commodities momentum a behavioral perspective the growth in commodity related investments has sparked interest in the performance of momentum strategies in these markets this paper introduces a behavioral proxy of the 52 week high and low momentum that explains a significant proportion of the variation of conventional momentum returns after controlling for commodity specific risk factors our findings show that the 52 week high strategy generates significant profits after accounting for transaction costs we report that the 52 week high strategy is a better predictor of returns than conventional momentum our findings suggest that term structure and hedging pressure risk factors provide only a partial explanation of the results

explaining the attacker s advantage technological paradigms organizational dynamics and the value network abstract understanding when entrants might have an advantage over an industry s incumbent firms in developing and adopting new technologies is a question which several scholars have explained in terms of technological capabilities or organizational dynamics this paper proposes that the value network the context within which a firm competes and solves customers problems is an important factor affecting whether incumbent or entrant firms will most successfully innovate in a study of technology development in the disk drive industry the authors found that incumbents led the industry in developing and adopting new technologies of every sort identified by earlier scholars at component and architectural levels competency enhancing and competency destroying incremental and radical as long as the technology addressed customers needs within the value network in which the incumbents competed entrants led in developing and adopting technologies which addressed user needs in different emerging value networks it is in these innovations which disrupted established trajectories of technological progress in established markets that attackers proved to have an advantage the rate of improvement in product performance which technologists provide may exceed the rate of improvement demanded in established markets this mismatch between trajectories enables firms entering emerging value networks subsequently to attack the industry s established markets as well

should we pay attention to investor attention in forex futures market we investigate whether forex futures dynamics is responsive to change in investor attention the currencies used in the study are the aud australian dollar cad canadian dollar eur euro gbp

the statistical properties of daily foreign exchange rates 1974 1983 abstract this paper examines the statistical properties of daily rates of change of five foreign currencies from 1974 to 1983 the main purpose is to discriminate between two competing explanations for the observed heavy tails of the distribution that the data are independently drawn from a heavy tail distribution which remains fixed over time and that the data come from distributions which vary over time evidence point to the rejection of the first hypothesis further investigations show that the rejection can be attributed to changing means and variances in the data which can be described by a simple statistical model

designing an eu energy and climate policy portfolio for 2030 implications of overlapping regulation under different levels of electricity demand abstract the european union s current climate and energy policy has to operate under an ex ante unforeseen economic crisis as a consequence prices for carbon emission allowances in the eu emissions trading system collapsed however this price collapse may be amplified by the interaction of a carbon emission cap with supplementary policy targets such as minimum shares for renewables in the power sector the static interaction between climate and renewable policies has been discussed extensively this paper extends this debate by analysing the efficiency and effectiveness of a policy portfolio containing a cap and trade scheme and a target for a minimum renewable share in different states of aggregate electricity demand making use of a simple partial equilibrium model of the power sector we identify an asymmetric interaction of emissions trading and renewable quotas with respect to different states of aggregate electricity demand the results imply that unintended consequences of the policy interaction may be particularly severe and costly when aggregate electricity demand is low and that carbon prices are more sensitive to changes in economic activity if they are applied in combination with renewable energy targets our analysis of the policy interaction focuses on the eu yet the conclusions may also be of relevance for fast growing emerging economies like china

sources of the great moderation a time series analysis of gdp subsectors recent work finds evidence that the volatility of the u s economy fell dramatically around the first quarter of 1984 we trace the timing of this so called great moderation across many subsectors of the economy in order to better understand its root cause we find that the interest rate sensitive sectors generally experience a much earlier volatility decline than other large sectors of the economy the changes in federal reserve stabilization policies that occurred during the early 1980s support the view that an improved monetary policy played an important role in stabilizing real economic activity we find only mild evidence that good luck was important and little evidence to support the claim that improved inventory management was important

liquidity uncertainty and bitcoin s market microstructure abstract this paper provides a novel measure of liquidity uncertainty for bitcoin using bid ask spread data from bitfinex one of the largest and most liquid bitcoin exchanges this measure can be used to analyze liquidity developments in bitcoin exchanges or to gauge the immediacy associated with buying or selling bitcoin it then proceeds to identify what aspects of bitcoin s market microstructure can explain the time series behavior of this liquidity uncertainty the estimation results are based on a markov regime switching model that captures episodes of high and low liquidity uncertainty for bitcoin over the period from october 2013 to march 2018

the inefficiency of bitcoin bitcoin has received much attention in the media and by investors in recent years although there remains scepticism and a lack of understanding of this cryptocurrency we add to the literature on bitcoin by studying the market efficiency of bitcoin through a battery of robust tests evidence reveals that returns are significantly inefficient over our full sample but when we split our sample into two subsample periods we find that some tests indicate that bitcoin is efficient in the latter period therefore we conclude that bitcoin in an inefficient market but may be in the process of moving towards an efficient market

assessing the design of three carbon trading pilot programs in china abstract to help overcome the challenge of growing co2 emissions china is experimenting with market based instruments including pilot co2 emissions trading systems etss in seven regions that serve as precursors of a national co2 ets implementing an ets in a rapidly growing economy in which government authorities exercise significant control over markets poses many challenges this study assesses how well three of the most developed pilot etss in guangdong shanghai and shenzhen have adapted carbon emissions trading to china s economic and political context we base our study on new information gathered through interviews with local pilot ets regulators and experts analysis of recent trading data and extensive legal and literature reviews we point out instances in which pilot regulators have deftly tailored carbon emissions trading to china s unique context and instances in which designs are insufficient to ensure smooth operation we also indicate areas in which broader institutional reforms of china s political economy may be required for carbon emissions trading to operate successfully we make nine recommendations to improve the design and operation of the pilot programs and to inform the construction of a national co2 ets

on the inefficiency of bitcoin abstract urquhart 2016 investigated the market efficiency of bitcoin by means of five different tests on bitcoin returns it was concluded that the bitcoin returns do not satisfy the efficient market hypothesis we show here that a simple power transformation of the bitcoin returns do satisfy the hypothesis through the use of eight different tests the transformation used does not lead to any loss of information

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

joint variance ratio tests of the martingale hypothesis for exchange rates there is considerable interest in whether exchange rates behave like martingales liu and he tested the martingale hypothesis for exchange rates using the variance ratio methodology of lo and mackinlay they found that exchange rates have violated the martingale property since the inception of floating rates in 1973 liu and he did not consider the joint implications of their tests however in this article we reassess the martingale hypothesis for exchange rates using the joint tests developed by hochberg and by richardson and smith contrary to the findings of liu and he the joint tests indicate that the martingale model worked quite well for exchange rates in the recent years of the floating rate regime

does foreign exchange intervention matter the portfolio effect until recently there was an unusual degree of consensus among economists that intervention by central banks in the foreign exchange market did not offer an effective or lasting instrument for affecting the exchange rate at least not independently of monetary policy this consensus was largely shared among policymakers and participants in the financial markets as well the 1982 g 7 economic summit at versailles commissioned a study of intervention known as the jurgenson report which found that the effects were small and transitory at most we think that the time is ripe for new statistical testing of the question many policymakers and foreign exchange traders believe that the intervention operations that have taken place since the plaza agreement of september 1985 have had an effect especially when operations are coordinated moreover the theoretical case against the effectiveness of intervention is not as clear as a reading of the economics literature might suggest the academic literature is predicated on the distinction between intervention operations that are sterilized and those that are allowed to affect the money supply we study the intervention operations that actually took place between 1982 and 1988 regardless of whether they were sterilized however we do begin in section i with a review of the issues involved 2 there are two possible channels through which intervention whether sterilized or not can influence the foreign exchange rate the portfolio and the expectations channels intervention can even if sterilized influence exchange rates through the portfolio channel provided foreign and domestic bonds are considered imperfect substitutes in investors portfolios intervention operations that for example increase the current relative supply of mark to dollar assets which private investors are obliged to accept into their portfolios will force a decrease in the relative price of mark assets 3 intervention can also influence exchange rates regardless of whether foreign and domestic bonds are imperfect substitutes through the expectations channel the public information that central banks are intervening in support of a currency or are planning to intervene in the future may under certain conditions cause speculators to expect an increase in the price of that currency in the future speculators react to this information by buying the currency today bringing about the change in the exchange rate today in sections ii and iii we describe the econometric problems that arise in the standard portfolio balance estimation equation we derive an alternative portfolio balance dominguez kennedy school of government harvard university 79 j f kennedy street cambridge ma 02138 frankel department of economics university of california 787 evans hall berkeley ca 94720 we thank three anonymous referees for valuable comments and suggestions julia marsh and julia lowell for research assistance and franz scholl at the bundesbank jean pierre roth at the swiss national bank and officials at the u s treasury and the board of governors of the federal reserve system for making the daily intervention data available 1many of the econometric results finding little or no effect were reported in kenneth s rogoff 1984 and dale w henderson and stephanie sampson 1983 2for authoritative statements see henderson 1984 or maurice obstfeld 1990 3the exchange rate reaction to an increase in the relative supply of outside foreign assets may be reduced if there is an increase in their expected rate of return that induces a corresponding increase in demand

the effects of climate policy on corporate technological upgrading in energy intensive industries evidence from china abstract the innovation effect is an important component when measuring the performance of environmental policy instruments based on a questionnaire survey this research has examined corporate energy conservation and emission reduction efforts in energy intensive industries in china under the pressure of different climate policies and in particular looked into their adoption of those technological innovation and diffusion activities the results show a large variety of corporate adoption of energy saving practical activities in general climate policies have played a greater role in promoting the adoption of managerial energy saving activities in respondent companies while comparatively their influences on the adoption of technology upgrading activities are relatively weak regulatory measures have exerted greater pressure and influence on corporate short term behavioural change as stated by the respondent companies however market based instruments show greater incentive effect in promoting adoption of energy conservation and emission reduction activities that refer to corporate long term oriented strategic planning or adjustment for instance they exert a significant incentive effect on increasing long term research and development investment for technological innovation and also play an important role in optimising corporate organisational structure the econometric analysis further proves the influences of market based instruments in promoting corporate adoption of technological innovation and diffusion activities

an analysis of company choice preference to carbon tax policy in china abstract this paper summarizes an analysis of choice preferences of chinese companies to the design options of carbon tax policy the data were collected from 201 companies with around half of them based in the western shanxi province and the other half from the eastern jiangsu province modeling analysis of the discrete choice dataset confirms the statistically significant relationships between the company s preferences to carbon tax policy with the policy attributes including tax rate tax relief measures and the revenue utilization from the viewpoint of chinese businesses the option of carbon tax policy with tax rate at 10 30 yuan t co 2 allowing tax relief to energy intensive sectors using the revenues specific for climate change and starting as early as the 13th five year plan period 2016 2020 would be preferable and realistic the results of this research may be referred for the discussions and development of carbon tax policy in china

the adaptive markets hypothesis evidence from the foreign exchange market we analyze the intertemporal stability of excess returns to technical trading rules in the foreign exchange market by conducting true out of sample tests on previously studied rules the excess returns of the 1970s and 1980s were genuine and not just the result of data mining but these profit opportunities had disappeared by the early 1990s for filter and moving average rules returns to less studied rules also have declined but have probably not completely disappeared high volatility prevents precise estimation of mean returns these regularities are consistent with the adaptive markets hypothesis lo 2004 but not with the efficient markets hypothesis

time cost substitutability earlycutting threat and innovation timing with time cost substitutability a potential imitator could threat to earlycut the innovator by increasing experimental intensity the earlycutting threat or uncertainty about the potential imitator s experimental cost advantage usually drives down the new product s quality but advances its launching date

commodity futures and market efficiency we propose a comprehensive treatment of the leverage effect i e the relationship between returns and volatility of a specific asset focusing on energy commodities futures namely brent and wti crude oils natural gas and heating oil after estimating the volatility process without assuming any specific form of its behavior we find the volatility to be long term dependent with the hurst exponent on a verge of stationarity and non stationarity to overcome such complication we utilize the detrended cross correlation and the detrending moving average cross correlation coefficients and we find the standard leverage effect for both crude oils and heating oil for natural gas we find the inverse leverage effect additionally we report that the strength of the leverage effects is scale dependent finally we also show that none of the effects between returns and volatility is detected as the long term cross correlated one these findings can be further utilized to enhance forecasting models and mainly in the risk management and portfolio diversification

sectoral crediting mechanism how far china has to go abstract based on the review of the basic design of the sectoral crediting mechanism scm a promising option for developing countries emission reduction commitments this paper analyzes five important practical issues for china to solve before participating in scm which include 1 difficulties in determining a crediting baseline 2 the unsolved over supply problem in the carbon market 3 the very likely carbon credits falling short of mitigation costs problem 4 the immature market oriented price system jeopardizing the success of motivation incentives and 5 inadequate capacity building corresponding suggestions or compromise solutions are given after a discussion of each issue it is also recommended that in order to witness scm come into being researchers and negotiators should endeavor to solve the practical issues that scm meets now bearing in mind the balance of interests of both developing and developed countries finally we believe that scm s political barriers can be overcome when technical economic institutional and capacity problems are solved

cryptocurrencies and momentum abstract retrieving a set of 143 cryptocurrencies for a sample spanning 2014 2018 we investigate the popular momentum strategy implemented in the cryptocurrency market contrary to earlier studies our findings do not indicate any evidence of significant momentum payoffs supporting the view that the cryptocurrency market is far more efficient than suggested in earlier studies

revisiting co2 mitigation potential and costs in china s electricity sector abstract to improve the reliability of sectoral mitigation potential and cost analysis this paper made an in depth exploration into china s electricity sector s thermal efficiency and inner structure it is found that unlike what many literatures portray china is actually among the world s leaders in coal fired power plants generating efficiencies besides although there are still numerous small and inefficient generating units in the current generation fleet many of them are in fact playing important roles in supporting local economic development meeting peak load needs balancing heat and electricity supply and providing job opportunities to the local economy therefore their existence does not necessarily mean low cost mitigation potential given the efficiency and structural characteristics of china s electricity sector it is pointed out that some other mitigation options such as demand side management igcc and renewable energy as well as the break through of ccs technology may play an even more important role in emission reduction considering the significant lock in effects in electricity sector it is warned that china if continues putting majority investment in large and advanced coal fired generating units will face another round of chasing after for the new and advanced renewable generation technologies therefore china should put more efforts in renewable generation technologies now

affordability of energy cost increases for korean companies due to market based climate policies a survey study by sector this paper estimates the affordability of energy cost increases for energy intensive companies due to the introduction of market based climate policies in korea data were collected from 62 respondents from iron steel cement and petrochemical industries over 90 of which are under control of the target management scheme an ongoing mandatory system limiting the greenhouse gases ghg emissions of large energy consuming entities the affordable energy cost increase was estimated using the multiple bounded discrete choice mbdc format results of which show that a mean energy cost increase of 2 6 is acceptable for all the entities sampled companies from the three sectors had similar affordability with an average acceptable energy cost increase of 2 5e2 8 the affordable policy induced energy cost in creases equate to carbon prices of 2500e4000 krw t co2 about 2 3e3 5 usd t co2 for the companies surveyed econometric analysis confirmed a strong correlation between energy price level and company ownership with cost affordability with a view to developing carbon tax policy and a domestic ghg emissions trading scheme in korea this research provides a basis from an industrial perspective for carbon pricing

bayesian counterfactual analysis of the sources of the great moderation we use counterfactual experiments to investigate the sources of the large volatility reduction in us real gdp growth in the 1980s contrary to an existing literature that conducts counterfactual experiments based on classical estimation and point estimates we consider bayesian analysis that provides a straightforward measure of estimation uncertainty for the counterfactual quantity of interest using blanchard and quah s 1989 structural var model of output growth and the unemployment rate we find strong statistical support for the idea that a counterfactual change in the size of structural shocks alone with no corresponding change in the propagation of these shocks would have produced the same overall volatility reduction as what actually occurred looking deeper we find evidence that a counterfactual change in the size of aggregate supply shocks alone would have generated a larger volatility reduction than a counterfactual change in the size of aggregate demand shocks alone we show that these results are consistent with a standard monetary var for which counterfactual analysis also suggests the importance of shocks in generating the volatility reduction but with the counterfactual change in monetary shocks alone generating a small reduction in volatility copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

how investible is bitcoin analyzing the liquidity and transaction costs of bitcoin markets abstract we examine the investibility of bitcoin by exploring the trading dynamics and market microstructure of bitcoin on three us cryptocurrency exchanges using high frequency intraday data of individual trades and quotes although all exchanges offer continuous trading we find that the highest trading activity highest volatility and lowest spreads coincide with us market trading hours suggesting that most trades are non algorithmic and executed by retail investors we further find that average quoted and effective spreads for bitcoin are lower than spreads on major equity exchanges implying that bitcoin is highly investible for retail size transactions

scenario analysis on co2 emissions reduction potential in china s electricity sector abstract with the approach of the year 2012 a new round of international negotiations has energized the entire climate change community with this analyses on sector based emissions reduction and mitigation options will provide the necessary information to form the debate in order to assess the co2 emissions reduction potential of china s electricity sector this research employs three scenarios based on the long range energy alternative planning system leap model to simulate the different development paths in this sector the baseline scenario the current policy scenario and the new policy scenario seek to gradually increase the extent of industrial restructuring and technical advancement results imply that energy consumption and co2 emission in china s electricity sector will rise rapidly in all scenarios until 2030 triple or quadruple the 2000 level however through structural adjustment in china s electricity sector and through implementing technical mitigation measures various degrees of abatement can be achieved these reductions range from 85 to 350 million tons co2 per year figures that correspond to different degrees of cost and investment demand side management and circulating fluidized bed combustion cfbc ranked in order are employed prior to use to realize emissions reduction followed by supercritical plants and the renovation of conventional thermal power plants in the long term nuclear and hydropower will play the dominant role in contributing to emissions reduction it is also suggested that a self restraint reduction commitment should be employed to help contribute to the reduction of emission intensity an avenue that is more practical for china in light of its current development phase setting the year 2000 as the base year the intensity reduction target could possibly range from 4 2 to 19 4 dependent on the implementation effectiveness of various mitigation options

high frequency analysis of foreign exchange interventions what do we learn abstract the high frequency analysis of foreign exchange dynamics is helpful in order to better identify the impact of central bank interventions evidence robustly shows that interventions do indeed move the exchange rate level in the desired direction interventions increase volatility in the short run as they are regarded as information but they can reduce volatility overall ways of transmission may reach beyond the signalling channel and also include the portfolio balance and a damping channel finally interventions are more successful if they obey certain conditions such as being coordinated among central banks and going with the market and fundamentals

investment intensity of currencies and the random walk hypothesis cross currency evidence abstract this paper studies the cross currency and temporal variations in the random walk behavior in exchange rates we characterize currencies with relatively large investment flows as investment intensive and conjecture that the more investment intensive a currency is the closer its exchange rate adheres to random walk using 29 floating bilateral usd exchange rates we find that the higher the investment intensity the less likely it is to reject random walk and the smaller the deviation from random walk is however the effect of investment intensity is non monotonic application of threshold models shows that after investment intensity reaches the estimated thresholds the level of investment intensity has no further effect on the deviation from random walk these findings help reconcile the previous conflicting results on the random walk in exchange rates by focusing on the effect of cross currency and temporal variations in investment intensity

the temporal pattern of trading rule returns and exchange rate intervention intervention does not generate technical trading profits abstract this paper characterizes the temporal pattern of trading rule returns and official intervention for australian german swiss and u s data to investigate whether intervention generates technical trading rule profits the data reject the hypothesis that intervention generates inefficiencies from which technical rules profit in particular high frequency data show that abnormally high trading rule returns precede german swiss and u s intervention australian intervention precedes high trading rule returns but trading intervention patterns make it implausible that intervention actually generates those returns rather intervention responds to exchange rate trends from which trading rules have recently profited

variance ratio tests of random walk an overview this paper reviews the recent developments in the field of the variance ratio vr tests of the random walk and martingale hypothesis in particular we present the conventional individual and multiple vr tests as well as their improved modifications based on power transformed statistics rank and sign tests subsampling and bootstrap methods among others we also re examine the weak form efficiency for five emerging equity markets in latin america

optimal vs naive diversification in cryptocurrencies abstract this paper contributes to the literature on cryptocurrencies by examining the performance of naive 1 n and optimal markowitz diversification in a portfolio of four popular cryptocurrencies we employ weekly data with weekly rebalancing and show there is very little to select between naive diversification and optimal diversification our results hold for different levels of risk aversion and an alternative estimation window

clean production pathways for regional power generation system under emission constraints a case study of shanghai china china is now facing pressures of emission reduction both from greenhouse gases ghgs and local air pollutants laps considering power generation system contributes a great share of co2 and pm2 5 emissions a regional power generation system modelling and optimization framework using long range energy alternatives planning system leap is conducted in order to explore the cost effective cleaner capacity expansion pathways under various emissions constraints a case study of shanghai follows focusing on analysis of capacity additions for different power generation technologies as well as energy inputs reduction co benefits and system costs the results indicate that i the clean production pathways differentiate along with stricter co2 constraints ii ultra supercritical coal fired units have significant advantage under no emission constraint which are substitute by cleaner power generation units such as wind power solar power and integrated gasification combined cycle igcc under the co2 constrained scenario and the combined co2 pm2 5 constrained scenario iii co2 constraint displays stronger reduction co benefits than that of pm2 5 iv emission constraints are conductive to energy savings that will increase system cost finally policy recommendations are made through sensitivity analysis that only when the price of natural gas declines sharply can natural gas units become one of the alternatives that reduce coal consumption and the related co2 emissions

economic policy uncertainty and dollar pound exchange rate return volatility abstract the extent to which economic policy uncertainty epu amplifies exchange rate volatility has been an important research question for at least a decade previous research has investigated this relationship using monthly data concluding that epu imparts an effect on exchange rate volatility either contemporaneously or with a one month lag the use of monthly frequency however may not provide an accurate causal interpretation and may even compromise the accuracy of the estimates if the natural cycles of epu are shorter than a month to address this econometric concern i construct uncertainty measures at a daily frequency and estimate a garch model using daily usd british pound returns the evidence indicates that epu contributes to exchange rate volatility much more quickly than monthly data can detect using a regression technique for separating epu from non policy economic uncertainty i find that non policy market uncertainty increases volatility more than epu does

the inefficiency of bitcoin revisited a dynamic approach abstract this letter revisits the informational efficiency of the bitcoin market in particular we analyze the time varying behavior of long memory of returns on bitcoin and volatility 2011 until 2017 using the hurst exponent our results are twofold first r s method is prone to detect long memory whereas dfa method can discriminate more precisely variations in informational efficiency across time second daily returns exhibit persistent behavior in the first half of the period under study whereas its behavior is more informational efficient since 2014 finally price volatility measured as the logarithmic difference between intraday high and low prices exhibits long memory during all the period this reflects a different underlying dynamic process generating the prices and volatility

return and volatility spillovers among cryptocurrencies abstract this paper measures interdependencies among 18 major cryptocurrencies and shows that i bitcoin is the dominant contributor of return and volatility spillovers among all the sampled cryptocurrencies ii return and volatility spillovers have risen steadily over time iii there are spikes in spillovers during major news events regarding cryptocurrencies these findings suggest growing interdependence among cryptocurrencies and by extension a higher degree of contagion risk it may be the case that cryptocurrencies are becoming more integrated albeit this makes for interesting future empirical testing in addition the time varying nature of spillovers reveals a certain dimension of uncertainty regarding the future of these digital currencies

market structure and schumpeterian growth abstract we present a discrete time version of a schumpeterian growth model a natural r d analogue to constant returns to scale implies a poisson production function with diminishing marginal product surprisingly the industry demand for r d inputs does not depend on the number of firms in the r d sector if bertrand competition ensues following ties in contrast demand is higher if ties result in collusion in general equilibrium bertrand competition leads to random switching between monopoly and competitive production under collusion production is always at the monopoly level but there is faster growth numerical simulations suggest that this leads to higher welfare

reform of china s electric power industry challenges facing the government abstract china s electrical power industry requires substantial reform if the country s economic growth is to be sustained the 1997 electricity law the creation of a state power company and the abolition of the ministry of electric power are important first steps on the path of reform but it seems that a clear plan is lacking objectives of the reform should include increasing the capacity to deliver power constraining the costs of the power industry increasing end user efficiency and minimising environmental damage efforts should be directed at restructuring the industry in such a way that fair competition may be introduced at least in power generation and at establishing a viable regulatory agency both tasks have the potential to be thwarted by a range of vested interests at different levels of government and industry

electricity consumption and economic growth in china abstract this paper applies the error correction model to examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp for china during 1971 2000 our estimation results indicate that real gdp and electricity consumption for china are cointegrated and there is unidirectional granger causality running from electricity consumption to real gdp but not vice versa in order to overcome the constraints on electricity consumption the chinese government has to speed up the nation wide interconnection of power networks to upgrade urban and rural distribution grids and to accelerate rural electrification

the impacts of liquidity dynamics on emissions allowances price different evidence from china s emissions trading pilots abstract the liquidities of china s emissions trading markets have significant impacts on emissions allowances price movement and pricing efficiency liquidity measures on illiquidity ratio and trade values indicate hubei emissions allowances hbea product has the highest liquidity shenzhen allowances sza and guangdong emissions allowances gdea products have the higher liquidity than beijing emissions allowances bea and shanghai emissions allowances shea products while tianjin emissions allowances tjea product has the lowest market liquidity in considered china s emissions trading pilots the dynamics of the illiquidity ratios for all selected emissions allowances products are negatively related with emissions allowances returns and trade volumes for bea tjea sza and hbea products are also negatively related with emissions allowances returns the dynamics of daily illiquidity ratios and trade based liquidity in beijing tianjin guangdong shenzhen hubei emissions pilots have significant volatility clustering impacts on the variances of regional emissions allowances returns previous market shocks of overnight and intraday price variations have the more persistent influences on the gdea returns than hbea returns reflecting greater inter day price ranges clustering effect

does twitter predict bitcoin this paper adds to the growing literature of bitcoin by examining the link between investor attention and bitcoin returns trading volume and realized volatility unlike previous studies we employ the number of tweets from twitter as a measure of attention rather than google trends as we argue this is a better measure of attention from more informed investors we find that the number of tweets is a significant driver of next day trading volume and realized volatility which is supported by linear and nonlinear granger causality tests

incorporating life cycle external cost in optimization of the electricity generation mix the present work aims to examine the strategic decision of future electricity generation mix considering together with all other factors the effect of the external cost associated with the available power generation technology options not only during their operation but also during their whole life cycle the analysis has been performed by integrating the life cycle assessment concept into a linear programming model for the yearly decisions on which option should be used to minimize the electricity generation cost the model has been applied for the case of greece for the years 2012 2050 and has led to several interesting results firstly most of the new generating capacity should be renewable mostly biomass and wind while natural gas is usually the only conventional fuel technology chosen if externalities are considered wind energy increases its share and hydro power replaces significant amounts of biomass generated energy furthermore a sensitivity analysis has been performed one of the most important findings is that natural gas increases its contribution when externalities are increased summing up external cost has been found to be a significant percentage of the total electricity generation cost for some energy sources therefore significantly changing the ranking order of cost competitiveness for the energy sources examined

sustainable energy development scenario forecasting and energy saving policy analysis of china abstract the development of renewable energy which is an important way to solve the environmental protection has now become a research focus around the world as a developing country with rapid growth china gains the rapid development of economy but the environmental pollution is becoming increasingly serious in recent years electricity industry plays an important role for energy saving and emission reduction in china in order to reduce the environment pollution it needs to consider how the electricity consumption affects the carbon emissions in this paper a stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stripat model was built which estimates the relationship between the carbon emissions population gdp per capita electricity consumption and energy consumption it found that population gdp per capita and the ratio of electricity consumption in energy consumption are change 1 the carbon emissions will change 1 207 0 901 and 1 188 respectively based on the relationship there electricity energy development scenarios were assumed and analyzed and it found that the way to reduce carbon emissions should consider improving technical ability which should accounting for improving the ratio of electricity power ratio in the energy consumption improving the efficiency of using fossil energy and the development of renewable energy

emissions trading in china emerging experiences and international lessons grants by the robert bosch foundation under the program sustainable partners partners for sustainability the australian research council and the australian government supported different parts of the project

is schumpeterian creative destruction a plausible source of endogenous real business cycle shocks abstract this paper examines the link between growth and business cycles by incorporating schumpeterian growth into an otherwise standard real business cycle rbc model we ask whether schumpeter s creative destruction process can generate realistic business cycles we solve the model generate artificial time series and compare statistical properties of these series with their historical counterparts in our approach the trend component is included in our artificial series just as it is in the data hence we are not tied to any particular filtering method for our comparisons we find that schumpeterian fluctuations alone can generate time series that match key moments from u s data we also find however that a model with both schumpeterian and standard rbc shocks performs better

central bank intervention and exchange rate volatility abstract this paper explores the effects of foreign exchange intervention by central banks on the behavior of exchange rates the g 3 central banks have undertaken an unprecedented number of both coordinated and unilateral intervention operations in the last 10 years existing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of intervention is mixed studies using data from the 1970s suggest that intervention operations that do not affect the monetary base have at most a short lived influence on exchange rates but more recent studies indicate that the intervention operations that followed the plaza agreement influenced both the level and variance of exchange rates this paper examines the effects of us german and japanese monetary and intervention policies on dollar mark and dollar yen exchange rate volatility over the 1977 1994 period the results indicate that intervention operations generally increase exchange rate volatility this is particularly true of secret interventions which are those undertaken by central banks without notification of the public overt interventions in the mid 1980s appear to have reduced exchange rate volatility but in other periods and for the 1977 1994 period as a whole central bank intervention is associated with greater exchange rate volatility

a simple model of schumpeterian growth with complex dynamics abstract in this paper we develop a schumpeterian discrete time model of endogenous growth with an explicit market for the resource used for innovation creating investment and study its global dynamics we show among others that the level of investment may fluctuate chaotically for a compact range of model parameters as a consequence of the explicit intermediation and market imperfections temporary monopoly power following an innovation underlying the growth process

testing for autocorrelation using a modified box pierce q test this article investigates the finite sample performance of a modified box pierce q statistic q for testing that financial time series are uncorrelated without assuming statistical independence the finite sample rejection probabilities of the q test under the null and its power are examined in experiments using time series generated by an ma 1 process where the errors are generated by a garch 1 1 model and by a long memory stochastic volatility model the tests are applied to daily currency returns

phillips curves and unemployment dynamics a critique and a holistic perspective the conventional wisdom that inflation and unemployment are unrelated in the long run implies that these phenomena can be analysed by separate branches of economics the macro literature tries to explain inflation dynamics and estimates the nairu the labour macro literature tries to explain unemployment dynamics and determine the real economic factors that drive the natural rate of unemployment we show that the orthodox view that the new keynesian phillips curve is vertical in the long run and that it cannot generate substantial inflation persistence relies on the implausible assumption of a zero interest rate in the light of these results we argue that a holistic framework is needed to jointly explain the evolution of inflation and unemployment

crypto currency bubbles an application of the phillips shi yu 2013 methodology on mt gox bitcoin prices the creation of bitcoin heralded the arrival of digital or crypto currency and has been regarded as a phenomenon since its introduction it has experienced a meteoric rise in price and rapid growth accompanied by huge volatility swings and also attracted plenty of controversies which even involved law enforcement agencies hence claims abound that bitcoin has been characterized by bubbles ready to burst any time e g the recent collapse of bitcoin s biggest exchange mt gox this has earned plenty of coverage in the media but surprisingly not in the academic literature we therefore fill this knowledge gap we conduct an econometric investigation of the existence of bubbles in the bitcoin market based on a recently developed technique that is robust in detecting bubbles that of phillips et al 2013a over the period 2010 2014 we detected a number of short lived bubbles most importantly we found three huge bubbles in the latter part of the period 2011 2013 lasting from 66 to 106 days with the

new market mechanism and its implication for carbon reduction in china abstract this article presents a detailed review and analysis of the discussions around the new market mechanism nmm and explores its potential in china it contributes to the current discussion of the nmm in three aspects first this article attempts to streamline ideas about the nmm the term nmm is considered to be an umbrella concept for emission trading systems which all parties can engage in on a voluntary basis in the implementation of their intended nationally determined contributions and which need to satisfy three criteria i having a large scale scope ii aiming to facilitate a net emission reduction iii allowing flexibility for the host country we also present a framework to clarify the nmm based on this framework major options with a high implementation potential are identified second we argue that the national level operational framework determines the chance of successful implementation of the nmm we identify different options based on a literature survey and evaluate them with respect to effectiveness and efficiency third we choose china a highly influential country regarding climate change polices as a case to analyze the potential contributions and challenges of the nmm and its implementation at different stages of national development

speculative bubbles in bitcoin markets an empirical investigation into the fundamental value of bitcoin amid its rapidly increasing usage and immense public interest the subject of bitcoin has raised profound economic and societal issues in this paper we undertake economic and econometric modelling of bitcoin prices as with many asset classes we show that bitcoin exhibits speculative bubbles further we find empirical evidence that the fundamental price of bitcoin is zero

a variance ratio test of random walks in foreign exchange rates the separate variance ratio tests under homoscedasticity and heteroscedasticity both provide evidence rejecting the random walk hypothesis using five pairs of weekly nominal exchange rate series over the period from august 7 1974 to march 29 1989 the rejections cast doubt on the random walk hypothesis in exchange rates which has received support in the existing literature furthermore since the rejections are robust to heteroscedasticity they suggest autocorelations of weekly increments in the nominal exchange rate series which may be consistent with the exchange rate overshooting or undershooting phenomenon in the past decade there has been a consensus that nominal exchange rates follow a random walk process since a unit root and uncorrelated increments are both required for a random walk process the random walk is usually supported in the existing literature either because a unit root component is detected in the exchange rate series or because the increment in the exchange rate is found to be serially uncorrelated for example meese and singleton 1982 and baillie and bollerslev 1989 both find a unit root component in the exchange rate series and the evidence provided in giddy and dufey 1975 cornell and dietrich 1978 logue sweeney and willett 1978 and hsieh 1988 all suggest that the exchange rate series contains uncorrelated increments in this paper the random walk hypothesis for the nominal exchange rate series is reexamined by applying a variance ratio test developed in lo and mackinlay 1988 to five pairs of weekly nominal exchange rate series over the period from august 7 1974 to march 29 1989 while there are two implications of the random walk unit root and uncorrelated increments this paper focuses on the uncorrelated increments aspect this is not only because there are some important departures from the random walk that unit root test cannot detect but also because the autocorrelation aspect may yield

the reform of electricity power sector in the pr of china deregulation was launched as a concept in the united states more than a decade ago the european union commission has also formally announced that electric deregulation must be completed by the end of 2005 deregulation or reform has already been a popular topic on the electricity power sector this paper will discuss the restructuring and regulatory reforms in the pr china s power sector it begins with a discussion of the characteristics of electricity reform or deregulation in other countries including the us the united kingdom and so on it will be followed by the industry structure and regulatory framework that characterized china s power industry during the latter part of the 20th century and the history of china s reform to restructure the power industry to competitive suppliers of generating services in recent years it discusses the role of the state power corporation in the reform and gives a detailed description of the latest electricity reform in the year 2002 the paper concludes with some thoughts regarding future challenges and trends on the reform for china s power sector

a conjoint analysis of corporate preferences for the sectoral crediting mechanism a case study of shanxi province in china it is crucial to understand corporate preferences in designing and planning new market based instruments using the method of conjoint analysis this paper evaluates corporate preferences for policy alternatives of the sectoral crediting mechanism aiming at supporting its discussions and development data were collected from 94 companies in all 11 prefecture level cities of shanxi province china the results confirm that companies are most concerned about three policy attributes domestic policy instruments the relationship with the clean developing mechanism and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities from the viewpoint of the chinese businesses surveyed the ideal policy alternative has a domestic policy instrument in which installations with voluntary targets receive tradable units while co existing with the clean developing mechanism and providing opportunities to get financial and technical assistance from developed countries meanwhile the coverage of the sectoral crediting mechanism could be expanded to small companies that are the most inefficient and thus have the lowest abatement costs in some sectors the results of this study are important in light of ongoing discussions and developments of the sectoral crediting mechanism in china

emissions reduction and economic implications of renewable energy market penetration of power generation for residential consumption in the mena region this paper examines the implications of renewable energy re deployment in power generation for residential consumption in the middle east and north africa mena region under various re penetration targets a comparative assessment revealed a great heterogeneity among countries with turkey dominating as the highest emitter at the sub regional level the middle east sub region contributes more than double the ghg emissions estimated for the gulf and north africa sub regions with all sub regions achieving reductions in the range of 6 38 depending on the re target penetration and promising up to 54 savings on investment excluding positive externalities associated with the offset of greenhouse gas ghg emissions savings

price delay and market frictions in cryptocurrency markets abstract we study the efficiency of cryptocurrencies by measuring the price s reaction time to unexpected relevant information we find the average price delay to significantly decrease during the last three years for the cross section of 75 cryptocurrencies we find delays to be highly correlated with liquidity

adaptive market hypothesis and evolving predictability of bitcoin abstract this study evaluates the adaptive market hypothesis amh and evolving return predictability in bitcoin market we use two robust methods in a rolling window framework to capture time varying linear and nonlinear dependence in bitcoin returns we find that market efficiency evolves with time and validates the amh in bitcoin market

factors influencing co2 emissions in china s power industry co integration analysis more than 40 of china s total co2 emissions originate from the power industry the realization of energy saving and emission reduction within china s power industry is therefore crucial in order to achieve co2 emissions reduction in this country this paper applies the autoregressive distributed lag ardl co integration model to study the major factors which have influenced co2 emissions within china s power industry from 1980 to 2010 results have shown that co2 emissions from china s power industry have been increasing rapidly from 1980 to 2010 the average annual growth rate was 8 5 and the average growth rate since 2002 has amounted to 10 5 secondly the equipment utilization hour as an indicator of the power demand has the greatest influence on co2 emissions within china s power industry in addition the impact of the industrial added value of the power sector on co2 emissions is also positive from a short term perspective thirdly the granger causality results imply that one of the important motivators behind china s technological progress within the power industry originates from the pressures created by a desire for co2 emissions reduction finally this paper provides policy recommendations for energy saving and emission reduction for china s power industry

the impact of china s differential electricity pricing policy on power sector co2 emissions abstract this article investigates the impact of china s differential electricity pricing policy on power sector co 2 emissions using the logarithmic mean divisia index method the differential pricing policy intended to reduce energy intensity in manufacturing is being implemented in eight electricity intensive industries the study finds that during 2004 2009 the policy accounted for a drop of roughly 115 twh in electricity use which amounted to a reduction of 82 million tons of co 2 emissions the policy has been most effective in reducing electricity use in the nonferrous metal smelting and rolling industry and least effective in the ferrous metal smelting and rolling industry because the differential pricing policy has had significantly different effects across industries improving the policy s design and implementation going forward will require a more detailed understanding and analysis of how it can be better tailored to individual industries

is bitcoin a commodity on price jumps demand shocks and certainty of supply abstract this paper discusses how similar bitcoin is to a commodity the application of a number of both linear and non linear garch models indicates that the role of extreme price movements is particularly pronounced garch models with student t innovations as well as combined jump garch models are among the models with the best fit the role of large movements is found to be stronger in the bitcoin market than in the markets for crude oil and gold as bitcoin shares with these exhaustible resource commodities characteristics such as the fixed supply the analysis of bitcoin prices can generally learn from the analysis of exhaustible resource commodities however whereas the short run supply of gold and oil are uncertain there are no uncertainties on the bitcoin supply side thus the observed movements of bitcoin prices can be interpreted as results of bitcoin demand shocks

some evidence of random walk behavior of euro exchange rates using ranks and signs abstract this study utilises recently developed tests based on ranks and signs in addition to the traditional variance ratio test to examine the behavior of euro exchange rates we show that adjustments for multiple tests must be employed in order to avoid size distortions overall such adjustments provide evidence consistent with random walk behavior of euro exchange rates

central bank intervention and trading rule profits in foreign exchange markets abstract moving average trading rules are utilized in both futures and spot foreign currency markets to show that significant positive profits can be earned in four of five currencies examined the results are consistent for both in sample and forward simulation tests regression results demonstrate that central bank intervention is strongly associated with the profitability of trading returns for the three major currencies dm yen and pound and partially explains returns for the sf and cd consistent with conjectures in previous studies that news concerning intervention tends to be revealed over weekends we find that moving average trading rule returns are significantly positive on fridays and mondays and not significantly different from zero in the middle of the week

the market microstructure of central bank intervention abstract how quickly do central bank intervention operations impact the foreign exchange market and do intra daily market conditions influence the effectiveness of central bank interventions this paper uses high frequency intra daily data to examine the relationship between the efficacy of intervention operations and the state of the market at the moment that the operation is made public the results indicate that some traders typically know that the fed is intervening at least 1 h prior to the public release of the information in newswire reports also the evidence suggests that the timing of intervention operations matters interventions that occur during heavy trading volume that are closely timed to scheduled macro announcements and that are coordinated with another central bank are the most likely to have large effects

demand side management in china the context of china s power industry reform abstract the reform of china s power industry has lasted for decades while the implementation of demand side management dsm in china is still in its infancy in this paper we present a comprehensive study of the dsm and demand response dr programs in china under the context of china s power industry reform we first present a brief introduction of the background including the socio economic status and geographical location of china the energy policy of china china s power industry the smart grids and microgrid in china and the reform of china s power industry then based on the introduction of dsm and the analysis of dsm practices in some countries we discuss the development status of dsm and the reform of electricity pricing in china finally the main challenges in five aspects for the future development of dsm programs in china are proposed and discussed these challenges include customer understanding and participation advanced metering infrastructure ami and information and communication technology ict pricing mechanisms and optimal scheduling big data analytics based decision support as well as government regulations and market policies

utility subsidy reform in abu dhabi a review and a computable general equilibrium analysis abstract electricity and water consumption in abu dhabi has increased substantially in recent years along with rapid economic and population growth as one of the oil producing economies located in arid regions abu dhabi s electricity and water are produced predominantly with fossil fuel based power water co generation which generate carbon emissions the consumption of electricity and water is heavily subsidized to support industrial growth lower cost of living and distribute state wealth to the population the low utility prices however may have contributed to high per capita carbon emissions for the emirate this paper reviews critical literature on energy subsidy policy for oil exporting economies we then examine the economic and environmental effects of water and electricity subsidy reduction in abu dhabi using a computable general equilibrium analysis the result shows that utility subsidy reduction alone increases gross domestic product gdp of the emirate through expanding the high value added service sector and reduces carbon emissions with decreasing carbon intensive industrial and utility productions meanwhile private consumption declines with decreasing wage electricity subsidy reduction in general has greater economic and environmental effects than water subsidy reduction the positive economic and environmental gains may incentivize utility subsidy reform in the long run when the negative wage effect is mitigated

exchange rate return predictability and the adaptive markets hypothesis evidence from major foreign exchange rates this study examines return predictability of major foreign exchange rates by testing for martingale difference hypothesis mdh using daily and weekly nominal exchange rates from 1975 to 2009 we use alternative mdh tests for linear and nonlinear dependence which include wild bootstrap automatic variance ratio test generalized spectral test and consistent tests we evaluate time varying return predictability by applying these tests with fixed length moving sub sample windows of two years while exchange rate returns are found to be unpredictable most of times we do observe episodes of statistically significant return predictability they are associated with coordinated central bank interventions and the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007 this finding suggests that return predictability of foreign exchange rates occurs from time to time depending on changing market conditions which is consistent with the implications of the adaptive markets hypothesis

on the long term effectiveness of exchange rate communication and interventions abstract exchange rate communication has come to play an increasingly important role as a policy tool for monetary authorities over the past decade the paper assesses the strategies and the long term effectiveness of communication as well as actual interventions the empirical results for the g3 economies indicate that communication has not only exhibited a significant contemporaneous effect on exchange rates but also has moved forward exchange rates up to a horizon of 6 months in the desired direction moreover communication is found to reduce exchange rate volatility and uncertainty whereas actual interventions tend to raise it overall this underlines a key difference between these two policy tools and suggests that communication tends to be a fairly effective policy tool over the medium term

art market inefficiency art is often used as an investment vehicle given the importance of market efficiency in finance we use a large auction based index to test whether the art market is weakly efficient evidence reveals that returns on artworks exhibit high positive auto correlation we attribute this result to price truncation resulting from unobservable reserve prices in auctions we conclude that the art market is not efficient mainly because price formation is opaque to outsiders who lack information on unsold artworks

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

marginal abatement cost under the constraint of carbon emission reduction targets an empirical analysis for different regions in china abstract as the global climate and environmental issues become increasingly serious low carbon development has become a consensus among countries to seek new economic growth pathway as an important emitter of carbon dioxide china has put forward thirteenth five year plan tfyp outline that carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp will be 18 lower in 2020 than that in 2015 to measure the policy effects on co2 emission reduction and abatement costs the directional distance function model is introduced in this paper and the sensitivity analysis is conducted to verify the rationality of our index formulation the results show the areas with the highest carbon emission control target level have significantly higher marginal abatement costs than that of other areas in the short term the reduction targets policy effect on decreasing carbon abatement cost is not significant through sensitivity analysis we further discovered that the carbon emission reduction cost is less sensitive to the carbon emission reduction target and the impact in the short term is smaller however as time goes by the impact increases we suggest that the government should guide interregional enterprises to cooperate and play a synergistic role implementing the multilevel emission reduction targets and expanding the scope of trading in the national carbon trading market are especially important to optimize the allocation

price discovery of cryptocurrencies bitcoin and beyond abstract academic research on cryptocurrencies is almost exclusively directed towards bitcoin we extend existing literature by performing various tests on efficiency of several cryptocurrencies and additionally link efficiency to measures of liquidity cryptocurrencies become less predictable inefficient as liquidity increases

the impact of fx central bank intervention in a noise trading framework abstract in this paper we analyse the effectiveness of the direct central bank interventions using a new effectiveness criterion to this aim we investigate the effects of central bank interventions cbi in a noise trading model with chartists and fundamentalists we first estimate a model in which chartists extrapolate past returns and fundamentalists forecast a mean reverting dynamics of the exchange rate towards a fundamental value then we investigate the role of central bank interventions for explaining the switching properties between the two types of agents we find evidence that in the medium run interventions increase the proportion of fundamentalists and therefore exert some stabilizing influence on the exchange rate

electricity demand and supply scenarios for maharashtra india for 2030 an application of long range energy alternatives planning abstract forecasting of electricity demand has assumed a lot of importance to provide sustainable solutions to the electricity problems leap has been used to forecast electricity demand for the target year 2030 for the state of maharashtra india holt s exponential smoothing method has been used to arrive at suitable growth rates probable projections have been generated using uniform gross domestic product gdp growth rate and different values of elasticity of demands three scenarios have been generated which include business as usual bau energy conservation ec and renewable energy ren subsequent analysis on the basis of energy environmental influence and cost has been done in the target year 2030 the projected electricity demand for bau and ren has increased by 107 3 per cent over the base year 2012 and ec electricity demand has grown by 54 3 per cent the estimated values of green house gas ghg for bau and ec in the year 2030 are 245 2 per cent and 152 4 per cent more than the base year and for ren it is 46 2 per cent less sensitivity analysis has been performed to study the effect on the total cost of scenarios policy implications in view of the results obtained are also discussed

announcement effects in the cryptocurrency market cryptocurrencies have gained popularity as new economic investment assets globally in recent years this study examines market reactions to major news events associated with cryptocurrencies abnor

public preferences for carbon tax attributes the impacts of climate change are already visible throughout the world recognizing the threats posed by climate change the durban platform the 17th session of the conference of parties cop 17 underscores that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation and ambitious action by all countries a crucial starting point for the design of effective and publicly acceptable policies is to explore public preferences for climate policy instruments using a choice experiment this study investigates public preferences for carbon tax attributes in a developing country context the results account for heterogeneity in preferences and show that turkish people prefer a carbon tax with a progressive cost distribution rather than one with a regressive cost distribution the private cost has a negative effect on the probability of choosing the tax earmarking carbon tax revenues increases the public acceptability of the tax moreover there is a preference for a carbon tax that promotes public awareness of climate change

long term electricity demand in china from quantitative to qualitative growth abstract this paper develops scenarios of electricity demand in china until 2010 at a national a sectoral and a regional level it takes into account the recent macroeconomic downturn in the chinese economy and the potential effects of deregulation and price increases in the power sector the medium growth scenario hints at a gross electricity demand of 1500 twh in 2010 should the structural change from agriculture and heavy industry towards light industry and services accelerate electricity demand may be another 10 lower these figures are significantly below the projections fixed in the government s 9th five year plan which forecasts a demand of 2500 twh the aggregate and sectoral scenarios imply that current development plans for generating capacity and coal consumption until 2010 too need to be scaled down the disaggregation at the level of the 13 inter provincial and provincial power grids hints at potential regional discrepancies the large industrial areas in eastern china and the central region are likely to face overcapacity whereas north china and the peripheral regions may face deficits

a monte carlo based decision support tool for assessing generation portfolios in future carbon constrained electricity industries abstract this paper presents a novel decision support tool for assessing future generation portfolios in an increasingly uncertain electricity industry the tool combines optimal generation mix concepts with monte carlo simulation and portfolio analysis techniques to determine expected overall industry costs associated cost uncertainty and expected co 2 emissions for different generation portfolio mixes the tool can incorporate complex and correlated probability distributions for estimated future fossil fuel costs carbon prices plant investment costs and demand including price elasticity impacts the intent of this tool is to facilitate risk weighted generation investment and associated policy decision making given uncertainties facing the electricity industry applications of this tool are demonstrated through a case study of an electricity industry with coal ccgt and ocgt facing future uncertainties results highlight some significant generation investment challenges including the impacts of uncertain and correlated carbon and fossil fuel prices the role of future demand changes in response to electricity prices and the impact of construction cost uncertainties on capital intensive generation the tool can incorporate virtually any type of input probability distribution and support sophisticated risk assessments of different portfolios including downside economic risks it can also assess portfolios against multi criterion objectives such as greenhouse emissions as well as overall industry costs

company s affordability of increased energy costs due to climate policies a survey by sector in china this paper estimates the affordability of chinese companies on energy cost increases due to the introduction of market based climate policies the data were collected from 170 respondents mainly from iron and steel cement and chemical industries using a multiple bounded discrete choice mbdc format estimations indicate that a mean of 8 8 in energy cost increase would be acceptable for all the samples the chemical companies express a slightly higher affordability with the mean of acceptable ratios of energy cost increases being 9 9 while the cement companies show slightly lower affordability with a mean of 7 7 econometric analysis confirms that the market competition degree has a significant but negative relationship with the affordability while the company s size is significantly and positively associated with the affordability calculations indicate that the mean of affordable energy cost increases roughly equals a carbon price of 83 7 cny t co2 about 12 usd t co2 for chemical companies and around 40 cny t co2 about 6 usd t co2 for iron and steel and cement sectors this result provides a meaningful referendum for the development of carbon tax and the establishment of a domestic carbon emissions trading scheme in china especially from the perspective of surveyed industries

when do central bank interventions influence intra daily and longer term exchange rate movements this paper examines dollar interventions by the g3 since 1989 and the reasons that trader reactions to these interventions might differ over time and across central banks market microstructure theory provides a framework for understanding the process by which sterilized central bank interventions are observed and interpreted by traders and how this process in turn might influence exchange rates using intra daily and daily exchange rate and intervention data the paper analyzes the influence of interventions on exchange rate volatility finding evidence of both within day and daily impact effects but little evidence that interventions influence longer term volatility