the design of insurance coverage for medical products under imperfect competition this paper studies the design of health insurance with ex post moral hazard when there is imperfect competition in the market for the medical product various scenarios such as monopoly pricing or horizontal differentiation are considered insurers or their regulator can commit to a reimbursement policy which specifies two types of copayments an ad valoremcoinsurance rate and a specific per unit copayment by combining both copayment rates in an adequate way the insurer can effectively control the producer price which is then set so that the producer s revenue just covers fixed costs consequently a suitable regulation of the copayment instruments leads to the same reimbursement rule as under perfect competition for medical products additional rationing of coverage because of imperfect competition is notnecessary the optimal policy involves the smallest possible copayment combined with the largest possible coinsurance rate such that the participation constraint of health providers is binding

finance for achieving low carbon development in asia the past present and prospects for the future abstract finance has become a crucial agenda in climate change negotiations in recent years meanwhile multilateral negotiations on climate change as a whole are making meager progress and increasingly observed are activities by national governments and transnational non state actors the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how investment towards low carbon development could be materialized in asia a thorough review of current financial assistance for developing countries in asia was conducted and the amount of funding proved to be relatively modest to achieve the aim we then examined financial policy instruments that could be implemented in the region we estimated that usd125 149 billion per year would be needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the region by 2035 we also estimated that more than a half of this amount of funding could be achieved by public sector if several key policy instruments were agreed upon and enacted at regional and national levels in asia the role of private sector investment was also found to be indispensable in fulfilling all the long term investment needs related to climate mitigation in the region

the effect of environmental regulation on the locational choice of japanese foreign direct investment this article assesses the impact of environmental regulation er in host countries on japanese foreign direct investment fdi decision making it tests the pollution haven hypothesis using data on national er standards and japanese inward fdi in five dirty industries iron and steel industry nonferrous metals industry chemicals industry paper and pulp industry nonmetallic products industry the results do not support the pollution hypothesis on the contrary inward japanese fdi appears to be attracted to countries which have committed themselves to a transparent and stable environment regulatory environment suggesting that the quality of the regulatory framework in terms of its certainty and transparency has a greater influence on foreign investors choice of location than the level of environmental regulatory measures

decoupling china s carbon emissions increase from economic growth an economic analysis and policy implications as the world s second largest carbon emitter china has long been criticized as a free rider benefiting from other countries efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but not taking responsibility for its own emissions china has been singled out as one of the major targets at the subsequent negotiations after the kyoto meeting bq analyzing the historical contributions of interfuel switching energy conservation economic growth and population expansion to china s co2 emissions during 1980 97 this article clearly demonstrates that the above criticism is unjustified moreover given the fact that the role of china is an issue of perennial concern at the international climate change negotiations the article envisions some efforts and commitments that could be expected from china until its per capita income catches lip with the level of middle developed countries by emphasizing the it win win strategies these efforts and commitments are unlikely to jeopardize china s economic development and at the same time would give the country more leverage at the international climate change negotiations subsequent to the buenos sires meeting c 2000 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

retail price regulation and innovation reference pricing in the pharmaceutical industry our paper is a first attempt to evaluate the long run impact of reference pricing on pharmaceutical innovation health and expenditures the model is based on a dynamic game involving three types of agents pharmaceutical firms consumers and a regulatory entity pharmaceutical firms choose the level of research investment and its innovative content then negotiate introductory prices for new drugs with the regulator reference pricing affects negatively the intensity of research and it also modifies the types of innovations that are brought to the market deterring small innovations the model is calibrated with a small data on statins in france our results suggest that reference pricing typically generates a decline in health whereas discounted expenditures may decrease or increase depending on the degree of deterrence of cost reducing innovations

oil shocks and subnational public investment the role of institutions in regional resource curse abstract theoretical and empirical studies on oil price shocks have mainly focused on measuring its relationship with national macroeconomic performance in developing countries nevertheless research is scarce on the effects of natural resource booms on local governments and even more on public investment using a difference in differences strategy this paper contributes to identifying the causal effects of the recent oil boom in colombia 2008 2016 on subnational public investment our results suggest that the rise in international oil prices had mostly positive and disproportionate effects on public investment in oil producing departments and municipalities although municipalities and departments prioritized different sectors both increased their investments in sectors with high social returns suggesting a lower likelihood of a resource curse we also found that an institutional reform in 2012 was a source of heterogeneity and the main driver of the causal effects on subnational public investments

the effect of fdi on environmental emissions evidence from a meta analysis one important and frequently raised issue about foreign direct investment fdi is the potentially negative consequences for the environment the potential environmental cost due to increased emissions may undermine the economic gains associated with increases in fdi inflow although the literature is dominated with this adverse view of fdi on the environment there is also a possibility that fdi can contribute to a cleaner environment especially if fdi comes with green technologies and this creates spillovers for domestic industries theoretically the effect of fdi on the environment can be negative or positive to deal with the theoretical ambiguity about the fdi environment nexus many empirical studies have been conducted but their results only reinforce the controversy as they produce contrasting results we conduct a meta analysis of the effect of fdi on environmental emissions using 65 primary studies that produce 1006 elasticities our results show that the underlying effect of fdi on environmental emissions is close to zero however after accounting for heterogeneity in the studies we find that fdi significantly reduces environmental emissions results remain robust after disaggregating the effect for countries at different levels of development as well as for different pollutants

why are crude oil prices high when global activity is weak abstract there have been substantial increases in liquidity in recent years and real oil prices have almost returned to the high levels achieved before the global financial crisis unanticipated increases in global real m2 led to statistically significant increases in real oil prices the historical impact of global real m2 on the real price of crude oil is important in the recovery of oil prices over 2009 to 2011

the role of energy in real business cycle models abstract this paper modifies hansen s 1985 analysis of a real business cycle mode with indivisible labor by explicitly including energy as a productive input and modelling the relative price of energy as an exogenous random process one goal is to determine the extent to which the introduction of energy price shocks reduces the reliance of the real business cycle model on unobserved technology shocks the other goal following christiano and eichenbaum 1991 is to compare the correlation between real wages and hours predicted by the energy inclusive model to that predicted by hansen s model

oil price shocks and real gdp growth empirical evidence for some oecd countries this study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries multivariate var analysis is carried out using both linear and non linear models the latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature namely the asymmetric scaled and net specifications evidence of a non linear impact of oil prices on real gdp is found in particular oil price increases are found to have an impact on gdp growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases among oil importing countries oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but japan moreover the effect of oil shocks on gdp growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample with the uk being negatively affected by an oil price increase and norway benefiting from it

oil price shocks and european industries abstract we investigate the impact of oil price shocks at the industry level in the euro area for the period 1983 2007 we use different oil price specifications and use dynamic var models and multivariate regression to investigate how 38 different industries respond to oil price shocks we pay specific attention to the asymmetry of the industries responses regarding oil price increases and decreases we find that the impact of oil price shocks substantially differs along the different industries we find that the significance of this result also differs along the various oil price specifications the results are quite robust to the way in which we model the problem

does foreign direct investment lead to lower co2 emissions evidence from a regional analysis in china abstract existing studies have been concerned with the relationship between foreign direct investment and co2 emissions in recent years however little attention has been paid to regional differences in china this paper investigates the impact of fdi on china s co2 emissions at the national and regional levels using provincial panel data from 1995 to 2010 the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model was adopted the results suggest that fdi contributes to co2 emission reductions in china fdi s impact on co2 emissions decreases from the western region to the eastern and central regions our findings support the pollution halo hypothesis which claims that foreign firms can export greener technologies from developed to developing countries and conduct business in an environmentally friendly manner

oil shocks and external balances abstract we provide estimates of the effects of demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market on several measures of oil exporters and oil importers external balances including the oil trade balance the non oil trade balance the current account capital gains and changes in net foreign assets nfa first we show that the effect of oil demand and supply shocks on the merchandise trade balance and the current account which depending on the source of the shock can be large depends critically on the response of the non oil trade balance our results provide evidence of an intermediate degree of international financial integration second we document the presence of large and systematic valuation effects in response to these shocks valuation effects overall tend to cushion the effect of oil demand and supply shocks on the nfa positions of oil exporters and oil importers third we quantify the overall importance of global business cycle demand shocks as well as oil market specific demand and supply shocks for external balances

the impacts of gdp trade structure exchange rate and fdi inflows on china s carbon emissions abstract this paper examines the impacts of gdp trade structure exchange rate and fdi foreign direct investment inflows on china s carbon emissions from 1982 to 2016 and verifies the validity of ekc environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for china differentiated from the existing literature which rarely considers services trade and exchange rate this paper uses the proportion of services trade to measure trade structure and exchange rate as one of the independent variables firstly the stability of each variable is tested by adf augmented dickey fuller and np ng perron test then ardl bound test is used to test the cointegration of the variables as it has better properties than traditional cointegration methods and is more suitable for the model in this paper thirdly error correction model is used to analyze the long term and short term dynamic relationship between the variables fourthly the granger causality test based on the var is performed it is found that during the study period ekc hypothesis was valid for china and that whilst the impacts of both services trade and exchange rate on china s carbon emissions were negative the impacts of fdi inflows were positive conclusions and policy implications are provided at the end of the paper

on the dynamic effects of oil price shocks a study using industry level data abstract this paper analyzes the effects of oil price shocks on demand and supply in various industries the impulse responses of identified var models indicate that for industries that have a large cost share of oil such as petroleum refinery and industrial chemicals oil price shocks mainly reduce supply in contrast for many other industries with the automobile industry being a particularly important example oil price shocks mainly reduce demand the paper suggests that oil price shocks influence economic activities beyond that explained by direct input cost effects possibly by delaying purchasing decisions of durable goods

does urbanization lead to more direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions evidence from china during 1996 2012 china is experiencing a stage of rapid urban development the energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions of households continue to increase this paper calculates direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households based on the input output method in china from 1996 to 2012 the results reveal that there were more total carbon dioxide emissions from urban households than from rural households far more indirect emissions from urban households than from rural households slightly more direct emissions from urban households than from rural households and differences in direct carbon dioxide emissions from various fuels and in indirect emissions from various sectors between urban and rural households to examine the causal relationship between urbanization and the carbon dioxide emissions of households cointegration and granger causality tests are applied a unidirectional causal relation was found running from urbanization to both direct and indirect household carbon dioxide emissions and the direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions of households would increase 2 9 and 1 1 respectively for every increase of one percent in urbanization we discuss the reasons of why the development of urbanization will lead to more household direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions and suggest certain policy implications for urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions based on the results of this study

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

what do we learn from the price of crude oil futures summary despite their widespread use as predictors of the spot price of oil oil futures prices tend to be less accurate in the mean squared prediction error sense than no change forecasts this result is driven by the variability of the futures price about the spot price as captured by the oil futures spread this variability can be explained by the marginal convenience yield of oil inventories using a two country multi period general equilibrium model of the spot and futures markets for crude oil we show that increased uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls under plausible assumptions causes the spread to decline increased uncertainty also causes precautionary demand for oil to increase resulting in an immediate increase in the real spot price thus the negative of the oil futures spread may be viewed as an indicator of fluctuations in the price of crude oil driven by precautionary demand an empirical analysis of this indicator provides evidence of how shifts in the uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls affect the real spot price of crude oil copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

imperfect competition and the effects of energy price increases on economic activity the authors show that modifying the standard neoclassical growth model by assuming that competition is imperfect makes it easier to explain the size of the declines in output and real wages that follow increases in the price of oil plausibly parameterized models of this type are able to mimic the response of output and real wages in the united states the responses are particularly consistent with a model of implicit collusion where markups depend positively on the ratio of the expected present value of future profits to the current level of output copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

the effect of urbanization energy consumption and foreign direct investment on the carbon dioxide emission in the ssea south and southeast asian region abstract this study examines the relationship between urbanization energy consumption foreign direct investment fdi and carbon dioxide co2 emission of 17 countries in the south and southeast asian ssea region during the period 1980 2012 in order to find out the intensity of co2 emission in 17 countries we classify the total sample countries into three sub groups namely high middle and low income countries these three sub panels are constructed based on their gross national income per capita of countries pedroni cointegration result shows that urbanization primary energy consumption fdi and co2 emission are cointegrated in all sub groups of countries regardless of their levels of national income per capita furthermore while incorporating the fossil fuel energy consumption in place of primary energy consumption in the alternative specification of regression the result suggests a cointegrating relationship between fossil fuel energy consumption fdi urbanization and co2 emission in middle income countries nevertheless westerlund cointegration results are more or less in the line of pedroni results furthermore the results reveal that primary energy consumption fossil fuel energy consumption and fdi are substantially affecting the co2 emission in the ssea region moreover the empirical findings suggest that in middle income countries both primary and fossil fuel energy consumption are considerably increasing the co2 emission and leading to greenhouse gas problem in the ssea region

do economic financial and institutional developments matter for environmental degradation evidence from transitional economies abstract several studies have examined the relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth however most of them did not take into account financial developments and institutional quality moreover stern stern d 2004 the rise and fall of the environmental kuznets curve world development 32 8 1419 1439 noted that there are important econometric weaknesses in the earlier studies such as endogeneity heteroscedasticity omitted variables etc the purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the linkage between not only economic development and environmental quality but also financial development and institutional quality we employ the standard reduced form modelling approach to control for country specific unobserved heterogeneity and gmm estimation to control for endogeneity our study considers 24 transition economies and panel data for 1993 2004 our results support the ekc hypothesis while confirming the importance of both institutional quality and financial development for environmental performance we also found that financial liberalization may be harmful for environmental quality if it is not accomplished in a strong institutional framework

investigation of the environmental kuznets curve for carbon emissions in malaysia do foreign direct investment and trade matter abstract environmental degradation has become a central issue of discussion among the economists and environmentalists in view of malaysia s position as one of the main contributors to co2 emissions in asia and its status as a fast growing economy it is vital therefore to conduct a study to identify the relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions for malaysia this study attempts to examine empirically the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for malaysia in the presence of foreign direct investment and trade openness both in the short and long run for the period 1970 to 2008 the bounds testing approach and granger causality methodology are applied to test the interrelationships of the variables the results of our study indicate that the inverted u shaped relationship does exist between economic growth and co2 emission in both the short and long run for malaysia after controlling for two additional explanatory variables namely fdi and trade importantly the results of the study also provide some crucial policy recommendations to the policy makers

regulation and pricing of pharmaceuticals reference pricing or price cap regulation we study the relationship between regulatory regimes and pharmaceutical firms pricing strategies using a unique policy experiment from norway which in 2003 introduced a reference price rp system called index pricing for a sub sample of off patent pharmaceuticals replacing the existing price cap pc regulation we estimate the effect of the reform using a product level panel dataset covering the drugs exposed to rp and a large number of drugs still under pc regulation in the time before and after the policy change our results show that rp significantly reduced both brand name and generic prices within the reference group with the effect being stronger for brand names we also identify a negative cross price effect on therapeutic substitutes not included in the rp system in terms of policy implications the results suggest that rp is more effective than pc regulation in lowering drug prices while the cross price effect raises a concern about patent protection

oil prices exchange rates and emerging stock markets abstract while two different streams of literature exist investigating 1 the relationship between oil prices and emerging market stock prices and 2 the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates relatively little is known about the dynamic relationship between oil prices exchange rates and emerging market stock prices this paper proposes and estimates a structural vector autoregression model to investigate the dynamic relationship between these variables impulse responses are calculated in two ways standard and the recently developed projection based methods the model supports stylized facts in particular positive shocks to oil prices tend to depress emerging market stock prices and us dollar exchange rates in the short run the model also captures stylized facts regarding movements in oil prices a positive oil production shock lowers oil prices while a positive shock to real economic activity increases oil prices there is also evidence that increases in emerging market stock prices increase oil prices

the effect of urbanization on co2 emissions in emerging economies the theories of ecological modernization and urban environmental transition both recognize that urbanization can have positive and negative impacts on the natural environment with the net effect being hard to determine a priori this study uses recently developed panel regression techniques that allow for heterogeneous slope coefficients and cross section dependence to model the impact that urbanization has on co2 emissions for a panel of emerging economies the estimated contemporaneous coefficients on the energy intensity and affluence variables are positive statistically significant and fairly similar across different estimation techniques by comparison the estimated contemporaneous coefficient on the urbanization variable is sensitive to the estimation technique in most specifications the estimated coefficient on the urbanization variable is positive but statistically insignificant the implications of these results for sustainable development policy are discussed

innovation and the welfare effects of public drug insurance rewarding inventors with inefficient monopoly power has long been regarded as the price of encouraging innovation prescription drug insurance escapes that trade off and achieves an elusive goal lowering static deadweight loss without reducing incentives for innovation as a result of this feature the public provision of drug insurance can be welfare improving even for risk neutral and purely self interested consumers the design of insurers cost sharing schedules can either reinforce or mitigate this result schedules that impose higher consumer cost sharing requirements on more expensive drugs help ensure that insurance subsidies translate into higher utilization rather than pure increases in manufacturer profits moreover some degree of price negotiation with manufacturers is likely to be welfare improving but the optimal degree depends on the size of such transactions costs as well as the social cost of weakening innovation incentives by lowering innovator profits these results have practical implications for the evaluation of public drug insurance programs like the us medicaid and medicare part d programs along with european insurance schemes

do financial development urbanization and trade affect environmental quality evidence from china abstract it is of great significance to study the impact of financial development on carbon emissions for the development of low carbon economy although many empirical studies reveal significant correlations between financial development and various environmental pollution variables few studies differentiate financial scale and efficiency from other factors and pay attention to the impact of securities capital market on carbon emissions in view of the complexity of financial development impact mechanism on carbon emissions in china this paper classifies financial development into two dimensions financial scale and securities size we establish a broader autoregressive distributed lag error correction model ardl ecm which is used to measure the dynamic relationship among financial scale securities size urbanization economic development trade openness and china s carbon emission intensity the study indicates that there is positive short run and long run relationship among financial scale economic growth and carbon emission intensity this reflects that the current development of financial scale has stimulated the development of china s economy but brought carbon emissions the size of securities has a relatively small impact on carbon emission intensity both in the short run and long run this shows that china s current securities market mechanism of regulating carbon emissions needs further improvement the above conclusions are convinced by the robustness tests this paper provides empirical evidence for policy makers to support the implementation of financial and low carbon economy growth

price of oil and world inflation and recession new evidence shows that the commonly held assumption that the 1973 74 oil price increase directly affected us and world inflation and subsequent recession is consistent with the empirical data an extended lucas varro real income equation applied to the us united kingdom canada france germany italy japan and the netherlands gives mixed results partly because of price control and decontrol programs simulation experiments on the price control variable using us data finds strong effects further studies can be made when consistent international data is available for the 1979 80 period 18 references 4 figures 3 tables dck

health insurance and diversity of treatment we determine the optimal health policy mix when the average utility of patients increases with the supply of drugs available in a therapeutic class health risk coverage relies on two instruments copayment and reference pricing both of which affect the risk associated with health expenses and diversity of treatment for a fixed supply of drugs the reference pricing policy aims at minimizing expenses in which case the equilibrium price of drugs is independent of the copayment rate however with an endogenous supply of drugs diversity of treatment may susbtitute for insurance so that the reference pricing may depart from maximal cost containment in order to promote entry we next analyze the determinants of the optimal policy while an increase in risk aversion or in the side effect loss increases diversity and decreases the copayment rate an increase in entry cost decreases both diversity and the copayment rate

not all sectors are alike differential impacts of shocks in oil prices on the sectors of the colombian economy abstract in this paper an estimation of differential impacts of shocks in oil prices on the economic sectors in the oil exporting colombia is made using data from the world economy and adopting the model of structural autoregressive vectors var employed by kilian et al 2009 oil prices shocks are estimated according to three types of origin oil supply oil demand and aggregate demand subsequently using data from the colombian economy the effects that these shocks have on sectoral production in colombia are estimated through the use of var models which allow direct impacts to be separated from those that are transmitted through the interrelations between sectors the results obtained show that only the specific demand for oil and aggregate demand shocks affect significantly the total production in colombia although not in all sectors only manufacturing industry and electricity gas and water sectors are directly and significantly affected by both types of demand shocks however when considering the indirect effects transmitted through the interrelations between sectors it was found that the total impacts of these two types of shocks affect the construction transport and trade restaurants and hotels sectors as the effect is positive the colombian economy benefits from increases in oil prices due to demand factors but responds negatively when the opposite situation occurs

reference pricing competition and pharmaceutical expenditures theory and evidence from a natural experiment abstract we study the impact of regulation on competition between brand names and generics and pharmaceutical expenditures using a unique policy experiment in norway where reference pricing rp replaced price cap regulation in 2003 for a sub sample of off patent products first we construct a vertical differentiation model to analyze the impact of regulation on prices and market shares of brand names and generics then we exploit a detailed panel data set at product level covering several off patent molecules before and after the policy reform off patent drugs not subject to rp serve as our control group we find that rp significantly reduces both brand name and generic prices and results in significantly lower brand name market shares finally we show that rp has a strong negative effect on average molecule prices suggesting significant cost savings and that patients copayments decrease despite the extra surcharges under rp

explanations for the 2014 oil price decline supply or demand abstract the brent price of crude oil declined from 112 in june 2014 to a low of 31 in january 2016 both nominal prices a cumulative decrease of more than 70 some attribute the decline to increased oil production due to the u s shale revolution this paper proposes a variety of diagnostics to assess the how consistent this explanation is with the data i find that the data are broadly inconsistent with this attribution of the decline to shale oil rather the data are more consistent with a demand side explanation of weakening global economic conditions and demand for commodities including but not limited to oil in summary there is no evidence that the u s shale revolution played a significant role in the decline in oil prices since 2014 rather the evidence suggests that weakening oil demand played a much stronger role in driving the 2014 decline in oil prices

economic development and pollution emissions in singapore evidence in support of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis and its implications for regional sustainability abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesizes an inverted u shaped relationship between indicators of environmental quality and economic growth the possible existence of an ekc has in the past been tested using relatively short time series of data and presumed indicators of environmental quality that can be considered sub optimal this paper addresses these shortcomings in investigating the extent to which economic growth and environmental quality in singapore the most economically developed country in southeast asia sea accord with an ekc a heavy metal chromium cr is here used as an indicator of environmental quality this is because levels of a heavy metal with well known risks to health are likely to have a much stronger relationship with perceptions of local environmental quality than for example co2 emissions and therefore likely to elicit a more rapid response from legislators a national emission inventory nei analysis quantified atmospheric cr emissions from 1900 to 2017 levels of cr emissions increased rapidly during the 1960s 1980s a period characterized by industrialization in singapore that commenced around the time of its independence returning to negligible levels by the 1990s as the country entered the current period of de industrialization and economic modernization results of the nei for the period post 1950 when an unbroken time series of reliable and annually comparable economic data first become available were further subjected to econometric analysis which confirmed the ekc hypothesis with regard to cr emissions in singapore results also suggest that the post industrial development of singapore may have contributed to creating pollution havens in the region together the findings have important implications for regional sustainable development and the governance of pollution emissions including those that potentially have transboundary effects more generally

the impact of oil price shocks evidence from the industries of six oecd countries most of the studies about the macroeconomic consequences of oil price shocks have been focused on us aggregate data in contrast to these studies this paper empirically assesses the dynamic effect of oil price shocks on the output of the main manufacturing industries in six oecd countries the pattern of responses to an oil price shock by industrial output is diverse across the four european monetary union emu countries under consideration france germany italy and spain but broadly similar in the uk and the us moreover evidence on cross industry heterogeneity of oil shock effects within the emu countries is also reported

investigating the validity of pollution haven hypothesis in the gulf cooperation council gcc countries this study investigated the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis in the gulf cooperation council gcc countries using a multivariate framework to achieve the goal of this study the non stationary panel techniques were used to examine the hypothesis from 1980 to 2009 based on the pedroni cointegration test results it was found that the variables are cointegrated moreover the fully modified ols results showed that energy consumption and gdp growth increase co2 emission while foreign direct investment inflows have a long run negative relationship with co2 emission furthermore based on the short run granger causality test results fdi has no short run causal relationship with co2 emission and energy consumption while energy consumption and gdp growth have a positive causal relationship with co2 emission thus the results of this study indicate that energy consumption and gdp growth are the source of pollution in the gcc countries and not the foreign direct investment inflows thus the study recommended that these countries should utilize policies to encourage inward foreign investment since it plays an important role in stimulating gdp growth

how sensitive are consumer expenditures to retail energy prices abstract there is growing evidence that the primary effect of energy price shocks on the u s economy involves a reduction in consumer spending we quantify the direct effect on real consumption of unanticipated changes in discretionary income shifts in precautionary savings and changes in the operating cost of energy using durables the possibility of asymmetries in the response of real consumption to energy price shocks is also considered we demonstrate that linear models are consistent with the symmetric behavior of real consumption in 1979 when energy prices increased sharply and in 1986 when they fell sharply it is shown that historically energy price shocks have been an important factor in explaining u s real consumption growth but by no means the dominant factor

oligopolistic competition and the optimal provision of products this paper considers the theory of market versus optimal product diversity in the light of two recent advances in oligopoly theory the first is the development of discrete choice models to describe heterogeneous consumer tastes and the application of such models to oligopolistic competition the second advance is the proof that logconcavity of the consumer taste density guarantees the existence of a price equilibrium we analyze an oligopoly model with price competition and free entry taking explicit account of the integer constraint under the chamberlinian symmetry assumption that tastes are i i d we first show that logconcavity of the taste density implies there is excessive market provision of variety when each consumer buys one unit of the product from one of the firms we then show that this result extends to price sensitive individual demands by proving that the equilibrium number of firms is at least as great as that which would be provided at the second best social optimum subject to a zero profit constraint for firms our results call into question previous findings for representative consumer models that left open the possibility of insufficient product diversity

health insurance as a two part pricing contract monopolies appear throughout health care we show that health insurance operates like a conventional two part pricing contract that allows monopolists to extract profits without inefficiently constraining quantity when insurers are free to offer a range of insurance contracts to different consumer types health insurance markets perfectly eliminate deadweight losses from upstream health care monopolies frictions limiting the sorting of different consumer types into different insurance contracts restore some of these upstream monopoly losses which manifest as higher rates of uninsurance rather than as restrictions in quantity utilized by insured consumers empirical analysis of pharmaceutical patent expiration supports the prediction that heavily insured markets experience little or no efficiency loss under monopoly while less insured markets exhibit behavior more consistent with the standard theory of monopoly

the differential effects of oil demand and supply shocks on the global economy abstract we employ a set of sign restrictions on the impulse responses of a global var model estimated for 38 countries regions over the period 1979q2 2011q2 as well as bounds on impact price elasticities of oil supply and oil demand to discriminate between supply driven and demand driven oil price shocks and to study the time profile of their macroeconomic effects across a wide range of countries and real financial variables we show that the above identification scheme can greatly benefit from the cross sectional dimension of the gvar by providing a large number of additional cross country sign restrictions and hence reducing the set of admissible models the results indicate that the economic consequences of a supply driven oil price shock are very different from those of an oil demand shock driven by global economic activity and vary for oil importing countries compared to energy exporters while oil importers typically face a long lived fall in economic activity in response to a supply driven surge in oil prices the impact is positive for energy exporting countries that possess large proven oil gas reserves however in response to an oil demand disturbance almost all countries in our sample experience long run inflationary pressures an increase in real output a rise in interest rates and a fall in equity prices

evaluating the interplays among economic growth and energy consumption and co2 emission of china during 1990 2007 the interplays among economy and energy and environment have been widely concerned this paper put forward several indicators to quantify the relationships among economic growth and energy consumption and co2 emission as an example these indicators were applied to evaluate the comprehensive performances of china during 1990 2007 the results show that chinese people has been living a better life with chinese rapid economic growth but not synchronously in urban and rural areas non carbon energy resources share has increased however fossil energy resources have still acted as the main driver for chinese economic growth during this period technical progress has improved the fossil energy efficiency of chinese economic activity which leads to co2 emission per unit gdp and co2 emission per capita unit gdp dropping simultaneously however the two indicators annual decline rates become smaller and smaller which reflects that technical progress role is dropping and economic scale s effect is climbing people s survival has a rising contribution to co2 emission co2 emission per capita has increased which shows that economic scale has greater impact on co2 emission than technical progress does relatively speaking chinese development patterns have become more and more sustainable during this period finally based on the related issues being discussed some corresponding suggestions are put forward for chinese government to further coordinate the relationship among economic development and energy consumption and co2 emission the proposed indicators can form a set of useful tool for policy makers to promote the harmonious development of economy and energy and environment in different regions and countries

china s carbon dioxide emissions an interprovincial comparative analysis of foreign capital and domestic capital abstract against the background of china s further relaxation of foreign investment control and implementation of energy conservation and emissions reduction the data of 30 provinces in china from 2001 to 2015 were used to measure the carbon dioxide emissions levels foreign direct investment stock and domestic capital stock in various regions the impulse response function variance decomposition and panel causality test in the panel vector autoregressive model evaluated in detail the impact of foreign capital inflows domestic capital inputs and economic growth on co2 emissions in regions of different energy intensity the study found that on the whole foreign direct investment has no significant impact on china s carbon dioxide emissions china s carbon dioxide emissions are mainly driven by domestic investment and economic growth the sub regional analysis based on different energy intensities shows that in areas of low energy intensity and medium energy intensity foreign direct investment has a significant impact on co2 emissions and the contribution of foreign investment to co2 emissions is between 12 2 and 14 1 the panel causality test found that in the short term foreign direct investment and domestic capital have significant predictive effects on carbon dioxide in various regions

investigation of pollution haven hypothesis for china an ardl approach with breakpoint unit root tests abstract china is experiencing a stage of l type economy while climate change challenge appears tougher and tougher however up to now there exists no consensus about whether the influx of foreign direct investment should be responsible for domestic co 2 mounting situation the study aims to investigate the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis phh in china using 1980 2012 annual time series data to achieve this goal the autoregressive distributed lag cointegration ardl approach is used to examine the hypothesis and gross domestic product gdp gdp square energy use inward foreign direct investment fdi economic freedom urbanization financial development as well as trade openness are included as major drivers of co 2 emissions unlike many previous studies we also perform breakpoint unit root tests and incorporated a structural break into our model the results of bounds test show that there is a stable long run relationship between chosen variables in each model co 2 emissions will increase by 0 058 with 1 increase in inward fdi of gdp which indicates that phh does exist in china since china could be regarded as a model for developing countries the results of our study are useful for other developing countries

industry effects of oil price shocks a re examination abstract sectoral responses to oil price shocks help determine how these shocks are transmitted throughout the economy textbook treatments of oil price shocks often emphasize negative supply or cost effects on oil importing countries by contrast the seminal contribution of lee and ni 2002 has shown that almost all u s industries experience oil price shocks largely through a reduction in their respective demands only industries with very high oil intensities face a supply driven reduction in this paper we re examine this seminal finding using two additional decades of data further we apply updated empirical methods including structural factor augmented vector autoregressions that take into account how industries are linked among themselves and with the remainder of the macro economy our results confirm the original finding of lee and ni that demand effects of oil price shocks dominate in all but a handful of u s industries

do structural oil market shocks affect stock prices abstract this paper investigates how explicit structural shocks that characterize the endogenous character of oil price changes affect stock market returns in a sample of eight countries australia canada france germany italy japan the united kingdom and the united states for each country the analysis proceeds in two steps first modifying the procedure of kilian kilian l forthcoming not all oil price shocks are alike disentangling demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market american economic review we employ a vector error correction or vector autoregressive model to decompose oil price changes into three components oil supply shocks global aggregate demand shocks and global oil demand shocks the last component relates to specific idiosyncratic features of the oil market such as changes in the precautionary demand concerning the uncertainty about the availability of future oil supplies second recovering the oil supply shocks global aggregate demand shocks and global oil demand shocks from the first analysis we then employ a vector autoregressive model to determine the effects of these structural shocks on the stock market returns in our sample of eight countries we find that international stock market returns do not respond in a large way to oil market shocks that is the significant effects that exist prove small in magnitude

the impact of financial development on carbon emissions an empirical analysis in china given the complexity between china s financial development and carbon emissions this paper uses some econometric techniques including cointegration theory granger causality test variance decomposition etc to explore the influence of financial development on carbon emissions results indicate that first china s financial development acts as an important driver for carbon emissions increase which should be taken into account when carbon emissions demand is projected second the influence of financial intermediation scale on carbon emissions outweighs that of other financial development indicators but its efficiency s influence appears by far weaker although it may cause the change of carbon emissions statistically third china s stock market scale has relatively larger influence on carbon emissions but the influence of its efficiency is very limited this to some extent reflects the relatively lower liquidity in china s stock markets finally among financial development indicators china s fdi exerts the least influence on the change of carbon emissions due to its relatively smaller volume compared with gdp but it is mainly utilized in carbon intensive sectors now therefore with the increase of china s fdi in the future many efforts should be made to adapt its utilizing directions and play its positive role in promoting low carbon development