monitoring changes in economy wide energy efficiency from energy gdp ratio to composite efficiency index since the 1973 world oil crisis monitoring trends in energy efficiency at the economy wide level has been an important component of energy strategy in many countries to support this effort various energy efficiency related indicators have been developed we examine some classical indicators which are often found in national and international energy studies in the 1970s and 1980s we then describe the recent developments in using the index decomposition analysis to give an economy wide composite energy efficiency index based on a bottom up approach this composite index is superior to the classical indicators as an economy wide energy efficiency measure and has lately been adopted by a growing number of countries for national energy efficiency trend monitoring

avoiding adverse employment effects from electricity taxation in norway what does it cost accepted author manuscripts post print this is the author s version of a work that was accepted for publication in energy policy changes resulting from the publishing process such as peer review editing corrections structural formatting and other quality control mechanism may not be reflected in this document changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication a definitive version was subsequently published in energy policy vol 39 issue 9 september 2011 doi http dx doi org 10 1016 j enpol 2011 06 049

sufficient fuel taxes would enhance ecologies economies and communities the model presented recently in this journal bybazin et al 2004 indicates that b the quality of theenvironment can be improved when taxationincreasesq as long as the magnitude of the environ mental tax is sufficient enough so that b thefinancial constraints imposed upon the consumerbecome too great and thus limit his desire to consumefurtherq in addition bosquet s 2000 survey ofenvironmental tax reform examples indicated thatshifts in tax burdens from socially desirable activities e g employment to socially undesirable activities e g pollution resource depletion and waste canlead to a ddouble dividendt where both environmentaland economic values are improved in terms of fueltaxes the weight of evidence from theory empiricalstudies and history indicates their strong potential forsimultaneous enhancement of environmental quality economic growth and quality of life as long as thesetaxes are sufficient and structured appropriately bazin et al 2004 emphasize in their modelingthat the introduction of a small tax or penalty canactually increase the consumptive behaviors of peoplewho perceive the tax to be payment for the right toconsume pollute or otherwise degrade public resour ces that is to say the environmental responsibility ofindividual actors can actually decrease with theintroduction of a tax or penalty if the penalty is toosmall the main empirical example of this compensa tory bcrowding out effectq cited by bazin et al 2004 was the observation by gneezy and rustichini 2000 p 3 of b a steady increase in the number of parentscoming lateq to pick up their children from day careafter a small late penalty was introduced it is reasonable to expect that imposing a nominalpenalty would erode parents punctuality at a day carecentre as these parents might perceive such a fine tobe a price for extracurricular services we expect nosuch erosion of responsible behavior to occur withrespect to automobile fuel consumption however because the consumptive behaviors of typical driversare environmentally irresponsible to start with unlikegneezy and rustichini s 2000 tardy parents typicaldrivers have negligible feelings of responsibilitytowards those adversely affected by their driving i e all people and all life including future gener ations if fuel taxes brought prices closer to dfull costpricingt revenues could be used to defray collateral

motor vehicle insurance rating with pseudo emissions coverage abstract there is general agreement amongst economists and ecologists that transportation is an important contributor to greenhouse gas emissions typical proposals to reduce the demand for transportation and consequently emissions focus on imposing a fuel tax or a direct fee on vehicles this paper outlines the method and advantages of treating the environmental risk as additional pseudo coverage rated under existing property and liability motor vehicle insurance systems

estimating the marginal abatement cost curve of co2 emissions in china provincial panel data analysis abstract this paper estimates the marginal abatement cost curve macc of co2 emissions in china based on a provincial panel for the period of 2001 2010 the provincial marginal abatement cost mac of co2 emissions is estimated using a parameterized directional output distance function four types of model specifications are applied to fit the mac carbon intensity pairs the optimal specification controlling for various covariates is identified econometrically a scenario simulation of china s 40 45 carbon intensity reduction based on our macc is illustrated our simulation results show that china would incur a 559 623 yuan t roughly 51 57 increase in marginal abatement cost to achieve a corresponding 40 45 reduction in carbon intensity compared to its 2005 level

coding error or statistical embellishment the political economy of reporting climate aid to benefit from a wide spread public support for climate policy aid agencies strive to show the climate relevance of their development activities using project level aid data and country level political data for 21 dac donors from 1995 to 2007 we test whether this may lead to politically motivated misreporting through keyword search in individual project descriptions and complementary hand coding we assess all aid activities for their actual climate change related content and thereby construct our most relevant control variables econometric results reveal that indeed project coding is influenced systematically by the donor governments ideological orientation as well as by national voters environmental preferences

optimal path for controlling co2 emissions in china a perspective of efficiency analysis this paper examines the optimal control of co2 emissions from a perspective of efficiency analysis several centralized data envelopment analysis dea models are introduced to study the optimal allocation of co2 emissions under spatial temporal and spatial temporal allocation strategies respectively the models have been used to determine the optimal paths for controlling co2 emissions at provincial and regional levels in china a sensitivity analysis of the optimal path on the emission control coefficient under spatial temporal allocation strategy is further carried out our empirical results show that more developed regions should take emission reduction responsibility earlier than less developed regions in china of the three allocation strategies spatial temporal allocation strategy seems to be a better choice for achieving the optimal control of co2 emissions at country level since it is more encompassing by allowing both timing and spatial substitutions it is also found that there exists an inverted u shape relationship between the aggregate optimal gdp and the emission control coefficient which shows that modest emission reduction policy might be more appropriate for china in order to achieve the joint goals of economic development and co2 emission reduction

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

effects of carbon taxes in an economy with prior tax distortions an intertemporal general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper analyzes the costs of carbon taxes in a model that recognizes interactions between this tax and pre existing taxes first we examine the extent to which costs of a u s carbon tax are reduced when its revenues finance cuts in income taxes such use of revenues significantly reduces but does not eliminate the overall policy costs the positive overall costs reflect the carbon tax s focus on intermediate inputs and its relatively narrow base in comparison with income taxes we also examine the sensitivity of the carbon tax s costs to the level of pre existing taxes for any given use of revenues welfare costs rise significantly with pre existing tax rates indicating that models disregarding pre existing taxes may substantially understate the costs of new environmental tax initiatives

the korean textile industry still competitive after all these years although a vital part of the economy the korean textile industry has been challenged by the recent reduction of international trade barriers particularly as this industry was fully integrated into general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt in 2005 the textile industries in japan and many other countries have also faced difficulties this study examines future prospects for the korean industry by investigating the presence of economies of scale and relationships among the inputs of domestic capital labour and intermediate goods as well as foreign intermediate goods the findings are consistent with constant returns to scale and a substitutes relationship among all input pairs except for domestic capital and foreign intermediate goods thus there appear to be no further cost reductions available through increased output and economies of scale however some reduction in industry output may not result in increased unit costs either a reduction in the price of foreign intermediate goods will not onl

marginal co2 abatement costs findings from alternative shadow price estimates for shanghai industrial sectors abstract shanghai one of the most developed cities in china is implementing a pilot regional carbon emission trading scheme estimating the marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions for the industrial sectors covered in shanghai s emission trading scheme provides the government and participating firms useful information for devising compliance policies this paper employs multiple distance function approaches to estimating the shadow prices of co2 emissions for shanghai industrial sectors our empirical results show that the overall weighted average of shadow price estimates by different approaches ranges between 394 5 and 1906 1 yuan ton which indicates that model choice truly has a significant effect on the shadow price estimation we have also identified a negative relationship between the shadow price of co2 emissions and carbon intensity and the heavy industries with higher carbon intensities tend to have lower shadow prices it has been suggested that shanghai municipal government take various measures to improve its carbon market e g using the marginal abatement costs of participating sectors firms as a criterion in the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances

air pollutant taxation an empirical survey abstract this paper provides an empirical analysis of the current taxation of the air pollutants sulphur dioxide nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide in the scandinavian countries the netherlands france and japan political motivation and technical factors such as tax base rate structure and revenue use are compared conclusions are drawn characterizing the general concepts of the current policies

regional energy efficiency carbon emission performance and technology gaps in china a meta frontier non radial directional distance function analysis abstract at present china is the largest primary energy consumer and carbon emitter in the world meantime china is a large transitional economy with significant regional gaps against such backgrounds the calculated results of energy and carbon performance indicators may be biased without considering heterogeneity across regions to this end after incorporating region heterogeneity this paper provides detailed information regarding energy efficiency carbon emission performance and the potential of carbon emission reductions from regional perspectives which may be important and useful for policy makers our main findings are as follows firstly there is significant group heterogeneity across regions in china in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance secondly there are no considerable differences between total factor and single factor performance indices since there is limited substitutability between energy inputs and other production inputs finally significant carbon emission reductions can be made by catching up for regions with low energy efficiency and carbon emission performance looking ahead the chinese government should adopt measures to promote improvements in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance in the short term

a just and efficient reduction of resource throughput to optimum abstract resource throughput in the economy e g of energy or materials must be progressively reduced by at least one order of magnitude to achieve an optimal level although this would solve the resource distribution conflict between the generations it would also aggravate the resource distribution conflict between persons of the same generation it is shown here that a solution to these two conflicts and efficient resource allocation are only possible if resource certificates are distributed to consumers free of charge and traded between them this paper builds on and integrates ideas developed in h daly s daly h e 1992 allocation distribution and scale towards an economics that is efficient just and sustainable ecological economics 6 185 193 article on allocation distribution and scale adding insights from the ecological footprint concept to propose a mechanism for facilitating intergenerational equity and drastically reducing resource throughput basically the mechanism involves rationing throughput equitably internalizing environmental and social externalities and substituting labour for resource use this can be achieved almost without a drop in prosperity both unemployment and dependence on scarce resources decline

concepts of efficiency in ecological economics sisyphus and the decision maker abstract efficiency forms the bedrock of policy planning and business approaches to sustainable development but what do ecological economists mean by efficiency in the resource use context efficiency has a wide range of potential interpretations from the ratio of work output energy inputs to pareto efficiency despite the potential richness of the efficiency concept in practice efficiency is often narrowly conceived within disciplinary boundaries this appears to be the case even in ecological economics which purports to be transdisciplinary and pluralistic such narrow disciplinary perspectives essentially waste the richness of the efficiency concept this wasting could mean ecological economists and decision makers are destined to sisyphean toil in the pursuit of sustainable development this paper explores the efficiency concept and its interpretation it then reviews ecological economic literature to find that there is much room for improvement in the way ecological economists apply efficiency finally the paper presents a framework within which a truly ecological economic approach to efficiency can emerge armed with this framework policy makers and planners should be better prepared to make decisions leading to sustainable development

a competitive carbon emissions scheme with hybrid fiscal incentives the evidence from a taxi industry abstract as two major approaches to reduce carbon emissions command and control instruments and market based carbon trading systems have their own weaknesses our paper first proposes a type of endogenous equilibrium methodology to dynamically derive the industrial carbon emissions standards at the equilibrium the sum of all carbon assets and liabilities is zero in the considered industry moreover the standards fall over time with low carbon technological advance most importantly combining pigou s and coase s ideas we construct a fiscal instrument accounting for both carbon taxes and allowances based on the dynamically improved emissions standards and carbon trading prices this no revenue for government method implements a self operated ecology for carbon trading market finally considering the waterloo recession of carbon prices we introduce an adjustment factor into the model which generates a negative feedback mechanism with carbon prices to support our idea we present the application to beijing taxi industry in detail and raise relative policy implications based on the evidence

environmental assessment for corporate sustainability by resource utilization and technology innovation dea radial measurement on japanese industrial sectors abstract this study proposes a new use of dea data envelopment analysis radial approach to examine the corporate sustainability of japanese industrial sectors the concept of corporate sustainability is measured by its subcomponent measures including uen unified efficiency under natural disposability uem unified efficiency under managerial disposability uenm unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability uei unified efficiency for intermediate measurement and uenm dc unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability with desirable congestion among the five measures the uei examines a degree of how each firm can efficiently utilize its resources the uenm dc examines a degree of how the firm can reduce an amount of undesirable outputs by technology innovation and or managerial change such a combined use between uei and uenm dc has been never explored in dea environmental assessment the empirical results obtained from the proposed approach have identified two important implications one of the two implications is that the japanese energy industry has been long under governmental regulation so that energy firms do not have corporate governance capabilities at the level of other industrial sectors which are competing in a global market in particular the implication is applicable to japanese electric power firms it is necessary for them to change their corporate governances e g by adding new executive board members who have international experience and or woman executives as widely found in american and european energy industries so that they can pay attention to consumers not regulatory agencies of the japanese government the other implication is that technology innovation can more effectively improve the performance of the energy sector employing high efficiency and low carbon generation technologies to achieve desirable fuel mix is essential for improving the corporate sustainability of the japanese energy sector

outstanding female economists in the analysis and practice of development economics abstract this article examines the contributions of five eminent economists all women to the analysis and practice of development economics irma adelman frances stewart and nancy birdsall are leading advocates of alternative development strategies that focus on poverty alleviation and investment in human capital anne krueger and alice amsden stand at the forefront of two opposing camps in a lively and long lasting debate on the appropriate role of government in trade and industrialization we use the storied careers of these economists as a vehicle to convey the big picture of how development economics has evolved and which topics have proved durable

comparison of technology efficiency for co2 emissions reduction among european countries based on dea with decomposed factors abstract for consistent and effective co 2 reduction many countries need to improve not only the technical efficiency of co 2 mitigation but also environmental responsibility in this study we examine both the technical efficiency and voluntary environmental consciousness vec of 12 european countries using a two stage data envelopment analysis dea in the first stage we measured the technical efficiency of green energy technologies get associated with fossil fuels renewable energy and storage technologies of each country for energy generation with regard to co 2 emissions by surveying get related patents using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi we decomposed co 2 emissions into the following technological factors energy intensity fuel mix and co 2 emission coefficient in the second stage we quantified the vec in each country by investigating get patent changes via research and development r d investment at given changes in co 2 emissions the results show different aspects for each country in terms of technical efficiency and vec suggesting potential levels of both efficient co 2 reductions and desirable get development by using reference countries as a benchmark our study methodology and results can contribute to establishing effective national technology policy and aid in calls for common responsibility and the active participation of nations in addressing climate change

evaluating environmental performance using data envelopment analysis the case of european countries abstract environmental efficiency is considered to be a critical pillar of sustainable development consequently improving environmental performance has aroused attention at both the local and global level this study evaluated the environmental performance of european union eu countries using the data envelopment analysis dea approach and the global malmquist luenberger index although literature using the dea approach to measure environmental performance exists this study s main contribution was considering different types of undesirable outputs and using long term panel data on eu countries in particular the dea window analysis technique was applied to evaluate the environmental performance of 27 eu countries in cross sectional and time varying data during the period 2000 2017 three dea models were examined labor capital and energy were used as common inputs with a combination of different outputs including gross domestic product carbon dioxide and particulate matter emissions and waste the empirical results revealed that the trends in the environmental performance of the entire eu and its individual countries were similar under all examined models environmental performance was indeed negatively affected by the financial crisis of 2007 2008 this impact was mainly observed in eastern eu countries furthermore both economic and environmental variables significantly influenced countries overall efficiency the analysis using the global malmquist luenberger index elucidated that overall eu countries experienced the efficiency improvement during the study period although fluctuations were observed these results enable countries and policymakers to understand their environmental performance identify strengths and weaknesses and set targets for further improvement based on the current best practices of comparable peers

drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in the baltic states a structural decomposition analysis since the mid 1990s three baltic states have significantly increased their per capita gross domestic product gdp and at the same time have managed to keep the co2 equivalent co2e emissions low we used structural decomposition analysis to identify the drivers of change for co2e emissions in these countries between 1995 and 2009 a period that includes the collapse of the soviet union restructuring and economic growth and the great recession the results show that final demand has been the main driving force for increasing emissions in the baltic states and would have caused an 80 64 and 143 emission increase in estonia latvia and lithuania respectively all other factors kept constant this increase has been partly offset by a declining emission intensity of the economy especially in latvia and lithuania whereas in estonia which has one of the highest emission intensities in europe a shift in consumption patterns towards low carbon consumption items and a decarbonizing economic structure were the main balancing factors it is likely that the baltic states will experience a continuation of economic growth given their relatively low per capita gdp which is less than half of the european union average thus adequate carbon policies are paramount

eco efficiency and convergence in oecd countries this paper assesses the convergence in eco efficiency of a group of 22 oecd countries over the period 1980 2008 in doing so three air pollutants representing the impact on the environment of economic activities are considered namely carbon dioxide text co 2 nitrogen oxides text no mathrm x and sulphur oxides text so mathrm x furthermore eco efficiency scores at both country and air pollutant specific level are computed using data envelopment analysis techniques then convergence is evaluated using the recent approach by phillips and sul econometrica 75 1771 1855 2007 which tests for the existence of convergence groups first we find that eco efficiency has improved over the period with the exception of text no mathrm x emissions second switzerland is the most eco efficient country followed by some scandinavian economies such as sweden iceland norway and denmark in contrast southern european countries such as portugal spain and greece in addition to hungary turkey canada and the united states are among the worst performers finally we find that both the most eco efficient countries and the worst tend to form clubs of convergence

potential contributions of political science to environmental economics while political science has much to offer at least some of its contributions might be difficult to incorporate into economic models nevertheless we argue that environmental economics might benefit from supplementing combining or sometimes even replacing the rational choice approach with other approaches commonly used in political science we develop our argument by examining three core components of political science analysis ideas power and institutions for each component we review political science approaches and propositions with a view to determining what s in it for environmental economics

economic and welfare influences of an energy excise tax in jiangsu province of china a computable general equilibrium approach abstract in recent years although china s energy intensity has gradually decreased the total consumption of energy commodities has increased sharply levying an excise tax on energy commodities is one of the keys to control energy consumption this paper constructed a computable general equilibrium model to simulate levying an energy excise tax in jiangsu province which is one of china s strong economic provinces with lower endowments of energy resources the results show that the energy excise tax is beneficial for energy saving while levying energy will cause economic and welfare declines when at a level tax rate of 5 10 and 15 the loss of gdp will reach 0 27 0 66 and 1 13 respectively and the incomes of inhabitants and enterprises alike will decrease when the energy tax revenue used to compensate for the welfare losses suffered by inhabitants or enterprises there is a double dividend effect energy saving and increasing income moreover the simulation indicated that a 5 improvement of energy efficiency brings about a backfire phenomenon with an increase of 142 in energy consumption however when considering the cost of energy efficiency improvements the rebound effect will be significantly decreased policy suggestions are further recommended to help improve the energy policy in regard to reducing energy consumption

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

the demand for imports in korea a production analysis approach abstract balance of trade problems in the united states and other highly industrialized countries have resulted in cries for korea to liberalize its import policies this paper uses a translog cost function to investigate korea s demand for imports and the effects of trade liberalization on the demand for the country s domestic inputs this study suggest that the domestic inputs and imports are substitutes and that as the proportion of investment goods in korea s gdp increases the demand for imports will also increase thus further liberalization of korea s import policies could present short run problems in the domestic input markets

environmental taxation and the double dividend in decentralized jurisdictions this research explores the implications for jurisdictional welfare of sharing environmental rents between private and public consumption an integrated model is developed from research literatures on jurisdictional competition the double dividend and on the design of tax refund instruments this model shows that jurisdictional welfare increases as environmental rents are initially allocated towards public consumption yielding a double dividend but that this dividend may or may not continue as all rents are shifted to public finance when the double dividend occurs the rent allocation both improves the efficiency of the tax system and reduces the private public consumption distortion that decentralized jurisdictional decision making creates in some parameter configurations there is an optimal rental allocation between the private sector and the local government at this optimum environmental and fiscal policies are set at their first best levels and decentralized jurisdictional decision making is globally efficient if less rents are allocated to public finance than this optimum fiscal and environmental policies will be suboptimal whereas if too much rent is allocated for public consumption fiscal and environmental policies will be set at levels above the global efficiency standard these results illustrate the crucial importance of environmental rent sharing for the efficiency of jurisdictional decision making

the political economy of environmental regulation towards a unifying framework there are several theories that attempt to explain various aspects of environmental policy building on insights from this theoretical work and recent advances in our understanding of instrument performance this paper constructs a more complete theory of environmental regulation there are two primary contributions of this research the first is to provide more satisfactory explanations for a number of observed patterns of environmental policy for example there is as yet no satisfactory theory about the emergence of incentive based mechanisms such as marketable permits and effluent fees the second contribution of this paper is to develop a parsimonious framework for understanding many important aspects of environmental policy this framework suggests the outputs of environmental policy emerge from a struggle between key interest groups

energy taxation reasons for discriminating in favor of the production sector abstract if a small open economy wishes to restrict it s greenhouse gas emissions it has to decide whether to impose uniform taxes on all polluters or to resort to a discriminatory policy in practice countries tend to impose higher taxes on households and to tax the industrial sector more leniently this paper identifies conditions under which this is efficient it is shown that an efficiency maximizing tax planner discriminates in favor of the production sector if i there are restrictions on the taxation of lump sum income or if ii labor supply exerts market power

running to keep in the same place consumer choice as a game of status if individuals care about their status defined as their rank in the distribution of consumption of one positional good then the consumer s problem is strategic as her utility depends on the consumption choices of others in the symmetric nash equilibrium each individual spends an inefficiently high amount on the status good using techniques from auction theory we analyze the effects of exogenous changes in the distribution of income in a richer society almost all individuals spend more on conspicuous consumption and individual utility is lower at each income level in a more equal society the poor are worse off

domestic and international influences on green taxation economists have made a strong case for the relative efficiency of market based mechanisms for environmental regulation such as cap and trade and green taxes yet the spread of these forms has been limited and traditional command and control regulation still predominates the authors explain geographical and temporal variation in green tax burdens by considering their domestic and international determinants modeling international influences using spatial lags hypotheses are tested using panel data on organisation for economic co operation and development member states from 1995 to 2004 at the domestic level the authors show that green tax burdens are influenced by the left right and environmental positions of legislative medians and the power of the energy producing sector among other factors the authors also show that ideas about policy diffuse through international networks generated by trade and environmental intergovernmental organizations but they do not find compelling evidence for intern

room for improvement in low carbon economies of g7 and brics countries based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves abstract carbon emissions which are nowadays targeted for significant reduction cause global warming with climate change producing a series of side effects including economic losses and ecological extinction the data envelopment analysis approach has recently been employed for environmental estimations the target of this study is to introduce a new data envelopment analysis method in order to provide environmental improvement suggestions this study measures the room for improvements in low carbon economies of g7 group and brics group based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves the main findings are as follows i the g7 group has greater room for improvement in its carbonization value than the brics group before 2005 however the latter has greater room for improvement in carbonization value than the former after 2005 ii countries with the backfire effect of a high carbon economy include germany italy and south africa iii during the data period three environmental kuznets curves including energy intensity emission intensity and carbonization value do not satisfy the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis that the curves are inverted u shaped on the contrary the three environmental kuznets curves in this study are u shaped

hybrid carbon incentive mechanisms and political acceptability this paper analyses how hybrid systems of carbon taxes and tradeable permits optimize some conflicting dimensions of political acceptability related to the design of these instruments pure systems like taxes without exemptions or auctioned tradeable permits cause problems for political acceptability in open economies due to high overall costs abatement cost plus payments on the tax or auctions for current polluters unfortunately pure systems based on grandfathering of emission rights across the board do not provide a feasible alternative because of monitoring and enforcement problems in contrast consciously designed hybrid systems employ grandfathering of emission rights together with either carbon taxes or auctioned carbon permits in order to overcome acceptability problems of pure systems while leaving incentives to reduce emissions at the margin untouched moreover monitoring and enforcement costs of the hybrid systems are less due to the lower number of participating agents compared with the pure systems while opportunities for cost or burden sharing exist as well

energy taxation in a small open economy social efficiency gains versus industrial concerns welfare analyses of energy taxes typically show that systems with uniform rates perform better than differentiated systems especially if revenue can be recycled by cutting taxes that are more distortionary however in practical policy efficiency gains must be traded off against industrial concerns presumably energy dependent industries of small open economies will suffer relatively more if taxed this computable general equilibrium cge study examines the social costs of compensating the energy intensive export industries in norway for their profit losses from imposing the same electricity tax on all industries the costs are surprisingly modest this is explained by the role of the nordic electricity market which is still limited enough to respond to national energy tax reforms thus an electricity price reduction partly neutralizes the direct impact of the tax on profits in addition we examine the effects of different compensation schemes and find significantly lower compensation costs when the scheme is designed to release productivity gains

use of multicriteria decision analysis methods for energy planning problems most decision making requires the consideration of several conflicting objectives the term multiple criteria decision analysis mcda describes various methods developed for aiding decision makers in reaching better decisions energy planning problems are complex problems with multiple decision makers and multiple criteria therefore these problems are quite suited to the use of mcda a multitude of mcda methods exists these methods can be divided in three main groups value measurement models goal aspiration and reference level models and outranking models methods from all of these groups have been applied to energy planning problems particularly in the evaluation of alternative electricity supply strategies each of the methods has its advantages and drawbacks however we cannot conclude that one method generally is better suited than the others for energy planning problems a good alternative might be to apply more than one method either in combination to make use of the strengths of both methods or in parallel to get a broader decision basis for the decision maker until now studies of mcda in energy planning have most often considered energy networks with only one energy carrier more advanced energy systems with multiple energy carriers have been neglected even though this field ought to be suitable for use of mcda due to its high complexity many decision makers and many conflicting criteria

refunded emission payments theory distribution of costs and swedish experience of nox abatement in this paper we discuss the effect of refunding environmental charges taxes are often resisted by polluters because they imply both abatement and tax costs when charges are refunded the incentives for abatement are essentially the same as for a tax as long as there are many producers the incidence and distribution of costs is however different lower net tax payments reduce resistance from the polluters and make refunded emissions payments politically easier to implement at a sufficiently high charge level to have significant abatement effects we describe and examine the refunded emissions payment scheme as a policy instrument and compare it with taxes and permits with regard to allocative properties distribution of costs property rights and consequently the politics of implementation as an empirical example the swedish charge on nitrogen oxides is analyzed

the energy intensity in lithuania during 1995 2009 a lmdi approach abstract the measurement assessment and effective mitigation of energy intensity compose a foremost objective of contemporary energy policy although the european union eu member states have been experiencing the convergence in energy efficiency indicators lithuania acceded to the eu in 2004 still remains peculiar with relatively high energy intensity our study therefore is aimed at analyzing the energy intensity trends in lithuanian economy as a whole as well as in separate economic sectors the investigation covers the period of 1995 2009 the logarithmic mean divisia index was applied for decomposition analysis our analysis has shown that energy efficiency falls during economic downturn in order to facilitate these challenges the lithuanian government as well as business should opt for increasing energy efficiency in the most problematic sectors of transport and services in addition the analysis of legal acts namely national energy efficiency programme for 2006 2010 and energy efficiency action plan for 2010 2016 was taken into consideration some suggestions thus were offered for successful implementation of strategic goals outlined in the aforementioned strategic documents

a new frontier approach to model the eco efficiency in european countries abstract this study aims to evaluate the resource and environment efficiency problem of european countries we specify a new stochastic frontier model where gross domestic product gdp is considered as the desirable output and greenhouse gases ghg emissions as the undesirable output capital labor fossil fuels and renewable energy consumption are regarded as inputs gdp ghg ratio is maximized given the values of the other four variables the study is divided into two distinct periods 2000 2004 and 2005 2011 this division is related to the implementation of the kyoto protocol in 2005 and will allow us to evaluate the difference between the levels of efficiency before and after the establishment of environmental targets since stochastic frontier models are typically ill posed a new maximum entropy approach to assess technical efficiency which combines information from the data envelopment analysis and the structure of composed error from the stochastic frontier approach without requiring distributional assumptions is presented in this work

knowledge flows in the global innovation system do u s firms share more scientific knowledge than their japanese rivals in this paper i test the common assumption that japanese firms strive to appropriate knowledge from the global scientific community while sharing little in return i found no support for this conventional perspective in the flat panel display industry u s firms shared no more knowledge with their global scientific community than japanese firms similarly japanese firms appropriated no more knowledge from the global community than their u s counterparts

is the lithuanian economy approaching the goals of sustainable energy and climate change mitigation evidence from dea based environmental performance index abstract even though lithuania has seen extensive social and political transformations there is still a gap in the literature on environmental performance of lithuanian economy specifically the environmental pressures stemming from economic activities have never been analysed in lines with the principles of production economics this paper therefore aims to estimate the environmental performance index epi for lithuanian economic sectors the paper presents the underlying trends in greenhouse gas emissions in lithuania the environmental performance index is estimated by employing the data envelopment analysis in the spirit of the hicks moorsteen indices the present analysis is based on the data from the world input output database specifically the environmental technology is defined in terms of the value added carbon and nitrous oxide emissions labour capital and energy results of the analysis imply that the analysed economic sectors can be grouped into the four clusters with respect to the mean epi and its rate of growth pulp paper and agricultural sectors fall into the best performing group featuring the highest mean epi and the highest growth rate petroleum production and air transport sectors are those featuring the lowest environmental performance therefore the latter sectors should be given an especial importance when developing strategies for increase in sustainability

environmental tax reform efficiency and political feasibility although market based environmental measures like uniform co2 taxes reach a given standard at minimal cost they do not prevail in real world policies an effciency oriented environmental policy fails as it involves a redistributen of pollution rights resulting in a strong and generally effective opposition of the groups that forego economic rents the present paper analyzes the tradoff between efficiency and political feasibility of several co2 tax and reimbursement schemes using a computable general equilibrium model of switzerland the simulation results indicate that a policy combining a uniform co2 tax with differentiated labor subsidies preventing intersectoral redistribution is a better solution for the tradeoff than the presently existing tax schemes in various countries

environmental efficiency and abatement cost of china s industrial sectors based on a three stage data envelopment analysis abstract china has gained the reputation of global factory due to its phenomenal industrial growth over the past decades at the same time its industrial energy consumption has resulted in serious environmental problems accordingly there is an urgent and critical need to reduce industrial carbon emissions at a minimum cost without hampering the country s economic development the dual targets for carbon emission intensity and amount from the 12th five year 2011 2015 plan make it necessary to investigate the environmental efficiency and reduction costs of different sectors this study employs a three stage data envelopment analysis model based on a directional distance function approach with radial and non radial slacks of desirable and undesirable outputs considered to measure the environmental efficiency and marginal co2 emission abatement costs of china s 37 two digit industries during 2005 2014 based on the environmental efficiency and abatement cost of the industrial sectors we reached the following conclusions first the adjusted estimates differ significantly from the results that do not consider the influence of environmental factors and it is essential to consider the heterogeneity of industries in proposing emission reduction strategies in addition the stimuli for the smelting and pressing of metal industries result in cost reduction and the supervision on the top nine emitters and the equipment manufacturing industries should be strengthened finally the industrial sectors with large abatement potential are classified into short term and long term key target industries according to the emission abatement cost analyses

environmental efficiency of land transportation in china a parallel slack based measure for regional and temporal analysis abstract as the second largest economic entity in the world china plays an important role in controlling global carbon dioxide co 2 emissions the land transportation sector including railway transportation and road transportation has been the most important source of emissions in china and the average co 2 emissions of land transportation were 529 31 million tons during the period 2009 2012 in this study a parallel slack based measure data envelopment analysis model is proposed which is used for evaluating the overall efficiency of the land transportation sector and individual efficiencies of the railway transportation and highway transportation subsectors at the same time considering co 2 emissions the empirical results lead to three conclusions a only anhui province is efficient each year during 2009 2012 b the environmental efficiency of the eastern area in china is the best followed by the central area with the western area being the worst c the performance of railway transportation is better than that of highway transportation these three conclusions lead to policy suggestions to promote highway transportation technological innovation and narrow the regional imbalances in land transportation this paper makes two main contributions the model advances improvements to methods used in the data envelopment analysis technique and also provides governments with a practical and yet easy to adopt perspective to implement land transportation performance measurement that aids in decision making

the east asia challenge to neoclassical orthodoxy abstract this article reviews the east asian miracle economic growth and public policy which concludes that east asian economic success has little to do with government using criteria similar to that used in the world bank report this study shows that contrary to world bank contention industrial policies used in east asian economies have been effective non neoclassical tools for economic development with government complementing market factors by creating an environment conducive to economic growth given that japan and korea are the most representative examples of industrial policies and that the report seems to acknowledge the success of the japanese industrial policies the present study confines itself largely to a discussion of korean evidence

efficiency and allocation of emission allowances and energy consumption over more sustainable european economies abstract efficient use of energy reduction in fossil fuel dependence and control of co2 emissions are all fundamental to development of a sustainable economy competitiveness in energy use saves imports of oil and gas increases gross domestic product and creates new jobs in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors this study identifies the more or less competitive european union member states in terms of sustainable growth using data envelopment analysis dea model and proposes new allocations of country greenhouse gas limits and energy consumption using a zero sum gains dea model the analysis of european countries fills a gap in the existing literature and contributes to the discussion on the 2020 2030 european strategy proposing an efficiency based indicator which measures country performance in terms of economic social and environmental factors gdp represents the economic factor population represents the social factor and emissions final and renewable energy consumption are the environmental factors the numerical results show that the initial allocations are inefficient applying the modelled reallocation the most efficient countries are rewarded by potential increases in emission and energy consumption while the least efficient countries must bring about decreases to achieve full efficiency

diffusion of development the late industrializing model and greater east asia diffusion of development the late industrializing model and greater east asia author s alice h amsden source the american economic review vol 81 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundred and third annual meeting of the american economic association may 1991 pp 282 286 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2006870 accessed 15 01 2010 13 30

oil and democracy endogenous natural resources and the political resource curse by the end of the twentieth century a scholarly consensus emerged around the idea that oil fuels authoritarianism and slow growth the natural abundance once thought to be a blessing was unconditionally and then later only conditionally a curse for political and economic development we re examine the relationship between oil wealth and political regimes challenging the conventional wisdom that such natural resource rents lead to authoritarian outcomes we contend that most efforts to examine the causal linkages between natural resource abundance and political regime have been complicated by the likelihood that both democracy and oil revenue are endogenous to the industrialization processes itself particularly in its developmentalist form our quantitative results based on an analysis of global data from 1970 to 2006 show that both resource endogeneity and several mechanisms of intraregional regime diffusion are powerful determinants of democratic outcomes qualitative evidence from the history of industrialization in latin america yields support for our proposed causal claim oil wealth is not necessarily a curse and may even be a blessing with respect to democratic development

carbon taxes with exemptions in an open economy a general equilibrium analysis of the german tax initiative abstract sectoral exemptions from environmental regulation are applied in many countries to avoid adverse adjustment effects in specific industries the problem with exemptions is that they can make environmental policy more costly our paper analyzes the welfare costs of exemptions in environmental policy together with the issue of unilateral carbon taxes in an open economy several countries within the eu have introduced or contemplated unilateral taxes to reduce anthropogenic co2emissions taxes which are unilaterally imposed in an open economy can have significant impacts on production and employment of energy and export intensive industries to save jobs by maintaining international competitiveness most co2taxation schemes include exemptions for energy and export intensive industries as a compromise between environmental objectives and employment in these sectors this paper shows that such compromises are costly as the tax base narrows the dead weight loss increases our calculations illustrate this point in the framework of a static general equilibrium model for west germany calibrated to 1990 data we evaluate the excess costs of exemptions as a means of saving jobs in specific industries relative to an alternative instrument a uniform carbon tax cum wage subsidy which achieves an identical level of national emissions and employment at a fraction of the cost

a cost function analysis of import demand and growth in south africa abstract this study investigates the substitutability relationships among capital labor and imported inputs for south africa utilizing the estimates obtained from an aggregate cost function our results are consistent with the hypothesis that capital is a substitute for both domestic labor and imports but that labor and imports are complementary inputs this latter result suggests that relaxing south african trade restrictions may have a positive impact in both the long and the short run on the demand for domestic labor other results suggest that the reduction of market impediments may also positively impact the production of investment goods and economic growth