measuring the efficiency of energy intensive industries across european countries abstract this study evaluates the energy efficiency trends of five energy intensive industries in 23 european union eu countries over the period 2000 2009 in particular the performance of the construction electricity manufacturing mining and quarrying and transport sectors is examined the analysis is based on data envelopment analysis dea combined with the malmquist productivity index mpi which allows for distinctions between efficiency and technology changes over time at the second stage of the analysis cross classified multilevel modelling is applied to analyse the main drivers behind efficiency performance using a number of sector and country characteristics based on dea results an overall improvement in efficiency is observed in all sectors over the period the decomposition of the mpi indicates that technology change is primarily responsible for the improvements achieved in most sectors the results obtained by the cross classified model show among other things that the high electricity prices energy taxes and market share of the largest generator in the electricity market have a negative effect on industrial energy efficiency

economic analysis of coal price electricity price adjustment in china based on the cge model in recent years coal price has risen rapidly which has also brought a sharp increase in the expenditures of thermal power plants in china meantime the power production price and power retail price have not been adjusted accordingly and a large number of thermal power plants have incurred losses the power industry is a key industry in the national economy as such a thorough analysis and evaluation of the economic influence of the electricity price should be conducted before electricity price adjustment is carried out this paper analyses the influence of coal price adjustment on the electric power industry and the influence of electricity price adjustment on the macroeconomy in china based on computable general equilibrium models the conclusions are as follows 1 a coal price increase causes a rise in the cost of the electric power industry but the influence gradually descends with increase in coal price and 2 an electricity price increase has an adverse influence on the total output gross domestic product gdp and the consumer price index cpi electricity price increases have a contractionary effect on economic development and consequently electricity price policy making must consequently consider all factors to minimize their adverse influence

life and work of john richard nicholas stone 1913 1991 sir richard stone knighted in 1978 and nobel laureate in economics in 1984 was one of the pioneering architects of national income and social accounts and one of the few economists of his generation to have faced the challenge of economics as a science by combining theory and measurement within a cohesive framework he was awarded the nobel prize in economics for his fundamental contributions to the development of national accounts but made equally significant contributions to the empirical analysis of consumer behaviour his work on the growth project was also instrumental in the development of appropriate econometric methodology for the construction and the analysis of large disaggregated macroeconometric models this paper provides an analysis of stone s many contributions

applied general equilibrium models of taxation and international trade an introduction and survey we wish to acknowledge the help of three referees and of john pencavel on several earlier drafts as well as the assistance of the modelers whose work is referred to in the paper they corrected our lack of understanding of their work and provided many other helpful comments excellent research and bibliographical assistance have been provided by debbie fretz radwan shaban and janet stotsky helpful comments have been made by charles ballard michael boskin lans bovenberg sylvester damus harvey galper glenn harrison gordon lenjosek jack mutti serena ng t n srinivasan charles stuart and eric toder the authors also acknowledgefinancial support from the national bureau of economic research the national science foundation international business machines and the social sciences and humanities research council ottawa canada

how to set price and quality in a supply chain of virtual products under bi criteria and risk consideration abstract virtual products are characterized by ample production capacity zero lead time and no holding costs we consider a two echelon supply chain of a virtual product consisting of a single manufacturer and a single retailer who face random demand demand depends on both price and quality of the product and its stochastic nature exposes the supply chain members to financial risk each party adopts profit criteria that reflect his or her attitude toward this risk including the use of bi criteria by formulating a model that follows a stackelberg game and using the stochastic dominance property we show that one can analytically obtain equilibrium by assuming certain common structures of the demand function and of the risk attitudes the contribution of this study is fourfold i analyzing multiplicative and additive demand forms and comparing the properties of the decisions under the two forms ii showing that under the multiplicative demand form the pricing strategies are not affected by the parties attitudes toward risk whereas the manufacturer s decision on quality investment is affected by his risk attitude iii showing that under the additive demand form the manufacturer s utility function and the demand uncertainty affect pricing and investment strategies and iv suggesting a method to construct the efficient set of decisions and the non dominated set of profit criterion values

on tax reform systems of business and personal taxation in most western economies are not efficient the paper discusses efficiency losses due to 1 tariffs and sales taxes 2 the nonneutral treatment of business durable inputs 3 differential rates of business income taxation and 4 the taxation of interest estimates of the possible magnitudes of the various efficiency losses are derived the second part of the paper outlines the elements of an efficient system of taxation a feature of the proposed system is that most workers would not have to file tax returns

the canadian oil sands industry under carbon constraints abstract we investigate the impact of climate policies on canada s oil sands industry the largest of its kind in the world deriving petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel from oils sands involves significant amounts of energy and that contributes to a high level of co2 emissions we apply the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy augmented to include detail on the oil sands production processes including the possibility of carbon capture and storage ccs we find 1 without climate policy annual canadian bitumen production increases almost 4 fold from 2010 to 2050 2 with climate policies implemented in developed countries canadian bitumen production drops by 32 to 68 from the reference 4 fold increase depending on the viability of large scale ccs implementation and bitumen upgrading capacity moves to the developing countries 3 with climate policies implemented worldwide the canadian bitumen production is significantly reduced even with ccs technology which lowers co2 emissions at an added cost this is mainly because upgrading bitumen abroad is no longer economic with the global climate policies

structural causes of the global financial crisis a critical assessment of the new financial architecture we are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the great depression this crisis is the latest phase of the evolution of financial markets under the radical financial deregulation process that began in the late 1970s this evolution has taken the form of cycles in which deregulation accompanied by rapid financial innovation stimulates powerful financial booms that end in crises governments respond to crises with bailouts that allow new expansions to begin as a result financial markets have become ever larger and financial crises have become more threatening to society which forces governments to enact ever larger bailouts this process culminated in the current global financial crisis which is so deeply rooted that even unprecedented interventions by affected governments have thus far failed to contain it in this paper we analyse the structural flaws in the financial system that helped bring on the current crisis and discuss prospects for financial reform

a computational analysis of japan s generalized system of preferences abstract in this paper we employ a general equilibrium computational model of world trade to evaluate the generalized system of preferences gsp of japan we conclude that the japanese gsp is strongly trade creating because preferential treatment is offered primarily on products for which japan is a major world exporter however tariff concessions result in a deterioration in japan s terms of trade which lowers welfare in japan and improves the welfare of japan s major trading partners among the ldcs the gain from preferential treatment accrues primarily to the asian nics hong kong south korea singapore and taiwan

analysis of the economic impact of different chinese climate policy options based on a cge model incorporating endogenous technological change abatement cost is the main concern for climate change mitigation and the key factor for mitigation cost is technological change this study established an integrated economic energy environmental dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model representing endogenous technological change for china s climate change policy analysis this study analyzed and compared the economic impact of different approaches to mitigation commitments as well as the potential role of technological change in the formulation of mitigation targets and commitments taking into account china s climate policy making needs based on the current international climate negotiation process the results show that absolute emission limits similar to the kyoto protocol will seriously impede the future economic development of china while the impact of an 80 reduction in carbon intensity forecast for 2050 based on the 2005 level is relatively small technological change can promote economic growth improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon intensity per unit of output through the substitution of production factors consequently it can reduce marginal abatement cost and related gdp loss by mitigation at the same time it can increase mitigation potentials and extend the emission reduction amount showing that consideration of the impact of technological change when deciding the emission reduction targets is necessary

computable general equilibrium model analysis of economywide cross effects of social and environmental policies in chile abstract the analysis of the linkages between development policies and social and environmental variables is a neglected area within the development literature this paper focuses on the key interrelations among the economic social and environmental elements of the sustainable development triangle a thorough review is undertaken of both social and environmental policies in chile underlining important economic growth and reforms using the static cge model ecogem chile the economywide impacts of several environmental social and combined policies are simulated for the chilean economy six different policies are simulated three environmental policies that impose different taxes on pm10 so 2 and no 2 emissions respectively the same tax on pm10 in a context of high unemployment one social policy that increases government transfers to households and a mixed social environmental policy package where the environmental tax on pm10 and the social transfer policy are simulated simultaneously the results show that environmental tax policies may have negative social effects using real disposable income by quintiles as proxy the impacts depend on the use of the new revenues and the status of employment taxing pm10 emission yields better environmental results than taxing so 2 and no 2 social policies do not show negative environmental impacts combined environmental and social policies improve results thus specific compensating social policies would improve environmental policy acceptance while also reducing poverty or strong income distribution disparities the evidence suggests that environmental policies may have social impacts but not vice versa the results show that the ecogem chile model is useful for analyzing systematically and holistically different economywide policies and their impact on the chilean economy winners and losers may be identified as well as the potential magnitude of gains and losses the results obtained are not all straightforward due to indirect effects

the inherent dangers of using computable general equilibrium models as a single integrated modelling framework for sustainability impact assessment a critical note on bohringer and loschel 2006 the search for methods of assessment that best evaluate and integrate the trade offs and interactions between the economic environmental and social components of development has been receiving a new impetus due to the requirement that sustainability concerns be incorporated into the policy formulation process a paper forthcoming in ecological economics bohringer c loschel a in press computable general equilibrium models for sustainability impact assessment status quo and prospects ecological economics claims that computable general equilibrium cge models may potentially represent the much needed back bone tool to carry out reliable integrated quantitative sustainability impact assessments sias while acknowledging the usefulness of cge models for some dimensions of sia this commentary questions the legitimacy of employing this particular economic modelling tool as a single integrating modelling framework for a comprehensive evaluation of the multi dimensional dynamic and complex interactions between policy and sustainability it discusses several inherent dangers associated with the advocated prospects for the cge modelling approach to contribute to comprehensive and reliable sustainability impact assessments the paper warns that this reductionist viewpoint may seriously infringe upon the basic values underpinning the sia process namely a transparent heterogeneous balanced inter disciplinary consultative and participatory take to policy evaluation and building of the evidence base

developing countries and the gains from regionalism links between trade and farm policy reforms in mexico we use a multi country computable general equilibrium cge model with agricultural policy details to simulate the effects of north american free trade agreement nafta we find that mexico gains from nafta only when it also removes domestic distortions in agriculture in that case agriculture can generate allocative efficiency gains large enough to offset the terms of trade losses that arise because mexico has higher initial tariffs than its nafta partners when an rta forces a developing country to reform its domestic distortions that are linked to trade restrictions it becomes a building block toward multilateralism

export diversification through resource based industrialization the case of natural gas for small resource rich developing economies specialization in raw exports is usually considered to be detrimental to growth and resource based industrialization rbi is often advocated to promote export diversification this paper develops a new methodology to assess the performance of these rbi policies we first formulate an adapted mean variance portfolio model that explicitly takes into consideration i a technology based representation of the set of feasible export combinations and ii the cost structure of the resource processing industries second we provide a computationally tractable reformulation of the resulting mixed integer nonlinear optimization problem finally we present an application to the case of natural gas comparing current and efficient export oriented industrialization strategies of nine gas rich developing countries

can a carbon permit system reduce spanish unemployment this paper analyses the impact of carbon policy on unemployment in spain and whether recycling the public revenues earned from permit auctions can alleviate this problem while spain s deviation from the european union s intermediate emission goals is more serious than most other member countries unemployment in spain is also well above average for the european union we use a computable general equilibrium model that includes unemployment in the markets for unskilled and skilled labour we find that introducing carbon permits does not aggravate spanish unemployment in fact if supplied with revenue recycling schemes unemployment rates may actually fall contrary to other european studies we find that the best option is to reduce payroll taxes on relatively skilled types of labour this reform is successful in both increasing labour demand and dampening the supply response to rising wages however while all of the recycling schemes generate dividends in terms of aggregate welfare none entirely offsets the abatement costs

macroeconomics financial variables and computable general equilibrium models abstract this paper surveys micro macro computable general equilibrium cge models that incorporate asset markets and product and factor markets recent models are designed to analyze the impact on economic performance and the distribution of income in developing economies of structural adjustment and stabilization programs implemented in response to macro shocks these financial cge models add a loanable funds market incorporating a variety of assets to a cge model that already incorporates flow equilibria in product and factor markets these financial models start from tradefocused cge models and also draw on earlier work with micro and macrostructuralist models in specifying the interactions between financial variables and the real side of the economy the paper also compares these models to dynamic macro models both short run adaptive models with lagged adjustment mechanisms and longer run forward looking models the paper discusses the theoretical problems such models face in reconciling micro focused cge models with macro models incorporating dynamic behavior

on the use of ecological prices and system wide indicators derived therefrom to quantify man s impact on the ecosystem abstract ecological prices and other system wide quantitative descriptors of ecosystem functioning are derived from the assumption that ecosystems allocate available resources efficiently among their components however ecological prices are not efficiency prices only and using them does not require one to assume that the ecosystem is completely controlled by man the same prices balance flows of different biomasses in a multicomponent system as such they play the role of exchange prices in a decentralized ecosystem properly defined with the help of ecological prices the resulting ecosystem productivity is no less a significant indicator of ecosystem functioning than the national product is significant for assessing the functioning of an economy considerations of the values taken simultaneously by our proposed indicators and by their economic analogs are of much help in judging the desirability of projects with relatively mild environmental repercussions these values are obtained from an integrated model of a system in which ecological and economic activities are intertwined however for the indicators to have an analytical meaning the methodology should be applied to trace only those dynamic paths during which the system possesses unique state dependent intensive properties in other cases a more comprehensive methodology one which also pays due regard to the viability of the ecosystem must supplement the analytical approach this rather comprehensive methodology is scale dependent and probabilistic in nature while delineating relations between the structure of the system and its behavior this method implies that efficiency and viability are two complementary rather than two commensurate attributes of a single entity an outside observer may be guided by his own values in his attempts to weigh these features but no inherent property of the system exists that supports his values unequivocally nevertheless this paper proposes an approximation to overcome this difficulty and to estimate a quantitative limit to the rate of substitution between productivity and viability such a limit is also an intensive property of the simulated system and the estimation of its value is shown to be crucial for studying the vulnerability of real ecosystems to severe man made disturbances

stepping stones for biological invasion a bioeconomic model of transferable risk we investigate three sources of bias in valuation methods for ecosystem risk failure to consider substitution possibilities between goods failure to consider nonseparability of ecosystem services with market goods and failure to consider substitution possibilities between ecosystems the first two biases are known in the literature and we offer insight on the size of the bias for a specific example our work on spatially transferable risk is novel we develop the concept and show how it may undermine typical invasion prevention strategies we find three key results first partial equilibrium estimates of welfare loss are significantly overestimated relative to general equilibrium estimates if ecosystem services and market goods are substitutes the partial equilibrium bias is greater than if they are compliments second well intended policies do not necessarily reduce overall risk risk reduction actions can transfer risk to another time or location or both which may increase total risk third policies of quotas and inspections have to be extreme to improve welfare with inspections having advantages over quotas

rents and the cost and optimal design of commodity taxes this paper numerically investigates the significance of rents for both the welfare costs and the optimal design of commodity taxes using a general equilibrium model calibrated to 1986 canadian data in the data we use ricardian rents are concentrated in agriculture and utilities with market structure rents concentrated in manufacturing different types of rents have different implications for the welfare cost of taxes and hence also for appropriate tax design ricardian rents lower the cost of taxes rents supported by imperfect competition with no free entry raise the cost of taxes rents supported by regulation generate rent seeking costs and if taxed improve resource allocation model results show a markedly nonuniform optimal tax structure and a substantial influence of the treatment of rents on the pattern of optimal tax rates by commodity

an experimental examination of general equilibrium tax incidence abstract tax incidence is examined in an experimental general equilibrium production micro economy consistent with predictions the imposition of a tax on corporate capital resulted in a flow of capital out of the corporate sector decreased corporate usage of capital relative to labor and tax shifting through decreases in the relative prices of capital and non corporate output although capital owners were able to shift some of the tax burden the corporate tax resulted in a 35 drop in capital owner s share of payoffs implications for policy are discussed

on the possibility of an inverse relationship between tax rates and government revenues abstract when arthur laffer and other supply side advocates plot total tax revenue as a function of a particular tax rate they draw an upward sloping segment called the normal range followed by a downward sloping segment called the prohibitive range a brief literature review indicates that tax rates on the prohibitive range in theoretical and empirical models have been the result of particularly high tax rates high elasticity parameters or both the labor tax rate which maximizes total revenue for example will depend on the assumed labor supply elasticity this paper introduces a new curve which summarizes the tax rate and elasticity combinations that result in maximum revenues separating the normal area from the prohibitive area a general purpose empirical u s general equilibrium model is used to plot the laffer curve for several elasticities and to plot the newly introduced curve using the labor tax example results indicate that the u s could conceivably be operating in the prohibitive area but that the tax wedge or labor supply elasticity would have to be much higher than most estimates would suggest

reforming indirect taxes in canada some general equilibrium estimates the current indirect tax system in canada distorts economic activity in a variety of ways and has been the subject of considerable discussion as part of overall tax reform in this paper a general equilibrium model is used to analyze various changes in indirect taxes in canada focusing on possible changes to the federal and provincial sales taxes results suggest that replacing either the federal or provincial sales taxes with a broadly based sales tax yields a small but significant welfare gain the distributional effects from these changes are slightly regressive but appear to be quite small and easily offset by modest income tax credits targeted to low income households results also suggest that a broad based sales tax would be a significantly more efficient revenue source should additional sales tax revenues be required

effects of carbon taxes in an economy with prior tax distortions an intertemporal general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper analyzes the costs of carbon taxes in a model that recognizes interactions between this tax and pre existing taxes first we examine the extent to which costs of a u s carbon tax are reduced when its revenues finance cuts in income taxes such use of revenues significantly reduces but does not eliminate the overall policy costs the positive overall costs reflect the carbon tax s focus on intermediate inputs and its relatively narrow base in comparison with income taxes we also examine the sensitivity of the carbon tax s costs to the level of pre existing taxes for any given use of revenues welfare costs rise significantly with pre existing tax rates indicating that models disregarding pre existing taxes may substantially understate the costs of new environmental tax initiatives

general equilibrium analysis of black and white markets a computational approach abstract this paper explores the inter relationship between black and white markets and presents a formulation in which equilibrium conditions hold separately for each type of market for each product with linking conditions across market types using a traditional goods and factor general equilibrium model the simultaneous operation of price controls on white markets and surveillance with penalties for those caught trading on black markets is modelled a numerical example of such an economy is presented using data for india and equilibria under coexistence are reported

how to measure labour market effects of immigration a review abstract this paper surveys available empirical evidence on labour market effects of immigration many different approaches have been used already to try to find out whether immigration hurts the labour market opportunities of natives no doubt new approaches will follow in the future as globalization will keep the migration issue on the agenda this literature review discusses the different approaches concentrating on both the methodology and the results at the end it tries to summarize available evidence

the impacts of tax reform on agricultural households estimates of tax reform s impacts usually concentrate on macroeconomic impacts but attention at the industry or sectoral level is often limited our study uses a computable general equilibrium cge model to estimate the disaggregated impacts of the tax cuts and jobs act tcja of 2018 which lowered personal and corporate tax rates focusing on agriculture we use survey data to calculate how the tcja would change the tax rates faced by farmers at the sector level we use internal revenue service data to calculate tax rates for all other producers we then simulate the economy wide and sectoral effects of tcja we find that the tcja would cause a reduction in agricultural output as resources would be reallocated to other sectors using our survey data we extend the cge results to measure the impacts to farm households from changes in on and off farm income we find that most farm households would have income gains from tax reform our tax reform scenario highlights the fact that investment weighs heavily on model results that is firms that are attractive to domestic and foreign investment have gains in demand for their products while other sectors such as primary agriculture experience decreases in production a sensitivity analysis that reduces the attractiveness of the united states in foreign investment shows smaller impacts of tcja especially for macroeconomic variables

a general equilibrium assessment of rebound effects in this paper we use a general equilibrium model applied to a national economy norway to explore the potential for energy efficiency improvements to trigger economic forces that offset potential savings from using more efficient technologies rebound effects two types of energy efficiency improvements electricity and oil are introduced into various sectors of the economy our results suggest significant and surprising differences across sectors concerning both energy use and consequences for the build up of greenhouse gases rebound effects are found to be quite significant for manufacturing sectors since long term consumption of energy undergoes minor reductions or increases in response to efficiency improvements in other sectors rebound effects appear to be weak or almost absent

the circular economy an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context there have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development the circular economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way this set of ideas has been adopted by china as the basis of their economic development included in both the 11th and the 12th five year plan escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and ngos this paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the circular economy tracing its meanings and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology and discusses how the circular economy has been operationalized in business and policy the paper finds that while the circular economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials which may contribute to more sustainable business models it also encapsulates tensions and limitations these include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions and some unintended consequences this leads us to propose a revised definition of the circular economy as an economic model wherein planning resourcing procurement production and reprocessing are designed and managed as both process and output to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well being

carbon pricing and energy efficiency improvement why to miss the interaction for developing economies an illustrative cge based application to the pakistan case abstract carbon energy taxes and energy efficiency improvement are studied well in the recent years for their potential adverse impacts on economy especially for lost production and international competitiveness and rebound effects however little attention has been paid to investigate them jointly which can not only prevent fall of energy services cost and thereby rebound effect but reduce the associated macroeconomic costs this study thus employs a 20 sector cge model to explore separately the impacts of carbon tax and its coordinated implementation with energy efficiency improvement on the pakistan economy the country underwent enormous pressure of energy security issues as well as climate change fallouts in the last couple of years and can be regarded as a suitable candidate for energy environmental conservation policies to be considered at a broader context with more concrete efforts the simulation results show that the impact of carbon tax on gdp is negative but resulting reductions in pollutant emissions are relatively high moreover the gdp is expected to grow comparatively positive when analyzed with improvements in energy efficiency with even higher decline in energy consumption demand and so emissions this simultaneous economic and environmental improvement would thus have positive implications regarding sustainable development of the country

on reforming the welfare system abstract using a simulation model for a small open economy quebec 1986 various negative income tax nit and workfare schemes are compared from the point of view of efficiency and equity the main finding is that there exist workfare schemes that are superior both to the quebec regime of 1986 and to a nit characterized by a 100 percent implicit tax rate however these workfare schemes are dominated by some nit programs this suggests that it may be necessary to have work requirements that vary across socio demographic classes for a workfare plan to be superior to any nit combining workfare with an nit could also be the prescription

a computational general equilibrium model with endogenous unemployment an analysis of the 1980 fiscal reform in mexico abstract in this paper we develop a general equilibrium model of the mexican economy in which unemployment and government deficits play important roles the unemployment rate depends on a downwardly rigid real wage in the urban sector the government runs a deficit simply by selling bonds that consumers consider perfect substitutes for physical capital as savings instruments the model is used to analyze the impact of the 1980 fiscal reform the presence of the rigid real wage and alternative specifications of government policies regarding the size of the deficit are found to have significant effects on the comparative statics results whether or not the reform improves the welfare of rural households compared to urban households for example depends on whether government policy is to keep the deficit constant or keep expenditures constant in response to changes in tax revenues

the interface between environmental and trade policies last march i gave the frank paish lecture to the society under the title economic life in a greenhouse in my lecture i tried both to survey professional opinion as to some of the possible climatic implications of the greenhouse effect and also to draw out the economic consequences which might follow towards the end of my talk i made reference to some preliminary joint work with randy wigle 2 a colleague at wilfrid laurier university in canada on the global consequences of carbon tax schemes designed to limit and or reduce the build up of co2 emissions a key element underlying the greenhouse effect the written version of the lecture consciously does not reproduce the survey material which made up the first part of the lecture instead it elaborates on the issues raised towards the end it incorporates the work by randy wigle and myself and offers some thoughts on what seems to be a growing issue for the iggos namely the consequences for the international trading system of interactions between trade issues and both future global and current national environmental policies what follows emphasises that if they occur in the next few decades global policy responses3 carbon taxes tradeable permit schemes to environmental concerns will almost certainly have large economic effects among these are likely to be significant effects on trade patterns and trade volumes large interregional effects will also accompany such policies depending upon how such policies are implemented also the i99os may see a growing use of trade measures to achieve objectives set for environmental policies environmental policies towards such countries as brazil the philippines and others where deforestation is a concern may increasingly take the form of threatened trade sanctions unless compliance with global environmental policy objectives occurs 4

energy efficiency rebound effects and the environmental kuznets curve technological change is one factor used to justify the existence of an environmental kuznets curve and technological improvements have been argued to be a key factor in mitigating the impacts of economic growth on environmental quality in this paper we use a cge model of the scottish economy to consider the factors influencing the impacts of one form of technological change improvements in energy efficiency on absolute levels of co2 emissions on the carbon intensity of the economy co2 emissions relative to real gdp and the per capita ekc relationship these factors include the elasticity of substitution between energy and non energy inputs responses in the labour market and the structure of the economy our results demonstrate the key role played by the general equilibrium price elasticity of demand for energy and the relative influence of different factors on this parameter

age analysis of the impact of a carbon energy tax on the irish economy a computable general equilibrium model with specific detail in taxation and energy use is developed in this paper to quantify the impact of the implementation of energy taxation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in ireland benchmark data combining physical energy and emissions data and economic data in the form of a social accounting matrix sam had to be compiled from various data sources because energy and pollution accounts from the seea are not available for ireland we find that the reduction target for energy related co2 emissions in ireland of 25 8 compared to 1998 levels can be achieved with a carbon energy tax of 10 15 euros per tonne of co2 though fuel switching is important in meeting the target this result is more sensitive to the possibilities for producers to substitute away from energy use welfare would fall but only by small percentages production and consumption patterns would change more significantly with a shift in demand from fuels with a high emission factor to energy sources with a lower carbon intensity and from energy to other commodities this paper confirms that a carbon energy tax leads to greater emission reductions than an equivalent uniform energy tax the latter has a stronger negative impact on the less polluting energy sectors whereas the carbon tax greatly stimulates the use of renewable energy and reduces the use of peat and coal the new sam the model and the application to energy taxes contribute to a better informed debate on environmental policy in ireland

understanding sustainability innovations through positive ethical networks in this paper a positive organizational ethics poe based framework is informed by the microfinance and socially responsible investing movements to capture the process of sustainable financial innovations both of these movements are uniquely characterized by the formation of positive ethical networks pens to develop sustainability innovations in response to external crises the crisis pen innovation framework proposed makes four contributions to the poe literature 1 positions corporate sustainability through a poe lens 2 formalizes the pen construction through poe theory 3 proposes pens are mobilized to respond to external crises and 4 demonstrates how pens facilitate sustainability innovations the theoretical framework is tested using theory guided process tracing in the sustainable banking sector to understand how sustainability innovations were realized the findings are consistent with the crisis pen innovation framework proposed

income distribution impacts of climate change mitigation policy in the susquehanna river basin economy we examine the cost side income distribution impacts of a carbon tax in the susquehanna river basin srb region of the united states utilizing a computable general equilibrium model we find the aggregate impacts of a 25 ton carbon tax on the srb economy are likely to be negative but modest an approximately one third of 1 reduction in gross regional product grp in the short run and double that amount in the long run however unlike many previous studies we find that the carbon tax is mildly progressive as measured by income bracket changes per capita equivalent variation and gini coefficient changes based on expenditure patterns the dominant factors affecting the distributional impacts are the pattern of output income and consumption impacts that affect lower income groups relatively less than higher income ones an increase in transfer payments favoring lower income groups and decreased corporate profits absorbed primarily by higher income groups

the effects of energy taxes on the kenyan economy a cge analysis abstract the paper utilizes a computable general equilibrium model to evaluate the impact of the second oil price shock and consequent energy tax policies on the kenyan economy simulations show that dramatic change in energy prices and consequent changes in domestic energy consumption generate sequential feedbacks in the production process and affect economic structures terms of trade deteriorate the balance of payments deficit increases and national income falls energy import tariffs and a sales tax are effective policy instruments in controlling energy consumption and increasing government revenue both energy policies have net negative effects on other economic activities similar to those observed under the oil price shock as long as there are no other economically feasible sources of energy supplies there are economic losses associated with less petroleum product consumption in a net oil importing developing economy with oil intensive production technology

a computable general equilibrium model of energy economy and equity interactions in pakistan this article introduces a computable general equilibrium model of the pakistan economy some major extensions to a standard neoclassical model have been made to capture the interlinkages between economy energy and equity the model has been designed mainly to carry out policy oriented short term studies especially for the energy sector an illustrative application of the model shows its capability to provide detailed information which are useful in analysis of a policy issue

second best agricultural policy abstract since full economic liberalization is not generally feasible getting the prices of selected agricultural markets right involves optimal price distortions a methodology is developed for calculating the second best output price in a particular market by incorporating externalities government revenue constraints and distortions in other markets into the marginal social cost and benefit schedules for that market in the illustrative application to thailand tax friction consumption externalities and the optimal tariff argument are seen to support an export tax on rice even though import tariffs already discriminate against agricultural exports

negative rebound and disinvestment effects in response to an improvement in energy efficiency in the uk economy this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge framework to investigate the conditions under which rebound effects may occur in response to increases in energy efficiency in the uk national economy previous work for the uk has suggested that rebound effects will occur even where key elasticities of substitution in production are set close to zero the research reported in this paper involves carrying out a systematic sensitivity analysis where relative price sensitivity is gradually introduced into the system focusing specifically on elasticities of substitution in production and trade parameters in order to determine conditions under which rebound effects become a likely outcome the main result is that while there is positive pressure for rebound effects even where direct and indirect demands for energy are very price inelastic this may be partially or wholly offset by negative income competitiveness and disinvestment effects which also occur in response to falling energy prices the occurrence of disinvestment effects is of particular interest these occur where falling energy prices reduce profitability in domestic energy supply sectors leading to a contraction in capital stock in these sectors which may in turn lead to rebound effects that are smaller in the long run than in the short run a result that runs contrary to the predictions of previous theoretical work in this area

the efficiency gains from dynamic tax reform this paper presents a new simulation methodology for determining the pure efficiency gains from tax reform along the general equilibrium rational expectations growth path of life cycle economies the principal findings concern the effects of switching from a proportional income tax with rates similar to those in the u s to either a proportional tax on consumption or a proportional tax on labor income a switch to consumption taxation generates a sustainable welfare gain of almost 2 percent of lifetime resources in contrast a transition to wage taxation generates a loss of greater than percent of lifetime re sources a second general result is that even a mild degree of progressivity in the income tax system imposes a very large efficiency cost this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

economics and environmental implications of fuel efficiency improvement in malaysia a computable general equilibrium approach the continued increase in urbanization and vehicle ownership poses an increasing challenge in curbing the rising energy consumption and co2 emissions in malaysia for more than a decade road vehicles have been the leading contributor in the country due mainly to their heavy reliance on petroleum products particularly gasoline and diesel the efficient utilization of petroleum products becomes paramount in reducing malaysia s overall co2 emissions in the land transportation sector the timely abolition of petroleum product subsidies in 2014 may provide a financial source to support the improvement of petroleum product efficiency the primary purpose of this paper is to examine the impact on economic growth and sectoral performance with fuel subsidy savings being reallocated to the biofuel industry for research and development purposes the study then investigates whether an environmental tax on petroleum products could induce more energy saving and emission control this research applies the computable general equilibrium modeling for the simulation as it takes into account the interaction between petroleum products and the economy as a whole the malaysia input output tables 2010 is the main database used in the simulation the simulation results found that fuel efficiency improvement could produce a double dividend effect with simultaneous benefits on the economy and environmental quality a simultaneous implementation with fuel tax policy appears to be one suitable complementary measure for a further emission cut however sufficient compensation schemes might be necessary to stimulate economic activities over time based on the simulation results policymakers should emphasize fuel efficiency improvement as a crucial strategy to control the rising energy consumption and emissions in malaysia

estimating distortions in the chinese economy a general equilibrium approach a computable general equilibrium model is constructed to simulate the chinese economy under a system of free markets and is estimated using a calibration procedure coupled with econometric estimation for key parameters the equilibrium solution of the model indicates substantial distortions in prices and resource allocation in the 1983 chinese economy labour was found to be overpaid and capital underpaid in most non agricultural sectors two fifths of the agricultural labour force would have been employed by the non agricultural sectors had china been a market economy the elimination of these distortions would imply a significant improvement in allocative efficiency and a redistribution of income from labour to capital from households to the state and from urban to rural households china embarked upon its economic reform programme in the late 1970s over the period 1979 83 there were dramatic reforms in the rural agricultural sector including the dismantling of the three level ownership of communes the dis tribution of land to peasant households and the relaxation of controls over labour transfer from the agricultural sector to the rural non agricultural sector in contrast in the urban economy and especially in the state industrial sector reforms were confined to modest improvements in incentives for enterprises and workers notably through the introduction of profit retention schemes and bonus systems in 1983 much of the traditional mechanism of resource alloca tion remained essentially intact the problem of distortions in the price system and in resource allocation in centrally planned economies cpes has long been a concern of economists and there has been a considerable interest in empirical modelling of distortions in cpes thornton 1971 estimated potential efficiency gains from equalizing the return to capital for different branches of soviet industry in the early 1960s desai and martin 1983 provided similar estimates using econometrically esti mated production functions portes and winter 1980 estimated excess demand in the aggregated consumption goods market for a number of pre reform eastern european economies using the technique of econometric dis equilibrium modelling podkamine 1988 calculated free market demands and prices in the absence of rationing for consumption goods markets in poland during 1965 86 by transplanting demand systems estimated for market econ omies into the quantity constrained polish economy chow 1985 investigated the efficiency of labour allocation in chinese state industry by comparing the average wage rate with the value of the marginal product of labour all these studies however involve partial equilibrium analysis in the sense that they are concerned only with examining the distortion in a specific market and therefore have tended to ignore distortions in the rest of the economy and a

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

economic effects of vat reforms in germany in the tax policy debate differentiation of value added taxes is often justified by distributional concerns our quantitative analysis for germany indicates that such concerns are misplaced we find that the abolition of vat differentiation has only negligible redistributive effects instead reduced vat are found to act as industry specific subsidies whereas the overall welfare effects of pure vat reforms are very small a revenue neutral introduction of a harmonised vat combined with reductions in the marginal income tax rates or social security contributions turns out to produce substantial welfare gains for all households

property tax classification and welfare in urban areas a general equilibrium computational approach abstract this paper examines some of the structural and welfare effects of a change from a tax system in an urban area that classifies property by use for tax assessment to one that does not discriminate in its treatment of property a long run general equilibrium model of intraurban spatial location is developed due to analytical intractability the tax policy changes are simulated by use of a fixed point algorithm the model is stylized to the boston metropolitan area to the extent possible general equilibrium versions of compensating and equivalent variations in income are used as measures of welfare change the qualitative welfare results obtained from sensitivity analysis are fairly robust in a substantial majority of the cases considered there is a welfare gain in moving from the particular tax classification structure posited to a system in which all property is taxed at the same effective rate

energy taxation and the double dividend effect in taiwan s energy conservation policy an empirical study using a computable general equilibrium model abstract faced with pressure from greenhouse gas reductions and energy price hikes the taiwan government is in the process of developing an energy tax regime to reflect environmental external costs and effectively curb energy consumption as well as mitigate co2 emissions through an adequate pricing system this study utilizes a cge model to simulate and analyze the economic impacts of the draft energy tax bill and its complementary fiscal measures under the assumption of tax revenue neutrality the use of energy tax revenue generated for the purpose of reducing income tax is the best choice with double dividend effects since it will effectively stimulate domestic consumption and investment and consequently mitigate the negative impacts of the distortionary tax regime the double dividend effect is less significant however when the supplementary measures being used are for government expenditure nevertheless all supplementary measures have effectively reduced energy consumption which means they have delivered at least the first dividend in the sense of co2 emissions control it has been verified in this study that having adequate public finance policy measures is the key to realizing the double dividend effect

robust optimization of the 0 1 knapsack problem balancing risk and return in assortment optimization abstract retailers face the important but challenging task of optimizing their product assortments the challenge is to find for every category in every store the assortment that maximizes expected category profit adding to the complexity of this 0 1 knapsack problem retailers should also consider the risk associated with every assortment while every product in the assortment offers an expected return there is also uncertainty around its expected demand and profit contribution therefore retailers face the difficult task of designing a portfolio of products that balances risk and return in this paper we develop a robust approach to optimize retail assortments that offers this balance since the dimensionality of this robust 0 1 knapsack problem in practice often precludes full enumeration we propose a novel efficient and real time heuristic that solves this problem the heuristic constructs an approximation of the risk return efficient frontier of assortments we find that the robust solutions offer the retailer a considerable reduction in risk variance yet only imply a small reduction in expected return the constructed approximations contain assortments that are optimal solutions to the robust assortment optimization problem moreover they represent insightful visualizations of the solution space allowing for interactivity what risk premium should the retailer pay in real time matter of seconds

carbon emissions control and trade liberalization coordinated approaches to taiwan s trade and tax policy abstract in recent years several studies have emerged on the possible reconciliation between trade and environmental policies however little attention has been devoted to inquiring about the economic implications of the linkages of these policies in the newly industrialized countries the so called nics in this paper we investigate the joint effects of trade and environmental policies on the taiwan economy the estimates are derived from a five household 18 sector computable general equilibrium model calibrated to a 1995 social accounting matrix our empirical results based on taiwan s data show that tariff elimination can significantly reduce the costs of carbon emissions control and possibly offset welfare reductions due to implementation of a carbon tax our findings reveal that the coordination of trade liberalization with the introduction of targeted environmental policies enhances factor relocation towards competitive industries they are broadly consistent with those cases of developing countries reported in previous studies

a future for carbon taxes abstract carbon taxes have been frequently advocated as a cost effective instrument for reducing emissions however in the practice of environmental policies only six countries have implemented taxes based on the carbon content of the energy products in this paper we evaluate carbon taxes with regard to their competitiveness distributional and environmental impacts the evidence shows that carbon taxes may be an interesting policy option and that their main negative impacts may be compensated through the design of the tax and the use of the generated fiscal revenues

do increases in energy efficiency improve environmental quality and sustainability governments world wide increasingly see energy efficiency as an important aspect of sustainability however there is a debate in the literature as to whether the impact of improved energy efficiency on reducing energy use might be partially or more than wholly offset through rebound and backfire effects this paper clarifies the theoretical conditions under which such effects would occur and explores their likely significance using a computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy we find that for scotland a general improvement in energy efficiency in the production sectors of the economy initially produces rebound effects that eventually grow into backfire energy use ultimately increases in response to an efficiency gain and the ratio of gdp to co2 emissions falls the economic factors underpinning rebound effects are straightforward energy efficiency improvements result in an effective cut in energy prices which produces output substitution competitiveness and income effects that stimulate energy demands however the presence of strong rebound or even backfire does not mean that efficiency enhancing policies are irrelevant rather it suggests that such policies operating alone are insufficient to generate environmental improvements the implication is that a co ordinated portfolio of energy policies is required

assessing the benefits to developing countries of liberalisation in services trade this paper discusses the potential impacts of services trade liberalisation on developing countries and reviews existing quantitative studies its purpose is to distill themes from current literature rather than to advocate specific policy changes the picture emerging is one of valiant attempts to quantify in the presence of formidable analytical and data problems yielding only a clouded image of likely impacts on trade consumption production and welfare emerging to the point that the policy implications of results are not always clear a central intuition would seem to be that with genuine two sided oecd non oecd liberalisation in services that are seemingly considerably labour intensive in delivery the potential should be there for significant developing country gains from global liberalisation allowing full cross border delivery however this picture is neither fully endorsed by available studies neither is it explicitly contradicted this seems to be the case for a number of reasons one difficulty with the studies is that the conceptual underpinnings of what determines trade in services and how this trade differs analytically from that of trade in goods if at all is an issue prior to assessments of impacts of liberalisation of trade in services on developing countries being discussed key issues here are the treatment of mobility for service providers both firms and workers and the differing analytical structures needed to analyse individual service items banking insurance telecoms etc some recent analytical work suggests that liber alisation in some service items such as banking need not always yield gains and this contrasts with quantitative studies where analytical structures mirror conventional trade in goods treatments the discussion and measurement of barriers to service trade in both developed and developing countries is also problematic one is talking of domestic regulation entry barriers portability of providers competition policy regimes more so than only barriers at national borders as with tariffs both representing and quantifying such barriers raise major difficulties and these are also spelled out in the paper which barriers actually restrict trade and which do not because they are redundant is one issue for instance it is also often misleading to represent barriers in simple ad valorem equivalent form as a result numerical modelling work on the effects of service trade barriers which is based on ad valorem equivalent modelling is often not fully convincing in addition individual country results vary considerably across studies in ways that it is frequently hard for outsiders to understand studies do however point towards a tentative conclusion that effects are small and positive for developed and most developing countries if fdi flow changes accompanying service trade liberalisation are excluded from the analysis but much larger and more variable across countries if they are present this could be taken to suggest that mode 3 gats liberalisation roughly captured in some studies might be important for developing countries but mode 4 gats liberalisation could be even more important given large barriers to labour flows across countries thus if service trade liberalisation is thought of primarily as a surrogate for improved functioning of global factor markets in which more capital flows to developing countries and more labour flows from them to developed countries then developing countries could benefit in a major way from genuine two sided oecd non oecd liberalisation developing countries fear however that in global negotiations on services liberalisation where there is an asymmetry of power that largely one sided liberalisation may be the outcome and their gains will be correspondingly limited the paper concludes by evaluating econometric studies on linkage between services liberalisation and country growth rules and briefly discusses some key sectoral issues in health services and transportation

prices technology development and the rebound effect abstract energy efficiency is the critical parameter for policies that aim at reducing energy consumption while maintaining or even boosting economic growth the two main options to influence energy efficiency are changes in relative prices i e raising the price of energy through economic instruments or to introduce new technologies which increase the productivity of each unit of energy this paper is based on the notion that in an equilibrium economy the marginal economic productivity is identical for all factors i e energy labour knowledge and capital from this premise two main conclusions can be drawn first any change in price or technology will have an impact on the whole economy by creating feedbacks through the substitution of factors of production and goods as well as increased wealth second the two policy approaches changing relative prices and technology development are not opposite to each other they are the two faces of the same reality and should be developed and promoted simultaneously and consistently

evaluation of external market effects and government intervention in malaysia s agricultural sector a computable general equilibrium framework the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of changes in the external trade environment and domestic economic policies on the agricultural development of malaysia the scope of this research also includes providing further insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the computable general equilibrium cge methodology for agricultural policy analysis the first analysis focuses on the export agriculture sector which encompasses malaysia s two primary agricultural commodities rubber and palm oil heavily dependent on exports of rubber in the 1950s and 1960s malaysia has since built a more diversified economy with strong emphasis on manufacturing export agriculture however is still an important component of the national economy the second objective examines the influence of domestic policy on agricultural development the simulation results demonstrate the growing resiliency of the malaysian economy to external shocks also they point to the domestic economy s ability to buffer internal policy induced distortions

assessment of china s climate commitment and non fossil energy plan towards 2020 using hybrid aim cge model china made a commitment in copenhagen to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gdp from 40 to 45 compared with the 2005 level by 2020 and is determined to vigorously develop non fossil fuels this study analyzes the effects and impacts of policies that could help to achieve china s copenhagen commitments with a hybrid static cge model in which the electricity sector is disaggregated into 12 generation technologies four scenarios are developed including the reference scenario a the reference scenario b and two carbon constraint scenarios the results show that carbon intensity in terms of gdp will fall by 30 97 between 2005 and 2020 in the reference scenario a and will be reduced further by 7 97 if china s targeted non fossil energy development plans can be achieved in the reference scenario b however the rest of the 40 45 target must be realized by other measures such as carbon constraint it is also observed that due to carbon intensity constraints gdp loss would be from 0 032 to 0 24 compared to the reference scenario b and co2 emission reductions are due mainly to decreases in coal consumption in the electricity sector and manufacturing sector

rebound and disinvestment effects in refined oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the scottish commercial transport sector in this paper we use an energy economy environment computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial transport sector on the supply and use of energy we focus our analysis on scottish refined oil as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity we find that a 5 increase in energy efficiency in the commercial transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil based energy commodities in all time periods in the target sector and at the economy wide level however our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the scottish refined oil supply sector this disinvestment effect acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects however the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector particularly the substitutability of energy for non energy intermediate inputs to production

an overview of implemented renewable energy policy of pakistan abstract after initiation of renewable energy policy in 2006 yet it could not be executed the green path for sustainable energy development in pakistan currently the share of non hydro big hydro projects renewables is less than 4 less than 900 mw of total installed electricity capacity against the medium term plan of having minimum capacity of 9700 mw in 2030 with several strategies and goals established in place to support the development of renewables however it is not well organized and also ill managed to find the effective renewable energy mix for the country according to targets this study aims to analyze that whether targets of renewable energy technology rets deployment will be met under the current regime a cross country analysis of renewable energy status reveals the workable instruments to increase the growth of rets amongst developed and developing nations it is clearly evident that without supplementary and policy instruments these ambitious targets cannot be achieved the strong political and financial commitments are necessary to accomplish the green pathway as governments are more tilted towards thermal power generation to overcome the huge electricity demand supply gap

an integrated economic and distributional analysis of energy policies most public policies particularly those in the energy sphere have not only efficiency but also distributional effects however there is a trade off between modelling approaches suitable for calculating those impacts on the economy for the former most of the studies have been conducted with general equilibrium models whereas partial equilibrium models represent the main approach for distributional analysis this paper proposes a methodology to simultaneously carry out an analysis of the distributional and efficiency consequences of changes in energy taxation in order to do so we have integrated a microeconomic household demand model and a computable general equilibrium model for the spanish economy we illustrate the advantages of this approach by simulating a revenue neutral reform in spanish indirect taxation with a large increase of energy taxes that serve an environmental purpose the results show that the reforms bring about significant efficiency and distributional effects in some cases counterintuitive and demonstrate the academic and social utility of this approximation

exogenous shocks contagion and bank soundness a macroeconomic framework abstract in a model where all banks are initially solvent an exogenous shock affects confidence causing a flight from deposits into domestic and foreign currency real interest rates increase unexpectedly affecting firms and raising the share of the banks nonperforming assets this contagion causes a bank run simulations show that compensatory monetary policy mitigates the bank run but causes macroeconomic imbalances combining compensatory monetary policy with tight fiscal policies slows the bank run and mitigates insolvency a devaluation combined with compensatory monetary policy reduces insolvencies and increases the growth of real income but at the cost of increased inflation

the parallel market of illegal aliens a computational approach abstract this paper develops the notion of illegal aliens as a parallel market in coexistence with the regular market of legal labor in the presence of both price controls on legal labor by minimum wage legislation and quantity controls on illegal aliens by immigration laws illegal aliens involve not only rural urban migration but also tax evasion and deportation costs we develop an analytical equilibrium structure which links markets for legal labor and illegal aliens illustrate how much an equilibrium can be computed and explore some implications of the linkage using united states data

on the impacts of carbon tax and technological progress on china using a dynamic national computable general equilibrium model we investigate the impact of carbon tax and energy efficiency improvement on the economy and environment of china the chinese social

how does administrative pricing affect energy consumption and co2 emissions in china despite reforms china still largely applies the cost plus pricing mechanism for the energy sector government administrative energy pricing leads to energy price distortions which could result in not only the excessive and wasteful energy consumption but also environmental deterioration thereby undermining energy conservation and emission abatement using fossil fuel subsidies as a proxy for the level of energy price distortions this paper estimates the subsidy of 22 chinese departments during the period 2006 2010 and adopts the price gap approach to analyze the impacts of subsidy removal on energy consumption and co2 emissions for the various sectors and energy types the results demonstrate that removing energy subsidies would reduce energy consumption and emissions by 3 77 and 2 85 respectively but the effects vary across sectors the transport storage and post sector and the electricity gas and water supply sector are much more affected by energy subsidies removal than other sectors with respect to energy types fuel oil and natural gas are sensitive to subsidies indicating the magnitude of their consumption this suggests that removing subsidies on these fuel types could significantly reduce co2 emissions finally we comprehensively discuss relevant policy issues on energy price formation reform

socially responsible investing in the united states socially responsible investing sri has emerged in recent years as a dynamic and quickly growing segment of the u s financial services industry involving over 2 trillion in professionally managed assets its conceptual origins can be found in the early history of civilization with it s modern roots in the 1960s this paper provides an overview of the breadth and depth of the concept and practice of socially and environmentally responsible investing describes the investment strategies that together define sri as currently practiced in the u s offers several observations about some of the factors fueling its dramatic growth and presents data showing that investors who choose to invest in a socially and environmentally responsible manner can do so without giving up investment returns sri has matured to a point where virtually any investment need can be met through portfolio design that integrates an investor s personal values institutional mission and or social priorities the socially responsible investment industry in the unitedstates is a young phenomenon even referring to it as an industry ten years ago may have been a bit of a stretch while it has grown dramatically in recent years it is an area of work of study and of practical application that continues to evolve in many significant ways one intriguing example of the ongoing development of the field can be found in the analysis of the language used to describe it the terms social investing socially responsible investing ethical investing socially aware investing socially conscious investing green investing values based investing and mission based or mission related investing all refer to the same general process and are often used interchangeably

external sector closing rules in applied general equilibrium models abstract this paper examines formulations of external sector behavior adopted in some of the recent applied general equilibrium models in many cases these models are constructed for single economies and the model builder attempts to use a convenient external sector specification to close the model issues and difficulties with export demand and import supply functions for foreigners which satisfy trade balance and the modeling of small economy price taking behavior are explored

applied general equilibrium models for energy studies a survey the importance of energy in any economy developed or underdeveloped became clear after the first oil shock in 1973 since then different studies were carried out to formulate energy policies and to study their impact on the economies since energy policy issues are related to various aspects of the economy such as price formation output determination income generation and distribution consumption behaviour government operation etc a coherent and systematic mechanism is required for such analysis by offering such a framework of analysis age models gained popularity among energy modellers in the 1980s the environmental issues have gained importance and the focus shifted towards curbing and containing emissions of environmentally unfriendly gases resulting from the use of energy age models because of their capability to capture the complexities of the economy have found relevance in analysing the economic impacts of controlling pollution and greenhouse gases this paper surveys the literature on such general equilibrium models as applied to energy studies and reports their special features evolution through time as well as their limitations

the impacts of carbon tax and complementary policies on chinese economy under the pressure of global warming it is imperative for chinese government to impose effective policy instruments to promote domestic energy saving and carbon emissions reduction as one of the most important incentive based policy instruments carbon tax has sparked a lively controversy in china this paper explores the impact of carbon tax on chinese economy as well as the cushion effects of the complementary policies by constructing a dynamic recursive general equilibrium model the model can describe the new equilibrium for each sequential independent period e g one year after carbon tax and the complementary policies are imposed and thus describe the long term impacts of the policies the simulation results show that carbon tax is an effective policy tool because it can reduce carbon emissions with a little negative impact on economic growth reducing indirect tax in the meantime of imposing carbon tax will help to reduce the negative impact of the tax on production and competitiveness in addition giving households subsidy in the meantime will help to stimulate household consumptions therefore complementary policies used together with carbon tax will help to cushion the negative impacts of carbon tax on the economy the dynamic cge analysis shows the impact of carbon tax policy on the gdp is relatively small but the reduction of carbon emission is relatively large

the impact of increased efficiency in the industrial use of energy a computable general equilibrium analysis for the united kingdom the conventional wisdom is that improving energy efficiency will lower energy use however there is an extensive debate in the energy economics policy literature concerning rebound effects these occur because an improvement in energy efficiency produces a fall in the effective price of energy services the response of the economic system to this price fall at least partially offsets the expected beneficial impact of the energy efficiency gain in this paper we use an economy energy environment computable general equilibrium cge model for the uk to measure the impact of a 5 across the board improvement in the efficiency of energy use in all production sectors we identify rebound effects of the order of 30 50 but no backfire no increase in energy use however these results are sensitive to the assumed structure of the labour market key production elasticities the time period under consideration and the mechanism through which increased government revenues are recycled back to the economy

the displacement and multiplier effects of regional selective assistance a computable general equilibrium analysis this paper uses a hybrid approach to simulate the effects of regional selective assistance rsa for scotland this combines industrial survey estimation of the direct impacts and computable general equilibrium cge modelling of the system wide effects the results are compared to those derived using the method currently adopted in official evaluation studies of rsa and other regional regeneration policy instruments the cge approach captures capacity labour market displacement and migration effects ignored in existing studies simulation identifies the conditions under which these effects are likely to be quantitatively important a partir d une facon hybride cet article cherche a simuler pour l ecosse l impact des primes regionales une estimation des effets directs a partir d une enquete aupres de l industrie se voit allier a la modelisation des effets generalises par une analyse d equilibre general sur ordinateur on compare les resultats a ceux qui proviennent des methodes employees actuellement

sustainable development the ethics support the economics within their value chains of suppliers through customers many businesses are becoming more aware of the environmental aspects and impacts of their organizations viewed as a continuum of behavior business environmentalism can range from simply complying with the law to accepting and pursuing a goal of sustainable development the point on the continuum at which an organization chooses to operate is reflected in its environmental mission policies and actions attributes of the various levels of behavior and classification of some organizational mission statements are examined in this paper

bank failures and fiscal austerity policy prescriptions for a developing country abstract this work employs a dynamic general equilibrium model to evaluate the causes and implications of bank insolvencies we apply the model to stylized data from bangladesh a country whose banking system is currently suffering from large stocks of non performing assets the model is used to derive positive conclusions about alternative policy instruments designed to alleviate the impact of these insolvencies a benchmark case is simulated using historical exogenous parameters we then generate a bank failure by assuming that firms cannot service their debt if their interest obligations rise above their anticipated return on capital the public withdraws deposits from the banking system in reaction to worries about defaulting bank assets if banks optimize by restricting credit to risky borrowers these failures can be partially avoided such bank behavior is often prohibited in developing countries so we investigate an active monetary policy that compensates banks for withdrawn deposits the resulting outcome indicates that such a policy can slow the pace of bank failures although at the cost of certain macro imbalances our final simulation imposes a reduction in public spending in order to tighten fiscal policy and thereby reduce budgetary pressure the resulting decline in interest rates eliminates all investor defaults and bank failures we conclude that the combination of compensating monetary policy and restrictive fiscal policy may offer the best way of responding to a bank crisis

trade preferences for developing countries a survey of results empirical studies of the trade and development effects of the major preferential trading schemes between the industrialised countries and the developing countries are surveyed most studies find the agreements to be trade creating improving welfare for the donor though general equilibrium analysis indicates that terms of trade deterioration offsets efficiency gains there is some evidence that trade preferences stimulate ldc exports of preferred products but total exports are not significantly affected due to limited product coverage the existing literature does not provide evidence on the degree of infant industry protection or on economic diversification of the beneficiaries

carbon taxes with exemptions in an open economy a general equilibrium analysis of the german tax initiative abstract sectoral exemptions from environmental regulation are applied in many countries to avoid adverse adjustment effects in specific industries the problem with exemptions is that they can make environmental policy more costly our paper analyzes the welfare costs of exemptions in environmental policy together with the issue of unilateral carbon taxes in an open economy several countries within the eu have introduced or contemplated unilateral taxes to reduce anthropogenic co2emissions taxes which are unilaterally imposed in an open economy can have significant impacts on production and employment of energy and export intensive industries to save jobs by maintaining international competitiveness most co2taxation schemes include exemptions for energy and export intensive industries as a compromise between environmental objectives and employment in these sectors this paper shows that such compromises are costly as the tax base narrows the dead weight loss increases our calculations illustrate this point in the framework of a static general equilibrium model for west germany calibrated to 1990 data we evaluate the excess costs of exemptions as a means of saving jobs in specific industries relative to an alternative instrument a uniform carbon tax cum wage subsidy which achieves an identical level of national emissions and employment at a fraction of the cost

taxing tourism and subsidizing non tourism a welfare enhancing solution to dutch disease abstract using a combined analysis of a general equilibrium and a partial equilibrium this study models the impacts of a combined policy tool based on taxing tourism and subsidizing non tourism in a tourism dependent destination the results suggest that such a policy tool while widely discussed in economics literature may not be suitable for a tourism destination as it might have adverse effects on local welfare