can we use the energy intensity indicator to study decoupling in modern economies abstract the economic energy intensity of a country defined as the ratio between the energy consumed and the gross domestic product of a country is a widely adopted indicator of economic performance often applied to sustainability analysis the usefulness of this indicator has been challenged on the basis of the fact that the two variables making up this ratio are correlated this implies that when considered in isolation each one of these two variables energy consumption p c and gdp p c maps on to typologies of socio economic systems e g developed countries vs less developed countries however calculating their ratio produces an indicator which does not map on to any meaningful typology of economic system a number without an external referent this paper checks the validity of this criticism by looking at the economic energy intensity eei of 133 countries over the period 1960 2009 two approaches are used for this task 1 an analysis at a given point in time year 2009 after excluding countries with real gdp p c

the inequalities of public utility products in china from the perspective of the atkinson index abstract the chinese households make up approximately a quarter of the world s total compared with its size of population china s reserves of natural resources are relatively limited with the actual concerns about sustainable development in china we should pay more attention to the unequal distribution of energy which may result low efficiency and wasting of energy therefore how to best allocate the scarce public utility products pups for the household usage should be closely addressed in terms of equity and efficiency based on the micro household level data from crecs which investigated in 2013 in different scales city all over the country we measure the distribution of pups consumption quantitatively and evaluate the inequality of household income expenditures on electricity gas and water in the china s residential sector by using the atkinson index the results show that the atkinson index of households total pups consumption in medium scale city is equal to 0 0261 which is 83 0 higher than that of large scale city and 35 6 higher than that of small scale city it indicates that the inequalities of pups and income are greater in medium scale cities than in large scale and small scale cities considering the sustainability of pups we suggest further reform in china s public utility sectors the government should take more consideration on equality and efficiency of distribution and ensure that people have equal living standards especially for the low income households who serve as the main anchor for the sustainable development of china

migrants in a guest worker system a utility maximizing approach this paper examines the behavior of utility maximizing migrants in a system of guest worker migration their pattern of leisure and commodity consumption at home and abroad is analysed and related

energy in the development strategy of indian households the missing half there is a growing consensus that universalization of modern energy services is central to reducing major elements of poverty and hunger to increase literacy and education and to improve health care employment opportunities and lives of women and children in india as per 2011 census over 700 million people lack access to modern energy services for lighting cooking water pumping and other productive purposes devoid of these services people mostly women are forced to spend significant amounts of their time and effort on subsistence activities like firewood collection carrying these head load for miles and then burning these hard earned fuels inefficiently in traditional chullas these adversely affect the health and standard of living for women and act as a barrier to gender development here gender means women unless otherwise specified although the links between gender inequity poverty and energy deprivation have been studied by many not many practical solutions to the above problems have emerged the present paper explores the nexus among gender energy poverty highlights areas of gender concern and suggests actions we analyze how women from rural areas and low income households are at the receiving ends of energy poverty we then analyze the roles women as an important stakeholders in universalizing modern energy services we show how women self help groups can be a vital link in large scale diffusion of energy efficient and renewable technologies the paper concludes with policy pointers for sustainable development and gender empowerment through energy solutions

on the competitive effects of price matching policies abstract this paper challenges the conventional wisdom that price matching policies lead to supracompetitive prices by reducing firms incentives to undercut rivals i argue that price matching and price beating policies are more appropriately viewed as a means of price discrimination and develop a model that demonstrates their use as such analysis of this model shows that in contrast to the results of the existing literature price matching and price beating may raise or lower equilibrium prices relative to the equilibrium in which firms may not adopt such policies

on the incidence and variety of low price guarantees abstract this paper provides evidence of the incidence and variety of low price guarantees promises to match or beat a rival s price using data obtained from newspaper advertisements in 37 metropolitan areas in the united states we have a total of 515 low price guarantees in our sample we document their features and we infer firms motives and effects from these features the evidence suggests that the majority of low price guarantees are not consistent with their use as a facilitating device because they tend to apply only to rival firms advertised prices or they are associated with high hassle costs the evidence also suggests that price beating and price matching guarantees differ significantly in their features the former are associated with higher hassle costs apply disproportionately to rival firms advertised prices and are more likely to allow postsale search than are price matching guarantees

what impact does the choice of formula have on international comparisons in this paper an empirical comparison of a number of alternative multilateral index number formulae is undertaken the magnitude of the effect of choosing one formula over another is ascertained using an appropriate cross sectional data set constructed under the auspices of the eurostat oecd purchasing power parity programme to this end a new indicator is proposed that facilitates the measurement of the difference between two sets of bloc consumption shares each computed using a different multilateral comparison method jel classification c31 c43 c81 e31 f31 o57 quel impact est ce que le choix des formules a sur les comparaisons internationales ce memoire propose une comparaison empirique d un certain nombre de formules de nombres indices multilateraux on tente de jauger la magnitude de l impact du choix d une formule plutot qu une autre en utilisant une base de donnees transversales appropriee construite sous l egide du programme de parite du pouvoir d achat eurostat ocde on propose un nouvel indicateur qui facilite la mesure de la difference entre deux ensembles de patterns de consommation chacun calculea l aide d une methode de comparaison multilaterale differente

world product and income a review article kravis heston and summers provided comparable price and volume data for gross domestic product and its components for each of 34 countries varying in affluence from india and malawi to the united states the article discusses the data and the way in which they are generated and considers the use of these data for applied demand analysis

a cross country tabulation of own price elasticities of demand abstract this paper tabulates frisch slutsky and cournot own price elasticities for each of 10 goods at the per capita real income levels of 30 countries ranging from india to the united states

the energy metabolism of china and india between 1971 and 2010 studying the bifurcation abstract this paper presents a comparison of the changes in the energetic metabolic pattern of china and india the two most populated countries in the world with two economies undergoing an important economic transition the comparison of the changes in the energetic metabolic pattern has the scope to characterize and explain a bifurcation in their evolutionary path in the recent years using the multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem approach the analysis shows an impressive transformation of china s energy metabolism determined by the joining of the wto in 2001 since then china became the largest factory of the world with a generalized capitalization of all sectors especially the industrial sector boosting economic labor productivity as well as total energy consumption india on the contrary lags behind when considering these factors looking at changes in the household sector energy metabolism associated with final consumption in the case of china the energetic metabolic rate emr soared in the last decade also thanks to a reduced growth of population whereas in india it remained stagnant for the last 40 years this analysis indicates a big challenge for india for the next decade in the light of the data analyzed both countries will continue to require strong injections of technical capital requiring a continuous increase in their total energy consumption when considering the size of these economies it is easy to guess that this may induce a dramatic increase in the price of energy an event that at the moment will penalize much more the chance of a quick economic development of india

another perspective on changes in international inequality from 1950 to 1980 abstract real income data derived from the third phase of the international comparisons project are used to compute theil s population weighted indices of intercountry inequality for several years between 1950 and 1980 contrary to some recently reported results a substantial increase in inequality is observed internationally comparable consumption data indicate consumption inequality increased more than income inequality

output decisions and price matching theory and experiment we study the effects of price matching in a setting in which each firm selects both its price and output simultaneously we show that the availability of a price matching option leads to the cournot outcome in this setting our experimental study confirms this result in the laboratory our finding is a stark contrast to the one obtained in the standard price competition that the most likely market price in the presence of a price matching option is the monopolistic price in addition we show that price matching benefits consumers in markets with a large number of firms if a market has a few firms then the effects of price matching on consumers depend on the market demand and cost functions thus our study suggests that the effect of price matching depends on the strategic variables of the firms data and the online appendix are available at https doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2017 2788 this paper was accepted by eric anderson marketing

a cross country time series analysis of the volume and quality of consumption abstract using the cross section results of kravis et al 1982 and working s 1943 model we provide time series of the volume of consumption per capita and of the quality index for eight oecd countries with base u s 100 in 1975

effective price matching a comment abstract corts economic lett 47 1995 417 showed that when allowing for price beating policies in addition to price matching policies the competitive outcome prevails in lieu of monopoly pricing i show by expanding the strategy set further to include effective price strategies the possibility of monopoly pricing is restored

on the use of low price guarantees to discourage price cutting abstract this paper formulates a novel test to assess whether and to what extent firms might be using low price guarantees to discourage their rivals from cutting prices the test is based on a comparison of paired observations of advertised prices that are set by competing firms at the same point in time on similar items where one price is set by a firm that has a low price guarantee and the other by a firm that does not have a low price guarantee using data on retail tire prices we find that the majority of paired observations involving firms that have price matching guarantees are consistent with what one would expect if firms were using them to discourage price cutting whereas the majority of paired observations involving firms that have price beating guarantees are not this suggests that price matching and price beating guarantees may be serving different purposes the evidence also suggests that guarantees that apply to advertised prices only may be serving different purposes than guarantees that apply to both advertised and selling prices

experimental duopolies under price guarantees in a symmetric differentiated experimental duopoly we test the ability of price guarantees pgs to raise prices above the competitive levels different types of pgs aggressive and soft price beating and price matching are implemented either as an exogenously imposed market rule or as a business strategy our results show that pgs may lead close to the collusive outcome depending on whether the interaction between duopolists is repeated and provided that the guarantee is not of the aggressive price beating type

different selling strategies in bertrand oligopoly abstract i analyse a bertrand oligopoly game where firms can choose between selling strategies i price announcements ii price announcements and offers to price match i establish the set of nash equilibria and show that only the monopoly price nash equilibrium satisfies iterative dominance

an extended cross country time series analysis of the volume and quality of consumption abstract the approach of finke and theil 1985 is extended to include four countries ireland japan luxembourg and west germany for which consumption data are available at a less detailed level

the energy gdp nexus addressing an old question with new methods abstract this paper reassesses the causal relationship between per capita energy use and gross domestic product while controlling for capital and labour productivity inputs in a panel of 30 oecd countries over the past 40 years the paper uses panel unit root and cointegration testing and specifies an appropriate vector error correction model to analyse the nexus between income and energy use in doing so we contribute to an old debate using modern tools that shed a new light there is some evidence that over the very short run bidirectional causality exists our results also show a strong unidirectional causality running from capital formation and gdp to energy usage in the long run the reverse causality found in recent work is lost we then show that we can reproduce these earlier results in our data if we reproduce a slightly misspecified model for the engle granger two step procedure used in these earlier papers our findings thus imply that results are very sensitive to model misspecification and careful testing of specifications is required our results have some strong policy implications they suggest that policies aimed at reducing energy usage or promoting energy efficiency are not likely to have a detrimental effect on economic growth except over the very short run

on the robustness of the argument that price matching is anti competitive abstract the existing literature suggests that price matching leads to monopoly prices i show that this argument relies on an arbitrary and unrealistic restriction of the firms strategies in particular if firms may adopt price beating policies the competitive outcome prevails

a new cross country tabulation of the quality index of consumption abstract cross country data are used to tabulate a quality index of consumption for each of 30 countries ranging in affluence from the u s to india as well as the real income relative price and residual components of the quality index

goodness of fit and outliers in cross country demand systems abstract for a 10 good consumer demand system the fit for 30 countries in the sample is compared with that for five countries outside the sample

price matching guarantees and consumer search abstract this paper examines the effect of price matching guarantees pmgs on market outcomes in a sequential search model pmgs are simultaneously chosen with prices and some consumers shoppers know the firms decisions before buying while others non shoppers enter a shop before observing the price and whether or not the firm has a pmg in such an environment pmgs increase the value of buying the good and therefore increase consumers reservation prices this increase is so large that even after accounting for the possible execution of pmgs firms profits are larger in an equilibrium where pmgs are offered than in an equilibrium without pmgs we also consider the incentives of firms to choose pmgs and show that an equilibrium where all firms offer pmgs does not exist because of a free riding problem

frich s conjecture and the own price elasticity of the demand for food abstract frich s 1959 conjecture on the behavior of the income elasticity of the marginal utility of income is tested by means of cross country data particularly in relation to the behavior of the frisch own price elasticity of the demand for food

cross country demand systems and centrally planned economies abstract the cross country data of kravis et al 1982 include data on four centrally planned economies the question is addressed as to how such data fit cross country demand systems

the energy metabolism of countries energy efficiency and use in the period that followed the global financial crisis this paper discusses how the deceleration of economic growth that followed the financial crisis of 2008 influenced the energy efficiency allocation and use of 18 european countries by using a multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem the relationships between energy requirements economic trends and population are investigated for the years 2008 and 2015 the analyses are performed for the entire society level n for the household and the paid sectors level n 1 and for the agricultural the industrial and the service activities level n 2 results show that two main groups of countries performed the largest energy reductions namely the country most affected by the global financial crisis such as greece romania and spain where the total energy throughput decreased by 19 6 15 8 and 12 1 respectively and the countries such as ireland and united kingdom that experienced the largest energy intensity reductions 38 7 and 19 2 together with the highest gdp increases 44 8 and 10 2 by providing an overview of the relationships existing between socio economic and energy variables this paper contributes to the debate around growth and efficiency and can support the design of policies oriented to promote the achievement of a more sustainable and competitive economy

world food demand long term projections of global food demand are heavily dependent on which functional form of the food demand equation is used given that real incomes can change substantially over the long term key elements are the dependence of the income elasticity on income which ensures that the food budget share always lies within the 0 1 range and the role of income inequality this article analyzes these issues proposes a new functional form that deals with them and presents estimates of income and price elasticities for food in 138 countries copyright 2012 oxford university press

a time series analysis of a demand system based on cross country coefficient estimates abstract annual dutch consumption data 1952 1977 for 10 goods which exhaust the consumer s budget are analyzed by means of a complete demand system whose coefficients are obtained from the cross country data collected by kravis 1982

aggregate deposit insurance funding and taxpayer bailouts abstract recent events have focused attention on the fragility of the federal deposit insurance funds and made redesign of the insurance system an active policy issue this paper explores the implications of different rate structures for the long term solvency of the fund using two simulation techniques based on historical loss distributions three findings stand out 1 under the former 8 33 bp premium rate as well as under the 15 bp premium rate mandated as the new long run target or default premium rate by both firrea and the fdic assesment rate act of 1990 the probability that the fund could become insolvent over a given 55 year period is higher than previously recognized 2 raising the effective cap on the fund to as low as 2 5 of deposits can substantially reduce the probability of insolvency without further increasing the premium rate and 3 the anticipated temporary 1991 premium rate of 19 5 bp implies a quite low probability of insolvency

verifying a demand system by simulation abstract an intriguingly small value of the asymptotic standard error of the estimate of the income flexibility inspired us to simulate the demand system the procedure used should have more general applicability

energy metabolism of the balearic islands 1986 2012 researchers from multiple disciplines point to the link between fossil fuel consumption and socio ecological deterioration studying the energy metabolism of the balearic islands 1986 2012 gives insights on the ecological economic and social consequences of regional specialization in mass tourism the methodology applied multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem has been developed in the last decades to analyze societal metabolism from the perspective of complex systems this study has allowed us to see that since the entry of spain in the european economic community in 1986 the real state tourism business model has been reinforced giving place to a higher level of consumption of fossil fuels an increase in work instability and a diminishing of labor productivity