companies have over high quality shale gas resources opening pipeline network access providing geological data developing the domestic oil service market creating conditions for fair competition between service providers and improving the water management system

migration incentives migration types the role of relative deprivation the authors explore the role of relative deprivation versus absolute income as an incentive for migration in developing countries in section i of this paper we outline the relative deprivation model of migration and present an illustration of the divergent policy implications of a relative deprivation model versus an absolute income model an attempt is made to identify distinct empirical implications of relative and absolute income motives for migrating in section ii a migration decision model is estimated and is used to explore absolute and relative income motives for internal and international migration in a sample of rural mexican households as well as to test the extent to which discontinuity in labour markets shapes the choice of migrant destination in section iii we present our conclusions excerpt