renewable to total electricity consumption ratio estimating the permanent or transitory fluctuations based on flexible fourier stationarity and unit root tests abstract this paper examines the stationarity properties of the renewable to total electricity consumption ratio for this purpose we use becker et al s 2006 flexible fourier stationarity test as a benchmark and the recent advanced fourier adf unit root test for 90 countries over the period 1980 2011 the results of the first test document the stationarity of the renewable to total electricity consumption ratio for 65 countries from different geographic areas namely africa america asia pacific and europe however when validated the fourier adf test shows that the null hypothesis of unit root is rejected in all the cases except for the united kingdom the fact that the stationarity in the share of renewable to total electricity consumption is documented by the new proposed more powerful tests does not necessarily mean that the renewable energy policies are ineffective as the previous literature states a wide range of elements might influence the stationarity or non stationarity of this ratio however our findings are important from the modeling perspective as the empirical studies on renewable energy can produce reliable results and use appropriate techniques for modeling and forecasting only if the stationarity or non stationarity is correctly documented

the political business cycle new evidence from the nixon tapes drawing from the personal tape recordings made during the presidency of richard nixon we uncover and report in this paper new evidence that nixon manipulated arthur burns and the federal reserve bank into creating a political business cycle that helped secure nixon s reelection victory in 1972 nixon understood the risks that his desired monetary policy imposed but chose to trade longer term economic costs to the economy for his own short term political benefit

one market one number a composite indicator assessment of eu internal market dynamics we consider the lack of consensus about an appropriate theoretical framework linking sub indicators as a defining characteristic of composite indicators this intrinsic feature implies uncertainties about the appropriate normalization and aggregation of the raw data the two are related index theory offers some valuable guidelines about their connection yet these do not fully solve the basic problem of expert disagreement we embed such residual disagreement in the aggregation method itself specifically we apply an impartial benefit of the doubt weighting procedure where weight restrictions incorporate the available information on experts opinions we apply this procedure to the dynamic performance assessment of eu internal market effects thereby highlighting its capacity to disaggregate member states observed performance shifts into changes relative to benchmarks and performance changes of the benchmarks i e catching up versus genuine progress our results indicate that the latter factor is more important in explaining the observed progress

looking for hysteresis in coal consumption in the us abstract this paper estimates an unobserved components model to explore coal consumption in the usa we ask whether coal consumption exhibits hysteresis defined as a dynamic structure in which the cyclical component of coal consumption has permanent effects on the natural component in contrast to previous analysis we provide evidence in favor of hysteresis in coal consumption by using the nonlinear framework proposed recently by perez alonso and di sanzo 13 in which threshold type nonlinearities are introduced by allowing past cyclical consumption to have a different impact on the natural component depending on the regime the article discusses implications of the findings for energy conservation policies

review on malaysia s national energy developments key policies agencies programmes and international involvements this paper aims to present a review on malaysia s national energy developments by looking at various angles in terms of renewable energy and energy efficiency energy demand and consumption by sectors are presented as well as the fuel mix in electricity generation key energy policies implemented from the incorporation of malaysia s national oil company petronas in 1974 until the national green technology policy 2009 and a future policy will be addressed the roles of key players as well as important agencies in energy development are briefly presented key programmes in energy development such as malaysian industrial energy efficiency improvement project small renewable energy power programme and building energy efficiency programme are discussed as well as successful initiatives from the programmes malaysia s international involvements towards reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon emissions especially montreal protocol and kyoto protocol are highlighted as a conclusion malaysia is aware of its role in formulating its national energy development policies sensitive towards the country s development towards the environment and utilization of energy resources as well as conscientious and responsive towards the call for sustainable development in promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency

are there multiple bubbles in the ethanol gasoline price ratio of brazil this paper tests for the existence of bubbles in the ethanol gasoline price ratio in brazil from 2000 to 2012 using right tailed adf tests results suggest the existence of two bubbles one which has already burst during the re election of president lula and one which has been ongoing since 2010 thus corroborating empirical and anecdotal evidence in the brazilian sugarcane industry freezing gasoline prices not only depressed ethanol prices but also depressed investments in new sugarcane crops and distillation plants

conditional convergence in australia s energy consumption at the sector level abstract we examine the convergence of energy consumption per capita at the sector level in australia over the period 1973 74 to 2013 14 to do so we employ recently developed lm and rals lm unit root tests that accommodate up to two endogenously determined structural breaks we find support for energy consumption per capita convergence for six of seven sectors in australia

res and risk renewable energy s contribution to energy security a portfolio based approach abstract during the first decade of the 21st century renewable energy sources res had been gaining momentum due to environmental issues concerns about pollution and climate change have raised public awareness encouraging governments to adopt policies to preserve and protect the environment regarding energy res promotion together with energy efficiency measures has been the main policy response to address such concerns as a consequence res development during the first decade of the 21st century has been remarkable although res deployment has been mainly focused on achieving environmental goals its potential contribution to energy security went not unnoticed however it is worth noting that while the trade off between environmental goals and the use of res to accomplish them and competitiveness has been widely explored the relationship between energy security and res has received less attention both at the conceptual and energy policy levels this article tries to address such a relationship the present article focuses on renewable electricity imports as illustrated by the case of the mediterranean solar plan after introducing the energy security energy risk concept and its dimensions the article focuses on the contribution of res in terms of security of supply for a given energy mix using the portfolio theory most of the analyses of the interactions between res and energy security focus on the national level with res being mainly conceived as a substitute for fuel imports to produce electricity and reduce so called energy dependence however new transmission technologies allow the import of electricity directly from neighbouring countries far out of the range of regular electricity lines therefore this article tries to broaden the analysis of energy security to international res trade flows applying the previous discussion to the main project involving significant international green electricity trade the mediterranean solar plan

oil and gas trends and implications in malaysia abstract the trends of reserves production and consumption of oil in malaysia to meet the ever increasing demands do not seem to show that oil and gas will be depleted soon contrary to many reports malaysia s net exporter status of oil continues to expand over time for as long as the value of exports is greater than the value of imports only in physical quantities of oil that malaysia s imports exceed exports but this does not mean that malaysia will be a net importer by then given higher prices of exports the value of exports outweighs the value of imports if the current reserves are extracted based on the domestic consumption trend of 1980 2010 malaysia s reserves will last until 2027 but based on the 1998 2010 trend the reserves will be depleted by 2035 malaysia has adopted a four fuel diversification strategy comprising oil gas coal and hydro instead of heavily dependent on oil gas has a huge potential for domestic utilization as well as for exports to increase revenues malaysia is one of the few countries having many types of renewable energy sources malaysia has great potential in biomass utilization as renewable resources mostly from the existing natural forest and planned plantations

revisited are shocks to energy consumption permanent or temporary new evidence from a panel suradf approach abstract this paper explores whether the hypothesis of energy consumption stationarity is supported in different regions the stationarity properties indicate that the impact of a reduction in energy consumption or a realignment policy is only temporary and over time the series will revert back to the trend path this paper first applies the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller panel suradf test developed by breuer et al breuer j b mcnown r wallace m s 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 3 482 493 which allows us to account for possible cross sectional effects and to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root the main conclusion is that the stationarity of energy consumption will be affected by the differences among the five regions made up of 84 countries during the period 1971 2003 similar conclusions are reached when we analyze country groups based on levels of development moreover the results reveal that conventional panel unit root tests can lead to misleading inferences which are biased towards stationarity even if only one series in the panel is strongly stationary lastly some policy implications emerge from our results

macroeconomic policy in a two party system as a repeated game this paper considers the interaction of two parties with different objectives concerning inflation and unemployment and rational and forward looking wage setters if discretionary policies are followed an economic cycle related to the political cycle results in equilibrium this cycle is significantly different from the traditional political business cycle reputational mechanisms due to the repeated interaction of the two parties and the public or commitments to a common policy rule can improve upon the discretionary outcome by reducing or eliminating the magnitude of the economic fluctuations

persistence in natural gas consumption in the us an unobserved component model abstract this article re examines the persistence in natural gas consumption using an alternative methodology in particular we report estimates of an unobserved components model in which hysteresis exists if cyclical and natural gas consumptions do not evolve independently in addition this framework is also extended by using the nonlinear approach in which nonlinearities are introduced by allowing past cyclical component to have a different impact on the natural component depending on the regime in a linear framework our results seem to indicate that hysteresis does not exist however when non linearity is taken into account we provide evidence in favor of hysteresis in natural gas consumption when the variations in natural gas consumption are above the threshold value we also selectively survey the empirical literature that examines the long term properties of energy series in order to put our contribution in perspective

are fluctuations in coal consumption per capita temporary evidence from developed and developing economies abstract this paper investigates the unit root properties of coal consumption per capita for the 47 developed and developing countries for 1965 2010 period to examine the stationary properties of coal consumption per capita lagrange multiplier lm unit root test with one break and two breaks crash model has been utilized according to empirical results the coal consumption is stationary in almost all the countries analyzed thus if the coal consumption is mean or trend reverting then it follows that the series will return to its mean value or trend path and it might be possible to forecast future movements in the coal consumption based on past behaviors of the series for the policy makers it is not necessary to pay attention to coal consumption excepting for indian and italian however for the researchers it is important to take into account the stationarity property of coal consumption and also structural breaks should be modeled in their future studies

are shocks to disaggregated energy consumption in malaysia permanent or temporary evidence from lm unit root tests with structural breaks abstract the objective of this paper is to examine whether energy consumption in malaysia disaggregated by sector and type is stationary or contains a unit root to realize our objective we apply the lagrange multiplier lm family of unit root tests with up to two structural breaks depending on the decision rule for selecting between results in the no break one break and two break cases we find that energy consumption is stationary for between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of the disaggregated energy series and between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of sectors implications for the malaysian government s attempts to reduce fossil fuel consumption are discussed

substituting the end for the whole why voters respond primarily to the election year economy according to numerous studies the election year economy influences presidential election results far more than cumulative growth throughout the term here we describe a series of surveys and experiments that point to an intriguing explanation for this pattern that runs contrary to standard political science explanations but one that accords with a large psychological literature voters we find actually intend to judge presidents on cumulative growth however since that characteristic is not readily available to them voters inadvertently substitute election year performance because it is more easily accessible this end heuristic explanation for voters election year emphasis reflects a general tendency for people to simplify retrospective assessments by substituting conditions at the end for the whole the end heuristic explanation also suggests a remedy a way to align voters actions with their intentions providing people with the attribute they are seeking cumulative growth eliminates the election year emphasis

determinants of international university rankings scores this article analyses the relationship between a university s score in international university rankings its expenditure per student and other factors such as university mission size and productive inefficiency we develop an economic model of rankings and universities and estimate this model with data on universities classified in the top 200 by the times higher education supplement ranking of 2007 we find that the elasticity of a university s ranking score for the expenditure per student is between 4 and 9 and that there are no clear signs of inefficiency in production among the top 200 universities university mission and size are also significant predictors of ranking score these results are especially interesting given the relevance attributed to rankings by government officials university directors and students

a review on global wind energy policy with the increasing negative effects of fossil fuel combustion on the environment in addition to limited stock of fossil fuel have forced many countries to inquire into and change to environmentally friendly alternatives that are renewable to sustain the increasing energy demand energy policy plays a vital role to mitigate the impacts of global warming and crisis of energy availability this paper explores the wind energy industry from the point of view of the wind energy policy it is noticed that energy policy could help increasing wind power generation as well as stimulating the energy industry it may be stated that without specific energy policy a country would not be able to solve the acute problems like reducing greenhouse gases ghgs emission scarcity of energy etc this paper discussed the existing successful energy policies for few selected countries based on literatures it has been found that fit rps incentives pricing law and quota system are the most useful energy policies practiced by many countries around the world then status of wind energy policy for malaysia was investigated and compared with few selected countries around the world

how to decide when experts disagree uncertainty based choice rules in environmental policy environmental economists have traditionally addressed the issue of choice under uncertainty by applying the expected utility hypothesis when policymakers face a panel of experts with widely divergent beliefs the problem may more accurately be described as a case of choice under pure uncertainty arrow and hurwicz 1972 demonstrate that rational choice criteria under pure uncertainty will focus on the extremes of the state space not the midpoint as is typically assumed using nordhaus s dice model uncertainty based choices about global warming policies are evaluated linkages to the safe minimum standard and the precautionary principle are also discussed

the objectives and priorities of monetary policy under different federal reserve chairmen this paper utilizes a monetary policy reaction function that relates policy intentions to forecasts of policy objectives estimates of this reaction function over the post accord period suggest that the burns period was unique while the martin and volcker periods were extremely similar the burns period was structurally distinct from both the martin and volcker periods further model specifications that allow for an independent influence on monetary policy from different presidential administrations also imply that there are significant differences in monetary policy under different fed chairmen copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

are oil shocks permanent or temporary panel data evidence from crude oil and ngl production in 60 countries this paper examines the unit root properties of crude oil production for 60 countries employing a range of panel data unit root tests for the period 1971 to 2003 the study first employs a number of panel data tests that do not accommodate structural breaks and then proceeds to apply the lagrange multiplier lm panel unit root test with one structural break the results of the panel data tests without a structural break are inconclusive with at best mixed support for joint stationarity the findings from the lm panel unit root test with a structural break however are conclusive suggesting that for a world panel and smaller regional based panels crude oil and ngl production are jointly stationary

an analysis of oil production by opec countries persistence breaks and outliers this study examines the time series behaviour of oil production for opec member countries within a fractional integration modelling framework recognizing the potential for structural breaks and outliers the analysis is undertaken using monthly data from january 1973 to october 2008 for 13 opec member countries the results indicate there is mean reverting persistence in oil production with breaks identified in 10 out of the 13 countries examined thus shocks affecting the structure of opec oil production will have persistent effects in the long run for all countries and in some cases the effects are expected to be permanent

evidence of long memory behavior in u s renewable energy consumption this study examines the degrees of time persistence in u s total renewable energy consumption using innovative fractional integration and autoregressive models with monthly data from 1981 1 to 2010 10 the results indicate that renewable energy consumption is better explained in terms of a long memory model that incorporates persistence components and seasonality the degree of integration is above 0 5 but significantly below 1 0 suggesting nonstationarity with mean reverting behavior the presence of long memory behavior persistence in renewable energy consumption suggests that random shocks may very well move renewable energy consumption from pre determined target levels for a period of time

is per capita electricity consumption stationary time series evidence from oecd countries this study examines the stationary properties of per capita electricity consumption in which the endogenously determined break points are incorporated in 23 high income oecd countries by using annual data over 1960 2005 period we utilize lagrange multiplier lm unit root test that endogenously determines structural breaks in level and or trend we find that 21 country series reject the unit root null hypothesis at the 5 significance level except for 2 country series thus our empirical findings provide significant evidence that per capita electricity consumption is stationary in almost all countries considered in the study the stationarity of per capita electricity consumption indicates that it should be possible for the series to forecast future movements in the energy consumption based on the past behaviors of the series important policy implications emerge from our empirical results of the unit root test with multiple structural breaks

the energy growth nexus reconsidered persistence and causality abstract this article applies a recent econometric framework to the analysis of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in the us which allows a joint study of causality and persistence we provide evidence suggesting a nonlinear relationship with a structural break in the most recent regime we find that gdp causes energy consumption and vice versa furthermore both series show persistence i e cyclical and natural components do not evolve independently thus policies oriented to the reduction of energy consumption could constrain economic growth and policy shocks can have permanent effects

political business cycles and macroeconomic credibility a survey there is clear evidence that government popularity and election performance is affected in part by economic performance suggesting that governments may manipulate the economy to political advantage simple models incorporating adaptive expectations which allowed the government to exploit this relationship were developed in the 1970s but fell out of fashion with the advent of new classical economics however modern theories of the political business cycle which are closely related to the macroeconomic policy game literature assume rational expectations and lead to forms of political business cycle driven by the existence of uncertainty of one type or another the international evidence suggests that some aspects of the theories apply although definitive conclusions are as we might expect hard to come by

a new approach to energy consumption per capita stationarity evidence from oecd countries abstract applying a new panel stationary test procedure to data from 32 oecd countries from 1971 to 2013 this study examines the time series properties of per capita energy consumption the results indicate that energy consumption per capita follows a mean reverting process for 16 oecd countries whereas for the remaining 16 oecd countries a mean reverting process is not the case besides energy consumption per capita exhibits some sharp and smooth structural shifts breaks in its mean and or trend levels and the endogenously identified break dates correspond to specific macroeconomic events such as oil crises gulf war asian and global financial crises these results also have important policy implications for the 16 oecd countries that have stationary energy consumption per capita series government policies intended to stabilize energy demand will have no long lasting effects and therefore governments should not adopt unnecessary policy targets for energy demand level however for the remaining 16 oecd countries such policies will have long lasting effects

a vision on the opportunities policies and coping strategies for the energy security and green energy development in malaysia abstract energy security management remains a complex and fragmented interplay between the population growth urbanization economical development and the living environment today green technology application has been the prime contributor and an indispensable factor to preserve the long term reliability of energy supply this agenda has called for an integrated adaptive coordinated environmentally oriented and participatory approach to the protection of renewable resources malaysia endowed with its rich natural resources and diversity recognizes the need to adopt a sound developmental framework to transform the country s energy management landscape into a high quality and excellent level parallel to this development both government and non governmental organizations continue to advocate national efforts to explore alternative energy and improve the dynamic energy growth in a cost effective manner the plan espouses the establishment of ocean energy geothermal power hydropower wind power hydrogen fuel cell nuclear energy biodiesel and bioethanol processing industries the impetus is accompanied by the integration of environmental protection rules and boosted by the implementation of new energy policies the present work attempts to address the opportunities dynamic pressure and coping strategies of energy security and green energy development in malaysia the present and future outlooks of renewable and non renewable energy are elucidated besides the research breakthroughs and joint co operations for the promotion of green energy management are outlined

applied econometrics and implications for energy economics research abstract developments in applied econometrics particularly with regard to unit root tests and cointegration tests have motivated a rich empirical literature on energy economics over the last decade this study reviews recent developments in time series econometrics applications in the energy economics literature we first consider the literature on the integration properties of energy variables we begin with a discussion of the implications of whether energy variables contain a unit root and proceed to examine how results differ according to the specific unit root or stationarity test employed we then proceed to examine recent developments in the literature on cointegration granger causality and long run estimates between disaggregated energy consumption and economic growth we review both single country and panel studies and pay particular attention to studies which have expanded the literature through adding variables such as financial development and trade in addition to energy consumption to the augmented production function as well as studies which have extended the literature through examining disaggregated energy consumption by type in each case we highlight best practice in the literature point to limitations in the literature including econometric modeling challenges and suggest recommendations for future research a key message of our survey is that the profession needs to guard against overload of research in these areas as most applied studies are no longer adding anything more to what is already known

are shocks to renewable energy consumption permanent or transitory an empirical investigation for brazil china and india abstract this paper investigates whether there is a unit root in renewable energy consumption in three large developing economies brazil china and india over the period 1971 2014 to do so it uses four unit root tests assuming one structural break two structural breaks and more than two structural breaks it observes that renewable energy consumption is a unit root process in brazil but it is found as stationary in china and india the paper also tackles issues and challenges in the unit root test methodology in energy economics literature and provides implications for renewable energy consumption in three economies

equilibrium political budget cycles political business cycle theories generally rely on nominal rigidities and voter myopia this paper offers an equilibrium theory that preserves some basic insights from earlier models though with significant refinements the political budget cycle emphasized here is in fiscal policy rather than output and inflation it arises via a multidimensional signal process one can consider the welfare implications of proposals to mitigate the cycle and the effects of altering the electoral structure copyright 1990 by american economic association

a note on the causal relationship between energy and gdp in taiwan abstract this paper re examines the causality between energy consumption and gdp by using updated taiwan data for the period 1954 1997 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between gdp and the aggregate as well as several disaggregate categories of energy consumption including coal oil natural gas and electricity applying granger s technique we find bidirectional causality between total energy consumption and gdp we find further that different directions of cause exist between gdp and various kinds of energy consumption

indicators of security of natural gas supply in asia natural gas has become an increasingly valuable resource and a global commodity the demand for it has significantly increased japan korea and taiwan heavily rely on liquefied natural gas lng imports for their gas supplies from malaysia brunei indonesia australia and the middle east on the other hand countries like thailand and singapore import gas via trans border pipelines gas supply interruptions volatile gas prices transportation and distribution bottlenecks and a growing reliance on imports over longer distances have renewed interest on gas security in asia this paper examines the relative vulnerability to natural gas supply disruptions of seven gas importing countries in asia for year 2008 based on four indicators of security of gas supply a composite gas supply security index is estimated as an overall indication of gas vulnerability for our sample countries the results demonstrate that there are differences in the values of the overall indicator of gas vulnerability among countries and the assessment is useful in developing an effective strategy of natural gas supply security in countries in the asian region

long memory and disaggregated energy consumption evidence from fossils coal and electricity retail in the u s abstract in this paper the long memory properties of disaggregated fossils coal and electricity retail consumption in the u s over the 1989 2009 period are examined the presence of long memory is related to autocorrelation persistence of each series our results show that there is heterogeneity in the order of integration between these types of energy consumption and for the different sectors employed which is affected by the inclusion of a break event the order of integration was generally higher for the case of a break in the intercept than in the slope with the latter being more plausible for all series

on the existence of a political monetary cycle this paper examines electoral influence on monetary policy as measured by ml money growth i find a significant four year electoral cycle in money growth even when controlling for the influence of interest rates income and budget deficits further the residual electoral cycle produces the income and inflation movements associated with the political business cycle when it is used in simulations of simple reduced form macro models the paper concludes by discussing the difficulties in rationalizing cyclical monetary policy with rational expectations

will policies to promote renewable electricity generation be effective evidence from panel stationarity and unit root tests for 115 countries abstract this study examines whether policies to promote renewable electricity generation are likely to be effective by applying panel unit root and stationarity tests to time series data on renewable electricity generation for 115 countries over the period 1980 2008 we find that for the panel as a whole and almost three quarters of the individual countries renewable electricity generation is characterized by a unit root this result implies that policies to promote renewable electricity generation such as renewable portfolio standards which result in annual increases in renewable energy and as such which represent permanent positive shocks to the long run growth path of renewable electricity generation will be more effective in increasing renewable electricity generation than policies with a pre specified time horizon

energy efficiency and carbon trading potential in malaysia abstract the damage inflicted by global warming is happening far faster than any experts have predicted or anticipated since the kyoto protocol was signed in 1997 to fight global warming through reducing global greenhouse gases ghgs emission the world climate pattern has worsened at an accelerated rate beyond expectation while developed countries sanctioned by the protocol are committed to achieve their ghg emission targets developing nations play similar roles on a voluntary basis since almost all of the ghgs emissions come from energy sector it is obvious that energy policy and related regulatory frameworks play imperative roles in realizing the kyoto protocol objectives with carbon dioxide co 2 touted as the main remedy in the ghgs emissions it is only reasonable that carbon trading becomes the essential element in the protocol recently a milestone is marked in the kyoto protocol with the 2009 climate summit in copenhagen denmark with all participating countries further committed themselves in fulfilling the protocol s obligations before the commitment period due in 2012 it is worthwhile to review the various energy efficiency efforts and carbon trading potential in malaysia a country which although does not bear any obligation has ratified and lauded the cause of the protocol malaysia as a developing nation is seen as a direct beneficiary from carbon trading and in this paper how the country energy policies have evolved over the years with concerted efforts from the government to minimize its carbon footprint through numerous energy efficiency implementations are discussed in length the impact from the 2009 climate summit on malaysia is also briefed

are asian real exchange rates mean reverting evidence from univariate and panel lm unit root tests with one and two structural breaks there are a number of studies that examine the purchasing power parity ppp hypothesis the empirical findings from the extant literature for the ppp hypothesis are mixed this article applies univariate and panel lagrange multiplier lm unit root tests with one and two structural breaks to real exchange rates for 15 asian countries the univariate lm unit root tests find evidence of ppp for two thirds of the sample the results from the panel lm unit root test support long run ppp for the asian countries in the sample the results from the lm panel unit root tests differ from those of existing panel unit root tests of ppp for asian countries that have not allowed for the existence of structural breaks

the role of renewable energy to validate dynamic interaction between co2 emissions and gdp toward sustainable development in malaysia abstract closing the gap between economy activity and environmental quality is one of the solutions for reaching sustainable development in malaysia to do so the cubic polynomial functional form of ekc is utilized by accommodating renewable energy into the base of the ekc model and validating its hypothesis between co 2 emissions and gdp growth for the 1971 2015 period the f bounds vecm granger causality cusum and cusumsq tests are utilized the estimated results consistently show that the inverted n shaped ekc hypothesis holds in malaysia ceteris paribus the co 2 emissions will be declined when the gdp reach rm2841 9 billion in 2030 which is beyond the sample period the renewable energy has a negative significant effect on co 2 emissions and the direction of causality is running from co 2 emissions to renewable energy also the gdp growth will be the remedy for environmental pollution problems and that renewable energy is one of important elements to be considered for improving environmental quality a tighter and concentrated environmental policy is needed to direct the environment economic growth nexus toward a downward trend consequently these results may help malaysian policymakers to establish an energy policy that guarantees a balance between economic growth and environmental prosperity

did the fed raise interest rates before elections the literature on political business cycles focuses on elected incumbents and neglects the incentives of appointed officials we present evidence of rate hikes before elections when the chair of the us federal reserve is from a different party than the incumbent president this finding contrasts with the traditional belief that an inappropriate policy rate bias implies a more expansive pre election policy stance we also find weak evidence that rates are lowered when the chair and president are from the same party the evidence that ideological preferences of the chair matter remains even when we control for career motives

do malaysian house prices follow a random walk evidence from univariate and panel lm unit root tests with one and two structural breaks in this article we apply univariate and panel lagrange multiplier lm unit root tests with one and twostructural breaks proposed by lee and strazicich 2003 2004 and im et al 2005 to examine housing prices for five different housing price indices all housing detached housing semi detached housing terrace housing and high rise housing in 14 states of malaysia to test whether housing prices exhibit a random walk our main finding from the univariate lm unit root tests is that for the vast majority of states housing prices follow a stationary process about a segmented trend the results of the panel lm unit root tests provide overwhelming evidence that house prices are segmented trend reverting

does the fed contribute to a political business cycle in contrast to findings of other studies evidence is presented to support the existence of a federal reserve induced political monetary cycle that corresponds to the u s presidential election cycle using various taylor rules we find support for the view that fed policy turns significantly more expansionary in the seven quarters prior to the election but only when the fed chair and incumbent presidential party have partisan affiliations

the malaysian fifth fuel policy re strategising the malaysian renewable energy initiatives abstract the power industry is the most crucial and strategic sector for any country to achieve its vision due to the fast depletion and high cost of fossil fuel this is now a threat to sustainable growth attention is now focused on renewable energies as an alternative in malaysia renewable energy was included in the 8th malaysia plan 2000 2005 with a target of 500 mw out of the 20 000 mw total generation capacity however for the first 10 years 2000 2010 only 41 5 mw planting up has been achieved this paper recommends strategies implementation mechanism and financial framework to ensure success of the initiatives some of the recommendations were currently being implemented such as the green technology fund and the fit in tariff in addition this paper proposes the incorporation of a malaysian renewable energy development board with wide legislative and executive powers that would be a strong champion of the re initiatives its primary function would be inter alia cross ministry coordination tariff fixation regulating utilization of renewable biomass waste institute fiscal incentives such as investment incentives tax holidays removal of barriers and initiate government funded research development and demonstration rd d initiatives

is monthly us natural gas consumption stationary new evidence from a garch unit root test with structural breaks we apply a recently developed unit root test that simultaneously accounts for heteroskedasticity and structural breaks to united states monthly natural gas consumption we find that united states monthly natural gas consumption is stationary our results illustrate the importance of accounting for heteroskedasticity when testing for a unit root in energy consumption with higher frequency data

the political manipulation of macroeconomic policy conventional wisdom and some research indicate that macroeconomic policies follow cycles corresponding to political as well as economic forces using vector autoregression analysis i test three models of monetary policy determination for the united states 1953 1984 the electoral cycle model that reelection motivations on the part of presidents create a policy cycle the party differences model that policy changes reflect revolving presidential party administrations and the referendum model that changes in presidential approval create in effect a continuing referendum allowing presidents to monitor their success and change macroeconomic policies when necessary analysis shows that monetary policies as measured by the monetary base and short term interest rates respond to the election cycle and presidential approval although the effect on macroeconomic outcomes is ambiguous party differences are found in real income but are not very significant in other variables

a re examination of stationarity of energy consumption evidence from new unit root tests abstract in this paper we re examine the stochastic behaviour of per capita total primary energy consumption across 178 countries around the world for this purpose in addition to conventional unit root tests we apply newly developed tests that allow for nonlinear adjustments and structural breaks in the data generating process the results of the unit root tests show that allowing for structural breaks and nonlinearity result in more frequent rejection of the null hypothesis of unit root suggesting that most of the series under consideration follow a stationary process these findings imply that both energy economists and policy makers must be careful and take account of possible nonlinearities and structural breaks in their analyses of energy consumption in addition the results imply that government interventions into the energy markets in most countries have no effect in the long run although the short run effects of the interventions depend on the size and the direction of interventions

what starts inflation evidence from the oecd countries we use a pooled cross country time series framework to study the factors associated with the start of 73 inflation episodes in oecd countries since 1960 we find that policy makers pursuit of high real growthtargets and national elections were important factors in initiating inflation episodes u s inflation turns out to be a triggering event for simultaneous outbreaks of inflation across countries several other explanations for inflation starts including increases in the natural rate of unemployment oil price shocks changes in the political orientation of governments and government debt policy are not supported by the data

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

long memory in us disaggregated petroleum consumption evidence from univariate and multivariate lm tests for fractional integration previous studies that have tested for a unit root in aggregate energy consumption have potentially reached misleading conclusions because they fail to allow for the possibility that energy consumption might be fractionally integrated and do not distinguish between different types of energy consumption this study tests for long memory in disaggregated petroleum consumption in the united states using univariate and multivariate lagrange multiplier lm tests for fractional integration the results point strongly to the need to distinguish between different forms of energy consumption and allow for a generalization of the i 0 i 1 dichotomy when considering the order of integration of energy consumption allowing for short run dynamics the univariate test suggests that less than 50 of the series are fractionally integrated consistent with expectations the non stationary series are found to have the highest mean and standard deviation the multivariate test suggests that petroleum consumption in the commercial and industrial sectors is clearly fractionally integrated when allowing for short run dynamics and as such exhibits persistent effects while petroleum consumption in the residential sector is a stationary process

allocative efficiency in public research funding can bibliometrics help abstract the use of outcome control modes of research evaluation exercises is ever more frequent they are conceived as tools to stimulate increased levels of research productivity and to guide choices in allocating components of government research budgets for publicly funded institutions there are several contributions in the literature that compare the different methodological approaches that policy makers could adopt for these exercises however the comparisons are limited to only a few disciplines this work examining the case of the whole of the hard sciences of the italian academic system makes a comparison between results obtained from peer review type of evaluations as adopted by the ministry of universities and research and those possible from a bibliometric approach as developed by the authors the aim is to understand to what extent bibliometric methodology which is noted as relatively inexpensive time saving and exhaustive can complement and integrate peer review methodology in research evaluation

a review on existing and future energy sources for electrical power generation in malaysia abstract as the electricity demand is affected by population growth malaysia towards an industrialized nation is considering the options for future energy sources for its power generation besides the conventional four fuel mix the five fuel mix strategy under several national policies are introduced to diversify and expanding the resources to incorporate renewable energy and nuclear in view of malaysia will become a net energy importer by 2020 the increase in alternative energy shares at least will provide stable energy security more economical and greener environment in this paper present and future energy sources are discussed to emphasis on the constraints and barriers facing malaysia towards energy security and sustainability several preferences on future energy sources are under serious consideration where renewable energy re is becoming one of the popular choices as malaysia recognizes the potential of re as sustainable and greener option

evaluating the performance of higher education institutions in europe a nonparametric efficiency analysis of 944 institutions abstractalthough a long tradition exists of studying the economics of education performance comparisons of different kinds have traditionally been difficult to undertake an important impediment has been the lack of comparable data to a large extent this study remedies the shortcomings of earlier studies our contribution is twofold first the current higher education policy of contraction and economizing common to most european countries make knowledge of potential efficiency gains crucial second a unique database allows us to study a broad diversity of organizations as well as organizations located in a number of different european countries the study suggests evaluating higher education institution hei performance in a production theory context applying the well known data envelopment analysis dea method to a cross section of 944 heis in 17 european countries the dea approach is particularly suitable in this context where little is known about production technologies and economic behavio

are shocks to energy consumption permanent or temporary evidence from 182 countries this article applies univariate and panel data unit root tests to annual panel data for 182 countries over the period 1979 2000 to examine the stationarity properties of per capita energy consumption the univariate unit root test can only reject the unit root null for 56 countries or 31 of the sample at the 10 level or better however univariate unit root tests have low power with short spans of data and therefore failure to reject the unit root null should be treated with caution when we apply the panel data unit root test we find overwhelming evidence that energy consumption is stationary we discuss the policy implications of these findings and offer suggestions for future research

are shocks to natural gas consumption temporary or permanent evidence from a panel of u s states abstract this short communication examines whether or not u s natural gas consumption follows a stationary process unlike previous research that has focused on regional country or industrial sector based panel studies this study undertakes a sub national investigation of natural gas consumption for the 50 u s states levin et al 2002 im et al 2003 maddala and wu 1999 and hadri 2000 panel unit root and stationarity tests reveal that natural gas consumption is integrated of order one however once allowance is made for endogenously determined structural breaks the carrion i silvestre et al 2005 im et al 2005 and westerlund 2005 panel unit root and stationarity tests indicate that natural gas consumption is integrated of order zero discussion of the structural breaks is briefly surveyed in relation to the natural gas industry s response to legislative actions

choosing the federal reserve chair lessons from history stable noninflationary growth has been the goal of monetary policymakers since the inception of the modern federal reserve in the mid 1930s policymakers however have come closer to achieving this goal in some eras than in others under chairmen william mcchesney martin jr in the 1950s and early 1960s and alan greenspan in the late 1980s and beyond the federal reserve presided over decades of low inflation and mild real fluctuations under paul volcker in the 1980s the federal reserve oversaw a significant recession but one that returned the american economy to near price stability and steady growth in contrast under marriner eccles in the late 1930s the federal reserve triggered a recession that was second in severity only to the great depression and that resulted in severe deflation and under arthur burns and g william miller in the 1970s the u s economy experienced high and rising inflation and painfully variable real growth an obvious question is why monetary policy has been so much more successful under some federal reserve chairmen than others this question has taken on new urgency because current chairman alan greenspan will need to be replaced in the near future it is crucial to understand what has determined policy success in the past and to identify factors that help predict success only by learning the lessons of history will we be able to choose a new federal reserve chair who is likely to replicate our policy triumphs and avoid our policy failures this paper demonstrates that the key determinants of policy success have been policymakers views about how the economy works and what monetary policy can

are fluctuations in energy consumption per capita transitory evidence from a panel of pacific island countries this study applies the panel stationarity test developed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 breaking the panels an application to gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 to examine the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for a panel of 13 pacific island countries over the period 1980 2005 this test has the advantage that it allows for multiple structural breaks at unknown dates that can differ across countries and can account for all forms of cross sectional correlation between countries the conclusion from the study is that energy consumption per capita in approximately 60 of countries is stationary and that energy consumption per capita for the panel as a whole is stationary the study offers several suggestions for modelling energy consumption and policy making in the pacific islands

fourier quantile unit root test for the integrational properties of clean energy consumption in emerging economies abstract since the adoption of the kyoto protocol in 1997 and its entry into force in 2005 as well its aftermath such as the doha amendment and paris agreement national policies have become more conscious of the usage of clean energy mostly the different forms of renewable energy and nuclear energy ratifying countries and signatories had committed themselves to binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse emissions by 8 with respect to 1990 levels until 2012 also based on the particular contribution to global emissions from each country this paper examines the integrational properties of clean energy consumption from eight emerging economies which are also high greenhouse gas emitters the empirical results show that the clean energy consumption is stationarity for brazil and philippines by using a quantile unit root test without smooth breaks koenker and xiao 2004 however after capturing the smooth breaks bahmani oskooee et al 2018 we find the clean energy consumption of china pakistan and thailand are stationary the time varying deterministic trend with smooth breaks is more fitted to the path of clean energy consumption in comparison to the deterministic trend without smooth breaks the paper suggests economic insights useful for policy making

management of natural gas resources and search for alternative renewable energy resources a case study of pakistan abstract energy usage in pakistan has increased rapidly in past few years due to increase in economic growth inadequate and inconsistent supply of energy has created pressure on the industrial and commercial sectors of pakistan and has also affected environment demand has already exceeded supply and load shedding has become common phenomenon due to excessive consumption of energy resources it would become difficult to meet future energy demands this necessitates proper management of existing and exploration of new energy resources energy resource management is highly dependent on the supply and demand pattern this paper highlights the future demands production and supply of energy produced from natural gas based on economic and environmental constraints in pakistan with special emphasis on management of natural gas an attempt has been made by proposing a suitable course of action to meet the rising gas demand a mechanism has been proposed to evaluate pakistan s future gas demand through quantitative analysis of base worst and best chosen option co 2 emission for all cases has also been evaluated the potential constraints and possible solutions to develop alternative renewable energy resources in the country have also been discussed this work will be fruitful for the decision makers responsible for energy planning of the country this work is not only helpful for pakistan but is equally important to other developing countries to manage their energy resources

natural gas in asia trade markets and regional institutions natural gas trade in asia has been dominated by long established market structures under which liquefied natural gas lng has remained indexed based on the price of crude oil high transaction costs in the region in recent years imply that the regional market is sub optimally organized since 2010 the continued prevalence of oil indexation has had the most adverse effect on japan the world s largest lng importer in response japan implemented several strategies to challenge traditional lng pricing mechanisms in the region and ultimately reduce transaction costs japan s efforts include an increase in the share of spot and short term purchases sourcing new supplies from the united states under alternative pricing arrangements and driving regional buyer cooperation this paper evaluates the potential effect of japan s lng strategy on regional pricing in the broader institutional context arguing that lng pricing in the region will only partially shift away from oil indexation by the end of the decade while recent cooperation among regional lng importers indicates that there may be scope for change in the regional institutional setting the degree of cooperation is insufficient to have a profound effect on regional pricing

presidential elections and federal reserve policy an empirical test traditional macro economic models of federal reserve fed behavior typically assume that the fed enjoys a well defined objective function based on social welfare and generally predict counter cyclical monetary policy the increasing observation of procyclical monetary policy has led many researchers to investigate new models of fed behavior several recent papers imply that procyclical fed behavior is due to a lack of political accountability friedman 7 toma 23 and shughart and tollison 21 all attribute considerable bureaucratic discretion to the fed and seek to explain monetary policy by examining typical bureaucratic objectives other papers such as pierce 19 20 weintraub 26 and kane 10 11 argue that the fed operates in an arena filled with political constraints that cause sub optimal monetary policy but these constraints are not modeled explicitly one possible political constraint on fed behavior is the incumbent president s desire for re election in the political business cycle pbc literature presidential re election opportunities are enhanced by the production of a precise set of inflation and unemployment outcomes leading up to the election thus to the extent that presidents desire cyclical macro economic outcomes there will be executive pressure on the fed to create or accommodate such outcomes the effect this pressure will have on fed policy is ultimately an empirical question but most models deal with it by assumption traditional macro modeling assumes a zero effect while the pbc models implicitly assume that a favorable election cycle is a primary goal of all economic policymakers this paper examines presidential influence on the federal reserve by testing for an election cycle in money growth the major result is the identification of a regular 16 quarter cycle in money growth corresponding with presidential elections this cyclical effect is found to be stable over time and significant under a wide range of model specifications further when the cyclical component of money growth is used to simulate a simple macro model it produces a classic political business cycle in inflation and real output growth

elections and the fed is there a political monetary cycle to understand the political causes of macroeconomic policy it is necessary to examine the institutions that actually make such policy and the incentives those institutions face an explanation of the political causes of united states monetary policy must treat the various institutions that are influential in the monetary policy process which are at a minimum the federal reserve fed and the executive including the president the treasury department and other advisors in the executive office of the president the reelection motive has proven useful in modeling presidential incentives in this article i investigate whether electoral incentives associated with the theory of the political business cycle pbc can help to explain the behavior of the fed over the last quarter century the political business cycle has had a curious hold on modern political economy while the empirical evidence in favor of the cycle is far from overwhelming its theoretical importance leads to continuing empirical

the impact of central bank independence on political monetary cycles in advanced and developing nations this paper examines the extent to which monetary policy is manipulated for political purposes during elections we do not detect political monetary cycles in advanced countries or developing nations with independent central banks we do find evidence however in developing countries that lack central bank independence furthermore we find some evidence that these cycles are not caused by monetization of election related fiscal expansions this suggests that pressure by politicians on the central bank to exploit the phillips curve may be an important factor in generating political monetary cycles

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

malaysian biofuels industry experience a socio political analysis of the commercial environment this study examines the jatropha adoption process in sarawak malaysia a land rich in biological and ethnic diversity but highly impoverished attempts to alleviate poverty through oil palm plantation development resulted in internationally condemned destruction of peat lands sarawak subsequently turned to the inedible low input exportable biodiesel feedstock jatropha this case study argues that jatropha is unlikely to make more significant socio economic contributions than oil palm or other cash crops the analysis suggests that companies use social capital to aggressively expand their jatropha business among the native population in order to gain access to native customary lands which are often underproductive peat lands global biofuels sector development dynamics are examined through the lenses of political economics and social agricultural and energy studies the research finds that farmers 39 decisions to participate in the biofuels global value chain may result in negative income effects household food security reduction and biodiversity loss from peat land destruction the paper concludes with a proposal for an alternative approach to evaluate both social and financial drivers in order to prevent the negative effects of biofuel based agribusiness on human and environmental systems c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

opinion polls and political business cycles theory and evidence for the united states the paper shows that the frey schneider schultz hypothesis that there is a negative relation between the government s popularity and the government s incentives to engineer political business cycles is consistent with rational forward looking voting provided one makes appropriate assumptions about the incumbent s preferences the empirical part of the paper presents evidence favourable to the hypothesis using quarterly data on us money growth

rickety numbers volatility of university rankings and policy implications abstract the most popular world university rankings are routinely taken at face value by media and social actors while these rankings are politically influential they are sensitive to both the conceptual framework the set of indicators and the modelling choices made in their construction e g weighting or type of aggregation a robustness analysis based on a multi modelling approach aims to test the validity of the inference about the rankings produced in the academic ranking of world universities arwu of shanghai jiao tong university and those produced by the uk s times higher education supplement thes conclusions are drawn on the reliability of individual university ranks and on relative country or macro regional performance e g europe versus usa versus china in terms of the number of top performing institutions we find that while university and country level statistical inferences are unsound the inference on macro regions is more robust the paper also aims to propose an alternative ranking which is more dependant on the framework than on the methodological choices

the incredible volcker disinflation abstract the reduction in inflation that occurred in the early 1980s when the federal reserve was headed by paul volcker is arguably the most widely discussed and visible macroeconomic event of the last 50 years of u s history inflation had been dramatically rising but under volcker the fed first contained and then reversed this process using a simple modern macroeconomic model we argue that the real effects of the volcker disinflation were mainly due to its imperfect credibility in our view the observed upward volatility and subsequent stubborn elevation of long term interest rates during the disinflation are key indicators of that imperfect credibility studying transcripts of the federal open market committee recently released to the public we find to our surprise that volcker and other fomc members likewise regarded the long term interest rates as indicative of inflation expectations and of the credibility of their disinflationary policy drawing from the transcripts and other contemporary sources we consider the interplay of monetary targets operating procedures and credibility during the volcker disinflation

will initiatives to promote hydroelectricity consumption be effective evidence from univariate and panel lm unit root tests with structural breaks abstract this paper examines whether initiatives to promote hydroelectricity consumption are likely to be effective by applying univariate and panel lagrange multiplier lm unit root tests to hydroelectricity consumption in 55 countries over the period 1965 2011 we find that for the panel as well as about four fifths of individual countries that hydroelectricity consumption is stationary this result implies that shocks to hydroelectricity consumption in most countries will only result in temporary deviations from the long run growth path an important consequence of this finding is that initiatives designed to have permanent positive effects on hydroelectricity consumption such as large scale dam construction are unlikely to be effective in increasing the share of hydroelectricity relative to consumption of fossil fuels

the japanese energy sector current situation and future paths abstract as the world s third leading economy and a major importer of fuels the choice of future energy paths and policies that japan makes in the next few years will have a significant influence on the energy security of the world as a whole and of the northeast asia region in particular in this article we describe the current status of and recent trends in the japanese energy sector including energy demand and supply by fuel and by sector we then discuss the current energy policy situation in japan focusing on policies related to climate change targets renewable energy development and deployment liberalization of energy markets and the evolution of the japanese nuclear power sector the final section of the article presents the structure of the japan leap long range energy alternatives planning software system dataset describes several alternative energy paths for japan with an emphasis on alternative paths for nuclear power development and ghg emission abatement and touches upon key current issues of energy policy facing japan as reflected in the modeling inputs and results

the federal reserve s response to aggregate demand and aggregate supply shocks evidence of a partisan political cycle the orthodox approach to modeling the fed s response to economic conditions is to employ a monetary policy reaction function most reaction functions are estimated by regressing a policy indicator possibly the federal funds rate or a monetary aggregate on variables that describe the state of the economy such as unemployment inflation and growth in output under certain conditions which we discuss below estimated coefficients from a reaction function provide information about the fed s monetary policy priorities moreover extending the model to include election and partisan dummy variables may provide information about the fed s response to political pressures there are two problems with interpreting the coefficients in a standard reaction function as the weights that the fed attaches to its policy objectives first the monetary policy decision may not be represented accurately by an aggregate reaction function one that models the fed as a whole because there are twelve voting members on the fomc chappell havrilesky and mcgregor 10 have recently addressed this issue by employing a disaggregated set of reaction functions the second problem with interpreting reaction function coefficients as the weights the fed places on its policy objectives is that this interpretation implicitly assumes structural stability of the underlying macroeconomy abrams froyen and waud 1 31 acknowledge this shortcoming when they state coefficients from estimated reaction functions do not provide direct information on policymaker utility functions rather than being the solution to an unconstrained optimization dependent only on policymaker preferences reaction functions are the output of a constrained maximization where the constraints are the reduced form equations that characterize

structural breaks and petroleum consumption in us states are shocks transitory or permanent abstract this short communication extends the literature on the stationarity of energy consumption to the case of us petroleum consumption at the state level from 1960 to 2007 the results of lee and strazicich 2003 and narayan and popp forthcoming unit root tests with endogenously determined structural breaks in the intercept and slope of the trend function reveal break dates that correspond to the two opec oil shocks of the 1970s along with the double dip recession of 1980 1982 the null hypothesis of a unit root in petroleum consumption is rejected for a majority of states these results highlight the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity in the behavior of petroleum consumption across states in the formulation of energy conservation and demand management policies