quantile relationship between oil and stock returns evidence from emerging and frontier stock markets abstract this study extends the literature on the asymmetric effect of oil price fluctuations on emerging and frontier stock markets via a quantile on quantile approach that allows to capture normal and extreme states in each respective market we find that oil risk exposures are heterogeneous across the emerging and frontier stock markets and indeed display quantile specific characteristics observing uniform patterns of oil risk exposures within groups of countries that include both importers and exporters we argue that oil price risk serves as a systematic risk proxy capturing the market s concerns regarding global growth expectations rather than a simple import export commodity our findings suggest that signals from the oil market either via measures of trading activity in oil futures or changes in basis values could be utilized by policy makers to improve models of stock market volatility

dynamic cyclical comovements of oil prices with industrial production consumer prices unemployment and stock prices abstract this paper examines the empirical relationship between oil prices and several key macroeconomic variables in particular we investigate the cyclical comovements of crude oil prices with output consumer prices unemployment and stock prices the methodology involves the use of the hodrick prescott hodrick r j prescott e c 1980 post war us business cycles an empirical investigation working paper carnegie mellon university and baxter king baxter m king r g 1999 measuring business cycles approximate band pass filters for economic time series review of economics and statistics 81 575 593 filters as well as the recently developed full sample asymmetric christiano fitzgerald christiano l j fitzgerald t j 2003 the band pass filter international economic review 44 435 465 band pass filter contemporaneous and cross correlation estimates are made using the stationary cyclical components of the time series to make inference about the degree to which oil prices move with the cycle besides documenting a number of important cyclical relationships using three different time series filtering methods the results suggest that crude oil prices are procyclical and lag industrial production additionally we find that oil prices lead consumer prices

the short term mortality consequences of income receipt many studies find that households increase their co nsumption after the receipt of expected income payments a result inconsistent wit h the life cycle permanent income hypothesis consumption can increase adverse healt h events such as traffic accidents heart attacks and strokes in this pape r we examine the short term mortality consequences of income receipt we find that mortality increases following the arrival of monthly social security payments re gular wage payments for military personnel the 2001 tax rebates and alaska permane nt fund dividend payments the increase in short run mortality is large potential ly eliminating some of the protective benefits of additional income

renewable and nonrenewable energy production and economic growth in sub saharan africa a hidden cointegration analysis the objective of this article is to investigate the hypothesis of asymmetric effects between economic growth and renewable and nonrenewable energy production to this end both the linear cointegration and the hidden cointegration methodology are employed with the latter allowing a straightforward delimitation of the data in an economically sensible way we test for the presence of hidden cointegration across 12 sub saharan african countries spanning the period 1971 2011 the empirical results confirm the growth hypothesis for a subset of countries suggesting that their growth could be adversely affected by conservation policies while for a second subgroup of countries they confirm the conservation hypothesis indicating that conservation policies could enhance the growth process in these countries the differentiation of the results could be captured entirely by the linear approach indicating that the lack of cointegration between renewable energy production and economic growth found in previous stud

measuring permanent responses to capital gains tax changes in panel data the authors use panel data and information about differences in state tax rates to separate the effects of transitory and permanent tax rate changes on capital gains realizations behavior the estimated effect of permanent change is substantially smaller than the effect of transitory change the difference is even larger than differences between estimates from past micro data studies which have primarily measured the transitory effect and time series studies which have primarily measured the permanent effect the authors results resolve a long standing conflict between micro data and time series studies of how marginal tax rates affect capital gains realizations behavior copyright 1994 by american economic association

behavioral responses to inheritance tax evidence from notches in france abstract for the first time we exploit quasi experimental variation to investigate the impact of inheritance taxation on wealth accumulation using bunching and difference in differences methods we directly estimate several behavioral responses during lifetime rather than relying solely on observations at death our empirical findings shed new light upon wealth accumulation and bequest motives taken together the small responses to inheritance tax estimated cannot be supported by the desire to retain control over wealth

dying to save taxes evidence from estate tax returns on the death elasticity this paper examines data from u s federal tax returns to shed light on whether the timing of death is responsive to its tax consequences we investigate the temporal pattern of deaths around the time of changes in the estate tax system periods when living longer or dying sooner could significantly affect estate tax liability we find some evidence that there is a small death elasticity although we cannot rule out that what we have uncovered is ex post doctoring of the reported date of death

accounting for fuel price risk when comparing renewable to gas fired generation the role of forward natural gas prices abstract unlike natural gas fired generation renewable generation e g from wind solar and geothermal power is largely immune to fuel price risk if ratepayers are rational and value long term price stability then contrary to common practice any comparison of the levelized cost of renewable to gas fired generation should be based on a hedged gas price input rather than an uncertain gas price forecast this paper compares natural gas prices that can be locked in through futures swaps and physical supply contracts to contemporaneous long term forecasts of spot gas prices we find that from 2000 to 2003 forward gas prices for terms of 2 10 years have been considerably higher than most contemporaneous long term gas price forecasts this difference is striking and implies that comparisons between renewable and gas fired generation based on these forecasts over this period have arguably yielded results that are biased in favor of gas fired generation

can deployment of renewable energy put downward pressure on natural gas prices abstract high and volatile natural gas prices have increasingly led to calls for investments in renewable energy one line of argument is that deployment of these resources may lead to reductions in the demand for and price of natural gas many recent us based modeling studies have demonstrated that this effect could provide significant consumer savings in this article we evaluate these studies and benchmark their findings against economic theory other modeling results and a limited empirical literature we find that many uncertainties remain regarding the absolute magnitude of this effect and that the reduction in natural gas prices may not represent an increase in aggregate economic wealth nonetheless we conclude that many of the studies of the impact of renewable energy on natural gas prices appear to have represented this effect within reason given current knowledge these studies specifically suggest that a 1 reduction in us natural gas demand could lead to long term average wellhead price reductions of 0 8 2 and that each megawatt hour of renewable energy may benefit natural gas consumers to the tune of at least 7 5 20

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

crude oil and the macroeconomy tests of some popular notions a note perhaps no other economic events in the post world war ii era have generated as much attention as the series of crude oil price shocks that have jolted the world economy since the opec boycott of 1973 a tremendous amount of space in the popular and professional literature has been devoted to analyzing the impacts of these shocks on the developed economies and the adjustments these shocks have induced one residual of this literature has been a general impression that since 1973 the functional relationship between crude oil prices and the developed macroeconomies has been dramatically and fundamentally altered yet to our knowledge no one has formally tested this impression recent evidence of hamilton 1983 suggests that crude oil prices had a strong impact on the u s business cycle well before 1973 further while textbook treatments of oil price shocks tend to highlight cost push inflationary effects the research of berndt and wood 1975 1979 and wilcox 1983 indicates the net complementarity between energy and capital in the u s economy is quite strong both before and after 1973 thus oil price shocks may have stronger real effects than generally believed in this paper we formally test three popular notions associated with the so called

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 status of conventional world oil reserves hype or cause for concern the status of world oil reserves is a contentious issue polarised between advocates of peak oil who believe production will soon decline and major oil companies that say there is enough oil to last for decades in reality much of the disagreement can be resolved through clear definition of the grade type and reporting framework used to estimate oil reserve volumes while there is certainly vast amounts of fossil fuel resources left in the ground the volume of oil that can be commercially exploited at prices the global economy has become accustomed to is limited and will soon decline the result is that oil may soon shift from a demand led market to a supply constrained market the capacity to meet the services provided by future liquid fuel demand is contingent upon the rapid and immediate diversification of the liquid fuel mix the transition to alternative energy carriers where appropriate and demand side measures such as behavioural change and adaptation the successful transition to a poly fuel economy will also be judged on the adequate mitigation of environmental and social costs

drivers promoting renewable energy a dynamic panel approach we study the commitment to renewable energy sources focusing on a set of 24 european countries and applying panel dynamic estimators europe is a leading player in the fight against climate change and the estimators we use reveal themselves to be appropriate in handling the persistency effect on renewables the level of renewable energy use in the previous period has a positive and highly significant effect on the current level of use traditional energy sources restrain the impetus towards renewables social awareness of sustainability climate change mitigation and co2 reduction targets are not enough to motivate the switch from traditional to renewables energy sources income and prices of fossil based fuels were not significant for the development of renewables in the period from 1990 to 2006 suggesting that it was not the market that encouraged renewables

living to save taxes does taxation affect the timing of death this is important as an example of how behavior might be affected by economic incentives we study how three changes in swedish inheritance taxation 2004 2005 have affected daily all cause mortality our first main result is that mortality decreased by 16 percent the day before the beginning of expected tax reductions second there was no corresponding effect before an unexpected tax reduction

institutionalisation of sustainable consumption patterns based on shared use the product service system pss concept has been proposed as a way of dealing with unsustainable patterns of consumption in the business to consumer b2c domain existing alternatives to traditional consumption based on ownership such as car sharing communal washing centres and tool sharing schemes indicate that more sustainable patterns of consumption may be found for other household functions however the low profile of these examples in society and on the market calls for a query into factors that may facilitate or hinder broader acceptance of more sustainable alternatives in this study the aforementioned examples are analysed from institutional and product service system perspectives and it is suggested that the embodiment of alternative consumption patterns into every day routines depends on institutional arrangements regulatory and normative on how the product service systems are designed and applied in practice and oil the socio cultural background of the society the systems are implemented in c 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved less

threshold effect of the economic growth rate on the renewable energy development from a change in energy price evidence from oecd countries this paper uses a panel threshold regression ptr model to investigate the influence that energy prices have on renewable energy development under different economic growth rate regimes the empirical data are obtained from each of the oecd member countries over the period from 1997 to 2006 we show that there is one threshold in the regression relationship which is 4 13 of a one period lag in the annual gross domestic product gdp growth rate the consumer price index cpi in so far as it relates to variations in energy is significantly positively correlated with the contribution of renewables to energy supply in the regime with higher economic growth but there is no relationship in the regime with lower economic growth therefore countries characterized by high economic growth are able to respond to high energy prices with increases in renewable energy use while countries characterized by low economic growth countries tend to be unresponsive to energy price changes when they come to their level of renewable energy

consumption and environment some conceptual issues abstract consumption ranks with population and technology as a major driver of environmental change and yet researchers and policymakers have paid it scant attention when the topic is addressed its conceptual foundations are either taken as self evident or are conflated with production overall economic activity materialism maldistribution population or technology the risk is to adopt the latest buzzword in the environmental debate stretch the concept to encompass all conceivable concerns and forfeit any advantage for analysis or for behavior change that may accrue to a new perspective on environmental problems consumption must be distinguished conceptually from other approaches to environmental problems one approach is to work within the consumption production dichotomy examining not just purchasing but product use and non purchase decisions a second approach one that challenges the prevailing dichotomy and its propensity to relegate consumption to a black box is to treat all resource use as consuming that is using up and ask what risks are entailed consumption can then be seen as material provisioning where risks increase with increasing distance from the resource as background misconsumption or overconsumption depending on the social concern raised or as a chain of decisions that compel the behaviors of restraint and resistance among producers pursuing the consumption and environment topic engenders resistance among a wide range of actors for reasons that are personal analytic and policy related nevertheless the topic appears to have the potential of helping analysts and others transcend conventional approaches to excess throughput

taxes and the timing of births because the tax savings of having a child are a realized only if the birth takes place before midnight january 1 the incentives for the marginal birth are substantial using a sample of children from the national longitudinal survey of youth we find that the probability that a child is born in the last week of december rather than the first week of january is positively correlated with tax benefits we estimate that increasing the tax benefit of having a child by 500 raises the probability of having the child in the last week of december by 26 9 percent

do taxes matter the impact of the tax reform act of 1986 do taxes matter is the first systematic examination of the actual effects of the tax reform act of 1986 the most important u s income tax reform of the last four decades it presents basic information on and an analysis of a variety of different aspects of economic behavior in order to discover whether the observed changes coincide with the predictions of standard public finance models prior to implementation of the new law supporters and opponents made numerous forecasts about its effect on savings corporate investment and other major determinants of the country s economic health the general finding of these original contributions is that the effects of tax reform turned out to be smaller than had been anticipated commissioned by the office of tax policy research of the university of michigan eight of the studies focus on different sectors of the economy reviewing the predictions and carefully analyzing the evidence to determine actual effects the ninth study draws together the results to find lessons for future changes in tax policy joel slemrod is professor of business economics and public policy and director of the office of tax policy research at the university of michigan contents the economic impact of tax reform act of 1986 joel slemrod investment tax policy and the tax reform act of 1986 alan j auerbach kevin hassett the impact of the 1986 tax reform on personal saving jonathan skinner daniel feenberg effects of the tax reform act of 1986 on corporate financial policy and organizational form roger h gordon jeffrey k mackie mason taxation and housing markets preliminary evidence on the effects of recent tax reforms james m poterba the impact of the tax reform act of 1986 on foreign direct investment to and from the united states joel slemrod the impact of tax reform on charitable giving a 1989 perspective charles t clotfelter the impact of the tax reform act of 1986 on state and local fiscal behavior paul n courant edward m gramlich foreign responses to u s tax reform john whalley lessons for tax reform henry j aaron

consumption sustainable welfare and human needs with reference to uk expenditure patterns between 1954 and 1994 abstract this paper explores the complex relationship between economic consumption and human welfare or well being conventional economics suggests that increasing levels of economic consumption lead to increasing levels of well being however this view has been criticised on both environmental and social grounds on the one hand the material impacts of increasing consumption are environmentally unsustainable on the other hand material consumption can conflict with crucial social and psychological components of human welfare this paper develops a perspective on human welfare which is based on max neef s characterisation of human needs it discusses the implications of this alternative perspective for the conventional viewpoint and illustrates the importance of it with reference to patterns of consumer expenditure in the uk over the last 40 years the authors suggest that from this perspective modern societies may be seriously adrift in their pursuit of human well being however they also point out that addressing this situation provides far more opportunity for ecologically sustainable development than is generally recognised

the effect of electricity consumption from renewable sources on countries economic growth levels evidence from advanced emerging and developing economies abstract this paper uses a sample of 36 countries for the time period 1990 2011 in order to examine the relationship between countries electricity consumption from renewable sources and gross domestic product gdp levels several nonparametric techniques are applied to investigate the effect of electricity consumption from several renewable sources including wind geothermal solar biomass and waste on countries gdp levels when investigating the whole sample ignoring countries economic development status the results reveal an increasing relationship up to a certain gdp level which after that point the effect of electricity consumption on gdp stabilises however when analyzing separately the emerging markets and developing economies and the advanced developed economies the results change significantly for the case of emerging market and developing economies the relationship appears to be highly nonlinear an m shape form indicating that on those countries the levels of electricity consumption from renewable sources will not result on higher gdp levels in contrast for the case of the advanced economies the results reveal an increasing nonlinear relationship indicating that higher electricity consumption levels from renewable sources results to higher gdp levels this finding is mainly attributed to the fact that in the advanced developed economies more terawatts from renewable sources are generated and consumed compared to the emerging market and developing economies which traditionally their economies rely on non renewable sources for power generation and consumption

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

an economic assessment of windfarm power generation in scotland including externalities abstract this paper uses cost benefit analysis to assess the economic feasibility of a large scale windfarm project taking into account positive and negative externalities of generation the issue of non use value i e a welfare change among those who will never visit the area and see the windfarm is addressed with reference to the study by bergmann et al 2006 valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments energy policy 34 1004 1014 which determined a social cost of 19 40 per household for the non use disamenity associated with a large scale windfarm in scotland this paper demonstrates the extent to which this estimate affects the economic feasibility of the project we find that for all but one of the 16 scenarios considered the project returns a positive net present value despite the inclusion of this non use value thus suggesting that in these cases the windfarm delivers a net welfare gain to society

alternative methods of depreciation and the reliability of accounting measures of economic profits most u s firms use straight line depreciation some use accelerated depreciation a series of monte carlo experiments were conducted to show how a proposed switch to annuity depreciation would affect accounting estimates of two measures of economic profitability the rate of return and q the ratio of a firm s market value to its replacement cost annuity depreciation significantly improved the accounting rate of return but had little effect on estimates of q some of the improvement in the rate of return and almost all the improvement in q could be obtained if all firms used straightline depreciation

exploiting the oil gdp effect to support renewables deployment the empirical evidence from a growing body of academic literature clearly suggests that oil price increases and volatility dampen macroeconomic growth by raising inflation and unemployment and by depressing the value of financial and other assets surprisingly this issue seems to have received little attention from energy policy makers in percentage terms the oil gdp effect is relatively small producing losses in the order of 0 5 of gdp for a 10 oil price increase in absolute terms however even a 10 oil price rise oil has risen at least 50 in the last year alone produces gdp losses that could they have been averted would significantly offset the cost of increased re deployment this paper draws on the empirical oil gdp literature which we summarize to show that i by displacing gas and oil renewable energy investments can help nations avoid costly macroeconomic losses produced by the oil gdp effect and ii that these avoided losses represent a significant external macroeconomic benefit of such investments we show that a 10 increase in re share avoids gdp losses in the range of 29 53 billion in the us and the eu 49 90 billion for oecd these avoided losses offset one fifth of the re investment needs projected by the erec and half the oecd investment projected by a g 8 task force for the us the figures further suggest that each additional kw of renewables on average avoids 250 450 in gdp losses a figure that varies across technologies as a function of annual capacity factors we approximate that the offset is worth 200 kw for wind and solar and 800 kw for geothermal and biomass while we focus only on renewables the gdp offset will apply in some measure to other non fossil technologies including energy efficiency dsm and nuclear the societal valuation of non fossil alternatives must reflect these avoided gdp losses whose benefit is not fully captured by private investors this said we fully recognize that wealth created in this manner does not directly form a pool of public funds that is easily earmarked for renewables support finally the oil gdp relationship has important implications for correctly estimating direct electricity generating cost for conventional and renewable alternatives and for developing more useful energy security and diversity concepts we also address these issues

the value of social networks in the diffusion of energy efficiency innovations in uk households abstract the uk government has policy goals for increasing energy efficiency in existing homes however there are doubts that standard technology and behavioural innovations will be adopted widely enough in time to achieve the targets diffusion of innovation theory states that the communication of information on innovations through a social system encourages adoption social capital theory states that interpersonal communication is a key means of gaining resources such as information on energy efficiency innovations for attaining certain goals case study research of three british communities was conducted in 2009 in order to understand the influence of social capital on information diffusion regarding the adoption of household energy efficiency measures the findings show that while standard campaigns may account for two thirds of information seeking behaviour they may not be addressing up to one third of information seekers who would prefer to speak to people they know findings also indicate that seeking information amongst personal contacts is often associated with adoption of energy efficiency innovations increasing the likelihood of adoption by up to four times but that there are important differences between types of innovations and communities tailoring campaigns to communities communication channels is therefore imperative these findings have important implications for informing community based energy efficiency programmes

sustainable consumption through social innovation a typology of innovations for sustainable consumption practices abstract social innovations are often assumed to have high potential for promoting sustainable development and transformation towards more sustainable consumption practices meanwhile the spectrum of social phenomena that are labelled as socially innovative is quite diverse and heterogeneous ranging from urban gardening projects to swapping and sharing platforms to do it yourself workshops this article describes a research project where sixty two cases of potential social innovations for sustainable consumption were analysed based on a process model combining innovation and practice theory thorough document and case analyses revealed five distinguishable types of innovation do it together strategic consumption sharing communities do it yourself and utility enhancing consumption these are mainly characterised by differences along four dimensions innovativeness formality communality and personal engagement each of which is connected to potential problems and advantages in the process of initiation and stabilisation of innovative practices based on this typology type specific measures to overcome problems and strengthen advantages are presented which help practitioners in politics administration associations and foundations to support social innovations for sustainable consumption for sustainability science the typology can add to a more thorough understanding of the multi faceted field of social innovation for sustainable consumption thereby the study takes up theoretical and practical desiderata stressed by other authors in this field however we agree with other authors that further research is necessary to assess the ecological social and economic impacts of social innovations for sustainable consumption

what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract strong evidence is found that oil prices no longer granger cause many u s macroeconomic indicator variables in data after 1973 a number of potential explanations are explored that sample stability issues are responsible that oil prices are now endogenous and that linear and symmetric specifications misrepresent the form of the oil price interaction none of these hypotheses are supported by the data the opec price increases do appear to have had significant impacts while the effects of the price declines of the 1980s are smaller and harder to characterize these results have potentially important implications for the large body of research which utilizes oil prices as an instrumental or explanatory variable

a neoclassical model of unemployment and the business cycle this paper investigates a general equilibrium model of unemployment and the business cycle in which specialization of labor plays a key role a rational expectations equilibrium with fully flexible wages and prices can exhibit unemployment in which the marginal product of employed workers exceeds the reservation wage of those who are without jobs workers are unemployed either because they are in the process of relocating for a better job or because they are waiting for conditions in the depressed sector to improve moreover seemingly small disruptions in the supplies of primary commodities such as energy could be the source of fluctuations in aggregate employment and can exert surprisingly large effects on real output

an analysis of factors affecting price volatility of the us oil market abstract this paper studies the price volatility of the crude oil market by examining the market structure of opec the stable and unstable demand structure and related elasticity of demand in particular the impacts of prosperity and recession of the world economy and the resulting demand shift on crude oil price are investigated the error correction model is used to estimate the demand relations and related elasticity the income effect on demand functions is evaluated to shed light on future prices a simulation of potential oil prices under different scenarios on a cut of one million barrels per day by opec is evaluated from our simulation given the 4 cut in opec production the oil price is expected to increase unless the recession is severe the magnitude and scope of a price hike would be diminished if non opec or domestic production were greatly expanded

input price shocks and the slowdown in economic growth the case of u k manufacturing this paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of input price shocks on economic growth with a focus on united kingdom manufacturing in the 1970s the theoretical model predicts a discrete decline in output and productivity after an input price rise and a longer run slowdown in productivity growth real wage growth and capital accumulation these features characterize the united kingdom and most other oecd economies after 1973 the empirical results confirm the important role of input prices in recent u k adjustment but also point to an important role for other supply and demand factors two types of explanations have been offered for the sharp deterioration in u k economic performance in the past decade focusing respectively on demand and supply factors a standard keynesian view holds that macroeconomic demand management has been either too expansionary or too contractionary and that rising unemployment and falling output reflect the burden of anti inflationary policies an alternative view holds that various supply shocks are the main source of the poor output performance in this interpretation higher raw material prices particularly oil competition from the newly industrializing countries nics and perhaps an independent decline in productivity growth all have lowered output growth and raised unemployment

this is what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many of the quarterly oil price increases observed since 1985 are corrections to even bigger oil price decreases the previous quarter when one looks at the net increase in oil prices over the year recent data are consistent with the historical correlation between oil shocks and recessions

increasing goal congruence in project evaluation by introducing a strict market depreciation schedule abstract the economic accuracy of accrual based managerial performance measures is most essential for value added investment decisions in decentralised firms contemporary eva literature often lends support to annuity based depreciation schedules for accomplishing congruence between capital budgeting criteria like npv and accounting measures like roi and ri this is incongruent with the principal agent literature aiming at designing managerial incentive contracts we introduce a strict market based depreciation schedule which is shown to be superior to ordinary straight line annuity based or irr based depreciation schedules it gives the right managerial investment incentives also in the case of growth inflation or technological development

is renewable energy effective in promoting growth abstract this paper applies panel data techniques to analyze the role of the various energy sources in economic growth for a set of 24 european countries 1990 2007 controlling for energy consumption and energy dependency the results suggest that the negative effect of the use of renewables supplants the positive effect of creating income by exploiting a natural resource locally and thus growth does not appear to improve with the change towards renewables the high costs of promoting renewables are probably being placed excessively upon the economy namely by increasing the costs of electricity tariffs thus inducing a deceleration in economic activity fossil fuels lead to dissimilar effects on growth while natural gas does not appear to be relevant in explaining growth coal hampers the capacity for growth whereas the use of oil stimulates that growth this is in line with productive structures that are deeply grounded in fossil fuels particularly oil

pros and cons of exposing renewables to electricity market risks a comparison of the market integration approaches in germany spain and the uk abstract the article examines how renewable electricity res e producers are integrated into the electricity market under the support legislations and regulatory frameworks of germany spain and the uk focus is on wind power which faces the highest market integration challenge of all res e the analysis shows that the three countries follow contrasting approaches of exposing res e producers to the market risks of forward electricity markets balancing markets and system planning requirements risk exposure is highest in the uk and lowest in germany from a policy maker s perspective there is a trade off between a high risk and a low risk approach when res e face high market risks a higher level of financial support is required to stimulate res e development than in a low risk environment but the exposure to market risks may also give an incentive to make efficient use of the respective market thus limiting the indirect costs to society the special characteristics of wind energy however put natural limits to the response of wind power plants to market prices and locational price signals and will increasingly influence electricity markets and grid infrastructure these interdependencies should be recognised in the design of res e policies and market regulations

the role of public policy in advancement of product service systems this article discusses developments in the area of product service systems pss and the need to facilitate the proliferation of the pss approach through public policies the article argues that policies that establish the framework conditions for environmental improvement are preferable to detailed legislation as they favour environmentally superior pss however there is also a need for more specifically targeted policy measures that stimulate knowledge creation and dissemination in the pss area this article suggests that informative policy measures should be used by authorities and reviews the results from the functional programme of the swedish epa as an example of this type of policy c 2003 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

market and non market determinants of private consumption and their impacts on the environment abstract the view of consumption as an activity combining market and non market elements with the aim of attaining life enjoyment targets allows one to focus on the social and institutional determinants of the border between market and non market components of the consumption process and to consider the interrelations of market and non market domains of social life as a possible source of the environmental degradation which derives from consumption activities in this paper an analytical framework is proposed in which the view of consumption as a social process and the neo ricardian theory of prices and profits are combined to yield an evaluation of consumer efficiency and of its environmental effects the paper argues that the social and institutional framework in which consumption is embedded significantly determines the impact of human activities on the natural environment and that environmental degradation is intimately connected with a distortion in the consumption process towards a predominance of market relations and an excess of labour in industrial society two examples household energy conservation and private transportation illustrate the analytical framework and suggest the importance of redrawing the border between market and non market domains of social life in environmental policy

oil price shocks stock market economic activity and employment in greece abstract using a multivariate vector autoregression var approach this paper attempts to shed light into the dynamic relationship among oil prices real stock prices interest rates real economic activity and employment for greece the empirical evidence suggests that oil price changes affect real economic activity and employment oil prices are important in explaining stock price movements stock returns do not lead to changes in real activity and employment

the importance of bequests and life cycle saving in capital accumulation a new answer as the workhorse of consumption and saving research for the past four decades the life cycle model has proved flexible and useful for examining a variety of questions in a classic paper albert ando and franco modigliani 1963 p 56 stated a key assumption of the basic model t he individual neither expects to receive nor desires to leave any inheritance although the authors contended that the absence of a bequest motive was not critical to the heart of their results the assumption set off a long standing battle over the relative importance of different motives for saving in an influential study laurence kotlikoff and laurence summers 1981 estimated that a large fraction of the u s capital stock was attributable to intergenerational transfers modigliani and his collaborators vigorously disagreed and based on their own empirical work claimed that life cycle saving was the primary source of capital accumulation modigliani 1988 subsequent work has failed to reach a consensus since this debate began an important advance in the consumption literature has been the incorporation of uncertainty in life cycle models see e g r glenn hubbard et al 1995 we argue that allowing for uncertainty resolves the controversy over the importance of life cycle and bequest saving by showing that these motives for saving are overlapping and cannot generally be distinguished a dollar saved today simultaneously serves both a precautionary life cycle function guarding against future contingencies such as health shocks or other emergencies and a bequest function because in the likely event that the dollar is not absorbed by these contingencies it will be available to bequeath to children or other worthy causes under this view households have a bequest motive but bequests are given i e the motive is operative in only some states of the world wealth is something like traveler s checks you take them along on vacation just in case but odds are they will remain uncashed and available for sundry goods after the journey is complete we first demonstrate the result using a simple model and then argue that this approach reconciles the apparent importance of bequests with households declared focus on life cycle saving finally we consider implications of our analysis

what happens when you tax the rich evidence from executive compensation this paper examines the responsiveness of taxable income to changes in marginal tax rates using detailed compensation data on several thousand corporate executives from 1991 to 1995 the data confirm that the higher marginal rates of 1993 led to a significant decline in taxable income indeed this small group of executives may account for as much as 20 percent of the aggregate change in wage and salary income for approximately the one million richest taxpayers over this time period one person alone can account for more than 2 percent the decline however is almost entirely a short run shift in the timing of compensation rather than a permanent reduction in taxable income the short run elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net of tax share exceeds one in this sample but the elasticity after one year is at most 0 4 and probably closer to zero breaking out the tax responsiveness of different types of compensation shows that the large short run responses come almost entirely from a large inc

the hydroelectricity consumption and economic growth in asian countries evidence using an asymmetric cointegration approach this study examines the four commonly tested hypotheses in hydroelectricity consumption economic growth literature for 12 asian countries our results from a recently developed hidden cointegrati

born on the first of july an un natural experiment in birth timing abstract it is well understood that government policies can distort behavior but what is less often recognized is that the anticipated introduction of a policy can introduce its own distortions we study one such introduction effect using evidence from a unique policy change in australia in 2004 the australian government announced that children born on or after july 1 2004 would receive a 3000 baby bonus although the policy was only announced seven weeks before its introduction parents appear to have behaved strategically in order to receive the benefit with the number of births dipping sharply before the policy commenced on july 1 2004 more australian children were born than on any other single date in the past thirty years we estimate that over 1000 births were moved so as to ensure that their parents were eligible for the baby bonus with about one quarter being moved by more than one week most of the effect was due to changes in the timing of induction and cesarean section procedures we find evidence to suggest that babies who were shifted into the eligibility period were more likely to be of high birth weight two years later on july 1 2006 the baby bonus was increased and we find that this again caused births to be moved from june to july these birth timing events represent an opportunity for health researchers to study the impact of planned birthdays and hospital management issues

impact of cheaper oil on economic system and climate change a swot analysis abstract the drop in crude oil price by nearly half since june 2014 has created new opportunities as well as challenges this study employs the swot method to analyze the impact of cheaper oil on the global economic system and carbon emissions exploring the climatic opportunities and identifying the challenges of lower oil prices in addition it contends that falling oil prices boost economic growth but produce more carbon pollutants thereby accelerating global warming however cheaper oil has provided a window of opportunity to remove fossil fuel subsidies a major development that years of climate shaming has failed to achieve furthermore we argue that social factors are a critical often overlooked threat for the removal of fossil fuel subsidies with declining oil prices exerting downward pressure on gas and coal the removal of subsidies and carbon tax can be introduced without raising the energy prices four policy recommendations are proposed for the removal of fossil fuel subsidies to limit global warming as well as to meet the challenge and opportunity of cheaper oil removal of fossil fuel subsidies should be quickly implemented because this window of opportunity of cheaper oil will not last forever

economic welfare impacts from renewable energy consumption the china experience over the last years renewable energy sources have increased their share on electricity generation of china due to environmental and security of supply concerns in this work author assesses the role of both the amount and share of renewable energy consumption in economic welfare using cobb douglas type production functions this assessment is carried out by multivariate ols and spss software for china from 1978 to 2008 results indicate that a 1 increase in renewable energy consumption rec increases real gdp by 0 120 gdp per capita by 0 162 per capita annual income of rural households by 0 444 and per capita annual income of urban households by 0 368 respectively the impact of renewable energy consumption share srec on economic welfare is insignificant and an increasing share of rec negatively affects economic welfare growth to a certain extent in this paper the cost structural demand accounting mechanism and policy reasons of renewable energy development are interpreted marginal effects analysis show that the shape of sound and robust renewable energy institutions and policies would matter for increasing the standards of economic welfare in the context of speeding up renewable energy development and increasing share of renewable energy consumption especially the goal oriented policy refinement should be addressed efficiently in improvement households income while increasing share of renewable energy consumption c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

determinants of renewable energy growth a global sample analysis abstract we investigate factors influencing country level renewable energy growth by applying fevd and pcse estimation methods in a unique sample analysis with a longer time series 1990 2010 and a broader sample size of countries including brazil russia india china and south africa than previous studies our results reveal new insights the results suggest that certain government backed energy policies impede renewable energy investments thus implying significant failures in policy design these policies may be failing mainly because of uncertainty and the likelihood of discontinuity weak voluntary approaches are introduced in order to satisfy public demand for more sustainable investments and programmes we find that these may have negative influences on the growth of renewables as well the insight gained is consistent over the estimation methods employed

valuation for renewable energy a comparative review abstract environmental cost benefit analysis is applied for the evaluation of renewable energy projects since some benefits and costs do not have monetary values economic valuation techniques are applied to estimate them this paper reviews the literature on the valuation evaluation of renewable energy resources and summarizes the methods used in them it discerns four main streams of valuation in renewable energy the first is economic welfare oriented and comprises stated and revealed preference methods the second is the financial option analysis with a financial background the third is emergy analysis which is mostly an ecological engineering based method with capable economic links and the fourth is again economic but not welfare based the paper discusses the main directions discerned in these studies and recognizes first that proper valuation takes place only in the first method while the other methods describe only evaluation procedures and second that there is a research gap that has yet to be filled in as compared to other areas of environmental resource and energy economics

do estate and gift taxes affect the timing of private transfers abstract proposals to alter the estate tax are contentious and have been considered largely in an empirical vacuum this paper examines time series and cross sectional variation to identify the effects of estate and gift taxation on the timing of private transfers the analysis is based on data from the 1989 1992 1995 1998 and 2001 surveys of consumer finances legislative activity during this period reduced the tax disadvantage of bequests relative to gifts moreover the magnitude of this reduction differed systematically across identifiable household categories we find that households experiencing larger declines in the expected tax disadvantages of bequests reduced inter vivos transfers relative to households experiencing small declines in the tax disadvantages of bequests this finding is consistent with the hypothesis that the timing of transfers is responsive to applicable gift and estate tax rates the results also provide evidence of a systematic bequest motive for high wealth households

energy price uncertainty energy intensity and firm investment this paper examines the effect of energy price uncertainty on firm level investment an error correction model of capital stock adjustment is estimated with data on u s manufacturing firms higher energy price uncertainty is found to make firms more cautious by reducing the responsiveness of investment to sales growth the result is robust to consideration of energy intensity by industry the effect is greater for high growth firms it must be emphasized that the direct effect of uncertainty is not estimated conditional variance of energy price is obtained from a garch model findings suggest that stability in energy prices would be conducive to greater stability in firm level investment

oil and the macroeconomy when prices go up and down an extension of hamilton s results in an important paper hamilton 1983 demonstrated a strong correlation between oil price changes and gross national product growth in u s data however his study pertained to a period in which all the large oil price movements were upward and thus it left unanswered the question whether the correlation persists in periods of price decline moreover the price variable he used was somewhat distorted by price controls in the 1970s this note investigates whether hamilton s results continue to hold when the sample is extended to include the recent oil market collapse and the oil price variable is corrected for the effects of price controls particular attention is given to the possibility of asymmetric responses to oil price increases and decreases as suggested in the structural employment literature loungani 1986 davis 1987 hamilton 1988 like hamilton i based my investigation on the gnp equation in sims s 1 980b six variable quarterly vector autoregressive model

oil shocks and aggregate macroeconomic behavior the role of monetary policy a recent paper by bernanke gertler and watson 1997 suggests that monetary policy could be used to eliminate any recessionary consequences of an oil price shock this paper challenges this conclusion on two grounds first we question whether the federal reserve actually has the power to implement such a policy for example we consider it unlikely that additional money creation would have succeeded in reducing the fed funds rate by 900 basis points relative to the values seen in 1974 second we point out that the size of the effect that bernanke gertler and watson attribute to oil shocks is substantially smaller than that reported by other researchers primarily due to their choice of a shorter lag length than that used by other researchers we offer evidence in favor of the longer lag length employed by previous research and show that under this specification even the aggressive federal reserve policies proposed would not have succeeded in averting a downturn