armington elasticities for energy policy modeling evidence from four european countries elasticities of substitution among imports and competing domestic production armington elasticities play an important role in computable general equilibrium cge assessments of energy and climate policy this paper provides estimates of armington elasticities for 15 commodity groups in four european countries since armington elasticities are found to be rather low on average researchers may want to reconsider the device of using high values of armington elasticities in cge models to avoid unrealistic competitiveness effects or emission leakage rates associated with energy or carbon taxes or other forms of energy related regulation estimated elasticities tend to be higher in the case of machinery and other investment goods than in the case of primary products ores and chemicals as well as consumer goods

reallocation and learning over the business cycle abstract this paper shows how cyclical aggregate shocks can stimulate structural reallocation activities which in turn amplify the effect of the shock it analyses the informational aspects of restructuring activities and their interplay with aggregate shocks a model is developed in which production units are uncertain about the value of staying in the market and learn about it over time in a bayesian fashion in addition to their own private assessment they can also learn from observing other units decisions given that adjusting is costly each unit has an incentive to delay action and wait for other players to act in order to make a better informed decision if delay is more costly in a downturn a negative aggregate shock can break the inertia and induce the most pessimistic agents to exit the information released by such actions will induce more action thus generating a burst in restructuring activities that reinforces the initial effect of the aggregate shock this process of information accumulation and revelation offers both a powerful amplification mechanism of relatively modest aggregate shocks and a potential explanation of why restructuring tends to be concentrated in recessions

optimal capacity investment decisions with two sided fixed capacity adjustment costs in this paper we consider the optimal management of capacity when a firm faces fixed costs and variable costs to purchase capacity the firm can also salvage capacity and receive a variable value per unit capacity salvaged but faces a different fixed cost in this case each period the firm faces a stochastic demand and maintenance costs for capacity that it decides to keep the firm would thus like to decide how much capacity it should purchase or salvage each period we introduce a new concept which we call k1 k2 concavity and show that the profit to go function satisfies this property this enables us to characterize the structure of an optimal policy which is rather complex consisting of multiple regions in which different decisions are made we show how special cases of this problem e g no fixed costs expansion or contraction not allowed reduce to well known results and how k1 k2 concavity is a generalization of concavity k concavity and sym k concavity we also show how different lead times for purchasing or salvaging capacity can be integrated into the model finally we extend the model to the case where demand is markov modulated and a portion of capacity can deteriorate in each period

agreements between firms and the technological life cycle model evidence from information technologies abstract contrarily to most previous contributions which have addressed the issue of cooperative agreements essentially in a perspective of comparative statics in this paper a model is proposed that relies on the technological trajectory notion suggested by evolutionary theories and emphasizes the relevance of the technological and market dynamics in explaining why and to what extent firms have recourse to agreements in particular it is claimed that the propensity of firms towards collaborative ventures and the characteristics of the cooperation depend upon the phase of the technological life cycle of the industry branch in which the cooperation takes place based on a cross sectional analysis of 45 industry branches in the information technology industrial system the paper also provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the propensity towards agreements and the nature of the agreements concluded do change during the technological life cycle to this end it takes advantage of the arpa database developed at the polytechnic of milan and containing detailed information on over 2 000 agreements concluded in the 1980 1986 period all over the world in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

a chinese sky trust distributional impacts of carbon charges and revenue recycling in china abstract the introduction of carbon charges on the use of fossil fuels in china would have a progressive impact on income distribution this outcome which contrasts to the regressive distributional impact found in most studies of carbon charges in industrialized countries is driven primarily by differences between urban and rural expenditure patterns if carbon revenues were recycled on an equal per capita basis via a sky trust the progressive impact would be further enhanced low income mainly rural households would receive more in sky trust dividends than they pay in carbon charges and high income mainly urban households would pay more than they receive in dividends thus a chinese sky trust would contribute to both lower fossil fuel consumption and greater income equality

carbon tax simulations using a household demand model abstract the main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy to achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non durable consumer demand in sweden that utilises micro and macro data in the simulations we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the co2 tax one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower vat and one that subsidise public transport one conclusion from the simulations is that the co2 tax has regional distribution effects in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden

science dependence of technologies evidence from inventions and their inventors abstract articulating a compelling economic rationale to justify investments in research by definition furthest removed from direct immediate economic benefit is perhaps one of chief challenges of r d managers policy makers and science analysts in the years ahead although several innovation studies and surveys have provided some convincing empirical evidence of impacts and benefits of research to technical progress there is still an urgent need for comprehensive models reliable data and analytical tools to describe and monitor links between r d and industrial innovation in more detail as for the role of scientific and engineering research in the innovation process this paper reports on the findings of a novel methodology to increase our understanding of the contribution of research efforts to successful technical inventions the approach is based on a nation wide mail survey amongst inventors working in the corporate sector and the public research sector in the netherlands the inventors inside information regarding their patented inventions and related technological innovations on the market provided a range of quantitative data on the importance of the underpinning research activities statistical models attempting to explain the degree of science dependence of the inventions identify a range of relevant variables covering the inventor s own capabilities and previous r d achievements external information sources as well as the inventor s r d environment in general some 20 of the private sector innovations turned out to be partially based on public sector research furthermore citations in patents referring to basic research literature were found to be invalid indictors of a technology s science dependence

composition of r d and technological cycles abstract this paper investigates the existence of technological cycles that arise endogenously from certain tradeoffs between research and development inherent in the technological features of r d production it analyzes the composition of r d expenditures and models the associated internal structure and dynamics of the innovation process explicitly the model includes externalities and cumulative aspects of r d processes the discussion is initially developed in a deterministic setting for both the first best and the market cases the dynamics leading to optimal cycles are fully explored for specific examples results are given with regard to 1 i level of research investment 2 ii stability of steady states and cycles and 3 iii amplitude of cycles extensions to a stochastic setting are also presented

poverty and distributional effects of a carbon tax in mexico abstract mexico recently declared ambitious goals in reducing domestic co2 emissions and introduced a carbon tax in 2014 although negative effects on household welfare and related poverty measures are widely discussed as possible consequences empirical evidence is missing we try to fill this gap by simulating an input output model coupled with household survey data to examine the welfare effects of different carbon tax rates over the income distribution the currently effective tax rate is small and has negligible effects on household welfare higher simulated tax rates maintaining the current tax base show a slight progressivity but welfare losses remain moderate welfare losses regressivity and poverty rise more with widening the tax base towards natural gas and the other greenhouse gases methane ch4 and nitrous oxide n2o mainly through food price increases for a complete analysis of the policy we simulate a redistribution of calculated tax revenues and find that the resulting effects become highly progressive also for high rates wider tax bases and even in the absence of perfect targeting of social welfare programs

is the gasoline tax regressive in the twenty first century taking wealth into account abstract poterba 1991a has much influenced the literature on the distributional effects of carbon pricing poterba argues that the incidence of energy environmental taxes across households is better appreciated if the relative tax burdens are measured against total expenditure interpreted as a proxy for lifetime income instead of annual income this way however since the distribution of total expenditure is structurally more uniform the incidence of energy price increases is always less regressive than when annual income is used this outcome is often taken to lessen the relevance of equity concerns regarding carbon pricing almost twenty five years after poterba 1991a piketty 2014 revived the idea that wealth is a dimension of economic welfare constituting an increasingly important source of inequality we show that omitting wealth in measuring ability to pay means underestimating the regressivity of carbon pricing and its inequity towards younger people using household level data and statistical matching we revisit poterba s application and compare the distributional incidence of the us gasoline tax for different measures of ability to pay total expenditure income and wealth adjusted income regressivity is not a reason to forgo carbon pricing as a cost effective approach to climate mitigation but calls for consideration and compensation of the distributional effects

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

can the paris deal boost sdgs achievement an assessment of climate mitigation co benefits or side effects on poverty and inequality abstract the paper investigates potential synergies and trade offs between emission reduction policies and sustainable development objectives specifically it provides an ex ante assessment that the impacts of the nationally determined contributions ndcs submitted under the paris agreement will have on the sustainable development goals sdgs of poverty eradication sdg1 and reduced income inequality sdg10 through this research we aim at answering the following questions does mitigation policy always imply a trade off with development objectives if this is the case what is the magnitude of the effect of the new international climate architecture on poverty and inequality by combining an empirical analysis with a modelling exercise the paper estimates the future trends of poverty prevalence and inequality across countries in a reference scenario and under a climate mitigation policy with alternative revenue recycling schemes our study finds that a full implementation of the emission reduction contributions stated in the ndcs is projected to slow down the effort to reduce poverty by 2030 4 2 of the population below the poverty line compared to the baseline scenario especially in countries that have proposed relatively more stringent mitigation targets and suffer higher policy costs conversely the impact of climate policy on inequality shows opposite sign but remains very limited if financial support for mitigation action in developing countries is provided through an international climate fund the prevalence of poverty will be slightly reduced at the aggregate level but the country specific effect depends on the relative size of funds flowing to beneficiary countries and on their economic structure the output of our analysis contributes to the emerging literature on the linkages between climate change policy and sustainable development although we capture only partially the complex system of interrelations and feedbacks proper of the sdgs moreover due to its policy relevance it further enriches the debate on the implementation of the paris agreement and its climate finance tools

quantifying the severity of fuel poverty its relationship with poor housing and reasons for non investment in energy saving measures in ireland fuel poverty has generally been calculated by quantifying the number of households spending in excess of 10 of income on home heating this definition has a number of significant practical and scientific limitations this paper employs self reported data to calculate the severity of fuel poverty in ireland to identify chronic fuel poor households from occasional sufferers it also assesses domestic energy efficiency levels ireland is a useful case study as it demonstrates the highest variations in seasonal mortality and morbidity in northern europe both of which are associated with fuel poverty ireland is also experiencing extreme difficulties meeting its environmental emissions targets in light of recent spectacular economic growth reducing fuel poverty would lower energy related emissions assisting policy makers achieve these challenging targets furthermore little empirical research has been undertaken on fuel poverty in ireland this paper identifies key social groups at risk by conducting detailed socio economic and socio demographic analyses the relationship between fuel poverty and adverse housing conditions damp condensation is also examined moreover the reasons behind householders not investing in energy saving measures are reported the results show that ireland suffers from similar levels of fuel poverty as the uk with low income households suffering the greatest the key policy implications are outlined

age analysis of the impact of a carbon energy tax on the irish economy a computable general equilibrium model with specific detail in taxation and energy use is developed in this paper to quantify the impact of the implementation of energy taxation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in ireland benchmark data combining physical energy and emissions data and economic data in the form of a social accounting matrix sam had to be compiled from various data sources because energy and pollution accounts from the seea are not available for ireland we find that the reduction target for energy related co2 emissions in ireland of 25 8 compared to 1998 levels can be achieved with a carbon energy tax of 10 15 euros per tonne of co2 though fuel switching is important in meeting the target this result is more sensitive to the possibilities for producers to substitute away from energy use welfare would fall but only by small percentages production and consumption patterns would change more significantly with a shift in demand from fuels with a high emission factor to energy sources with a lower carbon intensity and from energy to other commodities this paper confirms that a carbon energy tax leads to greater emission reductions than an equivalent uniform energy tax the latter has a stronger negative impact on the less polluting energy sectors whereas the carbon tax greatly stimulates the use of renewable energy and reduces the use of peat and coal the new sam the model and the application to energy taxes contribute to a better informed debate on environmental policy in ireland

patents as indicators of corporate technological strength abstract quantitative indicators of the technological strengths of individual companies would be an important addition to the financial and economic data used in competitor assessments merger acquisition analyses investment decisions and corporate planning and management this paper examines the links between corporate patent and patent citation data and several other indicators of corporate performance changes in sales and profits research and development budgets scientific productivity and expert opinions of company technological strength the study covers 17 us pharmaceutical companies for which financial r d and expert opinion data were readily available for these pharmaceutical companies it was found that the patent data are an excellent indicator of overall corporate technological strength with 1 an overall correlation of 0 82 between expert opinion of pharmaceutical company technical strength and the number of us patents granted to the companies and 2 correlations in the general range of 0 6 to 0 9 between increases in company profits and sales and both patent citation frequency and concentration of company patents within a few patent classes

income distribution impacts of climate change mitigation policy in the susquehanna river basin economy we examine the cost side income distribution impacts of a carbon tax in the susquehanna river basin srb region of the united states utilizing a computable general equilibrium model we find the aggregate impacts of a 25 ton carbon tax on the srb economy are likely to be negative but modest an approximately one third of 1 reduction in gross regional product grp in the short run and double that amount in the long run however unlike many previous studies we find that the carbon tax is mildly progressive as measured by income bracket changes per capita equivalent variation and gini coefficient changes based on expenditure patterns the dominant factors affecting the distributional impacts are the pattern of output income and consumption impacts that affect lower income groups relatively less than higher income ones an increase in transfer payments favoring lower income groups and decreased corporate profits absorbed primarily by higher income groups

densification what does it mean for fuel poverty and energy justice an empirical analysis energy is increasingly at the forefront of the global political agenda while there is a longstanding literature relating to fuel poverty and increasingly energy justice there remains little evidence which explores its link with the urban form specifically the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the urban consolidation hypothesis and the cultivation of energy justice in australia this study uses data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey years 2007 2014 a national probability sample and indefinite life panel the substantive findings of this study demonstrate that for low income and renting households greater urban density corresponds to a higher likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty further for households with a dwelling type described as an apartment two or three storeys there is a separate and quite generalisable indication that this type of dwelling is associated with a lower likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty this study connects the debate regarding urban consolidation and energy consumption to the fuel poverty and energy justice literature alongside this contribution this study also provides policymakers and planners with new evidence to inform remediation policies that are directed at supporting the fuel poor

double boom cycles and the comeback of science push and market pull abstract the discussion about the course of technology development began in the 1960s with linear science push and market pull models and received a decisive impetus in the 1980s with the introduction of non linear recursive models the effect of these non linear characteristics on the chronological development of a field is less clear in particular as to science based technology several authors discuss such developments of technologies but with a focus on market activities some studies point to cyclical instead of logistic developments so that a closer look at the underlying mechanisms suggests itself for an improved understanding a clear distinction between science technology and market activities proves to be important a long term analysis of the development of science based technology fields and related science fields leads to the discovery of typical double boom cycles of technology where the first boom can be associated with science technology push and the second boom with market pull but with feedback loops and non linear characteristics the scientific development shows two growth periods with an intermittent stagnation period where the turning points precede the referring technology developments indicating a relevant impact of science on technology in contrast a cyclical development of the market activities in parallel to technology is not visible

distributional effects of subsidy removal and implementation of carbon taxes in mexican households abstract this paper presents a microsimulation using data from the national households income and expenditure survey nhies from 1994 to 2010 to determine the distributional effects of the price changes arising from energy and environmental policies and their impact on mexican households we reported simulations of several changes in energy prices as a result of partial or total energy subsidy removal including carbon tax in order to examine whether the subsidy mechanism and carbon tax tend to be progressive or regressive we evaluated the households burden in different income levels these simulations respond to the need for an assessment of economic and environmental impacts of energy subsidies in mexico this is of great importance for mexico because of effort that has been taken in the development of energy policies and the rising interest of the mexican government in mitigating carbon dioxide co2 emissions and their concomitant environmental damage

are co2 taxes regressive evidence from the danish experience abstract denmark today carries one of the heaviest environmental tax burdens in the world bringing in around 10 of public revenues while evaluations have shown that the danish co 2 and other environmental taxes work as an effective measure to reduce emissions a considerable barrier to increased use of these instruments today seems to be a widespread perception of their socially adverse effects in this article it is demonstrated that co 2 taxes imposed on energy consumption in households as well as in industry do in fact tend to be regressive and therefore have undesirable distributional effects this holds especially for taxes imposed directly on households to analyze this we apply national consumer survey statistics in combination with input output tables

the distributional implications of a carbon tax in ireland we study the effects of carbon tax and revenue recycling across the income distribution in the republic of ireland in absolute terms a carbon tax of 20 tco2 would cost the poorest households less than 3 week and the richest households more than 4 week a carbon tax is regressive therefore however if the tax revenue is used to increase social benefits and tax credits households across the income distribution can be made better off without exhausting the total carbon tax revenue

growing through cycles in an infinitely lived agent economy abstract this paper extends the analysis of k matsuyama econometrica67 1999 335 347 to the case of an infinitely lived representative agent economy the economy grows endogenously through endogenous fluctuations perpetually moving back and forth between two phases in one phase there is no innovation the market structure is competitive and the economy grows solely by capital accumulation in the other phase new goods are introduced and the market structure is monopolistic in the long run both investment and innovation grow at the same rate but the economy alternates between the periods of high investment and the periods of higher innovation journal of economic literature classification numbers e32 o11

threshold nonlinearities and asymmetric endogenous business cycles abstract this paper presents a model of endogenous business cycles in the presence of knowledge spillovers and a time to build restriction there are two key assumptions that characterize the model i the payoff to each firm depends on the aggregate state of knowledge and ii the innovation of a project is time consuming under those assumptions a simple structure is shown to be described by a piecewise linear difference equation with a discontinuity we show that the resulting dynamics generated by such a dynamical system leads to an asymmetric periodic cycle of arbitrary period that appears to switch repeatedly between different regimes

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

taxation of multiple greenhouse gases and the effects on income distribution a case study of the netherlands current economic instruments aimed at climate change mitigation focus on co2 emissions only but the kyoto protocol refers to other greenhouse gases ghg as well as co2 these are ch4 n2o hfcs pfcs and sf6 taxation of multiple greenhouse gases improves the cost effectiveness of climate change mitigation it is not yet clear however what the effect is of multigas taxation on the distribution of the tax burden across income groups this paper examines and compares distributional effects of a co2 tax and a comprehensive tax that covers all six ghg of the kyoto protocol the study concentrates on the netherlands in the year 2000 we established tax rates on the basis of marginal abatement cost curves and the dutch policy target the distributional effects have been determined by means of environmentally extended input output analysis and data on consumer expenditures our results show that taxation of multiple ghg improves not only the cost effectiveness of climate change mitigation but also distributes the tax burden more equally across income groups as compared to a co2 tax these findings are relevant for the debate on the role of non co2 ghg in climate change mitigation