environmental policy and exports evidence from chinese cities we study environmental regulation and its role for trade in china specifically we assess the effectiveness of an environmental policy in china that introduced stricter regulations on sulfur dioxide so2 emissions in targeted cities to identify the causal effect of this policy on exports we use sectoral export data for a panel of chinese cities and exploit variations in exports between cities and sectors over time and in a second step between firm types we find a relative fall in sectoral exports in targeted cities after the implementation of the policy which is sharper the more polluting the industry further we find that the observed effect is mainly driven by privately owned firms whereas exports of state owned firms seem to be unaffected by the new policy this finding is consistent with the preferential political treatment of state owned firms in china

governing offshoring in a stringent environmental policy setting evidence from italian manufacturing firms this paper provides evidence of how environmental regulatory stringency relates to firms offshoring decisions while controlling for firms characteristics and environmental strategies relying on an original dataset of italian manufacturing firms a distinction is drawn between international outsourcing and foreign direct investments and between offshoring destinations in northern versus southern regions our estimates show that a stricter environmental regulation is related to a higher probability of production being outsourced to foreign suppliers in the south but not to foreign direct investments the magnitude of this effect is very low however offshoring decisions are mainly affected by firms ict endowment marketing and internationalization strategies and adoption of environmental product innovations and standards in particular eco innovative firms are found more likely to adopt governance decisions that enable a stricter control over the supply chain as in the case of foreign direct investments

intra national home bias new evidence from the united states commodity flow survey abstract this paper estimates the us intra national home bias in trade using poisson pseudo maximum likelihood methodology to complement and extend wolf s 2000 work we use wolf s data from the 1993 commodity flow survey cfs and add the 1997 2002 2007 and 2012 waves we claim that wolf s home bias magnitude is overestimated due to the log linearization of the gravity equation and the control for distance used in the cross sectional study our results with panel data and latest econometric estimators show that the levels of us states home bias are in between 50 and 60 lower than in wolf s however since 2002 the home bias has experienced substantial growth which suggests that the us market is less commercially integrated in 2012 than in 1993

aggregate consumption of non durables and services and the components of wealth some evidence for the united kingdom the growth of spending on consumer goods in the united kingdom in recent years has been a severe test of previously well established consumption functions this paper assesses the performance of a dominant standard consumption function which relies on income and net liquid assets it turns out that this has not been able to track the growth in consumer spending however developments of this consumption function which find a role for the components of personal sector wealth perform rather well with satisfactory diagnostic statistics and an estimated equation standard error of around 0 4

immigration and trade creation econometric evidence from canada immigrants may expand trade with their country of origin owing to superior knowledge of or preferential access to market opportunities the authors test this proposition using canadian trade data with 136 partners from 1980 to 1992 in an augmented gravity equation they find that a 10 percent increase in immigrants is associated with a 1 percent increase in canadian exports to the immigrant s home country and a 3 percent increase in imports they also find that among the primary categories of immigrants independents have the greater influence on trade immigration via the entrepreneur class appears to have less impact on trade than all other classes except refugees

emergence of green business models the case of algae biofuel for aviation emergent business models seek to take advantage of new market mechanisms driven by technological changes particularly those related to the production and delivery of clean or sustainable energy such business models often function at the intersection of various industries with global views and the resulting systems have distinct social political environmental economic technological and business dimensions such holistic systems are not only difficult to develop but also require support from a broad range of actors with effective regulations and policies in place such that the firm functions within a framework that integrates various factors this study substantiates such a framework by detailing the nascent algae based bio fuel industry that caters to the aviation sector while arguing that businesses in the energy industry can emerge as a next practice platform that drive a sixth wave of innovation the framework begins with three basic enablers innovation flexibility and sustainability and explains how value from renewable energy technologies can be created and captured sustainably and innovatively with new market mechanisms implemented by firms with green business models

business models of heat entrepreneurship in finland abstract this paper presents the business models of small scale heat energy production in finland firstly the development of heat entrepreneurship in the country is presented including the remarkable growth of small and medium size enterprises smes in the last 15 years secondly the concept of business model business architecture of product service flows and earning logics is modified to the framework of wood heat production the business model concept and its sub concepts is applied in a brief review of current heat energy businesses in finland we arrive at a business model of heat entrepreneurships that are public companies utilities public private partnerships private companies and cooperatives energy saving company esco network model of large enterprise and franchising descriptive cases of these models are presented finally the paper concludes with a discussion on the applicability of the business models in different operational environments and geographical contexts

immigrant links to the home country empirical implications for u s bilateral trade flows immigrants ties to their home countries can play a key role in fostering bilateral trade linkages immigrant ties include knowledge of home country markets language preferences and business contacts that have the potential to decrease trading transaction costs empirical results for the united states suggest that immigrant links have historically been important in increasing bilateral trade flows with immigrants home countries copyright 1994 by mit press

multinational oil companies and the adoption of sustainable development a resource based and institutional theory interpretation of adoption heterogeneity sustainable development is often framed as a social issue to which corporations should pay attention because it offers both opportunities and challenges through the use of institutional theory and the resource based view of the firm we shed some light on why more than 20 years after sustainable development was first introduced we see neither the adoption of this business model as dominant nor its converse that is the total abandonment of the model as unworkable and unprofitable we focus on multinational corporations mncs because they were among the organizations first called to take action in order to illustrate the institutional pressures mncs face and their strategic response to these pressures we analysed four major oil and gas multinationals subject to similar sustainable development pressures climate change biodiversity renewable energy development and social investment we argue that normative and coercive isomorphism does not occur at the global level because sustainable development is largely a stakeholder driven rather than a broad social pressure that is host country interpretation of sustainable development pressures varies across an mnc s subsidiary network based on the analysis of the four major mncs annual reports from 2000 to 2005 we argue that mimetic isomorphism may occur but since it implies the use of complex and intangible resources mimetic processes are slow rare and discretionary

life cycle individual thrift and the wealth of nations this paper provides a review of the theory of the determinants of individual and national thrift that has come to be known as the life cycle hypothesis lch of saving applications to some current policy issues are also discussed part i deals with the state of the art on the eve of the formulation of the lch some 30 years ago part ii sets forth the theoretical foundations of the model in its original formulation and later amendment calling attention to various implications distinctive to it and sometimes counter intuitive it also includes a review of a number of crucial empirical tests both at the individual and the aggregate level part iii reviews some applications of lch to current policy issues though only in sketchy fashion as space constraints prevent fuller discussion this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a note on environmental federalism interpreting some contradictory results abstract this paper reconciles some conflicting interpretations of recent literature on interjurisdictional environmental regulatory competition 6 7 present a model in which competition to attract investment by lowering environmental standards leads to a pareto optimal equilibrium 3 and 4 describe a model in which such competition can result in a suboptimal nash equilibrium while it would be possible to draw opposite policy implications from the two models regarding the appropriate degree of environmental federalism such a conclusion would be incorrect this paper reconciles the different results by showing that they depend in large part on monopoly profits and tax exporting not the nature of the pollution externality or environmental federalism

effects of environmental regulation on foreign and domestic plant births is there a home field advantage abstract whether environmental regulations alter capital flows remains a hotly debated issue this paper uses county level data to examine the location decisions of domestic and foreign firms in a single empirical model and tests for asymmetries by firm origin in the degree to which capital flows are influenced by environmental standards we find that while domestic firms are influenced by environmental regulations foreign firms are not since the benefits of foreign investment are well documented foreign plants typically provide more jobs and increase local wages by more than domestic plants this result suggests a double dividend is available foreign plants provide an economic stimulus and are not unduly influenced by environmental protections

environmental regulations in gravity equations evidence from europe one implication of the pollution haven hypothesis is that countries export more by applying more lenient environmental regulations most studies that apply gravity type equations do not find robust support for environmental regulations to affect bilateral exports in this paper we show that one can obtain robust negative effects of stringency as long as gravity equations are well specified with respect to theory our results based on the european data are both very consistent with us studies on environmental regulations and another line of very recent studies that infer non biased price or substitution elasticities from trade equations we show that more stringent environmental regulations when depicting a pure cost effect are reducing exports the coefficient is even larger in the case where exporting countries are central and eastern european countries comparing to the eu15 further we show that there is no significant difference in the impact of regulations on trade in case of dirty and clean sectors finally when using gmm estimation our environmental stringency coefficient gets significantly reinforced

the assessment consumer expenditure this article aims to illuminate two sets of consumption puzzles the first concerns the behavior of aggregate saving rates in the 1980s and early 1990s collapse and rebound in scandinavia and the u k and apparently a more secular decline in the u s the second set of puzzles concerns various apparent contradictions of the rational expectations permanent income hypothesis e g in time series the excess sensitivity of consumption changes to anticipated income changes and in cross sections the tendency of consumption and income age profiles to follow each other more than standard life cycle theory implies the article discusses in relatively non technical terms the implications both for euler equations and solved out consumption functions of introducing uncertainty credit constraint consumption leisure interactions habits and durability alternative to rational expectations the illiquidity of some assets and financial deregulation it also compares the merits of euler and solved out models of aggregate consumption

the role of smart metering and decentralized electricity storage for smart grids the importance of positive externalities because of its fluctuating nature the feed in of renewable energy sources into low voltage distribution grids complicates the balancing of demand and supply this carries the risk of grid instabilities causing damage to electronic devices and power outages which eventually lead to deadweight losses in principle the problems arising from fluctuating feed in can be solved by increasing demand elasticity or decoupling generation and consumption for the first an advanced metering infrastructure and for the second decentralized electricity storage are considered core enablers however to date the diffusion of these future smart grids core components is low the present study provides new insights for understanding and overcoming diffusion barriers for this purpose a qualitative research approach was chosen the most important stakeholders as well as related private costs and benefits are identified the findings show that both of these smart grid components are widely considered beneficial to society by experts however because the numerous private benefits are widely distributed among distinct players socially desired investments are hampered by positive externalities the importance of well designed and consistent regulatory and legal frameworks that provide economic incentives to involved stakeholders is highlighted in the results

responding to policy change new business models for renewable energy cooperatives barriers perceived by cooperatives members abstract renewable energy cooperatives recs in germany have received considerable attention in recent years their number having risen to nearly a thousand since 2004 this growth has resulted largely from germany s feed in tariff system recent changes in this policy however have made the previous rec business models mostly unprofitable so recs are looking for new business models our study aims at identifying those new models and characterizing the implementation barriers recs face to this end we interviewed rec members and management and observed rec annual general meetings we found three significant barriers first risk aversion on the part of both members and management second concerns about the environmental impacts or the ethics of certain models that while legal are not felt to align with the intentions of lawmakers finally the lack of competencies and time of the mostly unsalaried rec management these barriers could put the future of recs at risk and so threaten the contributions recs make to the german energy transition professionalization partnerships and other strategies can help mitigate this risk if recs are to continue to play an important role in the energy transition policy makers would be wise to consider measures to support their continued growth

does environmental regulation drive away inbound foreign direct investment evidence from a quasi natural experiment in china abstract this paper investigates whether environmental regulation affects inbound foreign direct investment the identification uses the two control zones tcz policy implemented by the chinese government in 1998 in which tougher environmental regulations were imposed in tcz cities but not others our difference in difference in differences estimation explores three dimension variations specifically city i e tcz versus non tcz cities industry i e more polluting industries relative to less polluting ones and year i e before and after the tcz policy we find that tougher environmental regulation leads to less foreign direct investment meanwhile we find that foreign multinationals from countries with better environmental protections than china are insensitive to the toughening environmental regulation while those from countries with worse environmental protections than china show strong negative responses

national borders and international trade evidence from the european union in this paper the impact of national borders on international trade within the european union is considered using a gravity model i find that averaged over all eu countries intranational trade is about ten times as high as international trade with an eu partner country of similar size and distance this relatively strong home bias suggests that even within the european union national borders still have a decisive impact on trade patterns jel classification f02 f14 f15 o52 ce memoire examine l impact des frontieres nationales sur le commerce international a l interieur de l union europeenne on montre que en moyenne pour tous les pays de l union europeenne le commerce intranational est a peu pres dix fois plus important que le commerce international avec un pays partenaire de l union europeenne de meme taille et a meme distance ce degre relativement important de preference nationale suggere que meme dans le cadre de l union europeenne les frontieres nationales ont encore un impact determinant sur les patterns de commerce

fdi in space spatial autoregressive relationships in foreign direct investment abstract there are a number of theoretical reasons why foreign direct investment fdi into a host country may depend on the fdi in proximate countries such spatial interdependence has been largely ignored by the empirical fdi literature with only a couple recent papers accounting for such issues in their estimation this paper conducts a general examination of spatial interactions in empirical fdi models using data on us outbound fdi activity we find that estimated relationships of traditional determinants of fdi are surprisingly robust to inclusion of terms to capture spatial interdependence even though such interdependence is estimated to be significant however we find that both the traditional determinants of fdi and the estimated spatial interdependence are quite sensitive to the sample of countries one examines

estimating the return to endogenous schooling decisions via conditional second moments this paper employs conditional second moments to identify the impact of education in wage regressions where education is treated as endogenous this approach avoids the use of instrumental variables in a setting where instruments are frequently not available we employ this methodology to estimate the returns to schooling for a sample of australian workers we find that accounting for the endogeneity of education in this manner increases the estimated return to education from 6 percent to 10 percent

a knowledge and physical capital model of international trade flows foreign direct investment and multinational enterprises abstract this paper addresses two important issues at the nexus of the literatures on international trade foreign direct investment fdi foreign affiliate sales fas and multinational enterprises mnes first the introduction of a third internationally mobile factor physical capital to the standard 2 2 2 knowledge capital model of mnes with skilled and unskilled labor allows us to resolve fairly readily the puzzle in the modern mne literature that foreign affiliate sales among two identical economies completely displace their international trade intra industry trade and intra industry fdi and fas can coexist for national and multinational firms with identical productivities in identical countries second the introduction also of a third country to the model suggests a formal n country theoretical rationale for estimating gravity equations of bilateral fdi flows and fas in a manner consistent with estimating gravity equations for bilateral trade flows

going beyond best technology and lowest price on renewable energy investors preference for service driven business models abstract renewable energy is becoming increasingly important for economies in many countries but still in an emerging industry renewable energy requires supportive energy policy helping firms to develop and protect competitive advantages in global competition as a guideline for designing such policy we consult well informed stakeholders within the renewable energy industry investors their preferences serve as explorative indicator for assessing which business models might succeed in competition to contribute to only limited research on renewable energy investors preferences we ask which business models investment managers for renewable energy prefer to invest in we report from an explorative study of 380 choices of renewable energy investment managers based on the stated preferences we modelled three generic business models to calculate the share of investors preferences we find exiting evidence a customer intimacy business model that proposes best services is much more preferred by investors than business models that propose lowest price or best technology policy makers can use those insights for designing policy that supports service driven business models for renewable energy with a scope on customer needs rather than technology or price additionally we state important implications for renewable energy entrepreneurs managers and research

econometric evaluation of consumers expenditure equations large errors in forecasting consumption in the late 1980s and early 1990s were a major contribution to the poor performance in economic forecasting overall these errors have been attributed to the inability of existing models to capture important influences on consumer behavior such as the effects of financial deregulation and shifts in expectations revisions to models followed their failure to predict the late 1980s boom an important question is whether these developments help to explain the unanticipated downturn in consumers expenditure in the early 1990s this article presents an appraisal of eight recent u k consumption functions it is found that these models can explain much of the rise in consumption in the late 1980s however forecast errors for the early 1990s while within the historical range are predominantly negative the nature of this overprediction suggests that further research on household finances including the role of housing as collateral is required copyright 1994 by oxford university press

outward foreign direct investment patterns of italian firms in the european union s emission trading scheme we consider the role played by the european union s emissions trading system eu ets as a possible driver of outward foreign direct investment fdi for italian manufacturing firms using a panel dataset of about 22 000 firms covering the first two phases of the eu ets and the period before the eu ets we measure the patterns of fdi towards countries not covered by the eu ets the results show that the eu ets had a weak effect on the number of new subsidiaries abroad extensive margin while it had a larger impact on production taking place in foreign subsidiaries intensive margin especially in trade intensive sectors

renewable energy investment by the world bank world bank group lending for renewable energy accelerated in the 1990s and resulted in 17 approved projects with 700 million in bank loans and 230 million in grants by the global environment facility the bank s 1999 energy sector strategy fuel for thought charted new directions for renewable energy investment the present paper considers the implementation challenges of fuel for thought strategies and the opportunities for carrying them out the paper distinguishes between agendas in the energy and rural development sectors and reviews limitations to implementing these agendas lessons from projects are just emerging but suggest ve areas of support for renewable energy by the bank in the future renewable energy nancing electric power policy frameworks rural energy enterprises regulated rural energy concessions and domestic technology manufacturing interviews with the private sector suggest additional forms of support assist with business plans nance pre feasibility studies reduce commercial risks support joint ventures build market volume and stability and pilot and test innovative business models the e ectiveness of the bank in following through on its ambitious agenda fundamentally rests on the willingness and commitment of developing countries to pursue these strategies and the degree to which renewable energy applications are seen to serve countries development priorities 2001 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

an empirical investigation of the pollution haven effect with strategic environment and trade policy abstract using a new dataset on the stringency and enforcement of environmental policy this study is the first to find robust confirmation of a pollution haven effect in a cross country context by accounting for strategically determined environment trade and intellectual property right ipr policies a simple game theoretic approach to policy determination is described which suggests an identification strategy based on other country characteristics it is found that for the top 20th percentile of countries in terms of growth in u s multinational affiliate value added as much as 8 6 of that growth between 1999 and 2003 can be attributed to declining relative stringency and enforcement of environmental policy the results are robust to a number of identification tests weak iv tests and third country spatial effects further evidence is found that relatively footloose industries are more likely to be affected by environmental policy than more traditionally dirty industries and enforcement of environmental policies tends to be a more important deterrent than the stringency of the policy set

three new empirical tests of the pollution haven hypothesis when environmental regulation is endogenous the validity of existing empirical tests of the pollution haven hypothesis phh is constantly under scrutiny due to two shortcomings first the issues of unobserved heterogeneity and measurement error in environmental regulation are typically ignored due to the lack of a credible traditional instrumental variable second while the recent literature has emphasized the importance of geographic spillovers in determining the location choice of foreign investment such spatial effects have yet to be adequately incorporated into empirical tests of the phh as a result the impact of environmental regulations on trade patterns and the location decisions of multinational enterprises remains unclear in this paper we circumvent the lack of a traditional instrument within a model incorporating geographic spillovers utilizing three novel identification strategies using state level panel data on inbound u s fdi relative abatement costs and other determinants of fdi we consistently find i evidence of environmental regulation being endogenous ii a negative impact of own environmental regulation on inbound fdi in pollution intensive sectors particularly when measured by employment and iii larger effects of environmental regulation once endogeneity is addressed neighboring environmental regulation is not found to be an important determinant of fdi

intra national trade costs assaying regional frictions abstract the effects of intra regional inter regional and international frictions on the trade flows of canada s provinces are disentangled by gravity model techniques unexplained trade barriers utbs are the difference between inter provincial trade barriers inferred from pair fixed effects and from bilateral distance and contiguity the estimates reveal large intra national trade costs and utbs that vary significantly across canada s provinces decomposition of utbs into relative border effects and a systematic residual utb is based on a novel cobb douglas aggregator of intra provincial and pure inter provincial trade costs variation of both components across provinces is big

the role of the business model in capturing value from innovation evidence from xerox corporation s technology spin off companies this paper explores the role of the business model in capturing value from early stage technology a successful business model creates a heuristic logic that connects technical potential with the realization of economic value the business model unlocks latent value from a technology but its logic constrains the subsequent search for new alternative models for other technologies later on an implicit cognitive dimension overlooked in most discourse on the topic we explore the intellectual roots of the concept offer a working definition and show how the xerox corporation arose by employing an effective business model to commercialize a technology rejected by other leading companies of the day we then show the long shadow that this model cast upon xerox s later management of selected spin off companies from xerox parc xerox evaluated the technical potential of these spin offs through its own business model while those spin offs that became successful did so through evolving business models that came to differ substantially from that of xerox the search and learning for an effective business model in failed ventures by contrast were quite limited

sustainable rural electrification using rice husk biomass energy a case study of cambodia abstract the role of energy in overall social and economical developments is well recognized however most energy providers are reluctant to venture in rural regions of developing countries these regions are generally characterized by low income populations minimum access to electricity rare access to financial services or loans in this paper we present the potential of rice husk for rural electrification in cambodia rice husk is locally abundant at almost no cost with a production over 9 3 million tons paddy rice in 2014 for a total population of about 15 million people the conversion of rice husk into electricity through gasification or thermally generated electricity is a well known technology rice husk can contribute in a sustainable manner to grant access to electricity to cambodian rural population and is more reliable and competitive with reference to other renewable energy sources of electricity the present investigation focuses on the study of self sustaining energy service model to provide grid quality power to rural populations without the need of subsidies in cambodia many rice mills are operating in rural and semi urban areas some of these mills are now using rice husk for electricity production for industries and rural households generally for lighting at low cost we believe that the power systems focusing on both power requirements for the industry such rice mills and power requirements for the people living in the neighboring villages rural areas at affordable tariff could become the most appropriate solution for the sustainable rural electrification along with the potential of rice husk for rural electrification in cambodia we present a financially viable business model to provide the grid quality power to rural population without grant or subsidy

wealth effects and macroeconomic dynamics the effect of wealth on consumption is an issue of long standing interest to economists conventional wisdom suggests that fluctuations in household wealth have driven major swings in economic activity both in the united states and abroad this paper considers the so called consumption wealth effects there is an extensive existing literature on wealth effects that has yielded some insights for example research has documented the relationship between aggregate household wealth and aggregate consumption over time and a large number of household level studies suggest that wealth effects are larger for households facing credit constraints however there are also many unresolved issues regarding the influence of household wealth on consumption we review the most important of these issues and argue that there is a need for much more research in these areas as well as better data sources for conducting such analysis

governmental decentralization and corruption revisited accounting for potential endogeneity the causal effect of governmental decentralization on firm level corruption is inconclusive due to the difficulty in obtaining a traditional instrumental variable circumventing the issue by using the lewbel 2012 identification strategy we find mild evidence of political decentralization being endogenous but no support for fiscal decentralization being endogenous

convergence and migration among provinces have regional disparities in canada changed over the past thirty years this paper assesses the robustness of earlier findings of convergence in the levels and growth rates of provincial per capita gdp and then estimates the extent to which interprovincial and international migration is being influenced by regional differences in incomes and employment excerpt

how does foreign direct investment affect pollution toward a better understanding of the direct and conditional effects this paper seeks to investigate the impact of foreign direct investments fdis on industrial pollution hbox co 2 hbox so 2 hbox no mathrm x and bod emissions on a large sample of highly heterogeneous countries by using panel data on manufacturing fdis from france germany sweden and the united kingdom between 1995 and 2008 and by developing an empirical model with first and second order interaction terms we investigate the existence and the conditionality of the most controversial fdi induced effects on industrial emissions i e pollution haven factor endowments and pollution halo hypotheses the paper has three main findings 1 the central hypotheses linking pollution to fdi are found to act simultaneously with opposing effects 2 fdis are associated with pollution reduction i e predominating pollution halo induced effect in countries with low to average capital to labour ratio but not too lax environmental regulation 3 fdis are found to increase pollution i e prevailing pollution haven and or factor endowments induced effects in countries with average capital endowments and lax environmental regulations as well as in all the capital abundant countries though with a smaller magnitude in countries having strict environmental regulations and or a high skilled labour force some specific and interesting findings are discussed regarding different fdi origin countries and fdi host country groups

comparing drivers barriers and opportunities of business models for renewable energies a review abstract this article systematically reviews the emerging field of research on business models for renewable energies differentiating between developing and industrialized countries the key findings on developing countries are as follows first there is a lack of quantitative data second opportunities are driven primarily by unfulfilled basic needs and micro finance whereas corruption and weak electricity grids are the main barriers and third business models should be replicable the key findings on industrialized countries are as follows first opportunities are driven primarily by climate change mitigation and energy efficiency improvements second stuck thought patterns and high costs of energy storage are important barriers and third cooperation is a key in future business models to handle increasing complexity this review reveals implications for researchers and policy makers promising avenues for future research are the analysis of intermodal business models and opportunities concerning energy self supply and renewable district heating policy makers are advised to design legal frameworks that account for the global nature of the renewable energy challenge and are simultaneously adapted to regional disparities

the saving and investment nexus for china evidence from cointegration tests the saving and investment nexus as postulated by feldstein and horioka fh 1980 is revisited the saving investment correlation for china is estimated over the periods 1952 1998 and 1952 1994 the latter culminating in a period of fixed exchange rate regime amongst the key results it is found that saving and investment are correlated for china for both the period of the fixed exchange rate and the entire sample period with high saving investment correlation the results suggest that the chinese economy is in conformity with the fh hypothesis this is a valid outcome for in china capital mobility was fairly restricted over the 1952 1994 period as indicated by the relatively low foreign direct investment

an aggregate consumption function for canada a cointegration approach this study utilizes cointegration theory and error correction models ecms to specify a candidate dynamiac formulation of the aggregate consumption function using quarterly canadian date the variables entering the long run equlibrium relationship are tested for unit roots using a variety of techniques such as the dickey fuller the augemented dickey fuller and the phillips perron test profedures the engle and granger cointegration test and the fully modified consistent and efficient estimator of phillips and hansen are used to estimate the cointegration relationship johansen s maximum likelihood approach is also used to determine the rank of the cointegrating matrix the error correction model which appears to be a tentatively adequate conditional characterization of the date generating process revelas that disposable income wealth government expenditures relative prices and liquidity constraints proxied by the unemployment rate are important variables non nested tests are carried out against

do state borders matter for u s intranational trade the role of history and internal migration empirical evidence of the impact of borders on international trade flows using the gravity equation approach abounds this paper examines the empirical relevance of state borders in u s interstate trade for various specifications of the gravity equation we find a large and economically significant subnational border effect for some specifications however two model specifications drastically reduce if not eliminate the border effect i dynamic panel specifications controlling for past levels of trade and ii models conditioning on internal migration les resultats empiriques de l analyse des impacts des frontieres sur les flux de commerce international en utilisant les modeles de gravite sont devenus monnaie courante ce texte examine l impact des frontieres entre etats a l aide de cette technique il s avere que les effets de frontieres infranationales sont grands et significatifs pour certaines specifications du modele cependant deux specifications du modele reduisent dramatiquement s ils n eliminent pas l effet de frontiere i des specifications qui prennent en compte les niveaux anterieurs de commerce et ii des specifications qui dependent de la migration interne

financial impact of energy efficiency under a federal combined efficiency and renewable electricity standard case study of a kansas super utility abstract historically local state and federal policies have separately promoted the generation of electricity from renewable technologies and the pursuit of energy efficiency to help mitigate the detrimental effects of global climate change and foster energy independence federal policymakers are currently considering and several states have enacted a combined efficiency and renewable electricity standard which proponents argue provides a comprehensive approach with greater flexibility and at lower cost we examine the financial impacts on various stakeholders from alternative compliance strategies with a combined efficiency and renewable electricity standard ceres using a case study approach for utilities in kansas our results suggest that an investor owned utility is likely to pursue the most lucrative compliance strategy for its shareholders one that under invests in energy efficiency resources if a business model for energy efficiency inclusive of both a lost fixed cost recovery mechanism and a shareholder incentive mechanism is implemented our analysis indicates that an investor owned utility would be more willing to pursue energy efficiency as a lower cost ceres compliance strategy absent implementing such a regulatory mechanism separate energy efficiency and renewable portfolio standards would improve the likelihood of reducing reliance on fossil fuels at least cost through the increased pursuit of energy efficiency

border effects and the availability of domestic products abroad trade between countries could fall short of trade within a country because 1 the volume of international trade is less than the volume of domestic trade for a given product the intensive margin or 2 some goods that are sold domestically are simply not exported the extensive margin my theoretical model illustrates that either of these two factors could explain a given aggregate border effect i examine the empirical relevance of this distinction by isolating the fraction of total domestic production attributable only to exporters finding that around one half of the border effect may be attributed to each explanation jel classification f1 les effets de frontieres et la disponibilite de produits domestiques a l etranger le commerce entre pays peut etre moindre que le commerce a l interieur d un pays parce que 1 le volume de commerce international est moindre que le volume du commerce interieur pour un produit donne la marge intensive ou 2 certains biens qui sont vendus a l interieur d un pays ne sont tout simplement pas exportes la marge extensive un modele theorique montre que l un et l autre de ces facteurs pourraient expliquer un certain effet de frontiere au niveau agrege on montre l importance empirique de cette distinction en isolant la fraction de la production interieure totale attribuable strictement aux exportateurs et il s avere qu a peu pres la moitie de l effet de frontiere est attribuable a chacune des deux explications

renewable micro generation of heat and electricity review on common and missing socio technical configurations abstract a widespread adoption of distributed generation dg technologies in energy systems can play a key role in creating clean reliable energy and support the targets of emission reduction a transition from current modes of production to a significant deployment of renewable energy technologies can fundamentally affect the structure of the industry and change the way energy is produced transmitted and sold the current paper provides an extended review of the socio technical configurations of micro generation based on journal publications and reports during the 21st century the paper analyses currently existing and missing configurations and discusses technology and policy implications to support proliferation of micro generation technology and local energy production from renewable sources the potential for new configurations can be found particularly in heat producing micro generation with solar heat heat pumps and biomass developing further the operations and maintenance of distributed generation technologies and business models appears an area that calls for further innovation and corresponding innovation policy measures third party service and community driven deployment models can aide the proliferation of distributed generation and further innovation therein justifying the introduction of feed in tariffs to attract such models during their early diffusion

estimating the intrahousehold incidence of illness child health and gender inequality in the allocation of time in this paper the authors develop and implement a method for estimating the effects of infant morbidity on the differential allocation of time of family members based on discrete indicators of health and activity participation commonly available in survey data and within the context of a household model in which health is determined endogenously their estimates that take into account the simultaneity of health activity associations indicate that increased levels of infant morbidity significantly exacerbate existing differentials in the accumulation of human capital across teenage boys and girls in indonesia copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

footloose and pollution free in numerous studies economists have found little empirical evidence that environmental regulations affect trade flows in this paper we propose and test several common explanations for why the effect of environmental regulations on trade may be difficult to detect we demonstrate that whereas most trade occurs among industrialized economies environmental regulations have stronger effects on trade between industrialized and developing economies we find that for most industries pollution abatement costs are a small component of total costs and are unrelated to trade flows in addition we show that those industries with the largest pollution abatement costs also happen to be the least geographically mobile or footloose after accounting for these distinctions we measure a significant effect of pollution abatement costs on imports from developing countries and in pollution intensive footloose industries

effects of large scale penetration of renewables the italian case in the years 2008 2015 abstract italy has experienced a revolution in the electricity production mix in the years 2008 2015 when a large scale deployment of intermittent renewables caused a high volatility of electricity prices stopped the investments in both fossil and renewable power plants and caused a high degree of uncertainty in matching electricity demand and supply the current legislation gives renewable energy the priority of dispatchment producing a significant decrease of the operational hours of all kinds of power plants which caused economic problems to utilities that had started investments in new high efficiency combined cycles before 2008 and reduced the overall efficiency of fossil fired power generation in order to restore the opportunities for further investments in renewable energy systems it is very important to develop long term policies and interventions to improve the capacity to balance the electricity demand and supply

volatility spillovers among oil and stock markets in the us and saudi arabia in this article we use high frequency data and an identification via changes in volatility approach to assess the volatility spillovers among oil and the us and saudi arabian stock markets we doc

transforming the energy system why municipalities strive for energy self sufficiency abstract despite evidence that a rising number of municipalities in germany are striving for energy self sufficiency there is little understanding of the driving factors behind this development we investigate economic ecological social and energy system related factors that drive municipalities to strive for energy self sufficiency with a focus on electricity supply the empirical data for this study is based on insights generated through expert interviews n 19 with mayors energy experts and scientists as well as a quantitative study among mayors and energy officers n 109 of german municipalities results show that environmental awareness tax revenues and greater independence from private utilities are positively related to the mayors attitude towards the realization of energy self sufficiency furthermore citizens the political environment the mayor s political power and his her financial resources are relevant factors for a municipality striving for energy self sufficiency policymakers need to decide whether or not to support mayors in this development for suitable policy interventions the results suggest the importance of an integrated approach that considers a combination of identified factors finally we propose a morphological box to structure different aspects of energy self sufficiency and categorize the present study

toward a new deal for saudi arabia oil or islamic stock market investment amid the ongoing national development programme of saudi arabia saudi vision 2030 a large trade openness plan to reduce saudi arabia s dependence on oil and to diversify its economy is announced

aggregation bias compositional change and the border effect borders affect the composition not only the level of interregional trade in disaggregated u s commodity flow data border effects vary substantially across commodities substantial border induced compositional change suggests the possibility that standard estimates suffer from aggregation bias arising from endogenous industry location patterns and the presence of zero observations in commodity level trade adjusting for these effects reduces the estimate of the aggregate border effect from 20 9 to 5 7 jel classification f14 f15 biais d agregation changement de composition et effet de frontieres les frontieres affectent la composition et pas seulement le volume de commerce inter regional une analyse des donnees desagregees des flux de commerce de biens des etats unis montre que l effet de frontieres varie substantiellement selon les biens le changement de composition du commerce engendre par les frontieres suggere la possibilite que les estimations usuelles souffrent d un biais d agregation resultant des patterns de localisation industrielle endogenes et de la presence d observations nulles dans le commerce de certains biens un ajustement pour tenir compte de ces effets suggere que les effets de frontieres passent de 20 9 a 5 7

revisiting the effect of household size on consumption over the life cycle abstract although the link between household size and consumption has strong empirical support there is no consistent way in which demographics are dealt with in standard life cycle models we study the relationship between the predictions of the single agent model the standard in the literature versus a simple model extension the demographics model where deterministic changes in household size and composition affect optimal consumption decisions we show theoretically that the demographics model is conceptually preferable to the single agent model as it captures economic mechanisms ignored by the latter however our quantitative analysis demonstrates that differences in predictions for consumption are negligible across models when using standard calibration strategies this suggests that it is largely irrelevant which model specification is used

the trade creating effects of business and social networks evidence from france using theory grounded estimations of trade flow equations this paper investigates the role that business and social networks play in shaping trade between french regions the bilateral intensity of networks is quantified using the financial structure and location of french firms and bilateral stocks of migrants compared to a situation without networks migrants are shown to double bilateral trade flows while networks of firms multiply trade flows by as much as four in some specifications finally taking network effects into account divides the estimation of the impact of transport costs and of the effect of administrative borders by around three

asymmetric effects of interest rate changes the role of the consumption wealth channel this article examines the role of the consumption wealth channel in explaining asymmetric effects of monetary policy changes towards this end we draw upon available literature on the consumption function and behavioural finance to construct a framework for asymmetric effects of monetary policy caused by the impact of wealth changes on aggregate consumption we then employ data from the uk to examine the validity of the proposed framework in the context of a liberalized economy with easy access to consumer credit wealth reduction due to monetary tightening is expected to have weaker impact on spending than increase in wealth our results validate the above hypothesis

factor movements and commodity trade as complements abstract several models are presented in which factor mobility leads to an increase in the volume of world trade the models share the common characteristic that the basis for trade is something other than differences in relative factor endowments these alternative bases for trade include returns to scale imperfect competition production and factor taxes and differences in production technology taken together the models suggest a more general idea the widely held notion that trade in goods and factors are substitutes is in fact a rather special result which is a general characteristic only of factor proportions models

world bank gef solar home systems projects experiences and lessons learned 1993 2000 abstract twelve projects provide energy services to off grid rural households in developing countries by enhancing markets for solar home systems and by removing barriers to their dissemination project approaches are reviewed along with early implementation experience and lessons suggested by experience most projects incorporate the following features pilot private sector and ngo delivery models pilot consumer credit delivery mechanisms pay first cost subsidies and offer affordable system sizes support policy development and capacity develop codes and standards and establish certification testing and enforcement institutions and conduct consumer awareness and marketing programs most projects are just beginning implementation a few are almost completed lessons from early experience suggest that solar home system delivery firms face a myriad of difficulties operating in rural areas credit risk is a serious concern of both financiers and dealers and makes credit sales particularly challenging technical performance of systems is becoming well proven customers desire a range of component options and service levels and can benefit from even small systems projects must recognize the link between rural electric grid extension and solar home system demand and marketing campaigns can be extremely costly and time consuming in rural areas challenges are to demonstrate sustainable and replicable business models develop regulatory models for energy service concessions and integrate rural electrification policy with solar home system delivery

the environmental consequences of trade evidence from subnational trade flows abstract the debate over the environmental consequences of free trade is not only quite heated but also entails significant policy ramifications recently cross sectional analysis at the country level has made use of exogenous determinants of trade to identify the causal effect of trade on the environment finding moderate evidence of a beneficial impact of expanded trade on environmental quality given the stakes involved we revisit this finding using subnational data on trade flows across us states and several measures of pollution not only does the analysis shed further light on the debate at the international level but also addresses a heretofore unexamined question does greater inter regional commerce at the subnational level harm the environment our findings are striking providing further evidence against a negative environmental impact of trade for the majority of measures analyzed however several sources of heterogeneity arise that are noteworthy

environmental regulation and industry location in europe this paper estimates the effect of environmental regulation on industry location and compares it with other determinants of location such as agricultural education and r d country characteristics the analysis is based on a general empirical trade model that captures the interaction between country and industry characteristics in determining industry location the johnson neyman technique is used to fully explicate the nature of the conditional interactions the model is applied to data on 16 manufacturing industries from 13 european countries the empirical results indicate that the pollution haven effect is present and that the relative strength of such an effect is of about the same magnitude as other determinants of industry location a significant negative effect on industry location is observed only at relatively high levels of industry pollution intensity

hybrid renewable energy support policy in the power sector the contracts for difference and capacity market case study abstract the article employs qualitative methods in contextualizing and conceptualizing the hybrid renewable energy support policy it claims that hybrid policies may combine distinct mechanisms to drive desirable objectives better than traditional policies a policy cycle helps to frame the united kingdom s contracts for difference and capacity market cfd cm scheme as a case study the cfd cm policy emerged to address environmental and energy challenges through the deployment of renewable energy re in a low carbon economy employing liberalization environmental protection is foremost in this scheme the policy combines and improves on the elements of feed in tariff fit and quota obligation qo and strives to solve the problems of these traditional policies it addresses regulatory uncertainty under fit by employing private law mechanics to guarantee above loss reward for low carbon generation and addresses market uncertainty under qo by incentivizing the capacity to supply future low carbon energy based on projected demand hence creating a predictable and stable market it also accommodates other important commitments overall the cfd cm scheme is a hybrid policy that engages the energy market mainly for advancing the end goal of environmental protection to thrive however it needs to meet private sector interests substantially

how renewables will change electricity markets in the next five years photovoltaic pv cells onshore wind turbines internet technologies and storage technologies have the potential to fundamentally change electricity markets in the years ahead photovoltaic cells are the most disruptive energy technology as they allow consumers of all sizes to produce power by themselves new actors in the power market can begin operating with a new bottom up control logic unsubsidised pv markets may start to take off in 2013 fuelling substantial growth where pv power is getting cheaper than grid or diesel backup electricity for commercial consumers managing loads and achieving a good match between power consumption and weather dependent power production will likely become a key issue this consumption production balance may trigger massive innovation and investment in energy management technologies involving different kinds of storage and controls increasing autonomy and flexibility of consumers challenges the top down control logic of traditional power supply and pushes for a more decentralised and multi layered system how rapidly and smoothly this transformation occurs depends to a large extent on the adaptation speed of the regulatory framework and on the ability of market players to develop appropriate business models the paper discusses conflicts of interest hurdles and drivers opportunities and traps for this perspective

intra national home bias some explanations wolf demonstrates that trade within the united states appears substantially impeded by state borders we revisit this finding with improved data we show that much intranational home bias can be explained by wholesaling activity shipments by wholesalers are much more localized within states than shipments from manufacturing establishments controlling for relative prices and the use of actual rather than imputed shipment distances also reduces home bias estimates

utilities business models for renewable energy a review abstract the transformation of today s electric power sector to a more sustainable energy production based on renewable energies will change the structure of the industry consequently utilities as the major stakeholders in this transformation will face new challenges in their way of doing business they will have to adapt their business models to remain competitive in the new energy landscape the present review of business model literature shows that two basic choices exist utility side business models and customer side business models the two approaches follow a very different logic of value creation while the former is based on a small number of large projects the latter is based on a large number of small projects the article reveals that blueprints for utility side business models are available whereas customer side business models are in an early stage of development applying the business model framework as an analytical tool it is found that existing utility side business models comprise a series of advantages for utilities in terms of revenue potential and risk avoidance this study provides new insights about why utilities will favor utility side business models over customer side business models and why they also should engage in customer side business models in their quest for more sustainable future business models

explaining the border effect the role of exchange rate variability shipping costs and geography this paper exploits a three dimensional panel data set of prices on 27 traded goods over 88 quarters across 96 cities in the us and japan we show that a simple average of good level real exchange rates tracks the nominal exchange rate well suggesting strong evidence of sticky prices focusing on dispersion in prices between city pairs we find that crossing the us japan border is equivalent to adding as much as 43 000 trillion miles to the cross country volatility of relative prices we turn next to economic explanations for this so called border effect and to its dynamics distance unit shipping costs and exchange rate variability collectively explain a substantial portion of the observed international market segmentation relative wage variability on the other hand has little independent impact on segmentation 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

low carbon growth for indian iron and steel sector exploring the role of voluntary environmental compliance abstract india s move towards low carbon growth will be successful only when the industries assume responsibilities of climate change previous studies argue that voluntary compliance by firms being business led initiative is appropriate for developing nations however provides little empirical evidence the present study investigates the role of voluntary compliance in improving firms environmental performance in indian iron and steel sector using sample of 76 firms over years 2006 07 to 2011 12 environmental performance is measured by co2 emissions in absence of emission data at firm level we quantify co2 emissions from energy consumption using intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc reference approach voluntary compliance is indicated by presence of voluntary environmental management standards iso 14001 the study finds that 33 of sample firms comply with iso 14001 further the empirical results based on panel data econometric suggests that there is a significant positive relationship between voluntary compliance and improvement in environmental performance even after addressing simultaneity issues and including other firm characteristics thus voluntary compliance may be used as supplementary policy tool to achieve low carbon growth in industries additionally there is a need to disseminate information about iso 14001 by government as well as firms to create awareness

canadian provinces in world trade engagement and detachment the authors test whether the findings of john mccallum 1995 and john f helliwell 1996 that the canada u s border substantially decreases trade are evident in canada s trade with the rest of the world they also test whether there are differences across provinces and between each province s exports and imports in this border effect the authors find canada s border with the united states is neither larger nor smaller than the border with the rest of the world and that the border s size varies dramatically across provinces provinces exhibit distinct borders for exports and imports suggesting british columbia is an export platform while ontario and quebec are import platforms

is environmental policy a secondary trade barrier an empirical analysis should international trade agreements be extended to include negotiations over environmental policy the answer depends on whether countries distort levels of environmental regulations as a secondary means of providing protection to domestic industries our results suggest that they do previous studies of this relationship have treated the level of environmental regulation as exogenous and found a negligible correlation between environmental regulation and trade flows in contrast we find that when the level of environmental regulation is modelled as an endogenous variable its estimated effect on trade flows is significantly higher than previously reported jel classification fl f14 f18 est ce que la politique environnementale est une barriere commerciale secondaire une analyse empirique est ce que les accords commerciaux internationaux doivent etre etendus pour couvrir la politique environnementale la reponse depend du degre de distorsion que les pays introduisent dans leur politique environnementale pour proteger leurs industries nationales nos resultats suggerent que cet impact est important des etudes anterieures de cette relation ont traite la politique environnementale comme exogene et ont montre qu il existe une co relation negligeable entre politique envir onnementale et flux commerciaux au contraire nous revelons que quand la politique environnementale est consideree comme variable endoge ne son effet sur les flux com merciaux est plus eleve de maniere significative que ce qu on a note anterieurement

are rta agreements with environmental provisions reducing emissions article i nfo this paper investigates whether rtas with environmental provisions affect relative and absolute pollution levels in order to do so the determinants of carbon dioxide emissions convergence are estimated for a cross section of 182 countries over the period 1980 to 2008 a propensity score matching approach is com bined with difference in differences techniques to effectively isolate the effect of the regional trade agree ment rta variable the usual controls for scale composition and technique effects are added to the estimated model and the endogeneity of income and trade variables is modeled using instruments the main results indicate that the co2 emissions of the pairs of countries that belong to an rta with environmen tal provisions tend to converge and are lower in absolute terms whereas this is not the case for rtas without environmental provisions as regards specific agreements we find that emissions converge more rapidly for nafta than for eu 27 and euro med countries we find consistent evidence that only rtas with environ mental harmonization policies affect relative and absolute pollution levels

2012 international year for sustainable energy for all african frontrunnership in rural electrification abstract 2012 has been declared the international year for sustainable energy for all by the un while africa remains the most underpowered continent the prognosis for a brighter future is looking good as key stakeholders governments private sector civil society and the donor community have mobilized at an unprecedented scale to experiment with new policies regulatory frameworks and business models to rapidly upscale access to sustainable energy the top down central grid expansion approach to increasing electricity access is very capital intensive and yet has gained considerable momentum at the expense of lower cost options that utilize decentralized off grid solutions a decentralized bottom up approach could also use indigenous renewable energy sources and foster more significant linkages with livelihood opportunities in the rural un served territories this paper evaluates the emerging experiments through the lenses of c k prahalad s bottom of the pyramid theory and clayton christensen s disruptive technologies perspective three front runner initiatives involving new business models innovative technologies and institutional capacity building will be analyzed in addition the paper examines a regulatory policy initiative designed to stimulate clean energy investments in ghana though the examples are all from ghana they illustrate general challenges to sub saharan africa as a whole

the complex integration strategies of multinationals and cross country dependencies in the structure of foreign direct investment abstract the behavior of many multinational enterprises is not well described by existing models of foreign direct investment fdi firms often follow strategies that involve vertical integration in some countries and horizontal integration in others a strategy known as complex integration this paper presents a three country model that is used to analyze why firms might follow a strategy of complex integration my analysis reveals that complex integration strategies create complementarities between potential host countries that have important implications for the structure of fdi the analysis also shows that falling transport cost between countries may increase the importance of complex integration strategies

aggregate consumption function and public social security the first time series study for a developing country turkey this article is the first attempt in the literature to investigate the effects of public social security on aggregate consumption in a time series setting for a developing country turkey that has one of the most generous social security systems in the organization for economic cooperation and development oecd region in order to quantify the social security variable this article uses the social security wealth ssw series calculated for turkey in a separate study this study indicates that ssw is the largest part of the household wealth in turkey and therefore should not be ignored in the aggregate consumption studies the results show that its effect on consumption is positive and robust

does energy policy hurt international competitiveness of firms a comparative study for germany switzerland and austria this paper investigates the impact of energy policies on the export performance of firms there has been a long policy debate on potentially negative impacts of cost increasing energy policies on international competitiveness we use firm level data from three countries with similar industry structure but different energy policies germany switzerland and austria we rely on firm manager assessments on the relevance of energy policy in terms of taxes regulations standards subsidies and demand stimulation for their firm operation and link data on the adoption and development of new energy technologies regression analyses and matching approaches both show very few impacts of energy policy on export performance suggesting that either policy impacts on firms cost are negligible in the period of study 2012 to 2014 or likely negative impacts are balanced by the adoption of new technology

three is a crowd exploring the potential of crowdfunding for renewable energy in the netherlands there is a huge gap between demand and supply of finance for energy transitions and the financial and economic crisis have had a negative impact in the already meagre funds for transforming the energy system towards renewable sources in this paper we explore whether crowdfunding for renewable energy as a novel sociotechnical practice developed in a niche has the potential to break through and transform both the energy and the financial regimes utilising the multi level perspective theory we empirically investigate crowdfunding platforms linked to renewable electricity projects in the netherlands the main conclusion is that the volume of crowdfunding today is low but the dynamic of these projects holds potential there is limited indication of learning processes until now as well as limited support from regime actors pointing at a low level of niche stabilization and break through potential which may however be related to the early stage of development of crowdfunding in the netherlands on the other hand the heterogeneity of crowdfunders is very promising platforms dedicated to renewable electricity exclusively and with an investment based business model seem to be the most successful we show how governmental market regulation and support mechanisms are shaping crowdfunding as a business model and discuss the implications for other countries

measuring internal trade distances a new method applied to estimate provincial border effects in canada in this paper we suggest an improved methodology for comparing the intensity of trade across and within national and provincial boundaries earlier efforts to assess border effects for provinces or for countries without internal trade statistics made fairly arbitrary assumptions about average distances for internal trade flows we improve on earlier efforts by taking more complete account of the distribution of population within each province or country internal distance is estimated as a population weighted average of intra city and intercity distances as well as distances to and within rural areas we find higher estimates of internal distances and hence border effects than found in previous studies

forest biorefineries a business opportunity for the finnish forest cluster abstract bioenergy and biomass based products offer the greatest new opportunities for diversifying business in the forest cluster in particular biorefineries which can be integrated into the pulp and paper industry seem to have immense future potential this article aims to explore the biorefinery concept and related new products and business operations as well as new business strategies and company models which are part of the biorefinery value chain these factors which contribute to the establishment and success of forest biorefineries were examined using internet survey responses and compared between scandinavia north america and south america this article looks at the results of the survey primarily from the finnish perspective to help identify competitive advantages upon which successful business operations in the finnish forest cluster can be built according to the survey the outlooks for technical and raw material choices as well as barriers to biorefinery diffusion are very similar in all the studied areas biorefineries and related energy products are considered the way to sustainably guarantee the forest cluster s success an increase in the price of oil motivates the development of forest biorefineries and wood based biofuels however it is obvious that there is a need to revaluate from a fresh perspective the utilisation of wood and the wood refining chain in the forest cluster the survey respondents consider wood based biofuel and chemical production a serious business opportunity for the forest cluster in finland there is a strong confidence in the production of biofuels however all the countries included in the study trust in their own national strengths and in their chance to be a leading actor in the forest biorefinery business worldwide the forest biorefinery business seems to have market potential and global competition can thus be expected

asymmetric responses of money demand to oil price shocks in saudi arabia a non linear ardl approach saudi arabia is an open oil based economy with fixed exchange rates therefore it has limited monetary policy autonomy using non linear autoregressive distributed lag approach this article inves

estimating the household consumption function in saudi arabia an error correction approach abstractwe estimate a micro founded life cycle consumption model for saudi arabia over the period 1970 2017 using error correction model procedures dynamic adjustments are significant and both in

agglomeration effects in foreign direct investment and the pollution haven hypothesis does environmental regulation impair international competitiveness of pollution intensive industries to the extent that they relocate to countries with less stringent regulation turning those countries into pollution havens we test this hypothesis using panel data on outward foreign direct investment fdi flows of various industries in the german manufacturing sector and account for several econometric issues that have been ignored in previous studies most importantly we demonstrate that externalities associated with fdi agglomeration can bias estimates away from finding a pollution haven effect if omitted from the analysis we include the stock of inward fdi as a proxy for agglomeration and employ a gmm estimator to control for endogenous time varying determinants of fdi flows furthermore we propose a difference estimator based on the least polluting industry to break the possible correlation between environmental regulatory stringency and unobservable attributes of fdi recipients in the cross section when accounting for these issues we find robust evidence of a pollution haven effect for the chemical industry

the distribution of wealth and the mpc implications of new european data using new micro data on household wealth from fifteen european countries the household finance and consumption survey we first document substantial cross country variation in how various measures of wealth are distributed across individual households through the lens of a standard realistically calibrated model of buer stock saving with transitory and permanent income shocks we then study how cross country dierences in the wealth distribution and household income dynamics aect the marginal propensity to consume out of transitory shocks mpc we find that the aggregate consumption response ranges between 0 1 and 0 4 and is stronger i in economies with large wealth inequality where a larger proportion of households has little wealth ii under larger transitory income shocks and iii when we consider households only using liquid assets rather than net wealth to smooth consumption

estimating long run economic equilibria with stochastic trends an asymptotic theory is provided to analyze a menu of currently existing estimators of cointegrated systems we study in detail the single equation ecm seecm approach of hendry our theoretical results lead to prescriptions for empirical work such as specifying seecm s nonlinearly and including lagged equilibrium relationships rather than lagged differences of the dependent variable as covariates simulations support these prescriptions and point to problems of overfitting not encountered in the semiparametric approach of phillips and hansen 1990

business structure in renewable energy industry key areas abstract diffusion of renewable energy utilization is difficult because of its entrepreneurial nature and related technological investment political and market uncertainties therefore evaluation of business structure based on traditional business models is difficult in this industry although many countries have actively developed renewable energy technologies by both governments and private sector business professionals are not still assured about participation and investment understanding the areas of business structure that lead to successful commercialization of renewable technologies has suitable research scope in this industry the objective of this article is to identify key areas of business structure to allow newcomers to enter successfully in the renewable energy industry from engineering policy and business aspects the innovative analysis leads to identification of seven sides of renewable energy business