are the determinants of co2 emissions converging among oecd countries this paper studies convergence in co2emission intensity co2 emissions over gdp among oecd countries over the period 1960 2008 based on its determinants namely energy intensity energy consumption over gdp and the so called carbonisation index co2 emissions over energy consumption we apply the phillips and sul 2007 methodology which tests for the existence of convergence clubs our results highlight that differences in emission intensity convergence are more determined by differences in convergence of the carbonisation index rather than by differences in the dynamic convergence of energy intensity

effects of free choice among public schools in this paper i investigate the impact of a programme in tel aviv israel that terminated an existing inter district busing integration programme and allowed students free choice among public schools the identification is based on difference in differences and regression discontinuity designs that yield various alternative comparison groups drawn from untreated tangent neighbourhoods and adjacent cities across identification methods and comparison groups the results consistently suggest that choice significantly reduces the drop out rate and increases the cognitive achievements of high school students it also improves behavioural outcomes such as teacher student relationships and students social acclimation and satisfaction at school and reduces the level of violence and classroom disruption

school choice school quality and postsecondary attainment we study the impact of a public school choice lottery in charlotte mecklenburg schools on college enrollment and degree completion we find a significant overall increase in college attainment among lottery winners who attend their first choice school using rich administrative data on peers teachers course offerings and other inputs we show that the impacts of choice are strongly predicted by gains on several measures of school quality gains in attainment are concentrated among girls girls respond to attending a better school with higher grades and increases in college preparatory course taking while boys do not

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

are shocks to ecological footprint in oecd countries permanent or temporary abstract the main goal of this study is to check the unit root properties of the ecological footprint and its six subcomponents cropland footprint grazing land footprint fishing grounds footprint forest land footprint built up land footprint and carbon footprint in 25 oecd the organisation for economic co operation and development countries during the period 1961 2013 this study uses a new stationarity test with sharp and smooth breaks in the panel setting developed by bahmani oskooee et al 2014 empirical findings demonstrate that the fishing grounds footprint does not have mean reverting behavior while the remaining ecological indicators display stationary properties under the assumption of both homogenous and heterogeneous long run variance therefore if policymakers decide to decrease the size of the fishing grounds footprint they will not face stiff resistance in addition to the panel results the univariate stationarity test results can also help policymakers in each country design effective emission reduction policies

productivity growth and structural change in chinese manufacturing 1980 2002 this article focuses on the contribution of structural change to aggregate manufacturing and industrial productivity in china using shift share techniques this article examines three types of structural change changes in the sectoral structure of production changes in the ownership structure and changes in the regional structure of production overall productivity growth was slow in the 1980s but accelerated dramatically from 1990 onwards in 1980s we found evidence of a structural change bonus with sectoral shifts contributing 24 to overall productivity growth however when productivity growth accelerated in the 1990s the contribution of the shift effect dropped to a mere 3 3 in contrast to sectoral changes changes in the ownership structure in the early 1980s contributed negatively to overall productivity growth the contributions of ownership change turned positive after 1985 reaching 23 of productivity growth in the period 1992 1997 shifts in ownership explain a substantial part of productivity growth during the productivity boom like shifts in ownership regional shifts initially contributed negatively to productivity growth till 1992 and positively thereafter however the general contribution of regional shifts is lower than the contributions of sectoral and ownership shifts contrary to initial expectations the regional analysis of productivity trends does not indicate regional divergence

club convergence in carbon dioxide emissions we examine convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among 128 countries for the period 1960 2003 by means of a new methodology introduced by phillips and sul econometrica 75 6 1771 1855 2007a contrary to previous studies our approach allows us to examine for evidence of club convergence i e identify groups of countries that converge to different equilibria our results suggest convergence in per capita co2 emissions among all the countries under scrutiny in the early years of our sample however there seem to be two separate convergence clubs in the recent era that converge to different steady states interestingly we also find evidence of transitioning between the two convergence clubs suggesting either a slow convergence between the two clubs or a tendency for some countries to move from one convergence club to the other

the effect of school choice on participants evidence from randomized lotteries school choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement to evaluate the impact on participants we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the chicago public schools compared to those students who lose lotteries students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions including peer achievement and attainment levels nonetheless we find little evidence that winning a lottery provides any systematic benefit across a wide variety of traditional academic measures lottery winners do however experience improvements on a subset of nontraditional outcome measures such as self reported disciplinary incidents and arrest rates

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data this paper tests the convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions for a collection of developed and developing countries using data spanning the period 1870 2002 for this purpose three recently developed panel unit root tests that permit for dependence among the individual countries are employed the results lend strong support in favor of convergence for the panel as a whole estimates of the speed of this convergence is also provided

convergence of per capita co2 emissions across the globe insights via wavelet analysis abstract this paper examines the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions for 162 countries across the globe covering all income groups high income oecd high income non oecd middle income and low income countries as categorized by the world bank the incidence of stochastic convergence is analysed by making use of recently developed wavelet based unit root tests the existing studies on this subject make use of conventional unit root tests using time series and or panel data a serious drawback of these tests is that they analyse the stochastic behaviour of any series in time domain only whereas the stochastic process may behave differently across different frequencies as well thus wavelet methods are an obvious solution as they consider frequency dimension as well in addition to time dimension when analyzing the stochastic behaviour of any data series and hence these methods encompass the conventional unit root testing methodologies by providing a clear and complete picture of the stochastic process our empirical findings based on latest available time series annual data from 1960 to 2010 lend support in favor of convergence among 38 countries including 18 high income oecd countries 2 high income non oecd countries 13 middle income countries and 5 low income countries while for the rest of 124 countries the co2 emission series is found to be non stationary suggesting the divergence in these countries these findings are in contrast with the most of the existing studies which may be due to the use of wavelet based unit root tests that are of course better alternatives some policy implications evolve from the empirical findings

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

per capita carbon dioxide emissions convergence or divergence understanding and considering the distribution of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions is important in designing international climate change proposals and incentives for participation i evaluate historic international emissions distributions and forecast future distributions to assess whether per capita emissions have been converging or will converge i find evidence of convergence among 23 member countries of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd whereas emissions appear to be diverging for an 88 country global sample over 1960 2000 forecasts based on a markov chain transition matrix provide little evidence of future emissions convergence and indicate that emissions may diverge in the near term i also review the shortcomings of environmental kuznets curve regressions and structural models in characterizing future emissions distributions

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the eu legend or reality abstract designing appropriate environmental and energy policies in order to meet the kyoto protocol s carbon dioxide co 2 reduction targets in the european union eu requires a detailed examination and thorough understanding of co 2 emission trends across the eu member states this paper investigates whether co 2 emissions have converged across 22 european countries over the 1971 to 2006 period the bayesian shrinkage estimation method is employed to do this work and the results reveal the following first the hypothesis of absolute convergence in per capita co 2 emissions is supported and a slight upward convergence is observed second the fact that countries differ considerably in both their speed of convergence and volatility in emissions makes it possible to identify different groups of countries third the results with respect to convergence do not vary much once the share of industry in gdp is accounted for in a conditional convergence analysis however a decreasing share of industry in gdp seems to contribute to a decline in per capita emissions these findings may carry important implications for both national and eu environmental policies

production and consumption based convergence analyses of global co2 emissions abstract the convergent trend of co2 emissions has received wide spread attention in an attempt to meet the global reduction target but almost all of the focus has been on the production side a systematic investigation on the convergence of global co2 emissions from the production side and the consumption side is of great importance to find the pathways for the worldwide low carbon development this study distinguished production and consumption based co2 emissions of 129 economies during the period 1995 2015 based on traditional sigma gamma beta stochastic and club convergence models we identified convergence progress of co2 emission on both the production and consumption sides taking convergence speed and influential factors into account we demonstrated different convergence pathways to a reasonable climate strategy this study obtained four key results first in all cases global per capita co2 emissions on the production and consumption sides were convergent second the speed of convergence on the production side was higher than on the consumption side third population density energy intensity and the share of trade and industrialization had significant effects on the production side while per capita gdp was more important on the consumption side low carbon development due to medium and high technology manufacturing had equal impacts on consumption and production forth different convergence processes among organization for economic co operation and development oecd european union eu asia pacific economic cooperation apec and rest80 i e the other 80 developing economies indicate that mitigation policies should differ according to the industrial structure and by economic development the results of this study will extend our empirical understanding of global co2 emissions and their policy implications

tiebout choice and universal school vouchers abstract this paper examines who is likely to gain and who is likely to lose under a universal voucher program following epple and romano d epple r e romano competition between private and public schools vouchers and peer group effects american economic review 88 1998 33 62 d epple r e romano neighborhood schools choice and the distribution of educational benefits in c m hoxby ed the economics of school choice the univ of chicago press chicago 2003 pp 227 286 and nechyba t j nechyba mobility targeting and private school vouchers american economic review 90 2000 130 146 t j nechyba introducing school choice into multidistrict public school systems in c m hoxby ed the economics of school choice the univ of chicago press chicago 2003 pp 145 194 we focus on the idea that gains and losses under a universal voucher depend on two effects changes in peer group composition and changes in housing values we show that the direction and magnitude of each of these effects hinge critically on market structure i e the amount of school choice that already exists in the public sector in markets with little or no tiebout choice potential changes in peer group composition create an incentive for high socioeconomic ses households to vote for the voucher and for low ses households to vote against voucher in contrast in markets with significant tiebout choice potential changes in housing values create an incentive for high ses households to vote against the voucher and for low ses households to vote for the voucher using data on vote outcomes from california s 2000 voucher initiative we find evidence consistent with those predictions

does structure influence growth a panel data econometric assessment of relatively less developed countries 1979 2003 neo schumpeterian streams of research emphasize the close relationship between changes in economic structure in favor of high skill and high tech branches and rapid economic growth they identify the emergence of a new technological paradigm in the 1970s strongly based on the application of information and communication technologies icts arguing that in such periods of transition and emergence of new techno economic paradigms the intermediate development countries and the countries which are not at the technological frontier have higher opportunities to catch up although this debate is theoretically well documented the empirics seem to lag behind the theory in this article we contribute to this literature by adding enlightening evidence on the issue more precisely we relate the growth experiences of countries which had relatively similar economic structures in the late 1970s with changes occurring in these countries structures between 1979 and 2003 the results reveal a robust relationship between structure and labor productivity growth and lend support to the view that producing though not user ict related industries are strategic branches of economic activity copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

leveling the playing field sincere and sophisticated players in the boston mechanism empirical and experimental evidence suggests different levels of sophistication among families in the boston public school student assignment plan we analyze the preference revelation game induced by the boston mechanism with sincere players who report their true preferences and sophisticated players who play a best response we characterize the set of nash equilibrium outcomes as the set of stable matchings of a modified economy where sincere students lose priority to sophisticated students any sophisticated student weakly prefers her assignment under the pareto dominant nash equilibrium of the boston mechanism to her assignment under the recently adopted student optimal stable mechanism jel d82 i21

are there schumpeterian waves of innovations this paper responds to a recent criticism of the empirical evidence of bunching of innovations an examination of various long run innovation samples shows that there is indeed very poor evidence of innovation waves in the time before the mid 19th century thereafter however two long waves of major innovations occur both having a lead of approximately 10 15 years over the economic long wave as identified in an earlier study a t test confirms that these waves can be clearly distinguished from random fluctuations in the final section some suggestions for further research are outlined

is there convergence in per capita so2 emissions in china an empirical study using city level panel data abstract as china s economy has grown rapidly in recent years china s environmental pollution has become increasingly significant among all the traditional pollutants sulfur dioxide has been monitored by the chinese government since the 1990s in this study china s city level panel data between 2002 and 2012 are utilized to investigate the existence of convergence in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across chinese cities the conventional estimation methods for convergence suffer from an endogeneity problem and therefore produce biased results to address the endogeneity problem and allow for dynamics dynamic panel data estimators are utilized and the static estimation results are conducted as a robustness check in addition the influential factors for convergence are examined the empirical results indicate that in the chosen sample period there were absolute and conditional convergences in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across cities within the whole nation as well as in the eastern western and central regions of china because per capita gross domestic product and the ratio of secondary industry to gross domestic product are both positively related with per capita sulfur dioxide emissions higher income per capita and greater importance of the secondary industry would cause the convergence speed to be lower therefore the most straightforward policy implication for the empirical results is that the policies for controlling sulfur dioxide emissions should be regionally differentiated for cities with high sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the regulation could be tight as the emissions would decrease faster because convergence exists however for cities with low sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the target for reducing emissions should not be excessively aggressive

multiple trends of tertiarization a comparative input output analysis of the service sector expansion between brazil and united states abstract the service sector expansion has shown to be a multiple trend process producing distinct sectorial compositions the present paper aims to make a comparison between two large economies in different stages of development with an extensive service sector brazil and united states by focusing on final and intermediary demand changes and sectorial productivity as well input output matrices for brazil and united states were used and two applications were carried out structural decomposition analysis and total factor productivity main results are as follows firstly the growth in services was fostered by several factors among which household consumption assumes an important role for both countries second inter industrial linkages play a major role only for united states thirdly there is now evidence of cost disease for brazil finally productivity is lower in brazil nonetheless labor productivity increased above the average in some service sectors

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

carbon dioxide emissions intensity of portuguese industry and energy sectors a convergence analysis and econometric approach abstract given the relevance of energy and pollution issues for industrialised countries and the importance of industry and energy sectors to the achievement of their economic and environmental goals it is important to know if there is a common pattern of emissions intensity fuel intensity and energy intensity between industries to know if it justifies a more specific application of energy policies between sectors which sectors have the greatest potential for reducing energy use and which are the long term effects of those specific variables on the mitigation of emissions we found that although there is literature on decomposition of effects that affect emissions the study of the convergence and of the relationships between these variables does not include ratios or effects that result from the decomposition analysis thus the above questions are not answered much less for the portuguese reality the purpose of this paper is to study i the existence of convergence of some relevant ratios as carbon dioxide co 2 emissions intensity co 2 emissions by fossil fuel consumption fossil fuel intensity energy intensity and economic structure between industry and energy sectors in portugal and ii the influence that the consumption of fossil fuels the consumption of aggregate energy and gdp have on co 2 emissions and the influence that the ratios in which co 2 emissions intensity decomposes can affect that variable using an econometric approach namely panel corrected standard errors estimator we concluded that there is sigma convergence for all ratios with exception of fossil fuel intensity gamma convergence verifies for all ratios with exception of co 2 emissions by fossil fuel from the econometric approach we concluded that the considered variables have a significant importance in explaining co 2 emissions and co 2 emissions intensity

school quality and residential property values evidence from vancouver rezoning abstract this study utilizes changes in the catchment areas of public schools in vancouver british columbia to measure the residential price capitalization of school quality specifications that employ repeat sales methods to control for time invariant neighborhood effects and disaggregated price indexes to capture time varying neighborhood price appreciation reveal significant effects of secondary school performance on residential prices however when we add controls for long run price trends in rezoned areas only prices of residences likely to be purchased by high income families appear to have been affected by changes in school quality induced by rezoning

accountability and flexibility in public schools evidence from boston s charters and pilots charter schools are publicly funded but operate outside the regulatory framework and collective bargaining agreements characteristic of traditional public schools in return for this freedom charter schools are subject to heightened accountability this paper estimates the impact of charter school attendance on student achievement using data from boston where charter schools enroll a growing share of students we also evaluate an alternative to the charter model boston s pilot schools these schools have some of the independence of charter schools but operate within the school district face little risk of closure and are covered by many of same collective bargaining provisions as traditional public schools estimates using student assignment lotteries show large and significant test score gains for charter lottery winners in middle and high school in contrast lottery based estimates for pilot schools are small and mostly insignificant the large positive lottery based estimates for charter schools are similar to estimates constructed using statistical controls in the same sample but larger than those using statistical controls in a wider sample of schools the latter are still substantial however the estimates for pilot schools are smaller and more variable than those for charters with some significant negative effects

priorities in school choice the case of the boston mechanism in barcelona abstract the boston mechanism is a school allocation procedure that is widely used around the world and has been criticized for its incentive problems in order to resolve overdemands for a given school most often priority is given to families living in the neighborhood of the school using a very rich data set on school applications for the case of the boston mechanism in barcelona we exploit an unexpected change in the definition of neighborhood this change allows us to identify that a large fraction of families systematically ranks first high priority schools neighborhood schools in this case additional data on school enrollment decisions and census data shows that some seemingly unsophisticated parents are high income families that can rank hard to get schools because they can afford the outside option of a private school in case they do not get in this sheds light on important inequalities beyond parents lack of sophistication found in the literature

assessing the decoupling of economic growth from environmental impacts in the european union a consumption based approach abstract pursuing a responsible and sustainable development the united nations urged to decouple economic growth from environmental impacts several european union eu policies have been implemented towards such goal although multiple authors have evaluated the decoupling of the economic growth from the resource use or environmental concerns the environmental assessment mostly focused on pressures rather than impacts and used single indicators assumed to be a proxy of the overall effects on the environment furthermore no studies were found using a process based life cycle approach to quantify the environmental impacts of consumption to solve such research gap this paper assesses the decoupling in the eu focusing on potential environmental impacts complementing a production based approach with two options for accounting for the impacts of consumption the aim of this paper is to evaluate the decoupling of the economic growth in terms of gross domestic product from the environmental impacts due to eu 28 consumption assessed by means of life cycle assessment lca the decoupling is then assessed in impact terms rather than limited to pressures by using the environmental footprint ef2017 indicators which allows assessing 16 different impacts the consumption footprint indicator quantified the environmental impacts of eu apparent consumption including the territorial impacts domestic footprint and the embodied impacts in both imports and exports trade footprint the inventory of pressures for the trade component is compiled either with a bottom up approach process based lca of representative traded goods or a top down approach input output based lca methodological aspects influencing the decoupling assessment and the resulting outputs are presented and discussed according to the results the environmental impacts of eu 28 consumption showed decoupling during the last decades 2005 2014 between relative to absolute decoupling depending on the inventory modeling approach taken some countries showed higher decoupling levels than others displaying a heterogeneous map of eu 28 decoupling which was led by acidification particulate matter land use and eutrophication impacts notwithstanding current limitations the assessment of decoupling using consumption based environmental indicators is very promising for supporting policy making towards addressing the actual impacts driven by the eu production and consumption system

structural estimation of a model of school choices the boston mechanism vs its alternatives we model household choice of schools under the boston mechanism bm and develop a new method applicable to a broad class of mechanisms to fully solve the choice problem even if it is infeasible

analysis of co2 emissions in apec countries a time series and a cross sectional decomposition using the log mean divisia method abstract we decompose the changes of co2 emissions in apec countries over time as well as the differences of co2 emissions among three income groups of apec countries at a given period of time based on the logarithmic mean divisia decomposition approach among the major findings of the paper the growth in per capita gdp and population are the two dominant contributors to the increase in co2 emissions in most cases furthermore energy efficiency and fuel switching are found to be the two most promising fields for possible cooperation between apec member countries

deindustrialisation and the social and economic sustainability nexus in developing countries cross country evidence on productivity and employment in an empirical investigation of the interactions between industrial structure and macro outcomes an accounting framework was applied to relate changes in sectoral employment and output compositions to changes in overall productivity growth over time the numerical results were interpreted using a taxonomy describing industrialisation and deindustrialisation in developing countries the findings suggest that in particular industrial performance correlates with the overall performance of an economy and therefore is the key sector in explaining the sustainability of different regional patterns in overall productivity and employment growth that is negative rates of productivity growth in the industrial sector are strongly associated with negative productivity growth for the economy as a whole and vice versa further slow industrial growth may lead to low road development in which productivity growth trades off with employment growth while high road development is defined as simultaneously expanding

global convergence in per capita co2 emissions national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013 new huadu business school research fund