what is the limit of chinese coal supplies a stella model of hubbert peak abstract american geophysicist m king hubbert in 1956 first introduced a logistic equation to estimate the peak and lifetime production for oil of usa in his 1956 article nuclear energy and the fossil fuels in which he predicted the production peak for the usa hubbert used 80 pages of differential equations to draw his conclusions that earned him some criticism because only those with profound mathematical knowledge could understand hubbert presented in his 1982 article techniques of prediction as applied to the production of oil and gas an alternative method that was much more accessible since then a fierce debate ensued on the so called hubbert peak including also its methodology the production of coal fields generally appears like a bell shaped curve a gradual increase to maximum output then a short peak and a gradual decline some people thought the capacity of coal supply only depended on the economical cost and technological factors but did not consider the life cycle of coal fields namely that once the output has reached hubbert peak no matter by whatever effort one cannot increase production this paper proposes to use the generic stella model to simulate hubbert peak particularly for the chinese raw coal production this model is demonstrated as being robust according to this simulation the coal peak in china comes between 2025 and 2032 with peak production at about 3339 4452 million tonnes before the peak comes chinese coal output will grow by about 3 4 annually after the peak however the output will fall china s coal demand at 2050 would be about 2500 mt of raw coal and possess 42 6 of total primary energy the figure of coal demand 2500 mt would be beyond possible supply which is 2338 mt according to the hubbert curve of this paper the gap between coal supply and demand will be 7 of the demand at 2050 notably the sustainability of chinese coal dominated energy policy will be challenged seriously by this so called hubbert peak in the coming decades china should find a new energy development policy related to supply diversification

testing for market power in multi product industries across multiple export markets a large body of theoretical literature has developed in the past 15 years incorporating various models of imperfect competition into international trade theory empirical work testing for imperfect competition in export markets however has been much more limited in particular the empirical evidence in support of widespread imperfect competition in u s export and import sectors is somewhat scant and mixed 2 one technique for assessing the existence of market power in export markets has been developed by knetter 33 who estimated a reduced form single equation in which the export price to a specific market for a good was a function of the exchange rate a country specific dummy variable and a time dummy knetter rejected the null hypothesis of perfectly competitive markets in nearly all of the u s and german export markets studied 3 his methodology has been adopted by other researchers who have rejected the perfect competition hypothesis in other u s export markets 4

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

private provision of public goods and information diffusion in social groups i describe a dynamic model of costly information sharing where private information affecting collective value actions is transmitted by social proximity individuals make voluntary contributions toward the provision of a pure public good and information transmission about quality of provision is a necessary condition for collective provision to take place in a stationary equilibrium i show that unlike in the case of private goods better informed individuals face positive incentives to incur a cost to share information with their neighbors and that these incentives are stronger and provision of the pure public good greater the smaller are individuals social neighborhoods

the mix of social and private provision of goods and services abstract in some countries health insurance and education are supplied as social goods at near zero prices and funded from taxation this paper analyses a case where such provision competes with income supplements as a redistribution device and where taxes or transferable vouchers influence the take up of the social goods compared to alternatives available in a private market each consumer chooses to consume either social or private goods and a vertical market segmentation results from differential demand for quality

can private giving promote economic segregation this paper explores the theoretical relationship between tax relief for private giving and individual location choice tax relief for giving may receive political support at the local level because of its distributional effects however through its effects on public provision choices such relief may affect individual location decisions and in so doing has an impact on the jurisdictional configurations that can arise in equilibrium for some demographic parameters it will promote economic segregation rather than integration while for others the opposite is true in the former scenario a ban on local tax incentives for giving would be pareto improving and would thus be sanctioned by a majority supported federal tax constitution

r d production structure and rates of return in the u s japanese and german manufacturing sectors a non separable dynamic factor demand model abstract the focus of this paper is an analysis of the production structure the demand for factor inputs and the rates of return in the manufacturing sector of three major industrialized countries the united states japan and germany the analysis is based on a dynamic factor demand model with two variable inputs labor and materials and two quasi fixed inputs capital and rd also for all countries the speed of adjustment for capital is found to be higher than that for r d

a theory of distributional conflict voluntarism and segregation along with the rise in income inequality in the us there is evidence of a simultaneous move towards fiscal devolution and increased government reliance on private provision of public goods this article argues that these phenomena are related we describe a model of jurisdiction and policy formation in which the structure of government provision is endogenous and public good provision levels are determined by a political process that can exploit private motives for voluntary giving the model predicts that an increase in income inequality leads to decentralisation with local jurisdictions becoming more income homogeneous than the population as a whole this reduction in local income heterogeneity combined with a reduced tax base results in increased reliance by government on private provision

the transition towards renewable energies physical limits and temporal conditions abstract the perspectives of the depletion of fossil energy resources together with the consequences of climate change have provoked the development of numerous national and pluri national energy policies however there have been few overall studies on the evolution of these resources this paper uses a dynamic model to study the exhaustion patterns of world fossil and nuclear fuels and their possible replacement by renewable energy sources the results show that peak oil will be the first restriction and it will not be easily overcome electric vehicles can produce some interesting savings but they are insufficient to avoid the decline in oil biofuels are even more limited due to the enormous extensions of fertile land they require and their low productivity this shows that overcoming the decline in oil will need much more ambitious policies than the mere substitution of technology if the oil economy relationship does not change substantially world economic growth may be seriously limited or even negative in contrast the production of electrical energy is not such a worrying problem in the short and middle term

why are tax expenditures for giving embodied in fiscal constitutions abstract this paper asks whether there can be unanimous support for a fiscal constitution that includes tax expenditures for giving among the set of available fiscal instruments we describe a political economy model of fiscal choices where individuals with different incomes vote over levels of proportional income taxation and over tax incentives for giving and investigate how the availability of such incentives affects political equilibrium outcomes and welfare for different income groups we find that unanimous support for the use of tax incentives for giving can indeed arise and is more likely the more unequal is the distribution of income

production and cost in the us paper and paperboard industry the us paper and paperboard industry has experienced significant structural changes over the past 25 years including reductions in the number of mills lower rates of capacity growth employment cutbacks and a loss of market share to foreign competitors these structural shifts portray an industry that increasingly has difficulty adapting to a more competitive global environment based on aggregate data from 1965 to 1996 this article estimates a short run translog tl cost function for the industry the estimated model fits the data well and all sample points satisfy monotonicity and concavity conditions at all points among the findings the industry operates at slightly increasing returns to capital utilization and labour and energy are allen uzawa complements but morishima substitutes in production technological progress generated 0 02 reduction in annual operating costs and consistent with an ailing us industry estimated marginal costs approximated average operating costs until 1982 after which

peak globalization climate change oil depletion and global trade abstract the global trade in goods depends upon reliable inexpensive transportation of freight along complex and long distance supply chains global warming and peak oil undermine globalization by their effects on both transportation costs and the reliable movement of freight countering the current geographic pattern of comparative advantage with higher transportation costs climate change and peak oil will thus result in peak globalization after which the volume of exports will decline as measured by ton miles of freight policies designed to mitigate climate change and peak oil are very unlikely to change this result due to their late implementation contradictory effects and insufficient magnitude the implication is that supply chains will become shorter for most products and that production of goods will be located closer to where they are consumed

growing chinese coal use dramatic resource and environmental implications chinese coal consumption continues to rise as the country s economy and industry expand coal is particularly critical for china s fast growing power sector generating about 80 of electricity output notwithstanding the importance of coal and electricity many international forecasts today underestimate their rising use in china this paper acknowledges the current world financial crisis and assumes that chinese gdp growth to 2025 will not again approach double digit levels using the scenario analysis this paper demonstrates that even with conservative assumptions about chinese gdp growth and income elasticity of electric demand to 2025 the country will likely experience much higher coal demand and emit much greater volumes of carbon dioxide than forecast by various international energy agencies the paper also analyzes how china s domestic coal reserves may be threatened within two decades possibly affecting long term economic growth in china as well as world coal prices

the gains from merger or collusion in product differentiated industries a merger in an industry with differentiated products increases the market power of the merging firms to the extent that their products are close substitutes and that other firms produce only more distant substitutes such a merger makes the residual demand curve of each partner steeper by shifting each in the direction of the industry demand curve 2 the extent of this increase in market power depends upon the own elasticity of demand for each merging firm s product as well as the cross elasticity of demand for each with all other firms products as a result evaluating the effect of a merger between two firms with n 2 other competitors would seem to require the estimation of at least n2 parameters all of the price elasticities of demand a formidable task that extremely difficult estimation task is unnecessary however the necessary information is contained in the slopes of the two single firm residual demand curves before the merger and the extent to which the merged firm will face a steeper demand curve for example suppose a merger between two u s brewing firms say pabst and anheuser busch were proposed it is not particularly important to determine whether it is competition from miller or competition from stroh or from heileman or which puts the most effective brake on anheuser busch s pricing only the total effect of these other firms and the particular effect of competition from pabst are of interest this paper proposes econometric procedures for estimating the demand system that merger partners will face based only on pre merger data the key to the procedures is that the effects of all other firms in the industry are summed together formally we start with a model of an n firm product differentiated industry manipulation of the model removes the prices and quantities of all but two firms this reduces the dimensionality of the problem to manageable size rather than an n firm demand system we estimate a two firm residual demand system in this way the technique extends our econometric method for

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

logistic growth curve modeling of us energy production and consumption abstract this research used four parameter multi cycle logistic growth curve models on us energy information agency annual data from 1949 to 2015 to produce fixed condition forecasts of us energy production and consumption to 2040 these models and forecasts were used to assess the ability of us energy production sources to meet demand to anticipate production and technology challenges and to make general policy recommendations the logistic fixed condition forecasts indicated the ongoing increases in total us energy production dominated by crude oil and natural gas production will likely peak in 2017 at 95 0 quadrillion quad btu then rapidly decrease through 2040 at 36 2 quad btu while total us energy consumption indicated an ongoing plateau at 98 1 quad btu new growth cycles not evident in the 2015 data will certainly occur mitigating the decline in energy production before 2040 however without adequate foresight and preemptive action it is possible that new production growth would not be adequate to reverse the decline given historical growth trends therefore in addition to continued increases in energy efficiency reductions in use and implementation of carbon management technologies direct effort towards the sustainable development of substantial new growth cycles in all energy production sources through adequate investment of resources should be a priority of the us energy industry policy makers and the public alike

economic fluctuations market power and returns to scale evidence from firm level data recent research on aggregate fluctuations coupled with ongoing work in industrial organization has renewed interest in the existence magnitude and cyclical pattern of market power and the extent of increasing returns to scale by exploiting restrictions from dynamic theory and information from financial markets we present a framework for generating quantitative evidence on market power and returns to scale tailoring the econometric model to firm level panel data we calculate the percentage differential between price and marginal cost the lerner index in terms of the parameters from the econometric system results for firms in eleven industries indicate that there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the extent of market power industries with significantly positive lerner indices tend to have substantial increasing returns in the production technology we find that there is only a modest relation between our estimated lerner indices and traditional measures of market power and that when market power varies temporally it is usually procyclical thus variations in the markup of price over marginal cost may help dampen aggregate economic fluctuations

environmental regulation cost and industry structure changes nonstationary markov analyses are used to investigate impacts of environmental regulatory costs associated with compliance on changes in market structure in pulp and paper industries results show environmental regulation expenditures have statistically significant effects on the probabilities of capacity moving to a larger company size category so industry structure is affected by environmental regulation however counter to expectations results further show consolidation occurs with higher probability when environmental costs are falling rather than when they are rising policy analyses that presume immediate policy responses to cost changes or that industry structure is unchanged may yield time inconsistent policy conclusions

lumpy capacity investment and disinvestment dynamics capacity addition and withdrawal decisions are among the most important strategic decisions made by firms in oligopolistic industries in this paper we develop and analyze a fully dynamic model of an oligopolistic industry with lumpy capacity and lumpy investment disinvestment we use our model to suggest answers to two questions first what economic factors facilitate preemption races second what economic factors facilitate capacity coordination with a series of examples we show that low product differentiation low investment sunkness and high depreciation tend to promote preemption races the same examples also show that low product differentiation and low investment sunkness tend to promote capacity coordination although depreciation removes capacity it might impede capacity coordination finally our examples show that multiple equilibria arise over at least some range of parameter values the distinct structures of these equilibria suggest that firms expectations play a key role in determining whether or not industry dynamics are characterized by preemption races and capacity coordination taken together our results suggest that preemption races and excess capacity in the short run often go hand in hand with capacity coordination in the long run

do government subsidies increase the private supply of public goods we study three different models in which public goods are supplied by private contributions in one of these models tax financed government subsidies to private contributions will definitely increase the equilibrium supply of public goods in the other two models government subsidies are neutralized by offsetting changes in private contributions we explain why it is that these models lead to opposite conclusions and we argue on the basis of our first model that a government that wants to use taxes and subsidies to increase total provision of public goods will be able to do so indeed our model yields a surprisingly decisive comparative statics result if public goods and private goods are both normal goods then an increase in the subsidy rate will necessarily increase the equilibrium supply of public goods

testing oligopolistic behavior abstract this paper develops an empirical model of short run pricing behavior for firms in a homogeneous product oligopoly it is based on the variable profit function and related output supply and factor demand equations and is used to analyze the behavior of firms in the coffee roasting industry a parametric test of the dominant firm model is developed and applied the hypothesis of dominant firm behavior and cournot behavior are rejected the hypothesis of price taking behavior is rejected for the largest two firms in the industry but is not rejected for all other firms using the estimated pattern of firm behavior an index of overall industry performance is constructed

tracing the effects of agricultural commodity prices and food costs we estimate a system of product and input demand equations for food processing industries to trace the links among farm commodity prices food processing costs and food prices disembodied technical change which likely reflects increasing consumer demand for convenience and product variety has sharply reduced agricultural materials demand relative to most other food processing inputs this implies weakening impacts of farm price shocks on food prices but improving quality and falling relative prices for agricultural inputs in combination with increasing factor substitution has counteracted these forces to encourage greater usage of agricultural inputs in food processing and limit these trends food prices today often appear less responsive to farm price shocks than in the past a development sometimes attributed to failures in market institutions however powerful long run technological and social changes leading to adaptations in production processes and food consumption patterns have also altered the demand for primary agricultural materials by changing the structure of food processing industries the social shifts surrounding the expanded role of women in the labor force represent one striking example of such changes the fraction of married women in the labor force less than one third in 1960 rose sharply through the next three decades before stabilizing at around 61 in the 1990s such demographic shifts increased the demand for food products requiring less home preparation time which in combination with enhanced technology has led to more in plant processing of agricultural materials and likely a growing share of nonagricultural inputs in

an analysis of china s coal supply and its impact on china s future economic growth many people believe that china s economic growth can continue almost indefinitely for a manufacturingbased economy such as china s to continue to grow it needs an adequate supply of inexpensive energy to date this energy growth has primarily come from coal but china s indigenous coal supplies are now falling short of the amount needed to support this growth in this situation the status of china s future coal supply will be very important for china s future economic development our analysis shows that china s ultimate recoverable coal reserves equal 223 6 10 9 mt and its production will peak between 2025 and 2030 with peak production of approximately 3 9 10 9 mt the extent to which china can import coal in the future is uncertain with rising coal demand this combination is likely to create a significant challenge to china s future economic development

dynamic factor demands and the effects of energy price shocks a dynamic model is used to understand how sharp changes in energy prices affect investment behavior employment and energy use the authors discuss the theory behind their model selection model specifications estimation methods and data list parameter estimates and elasticities for the selected model and describe the simulations they conclude that 1 the data strongly reject the hypothesis of constant returns to scale within their specification of aggregate production 2 the data indicate adjustment costs on labor are small and 3 their results help reconcile some of the conflicting estimates of energy demand elasticities appearing in recent literature 23 references 3 figures 3 tables

exogenous oil supply shocks how big are they and how much do they matter for the u s economy abstract the paper proposes a new measure of exogenous oil supply shocks the timing the magnitude and the sign of this measure may differ greatly from current state of the art estimates it is shown that only a small fraction of the observed oil price increases during oil crisis periods can be attributed to exogenous oil production disruptions exogenous oil supply shocks cause a sharp drop of u s real gdp growth after five quarters rather than an immediate and sustained reduction in economic growth and a spike in cpi inflation after three quarters overall exogenous oil supply shocks made remarkably little difference for the evolution of the u s economy since the 1970s although they did matter for some historical episodes

financing public goods public goods can be financed by direct taxation or a subsidy to private spending this paper examines the relative efficiency and distributional consequences of the two methods efficiency is shown to depend on the price elasticity of private spending and the trade off between public and private spending when this trade off is dollar for dollar however a subsidy is always more efficient than direct taxation the gains from a subsidy are larger for a mixed good than for a pure public good looking a t distributional effects the author shows when richer taxpayers may prefer a tax credit to deductibility even though they face lower prices with deductibility and also shows when richer taxpayers prefer direct taxation to either type of subsidy copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

does market size matter for charities abstract we analyze implications of market size for market structure in the charity sector while a standard model of oligopolistic for profit competition predicts a positive relationship between market size and firm size our analogous model of competition between prosocially motivated charities predicts no such correlation if charities are biased towards their own provision a positive association between market size and provider size can arise we examine these predictions empirically for six different local charity markets our empirical findings suggest that charities do not solely pursue prosocial objectives and that increased competition in the charity sector can lead to rationalization in provision

price margins and capital adjustment canadian mill products and pulp and paper industries abstract the purpose of this paper is to estimate a model incorporating non competitive behaviour in product and factor markets in addition capital accumulation is subject to adjustment costs so that firms are not constrained to be in long run equilibrium the model is applied to two major canadian manufacturing industries pulp and paper and mill products the results show for both industries in each of three product markets and the wood input market that there is competitive behaviour in addition the industries are not in long run equilibrium as marginal adjustment costs cause marginal profit to exceed the rental rate on capital with the industries exhibiting short run competitive behaviour in product and factor markets new estimates are derived for scale economies and rates of technological change unlike the results from other studies both industries exhibit small scale economies and positive rates of technological change

coal lumps vs electrons how do chinese bulk energy transport decisions affect the global steam coal market this paper demonstrates the ways in which dierent chinese bulk energy transport strategies aect the future steam coal market in china and in the rest of the world an increase in chinese demand for steam coal will lead to a growing need for additional domestic infrastructure as production hubs and demand centers are spatially separated and domestic transport costs could inuence the future chinese steam coal supply mix if domestic transport capacity is available only at elevated costs chinese power generators could turn to the global trade markets and further increase steam coal imports increased chinese imports could then yield signicant changes in steam coal market economics on a global scale this eect is analyzed in china where coal is mainly transported by railway and in another setting where coal energy is transported as electricity for this purpose a spatial equilibrium model for the global steam coal market has been developed one major nding is that if coal is converted into electricity early in the supply chain worldwide marginal costs of supply are lower than if coal is transported via railway furthermore china s dependence on international imports is signicantly reduced in this context allocation of welfare changes particularly

three laws of energy transitions the paper formulates and explores a hypothesis on three general energy transition laws the law of stable long term energy costs to income ratio the law of improving energy quality and the law of growing energy productivity these laws are essential for shaping long term projections and checking for their consistency all three are rooted in amazingly stable in time and universal across countries energy costs to income ratios limited energy purchasing power sets up thresholds which if exceeded bring asymmetry to energy demand to price elasticity the author believes that the theoretical postulate on the substantial substitution among production factors which is used in the production functions theory may be incorrect in reality innovations mainly lead to the substitution of a low quality production factor with the same yet of a better quality improving energy quality with stable costs to income ratio is accompanied by growing energy productivity energy costs to income thresholds are indicators allowing for better projections of oil prices

price cost margins exports and productivity growth with an application to canadian industries a model is estimated for oligopolistic industries producing multiple outputs in short run equilibrium outputs are sold domestically and exported while capital is treated as a quasi fixed factor the model is applied to the canadian non electrical machinery electrical products and chemical products industries the results show that there is significant oligopoly power in each of the industries and that the degree of this power differs between the domestic and export markets total factor productivity is decomposed price cost margins exert little influence but the rate of technological change returns to scale and the rate of capital adjustment determine productivity growth

global energy crunch how different parts of the world would react to a peak oil scenario peak oil theory predicts that oil production will soon start a terminal decline most authors imply that no adequate alternate resource and technology will be available to replace oil as the backbone resource of industrial society this article uses historical cases from countries that have gone through a similar experience as the best available analytical strategy to understand what will happen if the predictions of peak oil theorists are right the author is not committed to a particular version of peak oil theory but deems the issue important enough to explore how various parts of the world should be expected to react from the historical record he is able to identify predatory militarism totalitarian retrenchment and socioeconomic adaptation as three possible trajectories

collective choice and voluntary provision of public goods some public goods are provided entirely with private contributions others with a mixture of public and private funding and still others are entirely publicly funded in order to study this variation a model of dual provision is developed that endogenizes public and private funding households vote over an income tax that finances public supply of the good and on whether to permit private contributions while permitting private contributions may lead to a reduction in total provision a majority always favors permitting private contributions results are developed for small and large economies and the relevance of nonexcludability and noncongestion are investigated

coal production forecast and low carbon policies in china abstract with rapid economic growth and industrial expansion china consumes more coal than any other nation therefore it is particularly crucial to forecast china s coal production to help managers make strategic decisions concerning china s policies intended to reduce carbon emissions and concerning the country s future needs for domestic and imported coal such decisions which must consider results from forecasts will have important national and international effects this article proposes three improved forecasting models based on grey systems theory the discrete grey model dgm the rolling dgm rdgm and the p value rdgm we use the statistical data of coal production in china from 1949 to 2005 to validate the effectiveness of these improved models to forecast the data from 2006 to 2010 the performance of the models demonstrates that the p value rdgm has the best forecasting behaviour over this historical time period furthermore this paper forecasts coal production from 2011 to 2015 and suggests some policies for reducing carbon and other emissions that accompany the rise in forecasted coal production

a model of political competition with citizen candidates the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates a winner implements her favorite policy the equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the benefits of winning for some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates whose positions are distinct two candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoff system the candidates positions are less differentiated under a runoff system there exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning

pareto optimal redistribution and private charity abstract when private charity exists and is motivated by utility interdependence a non pareto optimal outcome the free rider problem typically arises nevertheless incremental fiscal redistribution cannot achieve a paretian welfare improvement so long as private charity continues at positive levels donors respond to incremental fiscal redistribution by reducing their voluntary contributions by exactly a dollar for every dollar transferred in this way no net transfer is achieved unless incremental fiscal redistribution is pursued to the point where private contributions have been driven to zero alternatively a net transfer may be achieved by fiscal measures which affect donors marginal incentives to donate