the carbon footprint of uk households 1990 2004 a socio economically disaggregated quasi multi regional input output model this paper presents a socio economically disaggregated framework for attributing co2 emissions to people s high level functional needs based around a quasi multi regional input output qmrio model the study in theory takes into account all co2 emissions that arise from energy used in production of goods and services to satisfy uk household demand whether the emissions occur in the uk or abroad results show that co2 emissions attributable to households were 15 above 1990 levels in 2004 and that although absolute decoupling occurred between household expenditure and co2 during the uk s switch from coal to gas in the early 1990s since then only slight relative decoupling is evident the proportion of co2 that arises outside uk borders in support of uk consumption is rising and reducing these emissions is particularly problematic in a global trading system investigation into the carbon footprint of different segments of the uk population shows wide variation the segment with the highest carbon footprint emits 64 more co2 than the segment with the lowest results show that recreation and leisure are responsible for over one quarter of co2 emissions in a typical uk household in 2004 we conclude that expanding lifestyle aspirations are significant factors in driving household co2 emissions but the study also emphasizes that attention must be paid to the infrastructures and institutions that result in considerable amounts of co2 being locked up in basic household activities through which people meet their everyday needs for subsistence protection and communication with family and friends the findings highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing uk policy makers and suggest that policies should be targeted towards segments of society responsible for the highest carbon footprints

is what we think of as rebound really just income effects in disguise this paper examines the question of whether unexpectedly high energy use in the wake of energy efficiency gains can be explained as arising from increases in consumer wealth as opposed to energy efficiency rebound effects the analysis concludes that historical energy consumption increases were driven by more than just income levels with the lowest income consumers in the us using more energy in 2002 than they did in 1987 despite significant energy use efficiency gains and despite declining average incomes in this category further direct use of energy in households increased for all income categories over this time period these results point to rebound as being the culprit not income effects

turning lights into flights estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for uk households energy efficiency improvements by households lead to rebound effects that offset the potential energy and emissions savings direct rebound effects result from increased demand for cheaper energy services while indirect rebound effects result from increased demand for other goods and services that also require energy to provide research to date has focused upon the former but both are important for climate change this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from seven measures that improve the energy efficiency of uk dwellings the methodology is based upon estimates of the income elasticity and greenhouse gas ghg intensity of 16 categories of household goods and services and allows for the embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves as well as the capital cost of the measures rebound effects are measured in ghg terms and relate to the adoption of these measures by an average uk household the study finds that the rebound effects from these measures are typically in the range 5 15 and arise mostly from indirect effects this is largely because expenditure on gas and electricity is more ghg intensive than expenditure on other goods and services however the anticipated shift towards a low carbon electricity system in the uk may lead to much larger rebound effects

asset pricing with loss aversion using standard preferences for asset pricing has not been very successful to match asset price characteristics such as the risk free interest rate equity premium and the sharpe ratio to time series data behavioral nance has recently proposed more realistic preferences such as preferences with loss aversion to model asset pricing research has now started to explore the implications of behaviorally founded preferences for asset price characteristics encouraged by some studies of benartzki and thaler 1995 and barberis et al 2001 we study asset pricing with loss aversion in a production economy we here employ a stochastic growth model and use a stochastic version of a dynamic programming method with adaptive grid scheme to compute the above mentioned asset price characteristics of a model with loss aversion in preferences as our results show a model with loss aversion performs considerably better than pure consumption based asset pricing models

defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

intertemporal lifestyle changes and carbon emissions evidence from a china household survey abstract this paper examines the endogenous evolution of household consumption patterns and household carbon emissions hces by integrating the analysis methods of income distribution with climate change based on a large scale household survey spanning from 2012 to 2016 in china we estimated the direct and indirect hces observed inverse u shaped carbon kuznets curves ckc and significant changes in hces over the period at the household level applying the oaxaca blinder method we decomposed factors causing the changes in hces and found that income and demographic effects contribute only 25 1 to the total increase of hces the other 74 9 remain unexplained and we define them as the effect of intertemporal lifestyle changes further analysis from multiple perspectives illustrates that the lifestyles of households across various social strata are becoming increasingly higher carbon intensive over time even though the income remains unchanged the findings indicate that existing modeling and projections of carbon emissions based on income and household characteristics may underestimate the future emissions pressure from the household sector hence we conclude that in order to reach more meaningful results the increasing effect of lifestyles should be taken into account when conducting climate change studies and formulating climate policies

the increase in brazilian household income and its impact on co2 emissions evidence for 2003 and 2009 from input output tables abstract in recent years brazil has experienced economic growth and a recovery of income that has had a positive impact on the consumption of goods in this paper we evaluate the impact of brazilian household consumption on the co2 emissions for 2003 and 2009 using input output tables from the world input output database we used a semi closed model with eight household groups in order to apply the hypothetical extraction method in the consumption structure of each group further we use the result from the hypothetical extraction to evaluate the impacts of the structure consumption of each household group in terms of co2 emissions we find that there is a trade off between the households greater satisfaction from consumption and the increasing setback in emissions from the restructuring and modification of the consumption basket thus this study contributes to the research on emissions by mapping the recent behavior of the brazilian economy in terms of increased income changes in the consumption structure and their impacts on emissions the paper s aggregated results by income and consumption structure based on the intensity of the emissions and their systemic effects add to the discussions on less polluting production processes more conscious consumption of goods and more rational uses of energy and transportation

casting a long shadow demand based accounting of canada s greenhouse gas emissions responsibility abstract canada is the only country to have ratified the kyoto protocol and then withdrawn part of the justification for canada s reluctance to commit to greenhouse gas ghg emissions reductions is the country s status as fossil fuel exporter in this paper we use input output analysis and the world input output database wiod to ask whether canada s contribution to global ghg emissions changes when calculated using a demand based shadow emission approach that excludes ghg emissions created in the production of exports like fossil fuels but includes emissions released to produce imports to canada we find that from 1995 to 2005 canada s contribution to global emissions was lower using this demand based ghg accounting approach than a production based approach from 2006 to 2009 however increased imports from ghg intensive trading partners like china meant that canada s demand based shadow emissions were higher than its production based ghg emissions we also introduce a method of calculating sub national ghg shadows using limited data applied to canada this exercise demonstrates that fossil fuel exporting provinces such as alberta and saskatchewan have demand based shadow emissions significantly lower than their production based emissions while populous provinces such as quebec and ontario have demand based emissions that are relatively higher than their production based emissions

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

perceiving prospects properly when an agent chooses between prospects noise in information processing generates an effect akin to the winner s curse statistically unbiased perception systematically overvalues the chosen action because it fails to account for the possibility that noise is responsible for making the preferred action appear to be optimal the optimal perception patterns share key features with prospect theory namely overweighting of small probability events and corresponding underweighting of high probability events status quo bias and reference dependent s shaped valuations these biases arise to correct for the winner s curse effect

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

a household s burden the embodied resource use of household equipment in germany the paper describes patterns of resource use related to german households equipment using cluster analysis and material flow accounting data on socio demographic characteristics and expenditures on fuel electricity and household equipment allow for a differentiation of seven different household types the corresponding resource use expressed in material footprint per person and year is calculated based on cradle to gate material flows of average household goods and the related household energy use our results show that patterns of resource use are mainly driven by the use of fuel and electricity and the ownership of cars the quantified material footprints correlate to social status and are also linked to city size age and household size affluent established and or younger families living in rural areas typically show the highest amounts of durables and expenditures on non durables thus exhibiting the highest use of natural resources

the role of consumption patterns demand and technological factors on the recent evolution of co2 emissions in a group of advanced economies changes in production structures and modifications of patterns of consumption are key factors in the fight against environmental harm initiatives such as agenda 21 promoted by the un highlight the need to evaluate the relationships among factors of production and consumption innovation and demographics and the environment in the attainment of sustainable development in this context our work studies in depth those factors underlying the economic activity of households in a representative group of european union countries and the us within the framework of an input output model a structural decomposition analysis is considered in order to identify the weight that growth in demand changes in patterns of consumption changes in the distribution of income the substitution of inputs and changes in energy intensity have all had on the evolution of co2 emissions the work specifically seeks to identify common patterns and differential behaviors among productive sectors in the european social environment the results show that growth in demand and therefore in production largely absorbs the limited effect of technological and efficiency improvements and the incipient changes observed in consumption patterns

constituent interest vs legislator ideology the role of political opportunity cost this paper applies the economic model of legislative voting to the automobile industry domestic content vote in the u s house of representatives in 1982 we consider constituent interests for and against the ml and compare the predictive powers of alternative indicators of ideological preferences we also examine the role of political opportunity cost and find that lame ducks were significantly less likely to vote for the bill than were returnees to congress given the political advantages of voting for the bill this is consistent with the view that legislators were influenced by the case for freer trade

generalized disappointment aversion and asset prices we characterize generalized disappointment aversion gda risk preferences that can overweight lower tail outcomes relative to expected utility we show in an endowment economy that recursive utility with gda risk preferences generates effective risk aversion that is countercyclical this feature comes from endogenous variation in the probability of disappointment in the representative agent s intertemporal consumption saving problem that underlies the asset pricing model the variation in effective risk aversion produces a large equity premium and a risk free rate that is procyclical and has low volatility in an economy with a simple autoregressive endowment growth process the observed facts of aggregate risks and asset prices in the post war u s economy have led researchers to explore models of intertemporal preferences that generalize the well developed time additive expected utility specification used in the asset pricing economy of lucas 1978 in particular models that allow for countercyclical risk aversion have been shown to perform much better than the standard model see e g campbell and cochrane 1999 gordon and st amour 2000 and barberis huang and santos 2001 1 this leads us to explore the preference foundations that may produce this behavior endogenously our preference specification is a one parameter extension of the gul 1991 disappointment aversion utility function these new preferences

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 1 theoretical framework abstract this is the first part of a two part paper providing an analytical model of the indirect rebound effect given a direct rebound estimate that integrates consumer demand theory with the embodied energy of household spending from environmentally extended input output analysis the second part applies the model developed in part one to simulate the direct and indirect rebound for the average u s household in terms of primary energy co2e nox and so2 emissions and for energy efficiency investments in electricity natural gas or gasoline services part one provides a critical review of the largely independent economic and industrial ecology literatures on the indirect rebound by studying the two goods case and the n goods case we demonstrate that the indirect rebound is bounded by the consumer budget constraint and inversely related to the direct rebound we also compare the common proportional spending and income elasticity spending assumptions with our model of cross price elasticities including both substitution and income effects for the indirect rebound by assuming zero incremental capital costs and the same embodied energy as conventional technologies for efficient appliances we model an upper bound of the indirect rebound future work should also consider the increase in consumer welfare possible through the rebound effect

residential energy expenditures and the relevance of changes in household circumstances this paper analyses the impact that dwelling characteristics and characteristics and behaviours of household members have on per capita energy expenditures it also analyses whether changes in household socio economic circumstances translate in changes in energy expenditures socio economic characteristics have a moderate impact while dwelling characteristics and especially household size have much larger impacts the largest changes in energy expenditures are due to changes in household size the recent socio demographic trends will make it harder to design policies to effectively reduce the carbon footprint of a country while policies influencing cohabitation and family size may have positive indirect effects

carbon footprint of a university in a multiregional model the case of the university of castilla la mancha abstract the increasing concern about the environmental performance and sustainability of firms and organizations also involves educational institutions if universities aim to become leaders in sustainability aspects they must adopt strategies that involve the entire university system as a useful tool for this purpose the objective of this study was to calculate the carbon footprint for the university of castilla la mancha for the period 2005 2013 the calculation of the university carbon footprint was accomplished through a hybrid environmentally extended input output model in a multiregional framework which constitutes a novelty of the analysis the proposed tool also allows the calculation of the potential for emissions reduction of abatement measures the carbon footprint induced by the consumption of university employees wages is also undertaken as a way to increase awareness and university outreach to society the results show the relevance of both imports and indirect emissions and highlight the significance of energy related emissions enabled by sectors such as renting electrical and optical equipment manufacturing or even services

luxury or lock in an exploration of unsustainable consumption in the uk 1968 to 2000 abstract sustainable consumption demands the ability to understand the patterns of resource consumption associated with changing lifestyles this paper explores changes in resource consumption patterns in the uk between 1968 and 2000 using an environmental input output model the paper tracks the fossil resource requirements attributable to 8 high level functional purposes and finds that overall fossil resource consumption increased 35 over the 32 year period the four functional purposes most closely related to the provision of basic material needs showed little change over the period the bulk of the increase in fossil resource requirements was attributable to two specific functional purposes 1 recreation and entertainment 2 commuting and business travel the authors discuss the relevance of these findings for the continuing debate over the question whether rising consumption is being driven by expanding social aspirations luxury or whether it is the result of structural lock in

a review of recent multi region input output models used for consumption based emission and resource accounting abstract the interest in consumption based emission and resource accounting has grown significantly many studies juxtapose consumer emissions carbon footprint and producer territorial emissions of greenhouse gases in order to demonstrate the effects of trade on the national emission budget to this end a respectable number of studies have been undertaken worldwide in order to estimate emissions embedded in international trade of numerous countries and world regions input output approaches and increasingly multi region input output mrio models are commonly chosen as they provide an appropriate methodological framework for complete carbon footprint estimates at the national and supra national level with increasing processing capabilities of computers and a wider availability of economic accounts environmental accounts and trade data such models are now being implemented on a wide scale after a brief overview of salient single region input output studies i provide an in depth review of the most recent multi region input output models used for the purpose of consumption based environmental accounting the main methodological features and important results are described for around twenty studies covering the years 2007 to 2009 this is followed by a detailed review of studies dealing with uncertainty in mrio analysis an area which has not received a lot of attention so far i conclude that further research is mainly needed in two areas a improvements in data availability and quality and b improvements in the accuracy of mrio modelling

indirect carbon emissions of urban households in china patterns determinants and inequality abstract the urban household sector is considered to be an essential source of climate change in order to obtain detailed information concerning the description of household consumption activities this paper combined consumer lifestyle approach and input output analysis to estimate indirect carbon emissions of urban household from 2002 to 2012 besides we further analysed the driving forces and inequality of indirect carbon emissions the results showed that the total indirect carbon emissions during the study period increased rapidly rising from 894 08 mtco2 to 1957 03 mtco2 more than 58 of carbon emissions were from 40 of the high income population the highest income group 10 of total urban households deduced 21 of urban indirect carbon emissions the per capita carbon emissions of different households showed a remarkable disparity and the per capita carbon emissions of high income groups decreased from 2011 to 2012 the effective mitigation efforts should focus on reducing carbon intensity and shifting consumption structure for high inequality consumption activities caused by rich households rich urban households should consume less goods and services from this consumption activities for high inequality consumption activities caused by low income households the redistribution of income from rich to poor and low carbon intensity lifestyles may be better options to reduce carbon emissions and inequalities of urban households

forecasting scenarios for uk household expenditure and associated ghg emissions outlook to 2030 using the modelling tool elesa econometric lifestyle environment scenario analysis this paper describes forecast scenarios to 2030 for uk household expenditure and associated direct and indirect greenhouse gas ghg emissions for 16 expenditure categories using assumptions for real household disposable income real prices exogenous non economic factors exnef average uk temperatures and ghg intensities three future scenarios are constructed in each scenario real expenditure for almost all categories of uk expenditure continues to grow up to 2030 the exceptions being alcoholic beverages and tobacco and other fuels and gas and electricity in the low scenario leading to an increase in associated ghg emissions for most of the categories in the reference and high scenarios other than food and non alcoholic beverages alcoholic beverages and tobacco electricity other fuels and recreation and culture of the future ghg emissions about 30 is attributed to direct energy use by households and nearly 70 attributable to indirect energy uk policy makers therefore need to consider a range of policies if they wish to curtail emissions associated with household expenditure including for example economic measures such as taxes alongside measures that reflect the important contribution of exnef to changes in expenditure for most categories of consumption

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

optimal portfolio choice under loss aversion this paper analyzes the optimal investment strategy for loss averse investors assuming a complete market and general ito processes for the asset prices the loss averse investor follows a partial portfolio insurance strategy when the investor s planning horizon is short less than 5 years he or she considerably reduces the initial portfolio weight of stocks compared to an investor with smooth power utility the empirical section of the paper estimates the level of loss aversion implied by historical u s stock market data using a representative agent model we find that loss aversion and risk aversion cannot be disentangled empirically

first order risk aversion and the equity premium puzzle abstract this paper integrates yaari s dual theory of choice under uncertainty into a multiperiod context and examines its implications for the equity premium puzzle an important property of these preferences is that of first order risk aversion which implies in our model that the risk premium for a small gamble is proportional to the standard deviation rather than the variance since the standard deviation of the growth rate in aggregate consumption is considerably larger than its variance the model can generate both a small risk free rate and a moderate equity premium

individual preferences monetary gambles and stock market participation a case for narrow framing we argue that narrow framing whereby an agent who is offered a new gamble evaluates that gamble in isolation may be a more important feature of decision making than previously realized our starting point is the evidence that people are often averse to a small independent gamble even when the gamble is actuarially favorable we find that a surprisingly wide range of utility functions including many nonexpected utility specifications have trouble explaining this evidence but that this difficulty can be overcome by allowing for narrow framing our analysis makes predictions as to what kinds of preferences can most easily address the stock market participation puzzle

living up to expectations estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for uk households this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement by uk households in contrast to most studies of this topic we base our estimates on cross price elasticities and therefore capture both the income and substitution effects of energy efficiency improvements our approach involves estimating a household demand model to obtain price and expenditure elasticities of different goods and services utilising a multiregional input output model to estimate the ghg emission intensities of those goods and services combining the two to estimate direct and indirect rebound effects and decomposing those effects to reveal the relative contribution of different mechanisms and commodities we estimate that the total rebound effects are 41 for measures that improve the efficiency of domestic gas use 48 for electricity use and 78 for vehicle fuel use the primary source of this rebound is increased consumption of the cheaper energy service i e direct rebound and this is primarily driven by substitution effects our results suggest that the neglect of substitution effects may have led prior research to underestimate the total rebound effect however we provide a number of caveats to this conclusion as well as indicating priorities for future research

the design of an environmental index of sustainable food consumption a pilot study using supermarket data monitoring of the environmental impacts of consumption is necessary for the evaluation of current performance and to support the understanding of how initiatives for change can be implemented we discuss design issues and methodology for an environmentally sensitive shopper ess index to measure the environmental sustainability of food consumption at the household level the ess index is based on revealed consumer preferences and uses scanner data provided by the largest uk food retailer as a pilot illustration of the methodology we use the index to identify environmentally critical periods during the calendar year

social interaction and stock market participation we propose that stock market participation is influenced by social interaction in our model any given social investor finds the market more attractive when more of his peers participate we test this theory using data from the health and retirement study and find that social households those who interact with their neighbors or attend church are substantially more likely to invest in the market than non social households controlling for wealth race education and risk tolerance moreover consistent with a peer effects story the impact of sociability is stronger in states where stock market participation rates are higher

cumulative prospect theory option returns and the variance premium the variance premium and the pricing of out of the money otm equity index options are major challenges to standard asset pricing models we develop a tractable equilibrium model with cumulative prospect theory cpt preferences that can overcome both challenges the key insight is that the variance premium can be written as the expected return on a portfolio of otm call and put options and the probability weighting feature of cpt can explain the puzzlingly low returns observed for these options using gmm on a sample of u s index option returns between 1996 and 2010 we show that the cpt model ts well observed option prices and therefore the variance premium in a dynamic setting probability weighting and time varying equity return volatility combine to match the observed time series pattern of the variance premium

consumption sustainable welfare and human needs with reference to uk expenditure patterns between 1954 and 1994 abstract this paper explores the complex relationship between economic consumption and human welfare or well being conventional economics suggests that increasing levels of economic consumption lead to increasing levels of well being however this view has been criticised on both environmental and social grounds on the one hand the material impacts of increasing consumption are environmentally unsustainable on the other hand material consumption can conflict with crucial social and psychological components of human welfare this paper develops a perspective on human welfare which is based on max neef s characterisation of human needs it discusses the implications of this alternative perspective for the conventional viewpoint and illustrates the importance of it with reference to patterns of consumer expenditure in the uk over the last 40 years the authors suggest that from this perspective modern societies may be seriously adrift in their pursuit of human well being however they also point out that addressing this situation provides far more opportunity for ecologically sustainable development than is generally recognised

first order risk aversion heterogeneity and asset market outcomes we examine a wide range of two date economies populated by heterogeneous agents with the most common forms of nonexpected utility preferences used in finance and macroeconomics we demonstrate that the risk premium and the risk free rate in these models are sensitive to ignoring heterogeneity this follows because of endogenous withdrawal by nonexpected utility agents from the market for the risky asset this finding is important precisely because these alternative preferences have frequently been proposed as possible resolutions to various asset pricing puzzles and they have all been examined exclusively in a representative agent framework the well documented shortcomings of asset pricing models based in part on the expected utility eu hypothesis has motivated a large and rapidly grow ing set of pricing models that incorporate nonexpected utility preferences the pricing implications of these models in the existing literature have been based exclusively on the assumption of a single representative agent ra who prices assets using the aggregate endowment as the consumption process while ag gregation is well understood in the standard eu setting see constantinides 1982 it can be more complicated when some or all agents do not have eu we provide a simple and intuitive examination of the asset pricing implications of heterogeneity for the most commonly used alternatives to eu our primary finding is that the risk premium and the risk free rate are sensitive to ignoring heterogeneity in all of the simple two date non eu models that we examine we compare the prices in a model with two agent types to the prices in a model with a single representative agent who has a wealth weighted average of the utility parameters in the two agent economy the economies are otherwise identical for example they have the same endowment process market structure etc it is common for the single agent model to overstate the equity premium often by as much as 100 or more of the value in the two agent model and to understate the level of the risk free rate often by as much as 20 of the value in the two agent model

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

emissions in a decarbonised economy global lessons from a carbon footprint analysis of iceland abstract decarbonisation of stationary energy supply particularly electricity grids is the current focus of climate change mitigation policy however studies have suggested that this narrow policy focus is insufficient to achieve meaningful global emissions reductions using iceland as a case study this paper demonstrates that significant emissions arise from transport and imported products which are often not fully captured in territorial ghg inventories this results in high greenhouse gas emissions per capita regardless of the nation s domestic energy supply the result is a low carbon illusion in which rich economies believe they are reducing their ghg responsibility whilst global emissions continue to grow this paper presents the first consumption based carbon footprint cbcf analysis for iceland a nation where the stationary energy supply is 99 renewable and could be viewed as a decarbonisation future case for rich nations globally the study combines icelandic household expenditure data with the multi regional input output database eora to calculate the cbcf of icelandic households the average annual cbcf of icelandic households was 10 4 tco2eq capita similar in magnitude to other eu nations despite iceland s unique energy supply ghg emissions from transport food and goods dominated the household cbcf the national cbcf was higher than most european nations and 55 higher than the territorial emissions inventory approximately 71 of household emissions were attributed to imported goods which were mapped globally revealing that the ghg emissions burden of icelandic consumption falls primarily on developing nations the findings suggest that a broader ghg accounting framework and resulting policy focus is required both in iceland and globally that incorporates both supply and demand based ghg reduction strategies

energy consumption by gender in some european countries household total energy use has been estimated in numerous studies in recent decades and differences have mainly been explained by levels of income expenditure studies of gender consumption patterns show that men eat more meat than women and drive longer distances potentially leading to higher total energy use by men in this study we calculated the total energy use for male and female consumption patterns in four european countries germany norway greece and sweden by studying single households significant differences in total energy use were found in two countries greece and sweden the largest differences found between men and women were for travel and eating out alcohol and tobacco where men used much more energy than women we suggest that these findings are policy relevant for the eu which aims to mainstream gender issues into all activities and to lower its total energy use

the carbon footprint of greek households 1995 2012 abstract the goal of this paper is twofold i to investigate the carbon footprint of greek households throughout the period 1995 2012 in order to identify the main socio economic factors that affect ghg emissions and ii to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented policies to tackle climate change in this a consumption based emissions inventory approach is applied the analysis is based on an environmentally extended input output model including direct co2 emissions from households indirect co2 emissions from electricity consumption and indirect co2 emissions from energy used in the production of goods and services purchased by households domestic or imported statistical analysis and appropriate regression models were developed in order to identify the main factors influencing the carbon footprint of greek households the results indicate that the observed trends during the period 1995 2008 can be attributed to the effect of high economic growth this trend is partially counterbalanced by favorable weather conditions and the implementation of greenhouse mitigation policies and measures mainly in the supply side since 2008 the shrinking household income is the dominant driver in addition the effectiveness of energy conservation policies and measures in place is rather low while the effect of imports is limited

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

measuring resource inequalities the concepts and methodology for an area based gini coefficient abstract although inequalities in income and expenditure are relatively well researched comparatively little attention has been paid to date to inequalities in resource use this is clearly a shortcoming when it comes to developing informed policies for sustainable consumption and social justice this paper describes an indicator of inequality in resource use called the ar gini the ar gini is an area based measure of resource inequality that estimates inequalities between neighbourhoods with regard to the consumption of specific consumer goods it is also capable of estimating inequalities in the emissions resulting from resource use such as carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and solid waste arisings from material resource use the indicator is designed to be used as a basis for broadening the discussion concerning food deserts to inequalities in other types of resource use by estimating the ar gini for a wide range of goods and services we aim to enhance our understanding of resource inequalities and their drivers identify which resources have highest inequalities and to explore trends in inequalities the paper describes the concepts underlying the construction of the ar gini and its methodology its use is illustrated by pilot applications specifically men s and boys clothing carpets refrigerators freezers and clothes washer driers the results illustrate that different levels of inequality are associated with different commodities the paper concludes with a brief discussion of some possible policy implications of the ar gini

how does income redistribution affect households material footprint abstract this paper presents a study of the evolution of spanish households material footprint for the period 2006 to 2013 the method proposed combines the multiregional input output model with spanish national data on household consumption according to social group material footprint has been affected by the 2008 economic crisis in relative terms the share of spanish households material footprint with respect to total material footprint decreased drastically from 70 7 in 2006 to 50 8 in 2011 this reduction can be mainly attributed to the construction sector crash 34 4 of the reduction is due to construction materials followed by biomass 29 metals 27 1 and fossil fuels 26 1 by type of household the material footprint exhibits a scale effect while consumption and income levels grow and this is accompanied by a global teleconnection effect which varies from 62 for biomass to 64 for metals to 82 for construction materials to 95 for fossil fuels given the context of increasing income inequality we perform one redistribution simulation from high to middle and low income households finding a material footprint increase in all cases the most materialized consumer basket is that corresponding to households with incomes between 1500 and 1999 euros above that income level the growing weight of expenditures on services reduces the use of materials importantly social income redistribution and environmental material footprint sustainability will become incompatible if responsibility is transferred only to households

integrating sustainability into city level co2 accounting social consumption pattern and income distribution abstract from a sustainability perspective city level co2 emissions require reconsiderations correspondingly the economy environment society nexus should be incorporated into city scale co2 accounting therefore in this study the semi closed io model is integrated with a hem to calculate co2 emissions arising from the social consumption pattern and income distribution and to explore economic drivers behind co2 variations this method is applied to a case study of beijing result demonstrate that beijing in 2012 witnessed something different from that in 2005 1 co2 emissions centred in the internal linkages of a broader class of consumption terms with high economic output mainly driven by interprovincial exports 2 imports increasingly helped decarbonize the mixed net forward and backward co2 linkages of consumption items and 3 income driven co2 emissions excluding demand side parts persisted which were more obvious on the supply side where households have more economy wide effects besides urban households played an essential role in household wide co2 reductions this paper ended with corresponding conclusions policy implications and directions for future work

a bibliometric review energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector residential sector has been one key sector for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions due to its significant contribution to global warming researchers in different countries have studied household energy consumption patterns and greenhouse gas emissions in order to promote low carbon lifestyles however few review papers have been published in this regard leading to a lack of systematic understanding on the related research achievements hence by using a bibliometric approach this paper aims to review the existing literature and examine the evolution of such a field so that the research trends can be uncovered including popular research methods citation analysis is performed to assess the influence of most productive journals countries territories and authors network analysis is also conducted to evaluate the relationship among different countries territories authors and keywords research outcomes of this paper present a comprehensive research picture on residential energy consumption and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions ree related papers published from 1997 to 2016 the most productive journals countries territories authors are also analyzed based on citation analysis and network analysis in addition results also revealed that behavioral analysis input output analysis life cycle assessment and cost benefit analysis are the most commonly used methods in this field results obtained from this study can provide valuable information for researchers interested in the ree related field

mill s scissors structural change and the natural resource inputs to labour the environmental structural change strategy claims that by shifting our expenditures to economic sectors with lower environmental intensity absolute resource consumption and environmental impact can be lowered environmental input output methodologies for computing these intensities attribute no resource consumption to labour or households because these are not classified as sectors the suggestion that service sectors entail less environmental impact however loses force if a unit of labour contains embodied energy and attributing these inputs to labour drastically reduces intensity variation between sectors relative growth of service sectors has furthermore not been accompanied by decreased resource consumption thus models whose intensity computations cover not only inter firm payments but also labour earnings and household expenditures may have superior predictive power if moreover natural resource and labour inputs to product are incommensurable intensity ratios themselves have perhaps only monetary rather than real significance

asset pricing in a lucas fruit tree economy with the best and worst in mind this paper studies a lucas 1978 fruit tree economy under the assumption that the agents are choquet expected utility ceu rather than standard expected utility decision makers more speci cally the agents non additive beliefs about the economy s dividend payment process are modelled as neo additive capacities so that the agents decision behavior emphasizes the best respectively worst possible economic scenarios in contrast to existing models of lucas type economies with ambiguity averse agents epstein and wang 1994 which ensure dynamic consistency through heavy restrictions on admissible ambiguity attitudes my ap

a theory of anticipated utility abstract a new theory of cardinal utility with an associated set of axioms is presented it is a generalization of the von neumann morgenstern expected utility theory which permits the analysis of phenomena associated with the distortion of subjective probability

higher wages for sustainable development employment and carbon effects of paying a living wage in global apparel supply chains abstract in this paper we explore how paying a living wage in global supply chains might affect employment and carbon emissions sustainable development goals 8 and 13 previous work has advocated using wage increases for poorer workers to increase prices for wealthier consumers thereby reducing consumption and associated environmental damage however the likely effects of such an approach remain unclear using an input output framework extended with income and demand elasticities we estimate the employment and carbon effects of paying a living wage to brazilian russian indian and chinese bric workers in the western european clothing supply chain we find negligible effects on carbon emissions but a substantial increase in bric employment under 3 scenarios of consumer behaviour changes in western european consumption lead to small decreases in global carbon emissions and bric employment however the increase in bric wages increases demand in bric this increased demand increases production which largely cancels out the carbon savings and generates net increases in bric employment we conclude by arguing that paying higher wages in global supply chains represents a good but not sufficient step toward achieving the sustainable development goals

the evolution of household induced value chains and their environmental implications abstract the growing fragmentation of production processes and expansion of international trade in the last decades have increased the scope and complexity of value added chains worldwide causing a rearrangement of sectoral linkages intra and inter regionally in terms of economic spillovers this implies that a dollar entering a particular economy nowadays follows a different path than a decade before permeating in longer interregional feedback loops and creating additional multiplier effects outside its region of origin however it also implies that the environmental burden that such this dollar generates has changed in scale and spatial distribution in this paper we explore the evolution of these paths over the period 1997 2008 and highlight the main drivers of observed structural changes that contribute to the surge or decline of the spatial distribution of economic spillovers and greenhouse gases emissions we specifically study the effects of an increase in income in the united states the country with the largest trade volume in the world we introduce an extended version of the temporal leontief inverse tli framework that allows tracing the evolutionary path of the american households multiplier in a quasi dynamic fashion isolating the contribution of expenditure patterns income trade and foreign structural change to the temporal evolution we find similar growing multiplier effects inside and outside the us due to services and manufacturing respectively but a declining local environmental burden due to changes in interindustry relations inside the us with declining manufacturing and a reduced emission intensity we also highlight the fragmentation process with declining foreign intraregional spillovers and increasing trade spillovers

calculation and decomposition of indirect carbon emissions from residential consumption in china based on the input output model abstract based on the input output model and the comparable price input output tables the current paper investigates the indirect carbon emissions from residential consumption in china in 1992 2005 and examines the impacts on the emissions using the structural decomposition method the results demonstrate that the rise of the residential consumption level played a dominant role in the growth of residential indirect emissions the persistent decline of the carbon emission intensity of industrial sectors presented a significant negative effect on the emissions the change in the intermediate demand of industrial sectors resulted in an overall positive effect except in the initial years the increase in population prompted the indirect emissions to a certain extent however population size is no longer the main reason for the growth of the emissions the change in the consumption structure showed a weak positive effect demonstrating the importance for china to control and slow down the increase in the emissions while in the process of optimizing the residential consumption structure the results imply that the means for restructuring the economy and improving efficiency rather than for lowering the consumption scale should be adopted by china to achieve the targets of energy conservation and emission reduction

prospect theory and mean variance analysis the experimental results of prospect theory pt reveal suggest that investors make decisions based on change of wealth rather than total wealth that preferences are s shaped with a risk seeking segment and that probabilities are subjectively distorted this article shows that while pt s findings are in sharp contradiction to the foundations of mean variance mv analysis counterintuitively when diversification between assets is allowed the mv and pt efficient sets almost coincide thus one can employ the mv optimization algorithm to construct ptefficient portfolios the markowitz 1952a tobin 1958 mean variance mv rule is probably the most popular investment decision rule under uncertainty in economics and in finance and it is widely employed by both academics and practitioners the strength of the mv analysis is that in the case of normal return distributions the choice of any expected utility maximizing risk averse individual will be according to the mv rule 1 the mv framework is the foundation of the sharpe 1964 lintner 1965 capital asset pricing model capm which is a cornerstone of modern finance moreover the mv framework provides a very important practical procedure for the construction of efficient portfolios while standard economic theory and in particular mv analysis assume expected utility maximization and risk aversion in a breakthrough article kahneman and tversky 1979 show that the actual behavior of individuals systematically and consistently violates these

the bare necessities how much household carbon do we really need the consumption patterns of western nations are generally deemed to be unsustainable yet there is little attempt to restrain either material throughput or income growth nonetheless in the face of the need to make deep cuts in carbon emissions for instance consumption restraint may be a perfectly legitimate response this paper explores the potential for a reduced consumption scenario in the uk constructed by assuming that households achieve a specific minimum income standard which is deemed to provide a decent life for each household type the minimum income standards are taken from a recent study for the joseph rowntree foundation and include not only subsistence commodities such as food warmth and shelter but also the means to participate effectively in society the joseph rowntree foundation study produced detailed household expenditure budgets for these income standards the paper uses an environmentally extended quasi multi regional input output model to estimate the greenhouse gas ghg emissions required in the production and distribution of all goods and services purchased according to these budgets our results show that average household ghg emissions in the uk would be around 37 lower in the reduced consumption scenario than they are currently we explore several implications of these findings including the need to change social norms around consumption the need for investment to improve the thermal performance of homes and the need to develop new transport infrastructures we also address the potential to reduce emissions below the level achieved in this scenario and discuss the implications for policy

a carbon footprint proportional to expenditure a case for norway abstract motivated by the importance of consumption as an underlying driver of co 2 emissions we examine the link between consumption and co 2 emissions for norwegian households the main goal is to investigate whether there is a decoupling of consumption expenditures and the environmental impact as we move up the income ladder by combining a 2007 norwegian consumer expenditure survey with emission coefficients from an environmental input output model reflecting emissions embodied in both domestically produced and imported goods and services we calculate the per capita carbon footprint the results from the analysis suggest that the per capita carbon footprint is directly proportional to expenditure with an estimated elasticity close to unity implying no decoupling the finding is partly driven by a near zero emission power sector which leads to comparatively low emissions embodied in domestically produced goods and services

dynamic portfolio choice and asset pricing with narrow framing and probability weighting this paper shows that the framework proposed by barberis and huang 2009 to incorporate narrow framing and loss aversion into dynamic models of portfolio choice and asset pricing can be extended to also account for probability weighting and for a value function that is convex on losses and concave on gains we show that the addition of probability weighting and a convex concave value function reinforces previous applications of narrow framing and cumulative prospect theory to understanding the stock market non participation puzzle and the equity premium puzzle moreover we show that a convex concave value function generates new wealth effects that are consistent with empirical observations on stock market participation

measuring fossil resource inequality a case study for the uk between 1968 and 2000 this paper quantifies fossil resource inequalities amongst income quintiles in the uk between 1968 and 2000 it calculates a resource based gini coefficient using an input output based resource allocation model the results show that the gini coefficient for total fossil resource consumption grew by 24 over the time period by comparison the gini coefficient for overall household expenditure rose by only 13 the increase in resource inequality was prompted by the rising demand by high income quintiles for goods and services such as fuel and light heating and lighting the home car use private transportation recreation travel and other services the analysis shows further that the gini coefficient for direct fossil resources fuel and light and car use was lower and rose less steeply than the gini coefficient for fossil resources embodied in other goods and services indirect fossil resource requirements investigation into the drivers behind direct and indirect resource inequalities suggests a number of policy conclusions firstly it is clear that policy initiatives to reduce fossil resource requirements and the associated climate change impacts must pay careful attention to distributional differences additionally increased attention needs to be paid to the inequalities associated with indirect fossil resources consumption as well as the more visible direct resource inequalities

who rebounds most estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for different uk socioeconomic groups this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement and behavioural change by uk households and explores how these effects vary with total expenditure the methodology is based upon estimates of the expenditure elasticity and ghg intensity of 16 categories of goods and services and allows for the capital cost and embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves the study finds that rebound effects in ghg terms are modest 0 32 for measures affecting domestic energy use larger 25 65 for measures affecting vehicle fuel use and very large 66 106 for measures that reduce food waste furthermore measures undertaken by low income households are associated with the largest rebound effects with direct emissions forming a larger proportion of the total rebound effect for those households measures that are subsidised or affect highly taxed energy commodities may be less effective in reducing aggregate emissions these findings highlight the importance of allowing for rebound effects within policy appraisals as well as reinforcing the case for economy wide carbon pricing

the effects of border crossing frequencies associated with carbon footprints on border carbon adjustments abstract the fragmentation of production across national boundaries has become an important feature of the world economy this present paper adopts the viewpoint that not only the size and composition of carbon footprints are relevant but also the border crossing frequency associated with these carbon footprints which is defined as the number of borders a product crosses in a supply chain this process will affect the spatial accounting of the carbon emissions produced to support the economic activity the calculation of border crossing frequencies of carbon footprint is accomplished by decomposing the leontief inverse matrix derived from the world input output database we find that the aggregated average border crossing frequencies of carbon footprints show an increasing tendency which is influenced by the economic crisis obviously the policy application focuses on the united states which we assume to levy carbon tariffs on foreign emissions embodied in imports we find that the indirect carbon tariff on emissions embodied in international trade take a significant share the border carbon adjustments are mainly targeted at emissions generated in china which also pays the greatest share of the tariff burden the implication of carbon tariffs faces the problem of multiple taxation

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis in recent years there have been a number of attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to the issue of measuring resource use and or pollution generation embodied in trade flows including contributions that combine input output techniques and ecological footprint analysis in this two part paper we describe how to enumerate the resource and or pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows part 1 and we present a literature review of recent methodological and empirical developments part 2 it is straightforward in principle to extend the basic input output approach to capture international trade flows however in practice problems of data availability and compatibility and of computability of extended input output matrices mean that simplifying assumptions are generally applied but with the implications of these assumptions often not made fully explicit what appears to be absent from previous applications is an account of the analytical method by which ecological footprints should ideally be estimated in an international input output accounting analysis this allows an explicit analysis of the problems that prevent the application of the full method and identification of the most appropriate short cut methods in a transparent way the objective of this paper is to provide such an account

measuring progress towards carbon reduction in the uk the uk climate change bill proposes to establish legally binding targets for a 60 reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 this paper discusses the challenges posed by measuring progress towards this target it takes as a premise that the conventional productionbased accounting framework enshrined in the unfccc emissions accounting guidelines is inappropriate for this task because it fails to account for the carbon traded across the uk national boundary accordingly it sets out a consumption based accounting framework using a two region environmental input output eio model which could in principle measure progress in reducing the emissions attributable to final consumers in the uk it illustrates the use of this framework to measure the reduction in carbon dioxide achieved by the uk between 1990 the kyoto base year and the year 2004 and compares this against the production perspective the results indicate that any progress towards the uk s carbon reduction targets visible under a production perspective disappears completely when viewed from a consumption perspective but the robustness of this conclusion depends critically on the accuracy of underlying economic and environmental data sets as well as specific assumptions concerning imports by analysing the consistency of uk input output data we conclude that eio is still some way from being able to answer the critical question of the carbon trade balance for the uk in these circumstances measuring real progress towards carbon reduction in the uk remains elusive

realising local government visions for developing district heating experiences from a learning country abstract district heating dh has an important role to play in enabling cities to transition to low carbon heating although schemes are commonplace in some countries in learning countries where building level technologies make up the majority of heating systems there are numerous barriers to introducing dh local governments are seen as key actors in helping to create a shared vision for dh amongst stakeholders this study uses interviews with stakeholders from a range of sectors in the uk an example of a learning country to examine the visions of local actors for developing dh and the types of national policy that would support local implementation of these visions the analysis shows that in engaging with dh development local governments seek multiple types of value realising this value will most likely happen by taking a long term planned approach to development in contrast national government policy is geared towards techno economic criteria and may lead to only a minority of potential sites being developed without realisation of wider social or environmental benefits aligned to local visions the work highlights the importance of local strategic planning enabled by aligned national policy in realising the full economic environmental and social benefits of dh

procedures and criteria to develop and evaluate household sustainable consumption indicators abstract communication about very complex problems like household sustainable consumption in simple terms is still a major challenge despite the diversity of tools to measure household consumption clearer indicators are needed to more effectively communicate with the general public the main objective of this research was to develop an approach to define the main procedures and criteria to built household sustainable consumption assessment tools based on indicator sets a review of available household sustainable consumption assessment metrics and related initiatives was conducted this included a comparative analysis of the different approaches the review revealed that the majority of these initiatives are focused upon specific domains e g energy or waste but none used an integrated approach in the sustainable consumption domains furthermore it was found that few methods used indicators to measure and assess household sustainable consumption principal components and a checklist of key good practice factors that a household sustainable consumption indicator system should include were developed due to the need to communicate effectively to engage stakeholders and to address the complexity involved in the measurement and assessment of household sustainable consumption the proposed integrated approach was designed to evaluate household sustainable consumption

to each their own the greenhouse gas impacts of intra household sharing in different urban zones abstract decreasing household size is a global trend driven by urbanization and multiple other socioeconomic trends going solo poses a great environmental challenge as the possibility to benefit from scale economies in consumption and its greenhouse gas impacts is not taken advantage of in other words understanding of intra household sharing patterns of different consumption categories is increasingly important in climate change mitigation this paper explores the relationship between household sizes urban structures and greenhouse gas impacts of lifestyles when urban areas grow outwards the household sizes also grow as a result of this the increase in intra household sharing seems to alleviate the negative ghg implications of urban sprawl which is highly logical but yet not comprehended thus the rise of collaborative consumption offers potential to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of solo dwellers and compensate for the lower intra household sharing with inter household sharing

responsibility for regional waste generation a single region extended input output analysis for wales this paper uses a regional input output framework and data derived on waste generation by industry to examine different aspects of regional waste accountability in addition to estimating a series of industry output waste coefficients the paper considers a series of methods for waste attribution from production and consumption perspectives in particular it considers a method that permits a greater focus on regional private and public final consumption as the main exogenous driver of waste generation in doing so it uses a domestic technology assumption to consider a regional waste footprint where local consumption requirements are assumed to be met using production technologies over which regional authorities are likely to have more control

income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions the case of chinese urban households abstract this paper draws on chinese survey data to investigate variations in carbon dioxide emissions across households with different income levels rich households generate more emissions per capita than poor households via both their direct energy consumption and their higher expenditure on goods and services that use energy as an intermediate input an econometric analysis confirms a positive relationship between emissions and income and establishes a slightly increasing marginal propensity to emit mpe over the relevant income range the redistribution of income from rich to poor households is therefore shown to reduce aggregate household emissions suggesting that the twin pursuits of reducing inequality and emissions can be achieved in tandem

domestic ghg emissions and the responsibility of households in spain looking for regional differences abstractthe aim of this article is to analyze the responsibilities of spanish households as final consumers for the generation of domestic greenhouse gases emissions ghg by region of residence distinguishing between nuts 1 and nuts 2 autonomous regions the motivation is the process of convergence experimented by spanish regions based on the strong economic growth experienced by the country until 2008 which could results in different emissions responsibilities because of different lifestyles and production structures we examine in depth the relationships between a representative household in each region and its patterns of consumption although we do find a relationship between per capita income and regional responsibility for pollution generation it is based on a demand scale effect which overlaps the effects of the regional consumption patterns thus in the richest regions madrid northeast east despite their having a less polluting pattern than other regions the level of per capita em

pro poor growth and sustainable development framework evidence from two step gmm estimator abstract the environmental sustainability agenda is not easy to be achieved without implementing pro growth and pro poor growth policies across the globe pakistan s economy is no exception that strive hard to managed environmental resource capital and pro poor growth expenditures in order to reduce poverty incidence and carbon mitigation policies while many efforts need more sustainable instruments to be achieved united nation s assigned sustainable development target till 2030 the study selected an annual time series data from 1975 to 2016 and employed two step generalized method of moments gmm estimator for robust inferences the results show that higher economic growth decreases poverty incidence through social reforms while deforestation under 5 mortality rate trade openness carbon emissions and fdi inflows largely increases poverty incidence in a country the study confirmed environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis of carbon emissions in relation of per capita income and public spending on education while pollution haven hypothesis is confirmed due to high involvement of dirty polluting industries in country s economic transformation process the fossil fuel combustion and high population density increases carbon emissions that sabotage the process of sustainable development in a country thus it is imperative to device sustainable policies for mitigating carbon fossil emissions with cleaner production techniques and improves the quality of life of poor people through increase social expenditures that trickle down to the poor as compared to the non poor

a geographically and socio economically disaggregated local household consumption model for the uk abstract a key challenge for local environmental and economic planning is to predict resource flows and material waste arisings at a high level of geographical localisation this paper presents an approach to household consumption modelling in which the material demands of small socio economically homogeneous neighbourhoods are estimated on the basis of consumer expenditure data in conjunction with census data household waste arisings are estimated through incorporation of a household metabolism model selected material flows of consumer commodities such as household appliances carpets and clothing are examined in case study areas representing extremes of relative deprivation and neighbourhoods representing typical examples of the uk national output area classification oac the model will be of use in sustainable consumption policy making and local waste strategy planning

population and lifestyle trend changes in china implications for environmental quality abstractdemographic changes have considerable impacts on a country s long term growth trajectory through the savings consumption and labour market channels population changes including ageing migration and urbanization as well as lifestyle shifts may affect growth for fast growing countries like china rural population migrating to cities consumes more energy services and produces larger emissions since urban lifestyles are generally more energy and carbon intensive household structures also keep changing across the majority of chinese cities migration and urbanization together drive china s energy consumption co2 emissions upwards and environmental quality downwards if the current trend continues over time it is thus necessary for china to draw useful lessons from experiences in other countries by reconciling population development and environmental changes this study provides insights into the challenge of environmental sustainability resulting jointly from population and lifestyle changes

accounting for the carbon associated with regional tourism consumption this paper examines the carbon footprint associated with tourism spending in a regional economy using an input output framework the method adopted permits an analysis of the carbon embodied in both domestically produced and imported goods and services consequent on tourism consumption in the region in this way the analysis comprises a statement of environmental externalities which can be set beside a developing tourism satellite account tsa framework and which also provides useful information on selected externalities associated with tourism consumption

global inequities and emissions in western european textiles and clothing consumption abstract rising demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in western europe is well documented as are changes in the textiles and clothing industry s globalised production structure we apply a sub systems global multi regional input output accounting framework to examine the sustainability implications of meeting western european demand for textiles and clothing goods between 1995 and 2009 our framework estimates environmental and socio economic impacts of consumption in a consistent manner and shows where these occur both geographically and in the value chain the results demonstrate that western european textiles and clothing consumption remains dependent on low cost labour from brazil russia india and china bric principally in the textiles and clothing and agricultural sectors conversely we show that the wage rate for bric workers in the global value chains serving western european textiles and clothing consumption has risen over time but remains low relative to the wage rate paid to western european workers likewise we find that profits are increasingly generated within bric and that they are now at comparable levels to those generated in western europe we find a slight overall decrease in the amount of carbon emitted in the production of textiles and clothing goods for western europe between 1995 and 2009 however the trend is not linear and the importance of different underlying drivers varies over the timeseries we conclude by discussing the implications of these results for a more sustainable future for western european textiles and clothing consumption

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

a model of casino gambling we show that prospect theory offers a rich theory of casino gambling one that captures several features of actual gambling behavior first we demonstrate that for a wide range of preference parameter values a prospect theory agent would be willing to gamble in a casino even if the casino offers only bets with no skewness and with zero or negative expected value second we show that the probability weighting embedded in prospect theory leads to a plausible time inconsistency at the moment he enters a casino the agent plans to follow one particular gambling strategy but after he starts playing he wants to switch to a different strategy the model therefore predicts heterogeneity in gambling behavior how a gambler behaves depends on whether he is aware of the time inconsistency and if he is aware of it on whether he can commit in advance to his initial plan of action this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

a study of degrowth paths based on the von neumann equilibrium model abstract this paper revisits the von neumann equilibrium model from a degrowth perspective degrowth can be either planned or autonomous based on voluntary simplicity vs characterized by voluntary constraints on the private consumptions any share of the working population is allowed to limit their private consumptions or ecological footprint degrowth means a lower economic growth rate as well as reductions in the usage of materials and fossil energy however when the economy cannot fit within the biophysical boundary despite such reductions degrowth can also mean a deliberate transition towards lesser and cleaner production of a smaller number of goods taking ecological boundaries into consideration may thus switch the direction of an economy from growth to degrowth degrowth is consistent with economic equilibrium in the dynamic input output model degrowth equilibrium results when a critical mass of the population prioritizes diminishing the ecological deficit over increasing the output levels green growth can take place during degrowth while the economy gradually shrinks the interest profit rate in macroeconomic equilibrium is negative due to the conservation target excessive consumption has negative value to vs type agents degrowing private consumptions implies less work more leisure and better quality of the environment improving social welfare degrowth can be advanced by adopting a more cooperative production system or by imposing high ecological taxes the equilibrium model yields an argument for basic income as a means of supporting welfare during degrowth and of compensating for unpaid work the open economy version of the model shows reduced scope for intra industry trade between similar countries

the distribution of material footprints in germany this study investigates the within country heterogeneity of material footprints implied by households consumption in germany material footprints are defined as the amount of biomass minerals and fossil fuels extracted to produce the goods that households consume combining input output data with households consumption expenditures from the german sample survey of income and expenditure evs we present the first comprehensive study on the distribution of material footprints among households highlighting hot spots of unsustainable consumption patterns by household groups households in the quartile with the highest consumption expenditures have material footprints three times as large as those in the quartile with the lowest expenditures results of a microeconomic model of household s consumption behaviour estimated on the evs data suggest that price based instruments can reduce material footprints of luxury consumption such as leisure and private transport without imposing large burdens on low affluence households the material footprints caused by energy consumption do not react sensitively to price changes suggesting that non price policies are more effective to reduce them

economic structure and strategies for greenhouse gas mitigation abstract greenhouse gas ghg emission mitigation policy impacts the economic system directly in the short term by altering relative prices and indirectly in the long term by shifting the structure of the economy there may also be adjustments to economic structure independent of policy intervention due to changes in population consumption patterns and global markets the overall effectiveness of specific mitigation policy will partly depend on these indirect and exogenous changes to economic structure this study develops a new measure linking economic development with its environmental effects the technical cost of ghg mitigation under economic growth in an economy is calculated by combining traditional input output io analysis and a linear programming based sensitivity analysis the approach is applied to northern ireland ni producing an isoemission matrix that maps emission neutral expansion paths for the economy the measurement provides an indicator of the demand for technical improvement to achieve ghg mitigation at a national or regional level the flexibility and transparency of the approach make it useful for evaluating potential ghg mitigation strategies