religion corruption and the rule of law in a 207 country sample we find that rule of law and corruption are both associated with a country s religious heritage thereby partially explaining the correlation between religion and economic growth found in previous research we also show that our results change when we control for some variables lacking data for all countries in the sample but that these differences are attributable to changes in sample composition rather than the effects of the control variables our research suggests that researchers doing cross country analysis should distinguish between the effects of adding a control variable and the resulting sample composition effects

islamic rule and the empowerment of the poor and pious does islamic political control affect women s empowerment several countries have recently experienced islamic parties coming to power through democratic elections due to strong support among religious conservatives constituencies with islamic rule often tend to exhibit poor women s rights whether this reflects a causal relationship or a spurious one has so far gone unexplored i provide the first piece of evidence using a new and unique data set of turkish municipalities in 1994 an islamic party won multiple municipal mayor seats across the country using a regression discontinuity rd design i compare municipalities where this islamic party barely won or lost elections despite negative raw correlations the rd results reveal that over a period of six years islamic rule increased female secular high school education corresponding effects for men are systematically smaller and less precise in the longer run the effect on female education remained persistent up to 17 years after and also reduced adolescent marriages an analysis of long run political effects of islamic rule shows increased female political participation and an overall decrease in islamic political preferences the results are consistent with an explanation that emphasizes the islamic party s effectiveness in overcoming barriers to female entry for the poor and pious

effects of substituting energy with capital on china s aggregated energy and environmental efficiency abstract substituting energy with capital sec in economic productions has become a common practice both for business owners and policy makers to improve their energy and environmental efficiency however seldom previous studies on energy efficiency and or environmental performance evaluation took this role into account this paper aims to shed some light on the effects of sec on china s aggregated energy and environmental efficiency aeee within a parametric stochastic frontier analysis framework moreover influencing factors of regional efficiency score are also discussed using a pooled regression model the results indicate that sec poses significant effects on improving china s aeee and this impact appears obvious regional variation that regions with lower efficiency scores hold more extensive potential to improve their aeee by means of sec furthermore upgrading industrial structure and decreasing the proportion of coal in energy consumption make great sense to improve china s aeee

market related reforms and increased energy efficiency in transition countries empirical evidence energy efficiency improvement is a desirable response to growing climate change and security of energy supply concerns this article studies the impacts of a varied set of macro level market oriented reforms as well as structural change on economy wide measure of energy efficiency across a group of the transition countries these countries experienced a rapid marketization process which since the early 1990s transformed their economies from central planning towards market driven models we use a bias corrected fixed effect analysis technique to estimate this effect for the period 1990 to 2010 the results suggest that reforms aimed at market liberalization financial sector and most infrastructure industries drove energy efficiency improvements we find significant differences in improvements in energy efficiency between transitional central european and baltic states south east europe ones and the commonwealth of independent states the reasons for these differences are also discussed

the determinants of aggregate energy use in west germany factor substitution technological change and trade this paper examines the determinants of production related energy use in west germany over the period 1976 1994 the approach is to estimate a system of share equations for energy capital low skilled labor high skilled labor and materials in the west german production sector taking account of biased technological change and increasing trade orientation while technological change is found to be energy saving increased openness is energy using i e tends to increase the energy share factor substitution biased technological change and trade contribute to the year to year volatility of energy intensity in the proportion 66 30 4 the results are robust across several specifications examined

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

religion and income heterogeneity between countries this paper tests whether the behaviour of households in different countries is homogeneous with respect to the influence of religion on income the violation of the homogeneity assumption would have two consequences first results based on country studies might not be applicable to other countries second one should be careful when pooling cross country data in this type of research data at household level from the european and world values survey are pooled for 25 western countries we estimate simultaneously an income and a religion equation to correct for the endogeneity of religiousness we find that estimation outcomes are different for low and high income countries whereas church membership is found to have a positive effect on income for high income countries this effect is negative for low income countries this result is robust to denominational distribution participation effects and alternative measures of religiousness

energy management and environmental awareness in china s enterprises abstract by virtue of the country s size population and heavy dependance on coal china s situation should be of particular interest to all with a concern both for energy conservation and the environment efforts to conserve energy in china s enterprises must be carried on alongside rapid development and the transition from a command economy to a more hybrid market socialist economy this transition may in the longer term offer opportunities for energy conservation but in the meanwhile can be seen as imposing constraints this paper is the result of field work undertaken in china over the period 1994 1997 the paper begins by outlining the contradictory context for energy conservation in china the international concern about climate change and acid rain and the domestic imperatives of modernization and transformation of the economy then setting out briefly the position with regard to energy supply and consumption and measures for conservation and enforcement it reports the views of managers at three important industrial plants on energy and related environmental matters and more generally of some of the most senior officials and experts in china concerned with forming policy on energy conservation in china s enterprises because little is known of the views of such practitioners outside china these views are presented in some detail and analyzed against the background of the broader changes taking place in china today the paper concludes with a number of specific recommendations to aid progress on conservation as they have been put forward by chinese experts

religion discrimination and trust across three cultures we propose that religion impacts trust and trustworthiness in ways that depend on how individuals are socially identified and connected religiosity and religious affiliation may serve as markers for statistical discrimination further affiliation to the same religion may enhance group identity or affiliation irrespective of creed may lend social identity and in turn induce taste based discrimination religiosity may also relate to general prejudice we test these hypotheses across three culturally diverse countries participants willingness to discriminate beliefs of how trustworthy or trusting others are as well as actual trust and trustworthiness are measured incentive compatibly we find that interpersonal similarity in religiosity and affiliation promote trust through beliefs of reciprocity religious participants also believe that those belonging to some faith are trustworthier but invest more trust only in those of the same religion religiosity amplifies this effect across non religious categories whereas more religious participants are more willing to discriminate less religious participants are as likely to display group biases

religious adherence and county economic growth in the us abstract we estimate a barro type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the american religious data archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the united states at the county level per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income initial human capital stock and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence religious diversity and regional indicator variables we also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations namely catholics evangelical christians and mainline christians on county economic growth our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for us county income growth we find mixed results for effects of various denominations

the behavior of the common stock of bankrupt firms the event of reorganization or liquidation will be determined by a court to the extent such legal decisions are insensitive to general market movements perhaps the market risk of the firm s shares is reduced it could be the case that most corporate bankruptices are so fully anticipated that little or no new information is released when bankruptcies are filed casual observation suggests that major corporate bankruptcies do not come as complete surprises trading in listed stocks usually is halted some time before bankruptcy filings stories that a corporation is about to file a bankruptcy petition sometimes appear in the financial press several days prior to the filing more conclusive evidence that the market anticipates corporate bankruptcies has been presented in previous empirical studies the findings of westerfield 4 and aharony jones and swary 1 demonstrated that shareholders experience abnormal losses over periods of from four to six years prior to bankruptcy one of westerfield s cumulative performance measures indicated that shareholders of bankrupt companies lost on average 76 percent of their wealth relative to returns on securities of equivalent risk during the seventy one months preceding the announcement of bankruptcy of course large shareholder losses prior to bankruptcy do not guarantee that additional large losses will not be suffered when bankruptcy is announced to date only limited evidence supporting the existence of a bankruptcy announcement effect has been reported altman 2 found that shareholders suffered an average capital loss of approximately 26 percent during the period from one month before to one month after bankruptcy announcements unfortunately a two month interval is too long to provide a clear measure of the market s reaction to bankruptcy announcements it is possible that most or all of the shareholder losses detected by altman occurred during the month preceding the announcements

labor market effects of september 11th on arab and muslim residents of the united states we investigated whether the september 11 2001 terrorists attacks had any effect on employment earnings and residential mobility of first and second generation arab and muslim men in the united states we find that september 11th did not significantly affect employment and hours of work of arab and muslim men but was associated with a 9 11 percent decline in their real wage and weekly earnings with some evidence that this decline was temporary the adverse earnings effects were strongly linked to hate crime incidence estimates also suggest that the terrorists attacks reduced intrastate migration of arab and muslim men

an empirical investigation of u s firms in reorganization the purpose of this paper is to understand the institutional features of chapter 11 from an empirical examination of thirty firms that have emerged from reorganization we find the recontracting framework of chapter 11 to be complex lengthy and costly violations of absolute priority in favor of stockholders are frequently encountered these deviations may result from the bargaining process of chapter 11 or from a recontracting process between creditors and stockholders which recognizes the ability of stockholder oriented management to preserve firm value an example of such recontracting addresses myers underinvestment problem an investigation of the effects of chapter 11 on the pricing of risky debt is also provided the purpose of this paper is to understand the institutional features of chapter

systematic share price fluctuations after bankruptcy filings and the investors who drive them beginning in the 1990s firms often continue to trade on the major national exchanges after chapter 11 bankruptcy filings for bankruptcies filed from 1993 2003 we find that the more negative the filing period price reaction the more favorable the immediate post filing returns on average this reversal is not attributable to bid ask bounce it holds after controlling for other factors associated with post filing returns and it appears more attributable to the activities of large traders than to small traders supplementary tests reveal that the pattern of post filing returns differs significantly for bankruptcies filed in bull versus bear markets bankruptcies filed during the 1993 to 1999 bull market enjoy substantial but short lived reversals averaging one third of the filing period price plunge these reversals are inconsistent with efficient assimilation of the bankruptcy information in contrast we find no evidence of post filing reversals for bankruptcies filed from 2000 to 2003

interfuel competition in the industrial sector of seven oecd countries abstract the purpose of this article is to present an analysis of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector of seven major oecd countries the united states canada japan germany france the united kingdom and italy over the 1960 1993 period translog models are used to provide estimates of price elasticities from annual data for each country results outline the weakness of price elasticities and changes in behaviour over the last 35 years and show evidence of asymmetric effects since the collapse of oil prices in 1986 substitution has stopped industrial energy demand and oil consumption have stagnated interfuel substitution is widely induced by events other than relative price changes energy policy political and institutional constraints changes in economic activity characteristics within individual country sectors

religion and female educational attainment the paper reviews the literature on the education gender and religion nexuses and identifies plausible hypotheses that religion adversely affects female education the link between major religions and female educational attainment is examined using the barro lee data set for a sample of 97 countries the estimates include control variables for colonial heritage urbanization labor force participation and young adult mortality the estimates show powerful negative links between female educational attainment and the proportion of ethnoreligions hindu and muslim adherents in a country with similar results for the gender gap the paper offers some interpretative thoughts and research agendas

substitution possibilities and determinants of energy intensity for china abstract this paper measures technological change factor demand and inter factor and inter fuel substitutability measures for china we use individual fuel price data and a two stage approach to estimate total factor cost functions and fuel share equations both inter factor and inter fuel substitution elasticities are calculated and the change in energy intensity is decomposed into its driving forces the results suggest that energy is substitutable for capital regionally and for labor nationally capital substitutes for energy more easily than labor does energy intensity changes vary by region but the major drivers seem to be budget effect and the adoption of energy intensive technologies which might be embodied in high level energy using exports and sectors capital investment and even old technique and equipment imports whether the trend in rising energy intensity continues will be significant for china and the rest of the world

can market oriented economic reforms contribute to energy efficiency improvement evidence from china since china accelerated its market oriented economic reforms at the end of 1992 its energy intensity has declined 3 6 annually over 1993 2005 however its energy intensity declined 4 2 annually during its first reform period 1979 1992 therefore can we conclude that the accelerated marketization since the end of 1992 has made no contribution to its energy efficiency improvement in order to answer this challenging question we examine the changes of energy own price elasticity as well as the elasticities of substitution between energy and non energy capital and labor in china during the periods of 1979 1992 and 1993 2003 generally in transition or developing economies holding the technology and output level fixed if the energy own price elasticity algebraic value declines or the substitution elasticity between factors rises they will contribute to energy efficiency improvement our empirical study finds that 1 during 1979 1992 the energy own price elasticity is positive 0 285 and capital energy labor energy are both morishima complementary which indicates a distorted energy price and inefficient allocation and 2 during 1993 2003 the own price elasticity for energy is negative 1 236 and capital energy and labor energy are both morishima substitute all factor demands become more elastic and all elasticities of substitution increase the implication is that the accelerated marketization contributes substantially to energy efficiency improvement since 1993 c 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the demand for coal among china s rural households estimates of price and income elasticities abstract china s residential sector has experienced rapid electrification and gasification among rural households however coal still accounts for a large share of energy use especially in the north use of coal for cooking and heating brings large health and pollution risks from a theoretical viewpoint economic tools such as taxes and subsidies have the potential to play a crucial role in addressing this issue in this paper a provincial level dataset is used to estimate the price and income elasticities of aggregate coal demand by rural households we find that coal is a non giffen inferior good for the rural household sector this means that future income growth may help to induce switching from coal demand is becoming more price elastic as rural incomes grow we also find that rural residential coal demand is more price and income responsive in the south than the north perhaps because of fewer substitution options in the north our results provide benchmarks and parameters for policy simulation research

deregulation and growth in china s energy sector a review of recent development dramatic changes have taken place in china s energy sector over the past decade these changes have important implications for energy consumption trade production and regulatory policies in china and beyond the objective of this paper is to review some of the key issues associated with deregulation and growth in china s energy sector specifically the paper presents a survey of recent reforms in this sector it also analyses the impact of deregulation on energy policy ownership foreign investment and trade and sheds some lights on the sources of growth in china s energy sector

the effect of protestantism on education before the industrialization evidence from 1816 prussia across prussian counties and towns protestantism led to more schooling already in 1816 before the industrial revolution this supports a human capital theory of protestant economic history and rules out a weberian explanation of protestant education just resulting from industrialization

ethnic diversity and economic development abstract this paper analyzes the role that different indices and dimensions of ethnicity play in the process of economic development firstly we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of alternative data sources for the construction of indices of religious and ethnic heterogeneity secondly we compare the index of fractionalization and the index of polarization we argue that an index of the family of discrete polarization measures is the adequate indicator to measure potential conflict we find that ethnic religious polarization has a large and negative effect on economic development through the reduction of investment and the increase of government consumption and the probability of a civil conflict

september 11th and the earnings of muslims in germany the moderating role of education and firm size abstract while available evidence suggests that the events of september 11th negatively influenced the relative earnings of employees with arab background in the us it is not clear that they had similar effects in other countries our study for germany provides evidence that the events also affected the relative earnings of muslims outside the us however the results show that there was no uniform effect on all types of muslims across all types of firms accounting for moderating factors a significantly negative effect can primarily be found for low skilled muslims employed in small and medium sized firms this conforms to theoretical expectations moreover we demonstrate that defining appropriate treatment and control groups is crucial for identifying the effects

people s opium religion and economic attitudes since max weber there has been an active debate on the impact of religion on people s economic attitudes much of the existing evidence however is based on cross country studies in which this impact is confounded by differences in other institutional factors we use the worldvalues surveys to id entify the relationship between intensity of religious beliefs and economic attitudes controlling for country fixed effects we study several economic attitudes towardcooperation the government working women legal rules thriftiness andthe market economy we also distinguish across religious denominations differentiating on whether a religion is dominant in a country we find that on average religious beliefs are associated with good economic attitudes where good is defined as conducive to higher per capita income andgrowth yet religious people tendto be more racist andless favorable with respect to working women these effects differ across religious denominations overall we find that christian religions are more positively associatedwith attitudes conducive to economic growth r 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification a1 e0 n4 z1

patriarchal norms religion and female labor supply evidence from turkey summary despite significant structural and social change the share of women working or seeking jobs in turkey has declined this paper focuses on the role of social conservatism as a constraint for women s labor force participation using 2008 demographic and health survey data in analyzing labor supply model i incorporate cultural constraints specifically the sexual division of labor in the household and broader gender ideology into the analysis i find that both patriarchal norms and religiosity are negatively associated with female labor force participation and that the impact of patriarchal norms is statistically significant after controlling for endogeneity

economic and security consequences of supreme values islamic societies have in contemporary times lagged western societies in income growth and human development indicators the supreme values of radical islam further de prioritize economic achievement and impose self deprivation on own populations this paper investigates the reasons for economic outcomes under islam contemporary illustrations are also provided of the self deprivation predicted from pursuit of the supreme value objectives of radical islam the self deprivation is placed in a rent seeking context

did the september 11th attacks affect the canadian labour market abstract difference in differences estimates of the effects of the september 11th attacks on labour market outcomes of muslims are generated using 2001 and 2006 canadian census data little evidence of negative significant impacts on employment hours weeks worked or wages is found

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

the information content of bankruptcy filing on securityholders of the bankrupt firm an empirical investigation this paper captures the information content of bankruptcy announcements on stockholders and three different classes of debtholders using daily excess returns significant negative stock price reaction to the filing announcement is documented more interestingly the secured debtholders are unaffected by the announcement however the unsecured and the convertible debt classes exhibit significant adverse price reaction during the event period the secured debt group gains significantly while all other classes experience substantial losses cross sectional analysis reveals that the complexity of the reorganization process the security of the debt issue and to some degree the anticipation of the bankruptcy filing are important determinants of bond excess returns it is also found that leverage plays a significant role in preserving firm value by forcing the firm to confront reorganization sooner

what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate 1997 2006 abstract china is the second largest energy consumer in the world during 1997 2002 china s energy intensity declined by 33 however it rose by 10 7 over 2003 2005 and declined by 1 2 in 2006 what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate so drastically industry accounts for approximately 70 of the total energy consumption in china in this paper we decompose china s industrial energy intensity changes between 1997 and 2002 into sectoral structural effects and efficiency effects measured by sectoral energy intensities at two digit level and including the shifts of product mix in the sub sector or firm level using tornqvist and sato vartia index methods the results show that in this period efficiency effects possibly contributed to a majority of the decline while the contribution from structural effects was less during 2003 2005 the excessive expansion of high energy consuming sub sectors and the high investment ratio were foremost sources of the increasing energy intensity attributed to the government efforts the energy intensity has started to decline slightly since july 2006 in future to save more energy in addition to technical progress china should attach more importance to optimizing its sectoral structure and lowering its investment ratio

sources of gains to shareholders from bankruptcy resolution abstract using a logistic regression model we identify the characteristics of firms whose shareholders are likely to benefit from bankruptcy resolution that is winners losers are firms whose shareholders experience positive negative excess returns after bankruptcy filing we find that winners are relatively smaller firms with higher proportions of convertible debt tend to file for bankruptcy for strategic reasons have low share ownership concentration and suffer comparatively larger pre filing stock price declines among winners shareholder returns are greater for firms that have higher levels of private debt and research and development r d expenditures and operate in more concentrated industries in addition our analysis indicates that an ex ante trading strategy of purchasing bankrupt stocks with a greater than 50 probability of being a winner on the day after bankruptcy filing and holding the stocks for a year on an average can generate average compounded and excess compounded holding period returns of 71 and 42 respectively

slowing global warming and sustaining development abstract policy discussions concerning global warming have been based on the assumption that co2 emissions from developing countries cannot be limited without slowing their economic growth the promise of energy efficiency is clear however only a correct shift in development funding and investment to support energy efficiency would allow this promise to be fulfilled this paper shows that such an assumption is wrong in fact these nations can limit fossil fuel use and co2 emissions while at the same time expanding economic growth the path to this is energy efficiency which allows resources to be shifted from wasteful expenditure on energy to more productive sectors the result is that less co2 is emitted while third world nations benefit from more rapid and sustainable economic growth

does religion distract the poor income and issue voting around the world this article asks whether religion undermines the negative relationship between income and left voting that is assumed in standard political economy models of democracy analysis of cross country survey data reveals that this correlation disappears among religious individuals in countries that use proportional representation this is the case in large part because there is a moral values dimension that has a correlation with income that is equal in magnitude but has the opposite sign as the economic dimension and the votes of the religious are better explained by their positions on moral than economic issues especially in countries with multiparty systems the authors conclude by discussing implications for theories of redistribution

belief in a just world and redistributive politics international surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate at the same time social ethnographies and experiments by psychologists demonstrate individuals recurrent struggle with cognitive dissonance as they seek to maintain and pass on to their children a view of the world where effort ultimately pays off and everyone gets their just deserts this paper offers a model that helps explain i why most people feel such a need to believe in a just world ii why this need and therefore the prevalence of the belief varies considerably across countries iii the implications of this phenomenon for international differences in political ideology levels of redistribution labor supply aggregate income and popular perceptions of the poor the model shows in particular how complementarities arise endogenously between individuals desired beliefs or ideological choices resulting in two equilibria a first american equilibrium is characterized by a high prevalence of just world beliefs among the population and relatively laissez faire policies the other european equilibrium is characterized by more pessimism about the role of effort in economic outcomes and a more extensive welfare state more generally the paper develops a theory of collective beliefs and motivated cognitions including those concerning money consumption and happiness as well as religion

gradual reforms and the emergence of energy market in china evidence from tests for convergence of energy prices this study investigates the emergence of energy markets by testing for convergence of energy prices with a new dataset on energy spot prices in 35 major cities in china both descriptive statistics and unit root are employed to test the convergence of energy prices for each of four fuel price series the whole study period is divided into two sub periods in order to reconcile the gradual energy reforms the results show the steady improvement in energy market performance in china especially during the second sub period which suggests that the market appears to be playing an increasing role in determining energy prices while panel unit root tests show energy markets are integrated in china as a whole city by city univariate unit root tests suggest that there are still many regional energy markets probably because energy reserves especially coal vary widely across regions since china s energy economy is gradually moving towards market oriented mechanisms the existing literature may become obsolete soon

the energy demand in the manufacturing sector of pakistan some further results abstract the purpose of this study was to re examine the role of energy in the manufacturing sector of pakistan using a partial equilibrium approach gl restricted cost function along with the factor demand equations were estimated using zellner s iterative procedure higher energy prices do not seem to adversely affect investment in capital substitution possibilities between energy and non energy inputs are very limited and therefore energy price hikes may directly affect the cost of production inter fuel cross price elasticities indicate that there are substitution possibilities between electricity and gas

disaggregation of energy saving targets for china s provinces modeling results and real choices starting with the 11th five year plan fyp and continuing in the 12th fyp quantitative and binding targets have been set for energy efficiency improvement in china drawing on international experience in burden sharing on climate change this paper presents a framework for provincial level disaggregation of energy saving targets in china based on principles of equity and efficiency four scenarios have been established by weighting different choice preferences of responsibility capacity and potential in addition nonlinear and linear allocation models have been developed by considering or ignoring marginal energy saving cost when this framework was applied to the disaggregation of the national energy saving target of 16 during the 12th fyp the results show that the final allocation schemes are largely determined by the policy maker s choice preferences the extreme reduction target of 37 26 fell to shanghai under responsibility preferring rp using the linear allocation method while the capability preferring cp scenario considering marginal energy saving cost is the closest to the actual scheme accepted by the 30 provinces development of such a framework may serve as a feasible policy instrument to help china achieve its conservation targets in a cost effective way and in accordance with its regional development strategies

trust in large organizations several authors suggest that trust is an important determinant of cooperation between strangers in a society and therefore of performance of social institutions we argue that trust should be particularly important for the performance of large organizations in a cross section of countries evidence on government performance participation in civic and professional societies importance of large firms and the performance of social institutions more generally supports this hypothesis moreover trust is lower in countries with dominant hierarchical religions which may have deterred networks of cooperation trust hold up remarkably well on a cross section of countries this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the economic impact of islam on developing countries summary this essay focuses on two questions how do the current economic systems and institutions of muslim countries differ from those of other countries at the same stage of economic development what is the impact of islam on the economic and social performance of these countries employing a cluster analysis i find that there is no special muslim economic system moreover few economic institutions are uniquely muslim using a regression analysis i also find that the presence of islam has relatively little influence on most economic or social performance indicators in the analysis of muslim economies religion does not appear to be a useful explanatory variable

empirical assessment of energy price policies the case for cross price elasticities abstract evaluations of energy price policies are necessarily based on measures of the substitution of energy and non energy inputs facing a variety of substitution elasticities the central question arises which measure would be appropriate apparently for a long time this question has not been at issue allen s elasticities of substitution aes have been the most used measures in applied production analysis this paper s main contribution is an instructive survey of the origin of substitution measures and of the trinity of empirical substitution elasticities aes cross price elasticities and the morishima elasticities of substitution mes with particular emphasis on their interpretations and the perspectives that will be captured by these measures this survey clarifies why classical cross price elasticities are to be preferred for many practical purposes berndt and wood s rev econom stat 57 1975 259 frequently applied data set of us manufacturing is used to illustrate why assessments of energy price policies would be better based on cross price elasticities like the energy price elasticity of capital rather than on aes or mes

what goes up recent trends in china s energy consumption since 1996 china s energy output has dropped by 17 while primary energy use has fallen by 4 driven almost entirely by shrinking output from coal mines and declining direct use since china is the world s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases it is important to understand the sources of this apparent transformation and whether it portends a permanent change in patterns of energy use this remarkable reversal of the long term expansion of energy use has occurred even as the economy has continued to grow albeit more slowly than in the early 1990s generation of electric power has risen implying a steep fall in end uses particularly in industry available information points to a variety of forces contributing to this phenomenon including rapid improvements in coal quality structural changes in industry shutdowns of factories in both the state owned and non state segments of the economy improvements in end use efficiency and greater use of gas and electricity in households a combination of slowing economic growth industrial restructuring broader economic system reforms and environmental and energy efficiency policies has apparently led to at least a temporary decline in and perhaps a long term reduction in the growth of energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions

religion and economy religion has a two way interaction with political economy with religion viewed as a dependent variable a central question is how economic development and political institutions affect religious participation and beliefs with religion viewed as an independent variable a key issue is how religiosity affects individual characteristics such as work ethic honesty and thrift and thereby influences economic performance in this paper we sketch previous studies of this two way interaction but focus on our ongoing quantitative research with international data

church state separation and redistribution we analyze how religion affects voting and redistribution our model directs attention away from the particular faith belief or risk attitudes of religious individuals and emphasizes instead how organized religion opens the door to standard group based distributive politics we argue that organized religion makes it possible for the rich and the religious poor to form electoral coalitions in favor of low taxes and limited redistribution such electoral coalitions form out of simple material self interest and they occur at the expense of the secular poor however the material reward to the religious poor from supporting such electoral coalitions depends on the institutional context as state support for religion increases poor religious voters have greater incentives to vote with poor secular voters in favor of parties that support high taxes the analysis therefore highlights the possibilities of understanding how religion affects politics without asserting that religious individuals differ systematically from secular ones in their values or preferences

the capital energy substitutability debate a new look over the last twenty years many studies have been made of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor the reported estimates are highly variable and reveal an apparent dichotomy between cross sectional and time series studies the former suggest that capital and energy are substitutes while the latter suggest the converse all these studies reported allen partial elasticities of substitution we suggest that the morishima elasticity may be a more useful measure for the issues of concern to capital energy substitution we calculate the morishima elasticities from parameters estimated in a selection of earlier studies and find no excessive variability nor any evidence of the time series cross section dichotomy capital and energy are morishima substitutes copyright 1995 by mit press

decomposition of energy efficiency and energy saving potential in china a three hierarchy meta frontier approach abstract considering both regional heterogeneity and industrial heterogeneity this paper proposes a three hierarchy meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea to decompose energy efficiency and energy saving potential into three components i e industrial structure regional balance development and management based on this approach the paper then analyses the historical evolution and current status of energy efficiency in china the results show the following 1 from 2001 to 2015 mainland china s energy efficiency increased by a factor of 2 48 primarily because of technological progress and the optimization of its industrial structure 2 nonetheless the current energy efficiency in mainland china remains very low and energy inefficiency is as high as 0 5922 indicating that 59 22 of total energy consumption is invalidly used severe industrial structure inefficiency and regional balance development inefficiency are the two main factors responsible for the very low energy efficiency 3 by promoting industrial restructuring regional balance development and management improvement mainland china is expected to save respectively 13 67 24 54 and 61 73 of its current total invalid energy consumption based on the estimation results this paper formulates strategies to improve energy efficiency and save energy for china s provinces based on their specific situations considering not only the direction of industrial restructuring in both the short and long terms but also the path to improved energy efficiency in addition a brief discussion about the applicability and the preconditions for an application of the multi hierarchy meta frontier approach is given at the end of the paper

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

energy productivity and chinese local officials promotions evidence from provincial governors abstract improving energy productivity is one of the most cost effective ways to achieve a sustainable development target the existing literature has shown some factors that have driven the improvement in china s energy productivity however these studies do little to tackle the role of chinese local officials political promotions can be seen as the most important career incentive for chinese local officials hence we intend to study whether energy productivity affects chinese local officials promotions in this paper the data of position changes for the 31 provincial governors during 1978 2012 are utilized we adopted probit models to empirically examine the correlation between provincial governors political promotions and energy productivity the empirical results demonstrate that 1 energy productivity has a significantly positive impact on provincial governors political promotions in china meaning that the provincial governors have the momentum to improve energy productivity and 2 the effect of energy productivity on provincial governors political promotions has evolved dynamically changing along with the transformation of the economic growth mode and the adjustment of the local officials promotion mechanism the results are helpful in understanding the drivers of the improvement in china s energy productivity and provide insightful implications for conducting energy policy in china

energy conservation in china an international perspective abstract the paper reviews china s energy conservation in an international perspective its purpose is to shed light on the accomplishments to date of china s energy conservation efforts and to derive china s actual potential for longer term energy conservation through a sector by sector comparison of energy intensity in physical terms moreover in order to promote such a potential the paper concludes that there is a need in drastic reform of china s energy policies combined with fundamental reform of aid and loan practices

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

the multidimensional effects of religion on socioeconomic development a review of the empirical literature religion plays a fundamental role in most people s lives with profound implications for socioeconomic development this survey provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the causal mechanisms between religion and development discussed and tested in the economics literature and reviews quantitative empirical evidence on the actual effects of religion on economic and social dimensions of development we start by disaggregating the concept of religion into four religious dimensions and propose a framework to conceptualize causal mechanisms numerous mechanisms are possible but only a few uncontested findings exist religion is ambivalent vis a vis development although religious ideas can foster certain forms of human capital acquisition and labor market participation scholars have found a negative relationship between religious dimensions and both income and gender equality as well as innovation activities religious identity is also a source of labor market discrimination and has ambivalent effects on economic growth and social cohesion methodological challenges refer to the availability of fine grained data especially for developing countries the use of concepts and definitions and the lack of causal inference

security pricing and deviations from the absolute priority rule in bankruptcy proceedings claims ultimately awarded to shareholders of firms in reorganization were examined for a sample of 30 filings under the 1978 bankruptcy reform act we measured the amount paid to shareholders in excess of that which they would have received under the absolute priority rule and found that this amount represents on average 7 6 of the total awarded to all claimants evidence is also reported that common share values reflect a significant proportion of value ultimately received in violation of absolute priority suggesting that deviations from the rule were expected by the equity markets the absolute priority rule hereafter apr states that a bankrupt firm s value is to be distributed to suppliers of capital such that senior creditors are fully satisfied before any distributions are made to junior creditors and junior creditors are paid in full before common shareholders bankruptcy reorganization proceedings however are leaving shareholders and junior creditors with valuable assets even when senior claimants receive only partial settlements as barrett and sullivan 1988 noted traditionally shareholders have been last in line their claims on a troubled company s assets have had the lowest priority and their impact on the course of bankruptcy code proceedings generally has been next to nil but lately the balance of power has been shifting warner 1977 provided one of the early discussions of the implications of deviations from the apr baldwin and mason 1983 pp 510 511 examined the resolution of claims in the massey ferguson reorganization and provided no support for the hypothesis that the market believes absolute priority rules will be enforced if the firm defaults on its financial obligations franks and torous 1989 analyzed a sample of bankruptcies that occurred during the period 1970 through 1984 and found that 21 of 27 sample cases exhibited departures from the apr more recently weiss 1990 examined 37 firms that filed for bankruptcy between 1980 and 1986 and reported that 27 of the cases involved apr violations

market driven energy pricing necessary to ensure china s power supply abstract china s rapid economic growth has strained its power supply as manifested for instance by the widespread 2008 power shortage the cause for this shortage is thought to be the current chinese energy pricing system which is mainly government rather than market controlled government regulated price caps for coal have seriously affected coal supply at the same time price caps for electricity supply have caused suspension of power plant operation as a result the average operating time of coal fired power plants declined 50 h annually across the nation in the first half of 2008 compared to the previous year despite clear power shortages here it will be suggested that energy pricing set by supply and demand may effectively discourage excessive growth in heavy industry substantially encourage energy conservation and efficiency and curb the rapid electricity demand in china it will be argued that a market oriented electricity pricing mechanism is required for china to secure its future power supply

output elasticities and inter factor substitution empirical evidence from the transportation sector of shanghai abstract as a major consumer of fossil fuels the transportation sector in shanghai presents a wide range of problems including air pollution noise and traffic congestion this study aims to explore the energy substitution effect based on a trans log production function to evaluate the contribution of each input factor to sectoral output and reveal the substitution possibilities between capital labor and energy to deal with a multicollinearity problem we adopt ridge regression to obtain the coefficient of each variable under the appropriate penalty value the bootstrap method is used for making statistical inferences and the 95 confidence interval is obtained with 1000 bootstrap samples the empirical results demonstrate the following 1 the output elasticities of capital 0 13 0 15 labor 0 24 0 25 and energy 0 43 0 48 are positive and show an increasing trend over the study period 2 the substitution elasticity between labor and energy is the highest among the input factors around 1 0095 with a slight decreasing trend 3 the substitution elasticity between energy and capital ranges from 1 0018 to 1 0021 and the substitution elasticity between capital and labor is infinitely close to 1

energy intensity and investment ownership across chinese provinces abstract the main objective of this paper is to investigate whether openness and investment ownership are key factors in explaining the diffusion of energy saving technologies in china compared with previous studies the novel aspect of this work is the use of a rich dataset at provincial level which allows the high level of regional heterogeneity to be taken into consideration the unbalanced regional growth has been translated into differences in the need for energy resources across the vast territory of china a detailed analysis of these issues may provide new insights into the energy situation in this country the analysis is also disaggregated by type of energy coal electricity and petroleum we estimate the models by panel corrected standard errors developed by beck and katz 1995 over the period 1985 2008 results obtained confirm the hypothesis that both foreign and non state investments play a leading role in the decline of energy intensity across chinese regions whereas there is no evidence of a positive contribution of state investment the findings also reveal differences in energy intensity across regions thus confirming the importance of accounting for the regional dimension when analyzing energy consumption in china

is god in the details a reexamination of the role of religion in economic growth summary barro and mccleary 2003 religion and economic growth across countries american journal of sociology 68 760 781 is a key research contribution in the new literature exploring the macroeconomic effects of religious beliefs this paper represents an effort to evaluate the strength of their claims we evaluate their results in terms of replicability and robustness overall their analysis generally meets the standard of statistical replicability though not perfectly on the other hand we do not find that their results are robust to changes in their baseline statistical specification when model averaging methods are employed to integrate information across alternative statistical specifications little evidence survives that religious variables help to predict cross country income differences copyright 2011 john wiley sons ltd

the demand for energy in swedish manufacturing industries the price sensitivity of energy demand and the substitution possibilities between energy and other aggregate production factors in swedish manufacturing industries are analyzed both homothetic and nonhomotethic specifications of a translog cost function are estimated using annual data for the period 1952 1976 for total swedish manufacturing and for 12 manufacturing subsectors the results indicate that relative changes in energy prices have significant effects on energy consumption there is evidence however that adjustment to higher energy prices may be accompanied by a deceleration in investment

energy capital substitutability complementarity the dichotomy abstract changes in the price of energy affect not only the demand for energy but also the rates of capital formation and labour utilization these changes depend on the functional relationship between energy and the primary factor inputs in particular the relationship between energy and capital has been characterized by major conflicting evidence time series data classify the two inputs as complements by contrast pooled cross section studies conclude that capital and energy aresubstitutes in the production process in this case higher priced energy will stimulate the demand for investment while several reconciliation attempts on this disparity deserve marked attention the most prominent explanation is that time series studies reflect short term relationships and cross section analyses capture long term effects

evaluating the atkinson index of household energy consumption in china abstract improving equality and efficiency of household energy distribution is the primary concern of china s policy makers in their effort to reform the energy pricing system in this paper we use atkinson index as an analytical tool to quantitatively and systematically evaluate the equality and efficiency of household energy distribution the result shows that the atkinson index of electricity expenditure is much smaller than that of transportation expenditure which indicates that transportation expenditure responds better to income differences furthermore a geographical distribution analysis indicates that households in middle china suffer greater inequality in energy distribution than those in eastern and western china in view of the oncoming energy pricing reform in china we reevaluate the atkinson index under the new pricing scenarios for electricity and petroleum products compared to the current household energy pricing mechanism the simulated new policies generate more allocative efficiency of household energy and ensure more equality of energy consumption for low income households on this account we suggest that geographical differences and equality in energy distribution be duly addressed in reforming energy policies in china

help or hindrance religion s impact on gender inequality in attitudes and outcomes summary this paper investigates the effect of religiosity on attitudes toward gender equality using world values survey data results indicate that religiosity is strongly correlated with gender inequitable attitudes across countries further ols tsls and 3sls regression estimates reveal that gender inequitable attitudes are associated with negative effects on seven measures of gender equality of well being and public policy no single religion stands out as more gender inequitable than others the impact of religiosity is likely transmitted via stealth effects on everyday behavior in economic transactions in labor markets household resource allocation and government spending

estimating future elasticities of substitution for the rebound debate abstract because they lower the cost of using energy in production and consumption activities energy efficiency improvements may lead to a rebound effect in which the demand for energy increases to offset partly or completely the initial energy saving the magnitude of the rebound effect depends on 1 the extent to which the effective costs of energy services capital and operating actually decrease from efficiency improvements 2 the technical and economic ease with which energy and other inputs to production and consumption capital labour materials can be substituted when the effective cost of using energy does in fact decrease 3 the response of intermediate and final demands to changes in the cost of energy services structural change and 4 the response of energy service demand to changes in income estimates of 1 and 2 together which is the elasticity of substitution esub between capital and energy have been criticized in the past for either not being explicit about what is technically possible in future critique of top down or ignoring the intangible costs facing firms and households when considering and implementing energy efficiency investments critique of bottom up in this study we attempt to address these two concerns by using a technologically explicit and behaviourally realistic technology simulation model to estimate long run future esub values for capital and energy for the canadian economy our simulations suggest that the capital energy esub may be lower than assumed by most studies that ignore behaviour suggesting only weak substitution between capital and energy ironically this could mean that our energy efficiency efforts will be less effective than sometimes thought but that the rebound effect will also be relatively small however estimates of 3 and 4 must be combined with our findings to assess the full magnitude of the rebound effect

religion and economic performance summary this paper investigates the relationship between religion and economic performance in both cross country and within country regressions the null hypothesis that religious affiliation is uncorrelated with performance can frequently be rejected i e religion matters though the regressions do not yield a robust pattern of coefficients with respect to particular religions the results with respect to islam do not support the notion that it is inimical to growth on the contrary virtually every statistically significant coefficient on muslim population shares reported in this paper in both cross country and within country statistical analyses is positive if anything islam promotes growth